In the Year of Our Lord 2202

by Edward Lee

  The urge to masturbate seized her; she could even see herself stripping, climbing into the cell. But she knew she couldn’t; she knew she mustn’t waste time.

  She could come back, she realized. Then I’d have to drown her.

  Instead, she quickly slipped the aspirate-line into Brigid’s vagina, slipped it up deep. The line was filled with saline, and at its other end was the injector full of preprogrammed nanobots. Esther had programmed them herself: using their microscopic cutters, they would progress up through Brigid’s prone body until they reached the brain, whereupon they would decimate the central sulcus, leaving the attractive remote-viewer in an untreatable coma. Eventually, the nanobots would be destroyed themselves by the resultant immune-system response of microphages and T-cells.

  Esther’s thumb rested on the injector’s dispersal button. She continued to stare down at Brigid’s motionless, shining body.

  Where are you? Esther wondered. Are you in Heaven?

  She pushed the dispersal button.

  Stay there.

  (V)

  “So. You believe all this?”

  It was Tom who broke the long silence in the cove. Sharon, in her own musings, had nearly forgotten that he was even there.

  Sharon manned her holoscreens. “I suppose so,” she said. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Consider the source.”

  “The General-Vicar? Why would he lie?”

  He cast her a sour look. “I don’t know, but I can’t think of a single reason why I should believe that we’ve located the actual physical celestial coordinates for Heaven.”

  “What’s so hard to believe?” she countered. “It makes sense when you think about it. Where else would God be but in space? God gave us brains, God gave us the ability to achieve. We’ve achieved the technological capability to explore deep space. Why shouldn’t we use that—a gift from God—to go to God?”

  “I’m not buying it,” Tom said.

  “Look at the Bible then. Daniel, Ezekiel, Job, Numbers, and many other books all make references to Heaven’s exact description, which all correspond to the ultimate description in Revelation.”

  “Big deal. The authors ripped each other off. Saint John had a hallucination. Besides, we don’t even know if the Apostle John really wrote Revelation. The syntax between John’s Gospel and Revelation are different.”

  “He was bilingual,” Sharon pointed out.

  “Yeah, and he wrote Revelation while in exile on one of the Dodecanese islands; he was malnourished and mentally traumatized. Most scholars say Revelation was written in 96 A.D.—that would put John at at least 75 years old; back then, that was the same as living to be 110 today. You’re telling me that a 110-year-old man could’ve written something as articulate as Revelation?”

  Sharon wasn’t concerned. “Moses lived to be 120. He was 80 when he parted the Red Sea. God extends the lives of the Prophets. I have no problem with that.”

  “It could just be interpretation, Sharon. Symbolism, metaphor. In 96 A.D. John was an infirm old man, probably senile, probably delusional. He had a weird dream and wrote it down. Right now, we’re nuke-dragging into uncharted space at several billion miles an hour because more than 2000 years ago a senile old man had a weird dream.”

  “John also wrote ‘Jesus cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. And he that was dead came forth.’ You believe that, don’t you?”

  Tom didn’t answer.

  “And you saw the spectrometric surveys yourself,” Sharon went on. “The cube is exactly 1500 standard miles in length, width, and height. Is it a coincidence that John’s dimensions of 12000 furlongs exactly equates to 1500 exact miles? 1500 even? Not 1501? Not 1499.99? The chances of that are billions to one when you consider the fact that the standard 5280-foot mile didn’t even exist until the year 1500. That’s more than 1400 years after John wrote Revelation.”

  Again, Tom had no rebuke.

  Sharon turned on the cove’s broad holomural, which threw before them the constellation Ursa Minor. Then she quoted The Book of Job: “‘He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.’ The Old Testament and New abound with references that associate Heaven with a northerly direction in general and the North Star in particular. Where are we now, Tom?”

  “The North Celestial Quadrant,” he droned back.

  “And what’s that you’re looking at right now at the end of the Little Dipper?”

