by Ken Hansen
Jochi had cried for so long under his arm. She had found the strength to pull herself together, yet she had not followed him back to Roma. Honoring her brother’s last words, she had joined the Way and traveled with Isa to Tetepe. Isa had used Yohanan’s death to spark the movement there. Tomadus had not been able to bring himself to follow, even though he longed to be near her, to be near him.
Tomadus knew he must return to both of them. While Isa could infuriate him, the man still remained the best hope for the world if Tomadus could just keep him from stumbling over the political cliff to his own destruction. Isa’s movement remained too weak to fend off the likes of Skjöldr in the King’s own domain. Without the help of the Three Empires, Isa would eventually be crushed and forgotten. The First Consul had hinted that help could come, but they had to convince the religious leaders of the depth of Isa’s beliefs. Maybe they could address both in the same way. If he could broadcast Isa’s words to the world, even the Juteslams would not dare take him into custody. And the religious leaders would see his true convictions. Tomadus felt the creature finally settle down. It could be the answer, and with his new wealth and reputation within Roma and the Empires, Tomadus might be able to engineer it. Now that would truly be glorious.
Or would it? People might think he believed in Isa’s God, but that would be impossible. Deities are for the weak. Faith is for the common man. I am a technologist. I live by logic and reason, by experimentation and data, by method and result. I have learned the laws of physics. The world is not determined by some perfect higher being but by the physical forces and reality of a world shaped by all too imperfect men. Yet what Isa says so often rings true to my ears. What is wrong with me? Have I gone soft? Do I really want to believe in Him? How can I? There is something that old priest said to me.
Old priest? Damnation! Stop confusing your life with the man in the other world. Why does it invade my every thought? How am I connected with this Huxley? I could swear that I am he and he is I. I do not share his flesh, yet I sense his thoughts. I feel his angst. I know his pain.
Tomadus sensed the feeling washing over him. When the light flashed again and a new vision streamed quickly through his brain…
…Huxley tried to sleep on the long jet ride home from Afghanistan, but too many inchoate thoughts kept swirling through his brain. The depth of his pain over the murder of Ahmed Jinnah surprised him. Sure, he had worked with the man for a few months in a few stressful situations in Pakistan, but that was five years ago, and they were never what you could call “close friends.” Yet the feeling lingered.
Maybe it was because Jinnah seemed like his Pakistani alter ego: a pretty bright, dedicated guy who just wanted to stop the whole world from going to hell. No, not his alter ego—Jinnah was better than he. Jinnah had heroically overcome his own national patriotism and bias and risked everything: He had cared more about averting a terrorist tragedy than avoiding being forever marked as a traitor of his own country. Had Jinnah understood he was risking his own life and limb as well? If I were put to the same test, would I choose the same way?
That uncertainty sprinkled salt on an open wound festering within the strange guilt that kept clawing his troubled gut. Jinnah had died because of Huxley’s mistake. Despite Huxley’s caution, someone must have followed him to the meeting with Jinnah that night. Yet no matter how many times Huxley ran the scenarios over in his mind, he simply could not imagine doing anything differently. He had chosen neither the location nor the time of the rendezvous. Hell, he had not even contacted Jinnah in the first place. Nevertheless, the strange feeling remained.
Why was he always so damn morose about death? Was it just a selfish reflection of fear for his own inevitable end? No. He had faced death when he was with the CIA on several occasions—all without suffering from this macabre feeling of depression. Still, every death of friends and family had triggered his own despondency going way back to his youth. Geez, it probably went all the way back to the time of his father’s “accident.” Did he somehow blame himself for that one as well? Shit, stop psychoanalyzing yourself, Hux. He grabbed a pillow and put it between his head and the vibrating fuselage.
Sleep refused to come, and his caustic self-examination continued. Now his brain kept rambling through the kind of hypnotic questioning that often troubled him at night; however, it began expanding and terrorizing his conscience all the more.
Why do I care about another’s death? Why should anybody? What are we but a blob of flesh, pre-programmed by a complex set of evolved biological codes and capable of converting energy to mass and back again? Why should one blob give a crap about another blob? Hell, why is there any morality at all?
Doesn’t natural selection favor those who can pass more of their DNA onto the next generation? Who can do that best but the most powerful—those great men who, through conquest and power, can spread their chromosomes as wide as they wish? Does evolution, then, agree with Nietzsche that life is not a path to self-preservation but a will to power? Look at Genghis Kahn—he probably has more confirmed descendants than any person in history. Yet some powerful men, like Adolph Hitler and Julius Caesar, passed on none of their genetic material. No, evolution favors more than the individual.
DNA passes successfully to multiple generations only if the offspring continue to propagate the codes to future generations. A man could have a thousand grandchildren, but if they all die by killing each other, then the coding ends there. It must help if the offspring are able to work together and encourage the growth of the entire community. That requires some genetic predisposition for getting along with others and suspending the immediate needs of the individual. That in turn requires acceptance of rules of conduct. So when humans evolved to that level, our genetic code found a strategy that allowed it to dramatically accelerate its expansion. But hell, apes and monkeys live together in communities as well. So do many other species. So what separates our morality from theirs? Or are they the same thing?
