Intelligent Design: Revelations to Apocalypse (9 page)

“Oh? That’s pretty high tech for a therapist like you.”

Riesman looked at the stone, and a low, green light began to pulsate slowly. She held it firmly in both hands, and warmth flowed through her fingers, but the rich green light intrigued her more. The more she looked, the deeper into the depths of the object it drew her. The light grew, and her fingertips heated further, but it aroused curiosity and puzzlement, not alarm. A vivid sensation came over her of a dark, warm, protected cavity, then a constriction followed by a rush of cold air that embraced her whole body. A cough, a sharp slap on her buttocks, then an image of her mother’s beautiful blue eyes looking down on her.

Mum? You’re so young …

More images and sensations flew by. She saw herself as a little girl entering kindergarten, falling off her bicycle and being picked up by her father and sister in third grade, the strong smell of cow manure, and the rush of riding her favorite horse. She saw herself delivering her first calf on the farm, followed by driving her family’s tractor in the corn field on a brutally hot day. She saw and felt the neighbor boy’s very first kiss. Middle and high school flashed through her mind, as did her first orgasm. Cold days, hot nights, and warm beer came and went, as did visions of her first day in officer training; all the ways to a firefight in Iran. The flashes came faster, and so did the days and nights of her past: some tender visions, others of dead friends and soldiers. She felt intensely throughout the experience: happiness, pain, tenderness, fear and sorrow. A vivid image of meeting Perez arose, and one of her running her first clinical group, followed by completing her doctorate and explaining to her parents why she was not moving back to Wyoming.

More visions came—various assignments, friends and lovers— and only slowed at her appointment to FEMA and the news of Perez’s family tragedy. They sped up again with tense, sad moments at her mother and father’s funeral, and she watched her nieces and nephews grow before her eyes. The visions slowed again at her last lovemaking with Hiaki, attending his funeral, lunch with Perez, her meeting with the Administrator and agents. Finally, she saw Agent Lee making sure that the audio devices and internal tracking system was as comfortable as any large tampon.

Riesman shook her head. The green light blazed brighter. Her hands shot to her eyes, and the tablet clattered onto the floor. Her knees weakened, but Perez’s strong arms caught her before she fell.

“I got you.”

She rubbed her eyes and blinked. It worked well. Her vision cleared quickly and the heat subsided from her fingers.

“What the hell was that, Perez? Thanks for the warning …Does … does it always do that?” It took her a moment longer to regain her balance, sight and wits.

“Only sometimes,” Perez replied.

“It can give me a nasty static shock on dry days like this.” He checked that she could stand alone, then stepped away.

Static shock? Are you kidding me? It was something much more than that.

Perez picked up the tablet and looked at it briefly. Surprisingly, the glossy surface displayed no finger prints, and no dents or damage from its drop to the hard marble floor.

“I’m sorry, Bobbie Jo. The tablet also has a biochemical defense mechanism. I thought I’d turned it off, but by your response, I expect you experienced a series of emotionally powerful images, important ones, I bet?”

“Are you kidding me? It’s like I experienced my entire life’s highlights in seconds. So if someone unauthorized holds it they get a here’s-your-life show while you tackle him? You’re kidding me, right? Wouldn’t a biochemical knock-out zap be easier?”

She tried to make light of the event, but when she rewound the moments just prior to holding the tablet, she remembered how Perez had put her drink down to free both hands, almost in preparation to use them if necessary.

She concluded that it wasn’t a mistake. She glanced beyond him to the three women. They looked at her with stunned expressions. Riesman took the glass of wine back, glad that she didn’t make a total spectacle of herself.

“
Um Himmels willen, Terra und Erde! Die blonde Gigantin hat eine Verwandtschaft zu unserem Stamm. Das hätte ich nie erwartet
,” one of the women said in a surprised tone.

Great! Here comes the German again.

“
Einverstanden! Wieso ist sie so groβ geworden, nachdem sie so viel verarbeitetes Mehl und Getreide gegessen hat? Denk nur, was passieren würde, wenn sie sich gesund ernähren würde! Denkst du, daβ die Gigantin noch gröβer wäre?
” the other woman asked.

