For Centuries More

by Ethan Johnson

  “Conquest. Mighty Nineveh is not so named merely by the height of its walls, or its hanging gardens I now tend as the royal gardener to the gods themselves. No, Nineveh boasts armies of its own. Fearsome, well-trained, and perhaps most importantly, loyal to the last. Who comes forth in hopes of conquest?”

  The man to his left nodded and bowed. “It is the Babylonian army, my king.”

  The king stopped and stared at the men incredulously. He read their faces. The men stiffened and put on a serious air, lest he receive the news in jest. Despite their efforts, the king erupted in a fit of laughter.

  “The Babylonian army? They dream of conquest? Let them dream. They are as a scarab met by a stone. The scarab is impressive to behold, and as an insect, intimidating to the passive eye. But the scarab is crushed by the stone. Like the scarab, the Babylonians will make a satisfying and piteous sound when they are crushed. They are of no consequence.” He waved his hand dismissively and resumed his march toward his concubine den.

  The advisers exchanged fearful glances. They walked quickly to catch up to their king. The one on the right made a pleading gesture. “Begging your pardon, my king, but they advance upon Nineveh as the sun shines.”

  “They advance upon Nineveh? What inspires this lunacy?”

  The man to his left swallowed hard before replying. “They sense… weakness, my king.”

  The man reeled as the king angrily slapped his cheek. “Weakness! The Babylonians come to test me? Fine, let them come. I shall command my armies to rise to this challenge, and this scourge shall be as a small fig: amusing to behold, and quickly devoured.”

  The men nodded in unison. “It shall be as you say, my king.”

  Black smoke ringed James abruptly, and he returned to physical reality to find his classmates rolling up their prayer mats. The teacher shook his shoulder gently and smiled. “James, I’m impressed with your focus and concentration. But my 10:30 group is here, and I must ask you to leave.”

  James felt around for his glasses and blinked as he slipped them on. He had asked for guidance. What on earth had he received instead?

  CHAPTER 30: AIRBORNE

  Jacqueline slipped her boarding pass into her shoulder bag and proceeded to the security checkpoint. Airport security was a nuisance, she thought, but a necessary one. She had dressed with clearing the checkpoint quickly in mind. Jacqueline kicked off her shoes and dropped them in a large gray plastic bin, followed by her shoulder bag. Her laptop was placed carefully in the bottom of a second tray, then the laptop bag was pushed along by the gray bins. She raised her arms for a full body scan, then dropped her arms to her sides with a pleasant nod to the TSA agent, who waved her through with wiggling fingers and a vacant stare.

  After collecting up her belongings, Jacqueline glanced at her boarding pass. A11. She would have about an hour to wait for boarding to begin. She knew the drill. She smiled thinly at the sound of less seasoned travelers complaining about the wait, about security, about the costly wi-fi. Jacqueline signed in to her account and took care of a few things before her flight. Down time didn’t have to be unproductive time, she thought. She frowned disapprovingly at a business traveler who read an insipid paperback a few seats away. Tch. He probably doesn’t get why he lost the sale, she thought darkly. People like her were eating his lunch.

  Jacqueline shrugged and answered a few emails, edited a spreadsheet, and firmed up the details for a staff briefing planned for the end of the month. The gate announcer snapped her out of her productive groove. “Ladies and Gentlemen, flight 1701 to Chicago will be boarding in five minutes. At that time, we will begin boarding our guests with special needs, followed by our Executive Seven Diamond members.”

  Jacqueline smiled at her boarding pass. She looked around for any familiar faces. She thought she’d recognized someone from a leadership summit she’d attended a few years ago but couldn’t be sure. She could find out on the plane if they sat together, she thought.

