The Mendelssohnian Theory: Action Adventure, Sci-Fi, Apocalyptic ,Y/A (20 page)

“Where is he?” asked the tall man.

“Who?” Khaled asked back, trying to buy some time for his
customers. The man didn’t answer and touched his hand. The light in the room
became purple, allowing the man to locate the switch that opened the escape
door on the floor by the fingerprints around it. While going down the stairs,
he raised his weapon and without looking, fired a laser beam straight into
Khaled’s forehead. Khaled was still able to think, “This can’t…” before the ray
scorched through his forehead and fried his brain.

Natalia led Adam and Joseph down the narrow tunnel. Joseph
breathed heavily, and Natalia felt a pang of guilt for the pain she’d caused
him, but what could she do? That was what they’d paid her to do. She could have
killed him for the same amount. Adam, on the other hand, was something else.
Ever since he had rescued her life on Mars she often thought of him, he even
frequented her dreams. She knew the chance they’d meet again was slim, but
couldn’t get him out of her mind. When she’d accepted the current mission, she
had no idea the target will be Adam. Once she had discovered Adam was involved,
she didn’t hesitate even for a moment and switched sides. It was perhaps the
rashest decision she had ever made in her life, but in spite of the risks it
involved, she was completely at ease with it. She looked back, now and then,
knowing Sato was getting close to them, hoping the exit Khaled had promised
them actually existed and that they’d reach it before their pursuer gets to
them. Adam was weak and she supported him, allowing him to lean on her while
Joseph was running behind her. A strip of bluish light stretched across the
tunnel wall and illuminated their way with a murky luminance. Joseph suddenly stopped.
She turned to him and saw that he had drawn his weapon. “What are you doing?”
she asked with a tense voice.

“I’ll delay him,” said Joseph, “and you’ll get Adam out of
here.”

“No one stays behind,” Natalia announced and Adam, in spite
of his weakness, placed his hand on Joseph’s shoulder.

“Come on,” he said, “we need you.
I need you. We’re almost there. I can feel it.” But what he really felt was the
assassin chasing them, approaching and advancing at a much higher speed. He
concentrated and called voicelessly:

• Report

• Two hundred and fifty feet southwest of you and closing
the gap

• Chances of successful evasion?

• Seventy-two percent

• That ought to do it

• Twenty-eight percent say it won’t

• I’ll take my chances. Inspect and report.

Adam had quickly gotten used to
thinking in computerized communication terms in his new mind contact.

• Yes, Nagid

“Come,” Adam said again. Joseph hesitated for another moment,
then nodded and continued to march quickly down the tunnel. Natalia and Adam
hurried after him. The burrow sloped downward until it abruptly widened into a
large cave, blocked from all directions, other than the one they had arrived
from. The three looked for an exit, but the earthen walls in front of them were
sealed. The only opening was on the cave’s ceiling and daylight penetrated the
tunnel through it. “Jump on us,” called Adam and joined his hands with
Joseph’s. Natalia hurried to jump on the ladder of hands the two had formed and
from there, lifted herself until her hands grabbed the edges of the small
opening in the ceiling. She pulled herself up, balanced herself quickly and
sent her hand down. Joseph hurried after her and grabbed her outstretched hand.
She pulled him up and he, without losing a second, grabbed her feet and dropped
her through the opening. Adam jumped and hung on Natalia’s arms and Joseph
strained himself and pulled them both up. A shadow lunged from the tunnel and a
hand outstretched and grabbed Adam’s foot. But it was too late. Adam shook his
leg and kicked the hand that tried to hang onto him with the other until he was
able to release himself and was pulled up.

They hurried to emerge into the daylight and found themselves
in the middle of a memorabilia shop in the great market on the outskirts of the
old city. One could find any electronic gadget created in the past two hundred
years in the market shops, from archaic computer game units to photoelectric
micro and nanochips (Nano Photoelectric Chips ©).

