Day 50 (The DMT Series Book 2) (24 page)
Because we are.
Look around you.
You may feel that you are part of something bigger than yourself because you share the religious beliefs of the man or woman next to you.
Why should that matter?
Why should it matter what the person next to you thinks?
We are individuals, but we are also the same.
We all come from the same universe.
So today I declare Codyism for dead. I never spoke to a God, I never communicated with the universe.
All I did was to trip out on a drug.
All I did was to die and return.
All I did was to cling to the idea that I was something special because of that.
But I have realised that we are all special.
So instead of killing the man or woman next to you, I want you all to drop your knives to the ground and give him or her a hug.
Because that is what the universe is about.
Love.
Love for the man or woman next to you.
Love for life.
Love...”
Cody couldn’t see the red lights of the cameras turn off as he staggered off the podium. But as he felt his knees buckle underneath him, and the last ounce of life seeped out of his body, he knew he had achieved something important for once - he would leave the world a better place than he had entered it.
He would die penniless like so many Prophets before him.
But no one would ever again use his word to justify evil.
His last word on Earth had been
Love
.
And Love was the legacy he would leave behind.
Epilogue
James Carter surveyed the new surroundings. He had been removed from his Guantanamo Bay cell in the middle of the night. He hadn’t been taken on any plane, so he knew he was still in Cuba. But where, he had no idea. The building looked brand new. The cell he was placed in was one in a row of five. He peered through the see-through glass.
The man on the other side of the glass was obviously an agent. He was not from the CIA though. The CIA would never have let Carter be treated like this. It was now three months since the FBI had raided Carter’s operation and accused him of treason.
He had never been presented with any charges though. Just accusations.
“You can’t keep me here forever,” he hollered to the agent outside the glass cell.
“We can. The new president has been quite adamant that we have to take every national security issue seriously. If any of our citizens ever side with terrorists then they give up their rights to be treated as Americans.”
“I’m as American as you can get. I’ve been a patriot my entire life.” Carter spat at the glass.
“We have a different opinion of what it means to be an American then,” the agent responded flatly.
“How is the patient doing?” A voice rang out from farther down in the room.
“He is fine.”
Carter recognised the voice, but he couldn’t quite place it. Where had he heard it before?
“Would you mind giving us five minutes before the trial starts?” the voice asked. The person was standing on the side of the second glass cell now. The glass was frosted so Carter couldn’t see through it. All he could see was a tall man wearing a white doctor’s jacket.
The agent nodded, before leaving.
“How are you, Mr Carter? Or should I say James? I feel that I know you quite well after all that time you spent by my bedside.”
“Who are you? What do you want with me?” Carter cried.
As soon as the man in the white doctor’s jacket stepped out in front of the clear glass of the cell, James Carter knew he would never be let outside whatever facility they were keeping him in.
“Drecker, Dr Drecker,” he said.
“You don’t need to be so formal, James. Call me Martin. I feel that I know you quite well.”
“You were the one who ratted me out.”
“I wouldn’t call it ‘ratting out.’ I would call it whistle-blowing. And you should probably not make your bedside confessions to a person you have been trying to kill for the last few years. It could backfire. You should know that.”
“You could hear me?” Carter asked.
“Every single word. I used to crave your visits. I would struggle for weeks just to move a finger, because I knew you would always show up soon afterward.”
Carter covered his face in his hands. “OK. So you win. You made some sort of deal with the new President. You gave him Alejandro, and he let you go.”
“Oh, you can do better than that, Carter.”
“What did you give him? Me? You ratted out me? And that was sufficient for him to let you go?”
“Now you’re just thinking too highly of yourself. I gave him the secret of DMT.”
“You what?”
“I found out how to make the DMT safe, and what happens on day fifty.”
“But how?” Carter was shaking his head.
Dr Drecker smiled as he patted Dr Kovacks’ leather-covered notebook. “The answer was always right in front of us.”
“You knew I had a tracker installed in the book?”
“Of course.”
“So what happens to me now? Do I get a fair trial?”
Dr Drecker shook his head. “There will be a trial though, just not the sort you are expecting.”
“What do you mean?”
Dr Drecker didn’t answer. Instead he raised a radio to his mouth. “Subject DMT-01 is ready for DMT trial. Could you please send down the prep-team.”
