Chapter 1

Somewhere Unknown

The dust storm across a barren desert finally stopped, leaving the inordinate plant life idly moving with the remnant air.  Dust continued to settle through the undulating temperature as a blistering sun bore down relentlessly.  A tumbleweed bounced aimlessly across the desert sand, finally dropping over the edge of a crater and falling onto the chasm floor.  More mutated vegetation covered the ground, trying to reach up out of the shadows for light.  All was quiet, save the sand vibrating with the waves of sound beneath the ground.  Ants scurried to their mounds.  A scorpion turned slowly, its tail at the ready.

  The vibrations from further below articulated into frantic voices working to fix a major problem. The sterile metallic walls of the subterranean enclosure housed banks of high-tech equipment and TV monitors showing images of New York streets and apartment interiors.  The voices in the monitoring lab and from a remote location argued, bringing tempers to the surface.  The voice coming through the loud speaker continued to rattle nerves… and the sand hundreds of feet above.  “Don’t give me excuses, God damn it!  Just fix it!”

Hands hurriedly manipulated switches and dials, sending L.E.D. lights into frenzied sequences.  A man’s voice in the monitoring room answered back.  “What can I tell you?  It crossed over.  The poor bastard is receiving Gloria’s dreams.”

One of the split-screen displays showed Richard, a man in his forties, thrashing beneath the sweat-soaked sheet of his bed.  The other half of the split showed the POV of a person being seduced, staring into the wild eyes of a large man about ready to lose it.

From another monitor, the split shows Gloria, an attractive young woman in her mid thirties, having a nightmare as well.  The other half of the split shows the same POV with the man seducing her.

“Override the God damn satellite with the back up then,” shouted the voice over the loud speaker.  “He’s going to be a loony with this.”

“Going to be?” asked another unseen sarcastic voice from the monitoring room.

A gigantic screen in the control room projected a deep bluish black universe surrounding the multiple lens that dominated the façade of a satellite.  Slowly, the lenses disappeared beneath an opaque reflective surface of mirrors.  The polished material reflected a massive array of stars.  A new bank of lens rotated into place and irises opened, tilted directly at the eastern seaboard of the United States.

New York City

New York City was experiencing its usual cauldron of energies swirling in all directions. 

The satellite POV zoomed into the façade of a Manhattan East Side high-rise apartment building—The Godard.  Bursts of reflective light bounced off the windows of the various floors as the scanning moved around the exterior of the building.  Its design of Art Deco styled polished metal and stone reflected the noonday sun and sent a rainbow of refractions into the lens. 

In the surveillance lab, monitors continued to show the Godard exterior, along with the interiors of apartments.  Right now, however, all eyes were on one monitor.  Richard continued to roll about under the sweaty covers, agitated sounds suddenly bursting into a scream as he awakened from his nightmare.  He lay in a frozen state, his eyes wide, mouth agape, arms and body trembling beneath a perspiration-soaked t-shirt. “Oh, My God!” he screamed.

In an optometrist’s office, a man pulled his face away from the futuristic-looking machine.  The doctor flipped on the light.  “You see, Jerry, you didn’t even feel it.  Laser implants are painless, just like I said.”

Jerry nodded.  “Could have fooled me.”  He hesitantly touched his eyelid.  “Damn.  20-20, right? And that’s it?”

The doctor nodded and tapped his computer key.  “Sending your file to your Cloud account.  And, like the rest on my computer, you’re one of sixty-three successful chip implants now.”    The doctor swung the machine aside and gave a last look into the eyes of his patient.  “Now, don’t do anything you wouldn’t want your mother to see, okay?”

The man stood up and touched his other eyelid.  “Yeah, I guess maybe that could get you in trouble, eh?”

The doctor winked.  “Only if you’re a bad boy.”

The monitoring screens continued to show activities in the apartments of The Godard, suggesting not only one or more POV images being transmitted, depending on the number of occupants in the apartment, but the fixed invisible cameras seemed to be transmitting from every room of each apartment. 

The new screen showed Jerry’s POV as he left the optometrist’s office and walked to the elevator.  Looking down, his work shoes and lunch bucket suggested he was a construction worker of some kind. 

“Jerry Trinon, number sixty-three.  Seems like an easy study,” said Skitter, a young black man looking collegiate in a seersucker suit and antiquated paisley tie, as he typed in the number and name.

“They all do in the beginning,” said Urian, another monitoring technician in his forties.  Unlike Skitter, however, Urian’s demeanor seemed less nerdy and like a mature geek.  Although never made obvious, Urian took pride in his conservative dress that helped cover his centrist attitude toward everything.  That, coupled with his six-foot frame and unpretentious beard, made him an intellectual’s intellectual for many of his colleagues.  For him, the only absolute was change.  Not believing that life was destined to be stifled by control freaks and government, he let cutting edge technology be his guru and guide to open thinking and evolution of the mind… a subject he believed he was working to advance with the Keyhole Project.  

