Read Out Through the Attic for Free Online

never told this to anyone other than Emily, but God gave me everything … all of it. The blueprints always came from God.”
    “You’re joking,” she said with polite disbelief.
    “Not at all.” He smiled gently. “There are still people who believe in God, you know. Not many, but a few.”
    “Whatever you say, Stiggs,” Adrienne said kindly. She was as disinterested in people’s personal beliefs as she was in anything else that wasn’t profitable. It just had no meaning to her.
    Just then Emily walked up and held out a black, cylindrical aerosol bottle twelve inches long and three inches in diameter.
    “Thank you, Emily.” Mathew stood up, took the bottle, and walked towards the edge of the patio. “As I said, God gave it to me, and then he gave me the name.” A strange calm overtook Mathew that seemed to unsettle Adrienne.
    “Brainstorm,” Mathew whispered, almost praying the word under his breath. “Emily, please lower the force field.”
    “It is done,” Emily said as she complied.
    The crowded hiss of the night and a stink of sour air splashed against them. Mathew raised the bottle into the air and pressed the activator. A strong misty cloud shot into the air, pouring out for long seconds and carried off on the strong currents propelled by the endless air traffic moving in all directions.
    It smelled of gardenias. That had been his one small addition to the chain.
    “Raise the field, Emily.”
    “It is done,” she confirmed.
    “Yes. It is,” he added with a severe finality
    “What was it?” Adrienne asked, confused.
    Mathew turned and faced Adrienne with a ghostly, stoic look upon his face.
    “Brainstorm.”
    “What?” You wasted it all?”
    “On the contrary. It will get carried in the air-cars, carried to the river traffic, carried to the space port and to Omikami. It will get carried all across the world. Quickly. And technicians in every Yudius lab on Earth and all four colonies are doing what I just did.”
    A terrible sense of dread gripped Adrienne.
    Panic filled her voice. “What did you just do, Mathew?”
    “Brainstorm is a bacterium. It feeds off of the pollutants in the air, and it replicates in minutes. That’s what I told the lab-techs … that they were helping to clean the air.”
    “It’s going to clean the air?” Adrienne seemed as if she felt a bit better. Matthew could see the wheels turning in her head—there might not be money to be made, seeing as he just released it, but there was immense marketing potential in the notion of clean air. Cleaned by Stiggs. Cleaned by Yudius. He’d known her a long time and knew she was already working out the business and marketing angles.
    “Yes,” he said simply. “But that’s just a life-process of the organism. That’s not its purpose . Everything has a purpose, don’t you think, Adrienne?”
    She cocked her head at him. “What’s its purpose, Mathew?” she asked, nervous once again.
    “It only affects humans, and when it interacts with human tissue it focuses its attention on the neurons of the brain. In a matter of days human neurons become hyper-energized while nerve impulses are deadened. A human, once exposed, will slip into a coma and dream like never before.” He paused and looked back at Adrienne, staring deeply into her eyes. “Then the human will die,” he added with utter finality.
    “But... but—” she sputtered. Stark terror filled her features. He could see that she was on the brink of insanity.
    “Perhaps everyone will dream of God, as I do. They’ll dream for a few days, maybe even weeks. They simply won’t wake up. It’s remarkably gentle when you think about it.”
    “They’ll stop it!” Adrienne screamed as she reached for her commlink. She hit the contact button to reach the authorities, but nothing happened.
    Matthew was perfectly calm. “There are thirty billion people on earth crammed together like matches in a box. I’ve merely dropped a lit one in amongst them. It is