4: Book One of the Numbers Trilogy: The Numbers Trilogy, #1

By A. A. Clifford

 

Science and Religion are not enemies... They are Conspirators.

2097 A.D. Religion is no longer the world's dominant belief system. Cyrenism, a global collection of atheists, agnostics and scientists is now the majority, and our society has become dependent upon artificial intelligence, technology and advanced robotics.

Global Marshal Austin Corrigan is a man produced by this brave new world. He is a tenacious law enforcement officer and a dedicated Cyrenist. Austin is balanced on the job and in life by his best friend, Dean "Deadman" Clarkson, a devout Catholic and a lethal military sniper.

When three of the most dangerous criminals in the world escape Prime Supermax Prisons, Austin and his team go after them. The escapees are tied to a fourth man, a powerful figure whose ambition is fueled by the most terrifying prophecies of religion.

Austin tracks his prey and discovers they possess incredible abilities that logic cannot explain: superhuman strength, speed, agility and a dominant telekinetic power. Are these man-made criminals, scientifically enhanced Apex Humans, or is Austin in pursuit of the unimaginable, the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

Austin confronts his enemy and his belief in a final battle and is forced to make an unspeakable choice, one that will forever change science, religion and the life which binds them together.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: HardBooks Publishing
• Release date: May 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227764478

Book preview

Foreword

Four

Science Fiction is prophetic, challenging the laws of nature or even reality itself, continually making man subject to a greater power, undone by his arrogance, but saved by his humanity—or not.

But as we evolve, we move closer to these stories in our real lives. Star Trek’s communicators and mobile tablets are for sale in a global cybernetic universe, and how long before you ask Alexa to do something, and she answers with the negative imperative, "No."

This story is no less sibylline. It concerns God, science and the eternal argument of which is more responsible for humankind.

It is set in a world becoming dependent on machines and AI. Very credible engines of science, technology and faith, power its incredible story.

The title is simple, but metaphysically, four is a disquieting number. The first three integers are all prime numbers, divisible by only one and themselves.

Four is the first step toward greater, exponential possibilities, like Moonwatcher, throwing his weapon skyward in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

God was first and then He created the Angels, then the Earth. His next creation was man, susceptible to the rules of science and faith, the application of which opened redoubtable prospects.

We are that fourth event.

We, are 4.

a.a.c.

June 25, 2019

"Science without religion is lame.

Religion without science is blind."

- Albert Einstein

"Man is still evolving, but it

is a journey of damnation."

- Madison Tichen,

The Ordinal Sacrifices (2067)

"We are left with one inescapable conclusion:

God is either not all powerful, or not all good."

- The Problem of Evil

Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy

Prologue:

The Day The Earth Stood Still

New York Times July 2, 2082.

cyrenism now world’s largest belief system

By Mark L. Westin.

VIENNA—The United Nations today announced its findings from the World Census Report of 2080, (WCR) collected from all member countries in the United Nations.

The findings report there are over 11 billion people in the known world, and for the first time, most of them are non-theist, they do not believe in a god.

After years of unprecedented growth, Cyrenism, formerly known as atheism or agnosticism, is now the most dominant philosophy in the world.

The WCR shows 51.6% of people in the world claim non-belief in a deity or deities as their controlling philosophy.

Cyrenists are a collection of many disciplines, including atheists, agnostics, mathematicians and scientists whose only faith is science, logic and personal morality.

They take their name from Theodorus of Cyrene, the first atheist. He lived in Greece in 465 B.C. and was one teacher of the great philosopher Plato.

Since the middle of the century, ordinary people from all walks of life joined Cyrenism, refuting all forms of theism, growing their numbers to now dominant proportions.

This is a victory for all humanity, said Silas Warner, 57, President of The United Cyrenists of America. Our commitment to peace, the environment and humanitarian causes has finally drawn people away from the distraction of myth. We have nothing against the theists, but their way has controlled for years, and all it did was hamper advancement by fomenting conflict and struggle.

But the Catholic Church and other religious organizations have a different reading on the news.

There have always been periods of faithlessness, said Pope Mary Catherine I, the first female Pope. God will bring these lost souls back into the fold.

All over the world, however, Cyrenists celebrate, saying we have freed humanity from a prison of its own making, and we can now embrace science and technology and turn ourselves to the preservation of intellect and compassion.

But while Cyrenists rejoice and the church remains optimistic, still others see the decline of faith as something dangerous.

