Gethsemane

by James Wittenbach

  Thoughtfully, Thall added. “There’s never been a time in my life that wasn’t dominated by the fact of our doom, and our relocation. It’s never even occurred to me that it’s an unusual way to live.”

  “We live in a spaceship,” Keeler pointed out.

  “I have no memories prior to three years ago,” Redfire added.

  “So, really, we’re not going to quibble about what’s unusual,” Keeler explained. “Still, the complete evacuation of a planet. There’s almost no parallel in the human experience.

  There were emergency evacuations in the time of the Crusades, but those were smaller colonies, or just a portion of the planet’s population in an emergency. I know of one account where twelve colonies in the same system were obliterated in a sneak attack by Berserkers, and the survivors created a rag-tag, fugitive fleet out of their surviving spacecraft, and struggled to make it back to Earth.

  “Did they make it?” Thall asked.

  “The historical record was incomplete, also badly corrupted, poorly lit, and the sound was terrible. Or was that the Panrovian erotic pirate holovid I was thinking of.” Keeler shrugged. “But your effort consumed your planet for a generation. I can only imagine what it was like for your society. And you were on the front lines for all of it. Cheese Louise, someone should take an oral history from you.” Grimness passed over Thall’s face like a cloud. “I don’t think I would want to discuss it.”

  Keeler tried to back off. “I’m sorry, I am just trying to imagine what it was like.”

  “It was … terrible,” Thall sounded angry, and anguished. Not too much, because Thall was not an emotional man. “The sacrifices people had to make were… terrible.”

  “Of course they were,” Keeler agreed. “But they knew they were going to a better place, right? That must have been some comfort.”

  Thall looked like he was about to say something, but then his pockmarked face returned to its usual, dutiful, stony visage.

  Redfire joined in. “Did the Kariad tell you this was a Gateway to your afterlife? That doesn’t sound like the Kariad as we know them.”

  “They told us the Gateway would give us the means to escape our planet’s fate by relocating us to a place of greater safety,” Thall said. “They instructed us to build three, but work was abandoned on two of them because construction was behind schedule. We combined all of our resources to finish the one gate. It wasn’t until we activated the Gateway that we knew it connected us to the Afterworld.” The bus pulled up to a large windowless building constructed of gray concrete blocks.

  Keeler guessed there was not much use for architecture in the time of an emergency. The building was a huge, one-story box connected to a number of other concrete boxes by covered walkways.

  They were escorted to a large room with a row of service windows at the front. Chairs and couches were arranged in rows that faced the front of the room. Banks and her technicians were led away by some of the Gethsemanian engineers and techies.

  Thall led Redfire and Keeler through the “Registration and Orientation” process, assisting them with forms and providing them with badges. For “Citizen ID Number,” Thall told them to just write “Not Applicable.” Inspired by the notion, Keeler filled in most of the form with “Not applicable.” A stern bureaucrat at the reception window made him fill it in again. She made him fill it out a third time when she saw he had written

  “Notorious Smuggler” next to Occupation and “Wouldn’t you like to know?” in the spot that asked if he had brought any contraband onto the Gateway Site.

  When their papers finally had been reviewed, inspected, and stamped Approved, they were led into a large auditorium in which they were the only two people, and were made to watch a video presentation. It flickered onto the screen at the front of the room. The audio crackled, and the video jumped and sputtered occasionally. Hildegard Kahn, a much younger version, appeared on the screen, standing in, what was presumably her presidential offices.

  “Greetings, and welcome to the Gateway. This is the final stage in the evacuation process.

  Soon, you will be received into paradise, where you will be reunited with friends and loved ones who have already passed through. You will be free of want and illness, and you will live in peace forever. But before then, you must be prepared. This presentation will describe how you can make these next few hours as orderly and controlled as possible.

  And you should also give thoughtful gratitude to the collective efforts of millions of people who have made this evacuation possible… from the planetary leadership down to the laborers who helped build the Gateway.”

