The Matriarch Matrix
Page 1
À mes deux filles.
Que leur monde soit celui de la paix et de la tolérance.
*
To my two daughters.
May their world be one of peace and tolerance.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
This work is protected by copyright by Tail of the Bird Books. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 2017 by Tail of the Bird Books
All rights reserved.
978-0-9993350-0-0 Ebook
978-0-9993350-1-7 Paperback
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017954439
Edition 1.1.0.0
Published by Tail of the Bird Books, Larchmont
www.tailofthebird.com
Please visit our website for behind the scenes background, historical
comments, and more.
Contents
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Part I
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
PART II
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
About the Author
Acknowledgments
The inspiration for The Matriarch Matrix came a few years ago, when I read a pop archeology article on an ancient monolith site in southern Turkey, Göbekli Tepe. The authors postulated that this site must be a sanctuary, perhaps a religious site, as there were no signs of houses nor sources of water. And that gave rise to creating an epic tale about who these people were, what they believed, who they worshiped, and what of their world has been transposed into today’s world.
I would like to thank the many people who offered comments, encouragement, and suggestions. In particular, I would like to thank my alpha readers, Elaine and Lucia, who reviewed the earliest drafts as well as recent ones and cover art. And once again to the latter for challenging to break the patriarchal history stereotype, as history is often written from a man’s perspective, and change the story from one about patriarchy to one about matriarchy. And my appreciation to the dozen-plus anonymous beta readers from many countries and cultures whose comments helped guide the editing of the story.
I would like to thank my editor Eliza Dee (clioediting.com), for patiently and nicely guiding me through the editing process, from first draft to final proof. And my gratitude to Ava Homa, author of Echoes from the Other Side (avahoma.com), for her expert Kurdish cultural advice and general editorial counsel. And to G.D. Dess, author of Harold Hardscrabble (desswrites.com), for sharing his journey, advice as an author, and expert opinion on cover art. Finally to the good folks at Damonza.com for their many wonderful book cover options.
Surtout, merci à ma femme bien-aimée pour son soutien à travers cette dernière année. S’assurant toujours que je trouve une table pour taper mon texte partout où nous avons voyagé. Pour supporter le bruit de frappe constant sur le clavier. Pour me donner l’inspiration en faisant passer à nos flles les sagesses belges reçues de ses parents et grands-parents. Peut-être que ces déclarations proviennent de 12 000 ans. Qui sait?
For maps, photos, diagrams, and background about the anthropology, history, culture, science, and technology described in The Matriarch Matrix, please visit: www.tailofthebird.com
If you would like others to discover this story, please kindly leave a review.
Thank you for reading my book. Maxime.
Part I
Let’s be companions, the two of us.
Let’s go to the Friend, my soul.
Let’s be close intimates, the two of us.
Let’s go to the Friend, my soul.
Let’s go before this life is over,
Before our bodies disappear,
Before enemies come between us.
—Yunus Emre,
thirteenth-century Turkish poet and Sufi mystic
Prologue
Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.
—Pope Paul VI
If only lambs could fly, peace could be a choice in front of us now. For through knowing their innocence, their understanding, their love, comes peace and tolerance.
But they cannot. And there can be no peace tonight. Neither lamb nor sheep, I must be the wolf to save her.
Our present has happened in the past from where our future appears. Our lesson learned from the voice of the object.
So here I must stand. Our last stand on this desolate pier jutting into the tempest of an angry Black Sea, the tears of a darkened, sorrowful heaven pelting my face.
Finger on this detonator. One flinch and a kilometer of this world will vaporize. All because of this black object, for which we have been chased, shot, and bombed in our quest to solve a mystery that burns deep in both my dreams and those of the man who is going to kill us now. That is, if I don’t kill us first.
To my left stands Jean-Paul, once Father Sobiros, now an armed biblical archeologist who has done his best to assuage my “alien origins of religion” hypothesis. To my right is Zara, once a Kurdish freedom fighter, who has personified the Neolithic goddess of my dreams.
In front of us is the object, the one of my family’s legends, the one of the matriarch of so many millennia gone by, the one that has changed Zara in the profound spiritual ways she has long sought, wrapped in six kilos of the most explosive material in the world. I cannot do what Zara has asked me to do, to her and to the object. I just can’t. Not after what she and I have been through together.
Next to the object is the man who hired us, Alexander, who looks extremely annoyed we didn’t quite deliver this supersized stone, this black object, under the terms he wanted, and who has just raised his hand.
No. Alexander’s snipers just shot Jean-Paul. He’s down and not moving. Follow her plan exactly, she said. No deviations. No matter what happens. Poor Father Sobiros.
I yell, “Alexander, tell them to stop or I’ll detonate the object. You lose. I lose. We all lose.”
Alexander yells something in Russian into his lapel mike.
