by Tal Klein
“That’s not fair, Joel. You know I can’t give you access to that kind of stuff, even in the event of an emergency, without prior approval or court order.”
“So it wasn’t a personal message? Because you do have to divulge personal details in the event of a medical emergency.”
“You’re right. But her comms indicate it’s not medical.”
“So she messaged someone in IT?”
“Yes. But that’s all I can say, and even that is a stretch. Fortunately, you figured it out on your own.”
“Look, I need you to give Sylvia a message from me when she comes back online,” Joel2 said.
“Of course.”
“Tell her that I love her. Tell her I understand why she did what she did, and that no matter what happens, we’ll get through this.”
“I will. I’ll tell her. That’s a very sweet message. It’s unlike you.”
“Weird,” Joel2 uttered.
“It’s not weird. It’s nice,” said Julie.
“No. I mean, this is weird. I just got a notification that Sylvia is in The Cave of Time.” He tried pinging his wife, but got no response. “I gotta go.”
“Okay, keep me updated. If you need any help, I’m here.”
“Yeah, because you’ve been so helpful already,” he muttered sarcastically and hung up.
Is she at work? Did she go back to New York without me? he wondered while opening the app.
The Cave of Time was the first title published in the Choose Your Own Adventure book series, which debuted in 1979. In it, the player could travel to several iconic time periods via a desert cave. Like every book in the series, it was an interactive story, letting the reader decide where the narrative went next by selecting from a number of options. Roughly half the choices led to the main character’s death. There were several other endings as well, but only one “best” ending.
In the year 2103, a team of cognitive neuroscientists and gaming technology experts created a psychoanalytical game based on The Cave of Time. The virtual reality game let players engage in iconic moments of the past, in the context of a choose-your-own-adventure scenario. The choices people made could be used to determine a player’s mental state and whether they suffered from any psychological irregularities.
Eventually, the game crossed over into the mainstream. People began to modify and record their virtual travels through different eras of time. It became kind of a what-if machine that let society investigate how past choices might have played out differently. After the Last War, many attempted to play out alternate strategies and endings to the conflict in The Cave of Time. Soon it became common wisdom that the war would have taken place regardless of what was done in the years preceding it. The prevailing theory was that the clockwork leading to the war’s advent was put into action thousands of years ago. Still, people go back in time through the caves in search of answers.
Sylvia and I liked the game for more mundane reasons. Since it could be played cooperatively, it was something we could do together, even if we weren’t together. When Sylvia got promoted to her new gig at IT, the job was considered so classified that external comms were absolutely verboten. Even Julie had to be modified to ensure compliance. This, compounded with the job’s long hours, made it very tough for Sylvia and me to check on each other’s welfare, let alone make plans to hang out after work. But thanks to a bug I discovered in The Cave of Time, we could leave messages for each other in a game location called Mr. Nelson’s Print Shop. Mostly it was stuff like, Starving for pizza. Meet at Alfred’s for lunch. These messages would synchronize between our instances of the game due to a sync glitch. Since the shop would respawn once we both disconnected, there was no evidence of our transgressions. It wasn’t ideal, but it was something.
The Cave of Time start screen appeared. What is she doing? Joel2 wondered as the intro music began.
A voice boomed, “Welcome, Billy Missile!” My gamer tag. It continued, “You’ve hiked through Snake Canyon once before while visiting your uncle Howard at Red Creek Ranch, but you never noticed any cave entrance. It looks as though a recent rockslide has uncovered it.”
Joel2 stood in a scrubby, bright Arizona desert. There was indeed a cave entrance off to his right. The orange Sun was setting behind the hill. Unless you were restoring a saved game, you never had the option of skipping the intro. The game forced him to enter the cave.
Inside was total darkness. Quickly, Joel2 navigated past the various tunnels, his path lit by phosphorescent material on the cave walls. He made sure not to fall in the occasional crevasse along the way, staying to the route he had memorized: Right/Right/Down/Down/Down/Down/Left/Up. As he exited the cave, a bright light transitioned him into the next location.