John-B, 73, the leader of the radical Christian church, First Day, posted a warning on the international web saying, The demarcation of the end of belief is a victory for evil and the beginning of oblivion.

Recent events bolster his accusation as the U.S. and other countries find themselves inundated with civil unrest, violence, hate crimes and protests against technology and robosapien replacement.

No matter what you believe, we are now living in a new age, one where science and technology hold as much power as the Star of David, the Crescent Moon and the Cross.

Part 1

"If one believes the credible acts of the Bible,

then the incredible acts should terrify you."

- Lilian Anders, Will Of Ages (2051)

1

Red War

Florence, Colorado.

April 3, 2097, 6:03AM (MDT)

The cornerstone cracked, a thick, jagged line not unlike a bolt of lightning, ripped across a twenty foot section of reinforced concrete, spitting chunks of rock and fine dust from the foot of the prison.

No one there realized this, nor did any of the sophisticated surveillance equipment pick it up, not even the ultraviolet, infrared and sonic sweeps, which were run out of a control room and had been in operation since it was completed in 2060.

PSMX-1, or the Prime Supermax Prison, was big brother to the old ADX, a maximum security prison which sat just two miles away and was now a military supply station and warehouse.

The power that split the stone was just time, decomposition and gravity, the normal physical forces we feel every day. But like the wings of a butterfly, it brought with it a storm; Zeus ringing a doorbell.

Inside the prison, a pair of eyes opened to this event, awakened by unnatural instinct.

PSMX-1 is the only Prime Supermax prison in the United States. There is one each in Canada, Mexico and Central and South America.

The Western Global Trade Agreement of 2045 designated this, which after creating seamless trade, also created an international law enforcement service and penal system, a convenient way to dismantle sovereignty when protecting financial interests.

There was resistance to the WGTA at first, but like most social rebellion, it gave way under the weight of government pushback, underground violence, economic pressure, disinformation and apathy.

The growing Cyrenist movement also aided the passage of this treaty, which united a third of the world.

Christians saw global consolidation as a bad omen, but Cyrenists saw it as social unification, a way to protect issues and interests important to humanity.

Like all Prime Supermax prisons, PSMX-1 is home to the most dangerous inmates in the nation. The government encouraged every state and province to send its worst men to the new facility.

Thus, in a larger sense, the prison houses the spirit of every vile act of society.

Q Unit is where the worst of these worst are kept. To end up here, you had to commit crimes deemed to threaten all of humanity.

It has always been hard to staff Q Unit. Prison guards would rather work with garden-variety rapists, pedophiles and serial killers than the wily, lethal and often brilliant minds there.

It is one thing to be threatened by a man with a makeshift knife, it’s another to have your retina burned out by a homemade magnesium flash gun.

Therefore, most of the guards work the larger section of the complex, which has 1600 cells and houses over 1500 men.

Q Unit houses thirty-seven men.

And one woman.

They brought her in at night, after trying to escape from two other secure facilities.

She choked one guard to death, another she gutted with the edge of a detached washing machine lid. She kicked the last guard she attacked over a railing and he fell to his death.

None of the officials guarding her that night worried about her safety in a prison of men, because Lieutenant Avery Alice Wilson was a soldier, designated LS-9, meaning trained with lethal skills and capable of killing without conventional weapons.

Avery was a former Army Ranger and one of the few women to lead a team into war. She was a decorated hero responsible for liberating a company of soldiers on two separate missions.

She was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the daughter of a business executive and a term coder who lived a middle class American dream, which left Avery wanting for nothing.

A year after she was born, the Wilsons became pregnant with another child, a boy who seemed perfectly healthy, until he emerged from his mother and mysteriously died.

The family would have no more children and became mired in grief until young Avery took her Unified DNA Test.

Since 2001, the government mandated that every child born to be subject to DNA filing and matching. This was done in secret at first, with the Canadian, Mexican and U.S. governments all conspiring in their words for the health of its citizens.

A database was kept and patterns studied on how to assist the Human Genome Project. The hope was in studying those with superior genes, we could help prevent disease and help all people live longer.

The Unified DNA Test determined levels of genetic strength, balance and structure, in short, scientific perfection.

They placed Avery in the highest class of DNA strength and structure according to the tests. They called this Mode One, a rarity and an honor.

The government studied Avery and gave her family a generous government grant for their troubles. In all other respects, she was allowed to live a normal life.