No. Please, no. His sniper shot Zara, twice. My heart skips. Stay focused, she said. No matter what happens, I have to stay patient, obedien
t to her plan. Yes. She’s scrambling on the floor to grab her rifle back and rolls over with her hand on a grenade launcher.
There ends the sniper. Clearly Alexander is beyond annoyed as he aims his pistol at Zara’s head. Okay, Zara. I would follow you to the ends of the earth and beyond, but I have to save you first. If only one person can walk out of this, it must be you. I don’t care what the voice said.
Click goes the detonator to normal mode. And where’s that pistol Zara gave me? Here it is. What did Zara tell me to do? Release safety, check. Pull backwards on the top slide until a click is heard. No click. Come on, faster, before he shoots Zara again. Oh, how I love her… Focus, Peter. Okay, slide it back harder. Click…too late.
Alexander has shot Zara directly in her chest, her Russian protective vest shattered for good this time as she yells, “Peter, shoot him! Rapid-fire rounds into his chest, like I showed you.”
“One more move and the first round has Alex written all over it,” I assert, as bold as I can be.
“Peter, my boy. Tell me, did you dream last night that you would be killing me today?” asks Alexander, still focused, with his gun now aimed at Zara’s scarf-covered head. “Because if you didn’t, then Zara here will die needlessly. Your choice, Peter. Kill me and kill Zara at the same time, or simply release that button and blow us all up. What did your dreams say you would do? Mine said you’re not the kind of person to kill.”
“Peter, shoot him. Ignore him. It doesn’t matter if I die. You know what will happen if he puts the object stones together. You know what the voice told us,” Zara says weakly as she slumps to the ground.
“Peter, my dear boy. You have been a loser, a failure so many times in your life up to now. Did I not say you and I were more alike than different? Be a winner this time. Be a winner with me. We both need the object intact. Put down the detonator,” pleads a fatherly Alexander.
I can do this. I can do this. No, I can’t. I can’t kill. It’s not in my DNA. What do I do? What do I do?
“Peter, my boy,” Alexander says softly. “Spare Zara. We can all see how deeply you care about her. I do not want to shoot her either. I care about her too. So, put down the gun. Put away the detonator, and you and Zara can walk out of here.”
Zara makes one last appeal to me. “Kill him, Peter. Let him kill me. If you love me. If you truly love me, let him kill me.”
What do I do? In every option spinning through my head, Zara will die. If only Zara and I could touch. When we touch, her soul and my soul together, everything becomes clear. And through her, the voice is so clear. How can I let her be killed?
“Okay, Alexander, here’s what we’re going to do…”
Chapter 1
You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.
—C.S. Lewis
Parkside, San Francisco, California
8:20 a.m. GMT−8, April 30, 2021
The fog. The fog billows by. The fog that surrounds during the night slowly retreats. So too begins the morning retreat of the infamous San Francisco fog, slowly but surely back into the Pacific, only to return once again every night. And so it is, the way of Peter Gollinger’s life since he was born. The wet blanket of billowing fog all night is all he knows.
Half-awake, half still in the fog of a traumatic dream, in a full sweat, he bolts up out of bed yelling, “I can’t kill. I can’t. What do I do?” Dazed, he looks at his clammy hands held out in front of him, shaking, gripping something.
Heart rate beyond tachycardic, clammy hands in tight fists, he looks around in panic for someone. “Where is she? Forget where, who is she? Oh, I wish, I wish I could remember these curses of my nights.”
Stumbling to his teeny bathroom, so tight his knees hit the wall when he’s squat on the squeezed-in can, he turns and looks around his one-room studio rental, the highest room in one of those pastel-colored stucco box houses that line the streets of this part of San Francisco.
“Did I just remember a dream? Why now? Did I just dream of a gun? Why? I hate guns. Who am I kidding? Why would I dream of things that scare me?”
He sighs again, looking at his war zone of a bed with the pillows bunched up and tossed about, the sheet and blankets in twisted spirals, flinging in all directions. He glances back into the oval mirror over the sink in his small bathroom. He brushes back his sandy brown hair. Vestiges of the blondness of his younger days. He tries to smile with his dimples arising, but he can only frown as he sees the bags under his eyes, looking so dark and miserable. “If only I could get a restful night. Even once every new moon would do,” muses Peter.
A mug full of microwave-heated imitation gourmet coffee and Peter is ready to start his day at his dilapidated desk, perpendicularly placed next to his one window that provides just a peek of his precious Pacific fog. The walls of his tiny place are bare save three posters. Ones that remind him of someone who meant so much to him. The newest with all the Starship Enterprises, from the 60s to the sixth of the reboot series, which will premiere a month from now. Another with all the alien gods and goddess of the Stargate franchises. And one emblazoned with the X-Files motto: I want to believe.