  “Alpha Ursae Minoris,” he admitted. “The North Star.”

  Sharon quickly quoted more of the Revelation: “John describes God as ‘He that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand.’ How many stars do you see in Ursa Minor, Tom? Eight? Six? Fifty?”

  “Seven,” Tom answered.

  Sharon rested her case. She should be praying, not arguing with an agnostic.

  “I guess time will tell,” he said a few moments later.

  Yes.

  But they both jumped at the sudden sound of an op-stat alarm. Footfalls quickly trampled outside the cove, down the accessmain. Sharon and Tom peeked out, saw Simon, Esther, and the General-Vicar running toward the elevator.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Tom said.

  “We better go find out—”

  (VII)

  The sight dragged across Sharon’s eyes like a thorned branch.

  Oh no! Please, NO!

  They’d followed the others up to the Edessa’s restricted Lab Station. Brigid lay nude in a long, opened tank of viscid fluid as Simon and Esther rushed to administer aid. Aside, monitors beeped, lights flashed.

  General-Vicar Luke’s face looked sunken by the gravity of remorse. “She’s back, and…I suppose I should’ve considered this possibility.”

  “What possibility, sir?” Sharon nearly raged. “What’s happening here?”

  Brigid looked death-white. She didn’t move at all when a submerged rack lifted her out of the fluid. In moments they’d gotten her up onto a lev-gurney and hooked it up to a small ICU in the cove. When the overhead lumes snapped on, Sharon quailed.

  There was blood trickling all over the place.

  Blood leaked from Brigid’s nose, ears, and the corners of her eyes. More blood pooled on the exam platform between her legs. Soon it was dripping to the floor in steady plips.

  Esther air-shot a coagulant, keeping a fast eye on the metabolic holoscreens that Simon was opening all around. Autoneedles descending, their infrared sensors locating veins and infusing new blood.

  Tom squeezed Sharon’s hand tightly. “She must’ve been RV-ing,” he whispered. “Something went wrong.”

  “She’s stabilizing,” Esther called out. She glanced over her shoulder to Luke. “We’ve stopped the hemorrhaging but…”

  “But what!” Sharon exclaimed.

  Esther sighed. “Life support will probably keep her alive, but I’m afraid the bleeding was considerable. She’s suffered multiple microscopic arterial perforations and several cerebral strokes.”

  Luke began, “Will she—”

  “Regain consciousness?” Esther said. “No, I’m afraid not. She’s lost all motor function as well as a good portion of active blood supply to the brain.”

  “She’ll remain in a PVS,” Simon added, “a Persistent Vegetative State—until she dies.”

  Sharon felt crushed.

  “She agreed to the survey,” Luke said dolefully. “But I authorized it. I felt it was necessary, considering the seriousness of our mission.”

  Tom spoke up. “She was RV-ing, out…there, right?”

  “To the target-object, yes,” Luke said.

  But Sharon thought: To Heaven. She went to Heaven… “Sir, what did you mean when you said you should’ve considered this possibility? What possibility?”

  “That even as a psychic vessel, her senses could not have held up to—well, to what we hoped she would see.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Scripture makes no secret of the effect that God’s true countenance
might have on physical humans. ‘Too beauteous to be beheld by man.’ ‘No man hath seen God at any time.’ ‘Thou canst not see My face: for shall no man see Me and live.’ In our physical forms of flesh and blood, we are too inferior to view God. That’s why God appeared to Moses as a Burning Bush, to Elijah as wind, to Jacob as sapphire light.” Luke seemed convinced. “God is perfection, but in our imperfection, we cannot see Him until we are taken to him in death.”

  They all looked down at Brigid.

  “Brigid’s sacrifice is a noble one,” Luke continued. “She has seen the face of God.”

  After they all left the Lab, Brigid began to twitch. Her eyes remained blank, but eventually her lips began to move and then her voice croaked in the dimmest whisper:

  “Not… God … Not… God…”

  But by then no one remained in the Lab to hear her.

