The Prophet's Ladder

by Jonathan Williams

Amina received the text from Ali’s phone that evening. He’d asked her to watch the episode online and to call him back after she’d seen it. She’d reviewed the segment and had experienced all the same emotions that Ali had: fear, betrayal, anger, but also excitement. At 11 that evening, after supper, she dialed Ali’s cellphone from her bedroom at her parent’s house.

  “Well, it could’ve been worse,” she whispered in consoling tones; Ali, like many of the writers and journalists she’d known at university could overthink things and suffer from the resulting anxiety. “They could’ve found out your real identity, or the names of your family, or even me and mine.”

  “Thanks be to God Habiba, that hasn’t happened yet. But it doesn’t mean they won’t try to find out for a followup story, or perhaps a devoted viewer with an axe to grind…”

  “Relax. Isn’t this great news? Your readership numbers, the visitors to your website must be way up, no? You do want people to read your work, right?”

  “Well of course...but…”

  “Ali, my beloved, you are overanalyzing everything to the tenth degree, like always. Take a breath: remember the breathing exercises we learned together? Then read a good book, and I’ll see you tomorrow, ok? I’ll stop by the library during my lunch break.”

  “Ok. Bless you; you’re so good to me. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Sleep well.”

  Amina ended the call and put her phone on the dresser next to her bed. Looking around her room, she reviewed her lifetime’s work in the artwork that decorated every meter of the walls and ceiling. Some of the paintings were done in acrylic, others in oils or even stencil. Nowadays her medium was her desktop PC, working for her father’s bank designing the pamphlets and billboards that advertised her family name as trustworthy: Tunisia’s standard for financial security. Reflecting as she prepared for bed, Amina mulled over her current circumstances, her train of thought prompted by the change in Ali’s fortunes. Have I earned it all myself? No. I took no risks; my father got me the job. Could I have struck out on my own? An educated woman in Tunis, even in this day and age? It was hard to say, honestly. Maybe she could start her own graphic design firm, hire other women (and men!) with talent, use her contacts from university, get some good clients lined up… who knew. What she did know was that her fiancé was sticking his neck out for what he believed in, taking some risks with his career, and she admired him for it.

  Father wouldn’t approve if he knew what Ali was writing - had written - on his blog. It was true. Her father, though likeable enough, could be extremely critical of new ideas, of real change. The Arab Spring was bad enough in his mind.

  She’d go visit Ali tomorrow and they would talk about their next move, together. She still wanted to marry in the summer, and they’d need to plan it all out: finances, everything. Amina had come to the conclusion that she would continue to work after marriage; she hadn’t yet mentioned the notion to her parents, but she suspected they’d go along with it if she stood her ground. It’d save the family bank money and the hassle of a new hire in the long term anyways. Father and my betrothed, both so predictable…. am I the same?

  ****

  Todd and his new engineering project team sat around a sleek, modern-looking conference table in the largest of Al-Hatem Aerospace’s administrative offices. It was burnished aluminum, with outlets and ports at each seat for every conceivable electronic device or gadget. Floating in the center of the table via an astounding holographic display that utilized water vapor was a schematic for a strange-looking robotic spider. The colorful image rotated slowly so that everyone seated around the table could get a good view of the conceptual automaton.

  Four meters in length, the creature was a fascinating blend of organic form and synthetic parts. Its multiple eyes were high definition digital cameras with powerful macroscopic lenses, each able to see in near total darkness. Every one of the machine’s eight legs contained fine pairs of heat resistant grasping arms, fractalized artificial fingers splaying into multiple points of articulation.

  The artificial spider’s exoskeleton was made of a heat resistant ceramic, tawny brown, almost red in color. Visualized in the hologram in semi-translucent layers, the outer shell of the machine’s belly peeled away to reveal massive, complex 3D printers capable of weaving sheets and strands of carbon nanotube fibers made from the graphene carried in its bulky abdomen. Much like a true spider, the creature emitted the completed strands from a spinneret at its rear.

