“You’re that Saraceni?” she asked incredulously.
“Art was always a distant second to teaching for me, but I did enjoy it,” he responded quietly.
The recruits looked from him and then expectantly at Ruth – reeling from their second shock in as many weeks.
And so Ruth began, “We’ve been teaching you about quantum universes. Well, we built one. And, like George said, it is an exact copy of this universe, so precise it was hard to even tell them apart at first. We once endangered the Earth to the point of almost blowing it up, and we swore we would never do that again. So, we created a test environment where we could see how things would interact with our environment, without actually risking our environment.”
“I remember! There were seven project teams. I was on one and George was on one, and the others!” Kyle exclaimed excitedly.
“The project grew,” Ruth continued, “We had perfected genetic engineering, with no real problems. Just meat, after all. We learned about the soul maps and dark matter DNA and we had the idea to do metaphysical engineering to complement the genetic engineering. To engineer the new souls created, and to guide the development of the existing souls so we could progress as a species.”
Juliet stared hard at the ground in front of her. She pulled her hair into a tight bunch with one hand, exhaling audibly. She groped for the words she wanted.
“Metaphysical engineering? How did you do it?” Juliet launched.
“We turned the other universe into The Cupel.” Ruth responded flatly, providing them time to wrap their brains around each line of her words as she spoke.
“A cupel is a dish in alchemy used to sort the lead from the gold,” Kyle explained.
“Correct,” Ruth continued, “so we created The Cupel. We conducted surveillance into it and those who are ready are allowed to be born into this world. We don’t allow anyone of inferior character, or inferior intellect, or who is not prepared to accept the multiple streams of consciousness required to excel here. We keep our planet and our society clean and safe and on a path of enlightenment by only selecting those worthy to participate in it.”
“And you just kill off the rest?” Juliet’s voice became shrill.
“ Of course not, Juliet,” Ruth’s tone was calm and motherly. “We try to help and guide people to complete the learning they need before coming here. New souls find our society difficult, too advanced, to function in without sufficient knowledge and skills. So, it’s like a teaching tool, from which we take the most valiant and worthy.”
“You’re playing God,” Chandra spat the words out.
“Some have argued that. And we are paying the price. All the religious doctrine you have been taught has come directly from our own, so we believe in a higher being and that we will go on when we die, just like most of you do,” Ruth replied.
Kyle added quickly, “But we broke it up-into seven pieces-one for each project, and the languages, too.”
“Yes, synthesis of concepts is a critical learning. We broke up all religious learning, and the languages, and all the other knowledge, and gave 1/7 to each project team, to each culture. Your civilization is gradually assimilating it, and when you have, you will have advanced to where we are now. Of course, we’ll be farther by then.” Ruth explained very clinically, as if giving a lecture. Saraceni noticed the distress on his recruits’ faces. He feared they were losing the battle for their hearts, critical to the completion of the mission as any general would relate.
“So other than George and Kyle, we’re all from this Cupel, your black box project? Where is it? How do we get back?” Gabriel resumed his role as mouthpiece. Ruth walked to the corner with the globe-sized amber orb behind protective glass.
“It is right here, Gabriel,” she said, motioning to the globe-sized orb, “We are the titans. Think about your creation stories. We passed along what we knew, but some of our early teachers tried to explain about our world here, and oral traditions retained some of that, too. Don’t you find it odd that religious doctrine has such fantastical stories of giants, magic healing, miracles, people created out of body parts of others-things that might look different from a scientific perspective? No less valid, but just doing double duty, performing two functions-teaching you what we know about God while also teaching what we know of the universe.”
“All the knowledge is there. They just haven’t put it all together yet, but they will,” Kyle added encouragingly. Ruth could see several recruits shaking their heads.
“Think about it-isn’t it too coincidental that the very first words in our religious doctrine are “let there be light”, followed by a statement that everything started with Adam and Eve. Atom and Eve-a particle and a unit of time? Light + matter + time just happen to be the exact necessary quantum building blocks. And then later, the Quran refers to the perpetual expansion of the heavens. Do the Upanishads not refer to the oneness of all ? That’s how we figured it out. It was all there all along, just waiting for us to become evolved enough to read it on the right level,” Ruth revealed.