The three hurried to escape from
the store straight into a short, narrow alley filled with merchants and buyers.
Joseph withdrew a market map from his external memory and began to direct their
way as far as possible from the cave they had just exited. It was clear to the
three of them they hadn’t gotten rid of the threat, the assassin must have
already exited the pit and was giving them chase. It was only a question of
time before he’ll catch up with them. And indeed, Sato blocked their way as
they turned to the outskirts of the market and entered a narrow street, lined
with fake microchip stands on both sides. He was standing in the middle of the
street, waiting. He knew they had no other choice, and they’d reach him soon.
The market was crowded with buyers, squeezing their way side-by-side, sometimes
even on top of one another. They tried to turn back but were blocked by the
crowd. The assassin continued to stand motionless, watching them with
equanimity while they turned back toward him. The buyers surrounded them, and
the crowd pushed and shoved them toward danger. Natalia looked all around her,
then pushed Adam to a narrow opening between two stalls on their right. Adam
disappeared from her eyes, and she and Joseph straightened up and continued to
advance toward Sato.

• Report

• Continue straight

• Chances?

• Twenty-seven

• That’s not much

• That ought to do it, just like last time

Adam continued to run among the people, quickly moving away
from the scene of the battle.

The assassin was momentarily confused when Adam had
disappeared, then he hurried toward Joseph and Natalia, jumped in the air and
sent a kick in Joseph’s direction, raising his hand toward Natalia’s head at
the same time. Joseph’s shoulder absorbed Sato’s kick, and he heard his bones
shattering. The force of the blow had spun him, and his other shoulder took a
hit from his attacker’s foot as well. Natalia had managed to step aside, so the
blow had missed her head by less than an inch and merely chaffed her ear. She
immediately sent a counter blow that hit the attacker at the exact same moment
he’d struck Joseph. Sato folded on the ground but immediately raised himself
onto his feet. He jumped to kick Natalia again, with the same dance-like
movement, turned, and struck Joseph again. All that time, the sound of shouting
and horrified screaming filled the market. People were trying to get away,
pushing and crushing one another, in an attempt to escape without becoming the
victims of the mighty battle, which took place right next to them. Sato did not
wait to see whether Natalia and Joseph will recuperate and hurried to the place
in which Adam had disappeared. Beyond the stalls, there was another street that
ended at the edges of the market and opened to the slopes of the Judean
Mountains and the outskirts of the arid Judean desert. Sato examined the view
that spread before him, trying to locate his prey. In the desert, a little more
than a mile from where he was standing, he recognized a dot advancing on the
ground and moving away. He suppressed a curse and hurried to follow the
escaping Adam. Bit by bit, the STD mission (STD-Saving Target Butt), that is
keeping the target alive was becoming more complicated than expected. He wasn’t
accustomed to missions in which he needed to capture his target alive but was
convinced he could pull it off. ‘It’s all a matter of time and patience,’ he
said to himself, while accelerating his pace.

Meanwhile, in the middle of the market, between the stalls
that had emptied out of terrified merchants and buyers, a hovercraft landed
next to the unconscious Joseph and Natalia. The aircraft’s door opened and
Elizabeth jumped outside, hurrying toward Joseph. She shook him till he woke.
“Where is he?” she shouted.

“I don’t know,” answered Joseph, “I hope he managed to reach
the desert.” Natalia’s voice was heard from behind him: “He went out into the
desert. But Sato is still after him.”

Elizabeth turned to her quickly, hands in attack mode.
“You’re one of them,” she determined with a threatening tone.

“I was,” said Natalia, “not anymore.”

“She saved us,” said Joseph and placed his hand on
Elizabeth’s ready fist, “she and Adam have met on Mars.”

“Where is he running to?” asked Elizabeth, who remained
suspicious in spite of Joseph’s words.

“I don’t know, but I think his protective suit is out of
order. He won’t last in it for long in the desert.”

