Dominoes in Time

by Matthew Warner

  Like a volcano, the basket on the rainbow table labeled “Geologic” erupted a global map that enlarged over her. Portions of the Eastern and NorthWest continents flashed yellow.

  Operating efficiency at 64%. Notify system manager immediately.

  Petra didn’t know what any of this meant, nor did she stop to decipher the ancient words. “Ack say meeto Khan!”

  Command entered > ACCESS METEO CON

  Command recognized > ACCESS METEOROLOGICAL CONTROL

  Please standby…

  * Warning * System errors detected. Communication lost with 100% of cloud-seeding towers, lightning spike initiators, glacial evaporators.

  Activating Moon-based automatic backup systems.

  Please standby…

  Communication link established. Checking user name and password. Please standby…

  Moon Gamma One responds > protocols authenticated

  Moon systems booting. Opening underground vault blast doors. Raising directed-energy cannons. Solar energy prisms aligning. System will be operational in

  1

  minute.

  Relative operating efficiency at 78%. Diagnostic evaluation recommended.

  As this blur of ancient words scrolled within the black window, additional grids flashed on the floating globe. Squiggly lines appeared between the globe and a floating moon that also rose from a basket.

  * Warning * System errors detected.

  A glowing placard rose from the basket labeled “EMS Coordination” and listed a series of numbers each suffixed with “MHz.”

  Emergency Medical Systems not countersigning to call tones. Probable telecommunication disruptions and/or personnel readiness failures. See Signaling menu for other options.

  Control Grid not operating at recommended efficiencies. Do you wish to proceed with system initialization?

  Petra held her breath as she realized she’d been asked something. What was next in the sacrament? She closed her eyes against the swirling colors and tried to remember.

  Oh yes—Slova—the day he’d first shown her the sixth century Bible. He had pointed at the verse describing the ritual—in the process teaching her to love its minutiae—and said, “Nod your head as if saying ‘yes’ to Khan’s boundless grace.”

  Petra now nodded.

  Command entered > [gesture]

  Command recognized > AFFIRMATIVE

  Proceeding with initialization. System will be operational in

  0

  minutes.

  Control Grid ready.

  Command? >

  A pot labeled “Weap/Sen” spewed a cloud of objects and letters that arranged themselves in a neat line overhead. A Khanite crisscross and the word “Toolbelt” appeared at its center.

  Petra’s emotions swelled in her chest. She didn’t comprehend most of this but realized she didn’t have to. All she needed was faith. And that had returned.

  Proceeding with the ritual, Petra pointed to heaven—and realized she was pointing directly at the Khanite crisscross. The objects in the “Toolbelt” brightened in response.

  “Ack tay sen! I day den!”

  Command entered > ACTIV SEN IDEN DAN

  Commands recognized > ACTIVATE SENSORS. IDENTIFY DANGERS.

  Please standby…

  Moon-based telescopes coming online.

  * Warning * Dangers detected in grids 1-98, 141-150, 168, 172, 180.

  Interstellar objects incoming through Van Allen zones

  A2

  A3

  A4

  B2

  B4

  B10

  As the words and numbers continued scrolling, telewindow-like images appeared upon the globe, showing real-time pictures perceived from outer space. The pinpricks of meteorites entering the atmosphere covered the Earth’s face like pox sores.

  And here the sacrament of summoning—at least in the old Bible—diverged down any number of optional tracts based upon Great Khan’s perceived mood and aspect. On Hajj day, Petra had just begun one of these, entitled “The Hand of Khan”—speaking the word “rheip”—when she’d been hit with the rock.

  * Warning * Tidal wave detected.

  The dark blotch representing the Peaceful Ocean detached from the globe and enlarged. Petra felt like she was flying as her perspective grew closer, zooming in upon an enormous hump of water approaching the NorthWest Continent’s western seaboard.

