Aktiya: The Ignition Sequence

By J. S. Cooper

Just when the nightmare raging in Julien Storms clairvoyant mind
is about to consume him, a session with a local hypnotist yields a
clue that sets off a chain of events, leading to a mysterious clearing
set deep in the Cascade Mountains. The source of the magnetic
disturbances plaguing the boys young mind has been waiting, for
more than 10,000 years.
This is the story of two souls, two souls that are millions of light
years apart, linked by a frequency that knows no boundaries.
Some believe it to be a savior; others believe it to be a cataclysm.
Together, these two clairvoyants must confront humanitys
tragic design flaws as well as their own personal demons, if
they are to learn the truth about the machine lying beneath the
mysterious clearing

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450025621

J. S. Cooper

J.S. Cooper is the New York Times bestselling author of multiple indie-published books, including the Ex Games series, the Private Club series, and the Martelli Brothers series. Born in London, she now lives in the US, where she is currently working on the next book in the Swept Away series.

Book preview

Copyright © 2010 by J. S. Cooper.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2010900235

ISBN: Hardcover    978-1-4500-2561-4

ISBN: Softcover      978-1-4500-2560-7

ISBN: Ebook           978-1-4500-2562-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover photo by James Bo Insogna

Cover photo enhancement by Darren Mahuron (Summit Studios)

Artist photo by Darren Mahuron (Summit Studios)

Written by J. S. Cooper

April 2006-September 2009

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

70475

Chapters

1.    Soothsayer

2.    Serotonin

3.    Curfew

4.    Mazama

5.    The Sacred Valley

6.    Route Twenty

7.    Clarity

8.    Holden

9.    The Lost Passage

10.    Kalmita

11.    Jeremy and Vera

12.    Inner Turmoil

13.    The Shivs

14.    The Sons of Liberty

15.    Carnage

16.    Ignition

Volume I

The Ignition Sequence

map I.jpg

1

Soothsayer

It was an early morning in October . . . the sun was beginning to rise over the Cascade Mountains, as the Earth rotated the largest city in the northwest corner of the United States into view. It would be a rare treat to catch a clear shot of the sky once the summer had lost its luster, but this would not be the day. The rising sun quickly became obscured by a pack of clouds that made up a heavy storm front billowing in from the Pacific Ocean. The awakening city began to buzz without paying much attention to the darkening sky as the sudden winds ripped more of the multicolored leaves from their trees. Construction crews rushed to complete their unpunctual summer projects, while a consortium in one of the tall buildings at the center of the city previewed its drainage issues, concerning the rains that were sure to fall in the upcoming winter. It was autumn, in Seattle, in the year 2056.

After little deliberation, the clouds released their energy. The rain began to pitter against the window of one suburban home as the boy inside one of the bedrooms began to stir. Elsewhere in the house, his mother was busy in the kitchen, preparing for her usual routine and the day ahead. The smell of freshly roasted coffee permeated the air as it percolated on the range. She set the table for breakfast and after sliding a few slices of bread into the toaster, she walked over to an intercom and gently pushed one of the buttons.

Julien? she said softly into the voice panel, Are you up yet?

The boy squirmed and turned onto his stomach, the sound of his mother’s voice having little impact on him. He was of medium build, with long black hair that fell to his shoulders. His lean arms each bore a lone tattoo, one depicting the sun and the other depicting an Egyptian pyramid. After pulling a few more things out of the refrigerator, his mother tried again.

Ju-leee-annnn . . . she sang softly into the intercom, awaiting his response.

The boy suddenly awoke in a violent upheaval, knocking everything off his nightstand as he flung himself out of bed. He spun around several times with his hands clutched against the sides of his head before falling backward into the dresser and collapsing against it. His mother, already in tears, burst into his bedroom.

Oh my god, Julien! she shrieked, her voice cracking, as she rushed to his side. The boy sat there groaning, with his face buried in his arms.

After a few seconds, he spoke. That’s the second time this month, the second time—it’s coming on stronger, it’s coming back.

"Again??" she lamented, the tears rolling down her face, as she knelt in front of her son and tightly held him. She could see his shoulder through one of the small stars that he’d gotten laser cut into each earlobe. The boy exhaled deeply and then partially lifted his head out of his hands before resuming.

