Tree of Life

by J. F. Penn

  Jake was more determined than ever to find the pieces of the map and reach the Garden of Eden first.

  7

  Martin Klein sat in the footwell of his desk, the wooden panels around and above him forming a kind of cocoon. He folded his tall frame into the tiny space, his knees up by his chin as he etched into the mahogany with a Swiss pocketknife, the blade kept sharp over the years for just such occasions.

  Martin could have had one of the largest offices within the ARKANE Headquarters underneath Trafalgar Square in the heart of London. He certainly deserved it in his role as Head Librarian. He was unofficially known as the Brain of the Institute, responsible for the digital powerhouse of knowledge that ARKANE relied on for research. But while Martin easily lost himself in the technological world accessible through his fingertips and manageable with code, he sometimes found himself overwhelmed by the physical realm. This tiny space below his desk enabled him to enclose the vast universe in temporary walls while he focused on etching the lines that made life controllable — at least for a short time. The geometric constants of the square, the circle, the triangle. Over and over again.

  A low beep came from his phone on the desk above.

  Martin tilted his head to one side as the sound drew him from his concentrated reverie. It was the tone he had programmed for Morgan and Jake, the two ARKANE agents he considered closest to what some might call friends. They appreciated his way of being in the world, and he had followed them into danger many times with a trust born of experience and faith in their ability.

  But something had changed in the last few months, and he wondered whether even they could manage what was to come.

  Martin’s job as archivist and librarian was far more than just managing the vast information storehouse. It was also seeking patterns in the material. His algorithms trawled the dark net as well as the various social media platforms, his bots burrowed into databases that governments thought to be unbreakable. His natural language processing engine, powered by the latest artificial intelligence, gathered words and phrases from diverse scanned images — ancient Sanskrit manuscripts in India, medieval biblical prophecy from plague times, banned books of the occult. In recent weeks, many of them pointed to something wild emerging, something savage on the horizon, something that could not be tamed by human endeavor.

  That was why he had been driven under his desk once more. Martin rarely came across things he could not eventually understand, but this seemed beyond even his comprehension. He wanted to take his research to Director Marietti, but he didn’t have a complete handle on it yet. It was as if there was some collective intelligence beneath it all, communicating across vast distances, slipping through his net of understanding.

  The low beep came again.

  Martin crawled out from under the desk and stood up, running his fingers through his shock of rough-cut blonde hair. It was particularly unruly today, spiking in all directions as a physical manifestation of his mental turmoil.

  He picked up his phone and checked the message from Morgan. Tracing this Frik Versfeld would distract him for a little time at least. He sat down at his desk and dived into a world he could control.

  Times Square, New York

  Aurelia turned the corner of Broadway into the famous plaza at the heart of the city. The din of the crowd assaulted her senses, amplified by the honking of horns, the shouts of street vendors, the stink of fast food and the bright lights of the oversized digital screens beaming consumerism to the masses. Eager tourists flocked here from around the world, but Times Square was Aurelia’s idea of hell. Her heart beat faster, her pulse raced, and she had to clench her fists to stop herself from running away from this cesspool.

  She stood on the edge of the seething mass of humanity and closed her eyes, conjuring up the peace of the rainforest, the sound of birdsong, the scent of flowers after rain. The vision helped her to breathe more easily and strengthened her resolve. Today was important for the cause — the public face of it, anyway.

  Aurelia glanced at her watch. It was almost time.

  She pulled up the hood of her sweatshirt to hide her face and hurried toward the stand of seating where tourists watched a trio of lithe acrobats spin around and run up and down multi-colored poles. Their ability to move like monkeys across the branches of trees was such a contrast to the oversized tourists munching on fast food, oblivious to the damage they did to the world with every bite, unable to walk even a few blocks without a snack. They would not last long in a world without these comforts, and Aurelia couldn’t help but smile at the thought of their suffering. After the way they treated Nature, it was time for payback.

  She climbed to the highest part of the stand where she had a view over the entire square, trying to avoid touching the disgusting sea of bloated humanity along the way.

  The giant digital screens above the throng suddenly turned black, the adverts silenced.

  Tourists looked around in confusion, and even the street vendors and performers glanced up at the curious sight. Nothing usually prevented the constant flow of advertising in this area.

  The screens flashed into life again — images of wild fires, gigantic mega storms, ice sheets tumbling into the ocean, bloated animal corpses, and sprawling cities pumping out toxic smoke and fumes into the atmosphere.

  Destruction, annihilation, extinction. Humanity ravaging the Earth.

  Aurelia watched with approval. Her wealth paid for the production and screen time, and while she appreciated the expertise of the organization, it was good to see they were spending it well. The video would now be dropped online and within minutes, it would spread around the world. While she instinctively hated the obtrusive control mechanisms of social media, Aurelia understood its power for spreading emotional messages to those who would never dream of doing their own research.

  All around the square, people started dropping to the ground.

