Titus

by Caleb Byrnand

  “We have no way to even track him?” Desdom has been left out of a lot of the nitty gritty details. His strength is in administration; the amount of paperwork involved with world domination left him little time to know many specifics.

  “No. Not until he’s registered. Before you ask, we can’t register him remotely.”

  Damn.

  “What sins of the past?” Marta speaks out. She was not born into the church, and whatever skeletons are in the closet have not seen light for some time.

  Desdom and Sacro both shift in their chairs a little and look to each other. Desdom decides to take this one. “Jannes and Jambres, the founders of the Church, mention the Resurrection Scrolls in an early transcript, and for one thousand years we dedicated much resource into its acquisition. To correlate with the scriptures, the church would take two boys, preferably brothers, and when the scrolls would surface the pair would be sent on a suicide mission retrieving it. Titus and Dumachus were the only pair that succeeded, on the eve of Christ’s death.”

  Sacro takes over. “This aligned perfectly with every scripture, as does their resurrection. The prophecy does not have the details about their registration status or personal gripes. Just that when the time comes the two will lead the armies to earth’s final conflict.” Desdom is not as convinced as Sacro is. Looking around the table there is not a single face that is satisfied with the current situation.

  Desdom speaks up. “He is a liability and we have so much more to do. Perhaps we should delay the fall by…”

  He is sharply cut off by Sacro slamming his fist on the table. “We do no such thing. He’ll return to us. The prophecy has not reached its conclusion so we continue as planned. When he returns we’ll deal with him then. Have some faith and get back to work.” Sacro sits there stoned faced while the table silently disperses.

  Desdom is last to leave, but not before saying his peace. “Final preparations are in place. The elders are coordinated and awaiting your signal.” He doesn’t wait for a response and turns to leave. The biggest event in human history is now in the hands of fate. He can’t help but feel everything he has stressed over of late was for nought.

  At least final checks will keep him occupied for a few hours.

  CHAPTER III

  Tony

  A small television connected to the boat’s satellite is picking up a local morning show in Tony’s home state of Utah. A small piece of home when he is so far out to sea.

  A reporter is on location in a cold and desolate place looking very uncomfortable and speaking through chattering teeth. “In a string of unprecedented economic events, the county with historically the strongest GDP has spent the past twenty-four months into what economists quote as ‘potentially cascading the country into an irreversible debt’, with a majority of it going into industrial manufacturing. But what are they making? It seems nobody really knows, but as long as the workers are being paid, it seems no one really cares.”

  Inside the warm studio the female co-anchor Sally O’Sullivan turns to the camera, tucks her Irish red hair behind her ears and continues the story. “All except one of our viewers. A local man, Sed Genisson, who has been on site at one of these mysterious manufacturing plants. We have him on location outside one of these manufacturing plants right now.” The camera pans left and frames Sally to the right half of the screen as a video feed of the interviewee fills the other half. He is an odd looking gentleman; a mad-scientist meets hobo look standing in front of a fence obstructing any of the view behind him. “Hello, Sed.”

  In an unrecognisable accent he happily replies, “Good morning to you!”

  “Yes, thank you for speaking with us today. I’m told you have been on the floor in one of these surreptitious factories. Tell us, what did you find there?”

  Sed licks his lips at the opportunity to divulge. “Well, what stood out right away is that it wasn’t on the power grid and I could see no generators so how was the dang thing operational? Then inside was a heavily automated mechanical factory line floor. I did however get my hands on this sample but was not allowed to keep it, so I have provided a drawing of it for the purpose of this interview.”

  “Okay. Can you tell us what it does?”

  Sed holds up a drawing of a cylindrical dotted block. May as well have been nothing. “This is just one piece of something a lot bigger so I couldn’t tell you. Taking into account that every plant manufactures a different part, trying to work out its function is kinda like the blind men and elephant parable.”

  Sally attempts to salvage what she can from this embarrassment, “Does this piece match any other part of a known mechanical device?”

  “Okay, I’ve been an engineer my whole life, and I can say with the utmost confidence that I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  She gives it one last ditch effort. “So what other findings can you report on?”

  “The technology we do have access to, this monitor behind me, the computers used to run all this stuff, all have a secret flaw engineered in the power couplings and a weakness in their EM insulation. The reasons for which I do not know, but I can only surmise that they are intended to fail.”

  Interested, Sally picks up. “Have there been many incidents of malfunction?”

  “No, not at all. In fact, quite the opposite.”

  Sally is doing her best to hide her look of ‘interviewer’s remorse’. “Good to hear. That’s all we have time for Sed, thanks for coming on the show.”

  “Thank you. Can I just say a…?” His video feed is cut and Sally couldn’t be happier about it.

  The camera pans back to show the full desk with both anchors. The second anchor, Ryan, looks a little bothered under the collar. “You see, this is the same old narrow-minded suspicious views of our southern settlers. They’ve been the target of this xenophobic rhetoric for so many years now, but look at their track record. Due to their innovation and initiative the quality of life for all humans have improved.”