Yeah, again . . . he whispered, staring blankly at the wall in front of him, I can never make out anything they say, it’s always the same.

The boy quickly realized that he had to offer his mother something more positive to ease her concern. He reached out and hugged her tightly as she let herself fall into a sitting position by his side. It’ll be OK, Mom—I’ll work it out. With that, he rose to his feet and pulled her up with him. They embraced there for a moment as his mother composed herself. She finally let him go, and began picking up the items that had fallen off his nightstand. He dressed quickly and then followed her lead.

Will you go see Dr. Antuna if this keeps up? she said, placing a photo of the two of them back on the nightstand. He’d be glad to see you.

I don’t need to see anymore doctors, Mom—we both already know the deal, Julien quickly retorted, as he shook his head. "It’ll pass . . ." he sneered, realizing immediately how sarcastic he had just sounded. He quickly followed up in a softer tone, Look, it’ll clear out when it clears out.

His mother reached over grabbed him by the shoulders. OK, well, you know I’m here for you, if you ever need me.

I know, Mom, I know, Julien replied, as he reached up and clasped his hands around her arms.

They made their way into the kitchen right as the toast popped out. Julien tried to make light of the jagged start to their day, while his mother served breakfast. She laughed as he cracked jokes about opening a demolition business, specializing in old bedroom furniture. The morning routine quickly consumed the incident that had taken place and within minutes, the casual side of breakfast slid into the frenzy of their daily schedules. It became another typical morning in the Storm residence.

Bye, Mom! he yelled, as he threaded his arms through the sleeves of his leather jacket and ran out the door.

Go slow, it’s raining! she yelled back, before the door slammed shut. She watched him through the window as he kick-started his motorcycle and started down the driveway. Julien waved his hand behind his head until he was out of sight. "He’s a good kid, she thought to herself, smiling at first. Her smile slowly faded. If God would just take back that gift, he’d have a normal life."

The rain slowed to a drizzle as Julien roared past a wave of plasma billboards. It was a miserably wet morning but he didn’t care. Riding his motorcycle to school in the rain instead of riding the school bus was yet another way to show society his defiance. The bike, an old BMW R-50/2 from the mid 1960s, had belonged to his great-grandfather. He had bought it new, and over the years, it had been handed down from generation to generation. Julien’s grandfather and his father had both taken good care of the motorcycle and remarkably, nearly one hundred years later, it was still in decent shape.

Julien parked the bike at a Walco station, a block from school, and darted into the bathroom to start his morning ritual. He switched out of his jeans into the school uniform slacks, and then carefully removed the school uniform top from a bag he kept in a storage compartment on his bike. He quickly slipped that over his T-shirt and carefully tucked it into the slacks. He hated the school uniform and had vowed to never wear it a minute longer than he had to. Next came the EarTunes, earplugs loaded with all his favorite music. Most music, especially the music he listened to, was on the list of Deleted Titles. It had all come about with the Public Decency Amendment in 2051, which detailed the lives of unmutual musicians, actors, and artists, acting as rogue activists . . . corrupting the cohesiveness and moral decency of society. Most of the confrontational films, books, and music made in the twentieth century and the first half of the twenty-first century had been taken off the market. There was a list of Deleted Titles, or D.T.s, and any films, music, or art on the D.T. list could not be legally sold. The U.S. government had not found an enforceable way to illegalize possession, but if you were caught with D.T.s, they were confiscated. Many of the larger cities had government-controlled incinerators, where D.T.s were brought by the cubic ton and destroyed.

The vast majority of high schools across the nation had outlawed personal music devices altogether, to ensure compliance. EarTunes, the older iPods, and all other types of music players, including plasma phones, were banned from school’s grounds. With a grimace, Julien removed his EarTunes and stuffed them into the storage compartment on the back of his bike, along with his plasma phone. All the bands he liked, the unmutual music of yesteryear: Bad Religion, Dead Kennedys, Peace Officer, HeadCrash, Rage Against the Machine, AFI; their music was virtually impossible to find anymore, deemed confrontational to the traditions of our society. He paused for a moment as he thought about an article he once read, about life at the turn of the twenty-first century.

