As he bought the coffee cup to his lips, the overhead camera caught a glimpse of a familiar form in the bottom of one of the small navy tenders.
“Holy shit!” Zarif used the strongest profanity he could muster, spilling hot coffee in his lap as he recognised Omar lying in the bottom of the boat. How could this be?
The Sirio’s crew had been vilified for machine-gunning survivors, but now they were being lauded as heroes for putting their personal safety to one side while coming to Omar’s aid.
Zarif leapt to his feet, not just because the hot coffee was causing him discomfort. It was the shock of seeing Omar alive. Surely no one had survived the sinking? Somehow, real time had been reset and a different set of events was now playing out. There was no mistaking it was Omar, staring into the camera as he was hoisted out of small boat and onto a much larger vessel. The upturned hull of the old trawler in the background slipped beneath the waves.
The sight fuelled Zarif’s speculation that this was no ordinary refugee camp or processing centre. But, if this was the case, where was he?
Without meaning to be disparaging about his fellow refugees, he didn’t think many of the others were educated or sophisticated enough to realise that this was no normal situation. However, he was reluctant to share his concerns. The last thing he wanted was to be marked down as an outsider or apostate.
Maybe he was wrong, and he was letting his imagination get the better of him. Maybe it wasn’t Omar.
“Excuse me, brother,” a voice asked quietly, catching him unaware as he pawed at his pants with a paper towel to mop up the worst of the spilt coffee. “What do you think happened to Omar?”
Zarif turned and saw one of the older men. “I’m not sure, brother,” he replied. “All I can say is I have never seen such a thing.” Zarif wasn’t sure whether the man was referring to Omar’s disappearance, or his reincarnation as the sole survivor of the boat full of refugees.
“Me neither. Do you wonder where we really are?”
“Yes, brother, but I don’t know how to find this out.”
Janice discovered that driving the rover was a lot of fun: the vehicle was clearly designed for the environment. It was the ideal vehicle to traverse the jumbled landscape of rocks, craters of varying sizes, dry river beds and other obstacles. The surface was reminiscent of the Australian outback, and like the outback gave her the sense that it was a great big empty space of infinite horizons.
The dashboard lit up with multiple readouts. She noted with a hint of anxiety that the rover's battery level was dropping rapidly. She didn’t want to run out of juice and have to walk back to the settlement. The dashboard also displayed external and internal environmental data, numbers she would expect to see if she was on the chilly surface of Mars.
But no matter how often she tried, or how hard she turned the wheel, the buggy could not be steered in the direction of the section of the settlement housing the androids. Each time she tried to go in that direction, the rover simply veered away, sending her on a series of wide arcs taking her away from the small group of buildings.
She got the message. She wouldn’t be allowed to interfere with the settlement or the reality show, so she turned her attention to searching for signs of civilisation, so she could make a break for it, contact the outside world, and bring this farce to an end. She watched the odometer roll over, counting off the distance she had travelled. After rolling across the barren dimly-lit landscape for what felt like an eternity, but was probably an hour at most, the rover came to the top of a small hill, where she stopped. Spread beneath her was a large basin stretching toward the horizon. There was no sign of any human habitation, nor plants or animal life of any kind. No roads, no buildings. No plume of dust in the distance from a vehicle travelling down an outback road. Nothing.
Janice took stock of the situation. According to the digital clock on the dash it was midday. It was much darker than it should be. She wondered if the sun’s rays were impeded by cloud or a dust storm. It was also much, much colder outside than she would have expected in the centre of Australia.
Then it finally dawned on her. She was really on Mars, but she didn’t feel as surprised as she thought she should have been. Later, when she had had time to reflect, she would wonder if her lack of surprise meant she had been conditioned or groomed especially for this moment. The truth of it was Bert was correct: they weren’t on Earth at all.
She tried to remember what the guy who looked like a tramp had said to them soon after their arrival, when she was convinced the MFY program was part of a big scam, but Bert interrupted her train of thought.
All in good time. Do you want to continue? I can find a path down to the plateau below if you wish. Or do you want to return to the settlement and make the next step on your journey?
“Do I need to return to the settlement?”
We only need to return the rover.
Nineteen
“I've got a golf trip planned, and a hotel opening to attend,” President Ronald D Chump whined. “I’ve been planning these events for a very, very long time. These are very significant events I need to attend to. Hugely momentous events.” he concluded emphatically.
“Now look, Chump, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you. You are now the President of the United States, and as a result, you are required to make a few personal sacrifices from time to time. One of these is you are required by law to separate the house of cards you call your business empire from your Presidential duties. I would also say it's about time you owned up to the fact that your kids are doing a much better job of running the family business than you ever did. Anyway, it’s what you signed up for,” the General reminded him.
