The Immortal Jake

The Immortal

Jake

By David DeRosa

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2009 David DeRosa

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Table of Contents

Prologue

The abduction

Finding Flanders

The Deal

The Intrigue

The Preparation

The Meeting

The Arrest

The Team

The Dream

The Missing

The Dean

The Machine

The Betrayal

The Dark

The Power

Epilogue

A Song for Jake

Prologue

An urgent message from a research laboratory in northern Arizona is received by an operative collecting data for a covert government agency.

Message:

I have obtained another piece to the puzzle and am sending it along with the new director of research. Have been assured the project is near completion. We have enough information for you to begin construction. Please be advised.

Reply:

Excellent work. The team is being assembled. Send what you have. We are anxious to get started.

After sending the reply the operative calls his men in the field. We’re ready. Bring them in.

Chapter One

The Abduction

Of all the great scientific minds that Jake had inspired in recent years, there was one man in particular of whom he’d grown quite fond. Come here, boy. I’ve something to show you.

Jake entered a room crowded with racks and boxes full of cannibalized electronic components. The old man who called him in was stooped over an old monochromatic screen, studying the readout intently. Look here, he said, tapping on the screen. I think I’ve solved your little problem.

Professor Hue Flanders was a retired mathematics teacher now living in one of the abandoned apartment projects just outside of Princeton, New Jersey. The equipment he was working with had been pillaged from the junk heap whenever the college upgraded their systems. It was a tangled mishmash of outdated computers that he and Jake had networked together and hacked into Princeton’s main database. Princeton was one of the three colleges that established the first computer network over telephone lines, so they had access to every research file stored on the college’s servers and network connections to top level projects world-wide.

What’re you up to, Professor? Jake leaned on the back of the professor’s rickety old chair to peer over the man’s shoulder. He squinted and immediately stepped back, shielding his eyes. Jeez Hue, how can you see anything on that?

Here, try these. The old man scooped up a pair of yellow tinted glasses from a pile on the table next to him. They’re supposed to cut down the glare.

That flat panel LCD would cut the glare just fine, don’ cha think? He pointed to the freshly salvaged parts heaped in a corner. Why don’t you let me hook it up?

I’ll get to it! Flanders stubbornly insisted on doing things for himself. It’s not like you’re missing out on a hi-def, full color image of a rainforest in bloom, or anything. This monitor is plenty adequate for what we’re looking at.

Which problem is it?

The space/time displacement formula, I think I’ve got it worked out. The professor knew Jake would be excited. They’d been working on the many related formulae for months. But the ratio of power to relocation is gargantuan. We’re going to need that fusion reactor you said you could build. Any chance you could have it done this weekend? He was joking of course. Even one as brilliant as Jake couldn’t be expected to just whip up a fusion reactor on the spot. Though, it was often surprising what he could do with a bit of junk and the proper motivation.

By all appearance he was a lanky teenager, not very tall, with straight dark hair and almond eyes. In truth he was much, much older. Those equations are pretty complicated, Professor. How’d you manage to solve for the compression ratio of time dilation due to displacement?

The old professor grinned mischievously and raised a finger to emphasize his difficulty. That wasn’t easy. I think I may have accidentally shut down the particle physics lab at Princeton. I used up nearly all of their physical memory running your equations.

Jake glared sternly at his old friend. You know, you’re gonna get caught one of these days, hijacking their equipment like that.

Don’t worry about it. I sent an e-mail to those wanky administrators telling them it was a routine maintenance program that had to be run before they could upgrade their system, again. He laughed it off, waving a careless hand at Jake. They’re probably wandering around right now, scratching their butts and wondering who ordered the upgrade and how much it’s going to cost them. Anyway, it’s done. I’m downloading the final results right now.

This is why I love hanging with you, Hue. He patted the old fellow on the shoulder. You ask for nothing and you get more results than half the research projects I fund. Jake had financed hundreds of research projects with substantial grants from foundations he’d established in recent centuries. His goal was to advance the technical knowing of this world to a level capable of producing the things he would use to replace the vessel that brought him here. The trick was to do it without handing people tools they could use to accidentally destroy themselves. Or worse, as he had already seen in his long history with men, destroy each other on purpose. It was a delicate balance and, therefore, a painstakingly slow process. He had stretched it over the several thousand years since his vehicle had accidentally been destroyed.

