The White Book

by George Shadow

  “We’re here,” Khan announced. “Welcome to Rubbish Mountain or what is officially known as the Ghazipur Landfill.”

  Kimberley could only see a dirt road wounding up a man-made mountain of refuse approximately 70 meters high. Stray dogs, rats, scavenging birds of prey and thousands of human waste-pickers combed through this putrid landmark as dump trucks maneuvered its simple network of dirt roads. “Wow,” she exclaimed.

  “See the red lights at the top?” Khan pointed out as they went round the dump site. “They warn aircraft.”

  “Place was opened in 1894, reached capacity in 2002 and has been growing ever since,” Diya said. “Our cities generate 180 million tons of waste each year, so this rapid growth will continue.”

  “The continuous dumping has severely polluted the air and ground water around here,” Rudra contributed. “Local residents know that living here is extremely dangerous.”

  “Fires that can last for days regularly break out here due to methane gas coming from the dump,” Avi took up. “People living nearby say the air is so toxic they can hardly breathe and many have complained of acute respiratory and stomach problems.”

  “Gross,” Kimberley exclaimed. “What’s your government doing about all these issues?”

  Ikshita chuckled. “Nothing?”

  “They think it’s all due to plastics,” Diya said. “I think it has to do with more than that.”

  Ikshita glared at the last speaker. Kimberley noticed.

  “Our air pollution levels have surpassed emergency levels, Kim, and although many other activities contribute to this, we just need to recycle more waste products,” Khan said as they went round another twisting bend. “Concentration of poisonous particulates in the air is now 20 times higher than the US recommended level.”

  “How do you live here?” Kimberley wondered.

  “Yeah, about that,” Khan began. He stopped before a door-like construction hugging the dump wall at the base of the humongous landfill and pressed a button on his person. Gears swiftly engaged somewhere inside the rubbish mountain and a slow whine came from the door before him. The wooden barriers disappeared into the sides of the frame lapping the refuse dump. This revealed metal doors that also slid open, cool air blasting out immediately from the gaping void leading into the Rubbish Mountain.

  “Cool,” Kimberley said. “So cool.”

  “We built a sophisticated lab and buried it under Ghazipur,” Ikshita said excitedly. “The design came from yours truly.”

  “Ikshita is our technical geek, while Diya is our science brain,” Khan explained as they all trooped into the waiting elevator inside the cool corridor.

  Lights came on and Kimberley noticed ankh and cross symbols painted into the wall design all over the place, including the elevator’s interior.

  The decent lasted approximately 20 seconds.

  The elevator doors opened to reveal more ankh and cross symbols in a hall brimming with sophisticated equipment and super computers.

  “Wow,” Kimberley repeated. “Do you guys really need all this?”

  “We will see when we find out more from you,” Diya replied.

  “I’ve been doing well without scientific computations,” Kimberley pointed out. “Well, with my friends, that is.”

  “We’ll find out more after your treatment and refreshment,” Khan told her, pointing to a door.

  “Wait, treatment?” Kimberley asked him.

  “We need to remove the virus from your body, first,” Raghav explained, laying his human burden on the floor. He turned to Khan.

  “Put him in the freezer,” his leader told him. “He won’t disturb us at all if he freezes over.”

  Avi assisted the tired Raghav to carry Carl Bain’s body into another room.

  “I have two questions,” Kimberley began. “First, where’s the freezer? And…and how will the virus be removed from my body? I hope it won’t be painful.”

  “We have a cold room we call the Freezer,” Ikshita said. “And the…”

  “The virus will be removed through devirulation,” Diya interrupted, ignoring Ikshita’s visible annoyance. “You know it’s painless, right?”

  “I guess so,” Kimberley said, not sure of her answer. She should know, but she couldn’t trust her alternate memory’s knowledge of the process. Unless something sparked off an update… “What’s today’s date?”

  “X01.04.05,” Avi said from a computer console. “Why do you ask?”

