"We are Faithers too," the Amish man says. "This side of paradise the war is without end. It should simply be viewed as a natural part of life."
"And we fight that battle against the enemy together," the other Arabic Christian says.
The Amish Elder adds, "When you all have the same enemy, that tends to unify people."
"Amen."
Yonah enters Congress Hall, and after scanning the crowd for a while, he sees his party. They see him too and wave.
The first man to reach him is wearing a white cowboy hat and extends his hand. "The Cowboy Rabbi in the flesh. Mr. Lariat of the Protestant Order."
The woman next to him has a brown cowboy hat with an American Indian bead necklace around her neck. "Mrs. Runningstar of the Conservative Jewish Order."
Yonah knows of both of them well. They were some of the last non-Goth agents working in Tek World and are actually married to each other—intra-religious marriages are rare in Faith World. Usually, one spouse converts to the religion of the other, but not in their case.
The other men are with the Mormon and Catholic Orders; the women are with the Shinto Order and the African Collective."
"I'm only the Cowboy Rabbi when I have my guns, which, for this meeting, are locked up safe at home."
"So we're creating the Cowboy Coalition," Lariat says.
"Yes, we are. A dedicated tactical team for the entire Continuum. We'll be the advance force to go into action before everyone else. Always training and always ready, but that doesn't by any means suggest we're—to use a very old term—to be cannon fodder. We're just the ones to fire the first shot when needed until the cavalry arrives or for quick strike-and-flight ops. We already have the approval for creation of a full contingent of robots for us."
"Please tell me we'll have robotic horses too," Runningstar says.
"Seriously?"
"Why not? Cowboys need their horses."
Lariat smiles. "My wife is an accomplished equestrian. Riding since she was five."
"And with robotic horses, we can all be accomplished equestrians," she says.
Sek arrives with Niccolo. They stand at the doorway and scan the room. They see Moses and his wife M (Emma) talking with a group.
"We'll meet with them afterward," Sek says. "We'll need Tova and Mr. Tova from the Conservative Jewish Order too."
"All of them were involved?"
"It was a joint operation of both Orders. Well, back then we didn't have the protocols we have now for operations. It was simpler back then. If you came at us, we were coming after you."
Niccolo laughs.
"You remember how it was before."
"I do."
Remote Outlands Enclave
3:00 p.m., 10 October 2096
The Outlands are the outermost part of tek-cities—sometimes urban, sometimes rural, but always apart from the main city. That is what its residents preferred despite the scarcity of services and rarity of drone patrols. Sometimes adjoining enclaves were built to be even more exclusive and sheltered from outsiders. This enclave is secretly run by Faithers.
The heli-jet is shuttled into the hanger facility by a giant hover-pad. It glides in and sets down in the center of the landing field. The 'sky' activates. It looks like the sky, but is actually a holo-image on a dome ceiling. The visitors are cleared for disembarking as the doors open. The forty-plus leaders exit and walk along a dusty path to a single dome dwelling. Some of them look at the dusk sky above and others notice that the entire terrain is a dusty desert plain with nothing else visible but their transport. They can hear the faint sounds of an approaching aircraft, but see nothing. The door of the house is open and a man wearing a silver helmet waves to them with a silly grin on his face.
"My name is...hmmm. Let me think."
Everyone is seated on single couches arranged throughout the large circular living room of the dwelling. The doors to male and female restrooms are visible, which some used before getting settled, as well as the entrance to kitchen-dining area, though the scatterbrained man didn't even offer them any water.
"You don't know your name?" a man asks with a frown.
"Of course I know my name. I'm Pagan Paul. I was trying to remember my speech, but I got distracted." He smiles wide. "This is so great. The Jews get new people. The Protestants and we Gnostics get people too. This is great! It makes me want to blow up something tiny—really tiny."
"I thought you were some type of clown, but clearly you're a crazy person," one woman says.
