Teenager

1984 for the 21st Century. Two powerful tech trillionaires have come to a crossroads. One intends to go through with their plan to destroy the technocracy they created to run the world; the other has fallen in love with their creation and intends to betray her. But she has hidden the power to turn it all off with one person who will decide the future of the human race - unless the machine can find that person first. A literary thriller of ideas on the verge of being cancelled...EXCERPT: For the first time, Saphire was going to be late. But she didn't hurry. She considered the tone of Noah's voice on the phone and his need to be reminded of a passion they had always shared, something that out of all other things was supposed to be immune to time. It confirmed what she had impossibly started to suspect. The world's leading computer engineer and richest man was her secret husband. And he was also, possibly, her deadliest enemy now. In the gloom ahead, high on the hill over Middletown, she noted the vacant, unfinished tomb where they used to meet when they were teenagers in the Olympian days of their ferocious youth, two geniuses in a storm of love so intense and total it was almost madness. A sliver of yellow candlelight flickered in the crack of the heavy iron door as she drew near. When they were teenagers, they conspired inside this hideaway, their temple, to free mankind. Now, after decades of astonishing accomplishments, they were on the verge of finally doing what they had promised.She hesitated as she touched the edge of the door before pulling it open on screeching hinges. Noah Rake sat cross-legged before her on the slab inside the crypt, looking down. His long silver hair and short-cropped beard were yellowed in the candle's glow. His slender six-foot six-inch frame was folded, like a spider. He spied her with gleaming blue eyes tipped by flickering points of candlelight. Under his open black coat, he wore a navy T-shirt, gray jeans, blue tennis shoes, like a teenager. In his right hand, gloved in deerskin, he swung a watch by a gold chain. "Late," he observed. He didn't rise to greet her. "Come on. Jump up." She climbed onto the slab, dreading his kiss, which was too practiced, too brief. "This is it," he smiled, blandly. "The last time before the end. By this time next year, we can finally pull the trigger and leave all this behind. Did you bring it?" He continued to ignore her hesitation. She realized he had expected it, planned on it. He extended his hand like a lie. Her vision dimmed as her rage welled. "Why weren't Choices put in the shipments for Asia?" It was a statement more than a question - a declaration. Of war? His face froze and cracked a thin smile as he tilted his head in wry but false surprise. "Straight to the point." "Why, Noah? I'm not shipping those things without them. I won't." The lanky mogul looked at his gold watch, hanging perfectly still on its fob. "If there is no choice," he said, philosophically, looking from the watch's implacable face to hers: "FreeWill is obsolete." He said it simply. Delicately. Politely. Sympathetically, even. It was an impossible chord of contempt and condescension. She could barely catch her breath now. Saphire stared at him as fear strangled a riotous fury inside her throat. "Who are you now?" A tear punctuated this last appeal.