by S. L. Duncan
Gabe watched his father stare into the glass case. He seemed to be feeling the loss of Carlyle and his Essene traditions more than ever. “Is there no other way?”
“I’m sorry; there isn’t,” Dr. Nathan answered. “But you don’t really need to worry. We’ve nearly mastered this technique.”
“Nearly?”
“It isn’t a perfect science, but our success rate is about—”
Gabe’s father held up his hand. “I don’t want to know. Just do what you have to do.”
Dr. Nathan locked the case into the machine’s examination bay and closed a steel door, sealing it inside.
“This is a variation of the multispectral imaging developed by NASA to study the surface of planets. Cool, huh?”
Gabe’s father didn’t reply.
Dr. Nathan continued, “A bunch of scientists at my alma mater’s Institute for the Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts, or ISPART—we actually used to call it ‘I far—’” He stopped, catching a cold look from Gabe’s father. “Anyway, we used the technology of that study and applied it to the study of ancient carbonized scrolls. The MSI was able to look at these texts in different spectrums of light and find the reflective and metallurgic properties of ink used to write on the papyrus, and thus, we were able to record the text’s content even when the writing was invisible to the naked eye. Which is great for a single piece of manuscript. But not so great for books that could no longer be separated into individual pages. Much like the problem you have here with this work.”
Dr. Nathan worked a computer, entering parameters and instructions into the machine. It came to life in with a powerful hum. “So we developed additional technology to compensate for such an issue. Now we use a 3-D imaging laser in combination with the infrared and ultraviolet components to see into the body of the manuscript by having those MSI components, or spectral detectors, piggyback a ride on the laser. Then we adjust the focal point of the laser-line scanner and microprofilometer to account for the depth of the specific page of the manuscript. Now we can read an entire book without ever opening the cover. Similar laser focal technology has been adapted for the surgical removal of tumors in cancer patients. Prevents the risk and the mess of invasive surgeries, you know?”
“And this destroys the documents?” Joseph asked.
“The laser, unfortunately, effectively burns through each layer the deeper we go. Shouldn’t take too long. Some of the documents will require some additional assembly. Pages this old tend to break and combine. Sentences and words get jumbled up. That might take some time.”
Gabe watched the machine get up to speed, as Dr. Nathan monitored his instruments. All this way to find this document, and our future falls into the hands of technology. Mankind, left to its own devices. Literally.
An hour later, Dr. Nathan entered the office they were using as a makeshift waiting room. “Mr. Adam?” Dr. Nathan said. He sounded like a medical doctor about to give bad news. “It’s done. We’ve recovered all that we were able.”
He handed over an electronic tablet.
Gabe’s father sat up. “What’s the prognosis?”
“The document suffered water damage at some point in time. Combined with the neglect of storage for what looks like a great portion of its life, it caused the ink to bleed and thus lose much of the distinctive qualities that separated it from the paper. This proved troublesome for the instrument.”
Joseph moved his finger across the home screen of the tablet, and a series of pages loaded.
“It is all rendered in full 3-D. Very easy to navigate,” said Dr. Nathan.
“Is there a place I can go for some privacy to study these,” Joseph asked.
“My office is at your disposal. Stay as long as needed.” He pointed to the room separated from the laboratory by a large window. Two men stood behind the glass, armed with machine guns. “The Swiss Guard, however, insist they must keep either you or the tablet secure.”
“Certainly.”
Dr. Nathan nodded. He looked worried. “What’s in the document? It’s one of those change everything you know about the world, pigs are actually flying kind of things, isn’t it?”
Joseph stood. He remained somber.
“Just great,” Dr. Nathan said, catching the hint. “Perfect timing. Twenty years in school, bullied by everyone above me, and now it’s finally cool to be the smart kid. And here you are, desperate to read an ancient text, looking like the world is about to end.”
Gabe looked away, afraid making eye contact with the doctor might give something away.
Micah also shifted, her gaze dropping to her shoes as if she too were hiding something.
Dr. Nathan noticed. “Oh. Shit. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“Have a little faith, Doctor,” Gabe’s father finally said. “It may be all we’ve got.”
CHAPTER SIX
Micah and Gabe waited while Joseph worked diligently in silence. For longer than an hour, he’d been staring at the three-dimensional display, as if he were trying to solve a riddle that had him beat. The image popped from the tablet’s screen, projected as if the pages were there, floating in space. Joseph held up his hand, letting the two cameras hidden at the bottom of the screen capture the motion, which looked as though he were turning a page. The digital image of The Apocalypse of Solomon leaf lifted and folded over. As he went through the pages, he furiously scribbled in a notebook.
“The manuscript is not unlike other gnostic or ancient texts I’ve read,” he finally said. “It seems to be divided into five books.” He quickly cycled through the images on the screen.
Micah leaned in for a closer look. “Chapter headings?”
Joseph nodded. “In a way.”
Gabe noticed the indented space and what looked like a title above the words.
“There’s so much missing,” his father said, pointing to the great empty spaces in the digital image. “And some of these aren’t even words. Probably a mixture of letters from two or three different pages, compressed and bled together over the years.”