  Implanted in its stomach, the robotic spider housed a series of rollers and wheels coated in an absurdly powerful dry-adhesive gripping material Todd had understood to be only hypothetical up until recently. The skin of the rollers imitated the footpads of a gecko, its synthetic ‘setae’ or elastic hairs capable of adhering to any known surface. Were Todd to don gloves and boots made of the material, each square centimeter costing thousands of dollars, he could climb up onto the sheer walls and ceiling of this very conference room with no perch necessary, like a fictional comic book superhero. I’d need to work on my upper body strength though, Todd thought.

  The robotic spider would not be a solitary predator like its biological counterpart, however. It was designed to operate in teams of two to three other similarly designed and equipped machines, performing routine maintenance and repairs on a piece of technology that was as yet untested and untried: the space elevator.

  Todd’s colleagues at NASA had for years speculated on the feasibility of such a thing, but many of them had dismissed it out of hand. A space elevator, were it to actually to be built and function as specified, would drastically decrease the cost of transporting cargo and materials into space. A cable would be attached to a counterweight orbiting the planet in a geostationary position above the earth’s surface; possibly an asteroid towed into orbit or a massive artificial space station. The cable would stretch thousands of kilometers from orbit down through the atmosphere to an earth based anchor point, where vehicles or ‘elevators’ could be launched up and down the length of the cable.

  Until very recently, Todd had understood the materials necessary to construct a space elevator’s cable to be too cost prohibitive, belonging solely to the realm of theory and not reality. The qualities inherently necessary for such a span of cable were mind-boggling. The tether would need to be astoundingly lightweight, as well as immensely, almost impossibly strong, able to withstand the stress of a cargo vehicle or vehicles repeatedly traveling up and down its length, as well as the shearing forces of the earth’s atmosphere, along with a heady host of other stressors. Luckily, Todd’s team was not responsible for the engineering of said cable; that was another department entirely. No, Todd and the group of people assembled in this room were responsible for overseeing the final design, construction, and management of the aforementioned robotic spiders, named Solifuges after their resemblance to a certain class of arachnid.

  Todd glanced around the conference room. The project team itself was a marvelous invention of the 21st century. Talent from every corner of the earth sat along each table edge. A communications specialist from Japan, Saudi hydraulics engineers, a Scandinavian software programmer, a Canadian imaging expert…the list ran on and on: 27 persons in total from 14 different countries, including the UAE and his own United States.

  All official work would be conducted in English as, for better or for worse, it was the lingua franca of the age, especially in engineering and academic circles, for which Todd was eminently grateful. His hour-long Arabic lessons, twice a week now, were coming along slowly. It would be some time before he could converse about anything more complicated than the weather or a grocer’s bill, let alone robots and spaceships.

  “Thank you all for your input today. Tomorrow we will begin touring the assembly floor clean room at the tertiary compound at zero-nine hundred hours. Let me know if you need directions to the facility.” Todd tapped an icon on his tablet computer and the hovering image of the spider vanished in a flash of mist-laden light. That never cease
s to wow me. Feels like I’m in a movie. Supposedly a Korean tech conglomerate had invented the vapor-hologram technology, and these desk models were not yet for sale to the general public.

  “Hey, boss. Want to grab a drink with us?” Todd looked over his shoulder as he slid his computer into a briefcase. It was John Bolivar, the only other American on the team. He had come from Alcaeus Space Systems, a robotics technician much like himself, and was one of the highest paid members of the project team, given his experience and background. Thirty-five and educated at Stanford and MIT according to his bio sheet. Parents were from immigrants from Colombia, and had settled in the San Fernando Valley.

  “Thanks, John. Nah, I have to get back to Anne. She’s off to lecture at the city university for two weeks starting tomorrow, this is our last night at home together for a bit.”

  “Absolutely understand. Say hello for me! I look forward to meeting her sometime. Maybe coffee or lunch with me and the wife?” John smiled. Tanned with pearly white teeth and fashionably unkempt dark hair, his complexion was as well suited to the Arabian Peninsula as it was to sunny Southern California.