Hue Flanders had been a true friend to Jake for over thirty years. Quit calling me Hue-Hue! He was always cantankerous, and often made fun of the resemblance between his name and the pronoun. He never missed an opportunity to drag out the same old tired joke.

Quit calling me boy! Jake retorted in fun. He never considered the joke particularly funny. It was often more of an inconvenience, which is exactly what the professor found so humorous. Jake enjoyed the banter between them, though. There was something uniquely human about trading gruff insults with good nature.

I suppose you’d rather I tell the world how old you really are! He flashed a stern look in Jake’s direction. A man of my advanced years can’t very well address someone with your youthful appearance as though you were my contemporary. That’d raise too many eyebrows, now, wouldn’t it. The old man was always thoughtful of Jake’s desire for secrecy. How old the ‘boy’ really was, after so many ages of wandering the earth, even Jake couldn’t be sure.

He leaned over the professor’s shoulder again to look at the flickering relic of a monitor. Scrolling through the almost endless string of symbols and numbers, he stopped and tapped the glass picture tube with childlike excitement. There, you see? That’s what I was trying to explain to those academiatic knuckleheads in their online chat.

Academiatic? the professor frowned. Is that even a word?

Well, yea. I mean, I just made it up. It refers to the smug rulers of academia, said Jake. You know the ones that forced you into retirement when you turned sixty-two?

Hmm, Flanders rubbed his chin thoughtfully. At a substantial loss of income, too, he recalled with rancor. But, that was over a decade ago. No sense in griping about it, now. He’d always been too proud to ask for money, which is how he ended up living where he was, in an abandoned building. If it were up to me, I’d still be teaching and earning enough to live in a real home.

I told you I’d hook you up, Hue. You don’t need to…

You have, kid, The old man reached back to pat Jake on the hand. Just look at everything I’ve gotten from you. It was true that while most of the building looked decrepit, the few apartments that were occupied had all the amenities needed for comfortable living, thanks to Jake and his remarkable ingenuity. So, tell me something about these numbers. Hue tapped on the screen, again.

Jake started to explain the formula in a language that made even an old math teacher’s head swim. The rate of time passage varies in proximity to the center of a rotating object in space. The variable is inversely proportionate to the relative mass and its distance from the event. As gravity spirals out, time spirals in! Do you see?

The professor’s eyebrows rose as he leaned closer to the monitor and stroked his chin. Yes, I…eh, nope, he decided, after a brief pause to consider. Don’t have a clue. I just let the computer run the numbers. But, I thought you might make something of it. He chuckled as he leaned back in a rickety old chair that he refused to replace. "It is right, isn’t it?’

It is right, Professor. Look here, said Jake as he scrolled further along the equation. Simply put, as time spirals in opposition to the rotation of a graviton impulse, the velocity of linear flow is inversely proportionate to the displacement value of mass. The greater the mass, the slower time will pass. He giggled like the boy he was. Hey that rhymes!

The old man scratched his head. So, this formula calculates those values?

I could kiss you, old man! Elated, he planted a kiss on the top of the old professor’s head.

Well sure, I get it, now… not one fuzzy bit! Flanders squinted at the problem with a curmudgeonly grimace. You call that simple, do you?

Can you print that out for me? said Jake as he hurried toward the door. We’ll need to make a shopping list.

Sure thing, kid. What are we shopping for? His question went unanswered as his youthful friend dashed out the door. Don’t know what all the fuss is about, he mumbled, rubbing the top of his head where Jake had kissed him. All I did was to punch a few numbers on the keyboard. You wrote the equations.

* * *

I’m tellin’ you he’s up to something!

Well, of course he’s up to something. Why else would we be spying on him?

Two FBI agents on loan to Homeland Security watched from a distance, as the dark haired teenager spoke to yet another of the university’s professors. The physics professor, cornered by the boy, shook his head and the boy walked away, dejected.

That’s the third one that’s turned him down, said the agent staring through his binoculars. I wonder what he’s asking them.

Why don’t you use the dish to listen in? asked his older partner.

That damned thing is broken, again. All I can hear is static and a loud whistling noise, he complained. The thing nearly blew out my eardrum, when a kid rode by on his skateboard. I’ve put in for a new one, but they turned me down twice, now! I’m tellin’ ya, Frank, I’m about ready to go out and buy one of those miracle ears ya see on television.

