by Toker, Dor
Chapter 2
When he woke up from his unconscious state, darkness still surrounded Adam. The cover was removed from his head, but the skies were dark during that late hour of the night. He lay still for a few moments, trying to organize his thoughts and recreate all that he had recently undergone. When he finally lifted his head, he noticed a man crouching behind a large rock and peeking beyond it. The man ignored his presence and for a moment, Adam considered leaping to his feet and running away. But then the man turned his gaze toward him. The man’s eyes spoke of strength and determination and Adam realized at once that he had no chance of escaping. The man hurried to direct his eyes back to the place he had viewed earlier. Adam recreated the elderly visage of the stranger in his mind and said to himself that he never trusted bearded people.
“Who are you?” Adam barked at him.
“Someone who just saved you,” the elderly man answered, without even bothering to look at the boy again. Adam was confused. Were there two different kidnappers? And if this man had kidnapped him from his kidnappers, does that mean he was for him, or against him? What in hell could anyone have against him? He’d realized some time ago that he meant nothing to everyone around him. He was not depressed by that fact and mostly did not suffer from low self-esteem, perhaps only occasionally, but he could not imagine any reason that would cause someone to want to kidnap him. And Naomi… where was Naomi?
“Let me go,” called Adam who was lying on the damp earth, his head leaning on a large backpack.
“Shh…” the man shushed him, and after a moment added, “they’re still around.”
“Who?” the boy asked, but the stranger didn’t answer. He continued to examine the area close to their hiding place. Heavily, not entirely trusting his muscles, Adam rose to his feet and approached the stranger. His hands were bound, his chest was aching and his head was brimming with questions.
“Keep your head down,” whispered the man and Adam immediately lowered himself. He turned his eyes toward the place the stranger was looking with concentration and saw the lights of two hovercrafts (Highfly 7 ©), scanning the ground below them back and forth.
“Where’s Naomi?” whispered the boy, but the man did not bother to answer. The hovercrafts continued to cut the darkness with their lights for a few more moments until they turned and disappeared into the darkness of the night. The man waited until the sound of their engines could no longer be heard, and then he relaxed his muscles and sat beside Adam.
“What do you want from me?” the boy asked.
“At the moment, the important question is what do they want from you?” asked the man. Adam examined him carefully. From up close his captor appeared to be about fifty, tall, lean and bearded. Actually, he could be any age because the routine anti-aging treatments (Your Age©), became available for all more than a century ago and have caused the age factor to disappear from human culture. Therefore, Adam assumed that the man was much older than he appeared to be, and his exhausted and penetrating eyes strengthened this evaluation. The stranger breathed heavily, sweat was pouring down his face and Adam assumed that he was tired or sick. Adam could not fathom how the stranger had managed to overcome his captors by himself.
“Where’s Naomi?” he asked again.
“I don’t know,” the stranger answered and returned to look at Adam. The boy felt that his jailor’s gaze dismembered him into little pieces. His eyes looked as if they had seen it all and had known no less. Now the stranger did not seem weak or old anymore. “You’re the one that’s important,” said the man and Adam felt confused. ‘I’m important? Why? For whom?’
“She’s important to me,” he said hesitantly, before realizing it was the truth. She is important to him!
“She does not appear in your probability,” the man answered, “you are the first priority.”
“Probability?” asked Adam, confused, “what probability?” but the stranger didn’t answer. He stood up, pulled Adam and raised him to his feet.
“Come on,” he instructed, “we need to get to our destination before sunrise,” and he began to march away.
“No,” said Adam, and stubbornly planted his feet in the ground, “I’m not going anywhere before you explain everything to me.” The disinterest with which the man had waved off his concern for Naomi angered Adam and he was determined to resist him. The man quickly turned around to approach Adam. He was short-tempered and it appeared he did not have time for Adam’s adolescent games. “You can either come on foot and of your own free will, which is going to be quick and brief, or you can refuse and make things heavy and awkward. I’ll have to carry you and I really prefer not to.”
“Where are you taking me?” asked Adam.
“Over there,” the man pointed westward.
“Back to the city?” the boy was surprised, “they’ll be able to find me there easily, whoever they are.”
“We’re not going back to the city,” answered the man and as if to offer further explanation, he added, “it’s still not in your probability.” He did not wait for Adam and began to stride between the rocks strewn all over the area, evidence of the great mountain blast that had taken place during the unforgettable events at the beginning of the century. Adam hesitated for a moment, then turned and followed the stranger.
“Tell me anyway,” the boy said when he’d caught up with the stranger, “where are we going?”
The man did not hurry to answer. They circled the hill in front of them to the right, then, only after the deserted ghostly valley, separating the city and the transit station leading beyond the reservation and the trans-European hover-train complex (Eutrain ©) was revealed to them, did the stranger stop and say, “we have a ride to catch.” Beyond the transparent wall of the dome, in the dim light of dawn, the train station was revealed to Adam’s eyes. Beyond it, he saw the huge water pipe that belonged to ‘Central Water Industries’ (CWAT Industries ©), the company importing the reservation’s water. Without being told anything, Adam realized the man was directing them toward the pipe and not toward the official transit terminal that was protected from intruders seven days a week and guarded by the reservation police twenty-four hours a day. He had no idea how the man would manage to pass them both beyond the dome wall without being detected by the high electronic fence. They stood only a few hundred feet from the station, partly concealed by a group of low pine trees.
