“Thanks, Solly! I truly appreciate you being there for me!”
Solly pats me on the back. “I stopped at your father’s bench and placed some flowers on it.”
“What kind of flowers, Solly?”
“Black knights. You know, Mikey, they’re called Scabiosa. They’re eccentric flowers—a little like your dad. You don’t really notice them until they’re gone.”
“I know what you mean, Uncle Solly—the kind of flowers that will protect you when you need them.” I shake my head. “Thank you, Solly. I owe you!”
“This one’s for you, Mikey!” Maya begins tiptoeing through our little group, walking slowly so as to not drop the birthday cake. The room seems beautifully aglow as I watch my friends crowd around me, singing “Happy Birthday to You.”
“Here’s to Michael!” Magdiel exclaims. “We’re all here because of you!”
As I look around, I can’t help but think what a lucky man I am. I pour everyone a glass of pure stemless Domaine de la Romanee. “To Solly—a man who knows how to be a real friend… and a Mensch!”
We take turns clinking our glasses.
“So what happened? We all want to know how you did it. It’s still a mystery!” Mags exclaims.
The room seems to be swimming in enticing confusion, like a wisp of smoke curling in the air and then suddenly disappearing. My plan had worked, yet no one knew how.
“Okay, Mr. Magician, exactly what made the laser beam disappear from the sky?” Magdiel asks.
I smile, displaying a small item in my hand. I place it in a very special location. “It’s called Eisenstein deterrence. I just pass magical bagels with terrific shmear around the war table.”
Proto stares at the little box sitting on top of my birthday cake. “Okay, hot shot, do we need a drum roll?”
Molly slides down the staircase, falling on to her butt. Sound familiar?
“Close one!” I say. “Gotta be careful with that last tiny bump! It really burns your butt if you don’t ride it right!”
Molly wrinkles her nose. “I wasn’t going to miss this!” she says in her high, angelic voice. I pull out my super subatomic microscope, the X22i. “This puppy can magnify anything a million times over!” I proclaim triumphantly.
“You mean I can turn my daddy into a million-foot giant?” Molly blurts out. We all smile.
“As long as your return him to normal size,” Maya replies.
I place the miniscule nanoscale box onto our high intensity microscope, which I nicknamed Menes—basically because Menes never shuts up, and neither does the microscope. That’s right; it has verbal directions for everything! Gazing intensely into the scope is like subscribing to a so-called subatomic tour of the universe.
I place my forehead on the top. Slowly, I find the exact coordinates, adjusting my focus.
“Drum roll!” I hear Maya say, reminding me of what we did as a child, whenever my father had an idea.
“Does anyone mind if I allow Molly to witness this first?”
Proto squeezes Menes’s hand. “She will be our eyes!” Menes proclaims.
“Wow, this is so cool!” Molly blurts out. “I see them!”
“Your turn, Proto!”
“Is that really them? No way!”
Proto’s eyes light up like beacons. “No! Can’t be! How is that even possible?” Proto’s mercurial orbs seem to be expanding and retracting like an overwrought lens taking growth hormones.
A huge smile covers my face. “With a little help from my friends,” I whisper softly. “I think good ole Benjamin may have had a lot to do with it.”
“Amen,” Solly says. “Your father would have been so proud of you.”
Maya peers into the scope next; her mouth widens as she gazes intently at the birdlike people inside the box.
“Eschew and Chandra are entering a castle! Oh my God! Their wings have retracted and they’re stealthily crawling on their knees; I think, they are inside the catacombs of some mansion.”
“Can’t be,” I say under my breath. Is it possible? I scratch my head. I don’t want to say anything, but something isn’t right. Something has gone terribly wrong.
What do I do?
I stare closer at the mansion. I know that mansion, I think to myself. You can’t say anything; this has to be your secret.
“How is that possible?” Menes blurts, after he too gazes into the scope, looking extremely perplexed.
