The Anarchists (28 page)

“Come home,” she implored from beneath a frazzled mess of scattered hair. “Take care of me.”

Understanding time travel posed a problem to the sober, much less than the inebriated. “Wish I could, but I can’t right now. I’m on the job. I’ll be home later.”  

Robinne edged her body to the end of the mattress and belched. “Enjoy it?”

“I didn’t sleep with Madison, Robbie.”

“Might as well.”

Frustrated, Damario breathed deeply and counted down from five. “You have the kids?”

“Mom and Dad’s.” Robinne retched and threw up into whatever receptacle she stationed underneath her head. Before she did so a second time, Damario disconnected the line.

He couldn’t tell her what he had seen.
Back in college, I received my internship offer, accepted it, and went east. We broke up. I became a successful executive at G.R. Cooper and married Madison. You’d be a strung out drug addict. Madison would’ve cheated on me with Justin and I lose an arm and an eye in a crash.

He imagined a coherent Robinne dismissing the explanation as an insult to her intelligence. An affair, switch of sexual orientation, or a drug-running operation would be an easier sell. She’d accuse him of making up an excuse to skirt around the truth.

I really married Madison?
Since they met at the academy, they carried an underlying attraction for one another.
But enough for marriage?
He doubted it. A lack of substance to build a foundation beneath the chemistry explained why he divorced her; that, and the fact she cheated on him multiple times. This Madison possessed a healthy libido of which she had a tendency to share too much about, but she did not crave it.
Why did that marriage fail? Why did this marriage fail?

After a quick check-in phone call to the precinct captain, Damario left the transport in the parking lot and walked back into the building. By the time he exited the elevator tubes and Madison let him in, he assumed they all had used the God’s eye. Harper cried uncontrollably and Micah consoled her. Quinne had been crying, but stifled any more tears by blinking and swiping tissue underneath her nose. Madison appeared affected by the somber scene – sympathy and not empathy. Damario would never tell her that they had been married in another timeline.

No one compared notes, but merely processed their alternate lives. Harper leaned on Micah’s shoulder for strength.
This life is something
.
We dodged a lot of pain by choosing it. But you don’t play God without consequences.

Quinne sniffled.
They got the American Dream. E’erythin’ you could possibly want and, if they ain’t got it, they can buy it. That’s power. Can’t believe I lost Troy and our baby, and here I am. Can’t hardly stand him.

Harper swooned when her husband touched her face.
I’d trade all the money we have for the one thing I can’t have. Girls, women get pregnant every day accidentally on purpose. No matter what I do, my child is stuck in that world and my money in this one. A child from my body, and from his. Our son.

Damario stared at Madison, whose eyes gazed back with quiet tenderness.
We were married
.
Robinne got addicted to drugs, and I lost my arm and eye. You cheated on me with Justin. Why? Could we have made it work? Did I give up too soon?

Madison
looked away, unable to sustain the connection.
It’s me. Something’s wrong with me – not Robinne, not Damario, but me.
  

“Why’d you show me this, man? Huh? My current life ain’t screwed up enough without somebody tellin’ me how screwed up it was somewhere else?” Quinne visibly trembled and cursed. “Who did this to me? And what we gonna do ‘bout it?”

 “Do you have a computer, Detective?”

Madison retrieved it from her bookshelf. “Who doesn’t?”

“Everyone, one-by-one, tell me what you saw. We’ll compare notes.”

The trio told the less personal aspects of their stories. Micah scribed them on a stand-alone holographic display, and interpolated images from the God’s eye. All of them had memories of the round room. Through the interface with the police department’s facial recognition software, Micah discovered the identity of the woman that all of them mentioned; a far younger version of Kareza Noor. She strongly resembled the woman Damario kissed, Quinne’s public defender advocate, the CEO of the Genesis Institute where Harper worked, and the guest host on the forum talk show he’d seen 

“Kareza Noor is the key?” Harper’s brow furrowed. “But she’s dead.”

“No,” said Damario. “Not necessarily.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Aboard Air Force One en route to the west coast, Nandor Adharma celebrated by drinking a flute of 1907 Heidsieck. Little about the human experience pleased him besides culinary pleasures. He relished the tenderness of a medium rare prime rib cut wading in a cesspool of au jus and blood. Prior to his indoctrination into mortal culture, he brutally killed to see it. After all, the former manner dictated animal sacrifice. Following the completion of the old order, however, such offerings were deemed unnecessary – and the blood of his replacement did nothing to satisfy that appetite.    

Sitting adjacent to Adharma, Ramsey Mateo, the newly-elected President of the United States, anticipated a return to his home state for a few days. There, he and Adharma would broker Palestinian and Israeli peace talks over a centuries-old problem: the restoration of Israel’s Biblical borders. Adharma convinced the two to momentarily stand down, long enough to join him and Mateo on neutral ground away from the White House. In two days, the conference would take place at Camp Bradley, a presidential retreat near the White Mountain range. Adharma promised him that a peace treaty of no shorter than seven years would “revolutionize the world, as you know it.”   

Mateo powered down his projection computer and tapped his fingers against the arm rest. Adharma sipped his champagne and hummed an upbeat tune. The president cleared his throat and the head of state still ignored him. “Nandor?”

“What?”

“Preach about goodwill and the advantages of foreign policy, if you want, but the Palestinians will never go for this.”

