Extracted - Chapter 27 – Where’s Ponce de León When You Need Him – Part 1 of 2

 

Extracted

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 27 – Where’s Ponce de León When You Need Him – Part 1 of 2

 

Two special ops units landed in Philadelphia, so did Curmett, Blake, and Holfstrom.  One ops unit headed for the home of Benjamin Folley, the other for the home of Judith Rameriz.  The ops unit at Folley’s home found no one there, but they broke in anyway and thoroughly searched and secured the place.  Things were a bit different at Judith Rameriz’s home since, as usual, both Ben and Judith were together again.

When they arrived, the special ops team spread out and silently surrounded the house.  Then, when all was ready, they broke in the front door and literally poured into the large house with guns at the ready and shouting as loud as they could.  It was a noisy and frightening operation, just like they wanted it to be.  In minutes, both Judith and Ben were down on the floor with their hands handcuffed behind their backs, while a team of men kept their guns pointed at them.  Judith and Ben barely knew what hit them, but it had hit like a ton of bricks.

Both Ben and Judith were picked up and marched into the kitchen where they were put into chairs at the table.  Five men in military uniforms kept watch over them while the rest of the team was still searching the house.  And then three more men entered the kitchen.  None of the three men gave their names.

“What’s going on?” Judith demanded.

Curmett ignored her question.  “We received information that you two abducted Stephen Marsh,” Curmett said to them.

The moment he said that, both Ben and Judith knew that Faucet had indeed told someone about everything they had admitted to him.  Something they now regretted doing.  But they had discussed this eventuality already, and they were both prepared for it.  “Who?” Judith replied.

“Stephen Marsh,” Curmett said calmly.  “The son of Philadelphia’s District Attorney.”

Judith grunted a laugh.  “I wish!” she said.  “Marsh put my son in prison, when he knew perfectly well that he had no real evidence against him at all.  But what does that have to do with his son?  I didn’t even know he had a son.”

“Oh, you knew alright,” Curmett replied.  “In fact, you not only abducted Stephen Marsh, you abducted Nancy Stiller as well, the daughter of Congressman Stiller from New York.”

“New York!  Are you balmy?  Why would I do any of that?  It’s ridiculous.”

“You tell me,” Curmett demanded.

“Tell you what?  Nothing you’re saying, or I guess accusing me of, makes sense!  I haven’t done anything!”

“And I think you’re lying!” Curmett countered.  “I know you’re lying!”

“And I know I’m not!” Judith argued.  “What’s this about anyway?  I…we…haven’t kidnapped anyone.  I wouldn’t even know where to start to do something like that.  Why on earth would we?”

“Revenge!” Curmett said.  “You wanted revenge!”

“Against who?” Judith demanded.  “For what?”

“Against Henry Marsh for locking your son up in prison.”

“Oh!” Judith replied.  “Yeah, I’d love to get a bit of revenge against him for that.  My Josh was innocent!  But what does all these abduction things you’re talking about have to do with that?  Josh is in prison, and what the hell does a New York congressman have to do with any of it?”

“That’s what we want to know,” Curmett told her.

“Then why are you asking me?  I don’t know.  I have no idea about anything you’re talking about.  Oh wait!  I remember that the police came here once and asked me some questions about Josh and his Planetary Eco Alliance people, but I’ve got no connection with them.  Why would I?  That’s Josh’s business.  Talk to him.  You can find him still in prison!”

Curmett was getting confused.  So far, it was sounding like these people knew nothing at all about the abductions.  He decided to move into the more sensitive information.  “Tell me about your system that can extract someone’s soul right out of their body.”  The strange looks he was getting now from both Ben and Judith were not what he wanted to see.

“Do what?” Ben asked.

“Pull someone’s soul out of their body, and store it in…something.”

“Huh?” Judith grunted.  “I was confused before.  Now I’m even more so.  You’re making no sense at all.  In fact, none of this makes sense.”

