The Apocalypse Script (20 page)

He nodded. “I can’t deny that you
appear to be capable of amazing things. Things I can’t explain,
yet.”

“
Good. It is my hope that, in
time, you will acknowledge the authority of the Nisirtu, and the
power you have received through my father. When you do, you might
rule all the lands you see below us, and beyond.”

Ben chuckled at the woman’s
hubris. “I don’t think so.”

She let another moment pass. “Even
if it meant protecting the survivors of your own kind? The
Ardoon?”

That got his attention.
“Survivors? I don’t understand.”

A cool, fragrant gust of wind made
the two sway in rhythm. Nothing was said until the wind had
subsided. Then, Lilian turned toward him and took his hands in
hers.

“
Ben,” she said quietly. “It’s all
going away.”

“
What is?”

“
All of it.”

Ben stared at her,
uncomprehending. She ran her thumbs over his knuckles and said
soothingly, “Mutu, I’m sorry, but soon, Denver will be in ruins.
Every city of the world, great and small, will fall with it. This
civilization is at an end. The apocalypse is here.
It is scripted.
”

She released his hands and wandered back to the
picnic table alone.

Ben stood dumbly for several
minutes trying to absorb what the Nisirtu woman had told him. His
trance was broken by the sound of the Mercedes pulling out of the
parking lot with Mr. Fetch at the wheel. Lilian and Fiela were
sitting at the picnic table looking at him expectantly.

He ambled down the path to them.
“Too far, too fast,” he yelled as he approached. When he reached
the table he said, “You should have stopped at, ‘We control the
world.’ I can’t believe that the Nisirtu can, or would, destroy
it.”

“
You do not need to believe for it
to happen,” responded Lilian.

“
But it doesn’t
pass the logic test. You’re telling me that the Nisirtu are trying
to kill the very thing that makes them what they are. Your people
need an oblivious, subservient
underclass
of Ardoon. If you
annihilated the rest of humanity, there would be no more fetches,
no more mansions and fast cars, no more power, no more anything.
Why would the Nisirtu commit suicide? It would be like a parasite
killing its host. Why would you do that?”

“
I’m not,” said Lilian.

“
Neither am I,” said
Fiela.

Throwing up his hands, he sat down
next to Fiela so that he could face Lilian. “You just told me the
apocalypse was scripted by the Nisirtu. You’re both
Nisirtu.”

Lilian said, “So are you, Mutu, but you’re not
involved, right?”

Fiela offered him a beer. “Being
sober isn’t going to make this any easier.”

Ben glowered at her but he took
the beer. “Explain to me why the Nisirtu would kill the geese the
lay the golden eggs?”

“
Because we are losing control,”
said Fiela, who had helped herself to a beer.

“
What do you mean?”

Fiela looked at Lilian, who
shrugged while placing some caviar on a cracker with a
mother-of-pearl spoon. Studying it, the other woman said, “It’s the
internet, instant communication, social networking – all of that.
Technology in general. It’s become too dangerous.”

“
What do you mean?”

The Nisirtu popped a cracker into
her mouth and chewed, one jaw distended. “An interconnected Ardoon
society seemed like a brilliant notion seven decades ago. That’s
when we scripted the creation of a technology that would allow the
Families to reach out and touch each of their slaves individually.
At first it exceeded all expectations. We collected volumes of data
on every slave and used the aggregated data to generate highly
refined scripts that put to shame those of our ancestors. With our
new goldmine of data the Families have been able to execute in
months scenarios that once took decades.”

“
I thought Al Gore created the
internet,” huffed the man.

Lilian grinned. “Perhaps he’s one
of us.”

That caught Ben off guard.
“Really?”

The woman laughed. “Anyway, the
internet also allowed us to feed massive quantities of
misinformation to the Ardoon. We directed our lies and distortions
at target audiences that would both believe and perpetuate them.
That people believe what they want to believe was axiomatic, right?
We exploited this weakness by turning the believers of one set of
lies against the believers of another, again and again, until the
world was populated by billions of self-absorbed zealots ready to
fight for any cause we might require.”

Ben grudgingly nodded. “Don’t
think that trend has gone unnoticed, Lilian. Objectivity and
critical thought?
Rest in peace, ye wicked
and troublesome creatures.
”

“
Just so. However, as of late this
most useful of all tools has begun to turn against us. The Ardoon
elite - in particular, Ardoon governments and businesses - have
started to use the internet for the same purposes as the Nisirtu,
and to great effect. They have begun reaching out beyond their own
borders and are developing new and creative ways of manipulating
the masses. They unknowingly seek to become like us, though they do
not know we exist. They will succeed given sufficient opportunity.
The clock is ticking. Thus, the Families have decided to crush
humanity now, while they still have the power to do so.”

Lilian swished some wine in her
mouth and swallowed. “Next time,” she said, “we shall be more
selective in deciding what toys we give the children.”

Ben shook his head in disgust and
said, “I can’t believe you’d be party to this kind of thing. Either
of you. We’re talking genocide on an unprecedented
level.”

Fiela said, “We’re not involved.
The Families make the decisions, not the subjects. It’s not a
democracy, Mutu.”

“
That said,” interjected Lilian,
“not all the Families are on board with the plan. Three of the
kingdoms voted against it and have gone into rebellion in a vain
attempt to stop the scripts.”

“
The Maqtu,” said Ben,
understanding.

“
Yes. The rebels. The ones Fiela
has been fighting all this time.”

Ben said, “I don’t’ understand. If
you both agree this is a crime, why didn’t you join the rebels? Why
do you remain members of the…what did you call it? The
Seven?”