They all became quiet. The street, which had emptied during
the battle between Sato to Natalia and Joseph, began to fill up with people
again, and they surrounded the hovercraft and looked at it with curiosity.

“There’s no other choice,” Joseph said after a moment, “we
need to ask for their help.”

“I can’t,” answered Elizabeth, “it’s too dangerous.”

“We have no choice,” Joseph urged her, “that’s exactly the
type of situation we were afraid of. We can’t help him anymore. Contact them.”
Elizabeth nodded and returned to the hovercraft to make the call.

“Contact who?” asked Natalia, but Joseph didn’t answer. He
helped Natalia to get up, and both of them followed Elizabeth into the
hovercraft.

Adam stumbled on a yellow sand dune, protecting his eyes from the
sun beating down from above. The heat was unbearable, and the protective suit
that had saved his life surrendered to a single bullet fired by one of his
pursuers and ceased to function. Elizabeth, Joseph, and Natalia had caught up
with him in the Judean Desert a few moments before the corporation agents’
hovercrafts would. They helped him get into their own hovercraft and flew away
quickly. But the agents’ aircraft were quicker, and the hovercraft was shot
down with a loud blast. At the last moment, before it crashed into the ground,
Joseph had managed to push Adam into the escape capsule and fired it with a
silent whistle to the maximum distance it could be sent to.

Adam knew his time was limited. Unless he finds water and
shelter from the sun, he won’t survive in the vast desert. He assumed the
assassin was already aware of the fact Adam didn’t die in the ground-hovercraft
blast or the aftershock that followed. He also realized the lone assassin
wasn’t the only one after him. Joseph had assumed skill did not want to put all
eggs in a single basket and in addition to their contract with Sato, sent
corporation agents to search for Adam as well.

From his repeated encounters with
the assassin, Adam began to assume he did not wish to kill him, merely to stun
him in a way that will make it easier to capture him. But he wasn’t certain
about the intent of the corporation agents.

• Report

He called the computer’s brain but received no reply. For
some reason, the computer had chosen not to communicate with him, something
that led Adam to wonder who the computers were loyal to. Also, ‘If they’d
chosen him as their contact person, why weren’t they available at all times?’

Adam worried about his friends. The thought that they might
have given their lives to defend him tortured him and desperation returned to
govern his thoughts, burdening his escaping feet with weights. After they’d
picked him up in the desert, Elizabeth asked him, almost begging, to run away
and leave them behind to fight the living, breathing war-machine that chased
them. Joseph pushed him to the escape capsule and fired it quickly. And indeed
he was saved. But what about them? Adam was afraid for their lives. That’s what
he wanted to find out with the computer, but communication with it could not be
established.

The moment the escape capsule had touched the ground and
landed with a crash, Adam jumped out of it, lunged to his feet and without
looking around, began to run as fast as he could. He assumed the assassin was
aware of the launching of the capsule and was hurrying after him. He did not
wonder where he was, and he didn’t look back. When he was convinced he was far
from the area in which he had landed, he turned around and looked in every
direction, but couldn’t see anything, just sand and even more sand. He returned
to running, crossing the desert with the maximum speed his improvetegrated
muscles allowed him, but as time went by, his footsteps slowed down and his
head emptied of any thought not related to water and shelter. During his
flight, which seemed useless to him, he had become so tired and thirsty that
even the little concentration necessary for lifting one leg after another began
to seem difficult. His foot got stuck in a pile of sand and he stumbled, lost
his equilibrium and tumbled down a high dune. When he’d landed, sprawled on his
back, he noticed a movement at the corner of his eye and became tense. He knew
he should jump up on his feet and move to a defensive posture, but his strength
had betrayed him, and he remained lying on the hot sand. With his eyes half
closed, he could barely sense the figure leaning toward him, placing its hand
gently on his head and covering his eyes. He tried to resist, but between the
thought of resistance and the actual action, utter darkness covered Adams mind,
and he lost consciousness.