“You know, Anthony, this speaking German is getting pretty old,” Riesman complained.

Perez rolled his eyes at the women’s exchange as if he understood them. The pygmy women had spoken German all through their time together. They spoke English occasionally, but only to ask her to move or tell her where to sit. This exchange had been the most she’d heard from them, and she was sure they were talking about her.

“
Sie kann kein Deutsch, meine Damen. Seien wir nicht unhöflich
,” he said as he led her to her chair at the table.

Riesman shot a look at Perez. She’d never heard him speak another language other than Spanish, and even that was rare.

German! You speak German? You live in a Boston penthouse with three women, walls covered in primitive art, and you speak fluent German. Who the hell are you?

“
Unglaublich! Sie kann die Sprache ihres Stammes doch überhaupt nicht? Armes Ding, siehst du, Milites Lux und Vespere? Sie hat ihre Vorfahren, ihre Abstammung vergessen und sie tötet sich langsam durch ihre Ernährung. Ich wette, sie möchte lieber in der Sonne liegen als sich zu verstecken und sich von UV- Strahlen zu schützen. Armes Ding. Und sie hat noch mindestens acht Prozent des genetischen Codes unserer Erbschaft?

Erstaunlich!
” Dee Dee said in a tone of contained enthusiasm as they sat down for dessert.

“Please,” Perez said with a look as he took his own seat.

“Sorry, Immunes, I will focus. I thought Riesman knew German because of her last name. I apologize, Riesman,” Dee Dee said in perfect, though heavily accented, English. For a moment, Riesman found herself unable to respond or move. She couldn’t tell if the reason was the experience with the tablet, the revelation that at least one of the women spoke English and Perez spoke German, or the use of certain words such as ʽimmunes.’

Does that mean she heard my pygmy comment earlier? Shit!

Riesman replayed when she’d said it, her volume, and where everyone was at the time. She tried to push down the embarrassment and focus on something else. Perez dipped his spoon into some earth-colored, graham-cracker-textured dessert. She tore her eyes from the vile plate, and tried to repeat the word she hadn’t understood.

“Immunes is a title from Latin that means something like a specialized soldier, such as Special Forces.”

“Latin? As in dead language?”

“Yup. Roman Empire, Tacitus, Cicero, Caesar. Oldies but goodies.”

“And it means specialized forces like a Delta squad?”

“Delta, Omega and Epsilon. All trained for specialized missions. That's what immunes means. Kind of cool, huh?”

“
Epsilon
Team? Really? An all-
woman ’
Delta Force?’ That’s just a myth; some Navy SEAL guy’s fantasy,” she scoffed.

“Maybe not here, but other governments might have such a force.”

Riesman was about to continue when she noticed that she was the only one having a piece of the apple pie. Perez took a tiny sliver—a no-thank-you-but-I’m-not-interested-in-this-food size her mother had trained her to take when confronted with offensive food. To her surprise, he’d taken a larger helping of the dirt-like substance the other women ate so eagerly. The large quantity of food the women ate amazed her. The Thanksgiving meal had been composed of protein rich meats and fowls of all sorts, followed by legumes and vegetables—no starches to speak of. She’d asked one of the women about the drinks and learned that they contained no alcohol but lots of blueberry and blackberry juice. It tasted more like pure extract than a sugared drink. The women also used large thick bowls for their dessert; similar to what they’d used at dinner. Riesman sighed and tried to figure out why she was getting very angry.

“So does anyone else want some pie I …?”

All three women said no before she could get the last syllable of her question out, as if she’d offered them poison. Worse, they pulled their own dessert closer as if she might take it. As if she wanted that pile of dirt!

“What are you eating?” she asked in an attempt to contain her surprise and rising anger. The women frowned and looked at each other as if trying to figure out what she was saying. Again, Dee Dee spoke for them all.

“Why, it’s baked chestnuts with crushed almonds, and coconut soaked in its own juices with cinnamon and lemon topping.”

Riesman’s jaw slackened. At first, she thought the woman must be joking, but the other two women returned to eating their treat with gusto.

My God! What have I’ve fallen into here?