  She soon found herself standing upon a beach lit by brilliant morning sunlight. The tidal wave was not yet visible, but she felt its approach as wind on her skin. Behind her in miniature sprawled one of the Califry coastal cities; she didn’t know which one. Its tallest skyscratcher building only came up to her waist. Its factories and apartment complexes hemorrhaged flame and smoke—meteorite damage—that tiny men in tiny machines struggled to contain. They didn’t see the approaching tidal wave, but Petra thought they still had time to make it to bomb shelters. If she could only warn them.…

  “Oh Khan,” she groaned.

  As if hearing her, several of the men stopped and pointed. Petra looked down at herself: she was a colossus made up of sparking crisscrosses.

  But there was no time for this. “Seek shelter!” she said. “Tidal wave approaching!”—and heard her words echo off the buildings, sounding like the grating voice of the Earth itself.

  The men abandoned their rollercars and water cannons to flee.

  Petra faced the ocean, and in seconds the tidal wave appeared on the horizon. Even from her giant’s perspective, the massive curtain of water dwarfed her.

  It would sweep over the coast in moments. What to do? In her mind, Petra ran through the optional sacramental tracts—“The Locusts,” “The Pillar of Fire,” “The Angel of Death”—seeking imagery that might apply to this situation. Maybe the scriptures weren’t relevant at all.

  … “The Whore of Babylon,” “The Seven-Headed Beast,” “The Hand of Khan”…

  Of course! The Hand of Khan. Perhaps it was metaphor for the shape of an approaching tidal wave. Except the scribes who’d dutifully copied and recopied the tract hadn’t known this.

  Petra extended her palms to the wave, hoping she’d selected the correct tract. “Rheip!”

  Command entered > REP

  Command recognized > REPULSE

  Like hot air on the horizon of the Rift canyon, the sky shimmered in a narrow line down from the half moon still visible. It touched Petra’s outstretched hands, then redirected toward the tidal wave.

  The shimmers spread over the face of the wave and arrested its forward motion. The water flushed a frothy white.

  “Rheip!” Petra said.

  And the wave moved backward. It subsided into the heaving ocean.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Petra continued saving the world for sixteen more hours, well past the point of exhaustion. She called upon all of her knowledge as pope—and correctly guessed at much she didn’t know—to repulse more tidal waves, deaden earthquakes, contain dust clouds and lift victims to safety.

  She even created small tidal waves of her own when necessary. For instance, she performed the Khanite rite of baptism to douse the greater western forest, extinguishing a fire that threatened cities and trees. She performed a tract called “Raise the Dead” to erect natural barriers against volcanic lava flows. She enacted “The Flaming Sword” rite to evaporate the flood of a broken dam in the Southern Continent, “The Breath of God” to blow back dust clouds, and “The Banishment of Locusts” to swat at the falling meteorites themselves.

  As when she destroyed the first tidal wave, Petra had no doubt the world saw her in action—a Khan-like giant towering over cities and oceans, with the halo upon her brow, bracelets upon her wrists, and the “X” logo of ThermaveX covering her body. Such had apparently been the source of the ancient Bible painting after Noah last operated the machinery.

  So did that make Khan a lie?

  The Order of Khan, despite its faults and historical abuses, was still at its heart a preachin
g of goodness and charity. So did it really matter if a deity called Great Khan the Protector existed in fact?

  Petra pondered this as she took off the golden suit, gloves and halo. She had been standing for so long that her back and feet felt on fire. Her mind was bursting with everything she’d learned and done. Thirst and hunger moved inside her like starving rats. Sleep beckoned her to lay down on the stone floor, but she thought it would be wiser to do so out in the pit. She didn’t want to be hidden in here, unconscious, when Halio eventually came back for her—that is, if he had not already.

  Petra crawled back through the hole, stepping on top of the fake door stone, and climbed down into the pit, which was still littered with fallen plank stones and the Altar of Summoning. It was night again, and her dying glow wand revealed no one at the top of the pit. Maybe she would perish before they rescued her. Well, that was all right; she’d performed her function. The sky that she saw was now free of meteorite streaks. She glanced back at the hole into the secret chamber.