“Anything that will help us?” Gabe asked.
“Possibly. The first book, The Book of Angels, seems to tell of the histories of the archangels and the birth of the demons. There are similar accounts in documents such as The Book of the Watchers, which was a popular noncanonical book. Yet this telling is far more detailed. Mastema’s story, in particular. And he seems to be cast in a sympathetic light. At least from what I can gather. But on the whole, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”
There were more large gaps of missing data clearly visible on the screen as Joseph waved his arms and skipped ahead to another chapter heading.
“The second book, The Book of War, retells the story of the First War between Heaven and Hell. This story doesn’t differ from the other ancient apocalyptic texts, but the style and language suggest it is older, predating the books that most famously recall these events. This is the most complete chapter, and again, it provides us with nothing new.”
He cycled through more images of ancient pages.
“The Book of Peace, the third book, was very enlightening and very new. In it, the specifics of the accord reached in the First War are given.”
Gabe remembered his time in Durham when Enoch, the immortal Steward of the Earth, had visited him and spoken briefly of this treaty—an unsteady understanding that the Earth realm and the two realms humans understood as Heaven and Hell would forever be separated.
“It also speaks of free will given to mankind. That free will seems to be connected somehow to control over the Earth realm.”
“Septis mentioned something like that,” Gabe said. “Like we no longer deserved the realm because of all the bad stuff.”
Micah turned to him, as did his father, eager to hear more. In his mind’s eye, that moment in Axum came rushing back. Gabe thought he smelled the metallic scent of blood, as he had that day. His skin crawled as the images appeared: the demon dressed in black, the rivers o
f blood flowing in the street. The inescapable knowledge that it all was about to end.
“He sounded like a lawyer or something,” Gabe said. “Talking about rights to the realm becoming theirs because humans had chosen war and greed with their free will.”
“That seems to be where this text was going. A contractual limit of sorts. As if control and access to this realm is governed by some cosmic pendulum swinging from light to dark. And once it swings all the way to the dark, ownership shifts and a convergence begins. At least, that’s what I’m guessing. There is also mention of the veil between realms, but the text is in very bad shape. This, however, may explain how the enemy is slipping into this realm without having to be born to it. There are cracks between the walls, it seems, caused by our own hate.”
His arm waved again, and the pages turned.
“And here is where our luck runs out,” he said, pointing to the image. The beginning of the chapter on the screen was missing much from of its text. “The last two books require the most scrutiny for interpretation: The Book of Parables and The Book of Prophesies. This would have been where Carlyle’s Essene training would have guided us. With much of the actual text missing, and without an understanding of the meaning of these books, we’re left with only disconnected clues.
“The parables in the third book are four stories set in an animal world. My guess is the animals are symbolic of the archangels. Though it is unclear which archangel pertained to which animal story, it seems the stories are meant to foretell the individual role each archangel would assume during the End of Days.”
“If there’s a sloth in it,” Micah said, punching Gabe in the shoulder. “That’ll be you.”
Gabe laughed, thankful that for the most part, the cloud of Yuri murdering the only parent she’d ever really known seemed to be parting.
She flipped her black hair behind her ear and noticed his gaze. He quickly turned back to the 3-D image.
Joseph continued, “The last one, and unfortunately the one in the worst condition, is The Book of Prophesies. The almost academic way in which the timeline is laid out is astonishing. The style is much different from the other books, in that it is written like an ancient history book, only it reveals a future history. Things we know have yet to happen. The clues are all here in the text. The final fall of Solomon’s Temple. The ring that bound the demons. A new temple built by a woman that will stand on a crescent moon. The war between nations over the black-heart gold. The mention of the number seven, repeatedly. Another woman who would give first warning of the times.”
“Thecla’s Prophecy,” Gabe said, remembering the legend of the woman who consumed the Entheos Genesthai in ancient times and saw the end of the world.
His father sighed and hit a button on the keyboard. The image of the fragmented page disappeared. “Unfortunately, without context and without the rest of the document, all we have are guesses and theories.”
“So we’re just as lost as we were in Axum?” Micah asked. “Or in Cairo? Or in Durham, where the only clue we had was given to us by some bloody ghost or whatever the hell Enoch is?” The darkness and the anger seemed to pass over her again like a shadow.
Gabe knew what she was thinking. If Carlyle were alive, he’d know what to do.
“Not exactly,” his father said and picked up his notes. “There is one part that survived better than the rest. I’ve pieced together a rough translation. The language is ominous. It reads, ‘From the words and blessings of Solomon, blessed by the elect and good, and whose words shall be living in the days of tribulation, when the judgment of man will be made, the End will bring a righteous hail and an eternal cold and shall be known by Enoch the Scribe.’”
“Enoch is the answer,” Gabe said. “He knows. He can tell us what was inside the Apocalypse of Solomon. Why wouldn’t he have given that to us before?”