  Keeler closed his eyes, shook his head, and uttered a curse against all politicians. When he looked at the screen again, a froggish woman in a green pantsuit was explaining the

  “Embarkation Procedure.”

  “PERA personnel will guide you to the Gateway Plaza. The Plaza will open twenty minutes before Gateway activation, and the doors will close two minutes before Gateway Activation. Please remain calm and silent while waiting for the gate to activate. If you miss your assigned departure time, bring your Departure Slip to the Rescheduling Office for a new time. You may ask any PERA guide for assistance in locating the Rescheduling Office.”

  “There’s just two of us. Why are they making us sit through this?” Redfire grumbled.

  Keeler understood, “They obviously developed these procedures when they were handling thousands of refugees every day. They never changed them. There’s a story of a man in the Republic Ministry of Certifications who has the job of standing at the foot of a staircase in the lobby. No one could figure out why. Then they discovered two hundred years previously, the stairs had been painted and a man had been hired to warn people not to use them.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Redfire snapped. “They could easily have programmed a robot to do that.”

  “Do not bring any food or drink into the Gateway plaza. Singing is expressly forbidden in the plaza area, or in the holding area next to the Gateway Plaza.”

  “What if you could use these things to travel between planets?” Redfire wondered aloud. “What if every colony in the galaxy had a gate to every other colony.”

  “It would be dreadful,” Keeler replied. “People would start migrating from planet to planet. People from failed planets would come to successful planets and recreate the same conditions that made their planets fail.” He shook his head in dread of it all. “It ought to be hard to move between worlds. It encourages people to stay put unless they have a damn good reason to move.”

  “When the Gateway activates, you will see a tunnel stretching before you with a bright light on the far side. Simply step into the tunnel. When you reach the other side, please move aside to permit the arrival of other travelers. Those who greet you on the other side will help familiarize you with life on the other side.

  “Oh come on!” Keeler burst out.

  The video presentation froze, and the voice of an annoyed woman crackled through the public address system. “If you do not pay attention, the presentation will repeat until you have sat quietly though the entire presentation.” Keeler and Redfire slumped quietly in their seats and endured until the end.

  After about twenty minutes more, the video presentation ended. Thall opened a side door. He had been waiting for them the entire time. He asked to see their Embarkation forms, so he could stamp the area that indicated they had watching the orientation film.

  “What’s next?” Keeler asked when his forms had received the proper stamps.

  “Next, you’ll undergo a medical examination.” Thall explained as they walked down a long corridor. Designed for larger numbers of people, it had become an echo chamber where their footsteps reverberated against the walls.

  “Why?” Keeler asked.

  “To make sure you are fit for Gateway travel,” Thall answered.

  Keeler was a bit baffled. “Minister Oberth said people on the other side enjoyed perfect health. Has anyone ever died or go
tten sick as a result of Gateway travel.”

  “No,” Thall admitted. “But Regulations require a thorough medical exam.”

  “Ah, Regulations,” Keeler said, as though the word were poison in his mouth. He detected a whiff of alcohol on Thall’s breath, which told him Thall had been drinking while waiting for them to finish the presentation. This confirmed what Keeler had suspected; Thall drank. Thall drank a lot.

  Keeler continued. “I was only thinking that it must have been chaotic back at the peak of the evacuation, with thousands of people passing through here. How many doctors did it take to perform all those exams?”

  “In Stages 1 and 2, Medical Exams and the other procedures took place at the Point of Origin,” Thall explained. “During Stage 2, 90% of our population was evacuated, the ten largest cities each had a facility for processing evacuees. They did the medical checks and orientation there, then they transferred the evacuees up here. Exams here only became necessary in Stage 3, when the final 10% began evacuating.”

  “How did people know when it was their turn to go?” Keeler asked.

  “The Authority divided the planet into zones, and people were evacuated according to their zone. People with vital skills went last. The Authority wanted to make sure society continued to function as the population reduced. Farmers, mechanics, pilots, truck drivers went last. The people who went through first were the people with nothing to do; mainly people whose companies were taken over by the Authority.”

