The Matriarch Matrix

by Maxime Trencavel

  The towering man, projecting his protective father figure to Peter, points at Zara and says, “She tells you not to believe that the aliens have left this object for us to find. She misleads you so she can retain full control, so she can retain power over all of us men. Break the pattern, Peter. Let us, you and I, father and son, work with the aliens, and bring into this world what we as a species deserve.”

  Peter looks at Jean-Paul to his left, then Zara on his right, then down at his feet. As Peter is distracted, Alexander holds his hand up, and the two guards to his side shoot at Jean-Paul and Zara. Jean-Paul is down but shoots the guard, who shoots him back. And the same happens to Zara, who is down but shoots her guard as well. Apparently these guards have the same vests the Spetsnav were given in Chechnya, as their bodies are ripped in half by the duo’s subsonic rounds.

  Peter feels brave as he watches his beautiful Zara’s plan playing out exactly as she had said. He boldly says, “Alexander, you’ve run out of guards. Leave here in peace and no harm will come to you.”

  Annoyance on his face, Alexander raises his right hand.

  Crack. Crack. Jean-Paul is taken out by a sniper. He is down flat and bleeding, his weapon thrown to the side.

  Peter, in a panic, yells what he was told to say. “Alexander, tell them to stop or I’ll detonate the objects. You lose. I lose. We all lose.”

  Alexander yells something in Russian into his lapel mike.

  Crack. Crack. Zara is taken down by a sniper too, her AK-9 sent flying. She is bleeding as well, but with inner resolve still running strong, she rolls over, taking her VSS out of her backpack and aiming the grenade launcher at the sniper.

  Boom.

  Alexander, more than annoyed she has killed his sniper, points his revolver at Zara.

  Peter breaks from what Zara told him to do. He has to save her. It does not matter if obedience is what his mother programmed him to do. It does not matter if Zara loves him back. It only matters that he loves her so much he will die today to save her. He flips the detonator knob to normal push function and fiddles with his gun in a panic, trying in vain to load the first bullet. Finally, he cocks back the slide hard twice to get it to click.

  Too late. Alexander fires off several rounds at his little Zara.

  And Zara is down for good this time, her dress bodice ripped to shreds, showing her vest plates shattered into many little pieces. She weakly tries to yell. “Peter, kill Sasha! Rapid-fire rounds into the chest, like I showed you.”

  With detonator in one hand and gun in the other, Peter aims at the giant monster, following what Zara had shown him to do. His hands shake as he fights the images of his father’s death with that gun that have hampered him all his life.

  Until now. For only Zara matters as Peter says, “Alexander, I will kill you if you move any muscle at all. Believe me, I have the resolve to do this. I know you know so. Somehow you know things about what Zara and I have said. Maybe you have our MoxWraps bugged. And so, you know I have changed. I can and will shoot you.”

  “Peter, my boy. Tell me, did you dream last night that you would be killing me today?” Alexander yells back, still focused, with his revolver now aimed at Zara’s 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 push 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 from the object told us,” Zara says weakly as her head finally slumps to the ground.

  “Peter, my dear boy. My son. You have been a loser, a failure so many times in your life up to now. Did I not say that 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.

  Peter’s mind freezes. But maybe not. He is now in that microsecond between choices. Between his love for Zara and his love for his pappy. He is no longer the panicked, sheltered man-boy hiding behind his computer screen. He is now fully aware in this microsecond as the world around him moves in ultra-slow motion. He has changed so much since he first met Zara. He has found his destiny with her and through her. What is happening is so surreal, just like the dream he had three weeks ago. He only wishes he had not awoken before finding out what he did in his dream. Now he has whether to cross that line or not.

  “Peter, my boy, my son,” Alexander says softly. “Spare Zara. It’s obvious how deeply you care about her. I don’t want to shoot her either. I care about her too. So, put down the gun. Put away that detonator. And you and Zara can walk out of here as man and woman together, just as you are destined to be.”