So, why don’t you? Frank looked up from the newspaper he was reading and tried to feign interest.

What, and spend my own money on a work related item? He shrugged as though the whole idea was preposterous. Besides, this assignment is supposed to be a low priority. We’re only on it because we screwed up our last job. The last case they’d worked was a sting operation that went wrong at great expense. Neither one knew how important Jake was to the bureau. Neither did they have any idea just how long the bureau had been watching him.

Frank smiled and went back to reading his paper. Then, there’s no reason to worry about it. He had less than a year until he could afford to retire. There wasn’t much that excited him about the job, anymore. If you’d have listened to me and stayed put, the bad guys wouldn’t have gotten onto us, and the collar would have been ours.

The younger man put down his binoculars and bored into his older partner with a cold stare. That’s easy for you to say. You were sitting comfortably in a car with the engine running, while I was stuck in a drafty warehouse with no heat, on the coldest day in January!

Let it go, Harry, the senior man advised. Another week of this and we’ll be back in the good graces of management with nothing to show but wasted man-hours. We told them this case was going nowhere.

I’m not so sure anymore, said Harry. This kid is up to something. And, why is he carrying that big empty bag?

* * *

Jake had become a casual acquaintance to many of the professors at Princeton, but none of them seemed willing to allow him access to the building he needed. Normally he would have assumed the role of a visiting professor. Identity was to him like a suit of clothes to be worn for whatever the situation required. Even with his thin facial hair and small stature he could, with a bit of makeup and the proper attitude, pass as an older man of Asian or Native American descent.

The problem was he’d been aware that he was under surveillance for the past couple of weeks, and he didn’t want his two shadows to see him as anyone but the teenaged kid they’d been assigned to follow. Besides, he’d been hanging around campus too long. There was a chance he’d be recognized if he put on a costume.

He finally decided to visit his old friend Starch. He found him in the usual place, outside the maintenance building, leaning on a mop in a pail of dirty water.

Starch, I need to get into the fusion experiments. Do ya know when the labs will be empty?

I’m s’posed ta be cleanin’ in there tonight, said the old janitor. Some big tour with a bunch of military mucky mucks, but I’m not s’posed ta know that when they show up here tomorrow in their civilian clothes. He smiled broadly and stuck his tongue through a gap where a tooth was missing. I could sneak you in with me. Jus’ show up in yer overalls, an’ I’ll give ya a bucket an’ a mop ta push around. Best security clearance yer likely ta have at your age. He grinned, tugging on the collar of his overalls.

Jake smiled at the clever reminder of how important it is to dress properly for every occasion. Tonight he would wear the person of a local kid earning a little extra money. Thanks, Starch, I owe you.

So long as ya help out a little while yer there, we’ll call it even.

You got it, buddy. Jake grinned and gave the oldster a pat on the back. Don’t work too hard.

Still leaning on his mop, Starch waved to the boy as he left. I never do.

* * *

Jake showed up in overalls that evening, and went to work with Starch mopping floors.

Sorry, I couldn’t get ya into that room ya needed, said Starch. Head researcher an’ his assistants are the only ones that go in there.

Not a problem, Starch. Jake sat at the teacher’s desk as he pounded away on his laptop keyboard. The janitor was leaning on his mop watching the boy with interest. I’ll be in there in a minute. He entered a long string of characters and then sat back in his chair. In a moment the keypad next to a sealed door began to flicker, and a soft ‘click’ released the lock. Gotta love security networking, he said with a smile. Everything gets monitored to make sure it’s all under control.

I don’t think they had remote control in mind, when they set up that particular system. Starch was enjoying the boy’s success. What’re ya gonna do tha’cha need ta be in there, anyway?

Actually, what I need isn’t in that room. It’s in the basement below it. The only access is through the room.

So, eh, what’s in the basement?

Come on, Jake invited. Ya wanna see? He led the way to the back of the lab and down through an access panel in the floor. Some of the old failed experiments are kept down here. There’s one in particular that I’m interested in. He followed a row of metal shelves to the end, and stooped to pull a box from the bottom shelf. The box was filled with files of papers and blueprints from the earliest experiments in nuclear fusion. Behind it was a ceramic container in a long metal box, with wires and hoses wrapped around it like some sort of big mutant millipede with insecurity issues. This experiment could have worked, Jake explained. But, I wasn’t sure, at the time, how the team would handle this kind of power.