  Sally shuffles some papers in front of her, uninterested in the whole debate topic. “Thank you Ryan for your opinion. We love opinions here. If you’d like to give us one of yours, just tweet us with the hashtag Breakfast Ant. Interesting stuff. Don’t you think so Kerry?”

  The camera feed cuts back to the location Anchor in the snow. “I can’t feel my feet, or my face.”

  “All right then. Keep warm Kerry, see you tomorrow.” Sally, always the pro, turns back to camera two, “And that was Antarctican correspondent Kerry Blackhall. A real team player. She is of course not in Antarctica but in Beaver Creek Colorado. Now for something a little warmer. Are you still using last season’s hairdryer? Science proves how your old dryer might be killing you. Stick around, we’ll be back after these breaks.”

  Tony, super excited, mutes the TV and grabs Rosita’s arm as she walks past. “Did you see that?”

  “You don’t use a hairdryer so don’t worry about it.”

  She knows how to rile him, but he’s too excited to exercise any self-control. “No, before that. It fits in with what I was telling you about. Everything they said.”

  She looks at him without encouragement or enthusiasm, but knows Tony will not drop it. “You tell me lots of stuff. I need some specificity.”

  “Preparing for the tribulation, the fall of mankind, the orchestration of our demise.”

  “From the Antarcticans?”

  “I’m telling ya man, look out for those Ants.”

  She rolls her eyes and flops down in her bunk, indicating an end to Tony’s conspiracy blathering. She is tall, strong, long curly hair she tied in a knot partially to one side. The bunk is too short for her to stretch out, and more than often one foot would hang out the side, just as it does now. She puts her head in a magazine and rereads dated articles.

  Tony turns off the TV and reengages her. “We are way too south. I know Cap’n wants to exploit these new routes, but this is really cold, don’t you think?”

  Rosita gives Tony a puzzled lo
ok. She doesn’t seem cold. “You cold?”

  It is hard to gauge Rosita; she is always honest about her shortcomings--being relatively new to sailing--but facetious in nature. It is cold.

  “Never mind. Did you bring the lines in?”

  Her former expression holds. “No?”

  Yup. Thought so.

  “Stay here, I’ll get them.” Tony leaves Rosita where she lies still thinking about the lines, or the temperature. It is hard to read her.

  Cold. A mist has fallen over the ocean as storm clouds brew overhead. Waves lick the side of their small boat, flicking up a light and constant spray ensuring whomever walks the deck is wet. He doesn’t have a lot of body fat so he feels the elements in his core.

  “THUD!”

  What was that?

  It isn’t exactly quiet outside on the deck but conditions are perfect for sound to travel through the thick air. It sounded like a large sack of potatoes landing on hard wood flooring. Tony moves around a stack of crates to inspect.

  “Unnnnnnnnhhh.” Lying in a crumpled mess, face covered in his cloak and body buried in the side of a shipping crate is a half frozen Titus.

  “Rosita! Get the Cap’n! Now!” There’s no way she didn’t hear that.

  Five seconds later he hears her voice echo out the door, “Now?”

  They try to pick Titus up but opt just to drag him inside. He is stripped of his wet and frozen clothes and is wrapped in blankets. Rosita positions a number of heaters around him while Tony fetches a mug of warm tea. Titus is shaking and muttering in Aramaic.

  “Do you think he’s speaking Antarctican?” asks Rosita.

  “No, that’s something else. One of the Semitic languages, northwest at a guess.” The Cap’n is good with her linguistics no one else on board is following. “Ancient Arabic.”

  Rosita gets in close for an inspection. “He doesn’t look Middle Eastern. Doesn’t really look human neither.”

  Tony has always enjoyed a good conspiracy; faked Moon landings, Kennedy assassination, chem-trails, but Antarctica trumped them all. “I’ve heard about these things. Experiments they’re doing in their underground lairs. Loads of them just walking around, just waiting to take over the world.”

  Cap’n is, to say the least, unconvinced of the latter. “Don’t be stupid. But now that you say it, there’s something not right with the way he looks.”

  Titus finally stops shivering and muttering and looks up to the three people standing over him. They look back. It’s getting slightly weird. Titus closes his eyes and begins to read their minds, soaking in as much as he can.

  “Anyone feeling a little light headed?” Tony asks. The effects of having your mind read are subtle, and the more aggressively your mind is read the worse the side effects. If incorrectly executed, it can inflict the on-set of psychosis, dementia, amnesia, even death.

  “Your anxiety is just getting the better of you, but now that you say…” Cap’n is a little light on her feet for a change and feels it too. Titus resolves the telepathy, looks up and the three sailors and smiles.

  “Hello.” This is enough to make the three flinch.

  “Not from a lack of will, but there are actually few questions you have I can answer. What I can tell you is that my name is Titus Bakari, I am something that was grown in a lab, I escaped Antarctica and flew here, landing on your deck.”

  The conspiracy is true.

  “What do you want?” Tony’s excitement may have made him sound confrontational so he pulls his energy level down a few notches.

  “Wait, he flew? I didn’t see any plane.” Rosita is a tad obtuse, but she is right.