  After a few passengers entered the jetway on wheelchairs and ECVs, Jacqueline marched confidently forward to produce her boarding pass to the gate attendant. The bar code reader chirped, and the attendant waved her through. When she reached the end of the jetway behind an elderly man who was being helped off his ECV by two family members, she turned around to see who else was joining her in her elite traveling class. She frowned to find nobody behind her in line. Moments later, she was strapped in to her seat in the front row of First Class. Jacqueline studied a financial magazine as the common folk were herded into coach by cordial flight attendants. She looked up in time to see the woman she thought she had recognized from the leadership summit. A name popped into her head: Patricia. She inhaled to speak it, when the woman beat her to it. “Jacqueline Winstead? Wow, it’s been years.”

  Jaqueline lowered her magazine and smiled genially. “Hello, Patricia.”

  The woman made a confused face. “Oh, begging your pardon, I’m Marie Kliminger. With Golding Hampton? Well… was. Things got a little kludgy there in ’09.” She talked with her hands, which Jacqueline didn’t care for. She tried to remember that company. Didn’t they get bought out? Or was it the insider trading scandal? She wished her assistant Chelsea was nearby to provide the answer.

  “Yes, well, we all must adapt to changing conditions. Hopefully you had a soft landing.”

  Marie made another face. “I’m heading to my last appeal hearing. If the judge dismisses my harassment suit, I’m going to be ruined.”

  Jacqueline was taken aback. She tried to recover gracefully, insofar as that was possible, but the line pressed forward and swept Marie along like a riptide. The sound of bags being stuffed into overhead bins and various apologies as people took their seats filled the air behind her.

  After the safety briefing, the plane took off. Jacqueline looked over at the empty seat beside her, then turned pensively to the window. The eastern seaboard shone with a golden pallor in the morning sun. She smiled at the sight of the various landmarks she could pick out. She slid the window cover down and nestled into her seat. Chicago was two hours away, and soon after, perhaps, a few answers.

  CHAPTER 31: COLLECTED

  Marc had arisen early to start another long day supervising wall construction. Inanna pouted as he got dressed. She didn’t understand his new responsibilities. She had been too idle in her old—very old—life in Nineveh, he suspected. She didn’t talk much about those times, focusing instead on the modern day. She asked lots of questions about a wide variety of topics. What land was this? Why was it called Chicago? How did the cars move without an animal to pull them? What was snow? Why did it fall in Chicago but not Nineveh?

  Marc felt like the parent of a young child. So many questions, never enough answers. To answer one question was to slice the head off a hydra: two more questions took its place. He did his best to help her learn, but some days were harder than others. He didn’t have the benefit of another parent to route her to for a break. Tobias would seem to be that outlet, but he was learning as well.

  He smiled as he knotted the rope that served as a belt. Inanna had her ways of making the little annoyances vanish, along with any other thought that didn’t concern a night of wild sex. She was insatiable, and incredibly creative. Marc thought he could write a letter to skin magazines that would take paint off their tires. Inanna was his, and his alone. The memoirs could wait. He was enjoying making the memories, nightly.

  He wondered for a moment why there was never any let-up. He’d had girlfriends before, even ones he slept with. Sooner or later, they’d all euphemistically close for maintenance. Things would cool down for a week or so, then get back to normal, depending on the girlfriend. With some, the break in the physical relationship revealed insurmountable shortcomings in the rest of it. Not so with Inanna. She had no off switch. That wasn’t normal. Maybe women were built differently back then? He wished he could look it up, but electronic devices had no place in the kingdom of Tobias.

  Marc saw the looks on the faces o
f the other guys. He saw a blend of awe and terror. As construction progressed, there was churn in the ranks, so Marc didn’t always see the same faces in the crowd. He knew some of the men lusted after Inanna. Some of the women, too, which excited him. Inanna seemed to pick up on this as well. She surprised him one night with two women hand-picked by her to spend the night in their bed. He’d fantasized about having two women at once but never closed the sale, not even in college during a particularly promising party. Three women, including Inanna was enough sexual stimulation to destroy a planet. He could barely walk upright for two days afterward.

