Excerpt: Death is a Primary Color

Chapter One - 2025
Day by day he engineered them – little machines, nanochines, nanobytes of information created by him. They were so small the strongest electro-scope could barely see them. Bit by bit he programmed them with matrices of information. Daily he would project his thoughts to them, his aspirations for them, his dreams of a world he, with their help, would control.
When he was ready, he would try them and gauge their reaction in living tissue. He had taken the first step. The next step was simple and they did not disappoint. He created a replica of a human heart and introduced them to its workings and showed them the pathways to the brain and they were ready. They were ready for the next step.
With laser-scalpel in hand he exposed the still beating heart of the sleeping form before him, injected his nanbots and watched the steady uninterrupted rhythmic pulsing. He reached out and stroked the glistening heart gently with a gloved finger then closed the flesh around it and she lived.
He was God. This was a new life-form. It was his now * his. He watched the steady breathing of this first validation of his work. He would build a perfect race, perfect men and more importantly, perfect women. One by one he would add them to his cadre and they would march to the step he intoned and the girl on the table woke, stared wide-eyed, sat bolt upright, opened her mouth in a silent scream and died. As the light fled her eyes, Chadak's dreams momentarily wavered. Failure. For a moment, he was a student again, groping for answers, and then the researcher in him took over.; science took over.
He had to take the heart to recover his nanites and perform a minute autopsy and neural scan, and dispose of the remains. It would be a long night, a long, red night in the pristine clean white room.
Exhausted, he returned to his private dorm room and sat at his computer. He glanced over the monitor at the just awakening campus, stroked a beard where none existed, lowered his brows and dictated the night's research to the waiting computer voice module while part of his mind pondered his next steps.

2101 AD
Jadeah glowered. Her warm bed is memory, and gold morning spilling through seaward windows is replaced by gray traffic and dark apprehension as she drives to the murder scene. James's voice, laced with confusion and not a little fear, echoes in her ear. She could only wonder what was wrong. His voice was clear and controlled when he called, but the bleed-through of raw emotion: the anger, fear and utter bafflement in his mind, were a miasmic smell to her highly trained senses. Jadeah's carefully planned day was now supplanted by the urgency he unwittingly implied.
Her mind kept returning to the manuscripts lying idle on her desk. She was busier than ever now. Anonymity was a thing of the past and sometimes she remembered those early days fondly. Back then, they turned her stories down. They were all skeptics and none of them believed in her and what she stood for. Back then, she could go anywhere unnoticed – not now. Now, she had two children's books and two novels published, and the poems and short bardic tales of the Before Times were even doing well. She smiled inwardly, Well, maybe I didn't like being unknown better, but my life sure was simpler and more serene.
This past year her old schoolmate from MU had taken to calling her in whenever he needed esper help in his law enforcement work. It took time away from her writing and sometimes resulted in unwelcome notoriety. She preferred the calling of writer and poet to that of psychic sleuth or 'Wonder Witch' as the ever irreverent columnist Amanda Mason dubbed her.
It wasn't pleasant witnessing the aftermath of crimes. True, James only calls her when he's desperate, and he never spreads her name around. "Blast!" She muttered aloud. Something is terribly wrong, and I will never get my book to the publisher by deadline, never mind the article for Mayax Today, and, damn it all! I'll call them both later. She had arrived.
She parked her Rover behind the police cars, and got a dirty look from the Sergeant. Jade got out, slammed the door, and called up to him as she mounted the stairs to the entrance he barred, "Sergeant, I got a call to meet lieutenant Jeffries here."
"He ain't here yet and the room is sealed and no one goes in until he gets here and you're illegally parked, so move that thing."
His words reached her: lances honed with anger, trailing fear. "Why are you so angry, Sergeant?" She asked, sending him soothing thoughts. A glare was her answer. Turning to go down the stairs, she saw James Jeffries pull in behind her Rover, and sighed with relief.
"James, just let me move the Rover, and I'll be right with you."
"You're on police business. The Rover's fine." The smile was for Jadeah. The sergeant received a cold, "See that Ms. Kenion's vehicle is not disturbed or ticketed."
"Yes, sir," the stony-faced reply belied the seething lava behind the eye.
James and Jade entered the house and instantly five people, all talking at once, surrounded them. The forensics team was there. The photographer wanted to take pictures. K.D. Jones, detective in training barred the door. "I kept them out just like you said, Lieutenant. Sergeant O'Conner is Pi..., uh, real upset, sir." The young man glanced sideways at Jade. She felt the curiosity and the awe, and gave him her warmest smile and thoughts.
James was all business, "So what else is new in the world. All right, K.D., report."
