by Steven James
The roads were choked with traffic, which wasn’t surprising. As it turned out, things these days weren’t quite the way people years ago had pictured in their futuristic stories—with flying cars and jetpacks, and homes nestled tranquilly in the clouds.
No, they were not.
Not at all.
Change on the small scale is fast and continues to get faster: microchips, nanotechnology, gene editing, quantum encryption, neurolinguistic programming in robots, and on and on. Technological advances seem to move in greater and greater leaps the smaller you go, but when it comes to infrastructure, well, that takes time.
Our legislators kept talking about expanding the public transit program here, maybe even utilizing the subway tunnels that had been built nearly a century ago and never used. But with the cost, and since the tunnels kept flooding, I couldn’t see that coming for years down the line, especially with the redistribution of tax revenue since the government started providing everyone with a universal basic income.
Nearly ten billion people in the world.
Maybe the number wasn’t all that shocking until you realized that there were now seven billion more than there’d been when those subway tunnels were built.
I could hardly wrap my mind around statistics like that. Change like that.
And so, my car drove me past the West Side’s sprawling slums and tenement housing complexes that lay along the surface streets leading to the expressway. Dead businesses. Empty storefronts. Lonely, abandoned homes. All in such sharp contrast to the gleaming success of the Terabyne Designs production facility less than a kilometer away.
By building there, Terabyne took advantage of low property values. They also tapped into a ready and willing labor market, and received huge tax breaks from a city hoping to recover from the economic ruin brought on by the automation of more and more jobs and the growing number of out-of-work low-wage earners.
Terabyne.
The cause of the problem.
And now, the solution.
For ease of distribution, the plant was located near the on-ramp, and as my car was merging left onto the highway, I saw a delivery truck racing toward the facility’s gated front entrance. Clearly it was moving too fast, but rather than slowing down as it neared the complex, it picked up speed and smashed through the gate, raced past a meditation pool, and slammed into a retaining wall meant to protect the building from this very type of attack.
Heart hammering, I commanded my car to stop.
As it pulled to the shoulder, the truck spewed smoke from its engine and then, as security officers swarmed out of the building to approach it, automatic weapons in hand, the vehicle exploded into a wide and wicked arc of flames that engulfed three of the guards, crumbled a corner of the building, and sent a shockwave punching through the morning, rocking my car even here, more than a hundred meters away.
Although there’d been bombings in Cincinnati by the Purists before, just as there had been in nearly every major city in the country since the Uprising began over a decade ago, this was the first terror attack I’d seen myself.
With the escalating number of attacks at places of worship over the last few years, clergy were now trained in first aid, so I had supplies in my trunk.
Given how sore I was from delivering Naiobi yesterday, I wasn’t sure how much assistance I’d be able to provide the survivors, but I felt like I needed to do what I could.
Go, Kestrel. You can at least help get people to safety.
I ordered my car to take me closer.
“Are you certain, Miss Hathaway?” she asked me.
“Yes.”
“My sensors indicate that there has been a—”
“Yes. Drive.”
Without a steering wheel, there was no way for me to take over the car’s navigation system for myself, but when I placed my hand on the vein recognition sensor to confirm my command and take legal responsibility for my “potentially hazardous” decision, the car finally obeyed, turning around and heading toward the front gate.
Most often, the Purists planned simultaneous attacks, and I wondered if there might have been another explosion somewhere else in the city or even if there would be another one here, after the ambulances arrived. But I put that thought aside—I had to if I was going to go any closer.
Once we were near the gate, I had my car park. “Wait here. Ignition off.”
“Of course, Miss Hathaway.”
Stiff and aching, I awkwardly climbed out of the car to retrieve my government-issued first aid kit from the trunk.
Dark smoke jetted skyward while agitated flames curled up from the fire that pulsed from the truck’s blackened carcass.
Three charred bodies lay still and smoking on the pavement.
Though it was too late for them, it wasn’t too late for the people who’d been on the perimeter of the blast and now either lay crumpled on the pavement or came stumbling out of the collapsed section of the building.
First aid supplies in hand, I hurried toward them.
The fire’s heat met me like a living thing, its tight claws scratching harshly at the exposed skin on my face and hands.
A woman to my left groaned, her legs peppered with shrapnel. Serious injuries, yes, but it didn’t look like they were bleeding extensively.
However, the ghastly wound of the guard ahead of me was.
His right arm had been torn nearly all the way off in the explosion.
He’d found a seat on a concrete bench surrounding the reflective pool and was staring vacantly at what remained of his arm and at the blood spurting out and curling ambivalently away from him in the water.
Urgently, I headed his way.
Just like suicide bombers who stuffed nails or ball bearings in their bombs or backpacks, the Purists had learned to fill their vehicles with shards of metal to produce more shrapnel and cause more carnage.
