Scene 8

Baha’i Outpost 443, 2077ce

Cambridge

 

Let us digress slightly into the divergent past. Two years back perhaps, which is to say Common Era 2077 or AR 1, one year after the beginning of the Great Revolt; but still in the satellite camps and shanty towns outside Boston.

 

We, at times are too enamored in our literature and film with the theatrics and heroics of men, thinks Adelina Blazhennaya.

 

They are most unstable creatures! So easily aroused and so readily violent. Hark I will tell you why I was flown all the way from lovely sane and stable Chelyabinsk; Tank City, to be building boiling plots in the North Americas; amid their anarchy. They were hardly tame before the Great Revolt, but now! And any little thing can trigger a mass shooting or an ethnic hysteria. Anything.

 

I did journey from Philadelphia to Boston on horseback, (yes horseback) and I wear the elegant and more importantly insulating fur of the Siberian Black Bear; I with my lovely brown locks falling out from under look like where the wild things are. There was no other way to travel, except by horse because then, and then was 2077ce; the Separatist Wars were raging. There was a no fly zone down the east coast imposed by the United Nations; New York City was burning to the ground and the rebels were one day winning one day facing decimation and massacre.

 

There was no longer Fung Wa bus service; there was Fung Wa horse-donkey convoy and believe me you me it cost more than $25 American. But I was not paying to be sure, the management was.

 

They offered me a bold Dmitry as an escort, but I adamantly declined. Robots and clones are a sign of the times; and the princely warlord cum lesser Oligarch Dmitry Khulushin, lesser oligarchy of the Tri-State area is both a sadist and serial philanderer turned himself into a product line called Epic Escort, hire and program your own Slavic prince as body guard, or whatever else you need. Having a second of third, or hundredth Dmitry in this world was a serious array of problems onto themselves. It will one day lead to a crisis of Dmitry’s.

 

With the rebellion clearly forcing the United States of America into the behaviors of a maldeveloped country; well the roads between New York and Boston were so bad we of this Chinese lead convoy had to move four weeks atop animals to reach the People’s Republic of Cambridge; for in 2077 Metropolitan Boston was largely in rebel hands excluding some of the Satellite towns to the South; Quincy Center was still part of the USA, but North all the way to Salem was the Rebel Confederacy. My quarry, the man I was send all the way from Russian Federation to find was interred in a concentration camp called a Shrakasa, held there since 2077 near a town called Waltham; where with a bomb stitched to his neck was both designing the rebels technology for the revolt and via his dreams giving the Oligarchy shockingly accurate predictions of the rebellion.

 

This man, supposedly dead since 2076, has been locked in this camp with his mind wiped out. He has forgotten a great deal about the past and future and he is being used.

 

What a game we all play. Everyone a serf to someone, and I suppose you will ask who is my master? Well you’d have to burn me alive like the others! I am from an old order, older than either the rebellion or the oligarchy. Older than anything. I serve women who are wise, and that is all I can say at this juncture. My paper works gives my name, as Adelina; thus must be my name! My profession is that of an apparatchik to an education firm; teaching English is the pretext. Which one I cannot say, I have signed a non-disclosure agreement, but a big one!

So in October of 2077 I arrived in the People’s Republic of Cambridge and arranged to be brought to the Baha’i Temple Outpost 433, at the home of some Persian Harvard & MIT professors. They plied me with hot sweet tea and cherry juice and gave me hugs. I would never openly say what my birth religion is, but I am certainly no stranger to Baha’i’ events and customs.

 

The Baha’i’ of Greater Boston, like Baha’i everywhere are apolitical, hyper-educated, hyper-diverse and explicitly always non-violent, charming but often boring. That they are also much massacred has driven them into their long standing alliance with the Israelis and thus, have entangled them messily into the Great Revolt. There are many Baha’i in the Breuklyn Soviet and that they are so protected by both the clandestine services of Iran and Israel speaks to their importance in events.

I am a delicate flower, but I have managed to cross the Ocean by steamer-sub and make this four week ride north to the outpost. Because of heavy fighting near Newton there is no reason to believe I can meet Sebastian Adon soon. But they tell me that he will travel in a fort night to partake in the Night of Power, a 19^th day feast. And I trust these people are they are sober and sincere and blessed heavily by the one true manifestation of Allah. Yes Allah, the part of a name not the useless conjecture of a noun, or worse using a listing of qualities to describe a majesty instead of thing who loves us and wants us to win.

 

If this pretext doesn’t work then Oleg the Bear my friend will bring Adon to my birthday on 12 April, which will work; as he seems too infatuated with Oleg, looks up to him in some strange way. Like an older brother he never had.

