Chapter 27 #3
“How big—how important—is the Word? Is it still a religion?”
“It has declined in significance, along with many religions. After the Autonomous War, religious worship came back into preeminence among many cultures on Earth. Christianity and Islam, especially, although Hinduism and Shinto gained enormous followers. It is a historical irony so many found a god or gods after the terrible destruction wrought by the war. The Word was among those religions that returned, especially during the dark times. But more recently, as technology has leaped forward at paces never seen in human history, religion has again declined. Mars, for example, is almost entirely secular.” She spoke like a professor.
I wondered if she was a TA or taught her own courses.
“Mars? Really?”
“Yes. Large swaths have been made Earthlike and rendered habitable.”
“Wow.”
“It is an exciting time for humanity. But, Scott Treder, what does this have to do with my original question?”
I remembered Miri. Her eyes when I made her promise not to follow the Word after I was gone. “Don’t take this the wrong way. But are you related to me?”
Her eyebrows rose. “No. Not in any way I have been able to determine. I was curious. Dug in records, in case I was a descendant. But no, I have not found any genetic connection, aside from the general sense that all of humanity shares some genetic material.”
Maybe Miri kept her promise, after all. “Are you an adherent?”
“Do you mean, am I a follower of the Word?”
“Yes.”
“No. I am interested in it for its historical value. I am not religious in your sense of the word.”
“All right. According to what Lyle wrote, I’m supposed to be traveling to the end point, right? The end of everything. To do … something. And that makes me special. I’m paraphrasing. I haven’t read it.”
“You have not read it?”
“No. I haven’t had the time. And now—I mean, Lily, ah … someone gave me a copy. But I lost it when … I lost it.”
“I can get you the original Norte text, untranslated—”
“That’s—I mean, yes, that would be great, thank you, but not what I’m driving at.”
“And what are you driving at?”
“Lyle wrote the Word.”
“Yes.”
“Lyle, my protective, obsessed, brilliant son. He created a religion to survive past his lifetime and protect me. He didn’t write it through some revelation from God, or after a feverish, life-altering dream. He made it all up.”
Anjari gazed at me, her eyes sparkling in the sunlight streaming in through the tinted windows of the aircar. “Does that diminish it for you? Diminish its worth?”
I opened my mouth to reply, then frowned. “I guess so, yes.”
“Perhaps the origin of the sentiment does not matter. Perhaps its worth is determined by the value others place on it, on what they get out of it.”
“I don’t know. If the Old Testament hadn’t been understood as revelation, straight from God’s mouth to the page, would it have held the same kind of sway over people?”
“Maybe not back then, four or five thousand years ago. But from my studies of your time, I believe even then many people understood that if such a work was not literally true, the teachings it contained through its stories and metaphors still held great value.” Her eyes shifted forward as the car banked into a turn. “Ah. We are approaching my spot.”
The aircar brought us toward a green hillside in a smooth, controlled arc.
It landed on the grass without a bump. Anjari tapped on her tablet and the doors swung open for us.
“Come, Scott Treder.” She led me across the grassy plain to the steep side of the hill.
White marble steps led to a flat area of grass.
Anjari took my arm and walked down the steps to the platform.
She brought me to the edge, and, folding her legs, sat, pulling me down with her.
I fiddled with the toga to get comfortable. Looked at the city.
The sight was like the one at the hospital, but much grander.
We were higher and had no ceiling over our heads to restrict the view.
The curved, dramatic spires and skyscrapers reached up through the clouds.
It was a towering city of marble, metal, and glass, pulsing with energy and movement.
Aircars flew in the thousands, all around the city, back and forth.
Trees the size of redwoods swayed on massive park platforms. The platforms themselves stood dozens, even hundreds of stories off the ground.
Between the skyscrapers and above the smaller buildings, I could see the Pacific, glinting in the sunlight, dotted by hundreds of ships traveling toward or away from the horizon.
“I am a historian,” Anjari said next to me, her voice soft.