  “Sure thing, John. See you tomorrow.” Todd slipped out of the conference room and headed downstairs, waving his security badge at the guard at the front desk. He’d biked to work today, before the sun had risen and the desert had gotten too hot. Al-Hatem had been good enough to install bike lanes on all their highways from the work complex to the company village. Now the sun was setting, a ruddy red ball on the horizon, heat waves obscuring any distinct scenery, warping its visage like the static waves on an old television set. As he pedaled his thoughts drifted over the day’s work. It had been two months already and the team was coming together, overcoming any cultural or linguistic barriers through sheer determination and drive; the project they were working on was something the world had never seen before and they all knew it. If it were successful, and to Todd’s mind that was a big if, Al-Hatem Aerospace would reduce the cost of transporting materials to space by a factor of a thousand or more. It would enable humankind to construct larger orbiting stations or assemble space-going vessels that would dwarf any previous interplanetary probes. Asteroid mining for rare metals and other elements would become economically feasible. Moon colonies, all that crazy stuff that Hollywood had assumed would be commonplace in the twenty-first century could actually come true. It would make NASA’s old business model obsolete, Todd thought. Every spaceport, every commercial satellite launching venture would either have to step up and build their own elevator or figure out some other way to drastically reduce the cost per kilogram of shipping things into orbit, or else….

  And Al-Hatem and, by proximity, the UAE would be at the center of it all. The Arab-speaking world would be at the forefront of technological innovation and progress. It would blow every American’s mind, that’s for sure. Todd considered all the hatred and vitriol he had observed in the U.S. immediately following the horrific tragedy of 9/11 and during the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Misspent and misdirected rage had destroyed Arab-Americans’ homes and businesses, had driven paranoia levels and the U.S. security state’s overreach to an all-time high. Was the Arab world and, by extension, the rest of the planet ready for such a shift in perception? Todd wasn’t sure. I suppose Al-Hatem Aerospace has to succeed first. The company’s rocket launch he had witnessed previously was impressive, but it was in part both a cover for the corporation's true mission and also a fallback plan, were the elevator not to function as designed.

  Todd had been briefed on how he and his fellow expat co-workers were to interact with host country nationals. Many UAE citizens were Wahabists, a conservative sect of Sunni Islam, and some—though not all—wouldn’t approve of their work or even their living in the country. All that besides, their work was to be considered classified to the highest degree. Each Al-Hatem employee working on his team had had his or her background checked and vetted thoroughly before being granted clearance to work on the Solifuges project, and his team wasn’t even working with the top secret engineering teams. They were based in another compound where the elevator car, the tether, and its launch mechanism were being designed and constructed.

  Perhaps they’re isolating us, each team, so that we won’t know anything comprehensively should our work be compromised? It was a sobering thought. He hated all this black ops industrial espionage malarkey whenever it came up. Any corporate bureaucracy was difficult enough to navigate without there being trade secrets involved. Still, he could understand why this work in particular must remain hidden from the public eye, especially here in the UAE.

  Fifty minutes and a bottle of water later, Todd and Anne were strolling through the park Al-Hatem aerospace had built for its employees in the center of their planned community. It was built around an old oasis: date palms stretched upwards, their tanned, lanky trunks curving ever so slightly eastward against the prevailing desert winds. Each tree was topped with a busy mop of dates and fronds. It was a brightly lit evening, with the moon almost full, its glassy white features starkly visible to those terrestrial observers. Even so, solar powered streetlights lit the path ahead of them. The paved pathway they followed formed a circular loop around the oasis that fed back onto itself, a veritable Oroboros. Other couples, families, and young teenagers strolled in the park or sat by the water’s edge on the green grass, skipping stones or laughing heartily. Many of the women wore the hijab covering out of respect for the indigenous culture, as Anne did. Others did not, some westerners even opting for shorts or tank tops.

  “So, how did it go today?” Anne inquired. Her face seemed more distinct in the moonlight, framed by cloth and not her usual shoulder-length auburn hair.

