by Mike Luoma
Uh-oh…
She shakes her head.
“This won’t do at all,” she says to herself more than BC. “I was your alibi,” she says to BC. She looks at the boy. “His name is Alibi,” she says, with an air of some sort of satisfaction. The boy has his mother’s big brown eyes. He looks up at BC, but stays quiet.
Alibi? Oh My God! Kim’s daughter! Ruth?
“Ruth!”
Kim said she was dead!
“You remember!” she exclaims, and a weird smile creeps across her face.
“I thought you were dead! Your father told me you had died!” BC remembers that Kim himself is dead, now. “I’m sorry about your father,” he tells her.
She frowns, and then looks down at the ground at her feet.
“You should be sorry,” she says. She looks back up at BC. “You have lots and lots to be ‘sorry’
for, BC!” she tells him, practically spitting out the word “sorry”.
“You ruined my father… my family! My faith! My home, my world… my life! You bastard!” She stares eye to eye at him as she finishes. The boy at her side begins fidgeting, whimpering softly. BC sees frenetic energy dancing in her eyes as she lectures him. There is a weird edge to her voice, a strange chaotic craziness.
I don’t think she’s all there anymore! She seems off…
“I… what can I say, Ruth?” BC tries to sound calm and reassuring.
She’s lost it… she’s not right! How do I call security without freaking her out?
“Nothing,” she answers him. She looks down again. One of her hands still holds the hand of the boy, the other is inside of her coat.
I thought she was holding it closed…
“What about the boy?” BC has to ask.
She looks up at BC, and then down at the boy. She bends down to talk to the boy face to face.
“Al? This man is your Daddy. Alibi, meet your father. This is Bernard Campion,” she says, and she and the boy both look up at BC. She straightens up.
Is she sick? Holding her stomach?
“Are you okay?” BC asks her. She ignores his question and begins to lecture him again.
“You’ve done a lot of bad things, BC,” Ruth tells him. “And I’m not talking now about what you did to me and my family and Fortune Station. I’m talking,” she looks down, and then back up at him,
“about the things my father told me about you. He told me all about you, BC. All the killing, the horrible things you’d done.” She shakes her head. “And now I see you all over the news. They’re all saying such great things, such nice things about you, but none of it is true! Leader of the free world! And I’ve seen you with that woman…” she trails off and looks back down at the floor. She glances at the boy and then looks back at BC. “Rumors say you two are getting married, is that right?” she asks in an accusatory tone.
“Well, I don’t know about that, we haven’t even talked about it,” BC says defensively.
“You’re a bad man, BC!” she says angrily. She glares at him as she raises her voice. “You don’t… Good things should not happen to you! You don’t deserve any of it!” Her eyes burn into his.
“I’ve tried to make up for the bad,” BC tells her. “I’ve tried to do good things! I’ve saved the human race! That’s gotta count for something,” he insists.
“You were lucky,” she reasons, “lucky to be in the right place at the right time. You were lucky, not repentant. Have you repented? Really? I don’t think so! You haven’t atoned for your sins!” Ruth says, a quavering edge to her voice, a hint of panicky excitement.
“Are you judging me, then?” BC asks her defensively. “Maybe I’ve made up for what I’ve done. I did it all in the name of God, anyway!”
“You don’t believe that! Do you?” Ruth challenges him. “You never did, did you? Neither do I!
You did it because it was fun! You didn’t really believe in what you were doing!”
How true is that? It is sorta true, on some level, to some degree, isn’t it?
Where is my security?
“I was an instrument of God,” BC tells her, but his words ring hollow in his own ears.
“You were judge, jury and executioner,” Ruth tells him. She fixes her eyes on BC’s. “And so am I.”
She breaks her gaze. Ruth looks down at the boy.
“This is your son,” she says, lifting her hand holding the boy’s. Her other hand comes out of her jacket holding a .38 pistol. “And this is a gun.” She pulls the trigger.
BANG!
There is a stunned silence. Ruth has just shot BC in the stomach.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
BC is on his back, on the floor of the church, and his stomach is on fire. She shot me!