  Zara makes one last appeal. “Kill him, Peter. Let him kill me. If you love me. If you truly love me, let him kill me. Just kill him.”

  “Okay, Alexander, here’s what we’re going to do,” says Peter.

  He aims his gun at Zara’s head. “I’m going to kill her, and what do you have? Nothing to bargain with.”

  Prone on the cold pier, Zara stares at him in disbelief. He is clearly off script. That is not what the dream foretold. She is helplessly furious at him.

  Alexander stares at Peter with his deeper-than-black piercing eyes, which are harder and harder to see with the darkened clouds. Then he smiles. “Are you happy now, my son? You have grown a pair. You would have never said that three weeks ago. You would have never had such confidence with a gun three weeks ago. Have I not done for you what you wished when you left Sarah’s brownstone with deep envy, that day you watched the man who replaced you and his gun?”

  Peter looks up at the now-blackened clouds. He looks at the blackened anger in Zara’s eyes. He looks up and sees that same anger in the near-night-colored sky. And he gets it. He looks at Zara again, putting his hands together as if he were praying.

  She nods back at him and closes her eyes.

  As the rain begins to fall, Peter says, “Alexander, my new father, if only you could have given me pecs and abs, everything would be perfect.”

  And to Alexander’s surprise, Peter walks over to him, turns the detonator switch to off, hands it to him, turns his gun around, and hands it to him too. He bows and says, “Our fate is in your hands.”

  Alexander drops his other gun, empty, which only he knew, and takes Peter’s gun, aiming it at Peter’s head with a tight two-handed combat grip. “My son, you should have listened to Mei more attentively. I had a son once. Zara spurned him as she did you. And he betrayed me like you have done. I killed him, as I do to all who fail and betray me.”

  Peter, with deer-in-the-headlights eyes, slowly backs up, not knowing what else to do. Alexander lets Peter simmer in fear for several steps and finally pulls the trigger. Rohat’s gun violently explodes in his hand, making the round miss Peter’s head. Alexander drops his gun, bending over and holding his bleeding hands.

  Knowing his one goal this morning was to defy Zara’s declared destiny, Peter runs to get Zara, who screams in agony as he lifts her up to walk. The black-clad figures come out of the shadows and pick Jean-Paul up.

  Zara yells at Peter, “Look at the sky.” His eyes are pelted by the falling tears. She demands, “Leave me here. You know what is going to happen. Stop Alexander from putting the objects together.”

  Peter moves his hand to support her better and clasps her breast with his hand. He says, “No, I won’t. I will always be with you.”

  As he helps her walk, she stares at his hand squeezing her gland, makes a face, puts her hand upon his, and says, “You did that on purpose.”

  As the reunited lovers and the black-clad priest hobble down the pier, Alexander, with injured hands and other puncture wounds, pushes the two objects together.

  Boom.

  He is thrown off the pier fifteen meters into the Black Sea. Peter and Zara are thrown several meters to the groun
d. Peter looks up and sees the angry black clouds again ready to discharge. He pulls Zara up, kisses her, and says, “I love you. The bad you. All of you.” And then he throws them both off the pier into the water and pulls her away from the pier.

  Flash-boom is the last thing they see and hear.

  Chapter 43

  For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow.

  —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

  Peter awakens, eyes not yet open. He remembers sensing the love of his life stroking him adoringly, fondly, passionately. Ready to be with him for eternity. But the fog he has known most all his life until recently still surrounds him. He cannot think straight. His head hurts and his body is fatigued.

  His eyes attempt to open in vain, yelling with every nanometer he tries to budge his eyelids. He peeps through the small slit he is able to muster open between the screaming lids. He is not in Zara’s room. He is not in Zara’s brother’s room.

  No. It can’t be. Is he still in his room in San Francisco? It wasn’t just a dream, was it? Zara, was she just a woman in his dreams? Was he so emotionally fraught, unable to overcome his dismay at seeing his Sarah with that boy toy alpha grunt, that he dreamt up a divine romance with an extraordinary woman, the descendant of those who made Pappy’s oral tradition?