As both men peered at the bank of monitors, Skitter printed out the label for Jerry and affixed it to a screen.  Urian chuckled.  “Never would have thought this thing would move so fast.  A wall of sixty-three apartments already.  A lot to watch.”

“Tell me about it," said Saeger, the number three man in the room, and another computer whiz that refused to grow up.  Sitting at a desk toward the rear of the room in tie-die coveralls, he studied a stack of readout sheets, requiring him to constantly push his horn rimmed glassed back to the bridge of his nose.  “These summaries are starting to get time consuming as hell.”

“It’s what you love, sweet cheeks,” said Skitter as he directed his attention to Godard’s front door entrance.  The wrought iron arches, opening onto a courtyard, looked like a chic film noir set of the ‘50’s, giving the constant stream of eclectic tenants passing through its portals the perfect framing.  After all, this was The Godard—New York’s newest renovation of luxury living few people could afford. 

The doorman, Hector, a chiseled, poor man’s version of Valentino, with a stylish ponytail he took particular pride in, carried out his duties with aplomb and patience—the sign of any good doorman in 2027 New York who expected monstrous holiday tips from the tenants at year’s end.

It had only been three months earlier that The Godard was completed and the campaign to fill it with subjects for The Keyhole Project began.  A simple beginning actually.  Just a simple mailing arriving in—

Mailboxes.

Nothing special about that.  Some were new boxes, some old, some dented, some keyless, and some even without doors.  It was New York. And, given the hacking epidemic of computers and email that had been around for years, post deliveries of sensitive material and get-your-attention mailings was becoming more popular than ever.  Postmen huffed and puffed their way through dog shit, cold winds, blizzards, heat waves, and humidity.  But the mail had to be delivered—especially on September 23, 2027. 

Social and political life hadn’t changed much since the years following 9/11 of 2001, and the embarrassing tenure of Donald Trump.  Sabre rattling continued, inept politicians continued to moan about having to work five days a week, and terrorists made life miserable as usual.  But, most of America was content with the corruption, porous borders, and higher taxes.  September 23rd was just another day.  Except, if you were so inclined, you could press your ear to the ground and pick up the excitement vibrating from the Battery all the way uptown to the now fashionable Harlem.  Mail hadn’t received this much attention since the white powder scares of the early part of the century.  On this day, and continuing for the week following, however, there was a lot of commotion.  Purple mailers were being studied by more than half of New York.

“This can’t be,” said a cab driver arriving home after a long night and reading through the garish-colored flyer as he climbed the four floors to his spartan digs.

“Gotta be a catch,” whispered the group of seniors gathered around their nursing home mail call.

Yuppies from overpriced lofts in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to the still stylish Tribeca district downtown were also staring at their mail.   It was a mass mailing.  And it was about to get a mass response—even if it had to be the loudest piece of mail delivered in a long time.

***

A bit further toward Columbus circle, a black limousine held vigil at the curb, its driver studying the robotic-horse race sheet for the day, as New Yorkers made their way down the stairs into the bowels of the 59^th street subway, a piece of infrastructure the politicians couldn’t agree o modernizing.

The morning rush hour past now, the uptown platform showed a few passengers waiting for the next train.  Several were studying the arresting purple flyer they too had received in the mail.  It seemed “purple” was going to get into your head, whether you wanted it to or not. N APARTMENT BUILDINGIEW ALL 212-544-5555"

 Seated on one side of a back-to-back bench at the far end of the platform, was a woman in her seventies known to her colleagues as KH5.  Wearing her customary baseball cap and plain black sweat suit, she listened patiently. 

To her back on the other side of the bench, looking totally out of place was Roxanne, a stylish thirties looking lady, put together like a glossy cover for Elle. 

KH5 broke into Roxanne’s seemingly endless questioning.  “…I hear you, but Operation Keyhole doesn’t exist, except it does.  There will be a select volunteer group of New Yorkers under our satellite surveillance 24/7, and, as the notice indicated, the compensation is five years rent-free living at the Godard.  Everything our subjects see and hear, we see and hear.  The agreement… confidential.  The research… confidential.  The purpose, as you were told in the telephone pre-screening… secret.”

Roxanne adjusted her seating and leaned her head back slightly, avoiding, as instructed, having any direct eye contact with KH5.  “Okay.  This might be of interest to me, but you’re not answering my one big question.”

KH5 sat stoically.

“Jesus, is it that hard to answer, for God’s sake?” Roxanne blurted out.

“For some questions, there are no answers.”

“So, you’re going to be a pain in my ass.  Okay.  Let’s try this.  I call you and ask…”

“You didn’t call me,” KH5 interrupted.  “We met just a few minutes ago, here on this bench.”

