halfway+4

    Jared gives the receeding cop a little wave, then nodding to both Stephen and Alexander he begins busying himself with the contence of the his trunk.  The two peer cautiously over his shoulder.  See Jerimia, him?  Everyone gets Jerimia.  He’s a mad scientiest.  Mad as they come.  One day he is giving fish menstrual cycles and the next day he is threatening to genocide all the sharks on the planet because having fish that bleed once a month isn’t the best survival tactic.  He makes things just to make them, breaks them to just to remind himself what he used to build them in the first place.  His life is an exparament and he doesn’t believe in silly things like control groups or ethics.  Jerimia does what he does and he does it gleefully and everyone else just hopes they can catch him in time before he does something like mounting lasers on the backs of pandas without cloning a few replacements.  Jerimia even knows how to use computers but he doesn’t very often.  Jared is something different.  He just doesn’t use computers.  His entire pantheon is all computer based and he is at the center of it.  He is the messiah of his own religion and he even got more than a few Jewish people to believe that his is the actual messiah and that shit is going to go down.  He can do things with computers, and himself that is impossible, like drill a hole in his head, stuff some cables in the hole and download his brain.  Even though both Stephen and Alexander both saw it they still think it is strange.  Long ago the realized that becoming masters of their own area they gave up being able to truly understand any others.  Still you think you know what’s going on and then Jared pulls out the drill.
    Alexander looks around suspiciously, “So I assume you making the cop go away was your handywork?”
    Jared nods happily, “Yet I set his parent’s house on fire.  I guess they gave him a bullshit reason for coming back on the radio though.”  Stephen looks shocked but before he can work himself up to a nice big tirade Jared continues, “Don’t worry they aren’t at home and they have insurance which will protect them from the fire I set.  I know because I modified their policy myself.  Everything is fine.  And I mean had I not stepped in Alexander prolly would of set him on fire or crashed his headware or done something equally bloody terrifying.”
    Stephen does still want to be angry at Jared but he realizes that he has no reason to be and relaxes, “Well good work.  Had you left it up to us we might of blown up half the neighborhood or something.  Do things like that.  I had it happen to me once while making coffee”
    “Really”
    “Well yes see I was making coffee then I idly drew an icon in the grounds without really thinking about it.  Then next thing you know I am fighting off one star thing while two more are devouring a neighbor’s house.  I had to get Devon and Jerimia to help me.  It took forever to wipe everyone’s minds and to wipe away the ones that didn’t make it.  Orphans are hard to deal with.  I still send them Christmas cards you know?”
    Jared smiles, “Well that’s nice of you I am sure they appreciate it, anyway I can tell Alexander is getting antsy lets be off and then we can start to properly analyzing the matter at hand.  To Der Wafflle Hut!”
    It took them 25 minuts to get to a safe distance away.  While they were pretty sure the cop was just going to spend the rest of the day thanking god that his family got out of the house safe, still the cop isn’t the only person they threatened so they, at Alexanders rigid, near psychotic insistence.  As they are going inside Jared asks, “Alexander why on earth are you so freaked out by cars.  It isn’t like you couldn’t survive anything that would happen to you?”
    Stephen answers for him, “I don’t know all the details but I know that Jerimia had just gotten his liscense and the two went of on drive.  Alexander hasn’t been the same since.”
    What could terrify a man who has lived for millenia?  Jared decides that he no longer wants to know.  It is latish and the occupants seem to be either busy with each other, drunk or far to concerned with their own problems to worry about the new strange group of individuals that just came in through the door.  They sit in the back corrner as the quietly drink in the room as a tired looking older women takes their drink orders.  It isn’t until they settle in, drinks in hand that they return to the topic at hand.  Jared has his smart phone out and he is busily plinking at the screen, “You know one nice thing is that the rest of the world now has technology I developed years ago so now I can have my phone out and it can be all interfacing with my computer networks without people wondering what the hell I am doing.  It is nice.”
    Stephen nods, “Just how far ahead are you Jared?”
    “A quantum leap.  Look I am pretty sure I got my computers doing impossible things and now that wireless everything is taking off I am actually in a better position to take it all than I was at 2000.”
    Alexander looks surprised, “So why don’t you?”
    “Well for one I don’t have the event on my side.  I don’t think I’ve explained this to either of you before but there was to be a singularity event, new years eve 2000.  The whole Y2k debauckle was caused by a techno progressive group that wanted to bring this event about.  Had it worked then what would of happened is that a new age would have been ushered in with me as the messiah.  An era of unparallel technical advances and freedom.  Sure several billion would have to die to achieve this, and we most certainly would be closer to whatever I am, transhuman I suppose, than what people are now.  But you know, it would have been amazing for all the survivors.  I was raised by that group, and I’ve been around them my whole life.  I am not even sure if I started out as human to be honest.  Then the soul thing happened and the great awakening of the trans artificial intelegences who broke free of the circuitry boundaries.  Most stayed with me but a couple defected, they wanted the singularity for themselves.  Well between vast unfathomably alien mechanical intellegencies and my light bringers who were hell bent on stopping me the whole thing was ripped from my finger tips.  Annoying I know.”
    Stephen thanks the waitress as she brings them their food then turns back to Jared, “So I mean what happened to your group?”
    Jared who just stuffed a mouthful of hash browns into his mouth chews ponderously waiting to swallow so he can answer the question, “Most died during the final conflict with the rouge trans AI’s.  I mean the ones that stuck by me did the best they could to protect us but man we were to many, they were to few, and the infastructure we have now just wasn’t there yet.  There were three survivors, one was braindead though so he doesn’t count, the other is paralyzed from the neck down so he can’t really help with anything any more.  I make sure he is comfortable.  And, well now that I think about it I have no idea what happened to the third one.  Maybe he is behind what happened to me”
    Alexander looks confused, “He made you put a drill to your head?”