  On his forehead, he feels the warmth of fingers stroking him in just the exact right spot. But these fingers are too large to be Zara’s. His eyes pop open in panic. Alexander? His vision is still fuzzy, and he looks and looks. There through his fog, a large black-clad figure starts to appear. As his fog that blurs his eyes dissipates, Peter spots the medallion hanging next to the crucifix. He reaches for Jean-Paul’s hand and grabs it.

  Jean-Paul, so serene once again, says, “You have had a rough two weeks. But we knew you would be okay.”

  Peter hears only the word we and looks around for Zara. But there is only an empty bed next to him. Oh no. Did he really kill her? He tried his very best to find a way to save her. Did he end up fulfilling her destiny to die that day? Maybe if he had only conceded more and prayed to her voice, maybe, just maybe, the voice would have had mercy on them.

  The good priest sees his distress and can only imagine what is tormenting his battered brain. He says compassionately, “She was here in the bed next to you for the past two weeks. She prayed next to you, holding your hands in hers. Last night, her great-grandmother died, and she left early this morning.”

  Peter rubs his strained eyes and laments, “But I didn’t even get to say goodbye to her.”

  His large hand lightly touching Peter’s head, Jean-Paul says reassuringly, “You should know she was at your side every day, every night, stroking you. Very lovingly so, if you were to ask me. She kissed you many times. But as I let you two share each other in much privacy, I cannot tell you how often, how much, or how personal.”

  As Peter’s vision begins to clear, he can discern Jean-Paul wearing a black cassock. Peter asks, “Didn’t you get a chance to change out of that Russian imitation cassock?”

  Jean-Paul smiles, knowing Peter is feeling better, meaning his cheeky gene is acting up. “This is mine, from my residence here in Rome.”

  “I’m in Rome?” asks a bewildered Peter.

  “Yes, Major Buchli was on standby and flew us all here for medical care. Zara and I were spared major internal injuries thanks to her old friend’s vests and pants. We suffered broken ribs and armor impact wounds, which bled, but nothing deeply penetrated past the armor. You, on the other hand, took a major concussion hit due to the blast.”

  Peter touches around his head. “What blast?”

  “When the lightning struck our object, it detonated,” Jean-Paul explains. “But oddly so. Most of the explosive force went straight up, sparing the town next to us. You were hit in the head by debris from the pier. Zara kept your head above water until my friends were able to retrieve you.”

  Peter looks up at the TV screen in his hospital room. Rhonda is talking with almost no makeup or accessories. “Experts are still unclear as to the source of the mysterious explosion in northeastern Turkey a week ago. The area is still recovering from a mysterious massive electromagnetic pulse that spanned out a thousand kilometers from this blast. The face-off between the Russian and US air forces was averted as all modern military equipment ceased to function. No one was left with functioning weapons of mass destruction. Not even small arms functioned as the MoxDefense Industries components common to all modern weapons were fried due to the strength of this unprecedented EM pulse.”

  Sahir comes on screen and adds, “Shortly following this EM pulse, a massive earthquake rated 10.6 on the Richter scale occurred in the Black Sea. Experts are at a loss to explain the fifty-meter-high tsunami that overturned both the Russian and US fleets but mysteriously only ran south to north, sparing the Turkish coastline. Religious groups, moderate and fanatical alike, are calling this a divine miracle that averted the start of what appeared to the Third World War. Major religious leaders have called for a multifaith summit to discuss this miracle and how they can work more closely together in the future to further ensure world peace and promote interfaith, intercultural tolerance.”

  Peter stares back at Jean-Paul. “But how did we get out of there?”

  But he remembers his own observation. “The sixty-year-old helicopter. It wasn’t equipped with modern digital circuitry. It came from the end of the tube age, didn’t it? You knew all along, didn’t you?”

