Amy looked at her wristwatch, drank the last of the cold coffee, and left the table. As she turned the corner of Micco’s she walked directly into Penny who was coming out through the cafe doors. Both gasped and danced around each other, trying to keep their balance. Amy juggled, trying to catch her sunglasses which were tossed into the air. Penny’s instinctive reaction was to push Amy away, but when she realized who it was she started to laugh and steadied herself by grabbing onto Amy’s shoulders. ‘I thought it was you!’ Penny said. ‘What happened to that partner of yours, did he stand you up? You’ve got to be careful, girl, once you commit to them, it’s all downhill from there. Stay single, honey, that’s my advice.’
‘No, it’s not like that, Penny. Daniel was called to an urgent meeting.’ Amy’s reply was unconvincing.
‘This is Ravi, by the way, he works on our floor.’ Penny turned to her companion and said, ‘Rav, this is Amy, the new apprentice I was telling you about.’ Ravi acknowledged Amy with a nod.
Amy’s thoughts were racing, trying to come up with a plausible excuse for not walking back to the office with them. ‘Oh damn!’ she said, ‘I’ve left my pen on the table, you two go ahead, I’ll see you back at the office.’
‘Don’t be late, honey. The director is hot on timekeeping,’ Penny said, walking away and giving Amy a wave over her shoulder.
5
“Help Me”
After returning to her seat, the angel Haamiah initially said nothing and sat in deep contemplation. Her fellow angels, Brynjar, Abraxas and Rampel waited expectantly. After a few seconds she looked directly at Rampel, ‘Given his background, are we sure that putting Anubis in charge of the auditing division is a good idea?’ Haamiah was talking cryptically, aware that she could be overheard.
‘The instructions from On-High were very clear; now that we are relying on drone technology we need a director with sound technical capabilities. And, from that point of view, Anubis is the perfect choice.’ Rampel replied.
Abraxas hummed thoughtfully, ‘Well, no one in Creation could know our requirements better than he, plus it will give us direct access to their technology. We can only hope he does not fully appreciate the power we are about to give to him, we do not want the tail wagging the angel.’
Haamiah smiled, ‘Very amusing, Abraxas.’ She looked back at Rampel, ‘I am still not convinced. Hedrick built the most successful auditing department GOD has ever had, and without any technical background.’
Rampel interrupted, ‘We understand Haamiah, but given recent events, what other choice did Those-On-High have?’
‘Perhaps none,’ Haamiah said, her expression showing concern, ‘but how can we be sure that these digital systems are foolproof? Hedrick had an intuitive feel for the numbers. He could read in between the lines. We must establish our own protocol, something to alert us if the tail starts to wag again.
‘And that is why we have invited our two guests.’ Rampel said, throwing a glance across the table at the two nervous, ghostly faces. ‘Prior to the Creation project, our friends, the ghosts, monitored the development of planetary life. And we propose that they resume this responsibility.’
The word, propose, was rhetorical. The suggestion would not be open to debate and the ghosts knew it. They glanced at each other, exchanging thoughts; they seemed more relaxed now that their task was becoming clear. The ghost opposite Rampel inclined towards him, ‘Exactly what is required of us?’
‘Our main concern is the enrichment process,’ Rampel explained, ‘if we are going to achieve our production targets, this is where we are going to need your help.’
‘You want us to take over the enrichment of Dark Matter?’ the senior ghost asked. He gave his colleague a confused glance, ‘How can we do that? We can’t interact physically, we are just apparitions. Surely, the poltergeists would be more suited for this task, they can-’
In a nanosecond Rampel’s presence exploded, expanding to fill the whole volume of the restaurant. The resulting compression wave hurled tables, chairs, diners, waiters and Jean-Marie across the restaurant floor. The windows blew out and those diners who had chosen a table with a view were flung out onto the plaza. The grand piano was sent crashing into Hedrick’s table crushing him and Anubis against the restaurant wall. ‘NO, NO, NO, NO, NO POLTERGEISTS!’ Rampel screamed. ‘NEVER will the poltergeists enter Heaven again!’