With self-driving cars and trucks these days, it was easier than ever to carry out well-timed and meticulously calculated attacks. You didn’t need to entrust the killing to a human being who might hesitate or change his mind at the last instant and not go through with the plan—or might be stopped by police or security officers before the attack could be completed.
Once the safety protocols on the vehicle were disengaged or reprogrammed, it would never change its mind or veer away from its target.
Pack the vehicles with explosives and you had dedicated, fearless killing machines.
Sometimes I wondered if any of that had even crossed the minds of the automotive developers when production of self-driving cars really took off two decades ago.
And technology is a clock you cannot turn backward.
What was done was done.
At the man’s side, I could finally gauge the extent of his injuries.
With most of the bones blown away, what was left of his arm hung limply by only the few inadequate threads of flesh and the strained tendons that still remained attached to his shoulder. Half a dozen slivers of metal protruded from his protective vest. If he hadn’t been wearing body armor I could only imagine what his chest and stomach would look like.
He was young—probably still in his early twenties. I doubted there would be any way to save his arm, but with a prosthetic he could recover and live a normal life, joining the growing number of people called Plussers who augmented their bodies with technology—some even amputating healthy limbs just so they could join the movement.
So, yes.
A Plusser.
If he didn’t bleed out here, in front of me, first.
“Help me.” With his free hand, he was fumbling unsuccessfully to quell the flow of blood. “It won’t stop.”
Even from my limited first aid training I knew that there was an artery in your arm that, when it’s severed, can cause you to bleed to death within minutes, if not sooner.
With haste, I unrolled a length of rubber tubing from the first aid kit.
“We need to cut off that blood flow,” I said.
“Yes.”
“This is going to hurt.”
“Do it.” His voice was firm and resolute.
I wrapped the tubing around his arm between his shoulder and the place where the severed artery was squirting blood, and then tugged it tight.
He cringed, teeth gritted, but somehow managed not to cry out in pain as I worked.
I tied off the tubing to create a crude tourniquet.
The bleeding slowed and appeared to come under control.
“What’s your name?” he asked me. By the strain in his voice it was clear that he was still in a lot of pain and I wished there was more I could do for him.
“Kestrel.”
“Are you a doctor?”
I’m a pastor, I thought.
“I know a little first aid,” I said.
Blood was dripping off the bench and into the water, where it swirled into intricate patterns that might have been beautiful if their genesis wasn’t from something so shocking and awful.
Blood and water.
Two central symbols of my faith.
The blood of Christ shed to offer us new life.
The water of baptism to confirm his covenant with us.
But life and hope seemed like distant dreams to me at the moment, now, here, with death all around me and the loss of my daughter seared into my mind.
The trilling pulse of emergency vehicle sirens ruptured the stillness of the morning.
“The hospital is close by,” I told the man. “Help’s on the way. It’ll be here soon.”
The paramedics would be far more skilled at removing the shrapnel from his body armor than I was, and if I started prying out the pieces of metal, any wounds left behind would inevitably bleed, perhaps fiercely. Leaving the objects in place wasn’t ideal, but for now it was the best choice.
The air was stained with black smoke, but a slight breeze kept it out of our faces.
He became lightheaded, and I helped him lie back on the bench.
“What’s your name?” I asked, trying to keep him alert.
“Ethan Bolderson.” And then, his voice dropping a notch, he said, “I’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“The paramedics will help you.”
“Okay.” But the word was tinged with doubt. “I don’t want to die today. Am I going to die?”
“We stopped the bleeding.”
I didn’t know what else to say. He was right about the extent of blood loss and from what I could tell it really might be too late for him. So, I didn’t tell him that he was going to be alright. I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
His next question surprised me: “Do you believe in heaven, Kestrel?”
You should be the one asking him that, an inner voice rebuked me. You’re the minister!
Ever since yesterday afternoon when I’d lost my daughter I’d been questioning my own beliefs about the afterlife, but now I found myself saying the things I’d been taught at seminary to tell people—teachings about our need for a Savior, about the work of Christ, about the offer of paradise to all who are lost in sin, but I didn’t know how much I believed those words myself. Not anymore.
Ethan closed his eyes, and I couldn’t tell how cognizant he was of anything I was saying.
“Ethan?”
He remained quiet and so, so still.
“Ethan!” Though hesitant to do so, and unsure it was the right thing to try, I slapped his cheek sharply enough to awaken him. “Stay with me.”
He regrouped. “Right.”
“Hang in there.”
In my haste to help him, I’d forgotten to tug on a pair of sterile gloves, and his blood was covering my hands and had also splayed cruel patterns across my clothes.
So much blood.
Still dripping into the pool, an evanescent chronicle of Ethan’s suffering.
Blood.
And water.
Now, the two of them brought to mind Christ on the cross and the soldier piercing him with a spear to make sure he was dead.
Blood and water flowed together from his side.
And the scripture referring to it: “They shall look on Him whom they pierced—”
“Thank you.” Ethan’s voice was feeble and small, like he was shrinking.