"Well, sir. The maid got here at 6:30 this morning, opened up and came in. She said she noticed the library door open slightly and a light on. She said that was not like Mrs. Kane, uh, the lady who lives here, uh, lived here, so she walked into the room and there she was, the corpse, uh, Mrs. Kane, sir. She got scared and didn't go any further - e ran out to the hall, called us, and oh yeah, she's in the kitchen with the cook. She's still pretty shook."
"Jadeah?" She barely heard James call her by her full name. She was already tuning into the room's vibrations. "Jade?"
"Yes, I hear you, please tell your minions to sit and stay put. The room where the body was found is only a part of the crime scene. It'll be hard to see past their traces to the earlier, fainter ones of what happened here some hours ago."
"Sure! You all heard. Shut-up and sit."
They sat, startled, and irritated that they weren't allowed to do their jobs. They watched Jade and muted whispers circulated amongst them.
"She's one of them you know one of the Wyse."
"Yeah? A witch you mean; I know."
"Shhh, she's his, you know, friend. He'll hear and she don't need to hear to know."
Jade smiled inwardly and tuned them all out as she prepared to begin. Slowly she breathed in the energy needed to elevate her personal vibrations to a level that would enhance her vision enough to read the record of this place. She mused briefly at what these people viewed as magic and she considered normal. All living things are levels of vibrating matter. As a piece of the fabric of the cosmos, just like comets, we all leave trails through the universe we travel.
Like a slow motion foggy picture, she began to see the ghostly shadow of a woman descending the stairs and entering through the library door.
"What do you see, Jade?" From far away, she could hear, James's voice, as always, impatient.
Another voice, "It's like she's following something with her eyes," that was K.D. "Man, she's seein’ something."
K.D. was the other side of the coin from the sergeant: awe, instead of fear and anger, and utter belief instead of skepticism. Jadeah was not sure which was worse, the skeptics who believe nothing and are fearful of the unknown, or the awestruck who expect miracles.
She motioned them to silence, walked to the library door, pushed it open with her walking stick, and mentally heard the forensic team's collective sigh of relief. Her amused thoughts were her own. How to make friends and influence enemies; every now and then I get it right. I will not mess up your evidence, boys. She knew that after all is said and done, it is they who provide the hard proof necessary in police work. But the prints will only serve them if they are on file somewhere and tricorders only give hard data in the now. If there are no prints, or what they find is not on file somewhere, as was the case with the last murder, then they do no good at all."
The light in the library is on and Jade sees the foggy afterimage she was following. The image stops in the center of the room, looks to the window, then drops. There doesn't seem to be anyone else around.
"There, through the open window" Jade points. K.D. and James both move to the window. "Yes, there and there, you should find traces. Something was fired from there. He never came inside. He fired and went across the lawn, entered a vehicle and left." Jade stares hard out the window then back at the room committing it all to memory before she lost the faint and fading images beyond recall.
"It was a man?" James, again. "Can you see what he looks like?"
"He's tall, slender, fast, and..." she stopped herself.
"What do you mean fast? And what was the and? Jadeah, I need a description."
She had explained and explained to him, but every time, she had to do it again Sea green eyes turned stone cold jade as she turned to explain one more time, "James, I see an afterimage and a faint negative of where he's been. The disturbance of the way things are and where things go as we move through. I see a shadow of an image like a hole in the fabric of the space he traveled through. I see a very tall, lean space with a faint impression of maleness. He went through here very quickly - hence: Tall. Slender. Fast. The energy ends at the curb, there." She pointed to the spot where Dresden Avenue meets Cantan Street. "A vehicle must have taken him on, because his path ends there. It doesn't go on to the other side." Something nagged at her about the image, but she couldn't put her finger on it. She would minutely examine her impressions later.
"Great, just great. Jadeah, I need more and what was the 'and' all about?"
"You're welcome, James," came the icy response. "I left a warm bed for this, and a desk piled high with work." She would keep the 'and' to herself just now, since she herself didn't know where it would lead. She couldn't put her finger on that nagging dark feeling at the edge of consciousness, but it would come. It always did.
James was instantly contrite, "Sorry, it's just, well there are things you don't know. Look, let me let the lab crew in and the coroner. We'll talk outside."
"Okay, guys!" he called out to the hallway just before reaching it. "Go on in, and I want an inch by inch report on this place and check the window, the killer fired from there, and check outside for prints - finger and foot, check for burns or any sign that a weapon was fired from the window. Okay, go!" James's steady stream of directives ended as they reached the door leading back out to the front porch. As long as she'd known him, he could talk more on one breath than anyone she knew. He only gets this way when he's really upset. Something more than murder was going on here. Jadeah could sense it.