“No, I didn’t.” Chump muttered petulantly, just loud enough for the General to hear. To the wider world, Chump had pledged to drain the swamp of corruption (meaning Washington) and make America boom again. As far as the public knew, he had chosen a group of very clever far-right zealots for his administration who were charged with helping him enact his policies. However, the reality was something quite different.
Chump hadn’t given too much thought to policy on the campaign trail because he hadn’t really expected to be elected. He’d said a lot of things he didn’t even believe, outlandish statements that his supporters lapped up eagerly. This encouraged donors of a certain kind. Big donors, who had once considered him an irrelevance and completely ignored him, had thrown money at him. Vast amounts of cash, and fantastic opportunities for the Chump organisation to prosper in the future.
Chump’s support base was a confounding coalition of the extremely wealthy, who were concerned only with the protection of their privilege and unfettered accumulation of wealth without regulatory interference by the government, and the working poor. The first group was largely made up of ideologues who were fanatical in their opposition to the provision of health care, education, and resources for the poor, and actively campaigned against government spending in these areas, disenfranchising the poor and uneducated under-classes who were often completely reliant on federal assistance to survive. The second group was made up of recipients of much of the federal aid.
General Smith almost admired Chump in some ways. The man had tapped a reservoir of resentment towards, and a lack of trust in, the establishment that nobody had quite understood or recognised the existence of before. The impoverished chunk of his support base didn’t seem to comprehend he represented a class hell bent on removing the safety net and regulatory framework they relied on for survival and was dedicated to exploiting and preventing any chance of them ascending the economic ladder. Chump was a junior member of a self-appointed elite establishment intent on strip mining the world economy for its own benefit, doing what he pleased when it pleased him, and making sure this wealth and privilege was shared only with people who would help him generate even more wealth.
Nobody, including Chump himself, knew the magic formula for this achievement, which was probably just as well for the world.
It was only now dawning on him he hadn’t realised what he was signing up for when he took up their offers of support. He hadn’t been valued for his vision and popularity, or his inspirational policy. Quite the contrary: they had something on him, the kind of leverage he understood, and he had proven to be easily malleable once he had won the election. But none of this mattered now: they were powerless to prevent the radical changes Chump was making.
Chump liked everyone to believe he was a successful self-made man, though everyone knew he had inherited wealth, then married into even greater wealth. His latest wife had been the only person he was truly wary of, until he had the misfortune to encounter Bruce Harwood.
While Chump was being roundly vilified by everyone who had voted for him because he was reneging on key policies, his wife appeared to be biding her time. Chump was unaware that General Smith, the key architect of the miserable predicament he now found himself in and the front man for the real power behind the throne, knew all her secrets too.
“I want to quit,” Chump declared truculently, half-believing this is what he really wanted.
“Now don’t be silly, Mr President,” General Smith chided him gently with what little respect he could muster for the man. “You agreed to announce your new immigration policy in front of the combined house today, along with an amnesty for all undocumented immigrants currently in the country who have a clean criminal record.”
“I can’t. It will be the end of my political career,” he snivelled. “It would amount to a complete reversal of one of the key promises that got me elected.” He paused, believing for an instant he had an option. “I think this is a very big mistake. My original policy was a very, very good one. It would have freed up jobs for the great American worker, the greatest workforce in the world, who have had their jobs stolen from them by cheap imported labour...”
“Something you have actively encouraged in your time by driving down the pay and conditions of your employees and buying products from lower waged economies overseas and contributing to the shuttering of manufacturing in this country,” General Smith finished for him. He was getting weary of the old hypocrite’s pronouncements. Chump needed to realise he had no significant control over his life any longer. He couldn’t contact his old cronies without permission, he didn’t have unsupervised access to a phone, he couldn’t even send emails, and he was banned from watching Fox News. Significantly, he hadn’t been given the access codes to the nation’s nuclear arsenal, not that it mattered in the new world order currently taking shape. The Transcendents would never countenance the use of atomic weapons anywhere on the planet. If nothing else, this should have given Chump a clear message about who was really in charge.
“Now let's play it from the top…”
“Despite my pledge to build a wall along the Mexican border to keep immigrants out of this great country of ours, I have decided we are going to prove America’s greatness by enabling immigrants to become citizens of this great country. America was built by immigrants, and immigration is a very, very great thing to have.” Chump cringed, imagining the outrage this announcement would cause amongst his dwindling coterie of supporters. “Furthermore, we are not going to make Mexico pay for a border wall, and we are going to introduce new agreements for working conditions for documented workers...”
“Very good,” General Smith said, when Chump had finished his speech, “You can go and watch television and have a rest now.”