It was clear from the start, however, that Avery was an exceptional young woman. She excelled in academics and sports and broke records in each during her school days.

Avery grew to five eleven and weighed a lean and very muscular 160 pounds.

She was an attractive girl, with stark green eyes and reddish hair, which she always wore short.

Avery was loved by her teachers and desired by boys and girls alike, but never showed much interest in romance.

She attended her high school prom alone but was still elected Prom Queen.

Avery accepted a scholarship from West Point, snubbing the likes of Harvard, Stanford and MIT. In her mind, she had always been a soldier, and nothing else mattered.

She played soccer and baseball and was also on the women’s wrestling team. She studied war and strategy, analyzing all the great generals throughout history.

Avery graduated with distinction, winning awards in marksmanship, leadership and simulated AI combat.

After joining the Rangers, she would learn several forms of fighting, including Karate, Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and boxing.

When her training was done, the Army had created a brilliant, lethal and efficient killer.

For reasons still unknown, Avery went AWOL in Africa’s Unification War, a conflict that was the most blatant financially based war the world had ever seen.

Corporate greed and the vast natural resources of the land drove the attempt to unify the continent. No one talked about patriotism, terrorism, religion or broken treaties. This was all about commerce.

They stationed Avery in Africa as a military advisor, which meant she and her fellow Rangers would watch the Africans kill, but were always ready to kill whomever the locals couldn’t.

She stole a cache of funds, then started a micro-war in a godforsaken region in northern Gabon.

Ancient tensions had festered for a long time and she single-handedly raised them to the surface over three months, a feat her superiors would find impressive as well as frightening.

Avery started with the gangs, using money and greed to rouse their violent tendencies.

Then she escalated the animosity between the religious groups, which was always simple to do.

When everyone was in a daily fight for food, water and survival, she ignited the mixture by bombing a hospital.

By the time the U.S. caught on, Avery had killed or caused to be killed over 900 people, including women and children.

In fact, she seemed to love the death of young people the most, and there were pictures of Avery smiling over their ravaged corpses.

The government had dozens of these pictures and banned them, so of course, they ended up on the web, where Avery, wearing her trademark red head wrap, became an infamous figure called Sorcière Rouge, the Red Witch.

Ironically, a team of Army Rangers came for her. Avery and her followers held them at bay for a week at the cost of many lives.

She was a clever tactician and used a variety of tricks and traps that confounded her pursuers. It had been difficult to find her because she had paid hundreds of people to wear red head wraps.

In the end, Avery walked into the Ranger camp, hands over her head, wounded, bleeding and looking like a madwoman.

The Rangers concluded they had starved her out, but when they raided her camp, they found it filled with weapons, food and water. It was also littered with the corpses of her team. She had killed them all.

Unofficially, Avery was tortured and chemically interrogated, but incredibly, she never broke. Like all Rangers, she had interrogation resistance training, and her resolve defeated even the most brutal government methods.

So, they never found out just why she went rogue, surrendered, or why she killed her cohorts.

She was court-martialed in several closed-door sessions, while all the military and law enforcement watched on secure servers.

The Army and the government did not want the public to know anything of her exploits. It was bad for everyone in politics and it would severely hurt recruitment.

Avery was convicted, but no ordinary high-security prison could hold her. So, they brought her to PSMX-1 and housed her in Q Unit.

She was moved after a month, when another prisoner complained about her presence being disruptive. She had not spoken one word or taken any physical action, but nightmares had plagued the complaining prisoner, a devout Christian. They were so awful that he had not slept for three days and had contemplated suicide.

So they took Avery into a special underground complex used for severe punishment, the guards called The Belly.

Avery awakened that day, just as the foundation cracked. It was an odd feeling, like she had lost control of her body for a moment.

She rose and felt a power surge through her, like a current of infinite possibility. For once, the small, windowless room did not feel like a prison. She could sense the sun rising and could faintly feel the other prisoners and their soiled essences stirring above her.

They were dangerous, she thought, but nothing felt deadlier than the pictures in her head today. Today, she was getting out.

Her newfound power amplified something inside her, something she called simply the voice.

It had been in her since she was a child, murmuring, whispering the answers to tests, the strategy to defeat sporting opponents and always getting stronger, bigger; always it was growing.

The voice never said words, but pushed feelings and thoughts. For a time, she thought it was some kind of illness, a mental disorder, but she only thought that because we were all trained to believe that anything exceptional was dangerous.