Rampel’s tirade was interrupted by a loud crack followed by a thundering crash as the crystal chandelier in the centre of the ceiling detached itself and descended to the floor. A dazed waiter who had just got to his feet was pulverised as it fell onto him. The noise of raining debris started to subside, replaced by the groans and cries from the mutilated and crushed diners. Jean-Marie, who had taken the full force of the blast, now lay buried under the debris, both legs severed just below the knee - Merde!
As Rampel’s fury subsided, so did his presence and like a deflating balloon, he slowly returned to his normal size, albeit with a faint air of embarrassment about him. Haamiah paused, giving Rampel time to compose himself, then turning back to face the now terrified ghosts, said, ‘No, you misunderstood us. We are not expecting you to become involved in the production process. We would just like you to monitor the blue planets for us and, then to-’ Haamiah stopped mid-sentence, the wailing and moaning coming from the restaurant floor was distracting her. She spun around angrily and surveyed the carnage. A young female creationist was dragging herself across the floor towards their table. Her right hand was missing and the remains of a crystal goblet were impaled in her forehead. She reached out and, extending the handless arm, mouthed the words, ‘Help me’, through a face distorted with pain.
Haamiah turned back to the table, ‘As I was saying, we would like you to monitor the blue planets until we are convinced that Anubis’ digital auditing systems can be trusted. This would not be for eternity, only for the next five, maybe ten millennia.’
The cry came again, this time stronger and more demanding, ‘Help me!’ Haamiah again spun around expanding her presence to twice its normal size and looked down into the terrified face. The injured female immediately cowered, covering her eyes with her remaining hand. Haamiah scowled at the pathetic figure now silently pleading for help.
The ghosts had been sharing thoughts telepathically, discussing the proposal. ‘How many blue planets are we talking about? Ten, twenty, thirty per cent?’ the senior ghost asked.
Haamiah was about to reply when the cry came again, ‘Help me’. The female had now reached the table, her remaining hand pulling at the tablecloth. Haamiah’s enigmatic smile morphed into an irritated frown. ‘Please, help me!’, the desperate voice croaked, her blood-soaked stump now brushing against the angel’s cloak.
‘Help me! Help me! Is that all you can say?’ Haamiah paused and then sighed, her irritation turning to resignation as the female’s body slumped, face down, onto the floor by her feet. Then everything in the room started to move, slowly at first, then gaining speed, until the air was full of flying debris again. Shattered objects, reunited in flight, returned to tables reassembling themselves from piles of splintered wood and tangled metal. The chandelier was scooped up and returned to the centre of the ceiling. Traumatised bodies, torn apart by the blast came together in a macabre dance across the restaurant floor. As Haamiah turned back to face Rampel, time was rewound to within a millisecond of the word “poltergeist” first being mentioned. Once again the chandelier sparkled as Jean-Marie served the lunchtime diners, playing out the part of a Parisian maître d’.
Rampel continued his negotiations. ‘We would require you to monitor ALL the blue planets,’ his voice implied that this was not an option. ‘On average each universe will have about a quintillion blue planets and, at any point in time, the Space Dimension will hold about a billion universes. I would have thought a hundred thousand ghosts should be able to handle the job.’
Unlike angels, ghosts are not omnipresent; they can only manifest themselves at a single point,
within a single heavenly dimension. But at that point a ghost would experience all of time concurrently. It was this ability to witness a planet’s evolution in an instant, which made them so well suited to the job in hand. The angels could sense, but not comprehend the rapid exchange of thoughts between the two ghosts, which went on for some considerable time. Just as Rampel’s patience was about to run out, the ghosts turned to face him, this time with confident expressions. ‘This will be a major project,’ the senior ghost said, giving his colleague a sideways glance, ‘one for which we would be well suited. But you will appreciate that the commitment of a hundred thousand ghosts for ten millennia is beyond our authority. We will have to refer your request to the Prima-Ghosta for approval. As soon as we have a decision we will-’
Rampel interrupted aggressively, his presence starting to expand again. ‘No! It is imperative we have an answer immediately! NOW!’