  — | — | —

  Part Seven

  “We hath made a covenant with death,

  and with hell we are in agreement.”

  —Isaiah 28:15

  — | — | —

  (I)

  Seven hours later, the C.F.S. Edessa assumed a para-spacial orbit around the newly discovered sub-asteroidal body. The occulatoric umbra had reached its peak, plunging the ship into absolute darkness. Every holomural onboard showed just that: black. No stars. No light refractions. No ecliptic edges.

  Just black.

  In the launch dock, the ship’s Lenticular Re-Entry Vehicle was being prepared for debarkation.

  ««—»»

  Sharon sat in the LRV’s navigational mod, helping Tom go down the pre-flight checklist. The blinking readout displays threw stippled light across her face.

  “This just gets dumber and dumber,” Tom complained from the pilot’s mod. “I can’t believe that Luke’s making us do this.”

  “The mission is authorized by the Pope,” Sharon reminded him.

  “Yeah? Well then, the Pope must’ve passed his fuckin’ brains the last time he took a shit.”

  “That’s blasphemy!”

  “Aw, stow it, will ya? Is everyone going nuts around here but me?” Tom’s scowl cut into his face. “All right, let’s just say for a minute that this whole cluster-fuck shebang isn’t a crock of crap. Let’s just say that it really is Heaven down there.”

  “It is Heaven,” Sharon insisted.

  “Fine. It’s Heaven. Peachy. So what are we doing? We’re going to fucking land on Heaven?”

  “Yes.”

  Tom glared at her. “What the fuck for?”

  Sharon ground her teeth at the expletive. “To give thanks to God!” she yelled back.

  “Sharon, it makes no sense. It’s a fucking affront to logic. You heard Luke. ‘Thou canst not see My face: for shall no man see Me and live.’ We’re going to go and knock on God’s front door to say hi? It looks to me like Brigid did that…and look what happened to her.”

  “I agree with the General-Vicar. By coming here, we’re proving to God that we’ve made the best of what He’s given us. It’s the ultimate gesture of praise. God gave humans their instincts. It’s in our instincts to seek God. God won’t kill us for using the sum of all our knowledge to seek Him.”

  “Great. He won’t kill us. He’ll put us all into a fucking coma instead, like He did to Brigid.”

  “That was just a psychic accident,” Sharon felt sure. “Brigid made a praiseworthy sacrifice. We’re just going to take some readings, make some observations— heighten our knowledge of God and His domain.”

  Tom just shook his head. “Well, then I guess being this close to God is making everyone fucked up in the head. Everyone except me.”

  “You’re so arrogant…and so afraid,” Sharon told him. ‘Put out thine hand to God, and God will take it.’” She let it rest from there. He just doesn’t understand. They continued matching the pre-launch checklist for a while, then Sharon asked: “So who gets to go?”

  “Me, Luke, Simon, and the securitechs,” he roughly answered.

  Sharon fidgeted in her seat. “I want to go too.”

  “You’re not on the EVA list.”

  “But couldn’t you talk to the General-Vicar?” she hinted.

  “No. Correction: fuck no.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Tom, I’m asking a personal favor. I want to go too. You could persuade the General-Vicar into letting me go. I can run scanners and probe relays. It’s really important to me.”

  “Well, let me see, let me think about this…” He frowned at her. “Forget it. It ain’t happening.”

  “Tom! Please!”

  “Not in a million fuckin’ years. If you got killed, I’d be responsible, and in case you haven’t noticed, I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t want to be responsible for anything except his own ass.”

  The prep buzzer went off. The issue was settled. “Time for us to both get out of here,” Tom said. “I have to go suit up and get ready to drive this piece of shit. I’m a fuckin’ flunky chauffeur in an EVA suit.”

  Damn it, Sharon thought, and switched off her system consoles.

  Tom climbed out of the pilot mod, prepared to leave the LRV. But he stopped at the air-lock, hesitant, then— “What are you—”

  —kissed Sharon hard on the mouth.