“I was told you developed a water treatment system.”

“Yes!” Judith replied.  “So far, that’s the only thing you’ve said that I can understand.  We did develop a system for that.  And we believe it’s the best system for producing absolutely pure clean water on the planet.  That’s no secret at all!”

“We’ve made a lot of money off it too,” Ben added.  “That’s no secret either.”

“I don’t care how much money you made.  I want to know how you took two people, pulled their memories and identities, stored them somewhere, and then put them back into someone else!”

Both Ben and Judith looked at him like he was crazy.  “He’s nuts,” Judith said to Ben.  “Absolutely nuts.”

“I think so too,” Ben agreed.

“Where is the water system that I’m told can extract someone’s soul?” Curmett demanded angrily.  I was told you keep it in your basement.”

“Um…” Judith hummed.  “I have the original prototype of our system that we used for developing it in the basement, but that’s all.  And trust me, it doesn’t extract anyone’s soul.  How could it?  Besides, it’s not even put together.”

“I don’t care if it’s put together or not.  We can put it together.  Where is it?”

“Why are you bothering to ask?” Ben said.  “You yourself said it’s in the basement.  That’s where we stuck our prototype for safe keeping.”

“Take them to the basement!” Curmett demanded.  “Let’s see this machine.”

With so many people trooping down to the basement of the house, it took a while.  Especially since Ben and Judith had their hands cuffed behind their backs.  But eventually they were all in the basement standing in front of the huge mass of machinery that was spread out along one of the walls.

“This is it?” Curmett asked.

“That’s the prototype,” Ben told him.  “Of course, our production model is much smaller, but we needed a central pipe that large so we could work in it to get the placement of everything just right.  That turned out to be critical to the process.  Our largest production model has only a six inch central pipe.  It’s much smaller.”

“I’m told that someone named Hector got injured from this machine and was in a coma,” Curmett said.

“Oh!  Indeed he was,” Judith told him.  “Poor Hector was inside the machine when he hit his head on one of the magnetic field generators.  Knocked the poor thing right out, and it most have done something else to him too because he was in a coma for months before he woke up.  Sadly, he decided to leave us after that to take a teaching position, but since he was part of the original production team, he still gets his share of the profits from our sales.”

“We were told that the reason he was in a coma was because your machine here abstracted his very soul!  Now stop playing dumb and tell me, how does it do that?” Curmett demanded menacingly.  “How does it abstract a soul?”

“It doesn’t do that!” Judith yelled back.  “It can’t do that!  It targets a list of molecules that pollute water.  Nothing else.  We’ve got patents on it.  How could you possibly even target someone’s soul?  Look, different molecules behave differently when they’re subjected to intense sonic waves.  Combine targeted magnetic fields with those waves and you can pull those molecules right out of the water.  And it happens fast.  Very fast.  That’s all his machine can do.  It targets molecular particles, nothing more.”

“How could you possibly target someone’s soul?” Ben asked.  “As far as I know, a soul isn’t matter and it isn’t energy.  What you’re proposing that this machine can do, doesn’t even make sense!”

Holfstrom considered that.  “I hate to say it, but he’s right,” he told Curmett.  “Of course, I haven’t studied this machine yet.  I know the physics of the process they’re describing.  It’s advanced, but it would still only target matter, not even energy.  We know nothing at all about what a soul would be.  In fact, what’s been described to me so far from someone you said was drunk, doesn’t even make sense to me.  To transfer someone’s entire identity would take intense computing power and something that would connect directly to the brain.  There’s nothing like that here that I can see.”

“There!” Judith said.  “See!  Even he agrees with us.”

“I don’t care,” Curmett told them.  He turned to the soldiers in the basement.  “I want them both taken to the site, and I want every bit of this machine packed up and sent too, along with anything at all that has to do with it or water treatment.  We’ll let the experts question these two, and I’ll get another team of experts to go through every bit of this machine.  We’ll get our answers.  One way or another!”