  “Is that meant to be a joke?” Kimberley wondered. “I mean, that’s not a date format, right?”

  “Interesting,” Diya observed. “You seem to be forgetting bits of your present life as a result of your transmigration.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “Let’s nourish and clean your system first, Miss Kim, then we can continue,” Khan said. “Obviously, there’s so much you can teach us, and learn from us.”

  Rudra took Kimberley’s hands. “Come Kim; let me take you to your room.”

  “Shouldn’t you be afraid of catching the virus from me?” Kimberley asked him and he laughed.

  “This place sterilizes itself, Kim,” Ikshita explained. “The decontamination process started as soon as we stepped into the elevator above.”

  “Ikshita and I worked on that. The system rids any surface, including your skin’s, of the virus,” Diya revealed with pride and Kimberley rolled her eyes. Good to know.

  She followed Rudra into a white room with a single bed. “Now what?”

  “You have to take a bath first,” Rudra told her. “Then you lie on the bed and wait for my return. Throw all your clothes into that washing machine. New clothes are in the wardrobe.”

  “Okay,” Kimberley said. Rudra left and she undressed, making sure to remove Carl Bain’s cube from her right pants pocket before throwing all her clothes into the washing machine. The white bathroom had no shower, but when she stepped in warm water soaked her from its walls as soon as she closed its door behind her. The shower stopped when she picked up the soap to lather herself and started again when she dropped the soap. “Okay, not bad,” she commended. “Nice one, Ikshita.” Of course, she remembered that Ikshita was the technology geek. The Indian resembled someone the Portwood officer had met before, but she still couldn’t place the woman’s face.

  But then she just couldn’t understand this group. How could these ‘Bookmakers’ be working to retrieve the two books with only scientific computations? Surely, the history of the codices should have told them that mysterious manifestations were involved here, not science. Unless science could finally explain how a time machine worked.

  Kimberley finished in the bathroom and wrapped herself with a white towel. She stepped into the room and took out a blue T-shirt and gray jeans from the wardrobe. Now dressed, she picked up Carl Bain’s package from the bed and studied it. Nothing new to see. No opening. Just a small solid cube.

  Kimberley put the small item in her jeans pocket and lay on the bed to wait for Rudra’s return.

  “Done,” he said at her door, smiling.

  “What?”

  “Done,” the Indian repeated, entering the room. “You’ve been officially devirulated.”

  “H-How?”

  “Once you lie on the bed, your body is scanned for the Mars-Cov-6 virus and any trace destroyed. The bed is the Devirulator.”

  “Where you watching me all this time?”

  “Of course, not,” Rudra said. “The process informs me when it’s finished with a beep on my wrist.” He brandished a wrist band on his right wrist.

  Kimberley got up. “So, what are we waiting for? I’m ready for the interview, then.”

  “Right. This way, please.”

  Rudra walked ahead and Kimberley followed him. Back to the hall with all its consoles and gizmos. All her rescuers were waiting here.

  “Okay,” Diya said, getting up from her seat. “First thing we do is get answers to some questions.”

  “I have some questions
for you guys first,” Kimberley began.

  “No problem,” Khan said. “Let’s hear them.”

  “How do I trust you guys are the real deal?” Kimberley asked him. “How do I know that you guys really want to help your people?”

  “Remember I told you I’m a Bookmaker,” Khan said. “You have nothing to fear. If you would like to know our Jewish names as an assurance of our devotion to Israel, no problem.”

  “Wrong answer. I trusted a Bookmaker once and he flipped on me and my friends.”

  “You’re not traveling alone?” Avi asked the Portwood sergeant.

  “Thought I said that before,” Kimberley replied. “Two kids have been traveling with me. A boy from my town and a girl who says she is the daughter of a Bookmaker at the Mine. She started all this.”

  “Rachel,” Khan said.

  “Yeah, you would know her,” Kimberley noted.

  “She’s the daughter of Jehoash, one of our leaders at the time. Her father gave her the white book before he was captured or killed by the Booklords, I’m still not sure which is it.”