“Hey, it’s all in the formula. You see, it’s a lot easier to miniaturize people if you’re sending them inside a new dimension—the eighth dimension, in case you’re interested.”
“The eighth dimension?” Molly says inquisitively, looking thoroughly shocked. “Can’t be. What did you do to them, daddy?”
I peer back into my scope. I see something remarkably disturbing, but I can’t divulge what I see.
“Are they ever coming back?” Maya asks.
“Not into our dimension. They’re trapped hopelessly until they die right where they are!” Proto proclaims.
I force a fake smile. It’s not over. Perhaps it’ll never be over. My eyes scan the room, watching everyone as they laugh and smile. I don’t have the guts to tell them that the joke is on us.
CHAPTER 67
May 29, 2401
1:19:25 p.m.
When I desire company
I leave my footprints on the sand by a reckless sea
Hoping you’d come to me
And we’ll explore what might have been
And leave the shore and give this tired old world a spin
When my ship will come in
Sun up we’ll sail away the day that my ship comes in
Fast as the highest mast can take us to you.
And old where but here
Look a this paradise for two …
—The Beach Boys (ancient band)
Simple white crosses stand everywhere around us. Maya and I gaze downward from the ridge where we are perched, overlooking Bruner Breunig’s beautiful castle estate out in the Berchtesgaden Alps.
“So they never were transformed into the eighth dimension?”
I shake my head. “I’m afraid not. Beauty is deceiving sometimes, isn’t it? These mountains span the entire area of Germany and Austria. They hold dominion over the southeastern area of Bavaria like a huge monstrous hand with fingers that extend to the north, south, and east, pointing their way to Bruner. That’s appropriate, isn’t it?”
Maya nods. After all, Bruner is the man that ogled her painting, saying nice things, but ultimately decided to make a robotic replica of her image and stick it inside a steel locker.
“He’s a monster all right,” I say.
“I guess Frankenstein’s creator has to emerge every century or two,” Maya adds.
Maya and I tiptoe around the graves overlooking Bruner’s castle. “Do you think they’re inside?” Maya asks anxiously.
I nod. “Yes, I’m picking up on his vibrancy quotient right now. My QB42 detects a 6.667 quotient, which takes into consideration vibrancy and spinning vortices.
“Is he alone?”
I shake my head as we continue walking through the cemetery of World War veterans. “Colonels, generals, captains, infantrymen—they’re all buried on this ridge. Ironic, isn’t it? These are veterans from the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh World Wars—good men.”
A small tear flows down Maya’s cheek. “Is he down there too?”
I nod. “Yes, the master of fraud and deception. I can smell his reeky odor as well.” I stare at my QB42, which is blinking like mad. It’s giving me the quotient 8.4779, which is exactly the footprint that we need. Eschew is hunkered down there, right in Bruner’s catacombs, sucking up to Breunig with all his fake little might.
“Two of the universe’s biggest scoundrels in one place,” I s
ay.
“So how did you know something was wrong?” Maya inquires.
“You mean how did I know that he wasn’t trapped inside an eighth-dimensional world? Honestly, it was easy. I saw another image of a man: someone right next to Eschew—someone who shouldn’t have been there. After I used my vibrancy quotient detector, I was able to match the coordinates to Bruner. Where there’s one rat, there’s generally another. In this case, I had two corpulent, egotistical demigods inside one microscope. Crowded, huh?” I take a deep breath, trying to get the stink out of my nostrils.
“Do you think the two of them have been in cahoots for a long time?” Maya inquires.
I nod. “The odd couple with a common goal… narcissism mixed with a desire to rule the world—perhaps the universe.”
“Strange bedfellows,” Maya quips.
“Yes, Eschew is a misguided religious figure who has lost his way.”
“How so?” Maya asks, staring downward at Bruner’s mansion.
I shake my head. “I think he began to believe all of the tripe that was being said about him. You know, ‘Eschew is a genius … he is a creative, spiritual soul … he’s a Demigod … no, he’s an actual G_d.’ That’s what happens when you have the ability to create a phony holographic world.”