Haamiah raised her hand, ‘We are sure our ghostly colleagues understand the urgency, Rampel.’ She turned back to face the ghosts who had been cowering in their seats, ‘Please convey our good wishes to your Prima-Ghosta and explain that an early decision would be very much appreciated. We would like to have this protocol in place before Director Hedrick retires from Creation.’
6
The Assignment
Hedrick looked at his watch, ‘I think it is time we got back, I have to finish interviewing the new apprentice. Why not browse around the office for a couple of hours and we can reconvene our meeting later this afternoon? Talk to a few of the auditors and have a look at the systems we are using. I am sure you will be impressed - they impress me!’
Anubis noticed Jean-Marie passing by the table, and raising his hand, called out, ‘L’addition, s’il vous plaît.’
Jean-Marie turned and smiled, ‘Tout de suite.’
Hedrick and Anubis stepped out of the elevator and started to walk towards his office. About half way down the central aisle they stopped at one of the work cubicles. ‘Ah, Ravi. May I introduce Deputy Director Anubis to you, he will be taking over my position when I retire on Friday. I would like you to show him around the office and demonstrate some of the systems we have developed.’ Ravi and Anubis shook hands. Hedrick turned to Anubis, ‘Ravi will show you our audit procedures. We can discuss any management issues later in the week.’ He glanced at his wristwatch, ‘I must get back to my office. Let us reconvene our meeting at four o’clock. I will be interested to have your feedback.’ Hedrick left the cubical and walked off, leaving Anubis and Ravi standing together.
As Hedrick entered the outer office, Penny was collating the reams of paper coming out of the printer into neat piles on her desk. Amy was sat in one of the guest chairs, flipping through the pages of her notepad. Hedrick was in a good mood, feeling that his lunch with Anubis had been a great success. Penny looked up, ‘Almost finished, Director, I’ll have this batch on your desk in a couple of minutes.’
Hedrick looked at the piles of paper Penny was now stapling together. Maybe Anubis had been right, he had created a lot of unnecessary work. But, it was too late to worry about that now. There was no point in changing his routine just for the last four days of his directorship. He approached Amy with a broad smile, ‘Miss Amy, I hope you enjoyed lunch with your partner.’
‘He stood her up!’ Penny said, almost under her breath.
‘Noooo.’ Amy said, turning Penny’s remark into a joke, ‘He had an important meeting that came up at short notice.’
‘Never mind, there is always another day. Give me five minutes to look through the reports and then we will get together. Penny, could you get me a cup of coffee?’
It was ten minutes before Hedrick invited Amy to join him, ‘Now, Miss Amy, I have to admit to doing some research. We auditors do like researching things, you know. I asked the Academy’s principal if I could have a copy of your dissertation. I took it home and read it last night. It was very interesting but I have to admit to not understanding all the latest technical jargon. As I am sure you have been told I am a bit of a technophobe. However, the principles of DM production are the same whether the work is undertaken by angels or drones. I was particularly interested in the section on creating planets. That part of the production process has always intrigued me. Maybe you could talk me through some of the latest developments, use the whiteboard, if it will help.’
Amy picked a blue marker from the whiteboard tray, ‘Director, let us assume that a universe has just been created. The galaxies are little more than hotspots in a ball of expanding stellar dust. Slowly, gravity draws in all the proto-matter to form massive stars, which eventually collapse in on themselves and explode.’ As she spoke, Amy drew a series of sketches depicting the life cycle of a star.
Hedrick relaxed into his chair, ‘So, these first stars produce the elements needed to create life?’
‘That’s right. But, the process has to be repeated thousands of times, each cycle producing heavier and heavier elements.’ Amy drew a grid on the left side of the board and started writing letters into each of its boxes. ‘This table, the Periodic Table, shows all the elements we need to establish intelligent life. Once these are available we can initiate phase-two star formation; this time we divide the solar disk in such a way that the inner portion is drawn in to fuel a star, whilst the matter in the outer disk is used to form planets.’
‘This is where the planetary drones come in.’