  “Was there any resistance?” Keeler asked.

  “Resistance?” Thall stalled.

  “Was anyone unwilling to go? Did anyone resist the evacuation orders?” Keeler clarified.

  Thall answered stoically. “In the beginning, there were some citizens who were uncooperative with the Authority.”

  “What happened to them?” Keeler asked.

  Thall paused so long Keeler began to think he was ignoring the question. Finally, he said, “The penalties for non-compliance were very harsh. A few people had to have examples made of them. Eventually, it got better, and people stopped… defying the authority.”

  By then, they were at the Medical Examination Room, and Keeler realized the stall had been deliberate. Thall did not want to give him time to ask a follow-up question. Thall again waited outside in the corridor while Keeler and Redfire underwent their exams.

  The medical examinations were conducted in a cold examination room by Doctor Vico, a stout middle-aged woman whom Keeler had not been entirely certain was a woman at all at first meeting. Doctor Vico had hands that shook alarmingly, particularly when she took their urine samples, and spoke in an odd drawling accent the LingoTron struggled with.

  Doctor Vico made Keeler lie on a cold bed whose well-worn cushion had been pressed flat as paper. She clamped one of his wrists and scowled at the readings her instrument was giving her. “Your heart is beating 28 times per minute,” she growled at Keeler.

  “Well, I’m kind of nervous,” Keeler replied.

  She continued scowling. “Is this heart rate normal for you?”

  “I think my normal heart rate is like 20, 21… something like that.” From there on, the examination became progressively less comfortable and more intrusive. Just as Keeler was beginning to feel like a Bountiful Harvest Day Turkiye, Doctor Vico announced that the exam was complete.

  Redfire rejoined them at this point, and Doctor Vico led them to a row of large devices that lined a corner of the room. “Put your hand on the pedestal, palm down,” she instructed.

  Keeler and Redfire did as they were told. Doctor Vico pressed a button on the side of the pedestal, and Keeler felt a brief sensation of something clamping to his hand. When he raised it, he saw a kind of sigil etched on the back.

  “What’s this for?”

  “Your recall trace,” Vico answered. “It is set to pull you (Yow) back to this (this-yuh) planet at the end of your journey. I have (Ah-vah) set it for three days (fuh three die-zuh).”

  Keeler did math in his head. Local days were 30.5 hours in length. He would be gone 91.5 hours.

  “The mark will be invisible for the first day. On the second, it will turn green. When it turns red, you have one day left,” she warned. “Time is different in the AfterWorld. So, you’ll want to pay attention.”

  “Will there be a Gateway for us to return through?” Redfire asked.

  “I was getting to that. We can get through this faster if you’ll stop interrupting me,” she huffed. “There is no Gateway in New Gethsemane. When it is time to recall you, a portal will open up within five meters of your position. It will be a circular area two meters wide and will have the appearance of a tunnel with a light on the distant side. Walk into the aperture.”

  “What if we miss it?” Redfire asked.

  “Then, you will remain in the Afterlife,” she said. “We will be unable to recall you.” Dr. Vico handed them off to Dr. Raman, another large woman, but at least this time, definitively a woman. Her responsibility was to prepare them spiritually for the journey ahead. She led them energetically down the hallway to a wing filled with chapels and prayer rooms.

  “You will want to make your peace with your personal godhead,” Raman said. “You go through this door. And you pray, and you pray, and you pray some more. Until you find a way to reach that far shore. Let the spirit come forth and pour…”

  “And two and two make four,” Keeler added. “If I had some marshmallows, I’d make a s’more. If I was drunk, I’d be on the floor…”

  She scowled at him.

  “What happens if I don’t believe in anything?” Keeler asked.

  “Non-believers do not appear in New Gethsemane,” Raman answered.

  “Where do they go?”

