Introduction to Ghost Detectives - Virus
Those of you who have read Ghost Detectives -- Discovery, my first submission, will know the locations and the relationship between James, Carolyn and her brother John, and why I have placed it in the Loving Wives section. These are various sex scenes but I've blended them into the plot and have not let them overwhelm the story.
The same main characters in the Ghost Detectives are in this story with their same strengths and weaknesses. There are quite a few new locations and new characters but with some locations staying the same. To get the most out of the story I would recommend you read the first story, Discovery, though it is not essential as this story can stand alone.
My main focus has been on character development and the different relationships and interactions of the main players and how fragile life can be against those who wish to destroy our free democratic way of life.
With a duality of characters with similar characteristics, the plot can appear complex but I assure you, when the gist of duality is accepted, the rest is easy to follow.
This story touches on what we need to guard against and shows the fragility of life and how easy it can be destroyed. I've undertaken a lot of research into the story and it's very topical in today's world. If you enjoy reading it only half as much as I've enjoyed writing it, I'll feel vindicated.
The story will be laid out in different chapters over the next several weeks. Here are the first four chapters.
Chapter One
James and Carolyn, together with their two children, were at the breakfast table. It had been a hectic few weeks, always the same when the children were home from boarding school. Today they had arranged a family day. The morning was to be spent at the museum as Keith, their older child, wanted to look at the Mayan exhibition for an essay he was to hand in when he returned to school. Later, they were to visit an art exhibition. Simone, over the last year, had taken a keen interest in water colours and spent most of her spare time painting landscapes. James had booked lunch at a top-class restaurant and later they would spend the afternoon at the theatre watching a play about a man who had lost his memory which reminded James of how they destroyed the minds of Frank and Sandra in both dimensions by injecting them with a concoction of drugs. Now both were housed in mental institutions little more than mindless zombies.
James and Carolyn's doubles in the other dimension had been investigated but when certain material came to light, which James fed into the system, the inquiry against them was dropped. In the other dimension, Courtney, Debra and Jennie resumed their lives unscathed, owing James a great debt for closing the Sandra and Frank case.
In this dimension, the three women were clueless and that was the way he wanted things to stay. Frank's illicit operation had been destroyed. His wealth first impounded and later confiscated as illegal gains. Sandra remained a mystery to the authorities; they didn't know who she was and that suited everyone and was best left well alone.
James had been back to the other dimension but only to check on his flat and be seen occasionally, deliberately avoiding reading the papers or surfing the internet. After all that had happened, he just wanted to rest, beginning to see his gift of knowing the future more a curse than a benefit and remembered the anguish and hurt he felt knowing his father in law would die and there was nothing he could do about it. To know the future was a great responsibility, and held great power, knowing and not be able to prevent something bad from happening was torture. No matter what he did in his dimension, it would have to mirror what had already happened in the other, the timeline of history was irrevocably written, a distorted mirror, granted, like those seen at a funfair.
They had a comfortable lifestyle. He, a renowned psychologist, his wife a qualified doctor and now a professional profiler working for the government. John, his brother in law, a professor of astrophysics. John and Carolyn were trained in the art of combat having both worked covertly for the government in the past. Together the three were known colloquially as the ghost detectives, a title they had inherited from the media, but for the last few months they'd been quiet and had issued no warnings of what would happen in their world, and the authorities, despite spending vast sums of money looking for them, had come up blank. If the authorities only knew how near they had been to exposure a few months back James reminisced, they'd all be in prison or dead and it frightened them into silence.
Carolyn was head of the taskforce empowered with finding who the ghost detectives were and to bring them to justice, which gave them inside knowledge of what the authorities knew, which wasn't much. They did make one almost fatal mistake when they sent a letter using words cut from local papers and magazines and from that the authorities ascertained the area where they suspected they lived and a house less than a mile away was raided which was a call too close for comfort. This made them hyper-vigilant, and James spent a vast sum of money on spy and detection equipment for their home even building a secret room in the basement where much of their equipment was kept.
A recent opinion poll showed that seventy-five percent of the population were for them and believed they were a force for good while others saw them as evil trying to manipulate the future; a proportion believed they were aliens out to control humankind, but no matter who believed whom or what, when a warning was given with the prefix CBGD299299 the world took the warning seriously and acted upon the information. That evening John arrived and, after the children were in bed, the three sat in the library talking and drinking whiskey.
"I've been meaning to ask you, has everything settled down in the other dimension?"
"Not sure, I've been back there several times but other than the first time I've kept off reading the papers. As for the situation around the Frank Ellis case, that is resolved, we were lucky, now I want to forget about it."
"The Ellis case is old news here; the only loose end is Courtney; she's still anxious about her brother's suicide but is starting to quieten down, so I think we can safely say the Ellis saga is over, but as far as our work is concerned, the Commissioners' Office is not letting up their search for us, in fact, they have added another four profilers to my team."
John took a sip of his whiskey. "I would have thought things would start to ramp the other way. We have given out no further warning for months so why the increased activity in looking for us?"
"This is not going away, John. The discussions are weird but there is a growing school of thought that aliens are responsible and they are following every lead no matter how trivial and are still focusing on this area but I'm not that concerned."
"Why?"
"Why what, James?"
"Not concerned about this area?"
"They know nothing other than words cut out from local papers and magazines and most of the team now believe that was just a ploy to have us focusing on the wrong area which I've encouraged. Give it a few more weeks and that line of reasoning will be dead."
"Sis, have you kept abreast of the two in the Ellis case?"
"Their brains are totally scrambled and we can forget about them."