When he woke up, everything was dark around him, and he was
sprawled on the sand leaning on the dune with his back and warming to the light
of a campfire. Adam examined his body with the aid of the inner-body scanner
(SR model ©). The scanner signaled his condition was fine, and Adam realized
the protective suit was functional again. He rose up and just like Elizabeth
had trained him to, immediately examined his surroundings with suspicion. The
darkness of the night surrounded him like an opaque wall, and at the center of
the darkness, a small fire burned brightly. Something about the fire bothered
him. Its color was darker than any he’d seen before, and it appeared liquid,
even more than the one he’d seen on the net during the great fire in the last
Persian Gulf oil well. He turned from the fire and returned to examine his
surroundings, wondering why the assassin hadn’t reached him while he was
unconscious.

Even with the aid of his improvetegrated senses, he couldn’t
perceive any living thing for miles and miles, couldn’t hear any background
noises as well. He felt he was located in a secluded bubble his senses weren’t
able to penetrate. Only the fire kept on burning, billowing with a straight,
precise vertical trail of smoke. Adam walked slowly and began to move away from
the fire, but the moment he was out of its circle of illumination, felt a deep
urge to turn around. It was a longing that crawled down his back and up his
head, one he was unable and unwilling to resist. He returned to the fire and as
he drew closer, the urge diminished.

“I see you’ve recovered,” the voice of a woman was heard.
Adam immediately moved to a defensive posture and tried to locate the source of
the voice. It seemed to him that it came from the other side of the fire. He
lunged toward it but saw nothing. “The scanners indicate ninety-three percent
of Earthly fitness, which should be enough for the moment.” To his great
Surprise, Adam realized the voice came from within the burning fire. Then he
realized what had seemed so strange about the fire. It was as if the bush was
burning without being consumed. He tried to jump outside the circle of light
again and once more, the urge made him turn back. “I’m sorry for keeping you
like that,” said the fire, “but it appears there’s no other choice. Time is
running out, and you’re not ready yet.”

“Ready for what?” Adam finally opened his mouth.

“I think in your English the exact term is ‘to let go,’” said
the fire.

Adam did not understand her intention and the entire
situation he’d found himself in seemed surreal and inconceivable. He felt as if
he was in the midst of a dream, but knew, because his improvetegrated senses
told him so, he was awake. “Who are you?” he asked the burning bush.

“I’m not sure I can refer to this question without preparing
you for the answer,” said the flickering tongues of fire, “join me,” she
invited him and sent a bright flame toward him.

“What should I do?” asked Adam.

“Give me your hand,” the fire instructed, “don’t be afraid,”
she added when she noticed his hesitation, “the fire won’t burn your body.”
Adam carefully extended his hand toward the fire and placed it within the
flames. The world turned blue, then darkened, and the skies turned black. His
fisted hand itched and he turned it up and straightened his fingers. A ball of
light jumped and settled in the air in front of his face. “Leave the ground,”
the ball of light instructed. Adam looked at the ground and to his surprise,
discovered his feet had left it. He recoiled with fear and lost his balance. Space
surrounded him in every direction, black, deep, strewn with tiny and distant
lights. He sought the sun and the Earth, and when he couldn’t locate them,
deduced the light must have taken him to another part of the universe. The ball
of light around him grew and widened until it wrapped him with its halo. He
floated and stabilized inside the ball, which began to move slowly, but
gathered speed the more it advanced into the dark emptiness. Adam didn’t feel
cold, and realized, much to his surprise, he wasn’t breathing. He tried to
inhale and exhale but had no need to do so. His senses behaved normally; he was
able to see as much the ball’s halo, and the speed of its advance allowed him
to. He could also hear the rustle of the accelerated motion. His nose caught an
unfamiliar scent, and he immediately classified it as gentle and pleasant.

“Where are you taking me to?” Adam asked the light and only
once he’d finished speaking, realized he spoke soundlessly.