Chandra backed up almost reflexively, shaking her head in disbelief. “This is ridiculous. It can’t be true. You’re saying everything we know, everyone we know, is in there.” She motioned at the orb in disgust. “And you created it. How do we get back?” Saraceni looked at Ruth and Kyle looked down. Gabriel stood in the center of all the Molior recruits, facing Ruth and Saraceni and staring at them. He thought of Gretchen, and Caleb, and Lela.
“We don’t.” Gabriel said somberly.
Chapter 17
Having successfully assisted Pfister in retaining funding, Lela returned to Africa on the first available flight. Emerging from the building, the heat of the day wrapped around her like a loving snake, the humidity gently pressing in on her in a close way. Her driver had been hired by Brett, who had learned the trusted local networks in a matter of weeks. As they left the city, Lela noticed less people than usual on the streets. Overt calmness permeated the view in a way that signaled not all was alright.
“You need to get on the floorboard for the rest of the journey, Miss Lela. You keep your head down.” He gave her a blanket, “and cover up with this, that’s what Mr. Brett say.” Lela hesitated and then complied. After 20 minutes, she actually began to feel carsick in this position, an experience she had never before felt. Each bounce in the road tempted her stomach to betray itself. Lela resorted to deep, even breaths as a measure of controlling the nausea. Just when she progressed to the point of wondering how much longer she could continue this, she heard the high-pitched squeal of the breaks as the car came to a halt.
The driver seemed all too hurried removing her bags from the trunk and leaving, citing that he had been prepaid as he waved away her attempt at a tip. Already feeling this to be quite strange, Lela spun about to face the camp only to discover it appeared to be empty. She cautiously and quietly walked along the edge of the tents down the main path rather than in the center and made her way back to the cafeteria tent. Empty. Suddenly, almost startling her, Tina emerged crossing the camp diagonally carrying a full plat of water bottles.
“Tina!” Lela shouted at her. Tina recoiled in fear and dropped the water plat, bottles rolling around in the leaves and dirt below.
“Jesus, Lela! You scared the hell out of me!” Tina replied frantically, scrambling to pick the bottles up in haphazard fashion.
“Where is everybody?” Lela queried as she stooped to assist her friend.
“You’re back! Come with me-quickly.” Lela followed her as the woman raced through the camp, her dirty, khaki pants hanging low on her hips, revealing additional weight lost on an already-thin frame since coming to camp. Was she that thin just a week ago?
“We’ve been stockpiling food and water. Brett’s orders.”
“Brett’s orders? Since when does he run camp?”
“Since we developed a security crisis. Rebels are making their way through the countryside and aside from some local travelers, we’re completely cu
t off to the west.” They arrived at the back tent, one originally used for storage, to find Brett and a handful of soldiers in full gear with guns standing before them. Others stood at the four corners, facing outward, on the lookout for anyone approaching. Unseen, in the surrounding jungle, lookouts responsible for sending back word of any approaching rebel bands were perched. Brett saw Lela and his face contorted in uncommon anger, a rare flash of emotion before his men.
“Damn it! They weren’t supposed to bring you here! My message didn’t get through!” he said to her, but really to no one.
“No. He said he got your instructions for me to be on the floor of the car,” Lela responded.
“Those were the original instructions. I sent word yesterday recanting those and telling him not to bring you here.”
“Well, I guess he didn’t listen.”
“No, that means he never got the message. Our courier to the west must not have been able to get through. I wish these local guys had cell phones.”
“Not this far in,” the soldier to Brett’s left added.
“Where is everybody?” Lela asked.
“Inside,” Brett responded, “It’s safer to have everyone pulled together to one location.” Just then a lookout returned, out of breath. Tina handed him some water, which he quickly downed, gaining enough breath to speak.
“They’re headed this way. From the south,” he reported.