‘Yes, that’s right. The first drone to be deployed divides the solar disk into stellar and planetary material.’ Amy was adding concentric arcs inside one of the ellipses she had drawn. She turned back to face Hedrick, ‘But the real magic is the formation of the blue planets.’
Hedrick leant forward on his desk, ‘Does intelligent life only occur on these blue planets?’
‘Mostly. Although some red planets support silicon based life.’
‘So, how long is it until we can start enriching Dark Matter?.’
‘Well, first we have to wait for the intelligent life forms to discover the temporal elements.’
‘Where do they find them?’
‘No, Director. By discover, I mean we have to wait for them to develop the technology to produce temporal elements.’ Amy turned to the whiteboard and added diagonal lines to the Periodic Table so it represented a cube-like matrix, ‘They’re listed here, in the temporal region of the Periodic Matrix, that’s the multidimensional version of the Periodic Table. Currently it’s taking about four to five billion years of evolution before intelligent life discovers temporal elements.’
Amy’s presentation was interrupted by a knock on the door. Penny swept in carrying a tray laden with two mugs of coffee and a plate of Hedrick’s favourite biscuits. She glared at Amy as she set the tray down, ‘Director, you’ve got a meeting with Deputy Director Anubis at four, and it’s three-fifteen now!’ Penny’s voice was hard and snippy and, before Hedrick could reply, she left the office, slamming the door behind her.
Startled, Amy waited for Hedrick’s reaction. He was enjoying his first biscuit and glanced up to see her concerned expression. He smiled and said, ‘Do not let Penny intimidate you, Amy. That is just the way she is. Between me and you, she carries a lot of baggage, no one would ever guess it, but under that brash exterior is a very sensitive creationist.’ He took his second biscuit from the plate, sat back in his chair holding the coffee mug against his chest, and gestured, ‘Please, carry on.’
Amy returned to the whiteboard and started to speak, but she couldn’t wipe Penny’s expression from her mind. ‘We got to the point where the insertion drones had created the first blue planets-’ she paused.
Hedrick sat up in his chair and brushed the biscuit crumbs from his waistcoat. He could tell that Penny’s abrupt entrance had unnerved Amy. ‘This is really interesting and you explain it so well. You should teach at the Academy,’ he said, trying to lighten the atmosphere.
‘I might do that one day, Director, when I’ve gained some practical experience.’ Amy’s
tail twitched and curled, as her confidence returned.
‘So I suppose this is when we create life?’ Hedrick said, taking his fifth biscuit from the plate.
‘Yes, this is when the evolutionary drone is deployed. It carries a bacterium with engineered DNA, pre-programmed to evolve intelligent life, usually bipedal humanoids.’
‘I will tell you an amusing story about the evolutionary process. When I was an audit team leader, the first insertion drones were being tested. One morning, I was reviewing the previous day’s audit report, when I noticed a series of blue planets that had failed to produce any intelligent life. The planets were overrun by huge reptiles which were dominating evolution. I called them dinosaurs, terrible lizards, quite a clever name, do you not think? It took my team some days to track down the problem which turned out to be a typing error. Apparently the engineer who had written the specification had put a decimal point in the wrong position. Instead of producing reptiles ten centimetres tall, the drone was inserting DNA to create creatures, ten metres tall.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Well, it was an Academy intern who inadvertently came up with the solution. She jokingly suggested hurling asteroids at the planets to kill off all the dinosaurs. It solved the problem brilliantly, the subroutine is still on file somewhere, just in case we need to kill off another dominating species.
Hedrick glanced at his watch, sat up in his chair and said, ‘Can we continue this later, there is something else I would like to discuss with you?’ Reaching down he opened a drawer and took out the manila folder. He placed it in front of him, and lifting the corner of the cover so only he could see the contents, slid out a sheet of paper. He was about to speak when the office door opened and Anubis strode in. He closed the door behind him, picked up one of the remaining chairs and, placing it next to Amy’s, sat down. Hedrick slid the folder back into the drawer. All three sat in an awkward silence until Hedrick said, ‘Can I help you, Deputy Director?’
Creation- The Auditor’s Apprentice Page 5