The boy is crying loudly, his shrieking and sobbing filling the air like a human alarm siren. BC
hears the gun hit the ground beside him, hears shouting in the distance – but everything is echoing. She shot me in the gut… that’s not good!
He blinks. He sees Ruth standing next to the crying boy. She stares off blankly into space, arms hanging limply at her sides.
The world begins to move in slow motion. BC watches his security officers rush up behind Ruth. One grabs her in a secure hold, pinning her arms and rushing her off. The other one leans over BC, kneels beside him.
“Priiiiime Rep-re-sen-ta-tive!”
He’s yelling, but to BC it sounds distorted and slowed down. BC tries to listen to him.
“Is that me?” BC wonders out loud. He feels like sleeping. His stomach really hurts. On fire. Why can’t I move?
“Stay with me, Prime Representative!” the man yells.
But BC sees the walls fall away and finds himself in a gray place, floating on a still calm silent sea.
He’s floating away. Floating up, away from his body. Floating across the still calm sea. Floating. Away.
The voice of love speaks.
YOU JUST NEVER KNOW, DO YOU?
I can hear you again? Jesus? Or… since that name’s been abused... is it… Ted?
HA! YOU REMEMBER! STILL HAVE YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR, DO YOU? THAT’S
GOOD! NAMES ARE NOT IMPORTANT.
I knew you weren’t Dolomay. He’s dead.
YES. HE IS. AND HE IS NOT ME.
BUT NOW, YOU ARE.
Wait… I am? I’m you? You mean this is it?
THIS IS IT.
ARE YOU WITH ME?
Yeah…
I’m with you.
Epilogue
From the First Address to the Solar Alliance Congress by Prime Representative Anita Capituna. This was her first public appearance after her election in November of 2112.
“…I cannot finish today without mentioning the man who isn’t here with us today, a man I grew to love, despite his many faults, Bernard Campion. Leader. Pope. Assassin. Scoundrel. And a man with a very big heart.
“None of us would even be here today without him, even though he would never have chosen to lead us. There’s a Shakespeare quote from “Twelfth Night” about those who have greatness thrust upon them: “…be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Actually, in the context of the play itself, it’s not a very flattering quote really, when you analyze its origins. But BC wouldn’t want us flattering him anyway. He would have admitted himself that any greatness of his was certainly thrust upon him.
“I have to tell you all… I didn’t want to be the one up here today. I never thought I’d have to be. I was sure that when we reached this point that it would be him up here in front of you, addressing you on a day like this. He earned the right to be up here. He tried to make up for his past… thanks to the media’s digging in the last few weeks since his death, we’re all well aware of Bernard Campion’s digressions. We all know what his faults were.
“But he rallied us, all humanity, to face the Eldred, even after they had tried to wipe us out with their disease. Even as they assaulted us hea
d on. He made sure we stood up to them. And he made sure we won.
“Humanity survived. And now we reach for the stars, united by our humanity. Bernard Campion had a lot to do with getting us here with his vision for the Solar Alliance. I am proud to be a part of carrying out that vision, or carrying on where he left off, a vision that is helping to carry us into the stars.
“We are joining the greater interstellar community of races that travel among the stars not as a reborn version of the Ancient Enemy but as a friend, an ally, a trading partner, a force for good among the alien races who now seek to find their way among the stars without the ‘guidance’ of the Eldred.
“Truly, we should mourn the demise of the Eldred. But how much? Their’s was a race whose time had come and gone. They held the interstellar community in a kind of stasis for a million years, much as they held on to Dolomay. Perhaps it was their time to move on.
“But I don’t want to dwell on the past. We have too much to do. Too much of the future to build to keep looking back. I wish BC was here to help us build that future. Because it is thanks to him that we even have a future to build.
“I have heard the voices of those who would write him off, who say his past just caught up with him, that he died as he lived. I can only hope for their own sakes that their pasts never catch up with them!
“For my part, I will treasure the good that BC did as I try to do my part to help lead us into the future he envisioned. I thank you all for your faith in me to carry us forward.”
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three