Wayfarers

PROLOGUE

Last Link in the Chain

Moshe sits in his tent and remembers.

...

It was just a few short years ago, when the tide of war turned decisively in the New Dominion’s favor. Moshe was still in his thirties, his scraggly beard had not yet turned gray. The big city, where he lived, had not yet been leveled. But that was coming. Everyone knew it was coming.

The New Dominion had overrun the rest of the country, and had finally broken through the peninsula to the north of the city. From there, they had begun their push towards the outer suburbs, bringing with them their new law. The law that banned religion. For many in the big city, this law was a shameful violation of ideals, a corruption of their freedom. For Moshe and many of his friends, it was far worse. Moshe was a rabbi.

Even before the army’s arrival, the New Dominion’s ban had its effect. They didn’t need bombs and soldiers to overrun the city’s data centers. Vast digital libraries were ripped offline and deleted. Entire troves of religious wisdom and knowledge were wiped out in an instant.

Luckily, the Jews of the city had kept their physical books. Most books were preserved in private libraries scattered throughout the city. Older books that had begun to fall apart were not discarded. In accordance with tradition, they were interred in a geniza, a subterranean crypt. With the New Dominion still a few days away from a full invasion, there was still time to save these books from total destruction.

Moshe heard about the Ark Project by chance. He had attended early morning prayers in the basement of a fishmonger’s shop. There was concern that the New Dominion’s first bombs would fall on houses of worship, so the Jews of the city relocated their services to any unlikely spot they could find. At the end of the service, Moshe was packing his tallit and tefillin into a worn leather satchel when he overheard the anxious muttering of some fellow congregants.

We just got another twenty crates of books from the place on 20th St. one guy said.

Stuff we don’t have? another asked.

Yeah. Some of it’s pretty obscure. Came from the library of a guy who studied eighth century poetry.

Moshe cut into their conversation. Are you gathering books? Do you have a place to keep them safe? I have a few that I could bring to you.

The men looked at him. They were much older, and sadness weighed heavily on their faces.

We can’t save the books, the first one said. We’re trying to save what’s in ‘em.

And we could use more help, the second man added.

...

A few hours later, Moshe found himself in a vast warehouse that was bustling with activity. The walls were lined with massive stacks of books. Between them, men and women rushed about with urgency and purpose. They all carried books with them from the towers to the middle of the warehouse, where row upon row of high-tech devices buzzed loudly. The sound reminded Moshe of an angry swarm of bees.

What are they doing? he asked the old man who had brought him in.

They are doing what you will be doing, the man said. They are saving the books.

Moshe watched as one woman brought a book to a machine. She slid it into a slot, hit a button, and the slot flashed an angry shade of green. She pulled out the book and rushed it to a disorderly stack at the far end of the warehouse.

Are those scanners? Moshe asked. They didn’t look like the scanners he was familiar with. Those would only take in a page at a time.

Medical scanners. Phased contrast imaging, the man explained. They create a volumetric scan of each book in a few seconds. The warehouse next door has computers that extrapolate individual page images from the data.

You’re rebuilding a digital library, Moshe said.

Come, the old man said, and lead Moshe out a side door and across a narrow road to another warehouse building. This is the data center.

Inside, technicians hunched over computer screens in long rows, checking the work of what must have been a hundred computers.

How much do you have? Moshe asked.

Almost all of it, the old man said. New books that come in are almost always redundant. But we scan them anyway and look for version changes. Can you help us with that?

Moshe nodded, still awe-struck. They have almost all of it, he thought. Almost the entire body of Jewish knowledge. Right here. In this warehouse.

He recalled a passage that opens one of Judaism’s classical texts. Moses received the Torah at Sinai and gave it to Joshua. Joshua gave it to the elders, and they to the prophets, and the prophets to the men of the Great Assembly...

It’s a statement that defines a great chain of tradition, a chain that links back to God. For thousands of years, against all odds, that chain seems to have remained intact. We’re forging another link, Moshe realized.

How can we keep this safe, he asked. If the New Dominion finds the warehouse...

Come, the old man said again, and pulled Moshe to a computer bank along the wall. The equipment here looked different than the computers that filled the room. It was some sort of server rack with hundreds of ports along its front. Smooth, black devices stuck out of the ports. Storage devices.

How many of these do you have? Moshe asked. Do you have enough for all the books?

All the books will fit on just one of these. Each one is an ark, containing the word of God and the works of His people.

But that is impossible! Moshe interrupted.

That’s what the woman who invented this told us the man said. She said it couldn’t be done. And then she did it.

It is a miracle, Moshe realized.

The old man smiled. It’s nice to think that miracles might still happen on occasion. In three days, we’ll be ready to—

Then, the sirens wailed. An air raid. The attack had begun.