“Get inside,” Brett barked at Lela, “We have to prepare to hold them off out here.” Everyone inside has any remaining weapons, so get one and be prepared in case.
“Wait, Brett, this is not the O.K. Corral-we can’t just have a showdown. Can’t we just escape to the east? There are villages that way.”
“With this many people, we’ll be too slow. We wouldn’t make it more than a few clicks before they catch up. We have the advantage here over terrain we don’t know at all. And we can’t go north. We’d run into the river. No boats, rapids, we’d never make it to the other side and there’s no civilization on this side of it.” Lela’s nausea from the car, which had never really disappeared, now welled up to the top of her throat again. Could this really be happening? Stunned, she went into the tent, grabbed two knives and sat silently next to the others, watching the doorway, listening intently for any sounds from the distance, any approaching footstep, any voice, any gunfire, but she heard nothing. She looked around at the scared faces of those around her-Mako, Tina, interns Brian and Rachel, little more than children, and the goofy, good-natured Texan, Lance, with all the geologists, medical workers, logistics personnel, all those who were not soldiers and not trained for this sort of situation. Mako clutched a single clear plastic container from his colored castle as if it were a security blanket. The mineral inside it was raw, not even neatly wrapped as was his custom. Lela’s nausea quickly subsided and an overwhelming urge moved its way up into her throat. She jumped up and ran for the door.
“Brett! Brett!” she scanned the landscape quickly searching for signs of him. The sentry posted to the tent quickly rounded the corner and put his hand over her mouth.
“We are in silent mode,” he whispered to her, “until our scout returns to tell us how much time we have, we have to assume they are close.” Lela nodded, his hand still covering her mouth, and he removed it.
“I need to speak to Brett most urgently,” she whispered.
“Impossible, Davies is in operational mode now. I can’t just pull him back here. Whatever your question is, it’ll have to wait.” His tone was subtly patronizing, as if to suggest her need to speak to Brett was for comfort.
“Look, I may know of a safe location near here I discovered while resource mapping. So, you get him back here now or you may be deciding we’ll all be unnecessarily slaughtered.” The young soldier appeared conflicted. “Do you really want that sort of decision on your head at this stage of your career?” she pressed in an emphatic whisper.
The sentry pressed a series of buttons on his walkie-talkie which made no sound but the pressing of buttons. In a moment the device returned one blink of a light.
“He’ll be right here,” the sentry reported. Lela looked around the still jungle in the minutes before Brett arrived and observed what a beautiful day it would have been had the humans not been warring with one another. The untouched jungle presented a sharp contrast to the areas closer toward town that had been razed. After four minutes that seemed like twenty, Brett arrived.
“Lela, I don’t have time for this.”
“I know, I know, but I found a cavern when I was exploring. I think we could hide there. It’s plenty big enough for all of us,” she confided hopefully. Brett considered the suggestion.
“These are local people, Lela. They’ve grown up here their whole life. The chances that they don’t know about that cavern already are very slight.”
Lela pressed, knowing deep in her gut that if they didn’t go, they would die. Each passing moment she felt it more and more intensely. Death was approaching. She could just go on her own, but leaving all the others behind did not feel right, not when she truly felt they wouldn’t make it. She had to convince Brett for all of them to go.
“The only entrance was covered with like fifty years of vegetation. I cut it away myself. And the inside was completely untouched. Full of mineral and no sign of even a single axe mark. If anyone knew it was there, it would have at least been mildly disturbed.” Brett sighed as he considered the suggestion.
“Trust me, Brett, I would not suggest it if I didn’t think it was our best hope. And, it’s to the northeast, we’d be moving away from them at the same time, which would give us time to get there.” He looked at her, his keen ability to read people confirming to him that she believed with every ounce of her soul what she was saying. In the end, the real question was: how much did he trust her, this woman he’d known only a short while? Brett turned to the sentry.
“We need a distance estimate right now.”
“The scout isn’t back yet and we’re on radio silence. If we ping him and he’s very close to them, it may compromise his position.”
“I know that. Ping him once. He’ll know what it’s for and ping back how many clicks away they are.”
