by J A Bouma
Here we go. Again.
Alexander said a quiet prayer still standing in the rear sleeping quarters as Jin returned to the front of the hydrocraft to retake control from the AI-assisted autopilot.
For as soon as he voiced his desire to step out in faith, stepping up to the plate to take a swing at Solterra and protect Ichthus and the faith, trusting in the Holy Spirit to carry him through, doubt was hot on his heels. Such was the pattern in his spiritual life, going back ages. Wanting to live for Christ and step out in faith, while doubt and discouragement were close at hand.
He sighed, frustrated with himself, wondering if he would ever get it right.
He guessed it had something to do with what Saint Paul himself had voiced: ‘Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me…What a wretched man I am!’
Wretched indeed!
But then he was reminded in the quietness of the moment of what Paul had also said: ‘Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!’
Praise God indeed!
Part of Psalm 46 came to Alexander’s mind as well, something he had often offered as a centering prayer while pastoring his parish church. He offered it as a prayer in that moment of rising worry: Be still and know that I am God…
Again, but shorter: Be still and know that I am…
Still more: Be still and know…
Then again: Be still…
And finally: Be…
A hand rested on his back. “You alright?” Rebekah asked.
He took a breath and nodded. “Sure.”
“Then after you, Master Zarruq,” she said with a wink, motioning toward the open door.
He smiled and went to join Jin. They had been resting for the journey in a private cabin at the back of the PSV. Ahead, Jin resumed the controls and guided the hydrocraft into a private docking port at the hydroport in Byzantium, Arabia-Persia. Alexander spotted their time-travel gear, two black cases resting near the red ladder leading up top. As Jin finished the docking sequence, he unlatched one of them and double-checked the equipment.
One neural core sensory receptor, a black cap that retrieved the aural and visual brain-wave information. One time travel belt, the black thing ringed by donut-like discs powered by fission material that opened up the wormhole for them to jump phases back through time.
“All look in order?” Rebekah asked, bending down next to him to check her own case. No black cap, but same black belt.
“Looks that way.”
She stood. “And looks like we’re ready for our return trip back to the future.”
“How does that equipment work, anyhow?” Jin said from the front, the PSV slowing to a gliding stop and a loud, echoey clang from above confirming they were docked. “Never did get the word on how the whole time-travel thing happens.”
Alexander stood and grabbed his case. “The way Sasha described it, imagine three people playing jump rope: you and me holding a rope while Rebekah here jumps in the middle.”
“Why can’t I be in the middle?” Jin complained. “Always loved jumping rope.”
He chuckled. “Fine. You’re in the middle, Rebekah and I are spinning the rope.”
Rebekah raised a brow. “Spinning?”
“I think it’s twirling,” Jin said.
“Or maybe skipping—”
“Either way…” Alexander interrupted, Rebekah adding a mischievous giggle. “Playing jump rope—how about that—our arms make a full rotation every two seconds. As Sasha described it, that two-second motion sets the time-translation symmetry, where the period of time the rope comes around again is two seconds, like clockwork. But what would happen if our arms rotated four or five times, but the rope only made one rotation?”
“I would have to jump only once,” Jin said, “and the time-translation symmetry would be broken?”
Alexander nodded. “You’re a quick study. Since our motion rotating the rope would be out of sync with your motion of jumping—in essence, two separate phases of time.”
“Something about breaking the time-translation symmetry, isn’t that right?” Rebekah asked.
“Right, through the creation of an electromagnetic field adding laser pulses. Something about ions and matter existing in two phases of time. But it wasn’t possible or practical until Sasha’s invention.”
Alexander held up the belt that would create the wormhole through which he and Rebekah would travel back in time to the Council of Nicaea. Holding up the black cap device, he added: “And this retrieves the sound and sight data from our brain waves to record the information. An AI algorithm translates that neural data into images and sound, allowing us to retrieve the actual events of Ichthus’s memory before jumping back to the future.”