 

After a long hot bath and much tea and delicious food I sit with the Sheikha Saadiya Usmani who while they have no clergy is a prominent local leader. A shapeshifter they say, I have just arrived so I don’t believe in magic until I see it.

Saadiya is a magical woman, she is barely four feet tall and moves as though there were no fixed joints, she moves as though her vessel is pliable. She is a Pakistani and speaks with a British accent. But she moves and thinks like a Maagi, a so-called white witch. She has been here in Boston for some time and has been elected one of the nine Baha’i; of the local assembly.

“Welcome to Cambridge, it’s a little more tumultuous since the war broke out last year, but we have for some time been out of harm’s way because of MIT’s missile shield system, and the minute men,” she says to me calmly in her British accent.

“The minute men?”

“Yes, the paramilitary irregulars of the Libertarian Party trucked in six months ago from Burlington and the Vermont Free Zones; they are far better organized than the militias from BLM and the Ivoryish partisans; very little of the fighting has affected us except for shortages.”

She opens a map.

“As you can see the UAS Military is concentrated in Quincy to the south and on the Brighton-Alston line to the West, and there in district Charlestown is a massive Bratva garrison, because of all the smuggling routes. The People’s General Assembly is located in lower Boston; on the Jamaica Plane; the four biggest factions running the operations here are the BLM Alliance, the Democratic Socialists, the Freemen and the Libertarians. Other than us technically it’s a Muslim free zone.”

Enough small talk my eyes say.

“Where is Adon?”

She points to a mountain to the West of Boston by four days convoy. Waltham.

“And where more importantly am I, Adelina Blazhennaya to make my home?”

Saadiya points to a town called Brighton-Allston, on the Federal side of the demilitarized zone. And with her powers asks Adelina who is actually more important to the cause then Sebastian Adon we can’t get both of you out alive; Adelina responds silently, with her powers; I don’t know, probably we leave him behind.

“Is he awake?”

“Not in the slightest. We’ve just begun a liaison of letters which indicate he remembers nothing before being brought here.”

“What’s you pretext for being here in the camp?”

“Teaching English.”

“And him?”

“He’s studying and designing training modals, he believes them to be cutting edge, but it’s all recycled Cuban technology that we’ve had for years, maybe decades. He’s applied for a para permit to move bodies around as a paramedic in Revere, he’s get cleared in November.”

“Why do you think he’s still asleep, a rather dangerous liaison this could quickly turn into. It doesn’t seem very random at all they sent you; who sent you Maya Sorieya Emma Solomon? As she someone put you together.”

“An Israeli agent absolutely put us together.”

“Well who is more important an asset to evacuate, in the event of outright nuclear chaos’ you or him?”

“We’re both important in different ways. We need him out of the camps and back in the bosom of Soviet safety. This area’s security is highly artificial. We’re not so much in a free zone in the same way New York mostly is; we’re in a strategic buffer zone where the oligarchy is conducting a great deal of, shall we say research.

“I have read that there is a train under the Charlestown district that goes all the way up the mountain.”

“Up the mountain, all the way?”

“Yes, this is what I’ve heard. And I have heard that neither Adon nor any of his colleagues are really sleeping, I’ve heard they’re very much plotting how to get on that train and take it all the way to Moscow.”

“You presume that Moscow is the very top?” asks Saadiya Usmani.

“I know it be.”

“I am not sure if there is really a train, but we believe there is a hatch their up the mountain as you suggested.”

“Who is the main oligarch running this sector, before the Great Revolt began?” Adelina asks.

“He is called Ilya Lubov. He has a fortress in the Western mountains by Mt. Greyloch. He lost a bet to the Koch Brothers in 2074 so they turned off the geothermal weather grid, that is why it has been hard winter here ceaselessly for 6 years.”

“I heard 3.”

“6.”

“So it is possible that below Charlestown or perhaps Quincy is a hatch to a tunnel that may lead all the way up the mountain?”

“Yes, as you know much of the Great Revolt was a pretext to capture control of black freighters, space dirigibles and fourth dimensional weapons.”

“Who does Adon work for?”

“That’s a tricky question, his ex-wife we can only hope and not Perchevney the great devil.”

“Not the Baha’i World Congress?”

“He’s more of a card carrying Baha’i than a real genuine practitioner. He contacted us a month ago stating he had some complex case to resolve. He had formally resigned his membership and faith under Israeli direction attempting to make Allehya in 2074. It is my understanding he is coming here to ask for re-admittance.”

“Who does actually work for then?”

“We can really only again speculate.”

“Can he be brought under control somehow?”

“Well that’s what you Adelina Blazhennaya were introduced to him to do. Who introduced you?”

“An Israeli sleeper, a photographer named Oleg Medved, also called Oleg the Bear.”

