2036 The Proof: A Thrilling Science Fiction Novel

by Speiser, Zvi

  The safe house in which he had been staying since he had left his home was smaller and more cramped. Not that his previous apartment had been roomy. On the contrary, it was tiny but comfortable. However, in light of the current circumstances, the apartment housing him now had justified its ongoing maintenance in a state of readiness over the last two years.

  The emergency gathering he had initiated was proving to be stressful. In addition to Takumi and Chinatsu, the regular cell members, on this occasion, for the first time in many years since the cell’s activity had commenced, the other local organization members were also scheduled to arrive. There were two of them: Professor Andrew Goldon, CEO of the BL Corporation, and Professor Paul Longstrom, the dean of the University of Chicago, neither of whom he had ever met.

  Aaron decided he would stand during the meeting, although there was a low stool in the apartment at his disposal. This time, he thought, he had to stand up and tower above Takumi and Chinatsu. It’s true, this was not in accordance with the protocol and decorum characterizing their meetings thus far. But this meeting was different than the ones that had preceded it for hundreds and thousands of years. This time, he had to fight for his opinion with all his might, even in the face of the fierce opposition he was expecting.

  The order of his presentation and its outline were clear to him. He had dedicated plenty of thought to the subject, examining and considering numerous details that came together in his mind to form one clear picture, and the more he delved into the latest developments, the firmer his conviction grew. Unlike his usual custom, he had not come up with any alternatives. His opinion must prevail.

  As in every meeting to date, at the appointed hour, on the dot, he heard a knock on the door. When he opened it, he saw Takumi standing alone. Aaron didn’t even bother to close the apartment door once Takumi entered the small living room. And indeed, one after the other, with only a few seconds separating one arrival from the next, Chinatsu walked in, followed by Professor Goldon, whose face Aaron recognized from various scientific publications, and finally by another man who had to be Professor Longstrom, and who was utterly unfamiliar to Aaron.

  Once everyone was sitting down, Chinatsu directed a commanding look at Aaron. This look conveyed two words: sit down. However, Aaron brazenly ignored it. It was clear that Takumi understood that Aaron was refusing to sit down. He, too, could see the low stool. No, Aaron would not be the first to speak. That would be a blatant, unnecessary violation of decorum. Takumi would quickly realize that he had to give in and would begin the meeting as usual. But he would surely think of some way to punish Aaron.

  Indeed, Takumi opened by saying, “Aaron has summoned us for an urgent meeting. He asked for full attendance by our members in Chicago. Currently present are myself, Takumi, Chinatsu, Goldon, and Longstrom.” He pointed at each member as he called his name. “Aaron has important things to say. We will allow him to do so.”

  Naturally, everything Aaron had learned by heart in order to remember it at the moment of truth evaporated and disappeared from his consciousness. The things he wanted to say were extremely harsh, especially for people who had dedicated decades of their lives to the cause, with no adequate compensation and with many sacrifices. Some of them had never established families, leading lonely, solitary lives. Their entire lives had been at the service of the organization. The words and sentences he had meticulously planned, statements creating a logical sequence, meant to explain and persuade, to change opinions grown rigid long ago, were all forgotten, vanished without a trace. Instead, he was swept up in the desire to call out, to roar like a deranged lion.

  Then, just a fraction of a second from the time the stage was given over to him—an interval that seemed to him like an hour in which he was standing silently—but long before the attendees could realize what he was going through, the orderly words and sentences returned to their proper place in his mind. The words floated in front of his eyes, large, shiny, and clear. Perhaps he didn’t even have to speak them. After all, surely they could see the words as well.

  “My entire life, beginning with my childhood, has been dedicated to one single goal. I did all I could for it, while risking myself and others. The last few days have been full of events that have led me to a terrible conclusion. A conclusion I’m having a hard time saying out loud. It feels like a betrayal of my very essence. But enough beating around the bush. I’m convinced that today, we must allow humanity to deal with reality. Cease all our underground activity. The flow of scientific discoveries arriving from the various fields of science can no longer be suppressed.”

