* * *
Lights flashed as I moved toward the sound of a blaring klaxon. Lindz was already downstairs, having run across the gangplanks and catwalks suspended over a wide room housing equipment on a scale that would have seemed large to giants.
Whatever team manned the day to day operation of the pump station was gone. Fluorescent strips arranged in linear patterns lined the floor and walls. They were placed as a visual guide towards the doors and exits, rather than for illumination.
Lindz pulled a chain off a large metal wheel. She put some muscle into it. With a rusty creak the wheel spun.
“Do you even know what you are doing?” I shouted over the klaxon.
“These are turbines.” She nodded at the machine attached to the wheel. Pipes like ten foot tall aorta ran through it. “I saw six on this floor. They run the water through this plant to generate electricity before sending it back upstream and repeating the process.”
“How—”
“I read, Pops.”
“What do you hope to accomplish? They can just turn them on again in the morning.”
“I’m not turning them off.”
Already I could hear the turbines whirring, gaining momentum. Dry heat rose from the machines.
“We let the water run free. With no one to monitor the turbines, they will meltdown.”
“And what happens then?”
Lindz didn’t say anything, but instead caught my eye for the briefest of seconds and ran to the wheel on the adjacent turbine. She didn’t need to say more.
“We need to get out of here,” I said.
“Not until I finish.”
Pettray’s voiced boomed over the P.A. “Harl, you dirty dog. You need to stop.”
Lindz looked up just long enough to acknowledge she heard, but didn’t allow the interruption to slow her down.
“Pettray!” I shouted. “Stay out of this!”
Could he even hear me?
I doubted it. Who would equip a pump station with microphones? Sure, closed circuit cameras to see. But microphones to hear?
“I don’t know what you hope to accomplish,” said Pettray, “but this is going to seriously queer our arrangements.”
The roaring whir of the spinning turbines drowned out Pettray and the repetitive drone of the klaxon.
“If you come out now, The BelleTrade Company has promised me that no more harm will come to you or your daughter.”
“They’re lying,” I said.
“Well, duh!” said Lindz, not breaking stride as she ran to the next turbine.
“It’s a good deal, Harl. You should consider it.” Static crackled. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The PA hissed, and Pettray was gone.
I felt a metal clank more than heard it. Adrenaline coursed through my veins. I knew what the sound belonged to.
“Lindz. We have to go.”
She snapped at me, “I told you—”
I grabbed her forearm and yanked her toward me. I looked up at the catwalk overhead. She followed my gaze.
On it, several tons worth of combat reinforced metal carrying plasma rifles marched across. The security bots footsteps were almost completely drowned out by the high pitched whine of the turbines.
“We have to go,” I said.
Lindz’s gaze lingered on the security bots so long that it made me nervous. I don’t know what was going through her mind, but we didn’t have time to hesitate. We needed to move. Now!
“Lindz,” I said shaking her arm. “Go. Now.”
She nodded.
I climbed up the metal catwalk taking the stairs two at a time, bee-lining for the door we had entered from.
I reached back to let Lindz run ahead of me.
Only she wasn’t there.
She was at the last turbine, removing the chain from the large metal wheel. Putting all her weight into a rusty wheel that refused to give.
The security bots were closing in on her location. She was out in the open. Exposed. They’d see her for sure.
“Lindz!” I shouted.
The security bots turned at the sound of my voice, raised their weapons, and fired.
I leaped out of the exit, as red particle blasts tore chunks from concrete. The night air sent a chill down my spine. Heat radiated in waves from the engine room.
I lined up at the edge of the exit, trying to get a better view inside. To see Lindz. To make sure she made it out.
An explosion threw me from the catwalk. Debris rained on all sides as I tumbled down the side of building.
I landed hard. Spitting sand, I climbed to my feet, watching in horror.
A loud groan drew my attention to the left cylinder. I couldn’t tell what was happening, but something was definitely wrong.
And then I saw it.
The left cylinder was listing, teetering back and forth, grinding against the side of the building.
I was suddenly aware how small I was.
Powerless. An ant standing at the base of a blade of grass. A man in front of his maker.
Like a wounded monster in the throes of death, the cylinder screeched into the night and across the Owens Valley, before tossing its mass to the ground and kicking up a monsoon of dust.
A wall of water rushed from the gaping wound in the building. At its base, a bone dry riverbed soaked up the incoming flood, providing mere suggestion with which to travel rather than an actual route.
Water, free flowing, sloshed back and forth, swelling at the edges, and tumbling over itself, becoming a living thing, a raging beast surging toward the city.
I felt wetness on my cheek. Only this wasn’t from the pump station.
Lindz had done it.
In her first visit to Los Angeles, she had done it.
She had made a difference.
A Word from J.E. Mac
J.E. Mac is a SciFi writer that fled Los Angeles for the shores of Maui.
His story “Drought” chronicles his life in Los Angeles.
Wait, sorry… That’s not right. Let me check my notes. Okay, so “Drought” is about a future Mad Max-esque desert wasteland where two warring corporations screw over the populace in the pursuit of profit. A father and daughter get caught in the middle of the power struggle.
