Land Of The Thunder Dragon Read online

  They all reflected briefly and silently about the plight of their families, wondering where they all were now, and why the five of them had been left behind with Grandpa Jack. All they were told was that their parents trusted Grandpa Jack totally, and believed in his reasoning for leaving his five Grand Children behind, on Earth.

  Chapter 3

  "What the........."

  A solitary figure with night vision enhancement watched as two dark figures climbed from an upper story window with a back pack, hit the ground, and took off running toward the neighbouring house.

  "Not a sound," Wayne whispered to Timothy at three a.m. as they gently leant the extension ladder against the roof of Mr. Rogers' house. "Negotiations are under way," Wayne sniggered to himself as they started to climb.

  The night was as quiet as it could possibly be, no wind, no barking dogs in the distance, not a good thing. Wayne and Timothy both knew from previous experience that Mr. Rogers sleeps very lightly, and that the slightest sound would wake him. They are also smart enough to know that even light sleepers will be at their deepest sleep during the REM Phase, which is about two to three hours before dawn. Luckily, Grandpa Jack replaced the broken solar panels with the latest flexible type panel that just sticks to any surface using Velcro tape, making it easy to move. However, as Wayne and Timothy started to roll up the panel, the Velcro made a terrible ripping noise as the velcro came apart. During the day this noise would barely be audible. But in the still of the night it sounded like a jet fighter taking off from the corrugated iron roof. They stopped, turned, and looked at each other in the dim starlight, smiled wickedly at each other and, as one, ripped the panel off in one movement, loudly. They remained totally glued to the spot, listening for movement in the house below, there was none. They rolled up the panel and moved gently back across the roof towards the ladder.

  As they were going down, they passed Mr Rogers' bedroom window. Suddenly, the light inside flicked on. They froze. With their hearts racing, they watched in horror as Mr. Rogers came to the bedroom window. They knew that with the light on inside, he couldn’t see what was outside in the dark through the window. However, if he opened the window, they were sunk. Timothy, who was below Wayne on the ladder was desperately trying to suppress his desire to run. He knew that he must remain perfectly still.

  Mr. Rogers inched closer to the window, cocked his head as if listening for something, then slowly retreated to the light switch thinking that he must have been imagining things. The light went out and Mr. Rogers climbed back in to bed.

  Ten minutes later and beginning to freeze, Wayne gently nudged Timothy to start moving again. Surely Mr. Rogers was back to sleep again by now. They replaced the ladder against the shed exactly where they had taken it from, and then made their way back through the fence and headed across the paddock with the solar panel rolled up and under Timothy's arm. From behind, they heard a slight crack, the sound of a twig breaking, they were being followed.

  Instinctively, the twins gently moved in opposite directions and into cover, not knowing that their pursuer had genetic night vision enhancements and could see every move that they made.

  Skye couldn't sleep. With the excitement of the day, and knowing she needed to concentrate deeply in order to place the security shields around the property, she knew, that there would be no further sleep tonight. “Maybe, it would be better to sort the security out now, while it’s quiet and she could concentrate deeply,” she thought.

  Skye got out of bed and sat cross legged on the cushion in the middle of the room, placed her wrists on her knees, and touched the tips of her forefingers and thumbs together in a meditation mudra. She closed her eyes, cleared her mind, and began to visualise the task in front of her.

  She needed to place two shield domes around the property, one close around the house, and the other as close to the external boundary of the property as possible. The property is oddly rectangular and her shield domes are effectively round, which means that the farthest corners of the property would remain unprotected. There was nothing she could do about that.

  The more Skye tried to concentrate, however, the more she got the feeling that someone was trying to break into her thoughts. A mental picture of fear on a ladder, then for ten minutes or so, nothing. She was able to place the shield dome around the house. Then another presence was knocking at her consciousness. Skye decided to open up to it, suddenly realising that Wayne and Timothy were outside the house and in terrible danger. Skye attempted to contact them telepathically, but they haven't developed that skill to the same level as David and Flynn, and she got no response. Maybe they were just too far away for that. As she tried to sense their location, she detected a third presence, someone with a very high intelligence about fifty metres further away than the twins. She recognised an evil trait in this third intelligence, just as that person sensed Skye's enquiries and closed off her (her?) mind to Skye.

  Realising that this woman's intentions could not be good, Skye decided that she must attempt to place the second shield dome between the twins and the third presence. It's extremely difficult to do this kind of work under pressure. Grandpa Jack and Skye had been working hard on that problem, hence the episode with the eggs earlier. That was the first time that Skye had been able to generate a shield urgently, but it was so much easier due to its small size. Then, Grandpa Jack's words came back to her, "The Universe is nothing but energy, size is not relative to anything, only one's ability to visualise it. Size and power are only visualisations of energy. Visualise it, then create it.” She concentrated, visualising herself creating the larger shield, requiring no more power than the one to stop the eggs. "Visualise it, then create it." The shield dome rolled invisibly into place from the top down, just as the third presence ran headlong into it. It was like being snared in a big flexible net.