Roxanne rolled her eyes.  “Yeah, well, I called and after your ‘pre-screening,’ I was told I had an opportunity to live “luxuriously” rent free for five years.  Sending me to a clinic out in East Jesus Queens somewhere, I get my finger pricked for a drop of blood, then two days later, you call me back…”

“I didn’t call you.”

“Right.  I know.  We just met.  So, I’m called and told to come here for an interview, maybe ending in an invitation to join ‘the program’… at…”’  she looked at her watch, “at precisely 12:10… here on this grungy subway bench.  Isn’t this a bit cloak and daggerish?  Subway interviews?  What happened to offices?”

An express train rumbled through the station.

KH5 asked, “Are we still interested?”

 Roxanne adjusts her sitting again.  “Determined to have it your way, aren’t you?”

“Always.”

“Damn these seats are hard,” Roxanne complained.  “Okay.  Shit.  Another question you don’t want to answer.  I’ll be simple.  Why me?  What makes you think I need free rent?”

Maintaining her stare across the tracks, KH5 replied “For you, it means little, given your line of work.  Your DNA fits our profile, and that is our main concern.”

Roxanne started to turn around.

“Ah, uh,” cautioned KH5.

“Christ.  Sorry.  Profile of what?”

“The behavior we wish to research.  Is that complicated to you?”

“Okay.  Let’s assume I believe my DNA tells you my behavior is of keen importance to you and I let you 24/7 me.  How do I know my private moments won’t end up in some TV show, or the tabloids?”

“Because we tell you they won’t, and we prepay your lease for five years as our gesture of honesty and good faith commitment.”

“And if I say no?”

“We haven’t invited you yet.  You have further questions?”

“If I say yes, can I leave the program anytime I want?”

KH5 chuckled.  “Even if I said yes, you wouldn’t know if it’s true, right?  We track that chip we managed to place in your iris on that last optometrist visit, and by satellite, once it’s scanned, allowing the monitoring to be non-intrusive… silent.”

Roxanne sarcastically replied, “So I wouldn’t know… I get it.”  Adjusting her scarf, she continued.  “And I’m to keep it to myself, obviously.”

“Obviously.  That is an obligation.”

“Or what?”

“Or what?  We make no threats.  We’d have to ask you to leave so that the apartment might house a more willing subject.  As to our secrecy… we are more than professional in our work.  You might find it hard getting anyone to believe you even if you tried… except to the others in the program.”

“Am I supposed to know ‘the others?”’

“As a member, you would be made aware.”

“Just one happy voyeur club… a neat little package, eh?”

“We’ve been rather thorough in our planning.”

“And in your secrecy.”

“And our secrecy,” KH5 repeated.

“So, I say yes and off we go into the sunset of luxury living… free.”

“Some might argue nothing is free.”

Roxanne started to turn again, and once again was cautioned by KH5.

“No face to face.  The rules are we talk, we interview, that’s all.”

“Sorry, for God’s sake.  Just curious, you know?”

“I know.   But my face is of no importance.  You would like to join the program, yes?”

Roxanne heaved a sigh.

Another train pulled into the station and stopped.   

“How much time do I have to decide?” asked Roxanne

No answer.

“To decide.  Do I have a couple of days, maybe?”

No answer.

The train pulled out of the station.

Roxanne cautiously turned in her seat and surreptitiously straightened her jacket, her eye catching only a blank seat on the other side.  She stood up and looked up and down the platform.  “Son of a bitch.”

Up above on the curbside, Tito, a homeless man, chewed slices of his apple, feeding a slice to the carriage horse now and again.  “Life’s somethin’ else, man.  I mean, I don’t like to complain or bitch, you know?  I’m easy.  Little coffee, donut… don’t take much, and I’m good. Apple when I can…” He lifted another wedge for the horse.  “Here.  But…”

Roxanne emerged from the subway and walked past Tito on her way to the black limo.  Her stylish, but garish shoes caught his eye, as he continued.  “But… I’m ready to snap, ya know?  People aren’t people anymore.”  He glanced up.  “Look at your buggy.  Standin’ here for hours, right?  Nobody takin’ rides in the park like they used to.  Why?  Why we loosin’ that?  Same reason…”  He glanced at the oats bucket beneath the horse.  “…you can’t even count on that bein’ oats, ya know?  Synthetic this and substitute that.  Test tube babies, Virtual Reality love making… Christ, they’re even routinely transplanting faces now.  What happened to the real thing?’

Tito stood up, folded his knife, wiped his hands on his pants, and looked over his shoulder at Central Park.  “Where’s the real thing, man?”   Catch you tomorrow.

The limo pulled away.

The lenses aboard the satellite rotated once again.

The limo pulled away.

The lenses aboard the satellite rotated once again.