It was an eighteenth-century Philadelphia print shop, the kind in which Ben Franklin had worked. This one, supposedly, had been a popular spot for distributing American revolutionary pamphlets. A huge iron printing press stood against one wall, surrounded by wooden bins of individual metal letters, barrels of ink, and big round rolls of paper. The sounds of merchants and carriages going past could be heard faintly outside.
Joel2 jogged through the print shop, past the huge press and to the writing table. The familiar feather quill was not in its ink bottle, but on the floor. Sylvia was here! He flipped through the cotton papers. On the fourth sheet was her message:
Gehinnomites kidnapped me. Somehow they disabled my comms. I’m here. The last two words had been highlighted as a link. He read the rest.
DO NOT come alone! Get in touch with Bill Taraval. Tell him they know about Honeycomb. He’ll know what to do. I love y—
Something must have caused her to log off prematurely.
Joel2 logged off as well, frantically summoning the only kind of transport he could find on the local ride boards. In our time, nobody owned cars unless they were super rich and eccentric. If you needed to get somewhere, car dealers simply leased you a car for the duration of time you needed it, and when you reached your destination, the vehicle drove away. Some people paid premiums for specific models or brand names, but it was still cheaper to get those on demand than it was to buy one outright.
His transportation sorted, Joel2 threw on some new clothes, stuffed some chits into his pockets, and jogged down the steps to the parking lot. A high-pitched hum came from the bottom of the hill as a white Carryall Club Car golf cart wound its way toward him. Upon reaching the top, it parked itself in front of Joel2.
“¡Buenos días, señor!” it boomed in a warm Spanish accent. “¿Adónde vas?”
“Take me here,” Joel2 said, copying Sylvia’s GDS location to the cart with a hand gesture. “And hurry.”
“With pleasure,” said the vehicle, smoothly switching to English. Hurry meant that the cart would actively pay the occupants of other vehicles on the road to prioritize Joel2’s route above theirs. It worked like an auction system, in which everyone could bid on getting to their destination as soon as they wanted. It could become incredibly expensive, but Joel2 no longer cared much about money. The bastards who had actually killed him had now taken his wife. The woman who’d brought him back. He wasn’t a fighter, but he would find a way to get her out alive.
He almost fell out of his seat as the cart took off faster than he’d anticipated. While tightening his grip on the roll bar, he considered trying to locate Bill Taraval on the comms. He decided it would be a bad idea, judging by their interactions thus far. Joel2 didn’t particularly trust the man, or anyone from IT, for that matter. That meant he also couldn’t trust the cops, since all of them were owned by the corporations.
Thus, my synthesized double found himself in a golf cart wending its way through the maze of tiny mountain roads in Santa Elena, barreling toward an unknown destination. Joel2 had many questions and no one to whom he could pose them. The clouds obscured the Sun, the wind picked up, and the temperature seemed to fall off” a cliff. His body began inadvertently shivering from the cold of the journey, and from fear of what
he’d find upon arrival. But there was no turning back. He had to reach Sylvia.
21 I was born in the post-war era, as I imagine a lot of folks have said throughout different periods, but I’ve seen a lot of historical streams. Enough to know that the Last War, known as Yawm al-Qiyämah in the Levant, was started by people who believed that building a Third Temple in Jerusalem would trigger the revelatory chain of the appearance of an Antichrist, a political leader of a transnational alliance who would secure a peace treaty among all nations. This Antichrist would then use the temple as a venue for proclaiming himself as God and the long-awaited Messiah, demanding worship from humanity. And so, the masterminds of the Last War sanctioned a religious sect known as the Third Temple Architects to manifest their beliefs into reality. At the cost of so many innocent lives, they saw to the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the building of the Third Temple on its site. The fools believed that resurrection would happen within their lifetime, that they could somehow accelerate or play a part in the apocalypse. In many ways their war led to today’s enduring peace, the downfall of nation-states, and the rise of corporate rule by the people for the people, and the unification of the three religions. So some good came of it, I suppose. The Third Temple Architects would never enjoy the fruits of their labor, though—they were all rewarded with public executions.