“Easy as that, huh?” Jin asked.
All of a sudden, the pain returned with a throbbing ping, offering up a timely reminder. He scoffed. “Easy nothing. You try zooming through time at faster than light and see how you turn out.”
“Don’t forget the awful smell!” Rebekah said. “Oo-wee does time stink.”
He laughed. “And that!”
“Sounds like a blast. But alas,” Jin sighed, “I’m stuck guarding our hydrocraft while you two get all the glory.”
Alexander put a hand on his shoulder. “For which we are eternally grateful.”
“Speaking of which,” Rebekah said, “we should probably get going. No time like the present to—”
“Jump to the past?”
She smiled. “Exactly.”
The trio embraced and said their goodbyes. Soon, Alexander and Rebekah were surfacing onto a grated deck bathed in white light, a door standing shut at the end of the narrow private corridor.
Alexander opened it and popped his head out. The hallway leading out was empty. Relieved, he motioned for Rebekah to follow, and off they went. He recalled the first time he ventured this way with his original handler, Tara Rodriguez. He got into a scuffle with a very large man, with the epithets mystik and sanguinazi slung his way. He hoped this trip would prove far less threatening.
The pair followed the flow of humans and humanoids out from the cool, sanitized hydroport of clean lines and pallet of ocean colors, Rebekah slipping her arm inside Alexander’s arm.
He startled and turned to her. “For our act, of course,” she said with a smile. “A couple traveling from Alkebulana to Arabia-Persia on holiday.”
One end of his mouth curled upward. “Our act. Of course.” He wondered if there was hope it would move beyond that.
Soon they emerged into stifling, sweaty Byzantium, the regional capital of Arabia-Persia at the center of the reconstituted ancient empires under the terms of the Reckoning. Temperatures had to be in the low hundreds, compounded by the suffocating humidity made that much more unbearable by the stench of rotting fish and seaweed and garbage wafting in from the sea and some ungodly part of the city.
He breathed through his mouth, shielding his nose with his arm, but it was no use. The present stunk just as bad as the past! Solterra liked to style itself as a utopian paradise, where everything was in unified order and done ‘For Humanity!’ as its citizens were programmed to intone. But most people knew better. Pax Solterra of the singular, united Earth may well indeed reign from sea to shining sea; that he’d give the Republic credit for. But much of the world seemed no better off than the days of the Roman Empire from two millennia ago.
Exhibit A: the stench.
A mishmash of soaring ultramodern buildings of gleaming glass and titanium towered above them. Ancient few-story ones of stone and steel still standing from the previous centuries were sandwiched in between, creating a claustrophobic feeling Alexander could definitely do without. The sight made him long for Tripolitania, where two, maybe three stories were the norm, with wide open spaces and views for miles. Most would call it quaint, destitute even. He called it home, and it was where his heart still was.
Alexander took Rebeka
h’s hand and made for the terminal pickup zone of queued magnacar cabs, a vacant cab hovering at the front. It had seen better days, the body dirty and pockmarked and vehicle leaning to one side, but it would do.
The up-door unfolded as they approached, like one of those ancient DeLoreans he had obsessed over as a boy. So he slid into the backseat that didn’t fare much better than the outside, the scuffed blue upholstery and a strong whiff of something sour making him think twice about his choice. Rebekah was close at his side, then the doors closed. There was something familiar about it, something he couldn’t quite put his finger—
“Where to?” a rather large humanoid grunted, a plebe as they were affectionately known among the human types for being of the lower-class AIs in the Republic.
That voice…Something about it also rang familiar.
“Iznik,” Alexander said, the ultramodern town of the ancient one known by the Church as Nicaea.
The rotund AI humanoid twisted to face him in a herky-jerky movement. “You. Again!” he grunted with derision.
Alexander furrowed his brow as he stuffed his long, lanky legs in place, staring at the mechanical human that creepily seemed to recall who he was.