  Men, however, were not invited. Marc wasn’t interested in having any men join them, and Inanna, while seeming to bask in the attention, especially when she roamed the halls of the fledgling kingdom in the nude, never suggested any. She was committed solely to Marc’s pleasure. If he wanted men in his bed, he’d have as many as he pleased, he was certain.

  Despite her charms, Inanna was prone to bouts of jealousy and impetuous tantrums. Today, she begged Marc to stay in bed with her, and when he refused per his commitment to Tobias and the deadline he was under to complete the west wall, she tossed off a barb about how he preferred to play at building like a child.

  “Maybe real man come to bed with Inanna,” she hissed.

  “It’s not like that,” Marc said. “I have to work. It’s important.”

  Inanna crossed her arms over her bare breasts. “Inanna is not important. Marc runs off and plays.”

  Marc sighed and tried to contain his exasperation. “No, Inanna, I would stay here forever if I could. Right here, by your side. But I must honor my commitments. The work makes our time alone together possible.”

  Inanna turned her head. “You say Inanna make all things possible.”

  “Yes, yes I did. And I meant it. Mean it! Don’t be like that, Inanna, you know I love you. I’ll do anything for you. I traveled through time to save you. And you saved me.” He put his hand to her cheek. “You’ve given me all I ever dreamt of and so much more. But I also swore to help Tobias, and I’m honoring that commitment. Please, Inanna, you have to understand.”

  She looked up with wide eyes that pulled him in like… well, he didn’t have the words to express that thought. He looked in her eyes and saw life itself. Lush, green, vibrant, the source of all things. He wanted to be sucked into that dimension and live out his days in paradise, naked beside his smoldering beauty who now bent forward to kiss him. Her hand slipped down to his shoulder, then his waist, then his rope belt, and—

  Marc leapt from the bed and re-tied his belt. “No, Inanna, I’m sorry, I have to get back to the wall.” He didn’t wait around to receive the brunt of her displeasure. Fortunately for him, it was delivered in her native tongue which he knew very little about. Sittu meant “sleep”, that he knew. When she said it, he drifted off as if under a spell.

  After Marc was away for a few minutes, Inanna composed herself and rose from their bed. She hissed and spat some more in case Marc wasn’t completely out of earshot, then she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She padded toward a wall of thick draperies and pulled a pair open, revealing a man named Gerald who came to her one evening while Marc was away, boasting of his prior conquests and the things he could do to her that Marc could only imagine. She stripped him bare and inspected his dark body, giving an impressed turn of the corners of her mouth at his pendulous member. She cupped it with one hand and cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at him.

  “Does Inanna not please you?”

  Gerald had smiled an easy, confident grin, responding with a faint nod. “Not my first rodeo, if you know what I’m saying. It’s obvious what impresses you. What’re you gonna show me?”

  Today was the day to answer that question. She ran her hands over his hard, muscular chest. She kissed his breastbone and sucked in a breath. She looked up into his eyes, enjoying his lusty gaze. He had impeccable control. He would have her when he was ready, unlike excitable Marc and his easily manipulated passions.

  This control pleased her. It meant she could hand him a spear and shield to hold. He accepted the props from her and scrunched up his face disapprovingly. “What, I’m supposed to be some Nubian warrior or something?” He watched her writhe before him and run her fingers up and down her sleek olive-skinned body. She ended her tease by letting her dark hair slide between her fingers, capping off the display with a coquettish pout.

  “Because I’ll be whatever you want, baby.” He held the spear and shield in a dramatic pose.

  “Yes, stand as the great warrior. Show Inanna your power.”

  Gerald raised his chin and put on a noble air. Perhaps, in that moment, he was the Nubian warrior, returned from a great battle, and now first to receive the spoils of victory from a beguiling beauty, enslaved in the rout. Inanna put her finger in her mouth and sucked it suggestively, giving Gerald the necessary motivation to begin his nether display of his prowess. He would provide her with hours of entertainment, if she let him.