  They lay on the pavement, bodies limp and unresponsive. One woman screamed as all those around her fell to the ground. She looked around in desperation, clearly thinking there was some kind of attack. Others dialed for the police as people around them continued to fall to the concrete.

  The screens high above changed to display the logo of Gaia Insurgent over the images of continued destruction. A deep voice rang out across the square.

  “Earth faces an existential crisis. If we do not stop this together, extinction threatens the entire planet. Today we perform a die-in across the world, members of Gaia Insurgent lie prone in public as a demonstration of extinction. Join us. Together we can save the world.”

  His voice faded out and the clamor of the crowd grew louder, even as bodies remained lying on the streets. Some bystanders nodded up in agreement at the images, some sat down cross-legged to join the protest. Others walked around the fake corpses, trying to pretend they did not even exist.

  “They’re just faking it,” one man shouted as he threw a half-empty can of soda at one protestor. “Get up, you idiot.”

  He drew his leg back for a kick.

  A hot dog vendor barged him sideways, so the blow didn’t connect. “Leave him be. They’re right. We are destroying the Earth. They’re allowed to protest.”

  The man turned in anger and the resulting scuffle ignited those around them in confrontation. People shouted at each other, some coming to blows over their different views, while the protestors remained limp and motionless on the pavement below.

  Aurelia watched with pleasure at the growing antagonism. People really would kill each other if the thin veneer of civilization was stripped away. We are all just animals. We deserve the end that is coming for us.

  A siren rang out across the square, and police quickly advanced to dispel the troublemakers. They hauled the protestors to their feet, dragging them into vans as they pretended to be dead weight. Some would get booked, others would be released later on, many of them curiously proud to be facing penalties for civil disobedience.

  These well-meaning members of Gaia
Insurgent were happy to spend their weekends protesting and give money to plant more trees or save the burning animals, but most returned to comfy homes and middle-class lifestyles after their run-in with the law. They had the freedom to protest, the money to buy organic and ethical products while they criticized those who had no choice in how they lived. They were useful for the public face of the movement, but Aurelia was one of the few who understood the true goal. The Revolutionaries of Gaia were willing to take things much further, for what could the planet become without people slashing and burning and polluting?

  Aurelia was more than ready to die for her beliefs, and she was certain that the Earth would be better off without one particular species. It was only humanity that stood in the way of a thriving planet. Her hunt for Eden was just one of the ways that the Revolutionaries intended to pursue the end times. There was something special in the Garden, something that had the capacity to strike back, and Aurelia was determined to be the one to set it free.

  Her phone buzzed with a text from Frik.

  She smiled at the news of another recovered fragment. It wouldn’t be long until they had them all and could trace a path to the Tree of Life. Aurelia looked out across the abomination of Times Square and imagined it full of bodies. The roots of trees grew over the corpses, and flowers bloomed from their remains as Nature ruled this land once more.

  8

  It didn’t take long for Martin to find Frik Versfeld in the web of information at his fingertips. Once the South African had emerged from the field hospital at the mine, he took his payout and trained for the elite security services. There were images of Frik in the mountains of Pakistan alongside members of the Black Storks, in Russia with the Alpha Group and on civilian training exercises run by ex-US Navy SEALs. After working in several war zones, he re-entered the mining world in Brazil, running the security operation at Mina de Fidalgo.

  There were suppressed police reports in the archives, complaints of brutal treatment of indigenous workers, and several women had turned up dead after being summoned to his lodgings. Martin clicked away from the disturbing images, pushing aside his concern for Morgan and Jake. They had dealt with such men before.

  But one image in particular made his heart beat faster.

  A painfully thin woman stood on the edge of a lush green rainforest, her chin raised in imperious determination. One of her hands lay flat on the bark of a tree, fingers spread out as if she were part of the forest. Aurelia dos Santos Fidalgo, the daughter of the mining magnate, who had recently inherited his empire. The article spoke of her determination to end the destruction of the rainforest by the mining industry and restore the damaged Earth. Frik worked as the head of her personal security, so she must be the true force behind the search for the map to Eden.

  Martin frowned as he stared at Aurelia’s face. He struggled to read people in the real world, often confused when the words they spoke did not match their actions or physical gestures. But this woman’s singular purpose was clear. Her words matched her deeds, and her tenacity in her quest would not be stopped. The rainforest behind her looked wild and sinister, not the imagined haven that many considered it to be. ARKANE had faced religious fanatics before, but Aurelia was something different and Martin didn’t quite know what to do with that.

  He turned to his happy place, using the keyboard to enter a world of code. He was the master of this domain, and the hours passed quickly as he delved into an ever-widening web of possibilities for the location of the remaining fragments.

  Martin started with the links between Macau and Amsterdam, expanding the map of the Portuguese Jewish Diaspora into places where the pieces might have ended up, ranking them according to the genealogy of the most likely families to have carried them.