  That’s it. The words had been said. Not as he’d planned them, without the extensive reasoning and logical analysis that had brought him to this extreme conclusion. But such a harsh conclusion could not be explained and justified calmly. He had to state it quickly and immediately once he began speaking, for fear he would be stricken by regret and retract it. Just like someone committing suicide by jumping from a high roof. There was no stopping. He just had to do the deed. No thinking.

  For a moment, he thought he might actually be committing suicide as well. He wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest if his blatant declaration of heresy before his companions on this long road had ended with a bullet from Takumi’s gun blowing his head to smithereens. Takumi always carried a weapon, after all.

  The utter silence in which his speech had been received surprised him. He had expected a sweeping assault from everyone present. He had expected them to throw decorum to the wind, and for the attendees to burst out in angry shouting, condemning him. But none of that happened. No voice was heard in the crowded room.

  For a moment, he wondered if someone had masked the sound of his voice. Perhaps they never even heard him. Perhaps he hadn’t even spoken out loud. Perhaps the intense pressure had made him imagine he was speaking, while in fact, his words had only echoed within the space of his skull, with the attendees still waiting for him to begin talking. Their eyes, focused upon him, did not shift in the slightest, their pupils remaining fixed.

  Then came the first confirmation that he had, indeed, spoken and been heard. The two professors exchanged looks and both nodded swiftly.

  Professor Longstrom’s hand was raised slowly, as if he considered every minute motion before carrying it out, and he said, “Professor Goldon and I support Aaron’s proposal.”

  Aaron couldn’t believe his ears. He had not thought, even for a moment, that anyone would agree with him, and certainly never dreamed that more than half of the members present supported his opinion. It turned out he was not alone. Others felt the way he did.

  All at once, he felt significantly better. He wondered what would happen now. The Guardians had never acted as a democracy. The sect was run as a complete dictatorship. Everything was determined from above. Everyone obeyed the instructions of the Leading Gentleman, with no hesitation or objection. This was how the Guardians had conducted themselves for thousands of years. No member dared question the authority of the Leading Gentleman. And this would be their conduct in the future, as well.

  His rebellion would be dealt with, one way or another. Or perhaps, if his speech truly had convinced the two professors, they might be able to convince the Leading Gentleman as well. Perhaps the sect was ready for its first essential change in the thousands of years it had been in existence. Could it be?

  And then Takumi and Chinatsu turned to look at each other. Their blank expressions revealed nothing of what was in their hearts. A nearly imperceptible nod, and they both rose to their feet simultaneously. This is it, the thought tore through Aaron’s mind. Takumi is about to draw his gun and shoot all of us. He was certainly capable of shooting everyone present in an instant.

  In his youth, Aaron had been present during Takumi’s target practice. The man was a virtuoso when it came to shooting a weapon. Aaron decided he would not run or try to fight. He had betrayed the cause, and betrayal necessitated
the gravest of punishments. He had known this when he summoned the meeting and was willing to bear the punishment.

  But then the strangest thing happened. Both of them turned and exited the room.

  No one else moved, and to Aaron it seemed as if none of them were breathing, either. The silence in the air could be cut with a sharp knife, or more accurately, hacked with an ax—it was that dense and hard. Hours seemed to go by until the silence, which had actually lasted only a few minutes, was interrupted by the ring of Professor Goldon’s assistant.

  It was impossible that the professor had forgotten to silence the assistant before the meeting. All of their assistant authorizations allowed only the most senior members of the organization to call at any time. Takumi must have called the Leading Gentleman, who was now calling Goldon. Aaron was very curious to know what was being said to Goldon, who listened intently for several seconds and then, much to Aaron’s surprise, replied in fluent Japanese before ending the conversation.

