The Contraption, page 1

This is something of a sequel to A Turn of the Dial [PAN2014] and contains ideas that have been rattling around in my head for a while now. I figured current events give enough to flesh out the outline.

Here goes:

The people gathered around the conference table eyed each other warily; weighing motives, attempting to discern alliances, measuring levels of conflict, in short trying to guess better than everyone else.

The election season had been ongoing for some time now and things were dangerously close to getting out of hand.

The groomed one had been working closely with one of the prime families for some time now, but had made some crippling mistakes. In her fumbling, the rope she had been given was tied into a noose that had been deftly wrapped around her neck by the few staggering against the inertia of power which had been so carefully husbanded for millennia. The only problem was, if she was let hang the entire edifice could come crashing down due to how widespread the Foundation's tentacles had reached.

The readouts from the console had been examined by the most gifted and talented of analysts. Projections had been run for numerous scenarios.

One things was certain. The focus had had to stay on the meanings of words and bind up the legal process until after she was installed in the apparent position of power. They were too far gone with their planning to let anything else happen.

The (one being portrayed as a ) clown who occupied the opposite seat in the presidential run had been making noise for decades now about the practices that had become common place; necessarily dirtying himself in the process of acquiring his wealth, though not to a satisfactorily enough degree to allow him to be controlled as easily as the groomed one.

He might present a problem, and that was agreed. The other noisemaker had served his purpose, and allowed the groomed one to gather enough 'grassroots' support from those who follow their team no matter who is their leader, flaws and all, because loyalty to the team was paramount; lest the other 'side' would win. This idea was fostered upon everyone and made for efficient use of the motivations behind sports fanaticism as applied to the political arena. Controlling how the rhetoric was delivered was key.

"What do you have to say for yourself," was the question demanded of the groomed one.

Her reply carried the same level of disdain she used anytime her motives or actions were questioned, "we need to move on. It's in the past and what's done is done."

A palpable level of incredulity permeated the air of the room.

"Don't talk to us like we're one of the lessers, those tricks don't work on us, we invented them."

A brief flicker of uncertainty crossed the face of the groomed one before she replied, "look, those idiots are too happy drinking their beer, arguing over football, and ogling the Kardasians to give much attention to the mess the Foundation finds itself in. I mean, most of them think the real problem is the emails and that Fukushima has been fixed..."

She let that reminder dangle in the air a while before she continued.

"We need to continue our efforts to find the Contraption."

Silence settled on the room immediately upon the utterance of that word.

No one thing in history had as much importance on the world as the Contraption. It's location had been variously ascribed to coincide with Atlantis, Lemuria, Dwarka, Sumer, Babylon and Z to name only a few. The general consensus was that it was located somewhere in the deserts of Africa, or maybe even underneath the Antarctic ice.

The Nazis had the Contraption as their main goal in all the searching they did of the globe, though it is unsure how they learned of it. None of the lessers even suspected such a device could exist.

The nearest as could be determined, the Contraption altered reality on such a fundamental level as to have to be magic. Or technology so advanced that it made no difference.

Use of the Contraption in the past changed such things as how the very binding forces of matter were arranged. With some configuration psionics became available to everyone; telepathy, telekinesis, esp, OBEs. When a different modification was made, the ability to perform spells replaced the same functions current society executed with technology.

In short, the Contraption was not physical proof of a multiverse, or parallel dimensions, it granted the ability to traverse those barriers. In those different 'realities' our world was considered fiction and what we take for granted beyond was the comprehension of those living "on the other side of the Veil between worlds."

"Excuse me, I hate to interrupt such an important meeting, but I thought you all should know that we are being observed..."

"What do you mean, I thought we had taken precautions against this the last time it happened when the Ebola news was dominant?"

"We did, but it seems as though he somehow overcame them, or he was let past the barriers by someone here..."

"It's ok, this one's been targeted for a long time. We've had our eyes on him since he was in elementary school. As you know we've been conducting these programs for thousands of years and so these individuals occasionally crop up with naturally exceptional abilities and sometimes they even further develop them on their own. These have historically been found to be useful even though they were inherently uncontrollable. Measures have long been since put in place such that if they every got too close to the truth, then they would systematically be destroyed but it would be made to look like their own volition. "

We make sure these individual targets receive special attention and nudge them into things the rest of society finds abhorrent so that if the need arises, all we have to do is bring their own faults back upon them and then anything they say is forever tainted afterward.

Our technology allows us a measure of control over the inhabitants of this planet considering we had a hand in the creation of their DNA, we stripped out the third rung of bases and left them with a double helix rather than the triple helix our chromosomes formed from. And that makes them much weaker than us on all fronts.

And that's part of the beauty of our control schema."

"So there's nothing to worry about?"

"No, if he gets too close with his digging, we have just the thing for him..."