They’re early! the man shouted. Get everyone inside! Shut the doors! Shut the lights! They can’t know we’re here!

But they knew. A deep, concussive explosion rocked the warehouse and knocked Moshe to the floor. Above him, windows blew in and rained glass on everything inside. Power cut out and the whine of computers was replaced by the wails of the terrified and injured.

That was the other warehouse, Moshe realized. The books!

Through the broken windows, Moshe saw flames leap towards the sky. The books were burning.

Moshe scrambled to his feet and looked around. The old man was on the floor, knocked out. The door where they had entered was blown-in and filled with debris from the other warehouse.

Moshe noticed some of the workers dashing in the opposite direction. There, in that wall, another door.

Moshe headed towards it. Then, he stopped.

He looked back at the server rack, at the smooth, black devices sticking out of it. He reached for one and pulled it from its port, then dashed to join the others pushing through the exit.

...

Moshe remembers the moment he got to the door. The moment he felt the outside air. The moment the bomb hit the warehouse behind him...

...

Moshe sits in his tent and remembers.

CHAPTER ONE

When My Cat Had Kittens

Adark, moonless night in the Eastern Desert. Only the brightest stars manage to glow through the haze onto rolling hills of coarse, nutrient-rich sand. This place would be fertile if only the rains came.

Cracked pavement, veiled by the shifting dunes, cuts a straight line across the landscape. It’s the old highway, the one from Port Jervis to Pine Island, Warwick, Sloatsburg... and on to where the old city once stood. There’s nothing there anymore—nothing you could live in, anyway. Jervis is where the action is, but it’s hardly a city. More like an enclave. You’ll see it soon.

First, a rumble—metal treads clanking across the potholes. Then the headlights, bright, blue, piercing. And with the strained whine of a poorly maintained electric motor, the sand truck comes into view.

They drive after dark when it’s cool and the roads are clear. It used to be more dangerous at night. Trucks made easy targets during the war. But the war is over—as they say—so in these lonely hours, the road belongs to truckers again.

The driver, he’s about what you’d expect. Heavyset. A scar under the bristles of his chin. From the war or from the schoolyard? One burly arm draped casually over the wheel. Yes, a wheel. The drifting sand wreaks havoc on the autonomous rigs. It takes a human driver to know the fine boundary between the road and the wasteland.

So he squints out at the night, watching the whorls of sand drift across the road and flare in his high beams. Every now and then he glances at the TV—old tech, still works—jerry-rigged to the dashboard.

Let’s get to the bottom of this. When did you first have these thoughts?

A talk show. Brightly lit set. Splashed across the lower third, a caption: MY KID THINKS GOD IS REAL.

There they are, the parents, doing their best to look concerned. The somber host, clean-shaven, milks the silence until the kid finally answers.

"When my cat had kittens."

Just a kid. Eight years old. A public shaming.

"When your cat had kittens? But that’s a perfectly normal event, isn’t it? Perfectly natural?"

The kid looks down. He knows. Or she? The picture’s fuzzy. Either way, the kid knows what’s coming. The parents wear their concern like a cheap suit. Are they in it for the money? Or is this a deal to get out of jail time? Either way, they’re doing their part. Doesn’t matter what the kid says.

"What happened when your cat had kittens?" the host presses.

I thought about them. About where they come from.

Where did they come from?

"God made them."

A gasp from the audience. Then static.

Shit.

The driver pounds the TV with a hammy fist. The picture coalesces—the kid’s crying now—but only for a split second. Static again.

Sorry.

’S’okay. A voice from a compartment behind the driver.

Only gets the one channel.

I wasn’t really watching.

It’s a lie. For the last half hour, Abe has been riveted, peeking through the nylon mesh that holds him in place and hides him from view in the trucker’s storage nook.

...

Abe wasn’t asked if he believed in God. At most, he’s agnostic on the matter. But when they pounded on his door and pinned him to the wall... It wasn’t like the talk show. No gentle prodding. No sympathetic frown. If they had just asked Do you believe in God? like they usually do, Abe would still be walking around the streets of Jervis, punching the clock at the city planner’s office seven days a week.

But they didn’t ask the usual question. First, they asked Abe if he was a Christian. He said no. A Muslim? He gave the same answer—equally true. Then they asked if he was a Jew.

He had renounced his Judaism long ago, back when that was still possible. When the laws changed, he had been grandfathered in. It should have been easy for him to deny any connection to that old identity. But for an unfathomable reason, despite his renunciation, the claim that he was not a Jew felt like a lie.

He wanted to lie. He had to lie. Now, two months later, hiding in the storage compartment behind a sympathetic sand trucker, Abe fights back the anger and self-recrimination that wells up inside him. He knew better than that kid on the show. He could’ve said something, almost anything, and gotten himself released. Instead, he got arrested, booked on the charge of harboring a discordant ideology.