“To the place where it all began,” answered the voice of the
light in his head, “it’s important that you realize what we’re facing.”

“Important to whom?” he asked and when he was unanswered,
closed his eyes and allowed the light to lead him. He fell asleep curled like a
fetus, floating in the soft zero-gravity halo.

*

Sato broke into the circle of light that the fire had cast with
the superhuman speed his defensive/offensive suit allowed him. He was
surprised to find his prey was missing. One moment he had Adam locked in his
sights, the next he was gone. Sato kicked the fire with anger, and it crumbled
into a pile of burning ashes, shimmering in a dim red light. He turned around,
left the circle of light and swallowed once more in the darkness.

*

All at once, Adam woke into an illuminated and blinding reality.
He blinked, activated his retina sun protectors (Sun Protection Corp ©), and
discovered the ball of light had slowed down and now cruised in a binary sun
star system. His webwires indicated he did not fall asleep independently, and
his awakening had been artificially induced as well. When he scanned his body
(Deep Scan ©) he found that he was unharmed by the usage of external chemical
substances and deduced that his senses and the upgrades added to them, as well
as all the tactical additions to his body, were disrupted by an element with a
higher level of technological knowledge. This scared him, but also made him
extremely curious.

The ball of light advanced toward the moon of an immense
planet, one of the twenty he had already counted in this solar system. He
guessed that the number of planets was even larger, because his view was
blocked by the sun and by the planet whose moon he was approaching.

“We’re here,” the female voice announced in his head, “this
is where it all began.”

“All of what?” asked Adam, wondering what he had to do with
any of that, but suspecting, deep in his heart, he was intended to receive this
knowledge.

“This is where my species made its first leap,” answered the
voice and continued, “this is where the material body that contained my
consciousness was born and raised, on this moon we’ve met our creators, once we
had completed the assembly of the jigsaw puzzle and placed the last brick of
the chain in its place. I, or what once could be called ‘I’, was responsible for
the completion of the final chain, now your planet has reached the point that
my species had reached billions of Earth years ago. You, as you probably
already know, are the ring that closes the last chain before the final
consciousness leap. No force in the world can prevent you from completing the
chain. Everything is in your hands. The choice when to act is yours.”

Adam was impressed by her words. He began to decipher the
magnitude of the occasion and the power he had at his command when the voice
continued to speak.

“You must be confused, and magnitude of the information I’ve
thrown at you must be intimidating. Trust me, in different times and under
different circumstances, we would not have met before you’d complete the chain
by yourself and leap at the forefront of the human race beyond the boundaries
of your current consciousness. But these times are not ordinary. Everything
I’ll tell you is already inside your mind and therefore, I’ll quickly review
the situation and the rest you’ll complete with the information processor,
which is very primitive I must add, attached to your brain.” The voice drew
silent for a moment, as if allowing Adam to prepare for what he was about to
hear. “We’ve created, as we’d done numerous times before, the planet which you
call ‘The Earth’, as a probability maze leading to the creation of advanced
consciousnesses, such as the ones we’ve been maintaining for a long time, along
with other species that had joined us.”

“And this is what you’ve got?” Adam asked, skepticism
mingling with his voice, “let’s suppose for a moment that I believe you, you’ve
created everything that’s on the Earth to eventually get us? Well, that’s not
much.”

“That’s plenty,” the voice answered, “considering that at
this stage of your development, you and your species are immeasurably more
advanced than all the other species that joined us.”

“Someone once told me we weren’t your first choice on the
planet.”

“I suppose such unfounded information can be classified as a
harmless folk tale,” Adam noticed a frightened undertone beneath her amused
voice. He felt he had inadvertently noticed an information thread he wasn’t
supposed to recognize, and decided to continue and strengthen his grip on the
threat.

“So I guess we weren’t?”

The voice was silent, and Adam assumed she was taking some
time to reorganize her answer.