DOCTOR! DOCTOR!
I AWOKE ON THE FLOOR of the LAST Agency conference room. My previous headache was now compounded by a brand-new one. Keeping my eyes closed, I felt around on my scalp until I found a tender lump where my head had struck the floor. At least someone had thought to put a pillow underneath my skull as I slept.
I sat up, groaning as most of my muscles filed complaints with my brain. Ifrit turned to me from her spot at the table, her gentle, concerned, blue-gray eyes putting me a bit at ease. “What happened?”
She spoke softly, as if I had a hangover. It sure felt like I did. “You fainted.”
“How long was I out?”
“About eight hours. For you, it is tomorrow. Around five a.m. on Tuesday, July fourth. We gave you a little sedative to make you sleep.” She came over to help me up.
A little sedative? Feels like a people-mover landed on my head. “I don’t need sleep; I need to get my comms working and talk to my wife.”
Ifrit nodded, handing me a cup of clear liquid.
I sipped from the cup, then spit the liquid out in disgust. “Ack! That’s not water.”
“Drink, drink! You need it.”
“More drugs?” I asked. Still, I’d do anything to make the headache go away. I took another tentative sip. “This tastes like ass juice.”
“It is medicine. It will make you feel better. You are hurt and dehydrated.”
“Ugh,” I said, but painfully gulped the swill down and handed the empty cup back to her. “That shit is more metal than water, you know?”
Ifrit smiled. “Good boy. Now here, eat some bread; it will help settle your stomach.” She handed me a couple of pieces of rye bread.
My mouth already tasted like tinfoil from the nano juice. Chewing on the rye bread made me feel like I had a mixture of toxic cement in my mouth, but since my body was starting to feel better, I did as I was told.
After I’d consumed both slices of bread, Ifrit handed me a glass of water, which I chugged instantly and handed back to her.
“More please.”
She walked over to the printer to refill my glass. My head had started to clear up, making room for the millions of questions emerging from beneath the fog. “So where is everyone?” I said.
“As it is still early, Moti and Zaki are in their homes, but I have commed them. They will be here soon. Moti, he believes your story. This is very important. He is usually right about people.”
Just then the wall parted and Moti walked in, knotting a new tie around his neck. He looked very serious, but thus far he’d always looked serious. Zaki followed behind him, the antique clipboard and pencil in hand.
“Where is Sylvia?” I demanded.
Moti leisurely sat across from me and tsk-tsked. “Yoel, you have stepped into something much bigger than yourself. We are Levantine Intelligence. We are posted here to monitor International Transport.” He grabbed a cigarette and lit it. “My superiors are very interested in your situation.”
“So you’ll help me?”
“Right now we are monitoring the situation in Costa Rica.”
“You mean, the other me? So they’re okay?”
“For now. But, Yoel, you must start coming to terms that it is you who are the other him.” He took a pull off his cigarette. “Right now keeping both of you alive is a strategic advantage for us.”
“You make it sound like I’m a pawn,” I said.
“Don’t be so dramatic, Yoel. You are not a pawn.” He allowed himself a razor-thin smile. “More like a bishop. Yes. There are only two of you, moving diagonally.” He seemed pleased with his simile.
“So that’s your plan? To monitor the situation?” I asked, making sure to imply what I thought of his tactics.
“Yes,” he said, refusing to take the bait.
“Okay. You stay here and monitor. I’m gonna go and make sure my wife is safe.” I stood up to show him I was serious. Zaki took a step forward.
Moti regarded his cigarette. “That I would not recommend. The first step outside of this office will probably be your last. They will kill you, Yoel, and nobody will know or care. A small bite from an unseen nano, and you are out like a light. Then, a man you never saw coming drags you into a drone. He straps you into one of their chairs, and you disappear.”
“What about Sylvia? And him? If IT is willing to murder people to cover this up, then they’re both in danger. At least let’s call the cops.”