  There was no response to Aaron’s and Longstrom’s probing looks. Goldon continued to sit still, staring at the corner of the room. The silence was interrupted by a knock on the door, in the familiar code used by the Guardians. Aaron and Longstrom immediately turned their startled gazes to Goldon, who didn’t react at all, as if he had heard nothing. Aaron opened the door, letting in Takumi and Chinatsu, who returned to their seats quite naturally, as if nothing at all had happened.

  Apparently, everyone was trying to process what was going on. Why had the two returned? What would happen now? Takumi seemed uncomfortable in his chair. Aaron continued to stand, leaning against the kitchen counter. The air froze. A soft snapping of fingers was heard from Professor Goldon’s direction, causing everyone’s eyes to focus on him.

  The professor turned his gaze to Aaron, still standing, and then, in the deepest and most assertive voice Aaron had ever heard, he said two words: “Sit down.”

  Aaron sat down immediately. He had obeyed mindlessly, without hearing the command, processing it, deliberating whether to comply, and then deciding to do so. It seemed as if the command had gone straight to his legs, bypassing and skipping his brain.

  The professor’s sharp-eyed gaze appraised each of them until pausing on Takumi, whom he addressed in Japanese. Takumi’s face grew pale, to the extent that a Japanese man’s face can do so. Once the professor stopped speaking, Takumi rose slightly from his chair, brought his palms together and bowed to him respectfully. At that moment, Chinatsu joined him, bowing to the professor as well, before the two men returned to their seats.

  The cold, emotionless Takumi seemed truly shaken. His eyes darted back and forth as he surveyed each of the attendees in turn before stopping and fixing on Professor Goldon.

  Takumi then began, “The Leading Gentleman has guided the Guardians’ actions through me for many years now. Until this moment, I only knew his voice and had never actually met him. My friends, the Leading Gentleman is…Professor Andrew Goldon!”

  Everyone’s gazes instantly turned to the professor, whose eyes roamed between them leisurely. Aaron was stunned. He had heard so much about the Leading Gentleman, the figure who determined everything, and whose absolute authority was obeyed by all, with no objections. The one who shaped the sect’s activity worldwide and managed the organization’s massive resources. The one whom all the Guardians admired to the point of worship. At long last, the Leading Gentleman himself was sitting with them around a table in Aaron’s little safe house.

  Since joining the Guardians many years ago, he had only heard about the Leading Gentleman. At meetings, his opinion was often conveyed. His messages to the sect were read, usually focusing on encouraging his people to stick to their difficult and unrewarding path, as this was the ultimate dictum that they must obey. They were instructed to do all they could to ensure the success of their task, just as the Guardians had done for many generations.

  In Aaron’s imagination, he had pictured the Leading Gentleman as a tall man with fierce black eyes, so that anyone who encountered his gaze would be enchanted, carrying out whatever he was tasked with accomplishing. He always wore a light-colored suit. Perhaps that was why Aaron himself liked to wear light-colored suits as well. Perhaps, deep inside, he wanted to resemble the Leading Gentleman. This was a troubling yet interesting possibility.

  During his first years in the sect, he had been keen to meet this admired personality. He often thought that if only he had gotten to meet the Leading Gentleman, this highly respected man he had never seen and whose name he never knew, face-to-face, even for a brief meeting lasting no more than several minutes, all his problems would be solved at that instant.

  But his many years of service, along with growing older, diminished his yearning, which became an aspiration and a distant, unattainable dream, the kind to which people cleave during moments of crisis. The kind of dreams that are accessed in order to suppress disturbing thoughts and unsolvable distress.

  And now, unbelievably and inconceivably, the Leading Gentleman himself, in the flesh, was sitting across from him, in his tiny apartment. For some reason, he had been certain that the Leading Gentleman was Japanese in origin and in appearance, although, of course, much taller. But the man facing him was a slender Westerner, an utter contrast to the fantasy. However, the man possessed great power, expressed in the way he had seated him instantly, despite his deliberate decision not to sit down.