“And Bruner?”
“Fairly similar, in a way. Bruner is the so-called brilliant innovator who created robots with incredible intelligence. Then he took it a step further. Bruner developed his research until he could place consciousness inside the noggins of his creations.”
“Does that make them human?” Maya asks.
“I guess that depends on how you define ‘human,’” I say. “All I know is that they’re made out of wires, screws, and a nonbiological matrix consisting of codes and sensors. You be the judge.”
We stop for a second, noting the name Matthias Frederichs on one of the headstones. “He was a valiant soldier, Maya. My great-great-grandfather knew him well. Matthias was one of the men who fought so bravely in the first war against artificiality—a war that helped define the Austrians as quite a fighting force. He was a good man who still felt that robotics needed to be kept in check; too bad our friends Bruner and Eschew never met him.”
“I wonder where he is now?” Maya says.
“He was a valiant man and a man of character. I hope he’s been reborn into a body and mind that will serve him well.”
From her perch on the ridge, Maya’s charcoal eyes hone in on the mansion below them, which houses two of the biggest criminals in the universe. Bruner was a creator, all right—a creator of cyborgs, virtual machinelike military men and women who were controlled by his fingertips.
Eschew? He was a man who didn’t mind turning his back on a thousand centuries of valor on the planet Hevyo. “A real coward,” I say. “A man who has confused his own holographic creations with reality. Genius, yes; moralist, no!”
“And now the two of them are together.”
I place my arms around Maya. “I’m the luckiest man in the world to be married to you!”
Maya smiles. “You’re a brave man and a good man, Michael. You’re a credit to your family,” she says.
“I smile. “Thank you, my queen! However, I’ve been thinking about something—something kind of weird.”
Maya winces. “Is it about the word ‘descendant’? If it is, I think we may be on the same path. Michael, I know this is kind of a silly thing, but do you think we can never say that to Molly? I mean, I don’t want her to feel—”
“That she has the burden of the whole planet on her shoulders?” I say, completing Maya’s thought.
Maya nods. “Am I wrong to be concerned about Molly?”
“No,” I respond. “Can you hear them whispering?”
“What are they whispering?” Maya inquires. “Do they want us to do something?” Maya smiles that wonderful smile of hers that makes my heart cry.
“Follow me,” Maya utters softly as she starts walking to a little pond named Commemoration Cove. “It’s so silvery and magical. The inquisitive trout flock to us as if we are some sort of gods lurking on the other side of their world.”
Maya stares at me, picking up a shimmering, mirror like stone. She brushes the dust off the shiny gem and hurls it spinning into the water.
“Forty-two times!” I exclaim. “You’ve been holding out on me. How did you get so good at skipping stones?”
Maya turns toward me and plants a delicate kiss on my lips. It is sweet and soft, like the innocence of fresh dew in the morning sun. “It happened the day I married you, silly!”
We both look up at the proud bluish sky dotted by some graying clouds. It seems as if G_d himself hasn’t decided exactly how to paint the day.
“Is that Ezekial riding his garnished high-tech wheel toward the sun?” I ask.
Maya points. “I see him! He’s staring down at us. I think he wants us to join him!”
We both start to giggle. “Not so fast!” I say. “We have work to do!”
Maya and I hunker down among the gravestones.
“It’s nice and cushy here,” Maya says, smiling.
I silently read the simple prose next to us. Maximillan Szmaria’s grave is to my left, and Julius Wenceslaus quietly lies to Maya’s right—one colonel and one infantryman, both probably wondering, “Who the heck are these two people, and what do they want from me?” After all, we are interrupting their normal afternoon reflection. I pause to wonder if, after all these centuries, they think dying in battle brought them any peace.
I imagine Maximillan saying courageously, “Dying in the quest for freedom was the best thing I ever did!” Then he’d add, “I’d do it again; after all, it was for my country, right?”