Adam was agitated by the thought of leaving the reservation. The chance of undergoing such an adventure easily overcame his apprehension of the man he had considered to be one of his kidnappers up until a few minutes ago. But his concern for Naomi and the fear something bad might have happened to her overcame him once more and he called, “I’m not leaving without Naomi.”
The elderly man spoke quietly and Adam could sense the intensity of the threat concealed in his words. “You can’t choose,” he announced to the boy, “your only chance of surviving lies with me. Now, before it is too late,” then he added in a slightly softer tone, “Chances are, they released her after I took you away from them.” But Adam knew it wasn’t true. He felt the man was lying to him, at least about Naomi. She was in great danger and there was no one to help her.
“What do they want from me?” he asked and immediately added, “What do you want from me?”
“You’re the last base,” said the man without offering an explanation to his vague words. “Come on,” he urged Adam, “our window of opportunity is about to close,” and when Adam persisted in his refusal, the stranger took out a drill-like instrument (Drill ©) and attached it to the boy’s neck.
“What are you doing?” Adam recoiled with fear. The man did not reply and pressed a black button on the side of the instrument. Adam immediately collapsed. Black-brown spots appeared and quickly spread on his skin, covering him with a thin, sealed elastic layer. The man easily hauled the boy onto his shoulder and carried him as if he was a parcel toward the electronic fence (Fence ©). An additional press of a button, with the instru
ment directed at the fence, created an opening in the energy lines stretched between the power poles. The man and his human cargo passed through. Once they arrived in the vicinity of the train complex, the kidnapper inserted the drill into a hole in a small control box located on the bubble’s wall. An invisible door was torn into the edge of the dome and the man, along with his booty, passed through. The door hermetically closed behind them and became invisible once more. The man motioned with his hand and a small, quick upper hovercraft (Highfly 7 ©) lifted from the ground. He hurled Adam into the hovercraft and hurried to get inside as well. The aircraft rotated, tilted its nose upward and quickly took up to the sky, whose color gradually whitened to the light of a rising summer sun.
Chapter 3
In the year two thousand and seventy-two AD, a scientist named Dr. Lawrence published a new theory that merged all the known great doctrines and scientific knowledge into a single formula, a single blueprint with which the universe and the development of mankind could be understood. He called it ‘The Mendelssohnian Theory’, and that is the way it is referred to since.
Dr. John Reuel Lawrence was the great-great-grandson of Ernest Lawrence, the inventor of the particle accelerator, the cyclotron, and the first one to successfully conduct nuclear fission. Following a public scandal in which young Lawrence was quite literally exposed, he was abandoned by all his lovers and loved ones and dismissed from his work. He returned to his parents’ house, where he was cared for by his mother who nurtured him until he was able to recuperate.
Mrs. Lawrence was a small and vigorous woman who loved the Christian Son of God almost as much as she loved her only son and tried to bridge these two loves of hers any way she could. She placed a collection of religious magazines and newspapers next to her son’s bed, in the hope that he would read them and ‘see the light’, get closer to God and recuperate. Lawrence, occupied with his personal problems, did not demonstrate any desire to discuss the existence of God with his mother and did not even glance at the magazines. But after a few days of idly lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, when boredom threatened to drown his mind, the doctor randomly drew one of the church leaflets from the high stack next to his bed and flipped through its pages. Several days later, Lawrence finished reading all the leaflets and religious magazines.
When Lawrence finally rose from his bed and went out of the small room, it appeared to his mother that a tiny spark of light had returned to his eyes. She was convinced that the leaflets she had left beside his bed played a crucial part in his quick recovery and believed that in a short time her son would overcome his troubles, get back to himself and find his belief in God. And indeed, in the following days, Lawrence began to leave his mother’s apartment and wander the streets of New York, his hometown.
Lawrence did not want to insult his mother, who did her best to make his time more pleasant, therefore, he did not reveal to her the real reason he had left the apartment was boredom. The doctor had always deeply hated idleness. He’d read his mother’s magazines because he was tired of staring at the ceiling of the room. Later on, he had risen from his bed and began to wander the big city because he’d finished reading all the magazines.
During his extended bouts of wandering, he didn’t know what he was seeking, certainly not redemption or forgiveness of the type his mother yearned for, but he enjoyed searching for literary treasures on the shelves of ancient bookstores in which printed volumes could still be found. The doctor loved the sensation that accompanied leafing through the pages of printed books.
Later on, the doctor rented a small flat on the border of Brooklyn and Queens. He was lonely, but loved his loneliness, nurtured it, accepted it and the loneliness, so he thought, peacefully lived with him as well. Other than his neighbor’s ginger colored cat, which habitually entered with pomposity through the always open window above the kitchen sink, he wasn’t bothered by men nor by animals.
