Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow (26 page)

“Tharcia, are you alright?”

“LGBT.”

“What? What is that?”

“LGBT. You know, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender. The acronym of social diversity.”

“What does that have to do with…”

“I dunno. Diversity. Being able to accept people who are different from you. The opposite of prejudice. You know.”

“I believe I do.”

“My noggin needs a way to deal with you guys. You are deep different. So, Lian’s the devil, right?”

“No. Common mistake. Please be calm.
You’ll feel better when I am out of your hair.”

“My head, you mean.”

“That, too.”

“But Lylit, who are you? Are you an angel?”

“Lian is the first being the Creator made, at least in this universe. The most perfect, powerful living thing. Lian had a dream for a companion, what I should be like. He petitioned the Creator to make this creature using his image. Lian gave half his soul and substance for me, and I was created. We have loved each other from that moment.”

“This Creator, meaning…”

“Yes. Humans use names like Yahweh, Gitche Manitou, God or Elohim, Allah or Brahman, hundreds more across human cultures and religions down the ages. But these are only names which pass into accessible forms of thought, forms which mortals can grasp.”

“Accessible form
s of thought,” Tharcia repeats, tasting the concept. “So what are you?”

“I am Lian’s split-apart, the first feminine
being ever made. I was made from Lian, a supreme angel, just as he is. I am the prototype for all women. I do have flaws, which are magnified in the myths about me. Every religion and religious cult tells different stories about me, not all flattering. But I am true to Lian’s design, I am whole in what he desired, and joyful to be that, for him.”

Gazing at herself in the mirror, Tharcia struggles to take this in. “But wait. When did all this happen?”

“When was I created? Tharcia, it was before time began. Before galaxies, before the solar system, the Earth. Lian and I came into being long before Eden. One thing you must realize. Most myths were written by the patriarchy of their cultures. Most stories about me are therefore told by males. ”

“The patriarchy.”

“Indeed. Patriarchy is the opposite of what’s on your shirt. Old bearded guys who run everything, or pretend to, for their sole profit and pleasure. But after the Creator finished making me, Lian was vulnerable. We became separated while the universe was being formed, so many fierce energies were at work. Lian sought soul-support looking for me and found this by inventing his ego.”

“Hold up. Lian invented the ego?”

“Practically. The supreme angels in those days were tasked to discover the glorious infinities the Creator had made and to bring back the interesting ones. All the angels were finding wonderful things. Lian found the ego. The Creator considered it a survival tool for sentient beings, and used it. In my absence it became Lian’s downfall. It made him unhappy and the two of us separate.”

“So where did you guys hang out? Like, you couldn’t just walk around and breathe air, right?”

“We are of One Spirit, universal consciousness. We cross all time and all space. Beings like us know the entire past and the entire future.”

“Eww. Sounds like buzz-kill, knowing what will happen.”

In Tharcia’s mind, a melodious laugh. “Only to one who is trapped in three dimensions. Freedom in the dimension of time means we can choose the conditions that appeal to us. We have wide tastes, we move around freely. We die. All of us who are created can suffer misfortune, all of us can die.”

“Wait, Lylit. May I call you Lylit?”

“You may call me by all my names.”

“Do you know about your own death?”

“Yes. I go to that time occasionally to meditate and feel gratitude. It is a magnificent moment when I rejoin universal consciousness.”

“Lylit, does that mean you can appear and disappear?”

“Yes. But to continue, I was on my way back to Lian when I was raped by a dark angel who crippled and imprisoned me. Other angels pursued me. They gave me to the first earthly male, thinking that purpose would keep me out of the way. It did not. There is more, often misinterpreted. What is mistaken in myth and folklore is that the Creator is an evolving being. It would not do today as it did long ago. The ultimate spiritual being does not hold on to any moment.”

“You said it.”

“Mm?”

“You called the Creator guy
an ‘it’ instead of a ‘he.’”

“Oh that. Well. Why do you suppose all the world’s creation myths depict gods in human form?”

“Because people were created in God’s image?”

“No
supreme angel, certainly no mortal, can know the mind of the Creator, or its form, or its will. We are not designed to know that. Even we must look at the Creator through a safe filter, like seeing the sun through smoked glass.”

“It would burn us out, you’re saying.”

“To a crisp. There is an infinity of sentient races in the universe, millions in this galaxy. Humans are not alone. Which one would the Creator pick to make in its own image?”

“I guess yo
u are saying none of them?”

“
No. All of them. All sentient beings are made in the Creator’s image, yet each is different. Each one is special, each one is loved by the Creator, each one deserves to live. Tharcia, it’s time to start things moving. Can you rejoin Lian? I will leave you in silence. I must reclaim my avatar. My enemies…”

“
Chill, dude! You’re leaving me alone with Mr. Business Suit?”

“Oh don’t be afraid of him. Underneath the smoke and wings he is really a softy.”

“He is a dragon lizard.”

“Oh yes, it’s an illusion. He will not hurt you. Not if I have anything to say about it! But there’s a
bargain you must make with him.”

“I’m supposed to make a bargain?”

“The reason you are here. Tharcia, I was selfish. I used you. I am responsible for that. Providing you with the Sumerian verses was the only way I could join with Lian without being captured again. Caught and cruelly punished. But larger things were already in motion.”

“What kind of bargain?”

“Oh, the usual, what Faust and others in your history and literature have always desired. Many of your film actors, financial wizards, pop singers, some inventors have done so. Most of the hyper-rich. Some even admit it. You just ask for whatever earthly advantage or pleasure you want for the rest of your life.”

“And?”