But what about good ole Julius? Does he feel the same way? After all, we didn’t really solve anything, did we? We’re still fighting an overblown, egotistical monster who is plotting to destroy the world right underneath our noses. What would infantryman Julius Wenceslaus say? “It’s a beautiful day!” Or maybe he’d take the less-popular road, like ancient poet Robert Frost. You know, maybe he’d take another path, leaving fighting and the horrors of war for another day.
Maya’s eyes are magnetically drawn to my comp screen, which reveals our prey in my scope. “They’re pulling a mannequin right out of Bruner’s locker. Oh, how sweet—our sadistic buddy Bruner has made a replica of Adolph Hitler. Will Mussolini’s electronic clone be next?”
I take a deep breath, patting my new friend Maximillan on the back of his gravestone. “It looks like I’m going to have to go in,” I say. “I don’t see a choice—do you?”
“I’m not letting you go in alone,” Maya says bravely. “Besides, I think I can talk sense into them. The world is falling off its axis, Michael. Someone has to listen to reason.”
“Maya, honey, you can’t talk sense to Bruner or Eschew. They’re both overblown, inflated, egotistical demigods. Don’t you see? They’ll cut our brains out of our heads and control us with their fancy remotes. You know that.”
“Maybe not,” Maya proclaims. “After all, they’re still people. I think I can talk to them. Besides, the cyborgs have been given free will.”
I can feel my entire body convulsing in fear and loathing. It’s as if the footprints of the past have come back to haunt us. I pick up a stone that has endured the ravages of time. I throw it as far as I can. I hear the weathered rock crash against one of the headstones in the cemetery. We both hear the sound reverberate over and over again; it is a hollow, frightening, resonating noise.
“I’ve tried so hard, Maya.” I reach up, feeling an errant tear slither down my cheeks. “First there was Bone. Then there was Ezekial. Then I lost you. I can’t lose you again!”
Maya embraces me. “Poor, poor Michael.” She smooths away my tears. “Don’t you know that you can’t fix anything by becoming guilty
of your ancestor’s actions?”
I nod. “I’ve tried so hard to be different and to not make the mistakes of the past.”
Maya kisses me. “And in your own way, you’ve succeeded. You can’t take the guilt for all of the violence in this universe.”
I force a smile, shaking my head. “But I’m part of the problem, aren’t I?”
Maya wipes away my tears. There is a frightened look on her face—one that I’ve never seen before. Her eyes remain fixated on an object emerging out of the fog.
“Maya…”
Maya holds her fingers over my mouth. “Quiet,” she says.
I peer upward, seeing an intruder. He stares back at me as if I am a lowly rodent—one that needs to be exterminated.
“You like to throw rocks, Mr. Eisenstein. You have an aggressive, angry side to you, I see.”
I hear laughter in the background. A thin man possessed by grotesque demons and dark dreams stands in Bruner’s shadow.
Eschew’s smile casts off evil images of disdain for human life. “You should have left well enough alone, Michael. After all, we would have taken care of you and, of course, your beautiful wife.”
“You make me sick. You’re a coward, Eschew.” I stare at Maya, who I can tell is ready to implode. I reach out and hold her hand.
“How touching,” Bruner says, coming forth from the shadows. “Pure love—quite a fantasy these days, isn’t it? It’s the kind of thing that will find you a shallow grave, my friend.”
“At least he’s not a sellout like you!” Maya blurts.
I see Bruner motion to one of his henchmen. The cyborg, Adolph II, leads a brigade of marching robots toward them. As they walk, they trample over the dead bodies buried beneath the battle-scarred earth. Yet as I observe them, I know they’re not in control. They may as well be tin cans with remote brains.
“My soldiers have come to witness your destruction,” Bruner says, flashing an arrogant, mocking grin. “They know I’m their master. I think they want you to join them. You’d make a wonderful robotic cyborg.” Bruner cackles like a raucous hen.
Maya flashes an indignant expression toward Bruner.
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