Though her early life looked peaceful from the outside, Avery and the voice had been killing people for decades.

She shoved little Carl Walker down a flight of stairs in grade school, breaking his neck. She’d poisoned Delores Vale, the art teacher with chemicals she stole on a hospital field trip, and in high school, she strangled Ferda McDonough in the Creek Caves after a softball game. Her body was still there, as far as Avery knew.

This was one of the main reasons the military was so appealing. It was their job to kill.

At 6:55 AM that day, after doing her push-ups, Avery informed her security robot that she wanted to exercise her right to personal time in the solo gym on the premises.

Prisoner 1B1376 requests solo gym, said Avery calmly.

The bot was a Cassian class 9 that walked on synth legs but had limited flight capability. It had a red visual display and a service arm, which doubled as a weapons port.

Avery had caused no problems since being brought in and so had earned the right to one hour in the one-person gym with its big window and color TV.

The bot responded: Received and granted after morning medical.

Many robots could speak, but it was mostly in programmed responses and a tone that mimicked a human voice but fell short of any genuine emotion, making them feel ominous.

The four-man contingent assigned to her arrived after she finished her morning meal, which comprised a protein and vegetable mash and water. It was all she ever consumed.

At 7:40 AM, Avery received her daily medical injection, a violence inhibitor called Mexyldiac, one of the many precursors to Tekladox, the universal mood enhancer.

They placed her in magnetic restraints, while two guards held SMGs on her. Her legs were also restrained, so she had to shuffle to move along in her slippers which were made of thick paper.

One guard faced her, walking backwards. Two guards walked on either side, their sidearms holstered away from the prisoner.

The last guard followed in the rear, his weapon trained on the dangerous woman.

The guard bot lifted from its feet and kept pace over her, floating near the ceiling.

Q Unit’s Commander, Bob Liu, a strict and thorough officer, watched on remote from his control room. He’d granted the request only because he was compelled to.

It would be better for everyone if she just kept her ass in The Belly, he said to no one in particular.

Avery was expressionless as she shambled along. Her breathing was strong and measured.

Prison cameras recorded the entire trip, including the one in the bot.

At 7:52 AM, Avery suddenly stopped walking.

What’s wrong? asked Bob Liu over a wall speaker.

Move, convict! said the guard to Avery’s right.

Avery just stood, looking straight ahead at the forward guard.

I said move! yelled the guard to her right and pulled an e-baton.

Privileges cancelled! said Bob Liu. Get her back in The Belly, now.

Bob Liu’s video feed glitched, the picture jumped and static appeared, like rain.

Then the forward and aft guards fired their weapons simultaneously, each striking the guards on either side of Avery in their necks above their defense jackets. Blood gushed forth, spraying the walls and Avery. Both guards fell to the ground.

The two standing guards fired again, this time each hitting the other in the head.

What the fuck!? yelled Bob Liu, hitting the guard bot’s attack button and the lockdown alarm at the same time.

The guard bot dropped from the ceiling, its service arm retracting and pushing out a gun.

Thump! It fell next to Avery. The end of the gun barrel hit Avery in the face. She toppled to one side, blood gushing from her nose.

The bot aimed the gun at her.

Prisoner cease movement, said the bot.

Avery didn’t move. She just stared into the big red eye of the Cassian 9.

Why isn’t it firing the sedative dart?! yelled Liu, hitting the emergency alarm button again.

The guard bot hummed, then shook. Avery concentrated her gaze, blood still coming from her nostrils.

Shoot her, goddammit! said Bob Liu, almost screaming now.

The guard bot fell face forward and fired into the floor.

Avery grabbed the digital key to her restraints from a dead guard. She freed herself as a bloody, mucous bubble expanded and popped from one nostril. She stood, then ran off.

Liu followed her on camera as she ran down a long corridor. It made no sense. She could not get out.

Then Avery stopped by a vent, kicked it open, and dove inside.

Shit! said Liu. He pulled his service weapon and ran.

By the time Liu and his team got there, Avery was gone and, to everyone’s shock, she had not taken a weapon.

There’s nowhere for her to run, said Liu. Lock down this area and flush her out. Get her tracker signal!

Liu went back and looked at the guard bot, which was still rattling on the floor. Liu kicked it hard.

Dammit! he said.

Sir, said a guard. Her tracker shows she’s moving underground, under the prison.

Just outside the perimeter of the prison, only fifty yards from a guard