 

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Three weeks later, Nancy was in the basement with Chrissy and Diane.  They were all holding cue sticks and trying to put the pool balls into the pockets.  Mostly unsuccessfully. 

“Can you believe it?” Chrissy said.  “School starts tomorrow, already!”

“Not for me,” Nancy pointed out.

“Well, it does for us,” Diane told her.

“Why aren’t you going?” Chrissy asked.  “Just because you lost your memory?”

“Oh!” Diane exclaimed.  “Did you lose everything you ever learned in school too and have to start all over again?”

“That would be bad!” Chrissy realized.  “Real bad.”

Diane could only agree.

“No,” Nancy told them.  “I’m pretty sure I can remember some…or hopefully most of what I learned in school.  I just don’t remember the school, the teachers, the kids, or anything else about too many things.  And I especially don’t remember anything about me.”

“That’s easy,” Diane said.  “You’re Nancy, remember?  Or did you forget again.”

Nancy laughed.  “No, everybody keeps drilling that fact into my head so often I doubt I’ll ever forget it again.”

“That’s good then!” Chrissy told her.

“And if we have to, we’ll keep drilling it back into your head,” Diane agreed.

“Go right ahead,” Nancy told them.

“I guess we’re going to have Miss Sanderson for a teacher this year,” Chrissy said.

“Unless they got someone else,” Diane suggested.

“I doubt it,” Chrissy replied.  “The seventh graders all said that Miss Sanderson was pretty nice though, so hopefully that should be good.”

“What if you have different teachers?” Nancy asked.  “You could be in different classes.”

“Nancy, you really don’t remember things, do you,” Diane told her.  “There’s only ten of us in our grade.  So only one class.  The whole school is like that.”

“And you’ve got to be pretty rich just to afford to go there,” Chrissy added.

“You do?” Nancy asked.

“It’s a private school.  Remember?” Chrissy said.

“Sorry.  No.  I don’t remember anything about it at all.”

“That’s alright,” Diane said.  “You’re not missing anything.  Just a bunch of stuck-up kids.”

“Like us!” Chrissy shouted teasingly.

“That’s us,” Diane laughed.

They played pool.  They danced around on the dance floor.  Basically, they all had a good time being together before Chrissy and Diane would have to start school again the next day.  Nancy wondered if she was going to miss them, then she remembered that they weren’t moving away to school, they would just be gone during the day.  They could still see each other after school and on weekends.  Hopefully.

But thoughts about Chrissy and Diane haunted Nancy for a few hours more, until in the middle of dinner with the entire family, Nancy finally blurted out, “Mom, Dad, I want to try something that’s probably so stupid you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Stupid?” Wanda asked.  “Why would you want to do something that’s stupid.  That doesn’t make sense.”

“No,” Nancy agreed.  “And neither does this, but I want to do it anyway.  Or at least, try it.”

“What’s that?” Henry asked.

“I want to go to school.”

“School!” Wanda exclaimed.

“You’re joking, right?” Emily asked.

“I guess I should be,” Nancy replied, “but I think I’m serious.”  She looked to both her new mother and father.  “Do you think I could even just take a look around there and see what I might be getting myself into?  I’m not afraid of whatever they’re studying.  More than likely I’ll probably know it all anyway.  Or most of it.  I guess there could be some things they might be doing that I wouldn’t know about, but it’s the beginning of the school year, it can’t be that much.”

“No, there wouldn’t be much,” Wanda admitted, considering her youngest daughter’s proposal.

“Nance!” Emily said.  “They’d eat you alive.  You’re not allowed to let anyone know who you really are inside.  Do you think you can survive living all day with a bunch of seventh graders, most of whom are girls?  Even I know that would be pure hell!  Seventh grade wasn’t that long ago for me.”

“You’ve got a point,” Wanda agreed.