  Professor Goldon was an extraordinary man indeed. Or perhaps that wasn’t even his real name? His thoughts drifted to the Better Life Corporation—or- as the public knew it, BL—founded fifteen years ago by Professor Andrew Goldon, who had also served as its CEO throughout this time. Initially a small, obscure company, it had expanded at record speed to the point where it had established itself as the leading pharmaceutical company worldwide, with sales over $200 billion a year.

  BL didn’t focus on cures for specific illnesses, but rather on drugs and treatments to strengthen the immune system as a whole, to balance the body’s various systems, and to regenerate tissue and return the body’s systems to their original healthy state, with none of the negative residue accumulating in the body over years and disrupting its optimal function. BL built upon the old saying that had been common toward the end of the twentieth century, “Sixty is the new forty,” taking it one step forward to “Ninety is the new fifty.”

  The products generating most of the company’s income were CardioBoost, to regenerate heart tissue; LungBoost, to rejuvenate the lungs; and the most popular of them all, PlaqueDissolve, which melted the layers of residue coating blood vessels, returning them to their original suppleness and volume once more.

  Most of BL’s products had been developed behind a thick wall of secrecy. The exception was a product that had yet to be approved for use, and which was intended to return the muscle tone of anyone taking it to a youthful state, without the need for exhausting physical exercise. The rumor mill, apparently fueled intentionally, promised that taking one pill a day, along with a healthy diet, would lead to shedding any excess weight and developing the kind of muscles normally requiring an hour-long, rigorous daily workout. The comments on the pertinent websites immediately inquired whether two, three, or four pills a day were equivalent to the same number of rigorous workout hours. Once people were freed of physical exercise, they immediately aspired to Mr. Universe-type muscles.

  The more Aaron thought about it, the harder it seemed to explain BL’s meteoric rise. The financial gossip columns had also often hinted at mammoth investments whose origin was unknown, despite plenty of efforts to uncover it. BL was the largest Western private company in the world. Despite its scope, the company did not reveal its profit-and-loss balances or any other data. Its shareholders were straw companies registered in various tax shelters. On this front as well, despite repeated, costly efforts, investigators were unable to discover anything about the source of the funds. Occasionally, usually following so
me prominent success achieved by one of the corporation’s products, various investigators would increase their efforts, leading to a plethora of rumors regarding the origin of the funds. The rumors were quite diverse in the range of possibilities they covered, from laundered drug money and unknown oil tycoons, to the claim that Professor Goldon’s physicist brother had developed a lucrative process for producing quality synthetic diamonds in commercial quantities.

  Apparently, he was not the only one caught by surprise. All of the attendees’ expressions wavered between astonishment and deep respect, although, here and there, there were also looks of disbelief. Apparently, the others had also expected a different sort of figure than the slight professor. It seemed to Aaron as if a long time had passed since the surprising declaration, an interval in which everyone held their breath, and which had not been interrupted by even the slightest of murmurs. Then, for the first time since the command that had seated him so quickly, the professor began to talk.

  “Aaron said everything I had intended to say. The Guardians have been successfully active for 3,348 years, during which we’ve concealed findings and made sure to divert humanity’s attention to the various religions. We didn’t interfere, and didn’t shape the believers’ faith. Any religion was fine with us, as indeed they all were initially. We observed and reluctantly accepted those religions whose paths grew warped over time, terrible religions that led to millions of people being murdered in their name.

  “Our mission was clear. We were not tasked with educating people. We were tasked with preventing certain revelations, or more accurately postponing them for as long as possible, and this is what we have done through the ages. We did so discreetly, without focusing attention on ourselves.

  “People worshipped these gods or others, and were satisfied with the answers provided by religion. Blind faith was the answer to the difficult questions that popped up every once in a while. However, our original mission had a clearly defined ending, and today, this condition is fulfilled. A new religion has taken form. It’s called science. No more consecrated beliefs that cannot be questioned, passed down from generation to generation. Religion is no longer accepted as the absolute, exclusive means of understanding our world.