“They own the police, Yoel. You know this. And you are not a warrior.” He stared at me, his dark eyes betraying no emotion. “You should be a Job, not an Aher.”
“Job? Aher? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Café?” he asked me.
“No, thanks.”
He shrugged, walking over to the printer. “It is an old story. From a book called the Talmud. About a rabbi called the Aher. That wasn’t his real name. I think it was Elijah—”
“Elisha. Elisha ben Abuyah,” Ifrit interrupted him.
“Yes, thank you, Ifrit,” said Moti in a tone that I interpreted to mean Don’t fucking interrupt me again. “He was like the opposite of Job. You know Job? From the Bible?”
I nodded. “Bad things happen to good people.”
“Yes, exactly. Bad things happen to good people. So, you know, Job was this guy God just kept kicking. He killed his kids, covered him in boils … many bad things he did to him. But Job, he keeps his faith in God, and eventually God rewards him with new kids, lots of gold, all that. But Elisha, he was this very well-respected rabbi, a really big man in his community, and then bad things happen to him. So he starts to question why God would do bad things to good people. And, as if in answer, the Romans killed his mentor, this even more holy rabbi. The soldiers, they sliced his head off right in front of Elisha. Fed his tongue to a dog. The thought of that, it gave me bad dreams as a kid.”
“So you’re saying you’re God now? That I should just wait here and suffer until my wife dies and you reward me?”
He shrugged and continued his story, “Anyway, Elisha, he’s watching all of this, and he just goes crazy. He loses his religion. His mantra becomes something like, There is no justice; there is no judge. So he starts disobeying all the rules. He sleeps with a prostitute on Shabbat, tells kids to get jobs instead of study the Torah, pisses everyone off. Eventually, he even pissed off God. So the people stop calling him Elisha. They say he’s not the same person, that he’s someone else—an Aher. So that became his name. They blame him for all sorts of stuff, like getting angels kicked out of the garden of Eden, things like that.”
“I also heard that after he died, his grave caught on fire, and smoke ros
e from his grave for a hundred years,” said Ifrit. “My father told me Aher used spells from Sepher Ha-Razim. Old Levant magic, you know, Kabbalah stuff. Like the Pulsa D’nura. We are not allowed to pray that something bad should happen to another person. My father always told me God made an example out of Aher. That we break the rules at our peril.”
“Well, I didn’t break shit,” I said. “They did, with their teleportation-replication-clearing-people bullshit. I just want my life back. I want to find my wife. I don’t want to be anybody’s Aher or Job or ayah or whatever-the-fuck.”
Ifrit took the clipboard and pencil from Zaki, scribbled something down, and passed it to Moti.
“I agree with you, Yoel,” said Moti after looking over what Ifrit had written. “Which is why you should be Job. Listen, I have to go for a minute. Zaki will stay with you. Do you want something to eat? Zaki, get him something to eat,” he instructed on his way out. “Ifrit, come.”
Ifrit glanced at me as she followed Moti out. Is that pity in her eyes?
Zaki pulled up the chair across the table from me and sat down. “You know, he lived a pretty good life after his breakdown, though.”
I was lost in my own thoughts, wondering what was on that fucking clipboard. “Who? Job?”
“No, the Aher guy. After he quit religion, he became a—what do you call it—epicure? He went on a journey through Arab, Greek, Roman cultures. I guess knowing that paradise was off the table for him, he decided to find it on earth while he was still alive.”
Zaki took out his cigarette, flipping it in his fingers. “He wasn’t so different from you, Yoel. He was a salter. Except, you ask questions that apps can’t answer, and he was asking questions that God couldn’t answer. Today you are rewarded for asking your questions, they call you a salter, and they pay you chits. But he, in his time, he was punished, and they took his name away, and exiled him.” A brief snigger. “It’s funny how the devout pretend like they want people to ask questions, but really they only want you to ask the questions that they have answers to. You ask the wrong questions, things they don’t want to answer, they get mad. But apps, they want you to ask the wrong questions—they don’t want questions they can answer. It’s very interesting.”