Because of his contract, he continued to receive his salary from the university, had no need to worry about his livelihood and was free to continue and conduct his travels in the city, in which he enriched his bookshelves with various treasures. He might have continued with his wanderings and shopping sprees forever, but during one of his visits to the shop of the ancient Jew, Pesach Goldstein, he accidentally encountered a thin volume, printed more than fifty before, called ‘Theories about Creation’ by M. Mendelssohn. As soon as he’d begun to read the first page, Lawrence felt he was holding a ticking time bomb. The tale Mendelssohn had told (he was unfamiliar with the man and his work) was written as a science fiction story, even though it had probably been first written and printed almost three hundred years earlier. From the opening sentence, it was clear to Lawrence it contained much more than the science fiction genre that his time had to offer.
Mendelssohn’s short book combined well with the ideas that had lately risen in the scientist’s mind and had given them a name and a number, as he would later say. He bargained with the old seller and purchased the book for a few cents. Right before he exited the shop, his eyes encountered the battered cardboard box of a jigsaw puzzle bearing the image of a realistic painting of the Earth. The doctor, who was a sworn fan of jigsaw puzzles, took it out of the display window. He purchased the fifteen hundred part jigsaw puzzle from the hunched Jew for half the price of the book. The seller did not even attempt to bargain with him, perhaps because he knew no one but this odd scientist would purchase such archaic artifacts.
When he had reached his apartment, Lawrence opened the book first and read it with fervor. When he had finished reading, he put down the book and turned to the jigsaw puzzle box. He was thrilled and enthusiastic about what he’d read and while constructing the puzzle, piecing together North America, then continuing to the southern part of the continent, an idea formed in his head that connected the book he had just finished reading and the puzzle he was busy putting together. He immediately left the jigsaw puzzle and sat at his writing desk in his study. On a battered writing pad, Lawrence began to scribble bits and pieces of his ideas and conclusions until he fell asleep on his own writings. When he woke up, several hours later, his muscles ached because of the uncomfortable position in which he’d slept, but his heart welled with joy. He felt an elation he had not experienced for a decade, since he’d developed his last invention, and he knew, in the same way a sailor knows his ship is close to its home port, that he was on the verge of a new discovery. To the casual onlooker, his notes would have probably appeared to be meaningless, but as he returned to look at them, a wide smile stretched across his face. He took out a new notebook from the writing desk drawer and wrote on its cover with bold letters ‘The Mendelssohnian Theory’. Later, he opened the notebook and began to write in an orderly and rounded calligraphy.
The doctor had worked a long time on his theory before he dared to publish it. He knew that it would raise a lot of objections among the scientific community of which he was a part, because it had a theological aspect, and he also knew that the church would be wrathful of the heresy it contained, but Lawrence did not relent. He was convinced the theory should be published and related to and, therefore, insisted on bringing it to the public’s knowledge.
And indeed, and even to a greater extent than the doctor had anticipated, right after its publication, the theory shocked the scientific world, mainly because it was seemingly simple, yet easily proven and backed up by easy to check and analyze observations. Dr. Lawrence had proven, with the aid of precise flow charts, how the placing of a cornerstone to an Aztec pyramid in southern Mexico by an almost forgotten young slave, had led, stage by stage, to the discovery of electricity almost two hundred years later, and later on to the invention of the electric bulb by Edison.
In his theory, Lawrence had mapped the history of the Earth as a jigsaw pattern, in which the shifting of each of its parts in a correct way causes a chain reaction, until a development and a human breakthrough are achieved.
For some reason, and in contrast to his own ex
perience, the Doctor felt that the world was ready to receive and appreciate his great research. The fact that he had based large parts of it on a booklet he’d purchased at a used bookstore did not bother him in the least. He did not know how right and how wrong he was.
In retrospect, it turned out that the doctor’s main contribution to the establishment of the Mendelssohnian theory had been in finding a measurable way to consider the theory and to prove it with scientific methods, and mainly in his joining together historical, geographical, theocratic and Social analysis. To be fair, one has to admit Lawrence had used a great deal of conspiracy newspapers and cheap science fiction books, in addition to the great databases he could access in the worldwide-web. Scientists and researchers who examined and upgraded the Mendelssohnian theory have reached similar results to those of the doctor and have established and verified Dr. L’s research. The findings were less in agreement about the second part of his research that dealt with the way in which the Earth was formed. Some say that this more problematic part had prevented the members of the Nobel Prize committee to award Lawrence with the coveted prize.
In that part of his research, Lawrence had developed a theory that offered a kind of code for the understanding of processes in the world, like a map that could help one with orientation inside a maze. It defined the relation between various events with the aid of probability chains. According to Lawrence, the Earth was planned and created by intelligent creatures, which Lawrence had called “the creators” and therefore had established their name for all eternity, or at least the eternity of the human race. Dr. Lawrence claimed creators originated from a planet created by one of the secondary blasts following the first known Big Bang, close to the center of the universe, which means close to the birthplace of the star-strewn space.