Gabe remembered his first and only encounter with Enoch in a family pub in Durham. The being, existing in some weird place between corporeal and spiritual, had possessed a man to bring a message. He’d been summoned and sent by Alois, apparently, to bring Gabe the Entheos Genesthai, so that he and Micah might come into their powers more quickly.
His father had described Sergeant Alois as an expert in the strange and the occult. That was an understatement, thought Gabe.
“I don’t know why he would keep such vital information from us,” his father said. “Unless he’s not as partial in this dispute as we had hoped.”
“If he can tell us what we’ll need to know to fix the cracks in the wall, as you say, that’ll be enough for me,” Micah said. The light of hope returned to her eyes.
“And then, once it’s all over, we can get back to whatever’s left of our lives,” Gabe said.
Joseph nodded.
“Has Afarôt found him yet?” Micah asked.
“I don’t know. That’s the task with which Sergeant Alois is occupied. We can only hope,” Joseph said. “Because if he and Afarôt are unable to find him, we may never be prepared for what is to come. It makes me wonder, though. If what these books say is true, if the pendulum has swung too far, can we even bring it back, or will the End of Days happen no matter what?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lilith stood at the altar of the Church of St. Peter and waited. Tucked into the side of a mountain in Antakya, the room was more cave than church. Two stars had been cut into the façade of the building, each on one side of a single shape in the center. They would each allow a stream of light to enter the building during the daytime, but in the darkness, they were merely holes in stone.
At night, the church seemed a more fitting place for pirates to store treasure than for worshipers to find God.
Appropriate, she thought. The churchgoers who attended so long ago had been persecuted and killed for their beliefs. What a lovely time to be on Earth. She brushed the dirt off her hands. The prints of the day’s foot traffic still scuffed the floor. She had a certain appreciation for the irony of hiding one of the planet’s greatest secrets inside a stop on a history tour.
Despite the rustic nature of the space, she felt a nearly uncontrollable excitement at being here. She thought of Mastema and the love he devoted to her, his promises of a new life together. Her heart swelled as she thought of her children, and the cold sharpness of anger filled her veins.
The spinning blue orb in the middle of the room cast its light around the worn pillars and rocky walls. She stared at its nucleus, hearing whispers, and knew she would not wait long.
St. Peter’s was considered one of this new religion’s first churches and was where Paul the Apostle first began to refine his religion and focus his message. His followers there called themselves Christians. And they, like so many followers from so many religions, sought a truth to their lives. To their existence.
“Such a waste,” she said to herself.
Lilith reflected on her own time on this realm, long before religion was born. A time that ended in heartbreak and shattered dreams. She knew now that truth lived and died in the moment. Everything else that followed was merely perspective.
My truth, she thought, is that life with my children was taken from me, and I was banished to a living hell for love.
The church was known to her for another reason. Long before it became the Church of St. Peter and centuries before Paul had been drawn here to refine his ministry inside its darkened interior, the cave had been the site of something far more important.
Before the recording of time, the land looked much different from the rocky, gray, and arid mountain it now was. She recalled the lush greenery and the fruit-bearing trees. Thick, humid air and flowers as far as the eye could see.
Mastema, her eternal love, often wrote prose comparing her beauty to the land. Now such a lyric would come as an insult.
Lilith felt a tear run down her cheek, and her hand wiped it away. She looked at the wetness on her fingers, the forgotten feeling as alien as the new character of the landscape. The world had changed so
much since she’d last been here.
A man named Enoch lived in the cave, cast out from the society Mastema had created. He spoke of signs in the natural world that foretold disaster for transgressions against the laws of the universe. The laws of creation. And then, one day, Enoch disappeared.
Three days later, he returned, and he was much different.
Lilith remembered the dazed look on his face and the power hiding behind his eyes, unable to be contained by his quickly deteriorating flesh. He was dying, as he was being reborn.
Gruesome, she thought as the light of the sphere danced around the room.
He claimed to have been taken to Mastema’s realm and brought back as a Steward of the Earth. He warned of consequences. Of an apocalypse. The end of our days, Lilith remembered.
Enoch died, the energy inside him too much for his body. But his spirit lingered, bodiless, tethered to the realm. Mastema had taken pity on him, not destroying his remaining essence and putting his ghost to rest.
Quite a mistake, she thought, and a shadow moved across the room.
“But not as dire as the mistake you make in this very moment,” a voice said from the entrance to the cave.
Lilith raised her arm, and smokelike shadow leapt from her hand to the wall, traveling around the pillars of the room to the entrance, where a stone door slid shut, sealing the man inside.
He wore a different body than he had the last time she’d seen him. But this was the existence that now cursed him. Steward of a realm in which he no longer belonged. She sensed evil in the physical body before her. A criminal or deviant, likely.
“I believe it is you who made the mistake, dear Enoch.” Lilith reached out, and the spinning orb leapt to her hand and was absorbed into her body. “Fool. Careless fool. Did you forget that my essence is nearly indistinguishable from the Archangel Michael’s? That with my power I can imitate him perfectly?”
“Her name is Micah these days,” Enoch said. “And no, your efforts are not perfect. I come willingly.”