Lilian shook her head. “First of
all, I never said it was a crime. I said I was
against the idea
. Knowing that the
Maqtu would eventually be put down, I have opted to prepare for the
inevitable instead of fighting it. Fiela, of course, is Peth. She
is honor-bound to obey the commands of her House, and that includes
the command to destroy the Maqtu.”

She handed a bottle of champagne and a corkscrew to
Ben. “A little help?”

Taking the bottle, he said, “Doesn’t it bother you
that, if you’re right, millions of innocent people will be
killed?”

“
Billions,” Lilian corrected him,
“though not all at once. It’s a very elaborate script. It did
bother me, years ago, but not anymore. I have learned to accept the
inevitability of it, as an adult child must learn to accept the
inevitable passing of an aging relative in a hospice, or a bomber
pilot must accept the death of the innocents who live next to a
targeted weapons factory. I realize that you have not had the
luxury of time to come to grips with this scenario, but you should
not hate me for having done so.”

Ben said bitterly, “It’s hard for
me to imagine ever coming to grips with that kind of future.” He
handed her the uncorked bottle, bubbles pouring over the top, and
glanced sideways at Fiela. “What do you think?”

Fiela said, “I obey my Family but
I think the Seven have made the wrong decision. Who will serve us
if we decimate the ranks of the slaves? The
golden geese
, as you said. That was
very wise of you, Mutu. It is a good analogy. We are slaughtering
geese.”

“
I’m not asking
your opinion on the wisdom of the decision,” Ben said. “I want to
know if the deaths of billions of people
bother you.
”

“
Of course,” the girl said without
hesitation, though the words sounded awkward and he sensed she only
spoke them to please him. Lilian had called Fiela a “protector of
the faith” and an article of that faith was that the Nisirtu were
the rightful rulers of this world. If a few billion slaves died,
what of it?

“
Do not mistake my acquiescence to
the script as surrender, Mutu,” said Lilian. “When the collapse
comes, I do not plan to continue subjugating myself to the Seven.
They are planning a perpetual Dark Age, a never-ending Feudal
society. That is not a world I want to live in.”

“
Nor I,” said Fiela.

Ben said, “What kind of
world
do
you
envision?”

“
One much like today’s,” replied
Lilian.

“
Presumably one where the Nisirtu
still rules, though.”

“
Fairly,” she said, “and in
mankind’s best interest.”

“
It is the proper way,” agreed
Fiela.

Ben looked at them both
incredulously. “Did you ever consider a world in which mankind
determines its
own
fate?”

Lilian snickered. “Ben, such was
the world before the Nisirtu arrived. Your history books make it
appear that civilization was inevitable. That is a lie. Humanity
was a ship without a captain until we took the wheel. All was
anarchy. Thousands of little villages and fiefdoms beating each
other to death again and again. The Nisirtu introduced schools,
agriculture, legal codes, libraries, physicians, writing, and much
more. We were the sun at the dawn of civilization.”

The researcher fought the instinct
to argue. It was true that civilization seemed to explode almost
overnight in the ancient world and that the advancements Lilian had
listed were first recorded in Mesopotamia. Exactly why civilization
sprung up there was not known. Most historians fell back on
‘necessity is the mother of invention.’ The wheat that grew in the
region and the Euphrates and Tigris rivers inspired agriculture.
Agriculture brought crop surpluses. The crop surpluses led to
urbanization. The lack of any natural defenses against invaders and
the unpredictability of floods in the plains compelled the
Mesopotamians to build walled cities and canals. And so
forth.

All of that was, of course,
conjecture. Lilian had legend and he had conjecture. It was not an
argument that could be won, so he let it go.

He said, “What did you mean when
you said I might rule?”

“
I meant you might be king. It
depends on how things play out.”

“
Why would I, of all people, be a
king in your society? I’m pond scum to you people.”

“
First, you are not ‘pond scum.’
You were highly accomplished, even as Ardoon. But now you are
Nisirtu. As to why you, I cannot say. Ridley is the one who
arranged for you to be here, Mutu. Do not misunderstand me, I am
very glad that he did, as you are incredibly smart-”

“
And handsome, and understanding,”
interjected Fiela, gazing up at him.

“
And those things,” agreed Lilian.
“But Ridley is the scribe, the man who plans my future based on the
parameters I set forth. He writes my scripts. He has not disclosed
to me why he chose you to be my husband and perhaps a
king.”

The man cocked and eyebrow. “I
thought I was here to decipher the tablets.”

“
So you are, but
you married me to achieve that purpose, and Ridley knew that I
desired a husband before the inevitable cataclysm. Are you
here
primarily
to be my husband, or were you brought here
primarily
to study the
tablets? I presume the latter but only Ridley knows. Either way,
you now wear my father’s ring.”

“
But I am not really your
husband,” Ben reminded her. “Our marriage isn’t legal.”

She looked at him knowingly.
“Husband, when the Ardoon fall, the
only
law will be
Nisirtu
law. In that sense, it is
perfectly legal.”

Ben pushed Lilian for additional
information about Ridley’s plans during the outing but came up
empty-handed. She steadfastly maintained that he would need to take
up the matter with the scribe, and soon, and while they were at the
park he should just enjoy the sandwiches and beer, which was, in
fact, the kind he liked.

Fiela didn’t help the situation.
Over the course of the meal she had inched ever closer to Ben until
they were practically fused together, at which point she crossed
her legs and, in an amazing demonstration of her flexibility,
covertly placed a bare foot high between his thighs.

“
Ben, are you okay?” Lilian asked.
“Your face is flushed.”

“
Too much alcohol,” he said,
squirming. “Hearing that the world is coming to end hasn’t helped
things.”