Tomato, to-mah-to.
J.E. Mac screws up his own author bio sometimes. Also, if you love Blade Runner-esque noir detective stories and adorable six year old girl robots, check out his Damaged Good series.
http://www.amazon.com/J.E.-Mac/e/B00OBSPMY6/
The Elissiad
by Asha Bardon
What if Hannibal and his elephants had crossed the Alps and destroyed Rome, making Carthage into a new Eternal City? Now Carthage is home to two aliens stranded on Earth, who have adopted the personas of the native gods in order to repair their vessel—while uplifting humanity in the process. Welcome to the day Carthage learns the truth about their gods.
Sing, O Muse, of the gods Tanit and Baal,
who descended from heaven
and raised their adopted children from chaos
into the eternal peace of Carthage.
Sing, O Daughter of Memory,
of the fall of this once great city,
through mortal strife and the gods’ hubris
and all that came after.
— From The Elissiad
TANIT SAT BACK from the holographic projector, glad the temple services were done for the day. The projection had cast her in a human form, not her normal Other self; human mythology said the gods walked in their image and she and her beloved Baal were definitely not human. It tired her, the facade of pretense and she rued the decision made long ago, certain now it was a terrible error on her part, justified by need and survival.
She poured water from a jug and sat back, drinking deep. Her long robes clung to her skin, moving like silk but heavy as linen and she was glad of the temperature-controlled chambers in their ship. Down on the planet below there was a heatwave and the peop
le were suffering, even in the enlightened, air-conditioned temple of Carthage.
As was her tradition, Tanit had blessed those mortals who came to her, accepted their offerings of the deceased children whose genome could be sequenced to better understand this strange species. She had healed those who were merely sick, raining down light and nanobots upon then, delighting in the joy of the parents as their offspring were restored.
She had taken the odd child in the frenzy, altered one or two whose family heritage would make them useful to her in later life, before returning them to their progenitors before the conclusion of the service. They looked the same but were subtly changed, allowing her to see through their eyes and hear through their ears.
The parents had praised her name, but all, it seemed, was not well in the Eternal City of Carthage.
“Attis!” She called out to her son, born of her experiments in genetic engineering and her own flesh, an amalgam of human and Other though he was more human than either she or Baal ever could be. “Son of mine, come as I call.”
He looked human but had the agelessness of his mother, and his curling, fair hair hid the nubs of horns, ones usually found on a nearly-adult bull calf. It was a mistake in the genetic sample, a muddling of the blood and bones offered up to during the first days, when the humans still believed animal sacrifice would please them. That continued to bother her, though it wasn’t something Tanit could fix until the next time they decided to craft a boy to bridge the gap—if they ever did.
Attis’ horns reminded her of the stories of the Lord of Earth, Iskander, whom legend said was born with spiraling ram’s horns. Maybe they weren’t the first of their kind to stumble on this world, or at least to mix the bloodlines into a mortal being?
The deformity marked Attis as god-touched and he wished only to pass among the humans who called his mother goddess and his father shepherd. So he hid them as best he could and pretended. They, on the other hand, could not hide themselves, despite their numerous gifts, and it made Attis a valuable gatherer of information. The idea to create him, a go-between, had been one of her better ones even if it had cast her son in an unenviable position.
“Mother?”
“There are words written in blood across the city. I have seen it through the eyes of the people. What make you of these seditious words?”
He shrugged. “The raving of madmen. Little more. The Mithraic cult spreading malcontent and histrionics in the name of their bull-slaying lord.”
“Would you walk through the city streets? Witness this cult of warriors and come back to me with what you find?”
“Do you fear them, mother?” Attis asked.
“No,” she replied, face a mask of calm. “But this is one of the few religious movements not to cede to our control. The cults of Ishtar, of Isis, of Attis and Cybele—they found familiarity in our rule and peace followed. These Warriors of Mithras are a danger simply because they see, granted eyes by something even we don’t know.”
“You could reveal yourself? Not through some hologram or worship tinged with the bliss of incense and ecstasy, but walk Carthage as I have done. You could tell them of the world you called home long before arriving here.”
“Son, they are not ready.” Baal spoke, appearing from a corridor. “Their minds are so small, so weak. It will take centuries before their focus widens, before they look up and see gas balls where they now see stories, creatures and monsters placed in the heavens by greater powers and feared gods.”
Tanit reached out to touch her son’s face. Her limbs were longer than a human’s, the skin paler with more digits, her face totally unlike anything a human would recognise. She seemed in that moment to be as ageless as she appeared; but though she might pretend to be immortal, her race was simply longer lived than humanity. She would die, one day, long after Carthage fell to dust and her own name passed into history.
“We disrupted this people and ushered them into peace. We’ve lied to them, for our own ends and so penance must be made. I will not let anything prevent that. We’ve become their guardians, even if they don’t realise it.”
“I understand, Mother,” Attis replied. “I’ll go into the city, speak with Priestess Barca and discover what I can.”