That drew an inquiring look from old Starch. Sonny, some of these experiments is older than me, by the look of ‘em. What d’ ya mean, you wasn’t sure? You wasn’t even born, yet.

Jake smiled. Actually, you probably won’t find anything in this room older than you, except me. The military funded research into nuclear fusion back in the forties, but they went with fission because they never solved the problem of containing a maintained fusion reaction. They’ve been trying to work out a way to control fusion since the early fifties. That’s when they started accumulating most of this stuff.

Kid, I was under the impression you was smart until ya started talkin’ this nonsense. You ain’t half as old as any of this junk, an’ yer talkin’ like ya knew the guys that built it. Starch shook his head at the boy. Only thing older than me is you. What kinda blubbery is that?

Jake went on, ignoring the old man’s skepticism. The thing is, they never knew how close they were, and I didn’t let on because of what they did with Ernie Rutherford’s work. He learned that radioactive thorium was converting itself to radium through a natural fusion process. Jake chuckled as he told Starch, We were gonna call it transmutation, but Ernie thought the witch hunters might take off his head for turning gold into lead. Hey, that rhymes, he declared with a smile. No, wait, it’s supposed to be lead into gold, he said with a half-hearted laugh. "I got it backwards.

Anyway, an Italian scientist named Enrico Fermi picked up on Ernie’s work and took it in a new direction. He realized even before Einstein did, that the potential energy was frighteningly huge. Well, one thing led to another, and a whole bunch of scientists started investigating. By the mid forties the allies were making bombs with uranium. At the time, because of Nazi Germany, they thought it was a good idea to stay ahead of those guys, technologically. Jake sighed with resignation. They were probably right about that. If Germany had gotten the bomb first… He shivered at the thought.

It wasn’t until the early fifties, he continued, that someone decided they should try to do something useful with atomic energy. I think it was Dr. Robert Oppenheimer who finally convinced them. When he saw his experiment tested for the first time, he said, ‘Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.’ It’s a quote from the Bhagavad-Gita.

The bagda what? asked Starch, scratching the side of his head.

It’s sort of a Hindu bible, Jake explained. It’s an ancient writing considered, by a lot of people, to be sacred and wise.

Jake paused in his narrative to shake his head thoughtfully. I know just how Oppenheimer must’ve felt. Can you imagine what they could’ve done with a controlled fusion reaction small enough to put in a knapsack? They would’ve had a stable power source they could use for all kinds of nasty little war machines.

The whole time Jake continued to root through boxes, blowing dust off of shelves, collecting what looked to Starch like nothing more than little bits of junk. He continued describing the mood of those times. At first the world was shocked. Then they were awed, and finally mortified that the allies would make such a thing, and then have the unmitigated audacity to actually use it. Oppenheimer and a few of the other scientists working with him told the government that they’d better learn to use atomic energy for something good, if only to improve their public image. So they formed the first atomic energy commission.

But yer talkin’ like you was there! A bewildered look from the old janitor caused a fleeting smile from the youngster. Ya can’t be more than in yer teens. I barely remember the news reels they used ta show in the movie house. I wasn’t even your age back then. People is gonna think yer crazy, talkin’ like you was alive when all this stuff was goin’ on.

You’ve been a good friend, Starch. I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m the one who put Ernie Rutherford onto the idea of looking for the energy that binds the atom. It was just around the turn of the century. Sometimes I think maybe I should’ve kept my mouth shut a while longer. If only I’d known then what was going to happen. He took the things he’d been collecting and placed them in a big empty bag that he could sling over his shoulder.

That’s about all of what I can find down here, Starch. Let’s get those floors clean, and get out of here, shall we? Jake hoisted the bag by the carry strap, and headed back toward the stairs that led up into the lab.

But yer only a kid, said Starch, still wondering why Jake was blathering on with all of this nonsense. A very smart kid, I’ll grant ya, but a kid nonetheless. This Ernie fella hadda be long dead by the time you came along.

Jake turned, and with a very solemn expression, he said, My friend Ernie was born in August of eighteen seventy-one. He died in nineteen thirty-seven, long before the bomb was ever tested, thankfully. He would not have been pleased that his discovery made it possible. October, I think it was when he died. Look it up if you don’t believe me. I knew him most of his life. That makes me older than you, Starch. He flashed a cocky grin at the man.