  Then, sensing a local build-up of energy, the shield bounced back violently, hurling her back into the boundary fence that she had just crawled through, smashing her head and seriously hurting her left leg. The Third Presence limped her way back through the dark to her waiting car and drove off into the night.

  Skye was very satisfied with herself and dropped the inner shield, so that Wayne and Timothy could get back home. Once they were inside the house, she telepathically suggested to them both that they should visit her room pronto. They wouldn’t understand it, but like a subliminal message, they would get the gist and turn up at her door.

  Grandpa Jack, appearing to be asleep, smiled a contented smile.

  Down in the basement, Flynn quietly continued tightening the final screws on the face plate of his latest creation as the final software code updated to the Synthetic's operating system. As the Operating System rebooted, he sighed as he realised that he hadn't been able to fix the code for the Synthetic's eye colour. It's always one eye blue and one eye green, just like Grandpa Jack's, “What The.....?”

  Chapter 4

  "swimmin with the fishes"

  Lauren's head was swimming with all the plans that needed to be finalised today as she jogged (Lauren calls it jogging, the Special Air Services call it Tempo Running. Where you deliberately push your muscles into working above your muscle's lactate threshold). She was running along the Scarborough beach foreshore as the sun was just beginning to send its first rays up past the hills behind Perth. It was one of those early mornings when you just knew how terribly hot the day was going to be.

  Since global warming really took hold of the Earth's climate over the past nine years, Perth's already scorching summer climate had become unbearable. Lauren's prototype smartsuit automatically switched on as the sun began to warm the air around her very fit, athletic body. She did wish that the suit wasn't so revealing, but it did allow her to finish the last five kilometres of her "jog" without overheating. Her thoughts turned to all the tasks that she needed to finalise in the twenty five hours she had left, as she collected her morning double shot espresso from Luke, the surfing Barista at Cafe Yello. Luke watched a
s Lauren walked out of the door to the waiting Lamborghini Veneno that had been shimmering along behind her on her jog.

  The Lamborghini Veneno , while still stunningly beautiful, was an old car now. But the organisation, had made some modifications to bring it up to current standards. The very quiet sound of the EV drive didn't quite complete the picture. Not having to have a driver any more meant however, that she could work completely alone, her most preferred method of operation. She glanced over her right shoulder at Luke as she told the car to punch it, and smiled, maybe she might find time to give him a call before she left.

  As soon as her implanted Flashnet connected to the Lamborghini's connection to the organisation's network core, Lauren's retina display showed an urgent message flashing in the top right corner of her vision. She toyed with the idea of ignoring it for a while, but realised that Jack would need her help today if he was to get himself and five kids to the airport in time tomorrow morning. She allowed her Flashnet to make the connection.

  Grandpa Jack's Flashnet alerted him to the incoming call from Lauren, he still preferred to re-route his calls to the old style telephone, it prevented the annoying feeling of having someone talk to you from inside your head, “God knows there are enough voices in there without adding to them voluntarily.”

  He picked up the handset, "Good morning Lauren," Jack said with an annoyed tone. "All this new-fangled connectivity doesn't seem to help having my urgent calls returned in a hurry."

  "It's 6am Jack." said Lauren. "Give me a break, I didn't sleep until two am, and was out jogging at 5. You're the last person I would expect to complain about cutting yourself off, even for an hour.”

  "Someone tried to get in last night Lauren," Jack went on, "Skye says it was a woman. You wouldn't know anything about that would you?"

  A moment's silence on the other end left Jack feeling suspicious, then, "Jack, you don't really think,,, no, the organisation is completely committed to the success of this mission, it's been too long in the planning to have insiders attempting to subvert it. It must be someone else." Lauren continued to think on that subject as she cancelled the autodrive application, she needed to drive herself, the thrill of driving a fast sports car was something she was definitely going to miss.

  "Jack, I'm going to organise an extra security escort for you tomorrow morning, go ahead as planned, you won't see the escort, I don't want to frighten the kids unnecessarily.” She terminated the connection before Jack could give her any further grief, then floored the Lamborghini's throttle as she rocketed into the tunnel under the Swan River.

  A large door opened on the left, Lauren initiated an old-fashioned hand brake turn. The Lamborghini shot through the door and spun to a halt in a cavern with the massive door closing quickly behind her. A hatch in the ceiling above her irised open, as the car was lifted through it into the glass dome which is the central conference room of "the organisation."

  Lauren's smartsuit morphed into more suitable business attire as she strode purposefully towards the conference table. She gasped with surprise as she saw who was seated at the table, the holograms of three middle aged men who Lauren privately referred to as the ‘fun police’. In truth, these men were the potential saviours of the human race, and Lauren trusted them implicitly. They were also her brothers.

  Lauren sat down in the fourth chair without meeting their gaze. Disturbingly, she wasn't quite sure what her next move needed to be. She knew she had to be cautious about saying her thoughts out loud, facts were needed first. Trouble was afoot once again, and she didn’t want to alarm these guys just yet.

