Entanglement
Chapter 1
Summer 2049
The end of the world starts during a hot Georgia summer. The old hunter jogs past a pine tree, the long green needles fanning out over rippled bark. His rifle bounces against his hip, beads of sweat pelting his brow, red Georgia dirt powdering his every step.
It’s been a week now, tracking the woman through the woods, over streams, up gravelly trails and into the low mountains. But she ain’t no woman, he thinks, sneering to himself. That word – what’d the scientist call em? Then he remembers. Mock. It echoes in his mind as he passes through tall grass and ferns. Ain’t no human, either. Now the dirt is sandy, well-worn, and packed. Someone shouts, “Over here!”, and a thin grin spreads over his leathered face.
He makes it out of the forest and stops to catch his breath. The climb was hard. His pants are stiff and sticky. Georgia heat is one son-of-a-bitch. He joins two young men waiting in the clearing. The big one looks up, a man with a shaggy beard and stained teeth. He picks at the gritty blood crusted on his hunting knife.
“Gimme some of that,” the old hunter says, motioning to the big guy’s rusty canteen. The hunter takes a swig, swishing water in his mouth then spits. He gives Big Guy a hard look over but before he can say anything, the dumbass opens his mouth.
“Freak’s down there, the greenhouse.”
“They’re called Mocks,” the hunter growls.
Big Guy laughs. “You’re gonna listen to that nut? That scientist was out of his goddamn mind!”
The hunter grips his assault rifle and spits again. The two young men start laughing and the skinnier one, a scrawny college dropout, swipes a finger over his throat with dramatic effect.
“Well, he ain’t around to call ‘em nuthin’ no more!”
The hunter glares at the college kid who joined the fight a few days ago. The kid keeps laughing and it pisses him off. “Shut up!”
The two men go silent and look down at the dirt.
“God rest his soul,” the hunter says. “The Revelation’ll make a man tear the truth out of his own mother, if he has to.” And he meant it. Why, last night, the old hunter had somewhat of an epiphany. It was his first sacrifice of the Revelation. The great almighty purge. There he was, gripping the top of the scientist’s head, dunking his face into the river — it came so easy the guy was as limp as a fish — and he came to the realization as clear as crystal.
“But they’re not clones!” the scientist said, sputtering between gulps of the cold Chattahoochee.
“Then what are they?” the hunter asked, hissing into the man’s ear. “We’re gonna kill all your science experiments, we’re gonna –”
“Mocks,” the scientist said, gasping for breath. “And they’re just people, like you and me.”
“Then where’d they come from, huh? You made these – these Mocks – you grew them –”
The man began to sob. “Please. I can’t tell you. Please!”
“I bet you can,” the hunter said, laying his knife against the man’s throat. “You’re gonna die anyway.”
Then the scientist stopped crying and looked up at the hunter, his eyes full of contempt. When he smirked, the hunter took a step back and almost let him go. “Alien tech, you backwards hick. By the time your children’s children come around, there’ll be more Mocks than any of you. We’re changing everything and there’s so much you don’t know cause you’re not the chosen ones, not like us, you dumb redneck, not like –”
The hunter’s eyes go hazy, remembering how the man’s throat sliced easy like wet tissue.
“Probably for his own good, anyway,” Big Guy says. “You put him outta his misery. Blaming this shit on aliens. Told you he was a lunatic.”
The old hunter mulls on this for a while — as if that fat dumbass even knows what he’s talking about. When he was a kid, there was all this hysteria about UAPs and those triangle ships in the sky. Mindless, senseless fake news. But see, that was just a coverup. He’s always known that. Just distractions from the real threats. The cloning in China, the neural chips made by billionaires, the generative AI that’s gone sentient, the energy weapons that could melt satellites, and the mind rays that could intercept your thoughts.
“We have to take matters into our own hands,” the hunter finally says. “Find the traitors — human or not — and kill ‘em.”
He reaches into his pocket and keeps his hand there, palming the scientist’s small notebook. He looks over half expecting the two to be picking their noses, thumbs up their asses, but instead they’re quiet, waiting for him to speak. With a sigh, he swings his rifle over his shoulder and retrieves the tiny notebook. He holds it out for everyone to see.
“It’s always been the government, boys. Ain’t nothing else.”
He turns the blood-stained pages, some ripped and the ink smeared. They crowd around.
“Well, what’s it mean?” Big Guy asks, squinting and pointing at a blurry diagram.
The hunter leans in. A bunch of squares, neatly arranged. It looks like –
The kid snatches it out of his hands, laughing. “Let’s take a look, shall we?” He flips through the pages, strutting in the dirt like a goddamn rooster.
The hunter draws his rifle. “Give it back.” But the kid ignores him, his nose buried in the pages. He begins to read, slowly.
“Mock Sapiens look indistinguishable from people and are genetically, Homo Sapiens. Mocks can only be birthed from a Mock Farm and cannot reproduce on their own.”
The kid’s face blanches and he begins to slowly lower his arms. The hunter grabs the notebook and slaps the kid on the head with it. He reads the rest.
“To prevent a null birth, Mock Sapiens require a complete quad of four powered stakes imbued with –” and for this, the hunter has to sound out a word spelled ‘calyxite’ – “cal-icks-cite,” he says. The rest of the words are smeared, but he tries to make them out. “A generative protein used to promote and control differentiable cell growth. Controlled by the algorithm.”
Everything else looks technical, jargon he can’t make out. But at the bottom of the page, words in sloppy cursive catch his eye. Big Guy seems to notice. “What is it?”
The hunter reads it again, completely aware of the chill in his bones. The words come out like a whisper, slow and dry. “Calyxite is engineered from… Morfyk DNA… key to Morfyk shape-shifting as they invade planets.”
Big Guy grabs the hunter’s forearm. “What’d you say?”
The hunter is frozen unaware of the man’s grip. “What the hell is a Morfyk,” he mutters under his breath.
“That’s what I’m asking! What’s that mean, invade planets?”
Big Guy snatches the notebook and this time, the hunter doesn’t resist. Maybe that scientist wasn’t a loon, after all.
“Hey what’s this mean?” Big Guy asks, showing him the back of the notebook. Tiny raised letters that spell ‘GLIACORP’. The same thing was on the scientist’s shirt.
The old hunter narrows his eyes. “I don’t know and I don’t fucking care. My whole goddamn family’s been in these parts since the Civil War, I’ll damn well die than let my country — no, my planet — be infested by these Mocks.”
Big Guy speaks up. “But the more-fik, thing, ain’t it –”
“It doesn’t matter, you idiot. Scientific jargon. Propaganda to keep us meek and blind.”
You’re not the chosen ones, not like us, you dumb redneck.
The hunter wraps his fingers around the cold steel of his Remington. Drawing the scope to his eye, he studies the greenhouse. “You said she’s down there?”
The college kid raises his rifle. “She ain’t alone.”
Big Guy lunges forward. “Then what the hell’re we waiting for?”
“Wait,” says the hunter. “Who’s with her?”
“Some man,” the kid says. “Real tall and fast.”
“He got any weapons on him?”
“I didn’t see any. But who cares?”
The hunter lowers his scope. Lost in thought, he takes the edge of his shirt and slowly wipes down the barrel. “Never thought I’d see the end of days in my lifetime.” With a heavy grunt, he loads a magazine into the stock. “No one’s gonna fight for us, boys. Gotta cleanse the Earth ourselves. Destroy every Mock before we die.”