“I know,” Nancy said.  “But Chrissy and Diane said there’s only ten people in their class.”

“All the classes are pretty small,” Emily told her.  “Purposely!  It’s an exclusive private school.”

“So if the classes are all small, I have less to worry about, right?” Nancy countered.

“Don’t bet on it Nance,” Emily replied.  “You’d still be dealing with seventh graders.  And seventh grade girls.  And I used to be one.  I know what it’s like.”

Nancy decided to ignore her sister.  She looked to her mother and father instead.  “I still think I’d like to try,” she told them.  “Or at least let me see the place so I know what everyone’s talking about.”

Wanda looked to her husband.

Henry shook his head.  “Don’t look to me.  She…Stephen, was heading into his senior year at high school.  It’s not the same thing as our Nancy having to go into her senior year, straight out of sixth grade.”

“At least we don’t have that problem,” Wanda agreed.  “So what do you think?”

“I don’t care.  If Nance doesn’t like it, then we pull her out and put her back into the on-line course.  She’d be done with college before she’s old enough to be out of high school.”

Wanda looked to Nancy.  “Are you ready to go back that far in your education?”

“I guess so,” Nancy told her.  “What choice do I have.  My…other mother told me that since I’m stuck like this, I’ve got no choice but to accept it and try to adapt and make the best of it.  Isn’t going to school doing something like that?”

“Yes,” Wanda agreed.  “It would be.  I’ll call the school tomorrow and see if we can at least set up an appointment to talk to them.  With you having no memory of anything at all to do with school or the kids or even yourself, they may not want you there.  They might have objections to dealing with someone who has your kind of problems.”

Nancy knew that her new mother was referring to the amnesia cover story that she had to live with.  “Can you ask them?” she asked.

“Yes,” Wanda agreed.  “In the morning.  In the meantime,” she looked to Emily.  “Can you take a look at her school uniforms?  See if there’s anything in her closet that will still fit her.  We weren’t expecting this.  We didn’t do any back to school shopping for her.”

“Sure Mom.  This should be interesting…to see if she can handle a bunch of seventh graders!  Good luck!” she teased Nancy.

It was the afternoon of the following day before Wanda went up to Nancy’s room.

“Mom!” Nancy exclaimed the moment Wanda walked in.  “Did you talk to them?”

“They said to bring you in and let them decide for themselves if they can handle having someone like you there.  They are concerned about not only your total lack of memory, but that you might have forgotten too much if not all you’re schooling.”

“My schooling is fine!” Nancy told her.

“We know that, but they can’t know it.  In fact, if they decide to let you stay, it might be smart for you to conveniently forget about a lot of stuff that you already know.”

“I know that,” Nancy told her.  “I don’t even plan on getting perfect scores on my tests.

“No!  You better get perfect scores…if you can.  That’s important to your father and me.”

“Okay.  Fine!” Nancy replied.  “So I’m going?”

“Just so you can see the school and so they can evaluate you.  Nothing more,” Wanda told her.

“Good enough,” Nancy agreed.  “At least it’s a start, and if nothing more, I can tell Chrissy and Diane that I tried.”

Wanda wondered how Chrissy and Diane could play such a big part in this.  But at least her daughter had friends.  After how alone and depressed she had been since she had been abducted, this was at least a welcome improvement.  “Do you want to wear your uniform in case they let you stay today?”

“Sure Mom,” Nancy agreed.  “Sounds good.”

Wanda was floored.  The school uniform included a skirt.  Her old Nancy was all girl.  All dresses and skirts.  This new Nancy wasn’t.  She was the exact opposite in so many ways.  Of course, what could be more opposite than a seventeen year old football playing boy?

“Want me to do your hair?”

“Yeah,” Nancy agreed.  “That would be a big help.”

Yes, this was not like her new Nancy at all.  Just what had Chrissy and Diane said to her?  She made a mental note to thank them the next time she saw them.

 

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