“No,” she finally admitted, “the creation of a world is a
very complex task, even for us. The energies necessary to produce such a
successful enterprise are vast even for creatures such as us. It takes a
tremendous effort from each and every individual, so we’ve managed to
concentrate on the production of a single enterprise at a time. None of the
species we’ve advanced, including my own, have provided us with the necessary
answer we’ve been seeking. And since we couldn’t endure the simultaneous
creation of several worlds, one of us had suggested that each star we’ve
created would be given energy sources for three evolutionary cycles before the
planet’s expiry. Still, no species with the right answer had developed. The
Earth, as you call it, was the last enterprise we’ve undertaken.” The voice
drew silent. Adam waited patiently. She still did not answer his question.
“Unfortunately,” the voice resumed, “three evolutionary cycles of intelligent
species on your planet did not yield the desired results as well, and even
though the new species had joined our consciousness level, we remain helpless
before the question that had bothered us for millions of Earth years.”

“Hold on,” Adam cut her short, “you said that each planet had
three cycles and Earth had already had them. So what are we?”

“You’re the fourth cycle,” explained the voice, “we’ve
decided to gamble against probability and provide your sun with energy for an
additional final cycle.”

The depth of the information the voice had provided him
shocked Adam. He felt he was on the verge of a new realization following her
words, but it slipped from his mind moments before he’d managed to grasp it.

“But you were on the high probability limit of success.
Fortunately, we were right in our gamble, and you’re the proof.” Adam nodded
distractedly. “As you may have noticed, you’ve received all the relative
details about us on your external memory (Extra Memo ©). Adam looked inside and
inspected the virtual folders on his eye-screens (In Eye Screen ©). He learned
about the creators and the creation of his world, about the connections and the
contexts called the Mendelssohnian Theory and about the yearned for a leap in
human intelligence. His eye screen zoomed out until he received an ‘overview’
of the universe. He was surprised to discover that the stars, galaxies, and the
entire universe were organized like DNA chains. This spectacular sight excited
Adam when an additional piece of information had fallen into place in the big
puzzle inside his mind.

“When I’ve told you earlier no power in the world could stop
you,” the voice cut off his thoughts, “I was only partially accurate. What had
passed into your external memory is only part of the information you require.”

“OK,” said Adam, “tell me the rest.”

“Look,” she began to speak and Adam sensed an unexpected
hesitation in her voice, “as a result of the intelligence leap that we’d done,
we’ve abandoned everything that cannot be calculated and is not based on data,
statistics and probability. At a certain stage on your way to the great leap,
you’ll also need to let go.”

“Let go?” asked Adam, “let go of what?”

“You’ll discover what you
need to let go of in the future,” answered the voice, “once you’ll reach that
stage. You’re not there yet, but you’re very close. What I want to ask you, is
unfair by any human standards and contradicts your moral principles, but from
our wider viewpoint, which weaves together time and space, we’re convinced this
is everyone’s only chance, the entire universe’s only chance, against that
great evil which threatens the existence of all kind of intelligence. You are
holding in your hands the human race’s flight ticket to the family of sentient
creatures. Perhaps you still don’t know what the action you’ll need to perform
is, but trust me, it’s in your near future. My request is that you’ll wait with
the revelation, that you’ll postpone the action as much as you can, possibly
even refuse to perform it.”

“What do you mean?” Adam was surprised, both by the request
and by the fact she had asked and had not ordered him.

“You’re making a lot of noise,” said the creator, “actually,
your planet produces the highest levels of galactic noise in space.” As far as
she was concerned, this was a satisfactory explanation, but Adam still remained
confused.

“So what?” he asked.

“Evil is attracted to your noise.”

Realization settled on Adam’s face. Someone was threatening
them. Someone or something. And the voice had hidden it from him thus far. “And
you want it to reach us, right?” Adam completed her words, “you’re using us as
bait so you can capture it.” The creator was silent, but Adam knew his analysis
was correct. “Did it ever occur to you that you might not be able to capture
it?”