And then his MoxWrap sounds.
“Mr. Gollinger,” says the elegantly attired lady on the screen. “Mr. Murometz would like to speak with you.”
Stunned, Peter’s mind races again. What do I say to someone I just tried to kill?
“Peter, my boy,” exclaims Alexander. “My condolences for your grandfather passing away. I know how much he meant to you. And what his words meant to all of us.”
Peter stares at Alexander’s image. A scar on the temple, arm in a sling, and lightly splinted and bandaged hands, which he delicately holds together.
“Yo, Alexander, how are those hands of yours? Did I blow them off, or do the fingers merely dangle there?” replies Peter with the most bravado he can muster.
Alexander shakes his bandaged hand at Peter. “My boy. That was a very, very bad thing you did back there. Trying to kill your boss is illegal under US corporate governance laws. I hope you know that,” muses Alexander, who is clearly not mad at Peter.
Putting on a fatherly air, he adds, “The doctors say my hands and fingers will nearly fully recover in another month or so. But I will always have these painful twinges to remind me of you. That kind of love is forever, Peter. You and I are bonded through the douleur in my hands.”
“Sasha, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. As I recall, you were going to kill us over some piece of rock.”
“Peter, my son, you were simply brilliant on the pier back in Turkey. That priest was certainly right in his assessment of you. Peter, you are the best yet. Even better than my little Zara,” Alexander beams like a proud father.
“Was I at a different fight than you? Didn’t you have a gun pointed at your little Zara’s head after you had fired several rounds into her chest?” asks a very puzzled Peter. “And by the way, you pointed my gun, which I voluntarily surrendered to you, at my head and pulled the trigger. Should I be feeling warm and fuzzy about you right now?”
Alexander howls in laughter. “Peter, my son. That is what families are for. You fight a little. You make up. And you are still family. That, my son, is unconditional love. We are family, you and I, Peter. Exactly as I said.”
He stops for a second, watching Peter’s reaction, and recognizes what is wrong. “And Zara is your family too. She knows this all too well. Did I not tell you she was the most compassionate person I have ever met?”
Peter looks at him, quite puzzled.
Alexander smiles and says, “What is compassion, if not the willingness to put one’s own concerns aside to end the suffering of others? Was she not compassionate when she killed her closest friend and relative, her sister of love, rather than let her be taken back into savage captivity? Was she not willing to give up her life to save you? Was she not willing to sacrifice her life to save the world?”
He pauses again, assessing his protégé. “Give her time, my son. What the object did to you and her was much more profound than anything I would have anticipated. She needs time to cope with her changes and how much she will still be changing.”
Peter is still unmoved by Alexander’s prognosis.
The grief in Peter begins to overwhelm him as he stares downwards. “Alexander, I am not ready to talk about this. Especially with someone who was going to destroy the world.”
With a look of disappointment, Alexander says, “Peter, let’s look at things in a different way. So many people want to, they need to villainize others. They need a clear bad guy who suffers the consequences of violating their morality. But isn’t this the essence of intolerance? Isn’t that your own intolerance not seeing who I really have been? Ask yourself, who equipped the world’s greatest militaries with the most advanced tech ever to be invented? Albeit, tech incredibly fragile to the most frightful electromagnetic pulse known to mankind. And who sent you and Zara out there to find the object? And at the risk of his own life, who pushed the two object parts together to create their momentous evaporation into the heavens, which wiped out the specter of warfare in the most conflict-ridden region of the world? Are not the leaders of the world now under pressure to talk about true peace, having been denied their tools of proxy war?”
Peter glares at this giant, this perpetually lying, masterfully manipulative monster, with a very distrustful look. Is it possible he was that many steps ahead of the entire world, just as Mei had said? And all Peter can say is, “Alexander, it’s been a really emotionally difficult day. You need to go.”
With a sinister grin, Alexander asserts in a deep, booming voice, “Peter, you forget. You still work for me. You signed a contract. And no one breaks their contract with me. Not even my son. I expect you to be in your new office at MoxWorld USA headquarters by eight a.m. tomorrow, where we can discuss your new job. Be there or suffer the consequences.” And the monstrous, threatening long-faced giant signs off.
Alone and in disbelief, he looks around at the empty cemetery. Incredulous is the only word this editor can come up with for this day. He saved the world, and he doesn’t get the girl. Any girl, as he stands alone once again.
What should he do with his last free afternoon before he goes back to work for the man he tried to kill and who tried to kill him? Maybe a run along the Pacific? No, where did that get him?
And then he remembers it. Back at the hearse, he finds the object fragment he left under his seat. He takes the blackened grey thing from another world back to his grandfather’s grave, kneels down, and plants the last remnant of the object in front of him. He looks about again, seeing no one anywhere around, and ponders what he should do next. What is the right thing to do?
He prays.
*
Waiting for a sign, an image, a sound, a voice, the voice, he silently tries to replicate the peace, the beauty, the wonders of what he once shared with her. But like Ki in the dream, he laments he was not gifted with hearing the voice. He cannot touch the voice. He cannot be one with the voice. He can only be faithfully obedient to her concept.
He continues to pray.
A brush of the grass. He hears the near silence of expertly light footsteps nearby. The cemetery was empty except for him. Who so skilled would be sneaking up on him? Assassins? Did the monster Alexander play him again, only to buy time for his newest henchmen to arrive and kill him in some hugely prolonged, inhumane, painful, excruciating, and torturous way?
He prays to God for forgiveness of all his idiotic claims that aliens invented Him. Or Her. He prays he can still go to heaven today. He prays his death will be quick.
With eyes closed, he hears his killer kneeling next to him. How bizarre. It must be a Russian style of execution. Waiting for the bullet, the knife, the lethal injection, Peter tenses, finally sensing warmth near his hand. Alexander has sent someone to remove his hand. A hand for a hand. How biblical.
A touch.
A wet touch. A touch that brings back the peace, the joy, the beauty. Did he die and go to heaven?
And then he smells her. Kneeling next to him, she takes his hand into hers, wet-kisses them, and rubs. He opens his eyes to see his angel smiling at him. His divine cherub in her beautiful black abaya. She removes her headscarf and touches her ear. For adorning her lobes are those yellow mollusks. She innocently shrugs her shoulders, looks at her watch, showing one thirty-seven p.m. and the direction of Mecca, and says, “The vice president will just have to wait. It is time for Asr prayer. Will you pray with me, Peter?”
Peter raises an eyebrow and returns the smile, as he has been studying a certain subject. Asr prayer is not for another three and a half hours.
But time has no importance nor meaning for these two halves of the apple as they come together into a whole completeness. Man and woman together. In prayer.
About the Author
Maxime has been scribbling stories since grade school from adventure epics to morality plays. Blessed with living in multicultural pluralistic settings and having earned degrees in science and marketing, Maxime has worked in business and sports, traveling to countries across five continent
s and learning about cultures, traditions, and the importance of tolerance and understanding. Maxime’s debut novel was written and edited in different locations in Belgium, including the Turkish and Kurdish neighborhoods of Brussels, in Peru, and on the two coasts of the United States.
If you would like others to discover this book, please kindly leave a review. Merci.
Merci pour tout.
Maxime
Author, Ponderer, Traveler
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The Matriarch Matrix Page 57