The old janitor was befuddled into silence. Jake added, with a cheery smile, Baron Rutherford earned the Nobel Prize for his work in chemistry. I only helped a little. He winked, then turned and went up the stairs leaving Starch slack-jawed, looking after him.

Kid, you’re just funnin’ with me, about all that Ernie Rutherford stuff, ain’t ya? They were back to work, now, mopping floors.

Jake had always been secretive for the simple reason that people got weird when they found out the truth about his age. Hue Flanders was the exception to that, in this century. Now, Jake decided he was so close to building what he needed that he just didn’t care. How long have you known me, Starch?

Oh, I guess about three or four years now, ain’t it?

And, being a kid this age, shouldn’t I have matured a bit in all that time?

Well, I hadn’t really thought about it, said the old man. Then it hit him like a slap in the face. Hey! Ya know, now that ya mention it… But Jake was off in another room hard at work, as promised. Nah, it couldn’t be. Starch tried, again, to convince himself. Jake often depended on the incredulity of his life’s story to divert suspicion from his true nature. Even when he tried to tell the truth, who could believe him? He’s just funnin’ with me. He must be.

* * *

Professor Flanders, have you got that readout printed? Jake walked into the junk cluttered room where the old man usually sat. No one was there. That in itself wasn’t odd, but Jake had already been to the apartment Flanders used as his living space. On closer inspection, this room had been ransacked. It was difficult to tell because the mix-matched equipment normally looked a shamble. Jake had come in through the garage, so he knew the professor wasn’t out there. What could have happened to the old fellow?

It was late, and he knew Flanders didn’t usually go out after dark. He decided to go and check the few other places, in the unfinished apartment complex, that were occupied by a handful of homeless people. Maybe he’s gone visiting.

Flanders referred to his neighbors as ‘guests’. There was one young runaway named Penelope in whom the old professor had taken a particular interest. Penny had told Flanders that she was abused by her step-father until she turned fifteen and decided she’d had enough. She missed her mother and worried about her, but she swore she would never go back. It’s her own damned fault for not leaving the bum, Penelope had said. Flanders figured it took a lot of courage for the girl to confront her mom. When she finally did, almost a year ago, her mother didn’t believe her. We had a huge fight, and I left. She found her way here to live in this forgotten, broken down housing project as one of the professor’s guests.

Flanders tried to be something of a father-figure to the girl, someone she could trust. He tutored her in mathematics and encouraged her to enroll in an adult class to get a high school equivalency diploma. He often spent evenings helping her study. He claimed she was the smartest kid he’d ever taught.

Hi Jake, she said, when he showed up at her door. She had an effervescence that made her immediately attractive. Her blonde wavy hair and clear brown eyes seemed to magnify the smile she always had for Jake. What brings you out so late? Penny knew him as a wiry kid, about her age, who’d befriended the old man in the apartments below.

I’m looking for the professor.

Would you like to come in? She was always trying just a little too hard to get him into her rooms. Jake was a good looking boy, and she’d let him know right away that she was definitely interested.

She’d heard that he had somehow scared the local street-gangs out of this place, but no one knew how. Jake kept secret the fact that he paid a substantial amount of protection money to the mobster that was trying to legally claim ownership of the place.

No thanks, I shouldn’t really stay. I’m just looking for Hue.

You’re looking for me? she asked, fluttering her eyes hopefully. Her face flushed with excitement.

Hue Flanders, the professor, said Jake, shaking his head. Have you seen him?

Oh. Her enthusiasm visibly deflated. Two guys showed up, earlier. They looked like government types. I heard him say he’d go with them. I think maybe he was trying to keep them from trashing any more of his stuff. I heard a lot of crashing, like things were being broken. I didn’t go near ‘cause I didn’t wanna get caught. But the way they were talking, I don’t think they would’ve hurt him. They needed him for something, is what they said. It sounded important. Now, she was starting to look worried. Do you think he’s in trouble?

I don’t know. It’s not like him to be out this late.

Well, do ya wanna come in? she asked again. He usually looks in on me before he goes to sleep. Maybe if you wait… She smiled brightly, hoping this time he would accept her invitation.

No, I better go look for him. He was worried about the two ‘government types’ she’d mentioned. He immediately thought of the two agents following him. He wondered if they were the men Penny had heard in the professor’s rooms. He didn’t know what agency they were from. He hadn’t had time to check them out, but he