"I'm not crazy. I'm a character. Crazy people don't have great personal references like I have or put in a position of authority. Don't distract me. I need to remember my speech."
"We don't need any speeches. Just talk to us straight," a man says.
Paul smiles and points to the man. "That was the title of my speech."
"Forget the speech. Just tell us what we need to know. We're humiliated enough. Do you get that?" another woman says.
"Humiliated? Why? You have nothing to be humiliated for."
"Yes, we do. I had a good career in the city and now, only because I happen to believe in God, I have to leave my home and live in these self-segregated communities out in nowhere land, never to return. I still don't know how I was found out."
"We don't live in communities. We live in cities. We have our own cities too. And we're not out in nowhere land. We're beyond the reach of the government, where we can protect ourselves and be left alone. And away from all their wires and brain-melting waves."
"What?"
"Never mind. We're safe. And you can go visiting Tek World whenever you want, though I don't know why you'd ever want to."
"I don't like being told where to live. And I don't like being chased from my home. It ticks me off. I don't want to live behind no walls either!" the woman continues.
Pagan Paul laughs. "What do you think the tek-cities are? They got invisible walls around them. It's no different."
"It is different."
"No, it's not."
"Stop it," a man interrupts. "We're not in kindergarten. Tell us what you need to tell us so we can get this over with."
Pagan Paul takes his silver helmet from his single chair, sets it on the floor, and sits on it. He wraps his arms around his knees. Everyone watches him.
"My name is Pagan Paul and I used to live with the Amish in Old Amish Quarter for almost twenty years before the bad Pagans came after us. That should tell you everything you need to know. If they'd come after pacifists, what chance did you think you would have? Well, I don't believe in God and never have. Probably never will, but I won't live with those Pagans. They're mean and hateful. I thought I'd be the only one of my kind in Faith World—that's what we call it—but I was so happy when I found out there were a bunch like me. The Faithers have their religious Orders and their Continuum—that's their alliance—so we created our own. Agnostic Order seemed kind of clunky, but someone came up with just dropping the "A." We're the Gnostic Order. All the agnostics and pro-Faither atheists in Faith World. I like a simple life, prefer it. In Tek World, you can't go to the bathroom without their tek and the government...always scanning, always listening, doing who knows what to you with their machines and invisible rays. We're better off, I tell you. In a generation or two, you'll start to see the mutations in them."
By now the group is looking at one another. Is he serious or joking with us?
"We'll remain Homo sapiens. They'll be Homo stupidus." The group is incredulous. "Their brains will be smaller and so will their IQs because of all the exposure to all the tek contamination."
"Excuse me, but let's get back to the serious stuff," one of the men interrupts.
"I am being serious." Pagan Paul thinks for a moment and then looks at the man, smiling. "Well, I think I am. Sometimes I can't tell myself. Well, we have our own section—"
"Segregation upon segregation," the woman says.
Pagan Paul points at her and says, "You are very negative." He drops his hand. "Mos
t of the Gnostics prefer that, just like the Amish live together, the Mennonites, the Protestants, Jews, Catholics, and so on. However!" Pagan Paul raises his hands in the air and flails them around. "You can live with any group you like. But!" He flails around again. "Since you are new, you would have to live in the Gnostic section and then when people trust you, then you can ask to live with any group you like. How did I do?"
"I can't say that I'm overly impressed," says the woman. "They send a clown to present to us rather than someone serious."
Pagan Paul hops up from the ground. He raises his hands and then walks to the window, pulling back the curtains. He gestures for them to join him. The group slowly rise from their seats and walk over.
"What are we looking at?" the woman asks.
Pagan Paul doesn't look, but says, "The color red."
The group looks and notices a reddish helicopter in the nearby landing area of the enclave.
"What do you see painted on it?"
"Symbols," the woman answers.
"It's Japanese, I believe," a man says.
"The Hidden and Lots like you, talk to me. The Exiles get to talk to them."