Twenty
Muhammad Alomar followed the official to the administration bloc where the infirmary was located. The last step in his release process from the refugee camp was a final medical check to ensure he wouldn’t be a burden on the health system of the country gullible enough to accept him. Bureaucrats were the same everywhere, he thought. No matter what happens they had to get their tick in the right box, even when it served no clear, sensible purpose. He had undergone any number of physical and mental health checks just to get this far. One more made no sense to him. It was just something the crusaders did to remind people like him just who was in charge.
However, so close to his goal of being released from the camp with a set of real papers, he was not going to jeopardise his mission by making a scene.
While he patiently waited in the reception area for a nurse to attend to him he amused himself watching a livestream of the MFY Reality Show.
While he was committed to martyrdom in the cause of establishing a true Islamic state, he was a little envious of the Martian colonists. A little wistfully, he thought that if things had been different he could have joined the program, but it was far too late for that now. He was on a mission on the other side of the world, and the MFY programme had closed its doors to new recruits in the past few days.
It disturbed him to realise the state he was prepared to die for could never, ever, support a mission of the sophistication of the MFY programme, even if they could afford it. Their strict interpretation of the book would never countenance an endeavour of this kind and ignored the reality that his people had been leaders in many different scientific fields for centuries. He sighed wistfully. Life could have been so different for him if his country hadn’t slid into a devastating, and seemingly endless, civil war.
But Muhammad had chosen his path and there was no turning back now, even if he had wanted to. If he quit now, he would either be tracked down and killed by his own people, or his details would be leaked to the crusaders, with the same result.
Someone remotely switched the television to a news channel. Muhammad recognised the town and the smoking ruins being used as a back drop for a news segment about the civil war in Syria finally coming to an end. Nobody was admitting it, but Muhammad could see the writing on the wall.
His people, the brotherhood he had hitched his star to, dedicated to the overthrow of the Russian puppet Assad, and the establishment of a new and pure Caliphate, had fought a great and righteous battle. However, their last supply routes had been cut. They had lost control of the oil wells financing their cause, and they were boxed into a rapidly shrinking desert area dotted with indefensible towns and villages, which were rapidly being reduced to rubble by continuous bombing and shelling. Very few of the brave fighters and leaders stuck inside this perimeter would survive the coming onslaught.
A few men like himself had been smuggled out months ago, before the noose had begun to really tighten, when there had still been a realistic hope of expanding and holding the Caliphate. They had been tasked to attack soft targets in the European underbelly and elsewhere.
As he mentally prepared to leave the camp on his final journey the Caliphate infrastructure was crumbling rapidly, and the terror cells were being compromised. He wasn’t sure who would greet him when he made contact, and whether he would be able to carry out his increasingly futile mission.
Muhammad briefly considered taking a new identity, using funds he'd locked away in an account only he could access, and seeking a new life in the west until it was safe to return home. Maybe he could find a good Muslim girl to settle down with and raise a family, and maybe get a job and some training so he could improve himself.
“This way, please.”
The nurse calling him for the blood test jolted him back to reality. There was no way he could ever allow himself to be diverted from his destiny. Too many of his brothers had made sacrifices for the cause and paid with their lives just to get hi
m into a position whereby he could slip away anonymously into western Europe.
Muhammad sat in the chair. He'd been through this before and rolled up his sleeve, but it didn’t feel right to be touched by this crusader woman. It ran counter to all the teachings of his leaders. She was dressed immodestly, and he couldn’t take his eyes off the swell of her smooth bosom. He considered demanding a male nurse take his blood and continue the check-up. However, he didn't want to draw attention to himself, and besides the women smelt so good, so fresh and clean. In a temporary moment of weakness, he chose to suppress his prejudices.
He had been taught these western women were completely immoral, wicked, and depraved, but this nurse showed no sign of this behaviour. She was polite and competent. The only thing he couldn’t cope with was the way she engaged with him, on the basis they were equals. He knew this was a common trait of western women, even women of the book, because he had encountered a few them who had become obsessed with true teachings of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and flocked to the cause. These western women quickly learnt about the real status of women in the Caliphate once they had been passed around the fighters as prizes and rewards, then were discarded once they had been thoroughly ruined.
Once he had completed this last hurdle, he would receive a freshly prepared set of papers. The paperwork would allow him to travel anywhere across Europe and receive state-funded support payments, access to healthcare, and other benefits. The sole purpose for joining the stream of refugees and allowing himself to be processed through the system was to get these papers and enter the West undetected.
“Your results should be ready by the end of the day. If we get the all clear, you can be on your way tomorrow,” the nurse informed him in a language which sounded barbaric to his ears and was filtered by an interpreter. “We’ll carry on with the rest of the examination shortly. Please take a seat in the waiting room and I will call you in a few moments.”
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