COMPETE: The Atlantis Grail (Book Two) - Preview

CHAPTER TWENTY (draft)

CHAPTER TWENTY

For the next hour I try to concentrate on writing up the events of last night, while they're still fresh in my mind. As I key in my work, Gennio and Anu move around me in the office. Several times I am forced to save my file and wait while they disconnect me, check various systems and re-initialize the computers.

"Oh, not again, Anu! I just lost a paragraph of work!" I mutter in frustration, as the pasty-faced annoying boy pushes past me and pulls out a connector or a panel that makes my display go blank.

"Only one more connection check," he says. "Besides, your blogging can wait. It's not important anyway."

I turn my head at him and frown. "This is not blogging," I say in a hard voice. "I don't blog."

"Oh, yeah?" Anu glares at me while rolling up a length of network cable. "Then what is it?"

"I am recording events. Unbiased, without embellishment or expressing my own opinion. Blogging is mostly opinion and perspective. This is reporting factual events—journalism."

"Yeah, whatever." Anu rolls his eyes.

So I ignore him and continue typing. So far, I've chronicled the entire hostage incident, and then the corridor gun battle. Horrible images of the firefight resurge before my eyes, the zing of laser firearms, the falling people, the blood. . . . I visualize the levitating wall panels forming the crazy barricades, as Aeson Kassiopei fires his weapon relentlessly. . . .

And then something occurs to me. "Hey, Gennio?" I look up. "Can I ask you something? Yesterday, the CP was involved in a bunch of serious hostile exchanges. Why didn't he simply use a compelling voice to just command the terrorists to stop and surrender? I mean, wouldn't it have saved a bunch of lives—?"

As I speak, Gennio pauses whatever he's doing and looks up at me. And so does Anu.

"He can't do that," Gennio says. "If you mean the kind of power voice that compels others, that's illegal. Wait—how do you know about that anyway? It's really bad, Gwen. No one on Atlantis is allowed to use it."

"Except the Imperator." Anu corrects him.

"Well, yes," Gennio continues. "But the Imperator is not going to use it either, unless it's under very rare, carefully controlled special circumstances, such as formal ritual at Court, or during an emergency."

"Okay . . . but wasn't it an emergency yesterday?" I say. "I mean, if Imperial Crown Prince Aeson Kassiopei is going to be Imperator one day, don't you think he could make an exception, in the middle of a life-and-death firefight?"

Gennio purses his lips and frowns. "I don't think so," he says. "It doesn't work that way. By law, he may not, not until he is Imperator. There's a good reason it's illegal to compel. Throughout history, whenever the compelling voice was used, there were many bad reactions, damage to the minds of the recipients, and some awful side effects. That's why they stopped allowing it."

"Yeah, it causes irreversible brain damage in some people, and the effects in general are unpredictable," Anu says.

I watch them intently. "How so?"

Gennio thinks. "Well, for one thing, it doesn't always work the way it's intended. People's minds and brains are wired differently, so when they are compelled, they may do weird things. If you compel a person to drop their weapon, for example, one person may hesitate and fire first, then drop, so it's not safe."

Anu snorts. "Not to mention it affects everyone in hearing range. If the CP used a compelling voice during the fight, everyone, including his own security team, would be affected by the command. Can you imagine if the guards dropped their weapons too? Ha-ha-ha!"