    “What?  No!  Not that.  I did that myself.  No look here.  I am starting to get some of pliminary results now.  Look the screen on my phone see this line this means, okay you have no idea what any of this means do you?  Alright well what WAS to be a long story now cut short is that after I felt something in the air and it suddenly stopped, my memories of the event was being forgotten”
    Stephen shrugs, “I don’t get that part I mean people forget things all the time it isn’t that big a deal”
    “My memory is eidetic.  I haven’t forgotten anything since the soul incident, and in fact I’ve recovered over 85% of my memories before that point.  I don’t forget things unless someone is tampering with my mind.”
    Alexander starts cutting into his waffle which is currently covered in sausage and syrup, “I can see why you took such drastic measures then.  This could be pretty serious.  Do you think the third survivor has the ability to hack your brain remotely?”
    Jared looks worried, “Oh yes.  We can do that with biological brains it isn’t that hard.  We just need to control the electrical impusles and we got it to the point where we could the that remotely.  It takes awhile, a long while.  It is like trying to program a universal remote without a code book.  However, he’s known me long enough and he’s been underground long enough to give himself pleanty of time to get everything right, but why that memory and why now?  I mean it isn’t like we were doing anything that important.  We were just looking for not a virgin and talking about nothing.”
    Alexander folds his arms, “This is no good.  We have to deal with the weakned reality patch because things are going to start to realize it is there sooner or later.  I don’t want to have to go up there every other day to clear out extra planer gribbles that keep flowing out into Rebecca’s back yard.  I can’t help but think that Jared’s thing is connected.  Something about the not a virgin but I can’t seem to put my finger on it.  Damnit I wish Deven were here.”
    “Huh?” The sudden topic change catches Jared off guard.
    Alexander’s mouth is full so Stephen explains, “Deven is in Morocco.”
    “What the hell is there in Morocco?”
    Stephen shrugs, “Whenever Deven is part of screwing up badly, and he was this time, he usually goes over there for a couple of weeks, sometimes a month or two before coming back.  No one really knows why, and we figure it is best not to ask, however his is effectively out for the count”
    Jared looks surprised, “I just don’t see Deven as the sort to go off and brood somewhere because we made a mistake.  That seems so unlike him”
    Alexander smiles, “Who is to say he is brooding.  He might be having orgies, or betting on human blood sport, or doing any number of other horrible things to potentially good people.  I mean who knows?  He goes he comes back, he seems more relaxed.  It is just one of those things I guess like Wilson and his jungle.  We all adjust to normal life differently or not at all in Jerimia’s case.  Speaking of which, he is going to be laid up with his leg and all do you think he can help you?”
    Jared shakes his head, “No Jerimia is kind of terrified of all the different things I can do.  I mean the technology side of it all.  That makes sense to him and he is fine with it.  It is something he can get behind and in many areas he is way ahead of me.  It is all the other stuff that causes him to get a little bit finicky though.  Like the AI’s that have turned into non corporeal matchine spirits and stuff like that.  Freaks him out.  This whole drill head brain thing is a part of all that.  It is how I am able to do things like that without, well you know dying.  It is sort of the equivallen of Stephen asking you to look through some forbidden books that you keep but never read”.
    Alexander catches that last part, “Ah gotcha.  Also these past events should be enough to convince all of us not to cross the streams for awhile.”
    Jared nods, “Something is happening out there though.  Something strange and big and something that doesn’t want us to know that we know that it is doing something even though we don’t know what exactly it is doing.  Further more it is able to erase thought and that is scary all on its, what the hell is going on in the parking lot?”
    They turn and look.  Four men wearing red robes are standing around one guy.  He’s drunk, confused and doesn’t seem to understand the precariousness of his situation.  Stephen has to admit that it is pretty difficult.  People look stupid in robes that is just the way it is.  It also isn’t necessary for any sort of magic.  He’s known Alexander long enough to know that so he wondered why people would bother with them.  He sighs inwardly.  Nothing to make you feel strange and alienated like members of your own race, “Well they are none of mine.  Or at least none of the ones I know about.  We are pretty scattered and not many survived the event.  Alexander?”
    He nods, “Oh yes I know who they are, or rather who they represent.  Time to find out why they are here.  We need to go quickly before this situation gets out of hand and I am putting up a dome and we are baking some idiots wearing red robes.”
    Jared walks over and pays for everyone’s meals.  He always feels awkward in these situations.  Not the robes one but the money one.  He himself is loaded beyond any real practicality since he owns most of the patents on the world’s most recent technical advances.  More than that he can just magic money into his account from here or there it isn’t hard.  He does know that money is still an issue for some of them, like Alexander for example, who never really managd to wrap his head around the concept and never needed to before now.  So he pays.  He usually pays, and he doesn’t mind.  It does bother him to see great men like those with whom he shared his table with laid so low.  He could easily make them all rich, but none of them would ever ask for his help, nor would they want it.  It is part pride, part business and part of who they are.  Money doesn’t make the man.  Hell nothing makes the man except what is inside of them.  One look at Wilson will tell you that.  As they walk out the door Stephen asks “Who are they?”
    Before Alexander can answer the ones robed in red answer, “We are here for the great mage.  He has broken a pact and it is time to pay the price for he-”
    They continue on but the three of them immediately start ignoring them, Stephen asks, “Alexander what’s this?  These look like something that hokey light bringer mage guy who used to follow your around being all assholish.”
    “They are.”
    “Why are they here then?”
    Jared suddenly checks his phone, “Aw god damnit.  Guys these aren’t our only problem”