  "Such a dramatic entrance agent Matson," said a voice from behind her that Lauren vaguely recognised, but couldn't quite place. She slowly turned to see a young, bald headed youth, sharply dressed, but in a style that she thought had its roots in eastern heritage. He was gazing, not at her, but in wonderment at the fish swimming around the outside of the dome.

  "Let me introduce you to The Fifteenth Dalai Lama," said Lauren's brother Evan's hologram.

  Never,,, Ever lost for words, Lauren could subconsciously see herself from outside her body, standing there, mouth gaping open and closed, rather like one of the fish outside in the river. Lauren forced herself to close her mouth, screaming internally to ‘get a grip for god's sake’ (woops, she thought), when the young Dalai Lama turned to face Lauren. His Eyes,,,,,,, One green, One blue. It was like someone had a hand surrounding Lauren's heart and suddenly decided to clench that fist. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t move.

  The Fifteenth Dalai Lama is nothing more than a myth, or so Lauren thought. When the Fourteenth Dalai Lama died around fifty years ago, Tibet and China were still at loggerheads as to how to allow the Reincarnation process to occur. The Chinese government wanted total control over the decision. However, Tenzin Gyatsu, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, had been reported as saying that he may well be the last, but if the Tibetan people wished for the reincarnation to take place it was only up to them to decide. He added that if the Fifteenth Dalai Lama was to occur, that that person may not be from Tibet or may even possibly be a woman, why not? As Lauren recalled this information, she looked into the Dalai Lama's eyes, it was like looking into seven hundred years of wisdom, compassion and knowledge, but also immense sadness at the same time. Lauren had just finished thinking to herself that she shouldn't use the word beautiful in reference to a young man, when she realised that she was in fact looking into the face of a young woman. Lauren was dumbstruck, still.

  Chapter 5

  "Knock Knock, Who’s There?"

  With the farm chores done early, before the sun really started to burn, Flynn walked into the kitchen expecting to find the place buzzing with excitement. He then realised that like himself, probably no one else got much sleep last night and as a result were a bit sluggish starting their day. Looking forward to breakfast, Flynn found Grandpa Jack sitting at the kitchen table looking very refreshed however, sipping his green tea, eyeballing Flynn as he walked in the door.

  "A horse walks into a bar, and the barman says, Why the long face? Hahahahaha," Grandpa Jack cackled to himself, barely raising a smile from Flynn.

  “Another one of Grandpa Jack's ancient and very unfunny jokes,” Flynn thought.

  "Seriously." said Grandpa Jack. "Didn't get much sleep hey, too excited?" Flynn looked at Grandpa Jack's eyes and couldn’t decide what to say, things are weird. "I was working on the Synth last night Grandpa Jack. It's finished, but,,,."

  "But what?" asked Grandpa Jack.

  Flynn desperately wanted to ask him the meaning of the eye colour thing, but something was holding him back. "I couldn't sleep trying to think of a cool name for it," He lied.

  "Ah," said Grandpa Jack with more than a little humour in his voice, "How about Myrtle?"

  "That is your second lame joke this morning Grandpa Jack," laughed Skye, leaning against the door frame from the hallway. "I vote for Cynthia," she added, "get it?"

  Flynn and Grandpa Jack both rolled their eyes, "Talking about lame jokes," they both said together.

  "It's definitely not female anyway," said Flynn, with an offended expression on his face.

  Wayne walked in and joined the conversation. "If the synth is going to be looking after things while we are away, then it's like our butler, right? So, we should give it a famous butler's name, you know, old English style? How about Jeeves?"

  "Or Alfred?" said Timothy, walking into the busy kitchen.

  "How about Lurch?” said David as he walked into the storm.

  Flynn turned to look at him questioningly.

  "You know, Adams Family?" said David.

  Flynn's jaw dropped as he looked into David's eyes.

  "What?" asked David.

  Flynn turned and raced out the door, not knowing what to think. "Someone is seriously meddling with my brain," he yelled.

  Grandpa Jack, having been able to follow Flynn's gaze, now saw exactly what Flynn saw. He was shocked, but didn't understand Flynn's problem.
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  "David, Your Eyes," screamed Skye. "They have changed colour."

  Wayne and Timothy turned to look, as David said, "No they haven't, you guys are playing a trick on me for my birthday."

  Skye, picked up an old hand mirror from the mantelpiece, offered it to David and said, "Here, look for yourself."

  David took hold of the handle, and tentatively (he was waiting for the trick) raised the mirror to see his face reflected and started to say, "See my eyes are br....." David blinked twice and looked again, he handed the mirror back to Skye and walked out of the door, and headed up the stairs to the bathroom, all the way saying that he will look in the bathroom mirror, that couldn't be a trick one. He positioned himself in front of the mirror, blinked twice and peered in to his reflection and saw one Green eye, and one Blue eye. Wayne, Timothy and Skye had followed David to the bathroom door, "It's not your birthday David, not for five days yet," said Timothy.

  David, knowing that Timothy was right, also knew that he was wrong. It's a feeling, he knows that today is his twelfth birthday. "How can that possibly be?" David said aloud, "Yesterday my eyes were brown.”