I didn’t know if he was thanking me for waking him up, for helping him in general, or for my words about heaven, but before I could ask, two ambulances came screeching to a stop nearby and a pair of paramedics hustled out of each of them. I flagged down one of the women and she made a beeline toward us.
“Are you real?” Ethan asked me quietly.
“Real?” Maybe he was thinking that he was hallucinating, just imagining me.
“A Natural,” he clarified, his words pained and now hardly audible.
“Yes.”
After I stepped back, the paramedic took over, assessing his vitals, and a minute later she and her partner were carefully positioning Ethan onto a rolling gurney. As they did, I heard him mutter, “I just don’t want to . . .” But the end of his sentence was too quiet for me to make out.
I imagined he might’ve been repeating what he’d said earlier about not wanting to die.
I watched in silence as they wheeled him away.
As I stood there amid the deadly debris on the ground, doubt crept in. Even though only moments ago I’d been hopeful that I was doing enough for him, now I wondered if that’d really been the case at all.
Don’t let him die.
Please, God, don’t let him die. Not like Naiobi. Not like my baby.
Yesterday’s bleak clouds had moved on and now, as the smoke cleared away in the stiffening wind, unforgiving sunlight gleamed off the reflective glass of the Terabyne plant’s tinted windows that were designed to impress the very world that they were also meant to keep at bay.
By the time the first two ambulances left, two more had shown up. Since the initial responders had focused on transporting the survivors to the hospital, the dead had been left behind, and now a shift in the wind brought me the horrible stench of burnt flesh, a stark reminder of man’s inhumanity to man.
As if our world needed any more of those.
In all of our years of existence, we haven’t come very far. No, not since that day when Cain took the life of his brother, Abel. The firstborn of humanity slaughtering the second. What a legacy. What a testament to human nature, to the depth of the Fall.
“Where is your brother, Abel?” the Lord asked him.
“What? Am I my brother’s keeper?”
“What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground!”
So much violence in our history. So many times the Lord has had to listen to the voice of the dead crying out to him from the ground.
Or from the bloody carpet of a bedroom after a simple argument took a violent turn.
Or a stretch of blood-splattered sidewalk.
Or the bullet-riddled halls of a school building.
So many reminders of who we are.
One of the police officers who’d shown up offered to help me wash off in the fountain, but I figured there was already enough of Ethan’s blood in there, so instead, I used the antiseptic wipes and absorbent bandages from the first aid kit to serviceably clean my hands and forearms.
As I did, I found myself doubling over in pain from giving birth yesterday and the officer came to my aid, but I waved him off. “I’m alright. I’ll be okay.”
Finally, I returned to my car and left for home.
Once inside the vehicle, I noticed that my clothes bore the odor of smoke and death.
And on the drive along Cincinnati’s clogged roads, I prayed a desperate, lonely prayer that Ethan Bolderson would survive.
Unlike Naiobi.
3
At my apartment, I found that the package from my brother had not yet arrived.
No word yet on Ethan’s condition.
I cleaned up—a shower and fresh clothes—but through it all, I still couldn’t relax or find respi
te from all that was on my mind. When I checked my messages I found several from congregation members who’d learned what had happened to my daughter.
Which brought her death to the forefront of my mind again.
One woman asked urgently if I’d had the chance to baptize Naiobi before she died.
Our denomination believed in baptizing infants, that it was the covenant God makes with us to call us into his presence through his prevenient grace.
But we didn’t believe in baptizing the dead.
So, no, I had not baptized my daughter.
According to our understanding of baptism, an unbaptized child would still be received by the Lord through grace that was bestowed through the Holy Spirit. So I tried to take comfort in that.
Tried.
But comfort eluded me and a dark sweep of grief returned, locking me inescapably in its arms.
For the time being I didn’t reply to that message.
Other people told me that they were praying for me and emphasized that if there was anything I needed, to please let them know.
I knew that the offers were heartfelt and came from genuine concern. If I asked, my congregants would bring me food or do whatever they could for me, no questions asked. But I needed some space, and I didn’t want to see anybody else today.
Last month, anticipating that I’d be at home here with Naiobi, I’d arranged for another pastor to cover for me in the pulpit for the next few Sundays. So, thankfully, I didn’t need to prepare a sermon or even show up this weekend. And at this point, I was no longer planning to. I had no idea what to say to anyone about God or his plans for us, or how I would respond to people’s sympathy with the appropriate measure of respect.
I messaged the people back, expressing my thanks and telling them that I would let them know if I needed their help. I wanted the two o’clock viewing tomorrow to be private, so I didn’t let anyone know about it.
So, our congregation.
Our church was quiet and predictable, and though it was welcoming, it rarely received new members.
In truth, it was slowly dying.
We only had seventy or so regular attendees, and most of them were older than me. I didn’t put on an impressive Sunday morning show, so maybe that was it—just simple preaching with traditional hymns sung to a synthesized piano.