  “Pretty well. I think the team is really starting to cohere. The language barrier thing wasn’t really an issue to begin with. I think it was just folks acclimating to the diversity of accents in the room,” Todd replied, swallowing a pinch of sunflower seeds from his hand.

  “That’s great.”

  “Yeah. And the Solifuge is really a fun project. The designs improving the adhesive rollers and the grasping arms specs coming from Olle and Heike are spot on. It’s really all coming together. Still…”

  “Still what?” Anne tilted her head at Todd, an inquiring countenance.

  “Still, the funding for all of this...I can’t wrap my head around it. It’s public, it’s private, it’s coming from foreign investors, but also it seems there are a few shell corporations? I know accounting isn’t my bailiwick, but I’d still like to know whose dollars we’re running on, or petrodollars for that matter. It was easier at NASA when I knew it was the U.S taxpayer footing the bill.”

  “Can you ask the sheikh?”

  Todd nodded. “I could. I’m still supposed to visit his estate to go hawking with him this weekend, but I don’t want to be rude. From what I understand it is inappropriate to talk business like that during recreation here.” Anne and Todd walked on past a few North American kids showing an Indian boy their own age how to nosegrind on a skateboard.

  “And the other thing is...some of this tech, Anne, I mean wow. Where are they getting this stuff? It’s impressive.”

  Anne was silent, choosing to let Todd vent his confusion over his new workplace.

  “Anyways, it’ll be fine. It’s just all very exciting and new. Are you all packed for your lecture tour?”

  Anne smiled. “ Yep. It’s a three-hour drive to Abu Dhabi tomorrow morning. I’ll call you once I’m settled at the residency apartment.”

  “Sounds good! You excited?” Todd rubbed her shoulder, unsure if it was an unseemly thing to do in public here.

  “Yep! Lecturing about North American desert macroflora is always a thrilling adventure. Cacti here we come!” Anne laughed, her self-deprecating manner getting the better of her as it usually did.

  “Well, I’m just glad we both found something useful to do out here.”

  “Me too. Ready to head back? Samam made that stew you li
ke.”

  “Mmmm-mmm!” Todd’s mouth watered instantly. Samam had turned out to be an excellent cook, in addition to being a universally delightful person to be around. She was quickly becoming part of the family, for which, especially due to her culinary talents and housekeeping rigor, Todd and Anne were particularly thankful. The couple steered themselves around the rest of the park circuit and walked the block to their apartment tower, passing a host of other couples and families out and about. The planned community was a bustling one, even at this hour. It seemed near utopian despite the multitude of cultures, languages, and customs present. Todd had often wondered, seeing similar sights on previous occasions, if the unifying force here was their respective employer or something else, something deeper: the high level of education amongst the families? The secrecy and the hope of the project? It was hard to say. All he knew for sure was that he was starving for that stew. Overhead, a meteor flashed brilliantly in the night sky west of the moon, seemingly unnoticed, winking out at its zenith.

  Chapter 5

  14th Century Tangier, Morocco

  “Are you ready to depart, master?” the servant inquired politely, continuing to strap sandalwood boxes of scrolls and books detailing matters of jurisprudence onto the dromedary that stood before him. The beast, a huge creature of some girth and age was unconcernedly chewing cud, indifferent to the weight of the supplies that were being attached to his bulk. A young man, twenty-two years of age, with a black, neatly combed beard, bearing the look of a man of station of the city of Tangier, nodded in reply. His eyes surveyed the small train of three camels that stretched behind him. He would be departing alone from the city, without even his family servants, intending to meet up with—and perhaps accompany— others on the long journey ahead.

  “Yes, my friend, I am ready. Bismillah! We go on Hajj! It is a glorious day.” The young man chose to lead his camels by foot through the outer gates of the city, thinking it wise to adopt a humble appearance when departing for Mecca, that distant, holy realm. It was a great pilgrimage, a glorious undertaking that only those of some wealth or position could afford in this land of the Marinids, so far from the epicenter of the Dar Al-Islam.