  Her finger glowed bright orange as she removed it from her mouth. Gerald looked up and away, maintaining his pose, until the glow caught his eye. He inhaled to speak, and Inanna pressed her finger to the center of his chest where she had kissed him. He trembled but could not move. Inanna stepped backward as Gerald took his last breath as a mortal man.

  Inanna pulled a series of curtains open. A golden man held a shield and dagger, also rendered in gold. Another caressed a golden woman. The center curtains revealed a blank space, followed by Gerald, and finally, Tex, who held a spear high over his head with both hands.

  Inanna stepped back to admire the display she had created, piece by piece. The center place of honor would be filled by Marc.

  When she tired of him.

  She snapped the curtains shut and went off in search of breakfast. She didn’t bother covering up. Let them stare, she thought as she licked her teeth. They are but flies to Inanna.

  CHAPTER 32: MEDITATION

  James sat cross-legged on his prayer mat in a stuffy room, filled with decorative pillows and Persian rugs. His instructor was a thin man from Sri Lanka named Deva. He spoke softly to his students from a lotus position. James wasn’t quite able to get his ankles up over his thighs and hold the position comfortably. He hoped nobody would comment on his lesser cross-legged position.

  “Now, we will meditate on the curvature of the Earth, and reach our consciousness outward to dance to the music of the spheres.” His accent was thick. James worked out his inflections and pieced the words together. He was beginning to understand that any meditation was good mediation in the eyes of the manor. Nobody was grading him on it, that was for sure.

  Fortunately for James, the contents of his mind were not known to his fellow students or the instructor. A hodge-podge of thoughts swirled around in his head. How could he help Agnes? Where had Aubra come from? Why was she here? Why couldn’t he turn stone into gold? He focused his mind on that question. The countess told him it was possible. She said others had done it before. That line of inquiry led him to Agnes and a mess of trouble.

  James felt uneasy. The countess had summoned him again after his previous class, and she would be expecting a successful demonstration this time. He had nothing to show for his study time but a replacement bed and a strange friendship with Aubra. Oh, and some woman named Agnes hated his guts. He wondered if he could convincingly call out sick instead.

  James remembered his epiphany: the challenge to turn stone into gold was an unsolvable puzzle, and unanswerable riddle. It was a Zen koan unto itself, speaking to the quest for enlightenment rather than being intended as a display of metaphysical prowess. He would explain this, and the countess would be pleased.

  Something nagged at him. She seemed sincerely disappointed in his inability to turn stone into gold. She started with a brick, and progressively shrank the target. No, this was no mere teaching tool. She wanted the gold, and if not from him, she would get it from someone who could succeed.

  Au
bra.

  James felt queasy at the thought. She was gifted in ways he couldn’t fathom. She never explained herself, she just… knew things. He’d never seen her attend any classes, yet the staff spoke highly of her. She never meditated in his presence, but her consciousness seemed capable of running rings around the most enlightened mystic.

  Would she turn stone to gold? She was stubborn. He thought back to his prior failure before the countess. Aubra came to him and spoke a single word: Agnes. What did Aubra know? Where did she learn it? He remembered hearing a name when he was incapacitated behind the manor: Ajax. Who was that? Maybe he was Aubra’s teacher. Maybe he would have answers.

  He summoned him, reaching out in all directions. Ajax. Ajax? I need you.

  James.

  James leaned forward intently. Contact! Yes? Yes, I am here. Where are you?

  “James, I need you to concentrate on my instructions. We’re using our mantra now and you’re not contributing to the vibrations.” Deva tapped his shoulder gently. He said “contributing” like the word was a pair of sneakers in the dryer.

  “Yes, yes of course. I’m sorry.”

  Deva returned to his lotus pose. James hummed the mantra with his eyes closed. His inner eyes searched through time and space for Ajax. He did not reveal himself to James.

  James, however, would reveal himself to be a failure once more to the countess in less than thirty minutes. He let out a frustrated sigh as he hummed.