  When he had done as much as he could, he sent everything over to Morgan and Jake for review, along with the information on Frik and Aurelia. They would have to decide the next step in the hunt for the fragments — but Martin felt a pull of curiosity, a sense he had learned to trust over his many years working at ARKANE. Some vital piece of knowledge remained hidden just beyond his reach, and the one thing that Martin hated more than anything was a subject he could not master through his extensive archives.

  ARKANE agents hunted down ancient manuscripts, medieval texts, secret libraries and religious relics so that all could be added to the vast storehouse of information held inside a complexity of databases, a tangle of ideas and threads of knowledge. But until every image and scrap of text was digitized, and every artifact scanned and catalogued, it would not be complete. It was Martin’s life purpose to fill the gaps, and he used his hacking ability to stealthily access private collections and secret archives. Director Marietti helped by sending ARKANE agents after physical items, most of which were stored in the highly protected vault deep below his office. There should be an answer in here somewhere.

  Martin followed his curiosity and dived into the most ancient manuscripts of the book of Genesis, searching for meaning behind the Tree of Life and translations of the text that might give an insight beyond the standard editions.

  He started with the largest organized collection of Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts in the world, housed in the Russian National Library of St Petersburg. Martin accessed the Leningrad Codex, the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible dated around 1008 CE and brought up scanned images of the text. His fingers flashed across the keyboard as he delved into the Aleppo Codex, held at the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, and then put both images on the screen side by side. He added the oldest Greek version from the fifth-century Codex Alexandrinus and finally, the earliest Aramaic version, the London Palimpsest 5b1.

  Martin scanned the translations, speed reading the commentary from different scholars. The frown deepened in his brow as he realized how many different views there were on something as fundamental as how God might have created the world.

  The five books of the Pentateuch — Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy — had been created from two primary sources with repeated stories, like the two creation passages, used to separate them.

  While it was originally thought that the Yahwist wrote from the time of the kings, perhaps even from the court of Solomon, more recent scholarship placed it during the Babylonian exile of the sixth century BCE. The Priestly aspects of the Pentateuch were generally considered to be created later in the period of exile, or afterward as the ancient Jews codified their religion.

  After several more hours of the minutiae of textual analysis, Martin admitted defeat. His true gift was finding connections across diverse sources, not delving deep into a few chapters of one particular faith. He could lose himself in biblical scholarship and religious arguments that raged over centuries — or he could find himself an expert. While Morgan and Jake traced the path of the map, he would focus on finding the location of Eden from a scholarly angle. There was one person he knew that might be able to help him take the next step.

  MGM Cotai, Macau

  Morgan stepped out of what was possibly the most luxurious bathroom she had ever experienced in what was most definitely the fluffiest hotel robe she had ever worn. Her dark hair hung in wet curls around her face, all traces of ash and smoke washed from her body. The medics had checked her over, but she only had bruises from the fall and some minor burns, nothing compared to her injuries from past missions.

  Jake had taken the brunt of the damage this time around. He was resting up in the adjoining room after being released from hospital while they both enjoyed the hospitality of one of the best hotels in Macau. ARKANE didn’t always stretch the budget to this level of extravagance, but Morgan was grateful for the chance to retreat away from the busy city streets.

  She walked over to the wall of glass that dominated the Sky Loft room and looked out across the skyscrapers of Macau, each one representing thousands of people come to gamble and shop and experience the excesses of wealth for even a short time. Morgan could just glimpse the Zhujiang River Estuary i
n the distance, but other than that tiny strip of blue, there was very little of nature here. Much of the land had been reclaimed from the waters with large amounts of rock or cement dumped into the coastline, infilling with clay and soil until the desired height had been reached. More space for rising consumerism, more opportunities to spend, more experiences to enjoy. And who was she to question such desire? Morgan gave a wry smile as she sank down onto the incredibly comfortable king-sized bed.

  Her phone pinged with a message. The latest research from Martin Klein.

  There was a dossier on Frik Versfeld and pictures of him as a good-looking young man working the mines of South Africa. One image showed him laughing as he worked, and it was hard to reconcile his smiling face with the nightmare of scarred rage who emerged from the flames in the burning church. The man who had tortured and murdered Ines.

  Morgan read of Jake’s part in the mining accident and how the injuries shaped Frik’s path into increasingly shady security companies, laid off for violence and abuse until eventually, he was hired for that very brutality.

  She sighed as she thought of Jake lying in the next room. They had both been on missions that resulted in death and destruction, they both had to weigh up the greater good — and they both made mistakes. Yet Morgan hoped, on balance, that they managed to stay on the side of the angels. Each must choose their path, and every day brought the opportunity to move toward good or evil. Jake had made a mistake back then, but Frik had chosen his own direction.

  She laid the information aside and read about the woman Frik worked for. Aurelia dos Santos Fidalgo, heiress of a mining empire, was dangerously thin, her face pinched, and yet she exuded confidence in official photos with tailored suits and striking makeup that made her look every inch the entitled, wealthy businesswoman.