  “She used the book to escape capture,” Diya continued. “If she was with you, Kim, that means only one thing.”

  Kimberley nodded. “Rachel had the white book with her when the three of us were together in a chopper, before we tried to escape the Bookmaker who betrayed us and…and I got separated from the kids after Rachel used the white book to transport us out of danger. Just don’t know why I appeared here in India in the year X01 without them.”

  “Truly baffling,” Dev said. “So, the guy in the freezer was after you?”

  “Yes, right before my eyes, the Booklords contracted Carl Bain to terrorize, defeat and capture us. He is very useful whenever their powers cannot touch us.”

  “And when is that?” Ikshita asked.

  “Whenever we got infected by a disease or drew ankh and cross symbols on our bodies,” Kimberley replied. “This guy came after me now because I had the virus and his infernal masters could not touch me.”

  “Okay,” Diya said. “That means we could also get information from him if we can wake him up, right?”

  “Don’t even think of doing that,” Kimberley warned. “Only his masters can wake him up from death, and we should be happy we can’t do that.”

  Khan frowned. “And why’s that?” he asked. “We can restrain him and…voila, problem solved.”

  “If we can wake him up, that is,” Kimberley pointed out. “It’s beyond technology.” She stopped short of saying that waking up the human minion was a very dangerous thing to attempt.

  “Noted,” Avi said. “Anything yet, Diya?”

  “No,” Diya replied, her fingers gliding effortlessly over her keyboard and her eyes fixed on her monitor. “Obviously, recalculating these miscalculations will take time.”

  “Where did you get your data for the calculations to begin with?” Kimberley wondered.

  “From you, of course,” the Indian scientist replied. “Since you came in here, we’ve been collecting data about your aura and using it to recalculate where your reincarnations have been to on Earth, back 400 years.”

  “Wow,” Kimberley whispered. “Are you guys really scientists?”

  “That’s understandable,” Khan said. “You don’t believe us, but you have to know that scientists and spiritualists now see their separate fields as pursuing a single goal.”

  “Which is?”

  “Knowing the origin of the universe.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Kimberley said, “but I should be dead by now if I’d lived my life the normal way, so I’m in no position to argue with you.”

  “Yes, you are,” Dev said. “You have recent memory…”

  “I call it current memory,” Kimberley interrupted.

  “So, you must know what is happening around you now.”

  “In this current life, I’m an author, not a scientist,” Kimberley pointed out.

  Diya cleared her throat. “Okay then, as I was saying, we’ve been collecting data about your aura and using it to recalculate where…”

  “And what would those recalculations actually show you?” Kimberley wondered.

  Diya turned to Khan, who nodded. “We think our assessment will show us two things. First of all, it will show us the best point in your travels where you and your friends could have easily retrieved the black book from space and time, so that we can contact the girl, Rachel, and go back to that time with the white book.”

  “You can do that?” Kimberley asked her. “I mean, find the best point in our travels where we could have easily retrieved the book?”

  “Yes, Diya can make the system do that,” Rudra said. “She is the best in the country.”

  “Secondly, we’re also trying to use our supercomputers to find the hidden Hebrew words completing the sentence on the books’ pages,” Diya said.

  “Will that work?” Kimberley asked her.

  “If anyone could complete the hidden part of the Hebrew sentence, then the black book would reappear in Man’s world,” Ikshita said.

  “Heard that before,” Kimberley noted.

  “We want it to appear in our headquarters,” Avi aired. “That will be swell.”

  “So far, we’ve been able to narrow things down to fifty-thousand-word combinations that could complete the sentence,” Ikshita revealed.

  “Two Bookmakers told us about the hidden Hebrew words on the books,” Kimberley said. “Their Jewish names were Mariah and…”

  “And who?” Khan asked her.

  “Mr. David Hoyte.”

  “That’s not a Jewish name,” Raghav said.

  “I know, I must have forgotten his name,” Kimberley apologized, looking at Ikshita. She now knew where she had seen that face before.