"There was a time when people could download music from the internet—any music they wanted, anytime! No one could or would stop you, from listening to whatever you wanted! He shook his head as he got back on his bike, thinking about how ridiculously censored the internet had become by 2056. Back then you could do whatever you wanted, he thought to himself, as he kick-started the bike. Back THEN—" it was an expression he’d become all too familiar with.

School had started three weeks ago, and Julien could tell that his senior year wasn’t going to be anymore appealing than his junior year, or any other year of high school for that matter. To him, it was all the same crap. The kids had all been force-fed the same garbage about how evil the rest of the world was, and how they needed to walk the straight and narrow path if they ever wanted to make it anywhere in life. He didn’t have very many friends and it wasn’t because he looked strange, or wore strange clothes, or listened to music on the D.T. list; there were plenty of kids who could identify with this. It was because they knew, the other kids knew. Word had gotten out.

Julien’s doctors could never make sense of the persistent nightmare that had plagued the inside of his young mind, since he was around three or four years old. They insisted it would pass with time, but it never did. It was only after his brain launched into an entirely new series of nightmares, that the doctors started to recognize his innate ability to see things that other humans could not see, things that had either never been seen or were yet to be seen. In certain instances, the boy’s nightmares would yield visions—the past, the future, or both—it was a gift that few had, and once his condition was diagnosed, the doctors turned his name over to the law enforcement. He had been summoned more than a dozen times since then, to use his clairvoyance, to help solve high profile murder cases. He should never have been exposed to the blood and the gore associated with the crime scenes, but law enforcement was more preoccupied with the pressure on their department than the mental stability of a no-name middle-class suburban kid. The last time around, though, he shook their faith in him when he couldn’t see what they wanted him to see. It was an old case, a case that was constantly being brought back to light: The infant son of Samuel Towers, a powerful media magnate, had been abducted and presumably killed. After years had passed without an arrest, law enforcement was under serious pressure to solve the case. They wanted Julien to find the culprit, but he simply couldn’t. Despite the query, which had lasted nearly twenty-four straight hours, he could not conjure up any new leads on the case. They accused him, as a child, of shirking his civic duty, before driving him home for the last time. It was by no means a reflection of his true clairvoyant abilities, but his failure in the Towers Case marked the end of his assistance to law enforcement and the beginning of a downward spiral into psychological instability.

Meanwhile, the original nightmare—the Dark Vision, as Julien called it, fell into remission for a few years, but then returned when he was a teenager, with a growing intensity. It never passed as the doctors insisted it would, and no one could ever derive the past or the future from it . . . they moved and communicated like human beings, loud, angry, menacing . . . he stopped going to the doctors, having lost faith in their ability to help him, and refused to discuss the Dark Vision with anyone. The death of his father, which had happened under circumstances that he still considered suspect, furthered his animosity towards organized medicine and conventional means of treatment. Julien was on his own. Somehow, word of his clairvoyance made its way out into the community by the time he was in high school, and the other kids began to avoid him. It had all gotten horribly distorted by the time it got around . . . Mindreader, Merlin, Nostradamus, Soothsayer—he’d heard it all, and he avoided the other kids as much as they avoided him.

By senior year, though, Julien had made a couple of good friends that he could count on. There was Nicoletta; they’d met at a sonic, an underground dance party. She was a petite, slender girl with brown eyes and brown hair. Her family had migrated from the Midwest in the 2040s after a series of droughts crippled their farm. They came for the rains that kept the land in the Pacific Northwest fertile and over time, they managed to carve out a meager existence, growing organic produce for a handful of restaurants in Seattle. Nicoletta grew up dirt poor and was often sent to school wearing hand-me-downs from her two older brothers. This made her the object of scorn and ridicule amongst the upper-class kids, their jeers cut through her pride like razor blades. As she tiptoed from her childhood into adolescence, Nicoletta found herself gravitating towards other teenagers that had been cast out of the popularity contest, which paved the way to electronic music and sonics. It was at the underground dance parties that she finally found real friends, friends that were open-minded enough to see past her family’s economic status.