  Her body-language tightened. Keeler intuited that this was a topic no one on the planet cared to discuss. “We retrieved some… they were catatonic… and we were unable to bring them out of the catatonic state.” Her hard brown eyes fixed on him. “I hope you believe in something, Mr. Keeler.”

  She opened the door to let him in. The door closed, and Keeler was along in the prayer room. The room was small, not much larger than a closet. There was a kind of an altar with a trio of candles burning on it. Some kind of deep red velvety cloth was draped around it, edged with purple tassels.

  Keeler looked up toward the ceiling, because that’s where he supposed the Allbeing was. “Okay, God. I don’t like you and you don’t like me. But, I apparently have to work things out with you, man-to-Deity, so let’s talk.

  “You probably have figured out that I don’t really believe this is any kind of stairway to heaven. It’s not that I don’t believe in miracles. I just don’t believe humans can make miracles happen.

  “I want to see what this really is, and the only way for me to do that is to go through the gate for myself.”

  That’s really not why you’re here, a still, small voice said inside his head. Keeler angrily told it to mind its own business.

  “I do believe in You, or ‘Thou,’ I guess, so I want to make that perfectly clear from the get-go. I don’t know who Thou art, or why you doest some of the crazy things Thou doest, but I doeth know this Universe and my life in it can’t be accidents. So, I believeth in Thou.” He realized he was pacing the room. He paused for a moment, then began pacing again. “O.K. What else do people talk about when they pray? Sin! Sin, all right, everybody likes a little sin. What have I done, sin-wise speaking, that I should clear my conscience of?

  Um… hm… Adultery? Look at me. Do Thou think I ever even get a chance to commit adultery. Murder? I think I’ve only killed some Aurelians, and some freaks on EdenWorld… they don’t count. Um… what else? Um, mother, father, honored… check.

  Stealing? I’ve never really had to do that. Lying?”

  He paused for several long seconds. “Moving on… Um… let’s see… What else is a sin.

  There’s wrath, I guess. I think I’m a pretty mellow individual, except when the situation has called for me not to
be. And Thou art the one who putteth me into those situations. So, if I have been wrathful, it’s because you wanted me to be.” He was pointing his finger at the ceiling, and more specifically at the lighting fixture, whose luminescence had made it a reasonable standin for the Allbeing. But he realized that pointing at the Allbeing was rude, so he lowered his finger.

  He continued. “Lust? OK. You’ve got me there. But frankly, you filled my world and my ship with so many tantalizing morsels of femininity. I think it would have been a greater sin not to appreciate them. By the way, nice job on Hardcandy Banks,” Keeler gave the Allbeing (lamp) a thumbs-up.

  He tried to think of some more sins. “Pride? Well, all things considered, I’m a relatively humble and unassuming individual. So, I think I get a pass on that one…

  “Sloth? I don’t think that’s a real problem with me. Gluttony? Maybe, a little. OK, I’ll grant that one. So, I ask forgiveness for indulging my appetites too much.”

  “As for envy,… that’s not really a problem for me, since I am the object of other people’s envy.”

  He muttered to himself. “What else goes into a prayer? Some scripture I guess. Um…

  ‘The Lord is my co-pilot/And what else could I possibly need?/ He likes long walks on the beach and hates phonies/ He restores my soul/He gives good advice/ He makes me breakfast in the morning/ And when I’m walking through the Valley of Death, I’m afraid of nothing Yea! All right!/ The Holy gunslinger protects me in the hour of my need/ Surely goodness and mercy will be right there when I need it as long as I live./Later, I’ll crash at His Place./You bet. Amen.”

  And then, a thought came to him then. Unbidden. A memory. He must have been 14 or 15 years old. It was Christ-Solstice Mass, in the Holy Name Church in New Cleveland. He remembered the scene vividly. He remembered the altar and the high places in the chapel filled with candles. He remembered the church decked out in its holiday glory. He remembered the Holy Man reading from the Gospel of Matthew, a sheen of sweat on his shaved head.