  “How did you get aboard my ship?” The Cap’n has a right to know; not that it would change anything.

  Tony is starting to do the math in his head of what kind of quandary they are in. “Either you are full of shit which makes you unreliable and dangerous, or we are now guilty of smuggling a highly classified Antarctican test subject. Neither of which is good for us.”

  Titus is starting to regain his strength. His healing ability is accelerated but nowhere close to the standards of activated nanotech. He looks at his mug for a few seconds before taking his hands away, leaving the cup suspended in the air. The three are as impressed as anyone would be seeing any street magic; the problem is that they have all seen street magic. Titus closes his eyes and concentrates. The mug falls to the ground, spilling the remainder of his tea across the floor. A miniature stream of tea runs along the scratches and natural grain of the wood before it comes to a stop. Tony looks down to see the spilt fluid slowly begins to rise and sway, competing for elevated dominance as if being pulled up by a greater magnetic force.

  “Anyone feel a little… lighter?”

  The bobbing of the ship has ceased and the constant wrapping of waves on the hull is gone. Perfect stillness. All three immediately feel the effects of land sickness and Tony runs outside to see what has happened. And also to vomit if necessary.

  Held above the waves of the sea, like some hyperrealism exhibition, was their boat, the Chanty. Propeller blades spinning freely, water from the keel dripping into the ocean. Tony is frozen in disbelief.

  Ah…

  Cap’n and Rosita accompany Tony on the deck and do what they can to process what is happening. The boat slowly lowers back into the sea and continues forward, churning a trail in the water behind her. Tony looks to Cap’n for some kind of assurance but is offered none. All three now grasp the gravity of their situation, and have mixed feelings.

  “That was the best floating cup trick I’ve ever seen.” Rosita strikes again.

  Back inside the warmth of the cabin Titus waits as the three sailors storm back in.

  “First, I’d kindly ask that you never do that again. Second, what do you want?” Cap’n is direct, but the situation calls for it. They can’t fight a god, but they sure as hell don’t want to die for one either.

  “I don’t know.” Not the answer she was expecting. How can someone so powerful exude such impotence?

  “Why did you escape?” Rosita’s voice is now comforting and assured. Tony doesn’t know it but she’s as lost as anyone else.

  Titus is unsure where to start. “What do you know about the Church of Light?”

  The three sailors take some amusement from this question, laughter acting as a value to release some of the pent up adrenalin. Tony steps forward. “I know a bit.”

  “What he means is that he’s a freak for them.”

  Thanks Rosita. “Not a freak, I just keep my finger on the pulse is all. I know they’re a superpower that wants to reduce the population and take over the world.” Tony feels a sense of justification with his response.

  Titus nods subtly, “You’re right.” Tony’s feeling of justification dropped under the weight of fear of what is coming next. It was fun to imagine the hypothetical truth in conspiracies, not as much fun to experience it firsthand.

  What did he mean?

  Cap’n beats him to it, “What do you mean?”

  There’s a long pause. Whatever Titus knows, he is reluctant to share. “You should head for land, now.”

  Damn.

  “And another thing. A few questions that are bugging me,” continues Titus.

  Tony replies, “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything that’s happened in the last two thousand years.”

  CHAPTER III

  Titus

  In under twenty-four hours Titus has digested over two thousand years’ worth of knowledge, most of it in the last four hours. His new friends introduced him to the internet.

  Fascinating.

  He learns that the church he helped build has helped build the world. Every piece of technology has the fingerprint of the Church. From computer chips to power stations, satellites to radio towers; their influence stretches far.

  As it was written.

  Tony is sitting next to Titus and offering assistance navigating the computer’s operating system. Their search
history has a definite common theme; the ugly truth. Tony is the perfect person to be paired with. Corruption, poverty, pollution, war. Weapons of mass destruction. Rhetoric and lies coming at great human cost. Nothing Titus hadn’t seen before, but never on this scale. If there is ever a time for the end of times, it is now.

  “It’s begun.”

  Tony is too scared to ask a follow-up question. Just shuffled in his seat and looked down. If there was any question in his mind on the legitimacy of the conspiracies, it was quelled. Suffering from a shaded moment of helplessness, Tony tries to distract himself from the impending doom. “So, where are you from originally?”

  “I was born in Egypt two thousand years ago. When I was young I was displaced and orphaned in a war no one knows or remembers. Many years had passed before the day my brother-in-arms and I were put on the cross and crucified in Judea.”

  Rosita walked into the room to hear the last line and is immediately intrigued. “Like Jesus?”

  Titus nods like it’s not a big deal.

  “No… Really?”

  “The dude can lift a boat with his mind, him knowing Jesus wouldn’t be the weirdest thing about him.” Tony is a rationalist.

  “Yesterday the church resurrected me and put me into this body. This copy of a man. One copy of millions, ready to take the world.”

  Rosita, jaw dropped, looks to Tony for some kind of validation. “So, all your end of the world stuff was right after all?”

  “How much time do we have?” Tony is desperate for an answer but Titus has none for him. “Is this judgement day?”

  Yes.

  CHAPTER III

  The Fall