  And glanced again. It was gone. Nothing but a smooth sheen of stone.

  Summoning her remaining strength, Petra climbed back up and reached out.

  Her hand passed through the rock.

  She felt the air of the hidden room on the other side. Holding her breath as if she were dunking her head into water, Petra poked her head in. The wall covering the hole vanished as she entered. She shone in the glow wand and saw that the golden suit and instruments were hanging where she’d left them. The air smelled dry and cool in here, somehow still insulated from the outside world despite the hole. She withdrew into the pit, and the illusory wall reappeared.

  Another ruse. She supposed the illusion had appeared when she reactivated Khan’s machinery. Petra was glad. Noah had wanted to keep Khan out of evil hands, and she could see why. The ancient American technology could easily devastate the world, and ignorance of Khanite rituals wouldn’t thwart evil people for long.

  Or, in the hands of a determined Khanite pope, the Control Grid could be used to overthrow a corrupt world government.

  Sighing with exhaustion, Petra climbed down off the door stone. She could see it all now: how Halio and the others would find her here and excitedly report that Khan had saved the world. With a small stretch of imagination, they would look at this huge pit that had opened beneath Noah’s Temple and decide that Great Khan, the sleeping god, had risen from it.

  Petra went to the stone altar table resting in the center of the pit and traced her fingers across the crisscross seal. If she wished, she could confirm her disciples’ version of events—lying to them—and revive the Order of Khan, consolidating her own power, and then use the ancient machines to gain yet more power. Or she could reveal the secret room, tell the truth and hope they still loved her, then trade the technology to the All Council for an unprecedented reprieve from her death sentence.

  Or should she seek a course somewhere between the two options?

  Good and evil—but which was which? There was nothing to guide her now except the internal moral compass she had inherited from Slova. Petra’s fingers came to rest in the center of the crisscross.

  She lay down on the altar to wait.

  Die Not in Vain

  As the airliner accelerated to take off, Joe Merrill gripped the armrests of seat 24E and prayed he would survive the next five hours.

  “It’ll be okay, honey,” his wife said. She pried away one clammy hand and held it against her chest. “Just relax.”

  And at that moment, the 747’s nose pointed at the sky and its wheels left the tarmac and Joe gritted his teeth and looked out at the airport tilting away at an obscene angle and Jesus they were going fast now over the field where that other plane crashed no survivors and there goes the landing gear being retracted and if the engines were going to fail it’d happen now and they were falling no rising now as they cleared the turbulence only still rolling so he’d spill out the window and—

  “Ow. You’re squeezing too hard.”

  “Sorry.” Joe returned his hand to the armrest.

  He felt ashamed as he blinked back tears. Here he was, a middle-aged phys-ed teacher, former captain of his college wrestling team, and he was about to shit his pants. He sucked in a deep breath, conscious of the ever-deepening gulf between the plane and ground.

  No escape.

  A businessman across the aisle shook open a Wall Street Journal and began reading, oblivious of the fact that humans were never meant to fly.

  Sharon handed him a pillow. “Just close your eyes and try to sleep.”

  Yeah, right.

  He knew he’d be fine once they broke through the gray membrane of clouds and leveled out. The ground became an abstraction at that point because it was concealed, the horizon a bowed blue ribbon in the distance. The flight attendants would start down the aisle, pulling their steel drink carts to trap him in his seat with a full bladder when they stopped to sell him the five-dollar sample bottle of Jack Daniels.

  Getting to that point was the tricky part.

  The plane still hadn’t leveled out, still was tilted like the beginning of a roller coaster ride, rocketing upward at—what had the magazine said?—five hundred fifty-five miles per hour. Back in the terminal, he’d appraised the plane as it was parked at the jetway and tried not to imagine seagulls being sucked into the massive black vortices of the turbines. The wing over which he sat looked too small for this enormous beast, a pathetic arm reaching into empty space, a freakshow appendage—my god, is my life dependent on that thing?—its rusty rivets trembling in the super gale-force winds blasting past.