I am a Jew. Why couldn’t he lie?

...

The TV catches a signal. The image flickers, and an authoritative woman materializes out of the static. The caption identifies her as a psychologist.

"The tendency toward religious thought is a naturally occurring byproduct of our proto-human origins. It’s an invasive cultural artifact. Children are especially susceptible to religious superstition since their capacity for pure reason is underdeveloped."

Abe feels himself pitch forward gently. The truck is slowing down.

"Here we go. Stay quiet. Don’t move," the driver hisses through his teeth.

Ahead, a lone floodlight illuminates a small roadblock. Two official-looking vehicles flank a portable liftgate.

A sleepy-looking guard steps out of one of the cars. She slings a rifle over her shoulder and motions superfluously for the truck to stop.

Abe braces against the storage netting. The brakes squeal, and the truck finally comes to a rest. Abe tucks deeper into his hiding spot as the air brakes hiss. He shuts his eyes lest their gleam show through the nylon mesh.

The driver rolls down his window. Hiya, Charlie.

The guard—Charlie—ambles up, clipboard in hand. Bit late for the Pine Island run. Whatcha got?

Produce today.

Charlie glances warily across the checkpoint at the other car. A cigarette glows in the driver’s-side window. I gotta inspect it, she says, almost apologetically. She shifts her weight. "I won’t find any, uh, contraband back there, will I?"

Not back there.

Charlie nods. The driver hops out of the cab.

I’ll open her up for ya.

They disappear around the back of the truck.

Abe lets his eyes crack open. He spots the cigarette glow. The other checkpoint guard. Watching the watchman from his car.

The TV chatter changes register. The speaker is gruff, heavyset, in the uniform of a New Dominion cop.

"The orders are very clear. Religion is a virus. We’re the cure—but only if we keep fighting it. If we allow kids to express these ideas without—"

The driver’s door pops open. He heaves himself back into the well-worn seat and slams the door shut. He leans out the open window at Charlie, who ambles over, crunching on a fresh carrot.

Should be a quick turnaround at Pine Island. I’ll see ya again before dawn.

Nah, my shift ends at midnight. Can’t come soon enough. Say... Charlie glances at the other guard again, then leans into the window. What happened to Jonathan? This was s’posed to be his run.

The driver’s response resonates with grim meaning.

Jonathan got theological. They nabbed him this morning.

Charlie’s face betrays no reaction.

Shame. He was a good runner.

She looks behind the driver. Abe freezes. She’s looking right at me.

Make sure your cargo’s delivered safe, ’kay? And with that, Charlie gives the driver a thin smile, backs away from the truck, and waves to the other guard. The liftgate rises, and with a heavy whine, the sand truck rolls on through the checkpoint.

CHAPTER TWO

The Last Great War

Abroadcast stage, moments away from showtime. The black-clad TV crew bustles in the ring of semi-darkness around a brightly lit podium. Facing the podium, a heavy camera hides behind the angled glass of a teleprompter.

The obvious star of the moment, a sharply dressed, impeccably groomed gentleman, walks briskly to the podium. This is the senator. Greatest hero of the Last Great War. He’ll be president soon. He’ll run unopposed. May his name be obliterated.

He stands at the podium as the crew buzzes around him. Someone touches up his neatly combed, precisely parted hair. Someone else clips a microphone to his crisp lapel, avoiding the red pin that marks the senator (as if anyone had any doubts) as a true patriot. The senator shuts his eyes. Gathers his thoughts.

The bodies. Corpses. Seventy million dead.

He remembers the war. This is the memory that animates him. That drives him onward through the difficult times.

I saw a boy without limbs. I saw a mother without her boy. I saw unimaginable suffering. I saw darkness.

The televised entertainment this evening—the talk show with the kid and the kittens—is about to wrap up. The Culture Ministry recommended that segment to remind viewers to remain vigilant, even (or especially) when it comes to children.

The Culture Ministry has a difficult job. They’re constantly putting out little fires, dousing discordant ideologies with sensible, pragmatic reason before they have time to spread.

The culture minister will be the first to go. The senator grins at the thought. When he’s president, many heads will roll. But the culture minister always struck the senator as being too soft, too willing to believe in reconditioning. This talk show episode is a case in point. The culture minister insisted that the kid be permitted to return home after a few sessions with the therapist.

Show ’em we’re not monsters. Show ’em they can learn.

The faithful never learn. That’s what makes them faithful.

A countdown begins. Five... four... three... The rest is mimed by a stage manager as the crew hurries away from the camera’s angle of view. Alone in the spotlight,