“We’ve been over this, Ramsey. They can’t afford to keep killing each other; isn’t that why your government cut off aid? Swift, decisive action brings definitive, measurable results. Flip-flopping gets you nowhere.”

The foreigner made sense. America’s conversion to marks and its reluctance to aid Israel brought the countries to the table in the first place. The terms were simple; declare a seven-year armistice, during which both countries must switch to the mark and restore Israel to its pre-partition boundaries.

Palestinians and Israelis would share the land and live in peace. In turn, Italy and the United States agreed to pump billions into the area over a decade and fund research methods to make the desert land arable. The reunited Israel nation would then grant drilling rights to its benefactors.

On paper, Adharma’s proposal heavily favored the Israelis, but he insisted the parties would sign. Among his more ridiculous assertions: the Arabs would permit a ceremonial rebuilding of King Solomon’s temple northeast of the Dome of the Rock.

“Mark my words,” Adharma claimed with assurance, touting his maternal Jewish heritage. “It’ll happen.”

Mateo disagreed. Religious fundamentalists were serious about their beliefs. They battled hard against his campaign of unity, and they planned to do so for his ’51 reelection campaign. The fiftieth sitting chief executive and the first full-blooded Hispanic was also the first avowed atheist in the nearly 300-hundred-year-old country.          

“If this deal goes down, you will be remembered in the annals of history, Ramsey.” Adharma swished the alcohol around in his mouth and swallowed.

“What about you, Nandor? What’s your motivation?”

He smiled. “All I want for this world is the right leadership.”

Since late that afternoon, when she and Micah returned from Detective Shenk’s apartment, Harper soundproofed the bedroom. With her room stationed at the back of the palatial second floor, Quinne did not have a prayer of hearing them no matter what the couple did. Still, she did not want their reluctant houseguest to be mortified by intimate sounds of passion, should she stop by for any reason.

In truth, she and Micah spent a handful of time being physical with one another. Even during their lovemaking, she could tell his thoughts preoccupied him. Whenever he and Doctor Chu worked on a project – which he finally revealed as the Sixth Equation – she could tell. Two-thirds of his attention went to involuntarily calculations. Whatever he did at the moment occupied the free third. He wanted to figure a way out of this alternate reality mess. Micah thought he could do the same with Harper’s infertility. But, the problem with no clear mathematical answer had odds stacked in the wrong direction.

After dinner, the Jameses retired to their room and Quinne to hers. Harper slipped into a comfortable peach nightgown. Micah wore cozy, wool grey pajamas. He crawled into bed beside Harper and kissed the pillows. “Oh, I missed you!”

Harper’s giggles waned into curiosity. “What’s it like – living on the street?”

Micah’s eyes rolled back, as if the memories were distant. “Hell.”

“Mike. I’m so sorry.”

He snuggled up to her shoulder and laid his head down. “How was it, with me gone?”

“Same.” She kissed his forehead. “There’s one thing I keep wondering, though.”

“What?”

“Why us? There's trillions people on the earth to send back. Why me? Why Quinne, and Teanna, and Officer Coley?”

“I’m not sure.”

His voice trailed off, which meant Harper had a third of his attention. “What's on your mind?”

“Harp, I met someone at the shelter, and something she said stuck with me. She said maybe science does not refute God, but supports God. That’s interesting.”

Stunned that her husband said the word, “God,” Harper perked up. “Continue.”

“Micah played us an audio recording of Kareza Noor killing the Prime Minister of Italy and then inhabiting his body. If humans have a sort of invisible essence, it makes scientific sense that two essences cannot occupy one space. But if she can transfer her essence to someone else, she’s clearly inhuman.”

Is he talking about spirits?
“Okay.”

“Time travel is impossible and God doesn’t exist. I believed that a week ago.”

Harper stifled her building excitement. “And now?” 

Micah turned contemplative. “I’m not so sure. What am I supposed to do when the proof I’m looking for doesn’t exist?”

“Sometimes, baby, you have to believe anyway.”

Crystal told him the exact same thing.
Had they talked? “
You miss them, don’t you?”

“Who?”

“Gabrielle and Christian.”

Harper bit her lip and stared at her stomach. “It didn’t escape my attention that Officer Coley’s children have almost the same names, if that’s what you mean.”

“It’s not your fault, Harp, or mine. It’s just the cards we were dealt.”

The explosion of the abortion clinic played over again in her mind. “No, Mike, it’s not. I traded in my hand, remember? Now, I can’t have children.”

“We discussed this. We can adopt, get a surrogate. . .”

Harper shook her head. “It’s not the same. I wanted our baby – in my body.”

“And you think we can’t because you presumably went back in time?”

“You don’t play God without some kind of consequence, Mike. We have to fix this.”

Set to disturb the married couple, whom she imagined were carrying on like newlyweds behind closed doors, Quinne hesitated.
It can wait.
She padded down the carpeting back to her assigned room and laid face down on the bed. The luxurious life of comfortable mattresses and service droids suited her, but she could not stay forever. If Anibel welcomed her back home, could she tolerate the signs of the cross and routine dousing of holy water?

It beat the alternative. Troy monitored her coming and going unless she snuck out while he slept. Without prior approval for an excursion, she anticipated a shouting match or, at worst, a punch into the drywall. She promised to leave him for good if he did, but didn’t.