“What’s going on??” Carter cried.
“We are restarting the DMT experiments. You will have the honour of being our first test subject. It’s not like anybody is going to miss you. You are a traitor, a traitor responsible for murdering hundreds of innocent people.”
“You’re crazy. That’s preposterous.”
“Don’t worry, Carter. It is perfectly safe.”
“Perfectly safe? You don’t know what you’re doing. DMT will open the gates to other worlds.”
Dr Drecker just smiled as he flipped through the pages of Dr Kovacks’ used notebook.
“Where did you get the DMT from, by the way? I thought all DMT was destroyed,” Carter said, visibly nervous.
“Not all. We still have the DMT I hid in my freezer in the Hamptons. It’s not much. But I’m sure it will do the trick.”
Carter shrank together as he understood the implication.
Cameron studied the GPS. Another two days of sailing and they would reach their destination. Cameron looked over at her father, and smiled. Adam looked good, very good. He looked ten years younger. Cameron didn’t feel that bad herself.
Perhaps she hadn’t realised how much stress they had been living under for the last few years. Always looking over their shoulders, always being suspicious of other people’s true intentions.
But those days were over.
For good, she hoped.
Cameron and Adam had received a written confirmation from the President of the United States that they had done nothing wrong. It had been part of the deal they struck when they agreed to hand over the evidence that would implicate Carter and his now-defunct MKULTRA organisation in the bomb attack that blew up the Washington Memorial Hospital.
“This is life,” Adam hollered.
“This is life,” Cameron replied. They were on their way to a small bay in Thailand where Cameron and her mum had lived some years back.
It was the most wonderful place Cameron had ever set foot. She had hated the day they had to leave.
But now she would finally be able to show her dad the place.
She looked forward to showing him all the places she and her mum had stayed.
Cameron’s phone beeped. It meant that they were close enough to land to get reception. She pulled out the phone and opened up the Messenger app.
The phone kept pinging as the app updated her messages.
She smiled as she saw whom they all were from.
“Miss you.” “Can’t wait to see you.” “XOXO.”
They were all from Hugo. Her boyfriend.
He’d had to fly back to Mexico to attend a funeral for a family member, but was supposed to meet them in two days when they arrived at Nang Yai Bay. He would take a motor boat over from Phuket.
“You wouldn’t believe who I ran into today,” the next message read. Hugo was obviously still online, but Cameron couldn’t Skype him. The connection on the boat only supported small amounts of data transfers.
“Who?”
“Cody!!”
“WTF???” Cameron texted back. She had been to the funeral. She had seen the casket being lowered into the ground. There was no way Cody would have been able to resurrect again. It was simply impossible.
She stared at the screen with the small dots dancing on the message line. Hugo was writing his reply.
Then a picture popped up on her screen. And it was Cody.
It was a picture of Cody.
Cody with a pigeon on his shoulder.
“They’ve erected the statue in the middle of Mexico City. Cody would have been so proud,” the message read.
Cameron smiled. Cody would have been proud.
He had truly left the world a better place than when he’d arrived.
Codyism didn’t exist anymore. When Cody had revealed the entire religion had been a sham, Cameron had anticipated that people would get angry. That they would feel cheated, tricked.
Instead something different had happened.
People had listened to Cody’s message. They had dropped their knives to the ground and simply started hugging the person standing immediately next to them.
And then they had walked home.
All of them.
Content.
Satisfied.
Knowing that, even though they didn’t belong to a religion that had the monopoly on truth, they weren’t alone.
They belonged to something much more important than a religion.
Something called humanity.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dear reader,
Thank you so much for taking the time and effort to read
Day 50
.
I hope you have enjoyed reading the book as much as I enjoyed writing it.
The fact that you must now have read both
49 Days
and
Day 50
is already more than I could have ever asked for. But I have no shame, so here it goes: Most people base their decision to buy and read books on personal recommendations. I don’t have a big marketing budget.
It is in fact close to zero.
Nada.
Instead of spending my money on advertising, I spend it funding my mini-retirement/writing project. So far this mini-retirement has resulted in five self-published works. I would love for it to result in even more. So if you liked what you have just read, and have a few extra minutes to spare, leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads would be of great help.
Thanks in advance,
Erik
www.facebook.com/authorerikhamre