“So the Mossad is assisting to get him out of the camps?”

“Well, people who speak Hebrew are trying to get him out of the camps, I can’t say of this is a Mossad job. They have their hands full.”

“Adelina Blazhennaya are you a Russian national from Chelyabinsk?”

“Soon a dual citizen.”

“Your mother…”

“Yes.”

“You been here for quite some time have you not, since age 17?” Saadiya asks.

“Yes, but I go to Russia once a year to see my family.”

“But you’re not linked to Oleg and the Israelis, via shall we say by payroll?”

“No. I was contracted directly by Emma Solomon to work on this unlimited operation. Having a direct liaison with Sebastian Adon is new news.”

“He’s been seen with Oleg Megved all over the twenty towns. He can’t pass the ring road or the aortic bomb in his neck will kill him. He may, or may not remember the events of the Great Revolt and Millennium Theater hostage crisis. He may, or may not remember his wife.”

“Emma Solomon?”

“Yes.”

“The…”

“Yes, we think so.”

“That mercenary, that brutal hunter killer was actually married to the Tzadikk HaDror?”

“Yes. But they’ve haven’t consummated the marriage with living children and they haven’t seen each other in over twelve years. And Emma is rumored to be a clone, as the woman actually he married was slaughtered by the Israeli Oligarchy on request from the Order of St. John’s in 2001, a day before the Towers fell.”

“Which was so long ago, I have almost forgotten that that even had happened!”

“So much back story!”

“You’re coming into the story during an intermission, but there were many acts and many partisan songs before you were destined to meet this great anti-hero.”

“So if Oleg was sent by the Israelis…”

“It’s not actually clear that he’s been sent, or if he is setting Adon up for either greatness or murder, they may well be just be connected by a shred of Chosen blood and common interests in their life of night,” Adelina states.

“What are you here to then, make him great or try and kill him?”

“What am I here to do? I’m here to try and make sure he is serving the cause.”

“Well since your people built his modal maybe you can get him to turn off.”

“He’s not just a robot,” Adelina says flatly.

“He’s not a robot per say. He’s an old soul inhabiting a fleshpot drone your people designed.”

“And who do you think my people are Saadiya Usmani?”

“People of Old Slavic Majik,” she says with a wink, “he’s occupying a mechanical person your combine designed. He did in fact die in the Millennium Hostage Crisis. He’s died a good many times before. So we are using deductive reasoning to assume he is not a flesh and blood man any longer.”

“Well if that is so why does he worry about the bomb in his neck?”

“Have you heard of the Greater Oligarch Alexandr Perchevney?”

“Yes of course. The devil.”

“A devil.”

“Adon if he serves anyone, he serves Perchevney.”

“Was not Perchevney an architect of the Great Revolt alongside Solomon and DeBuitléir?”

“That is believed now to be true.”

“What bloody games are these? What is it all for?” Adelina asks.

“The Baha’i World Congress believes that for Alexandr this is a power grab, but I believe it is much more. I believe he is seeking to annihilate the bloodline in a roundabout way. He is making sure that his seed is impregnating the candidates. He is annihilating those with bonobo blood and he is readying the entire house of Jacob for another big purge like in 1943.”

“All hidden up in this populist uprising around proletarian human rights demands?”

“Well just like Beria did. Or Hitler. Stir everything up and wipe out more of the bloodline.”

The both pause, touched by the bloodiness and gravity of collective history.

“I have read there’s nothing left in Israel. That it’s all been obliterated with atomic missiles. That it’s a clever illusion that the State of Ivory is real, that the Congress still meets in Haifa; but in truth it’s a blighted nuclear wasteland,” states Adelina.

“I cannot confirm or deny such a report,” Saadiya smiles, suffice to say I’ve never been there. I was born in Pakistan and trained in India & Burma, I arrived here via California and was soon after captured and sent to this camp.”

“So Adon will come here to the outpost for the Night of Power Feast, and then what?”

“You need to find out if he’s real or a just robot. Killer, zombie, hero, hooligan, freedom fighter; you have to get it out of him. You need to make him do, what we need him to do.”

“And what is that then, to you?”

“Bring his army of shadows under the actual direction of the Congress, move that army to link up with the larger divisions in Jamaica, Hispaniola, Trinidad and Cuba; move those armies to the hatch in Madeira; invade Europe. Obliterate the second peak of the mountain. With no guns.”

“How will I get him to do that? He doesn’t even remember his own birth name, he is not even aware of what has happened back in New York.”

 

“You’re a linguist, white witch and engineer. Just use your training.”

 

“Engineer, ha.”

 

“Or whatever other training you might have,” Saadiya says with a wink but not a smile.