Then it hit him.
The gruff, grande plebe from his mission with Tara racing to the conclave that started it all, and again when he returned after his first mission.
His face fell. He closed his eyes and sighed. Of course...
Both times the AI put up a major fuss for the long drive to Iznik. And both times the plebe had extorted from him digital merca credits. A thousand quids the last time.
Now a third time around this block? This was not going to go well.
And definitely did not bode well.
“Where’s your master, little doggie?” it said with a creepy grin, a plasticky mouth widening to show a full set of pearly white teeth and a thick, gray tongue.
Little doggie. The insult the AI had lobbed at him the last two times around.
Great.
“Again, you pay in full at start!” the plebe yelled.
Yep. Not good at all.
The humanoid brought a stiff arm to its chin. “Although, you gave me good tip last time.” It tilted its head awkwardly, then shrugged. “So ten percent discount.”
That was unexpected. Goes to show what a little kindness can do in the long run. Especially when you’re dealing with humanoids programed with perfect memories. Although he would never get used to the cheap imitation of humanity. Nothing came close to the imago dei; the image of God in humanity was far better than anything we could come up with shoved inside silicon and silicone.
“Deal,” Alexander said. He whipped out his mobile, the face of the thin sapphire device asking for the nine hundred Republic credits. He jammed Accept then stuffed it back in his pocket, cursing under his breath as his hard-earned digital money from that wharf zipped across DiviNet from his account into the humanoid plebe’s bank.
Gruff Grande Man offered a growly chuckle before turning around and throwing the vehicle into gear. It lurched forward on a bed of air before drifting into the traffic exiting the hydroport.
“What was that about?” Rebekah whispered. “The humanoid seemed to take a fancy to you.”
He chuckled. “You have no idea.”
The driver lumbered through the city before making his way on the O-4, the local nickname for the main Anatolia Motorway stretching through industrial parks and barren wastelands. The pair said little on their journey, partly because of the interest in discretion, partly because Alexander was nauseous from the deep-sea journey combined with the cabbie’s high speeds and hairpin twists and turns. He fell asleep, and soon the magnacraft was jerking to a sudden stop.
Alexander snorted awake. “Are we there already?”
“Not exactly, little doggie…” the humanoid grunted.
A hand dug their nails into his leg, jolting him awake now. He turned to Rebekah, who was pointing out the windshield. “Looks like trouble.”
He followed her gesture. Looked like she was right.
Large, boxy charcoal magnacrafts were anchored at the end, angled in a V and letting traffic through one vehicle at a time.
Destroyers.
A checkpoint, set up by Enforcers.
Which meant several months after destroying the Ministerium the Republic was still keeping the area under lockdown.
The magnacraft lurched forward, three figures coming into view wearing similarly colored charcoal garb, thick helmets of angled, reflective visors hiding ill intent. It wasn’t until another pair clad in crimson joined the trio that Alexander’s heart began matching the cab’s lurch.
“Enforcers and Purifiers?” Rebekah said. “Dear Yahweh from on high…”
Alexander agreed. Which meant nothing good.
They were still a ways behind, nine or ten magnacars. But the sands of time were running down to nothing. Soon they’d be next.
Then all bets were off.
He turned to her. “But why the show of force? This doesn’t make sense in the slightest. Didn’t the Ministerium abandon the blasted site months ago?”
“Certainly, and no one has returned since. From what Father Jim had described, the self-destruct mechanisms the Ministerium put into place should have decimated the former HQ. There was no reason to return.”
“Then why are they here?”
The pair went quiet, their quickening breaths and the plebe’s grunting mumbles the only soundtrack for their contemplation.
A muffled cry broke the silence, followed by a shout and shrilly shriek. Outside, up ahead.