“I read our surviving primary sources from your time. I imagine places of distant past, long swept away by the tides of time. But I cannot imagine myself living any time but now. This is humanity’s time.
There has not been a major war since the Unification, since all humans, everywhere, were enfranchised and given a voice. ”
“It’s beautiful.”
“I am sure, to you, your time was the most beautiful of all.”
“No. Not really.” I gazed at the astonishing skyline. “This is a great spot.”
“Yes.” She pointed at the hill behind us.
“There used to be letters here. Giant letters, spelling something for all to see. Archeologists uncovered the remains of the structure many years ago. It must have been so important, these letters, for them to be placed here. We have such gaps in our knowledge, not to know what they said.”
“‘Hollywood.’”
“Say again?”
I smiled, still looking out over the city. “The word. It spelled ‘Hollywood.’”
She took me to lunch in a little café near the top of one of the skyscrapers with a view of the Pacific. We had a table near the window, and I couldn’t help but stare at the clouds moving below us and at the distant ripples of the ocean waves.
Anjari watched me. She sipped a hot drink she’d ordered for us both.
It was strongly flavored tea I didn’t care for but drank anyway.
The café was busy, a constant hum of conversation ebbing and flowing around us.
If I didn’t pay attention, the words could have been English, my English, and I could have been back in my own time, listening to an indistinct murmur.
If I did listen—if I let my brain settle on a conversation, even a word—then I heard the unfamiliar tones, the foreign cadence and syntax that rendered the language unintelligible, and I lost the sensation.
I fell back into this alien time. This strange new vision of the world.
“Are you sure there is nothing more you would like to see?” Anjari asked as we waited for our food. She’d ordered for both of us. I couldn’t read the menu and her translations of the dishes made little sense to me.
“I don’t even know what to ask to see.”
“The world now is a spectacular place.”
“I can tell that much from here.”
“We must return to the hospital after we eat, so the medical personnel can run a final assessment. After that, I can take you somewhere, if you like. Your old home?”
“No. No, that’s okay.”
“There is another option. There are many others who would like to speak with you. I have been selfishly holding you to myself, but I am far from the only academic who would wish to talk with you, about what you have seen, where you came from…”
“I can probably do that. But not for too long, okay? Not for hours and hours.”
“That is okay. They will take what they can get.”
“You’re very good with idioms. From my time, I mean. I’ve heard that learning idioms is one of the hardest parts about learning another language.”
“I have studied Norte extensively. Primary sources are critical for my thesis, and idioms are important to discern both textual and subtextual intent. But I thank you.”
“So, just historians at this shindig, right?”
“Yes. I believe so.”
I stared out the window for a while, silent, conscious of Anjari watching me. Our food arrived, steaming and with flavorful, unfamiliar odors. Anjari nodded for me to eat. “Please, try it. If you do not enjoy it, you can try mine, or we can order you something else.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine.” I tried it. The dish was a flaky pastry filled with white fish, covered in a white sauce and resting on a bed of wild rice.
The sauce was a little strange, the flavors unusual, almost vinegary.
But the fish itself was good. I couldn’t tell whether it was fake, lab grown, or if humanity, despite all it had gone through in the last seven hundred years, had managed to preserve some natural aquatic life.
“It’s excellent,” I said, eating more for emphasis.
She smiled and started in on her own dish. She ate with care, chewing thoroughly, enjoying each bite. I found myself slowing down in imitation and discovered the flavors improved with the gentler approach.
When we’d both finished, Anjari got out her tablet and tapped for a few seconds. Then she looked up. “Shall we go? Or would you like more to drink?”
“Don’t we need to pay?”
“I just did.”
“Oh. I can’t repay—”
“Scott Treder. Of course you do not have to repay me. Come, we will go.”
A nurse took me to an examination room at the hospital. Anjari came with me, at my request. I think they allowed it because she could translate for me. She seemed pleased I asked her to come.