"Them who?" the woman asks.
"The Yakuza Fukkatsu." Pagan Paul walks up to the woman, real close. "Do you want to talk to me or them?"
The woman tries to look brave but is visibly nervous. "I'm okay with this current status quo."
Pagan Paul throws up his hands and runs from the window to his silver helmet 'seat.' "Okay, let's finish the presentation. We need to be done by lunch. And my belly will not tolerate lateness."
The group looks at each other and then slowly returns to their seats.
Congress Hall, The Ant-Hill
3:26 p.m., 10 October 2096
The meetings normally start later in the day, often well into night, and then everyone goes home—travel is always at night. The Continuum meeting is in full swing. The invocation and formal introductions are over. They call it the "donut hole," but it is a large round table with the center cut out, and all the senior Continuum leadership are seated around it. For the Jewish Orders: Conservatives, Orthodox, Shamar, Hasidim, Persians, Arabs, and Judeo-Spanish. The Protestants, who merged all their many denominations into one eight years ago. The Catholics with their Spanish American, Italian, and African contingents. The Mormons, the Shogun (Asian Christians, mostly Japanese), and the Magi. The African Collective; led by the African Catholics and made up of Coptic Christians, Ethiopian Jews, Armenian Christians, and various deists. The Anabaptists; Amish and Mennonites. All assistants, aides, and observers sit in the "coliseum" around the seated leaders, in successive rows with one row higher than the row before it, the entire seating area forming a circle. When the main deliberations occur, the section can move to a semi-circle configuration to be addressed by speakers.
On the side walls are other parties sitting and watching, not officially part of the Continuum. Goths (both Jews and Christians) never were an Order, but a coalition—with their spiky black hair, lipstick and eyeshadow, black clothes, and black boots. Their sole purpose is to gather intelligence from within the tek-cities and blend in with the population. Gnostics—the atheists and agnostics of Faith World—created their own group more for camaraderie rather than to have an Order.
On a large vid-screen, Archbishop Masai speaks to them from Africa.
"Our African Catholic Council had a lengthy meeting with Prophet Simon of the Mormon Order and his Apostles. It was then we learned what really happened in Russia to instigate their Purge with all their religious citizens being removed from Greater Russia into Europa. The Russians are especially adept at media blackouts. We know that the previous Russian president died—I use that word reservedly—but the succeeding president, this gangster, survived an assassination attempt...by the Pope Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox."
There are gasps in the meeting hall.
"I met the Pope Patriarch many times, though it has been several years since I last saw him. But the man I knew never would or could do any such thing, let alone leap out windows and climb buildings like a spider.
"We now have another piece of the puzzle in terms of what happened to the East Orthodox and Behemoth. If he went insane or was replaced somehow by some kind of doppelganger, then that's why none of us have been able to find them. Because it was not the Russians or any government. It was a conspiracy of one—the Pope Patriarch. God only knows what happened and we can only pray that the Russian Orthodox people did not suffer some deadly fate. We can only pray that we may see them safe again in the future."
"If he did go insane...if he was responsible, could he have seized Behemoth by himself, without his people?" one of the Continuum members asks.
Prophet Simon is on another vid-screen on the wall. "Sadly, the answer is yes. Behemoth is very much like Leviathan. We call it a 'living ship' because of its advanced AI offensive and defensive systems, but it is its DNA and brainwave interface with its pilots that makes such a thing possible. We have already built in safeguards because..." He pauses for a moment. Everyone in the room knows why and the Mormons will never speak of it. "We built in safeguards to make sure no one could use Leviathan against our people, including me, but the same safeguards were not implemented in Behemoth."
"Leviathan is water-based. Behemoth was land-based. My God, I hope he didn't do a mass-suicide somewhere," another Continuum member says.
"There is no way to know," Masai says, "but we all have surveillance drones searching."