Riesman put her fork down and looked around the table. She was not used to being the odd one out, or being ignored or avoided. Her jaw clenched and her heart rate rose. She picked up her wine glass, swirled the contents for a moment, and then, frustrated, plonked it down with more force than necessary. Thud. The others turned their heads at the sound. She closed her eyes and organized her thoughts.

“What is your problem with me? Why would you speak German when clearly I’m an American, and you can obviously speak the language?”

“
Est-ce que la géante préférait-elle le français?
” Vespere asked.

“
Non …je ne pense pas qu’elle puisse parler français non plus. Pourquoi ces gens ne peuvent pas apprendre les langues de leur monde?
” Lux said to Vespere.

“What! What is that? French? Now you’re speaking French?” Riesman’s voice rose.

“Ladies! That’s enough! Stop badgering her. She’s a guest and that’s discourteous,” Perez said, then he turned to Dee Dee.

“Milites Vespere and Lux! Silence!” she said with authority to the other women. Silence filled the room. Riesman looked at all of them before turning to Perez. He sat quietly with his elbows on the table, hands folded beneath his chin, looking down at the table.

“Anthony, what the hell is going on here? This isn’t you. You lived in the suburbs and had … normal friends. These women don’t belong here. You don’t belong here with them, in this apartment. You couldn’t have changed that much. I know you had losses …”

Sadness filled her heart at the thought of her own loss; Hiaki dying, gone forever. She would have continued, but Perez’s head snapped up when she mentioned his loss. He sat back and glared. Riesman blinked; never before had he directed anger at her.

His eyes narrowed, jaw line tightened and he placed his hands on the table.

“And you know my pain, Bobbie Jo?”

The kind, gentle soul she thought she knew dissolved in front of her, leaving a hardened effigy. He stared through her for a moment, then looked at his hands and uneaten dessert.

Riesman wanted to reach out, but he looked up again, less hard and more of the person she had known for years, but still different.

“There are some things that are bigger than us. Things greater in scale and scope that dwarf our own problems, tragedies, hopes and dreams. Visions of the future can only be fully grasped if we look beyond ourselves and see that we are only part of a larger plan, a small cog in a machine.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean bigger truths that once known will shake the very core of our existence,” Perez continued. “While our own planet sits on the very doorstep of its own demise, it’s not the biggest problem to humanity. Deadly, dangerous, extinction level events bubble just under the surface of the planet’s crust, and they're the least of our worries. The biggest narcissistic injury is yet to come. There are only a few people, very few, who can prepare our government that will in turn prepare a nation and world for the biggest existential answer to a long- standing question: are we alone? We’ve never been alone. The one who knows this carries great despair and responsibility to act outside the norms, beyond the laws and above all else, to teach a race of people not to strike out in fear and anger but to sit back and learn. So different is this from our nature. We attack what we don’t know. It takes a special type of person to lead the way and convince a planet to save itself and its soul. This is big, even bigger than my personal loss.” Perez fell silent and looked through the windows to the Boston skyline.

Riesman stared at him, unable to understand his words or look away from the man and the dark abyss into which he fell. She wondered if he were crazy. She wanted to say something reassuring and comforting but couldn’t think of anything that could counter his eloquent tirade.

The younger woman, Lux, caught her off guard when she spoke clearly in a thickly accented, low tone but in perfect English. “…ʽHis very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain—why he did not instantly disappear.’”

Riesman’s mouth slackened yet again, and she stared at the woman, stunned by her ability to verbalize her own thoughts, truly capturing the moment.

Vespere, who nodded as if she approved of the statement, answered an unasked question. “J. Conrad’s work,
Heart of Darkness and the Congo Diary.
A fine choice, Lux. I was thinking more J. Milton’s
Paradise Lost
quote of ʽYet he who reigns within himself, and rules passions, desires, and fears, is more a king,’ but then I think the better setting would be on Venus than Earth.”

Riesman’s eyes widened even more.

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any stranger!

Perez smiled and returned to his calm, kindly self. He shook his head, pulled out his tablet and placed it on the table while Dee Dee spoke to the two younger women.