There was also Simon, Julien’s best friend; he was a stocky, muscular kid with calloused hands. His family had lived on a ranch at the edge of Seattle for several generations, running a small dairy business. He was kind of an outcast too. He preferred camping, fishing, and hiking to sports and social functions. He was always reading survival magazines and talking about becoming a forest ranger, so he could get outta this airhead society. He’d been teased horribly as well, about everything from his long hair to his braces, and by the time he grew to be a teenager, he didn’t have much faith in people or relationships. He managed to suspend his cynicism from time to time and as fate would have it, that put him squarely into Nicoletta’s arms one night. After an endless courtship, delayed by a plethora of childhood insecurities, they finally got together. Simon and Nicoletta, the two of them were Julien’s only real friends—and sometimes, they were the only thing that made high school bearable.

Julien stared at the security lines leading into his school. Everything was a security check, no matter where you went, and it had been like that for as long as he could remember. The ominous clouds above him held at a drizzle as he stood there, thinking about life.

Society, it seemed, was in a spiraling state of decay. Despite the media’s constant barrage of overjoyed images, no one seemed like they were truly happy anymore. Everyone was preoccupied with paying the rent and putting food on the table, and any money left after the basics were paid went to superficial indulgences. It was as if the end was in sight. Security, the curfew, the incinerators; it was all attributed to the progress that the country had made. Proponents would argue that the new restrictions were to be compared to the motor vehicle laws that had gone into effect, once the Conestoga wagon was replaced with the automobile. The future brings restrictions with it, that’s a natural part of life, the talking heads would say, and no one seemed to want to contest this. But, under the banner of freedom, personal privacy had eroded to the point where you couldn’t make a phone call or check out a library book without looking over your shoulder, and anyone who questioned it was told it was for their own good; it was for their protection. Anyone who openly challenged the government found themselves under serious scrutiny, which often led to heaps of legal trouble, or worse. It wasn’t uncommon to see an outspoken dissident simply disappear. As a result, no one bothered to question anything, anymore.

Julien finally got into line. After standing there for a moment, a pair of hands suddenly tightened around his neck from behind. He whirled around menacingly to confront the would-be assailant, who turned out to be Simon. Julien shoved him.

Easy, man—I’ve had a rough morning, he grimaced, trying to avoid sounding too serious.

Bad dreams again? Simon’s expression instantly turned somber.

Yeah.

Julien didn’t want to talk about it, as usual, and after a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, he suddenly craned his neck to peer at the security guards ahead of him. He then glanced over his shoulder behind him to see if anyone else was paying attention. Without a word, he smirked, and then slowly pulled his uniform top up with one hand while holding his belt down with the other to reveal his T-shirt.

Peace Officer?? bellowed Simon, before quickly lowering his voice. Where the hell did you find a Peace Officer shirt?

I found it in a thrift store last week, replied Julien, They left out this big pile of stuff bound for the incinerators, I stole it.

"You stole it?"

Yeah, there was no other way to get it, they wouldn’t have sold it to me.

Julien and Simon had made a pact at the beginning of the school year; they’d pledged to dig up as many unmutual T-shirts as they could find, and then wear them under their school uniforms. When they passed each other in the halls, they’d inch up their uniform tops and flash their blacklisted T-shirts at each other, like they were in some sort of secret gang. This produced stifled chuckles from each another in the halls and endless laughter anywhere outside of school grounds.

"Check this out, I got you beat. Simon grinned, as he slowly lifted his uniform top to reveal a dark blue T-shirt, with the letters NAPN" stenciled onto the front of it.

"No Way!" hissed Julien. Before he had a chance to ask, Simon professed the answer, through a devilish smile.

I made this one myself.

Simon was known for being extremely outspoken on anything having to do with the natural environment and its indigenous peoples. He was a vehement supporter of Native American rights, and his strong opinions routinely got him into trouble. Julien and Simon had been bloodied a few times together, when Simon got hotheaded and words became fists. Julien always stepped up for Simon, even when the odds meant they were going to get beaten down. He was always there, partly because Simon was his best friend, but mostly because Simon was always right.