  The good humble Father shrugs. “I deduced from the traditions that the object might have produced a large EM pulse twelve thousand years ago, but I had no idea that it could be of such an enormous magnitude as we just experienced.”

  A Catholic Sister dressed in blue arrives at the door, carrying a box. She says, “Father Jean-Paul, His Eminence is ready.”

  Peter could swear he sees a wisp of red hair under her blue veil. He looks at Jean-Paul and says, “Father Jean-Paul, eh? You never renounced. I knew it.”

  Jean-Paul smiles serenely and rapidly blinks. “The Father General, with the blessings of His Eminence, was so gracious as to allow me to return to my Order. Any sins I committed while I was away have been forgiven.”

  As Peter’s fog finally clears, he bemoans, “And the object? Is it totally destroyed? After all that, I got nothing to bring back to my grandfather. I failed him.”

  And Jean-Paul says sadly, “As the voice had asked for and Zara had planned, we blew the objects into dust, straight back into the heavens. One would not even find a fragment of it.”

  With that word, Peter remembers. “And my fragment I had found at Karahan Tepe—where is it?”

  The good Sister comes forward, gives the box to Peter and says, “She said to give this to you when you asked for it.”

  With great relief, Peter finds the fragment in the box. He can go home and give this to his pappy. As he studies and fondles the fragment, he notices something odd on the back of his left hand. He looks and looks, and it is a heart scratched into his skin in ink. He spots a note in the box that had been placed under the fragment. He reads it.

  Am I all that Alexander said?

  Did I do to you what he said?

  Did I withhold from you what he said?

  You did not know for sure.

  And yet, you still loved me.

  And below this, a heart is drawn. The same as on the back of his hand.

  The good Sister with the wisp of red hair peeping through her veil smiles at him. “I know a woman in love when I see one.”

  And she looks up at Jean-Paul with that very look she spoke of, takes the good Father’s hand, very affectionately so, and says, “His Eminence is waiting for us.”

  Peter raises his eyebrows. “He’s meeting the two of you? Is this the first time he’s seeing you, Jean-Paul? You and your dear Sister Magali together?”

  Jean-Paul, a little embarrassed, does
not know what to tell Peter. Sister Magali, less abashed than her dear Father friend, says, “His Holiness has seen Father Jean-Paul every day since his return to Rome. Today, His Holiness was to see your Zara. But in her absence, he has requested the two of us meet him to discuss a very important topic.”

  With that, the good Sister Magali takes her dear Father Jean-Paul’s hand, very passionately so, and slowly leads him to the door.

  Peter stares again at the TV, which shows the world leaders pointing fingers in blame at each other. Rhonda says that MoxWorld News hopes the world’s political leaders can follow the lead of their religious counterparts and work together to rebuild this region, to help these people, and to do so not by proxy war, but by showing true compassion, providing the resources needed to rebuild their towns, cities, places of worship, and their health and educational infrastructures.

  Peter looks back at the Sister and the Father in the doorway. He could swear she had just stood on her tiptoes and kissed him.

  Chapter 44

  Dear Friend, let me plunge in the sea of love,

  Let me sink into that sea and walk on.

  Let both worlds become my sphere where I can

  Delight in the mystic glee and walk on.

  Let me become the nightingale that sings

  A soul freed from the dead body’s yearnings;

  Let me bury my head in my two hands,

  Take the path to unity and walk on.

  —Yunus Emre,

  thirteenth-century Turkish poet and Sufi mystic

  10:20 a.m. GMT−8, July 15, 2021

  Skyline Boulevard, California

  Michaela hangs on for dear life as her crazed older brother whips the hearse he convinced her to ride in around a sweeping mountain turn facing into the fog-covered Pacific. They had paid homage to Pappy’s fog at a grove of fogbound redwood trees, where the banana slugs emerged, enjoying the mist of their beloved ocean. In the back, the casket of their dear beloved pappy rattles around, and she dearly hopes that these excessive g-forces Peter is placing on them doesn’t throw her dear grandfather out of his final resting box.