“You are a good boy, Attis.”
* * *
The Son of Heaven, Tanit’s most beloved,
Crafted from clay by Her own hand,
Walked the streets in search of wisdom
And his Mother’s own priestess, Hannibal’s many-times daughter,
Such a task, ordained by Heaven, was his downfall.
— From The Elissiad
The city-folk leaked from the temple, people meandering from the building like flood water deciding its own path across flat ground. Another few hours and the sun would hit the dome, make it shine like it was made of mirrored mosaic stone. Most were still ecstatic, partly from the incense, partly from the sight of Tanit. Even Elissa herself wasn’t immune and could feel the love—the joy—from the Queen of Heaven as She smiled down upon them, washing over them like a balm.
The magic had melded light into Her form, casting Her appearance down upon the temple floor so she appeared to walk among them, real and yet clearly unsullied by the presence of mortal taint. Tanit wore Carthaginian clothes, hair cascading over a face the colour of any woman of the city. She moved like a spirit, but her power healed, her smile calmed. She had come as a benefactor, a maternal figure, and the Carthaginians loved Tanit for Her compassion and grace.
Artists had tried to render Tanit on coins, naming Her patroness of the Eternal City and affording Her all honours and devotion, but nothing could quite catch the Queen of Heaven’s true likeness, nothing forged by mortal hands. Her avatar always left the worshippers touched by Her presence, ensuring a peace in the city that was passed from person to person like an infection.
But it hadn’t begun with Her.
Rather, Hannibal Barca had crossed the Alps and crushed the fabled city of Rome. They had taken the bread and left the circuses. The Barca dynasty had offered homes to the engineers and all the people left behind, to craft a better place, a wiser city.
Generations later they had a unique capital blessed by the gods. The revelation, the gods arrival, had come only fifty years after Hannibal went to the afterlife and saw the city into a new age of prosperity. Suddenly Carthage had become the centre of the known world, god-blessed by magics unknown to any other people and a powerful peace which sank deeper than the Pax Romana ever could.
Elissa went into the rooms behind the temple, removing her clerical robes and vestments. She unpinned her hair and enjoyed the feeling of the fan fixed to the ceiling, gently whup-whupping as it rotated without the need for someone to turn a crank. Rome was responsible for so much, for hot water and aqueducts, but Tanit had brought them electricity and lamps, common comforts which had raised their lives from bitter struggle to something better.
The incense clung to her skin and followed her as she walked outside, through courtyards and miniature gardens. She breathed in fresh air and tasted the newborn day on her tongue. The city was moving like a living creature, a flower opening to daylight. Carthage was called the Eternal City for good reason. It endured; the sea sustained it, the pilgrims brought wealth in which the city revelled. The gods, Mother Tanit and Father Baal, had truly blessed this land.
Yet, as was the case in any city, not everything was perfect. Even the smoothest skin could be stained by scars and so Hannibal’s City had it’s own tribulations that only the keen-eyed could see. There had been wars and times of disquiet before the gods descended from on high, even now there were still those who craved chaos and a shift in the status quo. She was trained to see it, what others might simply ignore and this morning malcontent had once again reared up like a woken snake, hood back and waiting to strike.
Graffiti, red blood turned brown in the hours since it was daubed, decorated a pristine limestone wall near the temple, probably from a bull, they liked the
symbolism. The Warriors of Mithras, the only banned cult to continue its blasphemy within the city walls, had struck again.
The blasphemy was simple: talk of the fall of the Eternal City, abandoned by the fickle ‘gods’ who had uplifted the land. They said the Tanit was no deity, that only Mithras could save the misguided people tempted into falsehood and that Tanit’s half-blooded abomination would be the lynchpin in Carthage’s downfall. He was the bull and they would slay him.
Elissa was familiar with the prophecies, it was a part of her role as priestess to know as much about the various faiths and the prophecies transcribed by oracles. Goddesses and gods of legend often had half-human children and Son of Gods popped up often in the old tales.
Most recently, scholars and theologians had attributed that moniker to Iskander, who lived and died centuries before the founding of the city and its transcension. But Iskander, regardless of the legends about his divine parentage, was just a mortal. He was a passionate creature but one of flesh and bone and blood; he lived and he died, unable to rule the empire he created.
He was nothing more, if you listened to Mithras’ Warriors, than an upstart from Macedonia obsessed with power who had tried to bind the whole planet under his rule only to perish half way through his allotted days. With him gone to his grave, Iskander’s empire quickly sundered and was divided amongst his human lieutenants.
Only the land of Egypt, a free province as bountiful and open, as accepting, as Carthage itself, remaining outside of Tanit’s embrace, even if they recognised their own forms of Mother Goddess and Father God.
The graffiti though, it spoke of someone new. She shuddered and tried to dismiss the idea of discord. Such a thing was infectious; so many leaders had been felled by greatness and the duplicity of their followers. The Warriors of Mithras were not a particularly violent cult, merely a pesky and vocal one which claimed their Lord was the one and true.
Alt.History 102 (The Future Chronicles) Page 18