Alexander looked up in time to find a tall man with bronze skin putting up his hands just as the familiar blast of a Neutralizer sent the man sprawling backward. Saw it before he heard it, three electrical charges spitting bluish-white balls at the man before the dreaded chew-chew-chew sound echoed toward their magnacar.
Rebekah gave a shrieking gasp of her own as he leaned forward for a better viewing, glimpsing the man writhing on the ground as blueish-white tentacles flickered across the man.
Not good.
His tongue tingled for a narcowafer, but he was fresh out. He settled for a panicked prayer for the Holy Spirit to calm his nerves and pave the way for their safety.
“We need to get out of here…” Alexander mumbled.
The magnacraft lurched forward again, the offending polis’s own craft having been hauled off the road and another interrogated by another set of Enforcers.
He turned to Rebekah, grabbing his black case with a nervous rattle and hoisting her own case upon her lap.
“Now! Get ready to slide out.”
“What, here?” Rebekah exclaimed, face falling and eyes widening.
“What about the ride?” Gruff Grande Man complained, gesturing with a bloated hand out his rolled-down window.
Alexander said, “I’ve already paid you the merca credits up front. Remember?” He pointed against the glass window outside, adding: “We can use that clump of cypress trees over there as cover. Hopefully, anyway…”
Rebekah looked past him out his window. “You’re bloomin’ mad if you think we can just waltz out of here under the nose of a platoon of Enforcers.”
“The little missy’s got a point,” the plebe said.
Another lurch of the car; another several meters closer to a date with an Enforcer.
Running a frustrated hand through his unkempt hair, Alexander sighed. “What choice do we have? What do you think those Purifiers are going to do when they go rummaging through our cases?” He held up his case and rattled it for emphasis. “We’ve got five, maybe ten minutes until we find out, and I’d rather not press the Holy Spirit’s powers of intervention. So unless you’ve got any better ideas, we need to get to it.”
The pair jerked again as the magnacraft lumbered to their next place in the queue of magnacars. Not long now, and their getaway clump of trees was closer now.
Alexander offered Rebekah his hand. “
Now or never. Will you trust me?”
She looked at his hand and sucked in a breath. For a second, he worried she was planning on riding it out, rolling the dice to see what came up at the checkpoint.
But then she slapped her hand on his and clenched it tight. “Let’s do this.”
He grinned, then said to the plebe cabbie, “Another four hundred and fifty quid are in store for you if you keep your mouth shut. That’s a fifty percent tip for never mentioning a word of our existence. We were never here, understood?”
The humanoid heaved his form around for a look, staring a beat before saying. “Six hundred.”
Alexander frowned. “Four fifty.”
“Five.”
Rebekah rested a gentle hand on the plebe’s doughy arm. “Four hundred and fifty is a good tip.” She smiled, adding: “Please, help us…”
Gruff Grande Man licked his lips, as if some pre-programmed impulse raced through the humanoid on par with human lust. He nodded, then turned around, agreeing with a grunt as he drove to his next spot.
Six from the checkpoint.
Now it was definitely time to get to it!
Alexander gathered his case and prepared to jump. “Deal. I’ll add the tip once we’re cleared of the checkpoint and it’s clear you kept your word. Look for the extra funds in an hour.”
And with that, he threw open the door without another word, the plebe cabbie offering a grunting protest about the terms of their agreement, but it was no use.
Alexander was gone, with Rebekah close behind.
Praying to the good Lord above he’d made the right call.
Chapter 19
Alexander darted out onto the hard, packed brown earth dried in the kiln-fires of the cataclysmic climate changes Solterra had suffered under the past few decades, the dry heat slapping him in the face like the mawing mouth of an open oven. Hunched over and hugging the black case to his chest, he stumbled up a berm he hadn’t noticed from the car before beelining it for the cypress cluster.
He drove for the grouping of trees that were farther away than he had anticipated. The heat was doing a number on him as he sprinted toward the target, shirt soaking with sweat and the stifling, staid air refusing his lungs purchase.