“That’s not standard protocol, sir. He won’t know what we’re asking for. We can’t rely on that data.”
“You’re right, but in real operations things don’t always go exactly as planned. I trained him myself. It’s not the clearest communication, but he’ll figure it out. He’ll know that’s the only question we would be breaking radio silence to ask the man that is the scout. There would be no other logical reason to break radio silence. Send the ping.”
“Yes, sir,” the sentry withdrew his walkie-talkie once again, adjusted the frequency and sent a single click. The three watched the device for any response. Silence.
“He may be out of range,” the sentry commented. Brett did not respond, but remained intent on the device. He glanced at Lela, his mind already thinking through the logistics of their exodus, should they have sufficient time to make one. He withdrew a laminated map from his pack and held it up to Lela, who wordlessly pointed to the location of the cavern. Brett marked the location and calculated the distance and travel time in his head. He examined the perils of two competing routes.
“I cut this path through, it might move faster since it’s partially cleared, but it’s narrow,” she reported.
“This wide valley is open, so not as much cover. Even though it’s not as direct, the openness of the terrain will allow a group this size to get there faster than the direct route. Plus, that area’s all torn up by animals, not as much work to cover our tracks as the straight route.” Their whispering sounded eerie in the silence of the camp, like ghosts talking. Finally, a response from the scout: 4 clicks.
“That’s 12 kilometers. It’ll be tight, but if we leave right now, I think we’ll make it with a little room to spare.” He turned to the sentry. “Miller, gather everyone else quietly and return back her
e in 10 minutes. Lela, we’ve got to prepare the other civilians.” They burst into the tent and witnessed the still-huddled crew waiting in crippled silence. They looked at Brett with hope, instantly gathering from his demeanor that something had changed. They could only hope some good fortune had befallen them.
“Good news, we have an alternate location which we think will be safer than this one, and which the rebels likely don’t know about. Bad news, we’re out of here in ten minutes and have a trek ahead of us. So, pack water in your packs, and drink at least a liter right now before we leave, eat a protein bar, and take care of any bio needs you have now. We won’t be stopping for at least 2 hours. Dress in proper gear and protection; change your shoes if you need to. We need to make good time and we need to move in silence. Any questions?”
“What about the animals?” Rachel asked. She had tended to the animals every day since arriving in camp and the small brow on her thin face furrowed at the thought of them being hurt.
“They stay here,” he replied with no shred of sensitivity. “Anything else?” Silence. “Okay, we move out in ten.” He exited the tent. Lela moved to Rachel.
“They won’t hurt them,” she reassured Rachel, “They need milk from them same as we do, so they’ll take good care of them, if they even stop here.”
The camp members dumped all extraneous items from their packs. The few belongings they had intended to keep with them-a single book, extra clothes, a bit of music, or pictures from home-were hastily dumped into a pile and replaced with extra water bottles and protein bars. As much as each person could carry was stuffed into backpacks. Everything they thought was important no longer was-only survival was. In exactly ten minutes Brett stuck his head in the tent.
“Time,” he declared, more quietly than he would have preferred. The members began filing out of the tent and following his hand motion to line up in two lines.
“The path is wide enough for two rows. Try to walk as softly as possible so the tracks we leave are less clear as being fresh. When we get to the clearing, spread out so the tracks are widely dispersed. We’ll cover our tracks on the other side and with a little luck, they’ll be unable to tell which direction we went after the clearing,” he advised. As they set out, with five soldiers on point with guns, two at the halfway point of the line of evacuees, and five at the rear, Brett had an uneasy feeling. He looked at Lela and had an instant recollection of when he first met her in the States. He’d watched her from his seat in the audience, all smiles talking to her father and the other scientists, running across the field, winking at her brother. It all seemed a lifetime ago now. He hadn’t seen her truly smile once since that day, and today was no exception. He knew if this plan didn’t work no one would be smiling today, or ever again. This wasn’t an area of the country where they cared to take prisoners or bothered with ransoms. He knew his enemies well and if they were caught, they would surely be killed.
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