He clasps his MoxWrap like a lucky rabbit foot. He needs some luck to go his way again. He could never have afforded one of these, but one day last year, MoxWorld Holdings sent him one free. Totally free, with no service fees, even. He won one of those contests where he answered a series of questions. Somewhat personal questions, but free is free.
MoxWorld clearly demonstrated to him why they were the worldwide leaders in all things digital. Out of nowhere, they even sent him a free upgraded unit last week. Other than this quite pleasant tingling feeling he gets from the upgrade every now and then, what’s not to like?
He had to play a promo ad to activate this unit, which said everything:
“The device sitting on your wrist now will change your life. For the better. The MoxWrap is simply revolutionary. Thin, flexible, and available in your choice of seven sizes that allow custom molds around any adult’s arm. Lighter than the now-obsolete smartphone, with the comfort of a terry-cloth wristband, the MoxWrap contains the power of a personal command center. With solar-assisted batteries, the run time vastly exceeds all previous options. You could be in the wilderness for days, and as long as the sun shines, you will have around-the-clock minicomputer power through its satellite links to hectares of processors, the largest databases in the world, and infinite memory capacity. Triple the bandwidth and burst speeds of the best alternative technology allows for applications never imaginable until now. Congratulations on a smart decision.”
He taps his lucky rabbit foot surrogate and the associated processor unit on his desk beams up a screen as well a virtual keyboard hologram. Keyboards are the instruments of his music. Of his magic. For he is an editor. A copy editor, making the written work of others that much better.
He reads his messages, deleting all but the flagged one from MoxMedia he has kept for two days. Fingers tapping the desk, he waits for a message from his managing editor, Jerrod, with news of his bonus, as well as—maybe—an offer to become permanent and no longer a contractor. He rubs his MoxWrap again, wishing for luck.
He picks up an old-fashioned picture frame on his desk that holds an equally old-fashioned photo print of a woman. Someone else no longer in his life, who meant so much to him. She is attractively and tastefully posed, with her long dishwater-blond hair in a ponytail cascading down the front of her open plaid shirt, which is tied up at the bottom, covering her sports bra. Her raggedy blue jean cut-offs accent her lovely tanned legs, which slip right into her grey woolen socks, encased in her medium-height brown hiking boots. She was picture-perfect, his goddess at the top of Mount Shasta.
Catching himself lamenting about what once was, he puts a tank top and shorts on his runner lean body, which is of average height for an American. Within minutes he is jogging down the Great Coastal Highway, in amongst the retreating fog of his belove
d Pacific Ocean. Running in the fog is his best therapy for the fog of his brain, trying to resolve what he cannot fathom in the phantoms of his nights.
Walking up to his studio room after his morning ritual outing, he hears his MoxWrap sound. “Argh. Bus will be here in fifteen. Pappy will be so disappointed if I’m late. And Dr. Beverly. I hope she liked the final edit of her book.”
A quick shower and he pulls on jeans and a black t-shirt emblazoned with a yellow banana slug, mascot of his alma mater.
Looking out the bus window at his native California, Peter sees his land of cars, about sixteen million of them. People like Peter, who do not drive, who do not even have a driver’s license, who are creative in finding public transportation options—they are reducing our dependency on fossil fuels, our destructive addiction to gasoline that has governed global politics since the Second World War. At least that’s what Peter thinks as he rides the No. 397 bus from San Francisco to Daly City. How many wars have been fought, in the name of God, in the name of democracy, in the name of whatever is painted to be “just,” to ensure that the oil flows and is affordable? Peter wishes someone could change this.
He taps his MoxWrap to watch the MoxMedia morning news program. The world-renowned newscasters Rhonda and Sahir blare out the latest global events on this Friday morning. “Coming up on MoxWorld News AM: In Washington, the president defends the previous administration’s America First policy as conflicts around the globe continue to escalate. The Great Depression of 2018 has left the country with such a historical unprecedented deficit that it can no longer afford to be the world’s policeman.
“In the Middle East, the price of oil broke through its previous floor of twenty dollars per barrel as the Arabic Confederation last night launched an invasion into Iran, while they amass troops at the Turkish border near Kobanî. Recall that back in 2018, the catalyst for the creation of the Arabic Confederation and the New Kurdistan out of the former Syria and Iraq was the price of oil tumbling below twenty-five dollars per barrel, sending the region into chaos once again. In Moscow, the Russian president issued terse warnings of military reprisal for the downing of three more Russian fighters in Turkey’s latest challenge to Russia’s no-fly zone over New Kurdistan, the two-year-old union of the Kurds in former Iraq and Syria. In the South China Sea, warships from China, Japan, and the Philippines face off. In Europe, the Great Recession continues to take its toll as France and Germany retrench spending again for the rest of 2021, announcing their inability to fund NATO obligations. More after these messages.”