“His minimum is usually to take your soul. Followed by an eternity in his special class.”

“An eternity in hell. Oh whoopdee.”

“Not hell, actually. But I hear it’s not so bad, once you get used to it.”

The Boeing YAL-1, a heavily reworked 747, lifts off from Andrews AFB in Maryland, on a four-minute course for the Pentagon. Hastily re-commissioned, the only YAL-1 in existence had until three days ago sat in canvas wrap at Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, Arizona, among thousands of other aircraft the U.S. military doesn’t want or need. The order had come down direct from the Joint Chiefs: fly it to Andrews as quickly as humanly possible if not before, bring her to full operational readiness at Andrews. Crews had swarmed the plane for eighteen hours in Arizona, making her airworthy. When the plane lifted off for its 5-hour flight to Maryland, sixteen metalworkers and technicians continued to work aboard. Components of the onboard missile defense cannon, an oxygen-iodine laser, caught up three hours later, arriving on other flights and truck shipments into Andrews.

Now, five minutes
from the runway, the large aircraft with bulbous projections on the nose banks steeply, port wing pointed toward the Pentagon 5,000 feet below. With the YAL-1, the Department of Defense had hoped for a laser cannon of surgical accuracy that could destroy enemy missiles in flight. The program, like so many other expensive attempts, had failed, but present circumstances have brought this weapon back to operational readiness. In her belly, a 40,000-pound multi-stage chemical reactor is given the final security code to commence firing.

Onboard the YAL-1, the
Beam Control Officer issues a lock command to a rotor-ball laser ranging and video camera beneath the fuselage. A second crew member adjusts the laser beam’s setting to maximum. It’s a power level that will melt a full size battlefield tank in seconds. The gunner unsnaps the safety cover over the
Fire
button and pushes down.

In milliseconds, the chemical reactor mixes jets of chlorine and hydrogen peroxide gasses
, releasing high-temperature free oxygen. Streams of pressurized nitrogen drive the oxygen through a fine iodine spray, energizing the iodine molecules. Intense light floods the weapon’s interior and challenges the cooling system.

A
s an optical resonator reflects this light between mirrors, more iodine is injected and the beam’s intensity climbs. From the resonator, the light traverses a sealed pipe above the crew cabin to the optical chamber. At the aircraft’s nose a swivel turret widens the beam to manhole size and aims it, adjusting focus on the distant target, where two people sit unsuspecting in the Pentagon courtyard.

Designed to take out tanks and airborne missiles, a six-second burst can burn a smoking hole in whatever it hits. However, what it encounters above the Pentagon is the
invisible field that surrounds the courtyard in all directions, the same force envelope that holds suspended the various sniper bullets, RPGs and other projectiles. The beam does not penetrate to the courtyard grounds, or the two small figures there. What is not trapped can only heat the air above the impenetrable field, creating a turbulent, super-hot and noisy updraft, ripping water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, which spiral upward and recombine to send down misted rain, with the roar of a jet engine.

Onboard the YAL-1, the Beam Officer talks to his observation officer. “What do you see?”

“System burst at nominal power. No damage to target. Preparing salvo two.”

“Where did the beam strike?”

“Disappeared above the target. No ground impact.”

“Replay the video.”

On screens throughout the crew stations, video of the 6-second laser burst plays back. A bright spot forms in air above the courtyard, a whirlwind of sparks and burning debris rises up. The small seated figures in the view lift their heads toward the bright light.

“
Captain, hold orbit. Preparing to continue attack.”

In the Pentagon courtyard Lian stands motionless as
he’s done the last four days, allowing his mind to rest in gratitude. His thoughts are quiet. From this age-old practice he finds passages of perfect stillness, of having no boundary, of being one with all there is. Connected to the air, sky, trees, sunlight. He is one with the Creator and all that is or has ever been. It is not a merging. It is being conscious. He is one with All, even with the white-haired mortal who peers now from the doorway behind him.

Standing
near the women’s restroom, Tharcia studies the courtyard. There are many trees, most bare of leaves. Concrete paths radiate outward toward building walls that surround her. The sun is high, it is early afternoon. A wide swath of shadow lies across the ground, cuts partway up a wall. She sees nothing that could cause the shadow, but at the near end is that man. She shivers.
That thing grabbed me.
Remembers with fear how the pleasant man had changed, become a lizard-thing with wings and claws. Fearsome sights and sounds in twisting red tunnels.
Lylit’s boyfriend?

Tharcia
takes a deep breath, trying to come to grips. She’s somewhat more relaxed now that Lylit has stopped talking inside her head. Her last words suggested she’d be back once she found her avatar.
Avatar? She said it meant a body.
How is Lylit going to get a body?

“Lylit?”
Uncertainly, Tharcia speaks the name in her mind. Waits. No answer. She can only guess that her secret twin has actually departed. She recalls Lylit’s assurances.
He won’t hurt you. He’s really a softy.

The man faces away from her, standing easy, arms at his sides. His ash-blonde hair reminds her of Clay
and desolate longing floods her.
Clay! Dear Clay. Bring me home!

Poised in the air above,
Tharcia sees a litter of metal objects, little ones like shiny lipsticks, larger shapes with short blurry tails. Like it would be smoke, if smoke held still like that. Half hidden in the doorway, Tharcia summons her courage, calls out.

“Hello?”

The man turns slowly, faces her with a pleasing smile. When he speaks it is that strange tongue. “Please use the language Lylit taught you.”

Tharcia gropes
for memory. She understands what he says, but speak it herself? Lylit had said
Sumerian
. So unfamiliar. Clumsily she reaches for the words.