  Mariah.

  Ikshita was Mariah, no doubt about that. Same mannerisms. Same voice. Same face, but a different name and personality. This particular reincarnation of her old friend always seemed bitter about something. Like she was seeking revenge for something someone did to her.

  Something she couldn’t control.

  “Kim?” Rudra repeated.

  “Huh?”

  “I was saying we would love to hear what those Bookmakers told you about the hidden Hebrew words?”

  “Well, Mariah told us she knew that the black book was still with a human being, because the Bookmakers could still see some hidden Hebrew words on the white book,” Kimberley remembered. “Mr. David Hoyte said he knew that the black book had left Earth, because the Bookmakers could not see some of the hidden Hebrew writing on the white book.”

  “Wow, look at that,” Ikshita said.

  “They both disagree on the theory that the two books could be assumed present on Earth if the Sicarii Kabbalah Masada could decipher the complete hidden Hebrew writing on either book,” Kimberley added.

  “They base their arguments on the meaning of the remaining visible Hebrew on the two books,” Diya stated.

  “Yes,” Kimberley agreed, trying to act normal despite what she now thought she knew about Ikshita. “What do you guys think about what you just heard?”

  “Since these Bookmakers only had issues with what to see on the books before either book could be assumed present or absent on Earth,” Raghav began, “I think these arguments will complicate the matter.”

  “And why is that, Raghav?” Rudra asked his twin.

  “Can’t you see? Both sides disagree on the assumption that the Hebrew sentence visible to the Sicarii Kabbalah Masada has to be complete before the black book could reappear in Man’s world, so it doesn’t matter whether the black book is here on Earth or not.”

  “Can you explain further?” Khan asked his colleague.

  “If Mariah is right, then the book will find us, and if the other Sikama is right, then we need to unveil the remaining hidden Hebrew before the book finds us,” Raghav said. “All in all, the book will eventually find us. We only need to work on Mr. David Hoyte’s theory, because Ma
riah’s theory is already acting out if it’s true.”

  “You’re saying we only need to bother ourselves with discovering the hidden Hebrew words left?” Diya asked him.

  “Exactly.”

  “Good point,” Kimberley agreed. “Since that’s the only thing left to do after Mariah told us her theory has always been the truth.”

  “So, this Mariah told you the other book will find you?” Khan asked her.

  “Been thinking of that,” Kimberley said, “though I still wonder if the book will literally appear like she said.”

  “It should if this Bookmaker you encountered is correct,” Dev said. “Remember we’re dealing with mystical books here.”

  “Yeah, another good point,” Kimberley said. Right now, she could believe anything. “Can I see the word combinations your computations have brought up?” she asked Khan, who turned to Rudra.

  Raghav’s twin brought up the combinations on a screen.

  “We would need to get to Rachel and the white book in order to see if these word combinations can help any Bookmaker or Bookbearer to discover the hidden word combination making up the Hebrew sentence on the white book,” Khan told Kimberley. “I suggest we rest and do the work tomorrow since it’s already late.”

  “And I second that,” Diya began.

  “Does it matter if we rest or not?” Kimberley asked. “If we find Rachel in another place and time, our being tired or hungry won’t be an issue. Trust me, I know.”

  “I have to pack my gear before we leave,” Dev pointed out.

  “No need for that,” Kimberley told him. “The book decides who you’ll be wherever we’re going, so, no need for any gear, you’ll also get new equipment in the deal.”

  “Not true,” Khan said. “I have travelled with equipment before. This becomes a more sophisticated gear if you’re heading into the future, so I have to pack my gear now.”

  “Same here,” Avi said.

  “Same here,” Raghav said.

  “Same here,” Diya said.

  “Same here,” Rudra said.

  “Same here,” Ikshita said.

  “Okay, I get it,” Kimberley whined. “How come I’m yet to experience changing gear during my travels?” An idea popped into her head and she turned to Ikshita. “I’ll help you pack your things, dear. I need some good gear, myself.”