  Another dip, to the left this time, as the plane banked in search of its heading. Joe strained to look past the businessman at the ground through the other window.

  There. Whew. But good Christ were they high up.

  He couldn’t handle being on the side tilted upwards, when the deformed metal arm waved through formless white space. When he couldn’t see the ground, nothing appeared to move, and that didn’t make sense because G-forces still hurled his gorge against one side of his body and made him want to puke. Worse, he’d never been able to make himself throw up into a barf bag although he knew puking would make him feel better. He wondered if people ever puked into the yellow plastic breather cups that dropped from the ceiling, and why the actors in those airline videos looked so happy when demonstrating them.

  The plane dropped.

  Joe’s corn flakes rose to the back of his throat, and his seatbelt pinched his hips as he became weightless.

  “Oh, shit!”

  His butt crashed back into his seat as the plane cleared the downdraft, and Sharon made a small “ooh!”—her only concession to fear. The businessman glanced over his newspaper to glare at the cockpit.

  “Ah, sorry about that, folks,” the pilot’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Turbulence should clear up as we reach our cruising altitude. I’m going to ask you to stay seated until—”

  A computerized DAH DAH DAH interrupted him.

  “Whoops, uh oh.”

  Joe and Sharon exchanged a wide-eyed look as the intercom clicked off. The businessman burst into laughter.

  “The hell was that?” Joe said.

  They waited for the pilot to come back on and explain the sound was only an alarm clock reminding him to take his medicine. Instead, the plane descended again—which didn’t make sense because D.C. was still five hours away—not quite diving but steep enough for Joe to brace himself on the chair in front of him, dimpling its white disposable covering. Weren’t passenger jets forbidden to tilt more than so many degrees at a time? Surely they’d surpassed that.

  “It’ll be fine, don’t worry,” Sharon said. But the strain in her voice said everything was not fine, not even close to fine. “He’s just going down to the correct altitude.”

  The turbulence returned as they slammed into the wind shears they’d cleared earlier. The plane rocked left and right.

  “Fine, huh?” He tightened his
already overtight seatbelt. “What was that ‘whoops’ about?”

  The businessman put down his paper to stare ahead, as if trying to see through the cockpit’s barricaded door. The flight attendants hadn’t left their seats since takeoff.

  Joe looked out the window. “What in the fuck are we doing over the ocean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Sharon held his fist against her chest again. He would’ve rather kept it on the armrests in case he needed to brace himself during a crash.

  He stared at the gnarled limb of the wing, its service-panel liver spots and rivet carcinomas, its aileron-shredded skin.

  Please don’t break off. I want to live. I want—

  —smashed as something whipped past and THE MOTHERFUCKING WING WAS GONE and shrieking metal—

  —Sharon screaming—

  —ground above below above below—

  —bags popping out of overhead bins—

  —hoping he’d survive impact—

  —Sharon squeezing his arm—

  —falling too fast—

  glassmetalcrushpushdarkness

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Do you want a drink? Hello?”

  Joe inhaled and stared at the white covering on the seat in front of him. Not a dream. He looked at the stewardess who’d boxed in Sharon and him with the drink cart, then out the window to see a smooth blanket of clouds far below.

  “Hellooooo…”

  “No, sorry. Thanks.”

  The stewardess glanced at Sharon, who was asleep, then moved down the aisle.

  Oh my god.

  Not a dream. He also knew from the way he was sitting that he hadn’t been asleep. Which left what, delusion? Hallucination?

  He shook Sharon awake.

  “What now?” she said.

  “How long have we… I mean, what—”

  “Just go to sleep, I said. You’ll be fine.” She closed her eyes.

  He stared at her for a moment, his hand hovering, ready to wake her again. It’d been too real to be a dream. For godsakes, he was sitting here trembling. The shriek of tearing metal still rang in his ears.

  Going to scream—I’m going to scream right now.

  He peered back out at the wing. Everything normal… that is, if tons of metal floating through empty air could be called normal. Just as normal as it’d been the moment before the other plane sheared it off. He half expected it to happen again.