Our morality. Is there a common morality shared among all humans? Not even close. What makes one set of rules good and another evil? For that matter, what makes one world perspective good and another bad? Do good and evil arise simply from our own subjective, socio-centric perspectives? Or is there something inherently right and wrong? But if evolution is the sole cause of human morality, then how can one society share mores that can be innately right while another society considers those mores innately wrong?
Do we judge these rules by which society is the most objectively successful in growing its population? Isn’t that the ultimate arbiter of evolutionary strategies? Or do we judge them by which strategy we subjectively believe leads to the greatest growth for all? It seems stupid. Why is growth the determining factor at all? Earth already bulges at the seams from overpopulation. So have human societies outgrown natural evolutionary forces? But then what determines what is good and what is evil? Is it the nature of society? Is it my current society? And who in that society decides? And who decides if they decide correctly?
Is morality just about our agreement on a set of rules? Have we all entered into a social compact, as Hobbes and Locke would like us to believe? I get that for politics—we give up something (the right to do anything we want with whatever unpredictable consequences may occur) in exchange for the security, safety and relative predictability that comes from others agreeing to do the same so we can form a government.
But what does a social compact mean for individual morality? Why must I keep that social compact? Surely it is not because I must keep promises, for if there is no intrinsic morality, then keeping a promise itself has no intrinsic moral value. Then is it simply that I do not wish to be punished? But what if I know that I can commit murder without getting caught? Surely I understand that this behavior conflicts with the social compact, but so what? An unsolved murder results in no dire consequences to me. And without consequences, I cannot even say that I should refrain from the murder just to prevent others from committing murder. If I suffi
ciently cover up the crime itself, others wouldn’t even know anyone killed the victim, so they have no reason to act differently themselves. And yet, even though all my self-interests seem to be aligned with committing murder in a particular circumstance, I can never imagine partaking in the activity. Why? What keeps me in line? Is it just the social programming I have received from societal propaganda since my birth? Perhaps that is the answer, but somehow it just doesn’t feel right. There must be more.
Was the old priest right? Is there a value in believing in a God who prescribes right and wrong, so we don’t have to? Why would we listen to Him when we don’t have to listen to the very mores we have prescribed for ourselves? Maybe we realize, even subconsciously, that we can never completely hide our actions or even our intimate thoughts from an all-knowing deity. We will never be able to completely avoid punishment when God serves as the policeman, prosecutor and judge. Is this why we invent noble gods, to make us better able to live in societies? Or does this need merely confirm His existence? Is the old priest right regardless: Do we have much to lose by losing faith in God, whether or not He exists?
I once had faith, didn’t I? Despite all of the sarcastic expressions of my old man, I still believed. On Sundays, I dutifully followed my saintly mother to Mass and served as an altar server. I never doubted there was a God. I doubted the words of my father quite often, but only my father on Earth. And when he died, my mother and I prayed to God to take my father’s soul to Heaven, though I strongly doubted even then that He would seriously consider granting the request. Yet I never doubted then that He had the power to do so if He so chose, did I? Or was I just playing the role my mother had scripted for me as a child? I know I stopped going to church in college, but now it has been so long that I cannot recall whether I just lost interest or I actually made a decision to reject my faith. But I did decide at some point, didn’t I? Now, although I desperately wish I could somehow believe in a god, my brain and my heart simply refuse. Why? What else is there to believe in?
How do others resolve their own doubts? Wait, what am I thinking? So many have no doubts. So many seem so absolutely certain that they know there either is or is not a god, and those who know there is a god seem to have no doubt their particular god is the only true one. But how do they come to that conclusion when there is no clear, demonstrable evidence to support their belief? The old priest was right—nobody has ever proven there is or is not a god, and likely nobody ever will. Then how can these people be so damn sure of themselves that they hate others for believing in a god, in another god, or in no god at all? Do they simply ignore reason when they argue so vehemently that they know a truth that is clearly unknowable? Or are they like the character in the Shakespearean play who “doth protest too much?” Yes, they are like the bully who uses his false bravado to conceal his true cowardice. Do they even truly believe what they say? I suppose that may be right for some, yet I have no doubt the old priest truly believed what he said: “It gives me the confidence to know there is a God, a loving God, and in the end He will save us.” I saw it in the old man’s eyes. He was not professing a mere hope—he knew. How does one attain a faith in the unknowable so strong that it truly becomes knowledge rather than mere desire? How could I ever know? How did he know? How did my mother know?
My mother, the little angel on my shoulder whom I abandoned. She had tortured me with constant recriminations about torturing the very prisoners that Jesus had told us to visit, to comfort. Prisoners? We were told they were only terrorists bent on our destruction. We had every right to use any means to prevent another disaster. But then Najwa’s voice had reverberated from that prison cell, “What would your mother say if she knew you tortured me because of my love of God?” Huxley touched the bulging bruise on his own forehead, the mark of his own personal Afghan jailer, who seemed to have every right to use any means to prevent another disaster, or so that man had thought. What would my mother have said to that if only she could have visited me…
…When the light subsided, Tomadus blinked a few times. By now, he had grown so accustomed to the invasions that he could often function while they flooded his brain. What might seem like a week of experiences might only take him out of this reality for a few seconds. This vision had passed in an instant. Nevertheless, Tomadus still suffered the emptiness, the sadness, the pain he shared with Huxley. He could see the shadows of the steel bars on the prisoner’s face as the prisoner demanded Huxley’s empathy, and the look of surprise when the demand was met.