*     *     *

The early expeditions of Columbus and Cortez, the ongoing influx of Europeans; it was the beginning of the end, and the indigenous tribes of America never saw it coming. The European settlers would spend five centuries trampling through the New World, on their way to forming a nation that had no place for the natives living on the lands that were seized. The white man broke every treaty the natives ever signed and slaughtered men, women, and children whenever they resisted. In the end, the natives were herded onto reservations like cattle, stripped of any means to provide for themselves. It wasn’t until the beginning of the twentieth century that the tribes were even granted citizenship in the country that they once called home, and that was mostly due to the fallout from a scandal that came to light during World War I. Many Native American soldiers had fought and died for the United States at war, and the U.S. government could not even acknowledge the wounded and the dead as anything more than valiant natives, because they had never been officially recognized as citizens of the United States. The government attempted to diffuse the situation by extending citizenship rights to the tribes, but that would not and could not cover up for the dishonor that had been forced on the Native Americans over the previous five hundred years. A myriad of lies, violence, and corruption had paved the road to ruin in the systematic obliteration of the Native American way of life, and naturalization paperwork did little to reverse the damage that had already been done. Even with citizenship; the tribes were left to fend for themselves, in a society that they had played no part in creating. The rise of the Industrial Age at the end of the nineteenth century destroyed all hopes of returning to self-sufficiency, the fertility of the lands, and harmony with nature. The mighty cities furthered the ambitions of the white man, but behind the smokestacks, the indigenous people suffered. Crime, alcoholism, depression, and suicide; the darkness consumed their race.

For five centuries, the tribes of the Pacific Northwest managed to survive the machinations of the white man, but nothing could prepare them for what was to come in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. In 2024, the tribes were suddenly stripped of their autonomy when a handful of senators from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho finally succeeded in disbanding the tribal governments, through a series of deceitful initiatives that were advanced through closed door sessions. The senators who’d proposed the initiatives were clever enough to hide the truth, the real intent, beneath the bills that were hastily passed: private developer access to the hundreds of thousands of acres, the reservations, and the land the tribes were living on. The millions of dollars in campaign contributions made by real estate moguls across the Pacific Northwest had finally paid off. This was the final blow for a race that had relied on its sovereign right to govern itself, as a means to exist.

The NAPN (Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest) attempted to resolve the crisis diplomatically, but when it became obvious that Congress had no intention of reversing its initiatives, the negotiations ground to a standstill. The situation quickly deteriorated as the tribes were driven into a fundamentalist fervor to recapture their autonomy. Words became fists, and fists became guns. This resulted in a widespread revolt that would last three years, with the National Guard trying unsuccessfully to quell the uprising. It erupted into an all-out war on May 8, 2025, when a phalanx of tanks and fighter jets began to scorch the Earth, in a predawn attack on the NAPN compounds. They succeeded in destroying the tribal base, but killed eighty-four innocent civilians in the process. The assault was widely championed by the mainstream media, but in the end it simply furthered the misery of the tribes, popularizing the intensity of the Halkh-pa-wit Revolution. The ever-growing popularity of the Halkh-pa-wit (meaning the holy day, the day when autonomy would return) enraged Congress, who demanded an annihilation of the NAPN. Hundreds perished on one hot day in July of 2026, in the Taya’al Massacre; almost three hundred men, women, and children were systematically eradicated in an air strike meant to root out domestic terrorism. When word of the massacre got out, Native Americans tribes living in the east and southwest portions of the United States sent warriors to bolster the NAPN guerillas. Attacks on the U.S. government installations were frequent. The unrest quickly spread as non-tribal Americans began to join the fight against the U.S. government and suddenly the United States was at war, again, with itself.

The federal reaction to the uprising was swift and fierce. Within a matter of weeks, thousands of insurgents had either been captured or killed. The NAPN was branded a terrorist organization along with all sympathizers, who had risen from every race and creed in support of the Native Americans. The spin put in place to discredit the Halkh-pa-wit Revolution was staggering. Millions of dollars were spent on a smear campaign, painting the NAPN as ruthless killers and terrorists with no cause. It ran in the media for months, on every online banner and every plasma billboard across the country, and in the end, the polls still showed that most Americans bitterly disagreed with how their government had handled the situation. Then, on April 2nd, in a covert operation carefully timed with the start of the 2028 Major League Baseball season, a helicopter packed with explosives slammed into RFK Stadium right as the Washington Nationals took the field. Over two thousand people were killed, including Secretary of State Joseph Stallworth and Vice President Roger Frost. Support for the president shot from 31 percent to 81 percent in the polls as the public demanded that the culprits be brought to justice. A series of exhaustive investigations concluded that a blend of