  Her initial instinct was to recoil…but that only lasted a moment. Next, she was kissing him back, desperate in his firm embrace. She wanted to be wrapped up in him. She wanted to be carried away…

  A second later, though, the kiss broke. “That’s in case I don’t come back,” he said, and was leaving. “Which I probably won’t.”

  She watched after him, still swarmy from the kiss.

  God be with you, she thought and sighed.

  (II)

  As Simon made furious love to her in the med unit, Esther’s own pleasure hummed. The wireless voltaic-clips applied to her nipples and clitoris provided a roving circuit of gentle electrosonic current, tickling her nerves. In truth, Esther far preferred machinery to flesh when it came to sex.

  They were both nude, floating in the mid-air of the cove, thanks to the anti-grav harnesses they wore. Simon loved it that way. As for Esther, she simply pretended to love it too, just as she’d been taught. Instead, she concentrated on the electrosonic pleasure provided by the clips.

  Generally, these games bored her. Her training as a medical officer afforded her this ideal cover from the Federate Army, but long before that she’d been rigorously trained as a sex-op: she’d seen everything. She’d met men—bishops and generals alike—who longed to be beaten, tied up and gagged, whipped, and much else. Hence, Simon’s little anti-gravity quirks seemed trifling to a woman of Esther’s experience. It had been the director of Federate Intel himself who’d personally assigned Esther and Simon to go undercover together on this mission.

  She knew exactly what their plan was.

  Esther revolved in the air and wrapped her legs around Simon’s head. His tongue lapped desperately at the groove of her hairless sex. She returned the gesture via fellatio—another act she’d had considerable training in.

  She didn’t really like Simon at all; he was an arrogant prick, devious as a weasel. But it had been his idea— back when suspicions of a “stowaway” had been rife— that they accuse each other of spying, and it had worked. The hostile outburst had made them both seem innocent when actually they were both spies. Defeating the polygraph programs had been the easiest part; thanks to Simon’s FCI decryption code, she’d merely overridden their actual results with generic ones. Simple.

  She floated backwards in mid-air, rubbing out the last of her climax as Simon’s own orgasm broke in her mouth.

  Then they just hovered for a time, in the deep-space “afterglow.”

  They both eventually stepped out of their harnesses, began to redress. The tight smile on Simon’s face told her that he actually believed he’d satisfied her.

  The stupid fool honestly beliefs that I love him.

  She smiled herself at that thought.
<
br />   (III)

  At 0614 hrs, the occulatoric umbra cast by planets in the distant M34 blue-dwarf system began to break. Sunlight—from another sun—began to level upon the newly discovered and yet unnamed sub-asteroidal body, and as that body’s rare optical libration began to turn, it became fully visible. Not spheric at all, but a rough angled rock in space with approximately the same surface area of Saturn’s largest moon.

  At 0616 hrs, the Edessa’s Lenticular Re-Entry Vehicle blew its rail-locks. It fell lazily from the ship’s launch-bay, then fired a single one-second burst from its primary thruster.

  Heading for Heaven.

  ««—»»

  Seeing the figures on screen hadn’t prepared any of them.

  “Jesus Christ,” Simon whispered as he stared through the LRV’s active-glexan viewports. General-Vicar Luke spared a frown at the use of the Savior’s name in vain, though he too was clearly shaken.

  Tom couldn’t believe what he was seeing. No, seeing the mere numeric measurements in no way readied him for the actual visual confirmation of the “target-object.”

  “I’ve never even imagined anything so large,” Simon remarked.

  “It’s as big as a planetoid,” Tom compared.

  Luke cut them off from his flight seat beside Tom. “It’s a miracle. It’s proof of the incalculable greatness of God.”

  Tom, at this point, was not inclined to object.

  A cube of golden glass. Fifteen-hundred miles square. On earth, its base would cover most of former North America. Its height would ascend roughly 1400 miles past the terminus of the atmosphere, and its sheer mass would cause a regular axial orbit to deviate.