Tomadus recalled Isa telling all his disciples to visit and comfort prisoners. It had seemed so strange at the time, but now he understood. Perhaps the message was for him. He had asked Isa if there were others who experienced the light like him, and Isa had responded, “Do as my father asks, and you shall have your solace.” Solace…comfort…comfort the prisoners. Was it conceivable that was a hint? He could not possibly visit all of the prisoners in the Three Empires, even those in Roma alone. But was there another way?
Tomadus hit a button on the conference table and said, “Get me Servi Inquisitio.” He need not be alone. With his resources, he could hire several dedicated investigators to work through the prisons for him and narrow it down to a few worth a visit. No, not just prisons. Better include the derangement wards.
Chapter 65
Tomadus sighed as he walked down the dank corridors of yet another dismal derangement ward. His investigators had identified ten of the unfortunate ones for his search. He had reviewed their backgrounds and begun his quest with the most promising candidates. That was six prisons and four derangement wards ago. So far he had merely discovered a few desperate souls whose damaged brains so longed for a different world they had convinced themselves that they now lived in them. Perhaps he suffered from the same illness, but at least he could see the difference between the two worlds. And none of the worlds envisioned by these helpless souls approached anything close to his other world. Would he ever find another like him? Had Isa merely confused him? Am I simply insane?
The psych-technologist led him to a painted concrete box of a meeting room containing only a small wooden table and two plain wooden chairs. In the corner stood a burly ward guard with an unkempt beard wearing a beige uniform. The psych technologist explained, “We cannot permit you to be alone with him, sir. He could be dangerous.”
Tomadus sat at the table. “Has he ever shown any tendency to violence?”
“No, except to himself, but you never know with these cases. Blutus here is ready to provide protection for you if anything happens. I have other matters to attend to. Please excuse me.” The technologist left the room. Blutus nodded to him and spat to his side, all the time keeping his well-sculpted arms folded on his enormous chest.
A few minutes later, the inmate Peregrine was brought into the room and took a seat at the table. He was tall and lanky, with a scruffy black beard, curly black hair and wild blue eyes that didn’t fit his otherwise Romanus appearance. He smelled like he had not showered for a few months. “And who are you?” he asked.
“Tomadus of Roma. I would like to hear about your visions.”
“Why? I’m no lab rat.” He spat on the floor. “Leave me alone.”
“I would be happy to do so, sir, if you could just enlighten me. If you are whom I seek, I might be able to help you.”
“Help me? How?” the inmate said gruffly.
“I might be able to get you released from this place.”
“Why would I want to leave such an elegant palace?”
Tomadus’s lips curled tightly together. Crap, the guy was just another delusional inmate believing he lived like royalty. “You like it here?”
Peregrine looked up at him and with a big smile tinged with sarcasm. He said in a strange accent, “All things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.”
A tingle began in Tomadus’s neck and spread down his back and through his legs. “Why would you want to be in the Sardis province of Anatolia?”
“Yo
u don’t get it, but why would you? Just leave me alone,” Peregrine said and then looked down in disgust.
Tomadus looked at Peregrine and felt the tingle continue down his arms. The creature within began pacing. Tomadus closed his eyes. There was some other Philadelphia—in the other world—yes. And that line by Peregrine was from an old movie. An old joke. He leaned forward and said, “You refer to another Philadelphia in another part of another world, don’t you?”
Peregrine perked up quickly and nodded slowly as his eyes narrowed suspiciously.
Tomadus pursed his lips. He must give Peregrine hope but hold back the lifesaver until the man demonstrated Tomadus could be a rescue ship and not just another mirage on the horizon. “Tell me, sir, if we assume this Philadelphia you mention was once in a place known as the United States of America, would you be able to tell me what state it was in?”
Peregrine’s jaw fell. He stared at Tomadus a long time and a tear fell down his left cheek. “Pennsylvania. Dear God, how do you know about the United States?”
Now Tomadus fought off a tear. “Because I once knew someone who lived near Washington, D.C.”
Peregrine began shaking and crying uncontrollably, his lips quivering. He grabbed Tomadus’s wrists in his. The guard began walking toward the table, but Tomadus nodded that everything was fine. Peregrine whispered between sobs across the table, “I had begun to believe them—they said I was crazy—but the two of us could not have shared the same vision. I am sane! I am sane after all!”
The guard took a step forward and spat to his side, wiping his beard with his forearm. “Yes,” Tomadus replied, “As sane as I. When did you have your first vision?”
“It was nearly three years ago now. I was an astro-technologist attending a conference in Genua, and I met a preacher in white robes.”
“Isa?”