"Archbishop, you said doppelganger. Do we now suspect that?" Rabbi Kanter of the Shamar Order asks.
"We already know from our own operatives and others that President T. Wilson's Project New People, and comparable programs in other countries by other governments and by other groups, included the ability to create biological sim-clones and bio-android copies. We haven't done anything with the information, other than for Mexico, but we're talking about at least three countries, and why not other leaders?" Masai asks rhetorically.
"There are also various 'Manchurian Candidate' programs in existence," Kanji of the Shogun Order adds. "Narco-psychological conditioning. We may never know what was done to the Pope Patriarch or if it was really him."
"That is why I sounded the alarm at New Lerdo Church during Pope Marco's Inauguration Ceremony. I heard about some sick man on his way to the Church. Prophet Simon told me about the Pope Patriarch situation, we all know about the rumors of Russian President Igor turning himself into a monster, the news that the Delivery Man with the Man Made Out of String disappearing again. For all I knew this man could have been the Delivery Man android. I couldn't take the chance."
"What happened to that man?" another Continuum member asks.
"He disappeared. There's no way he could have gotten away from us, but he did."
"But was there a plot?" another Continuum member asks. "We just got through talking about the Igor's bomb situation. We were all panicking that the Russian Bloc was trying to drop a fission bomb on Faithers when in fact it was a move against American, Caliphate, and CHIN enemy subs. The last time I saw panic in the enclaves like this was when we first built the enclaves and felt the government was going to come over the horizon any moment. It's so easy for people to believe the worst. My children were crying for days, scared that our own president would do the same here—drop bombs on us."
"And we take responsibility for that," Vincent of the Mormon Order says. "We should have gotten that information disseminated immediately."
"We all should have," Sister Serena of the Catholic Order says. "I'm so glad we have the Cowboy Rabbi creating this Cowboy Coalition because it seems that we can only contend with one crisis at a time. There we had two."
"What about the death, possible assassination, of the former Russian president that did happen? Who was responsible? All of those smiling pictures of him with the three superpowers: Peace in Our Time. We all knew something bad was going to come from their summit."
"The Lords of
Earth, indeed. The Lords of Hell."
The Lords of Earth. The cutesy phrase coined by a reporter many years ago for the world's three superpowers. President of the United States Torrey E.C. Wilson has been in the White House for twenty-three years now, known by the public as President T. Wilson since he is the second president of America to have the last name. The Emperor Al-Siddiq has ruled the Supreme Islamic Caliphate for about the same length of time; during his reign, expanded their territorial conquests with the Fall of Jewish Israel, the destruction of Palestine Israel, and into Africa with the now-stalemated Islamic-Christian War. His late father led the Fall of Western Europe—all of Western Europe falling to radical Islam decades ago, with millions of people fleeing, those fortunate enough to escape. President Wen rules the other Pagan-majority empire, the Chinese-Indian Alliance, or CHIN. The previous reign of his father, which forced the union with India to create the Alliance, saw the decline of the Russian Bloc and the cessation of Caliphate incursions into CHIN territories.
"We will never know. With the exception of their current president, everyone who was physically there on site is now dead. All of us have theories, but they are only theories. And the Russian Bloc government doesn't seem to want to know either."
"We're calling these clones made to look like specific persons doppelgangers now?"
"It was never about what we call their Hitler Project. Creating clones of mass murderers—Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and others. Their Project New People was always about furthering their super-soldier programs."
"They were sim-clones—simulated clones, not actual clones, because there is no surviving DNA of the subjects. Be careful not to fall into the same science fiction fallacy traps that the public does," Kanji of the Shinto Order says. "They have gone past cloning to full biological manipulation, which cloning is only a small part of. They are so fixated on the ability to create biologicals that can effectively combat and destroy machines. They have merely figured out that they create doppelgangers for political purposes as an added benefit."
Pure Conspiracy (The After Eden Series): The Genesis of World War III Page 9
