John Schettler: Golem 7

Paul had been out negotiating delivery of a small cache of gasoline for their emergency generators when his Golem alert cell phone call came in. “Not now,” he said aloud, opening the phone. They were tired, and hungry, and needed rest. But time would not wait on the weakness of human frailties. Something was happening in the deep recesses of the Berkeley Hills, and he had to get up there as quick as he could. Something has come unglued again, thought Paul. Someone is up in the Arch complex at this very moment, spinning up the Arch. What is it this time, he thought as he rushed up the steps from the lower parking garage, a sick queasy anxiety building in his gut again. He wondered whether he really wanted to know.

Paul arrivedmoments later, somewhat bedraggled and out of breath after rushing up from the underground garage. He threw off his leather jacket and draped it over the back of a chair, reflexively running a hand through his hair to chase the wind from his locks as he did so.

“It’s crazy out there,” he said.

“Fearless leader!” Kelly greeted him.

“You’ve got the Arch up,” Paul noted. “I heard the generator down in the garage. What is it this time? And why aren’t we on city power? Hell, it took me all day to arrange a fuel shipment, and the bastards hit me for $20 per gallon. But at least I got hold of a hundred gallons, which is more than I expected to find. There isn’t a station open within ten miles of here now.”

“Wow… two grand? That’s going to put a real crimp in the budget, but thankfully, we’ll be back on the grid in a few minutes. It’s after six now, but I’m just giving it a few more minutes to be sure we don’t catch any more flack from FEMA or the local power Nazis. Don’t worry about the generator. I had ten gallons stored in a survival jug at my place and I brought that in this morning. We’re covered.” Kelly rubbed his hands with satisfaction. “But the professor here insisted I establish a Nexus Point, so I did. Feel anything coming in through the perimeter just now?”

“What? No, I didn’t notice anything unusual.” Paul was at the main consol now, settling into a chair next to Kelly. “So what’s up? My alert cell call came in just as I was finishing up this fuel delivery deal. I got over here as fast as I could. Christ I hope we don’t have to save Christendom and Columbus all over again… Do we?”

“We’ve done that,” said Maeve as she entered through the main door. “And I managed to save the three loaves of fresh baked bread I had in the oven as well before I rushed over here. So what is it this time?”

Kelly looked at Robert, then simply extended an arm, pointing at the professor where he was busy with something on a computer screen at the Golem module.

“Robert?” said Paul. “Care to tell us why we’re here?”

“Oh, he says you’ll love this one,” said Kelly with the hint of a spoiler in his voice. “But I better let our Chief Historian tell it.”

Robert looked over his shoulder at them. “Give me a second here.” He waved at them to be quiet.

“Is he monitoring variation reports?” asked Maeve.

“I have no idea what he’s monitoring,” said Kelly. “He just wanted me to fire things up and establish a Nexus.”

“Then there’s no alert?” Paul had a peeved expression on his face. “And you went up on auxiliary power?”

Kelly extended his arm yet again, pointing at Robert, unwilling to take the heat this time, and they all looked at the professor where he was still squinting at the computer monitor over his reading glasses. The silence pulled at him, and he looked over at the other three, raising his eyebrows with an obvious ‘I have news’ in his eyes.

“What?” said Paul, still upset over the fuel situation.

“Well I’ve got him,” said Nordhausen. “And it seems he had a bone to pick.”

“Got who?”

“The man responsible for Palma this time around. His name is Kenan Tanzir in data I gathered on this altered Meridian. It took a while, even using the Arion system at UCB, but I eventually ran him down.”

Paul thought for a moment, wondering if this was going to be another Nordhausen wild goose chase. But he remembered how he had worked to convince the professor that Kelly was alive just days ago, grateful that he finally had his support, albeit grudgingly at first. He decided to return the favor and give the man the benefit of the doubt.

“Go on,” he said, wanting more information.

“It was really fairly basic,” said Robert. “I scoured everything I could find on events leading up to the eruption of Cumbre Vieja—down to the most minute and seemingly routine occurrences—news bits, blog entries, even the nonsense sites like GodlikeProductions with all their intimations of doom. Eventually I culled the search down to the last 24 hours before the eruption, and then used pattern recognition software with the Arion to isolate any oddities. My attention was drawn to that story of the Algerian air charter that overshot its approach to La Palma airport that very night, and I became convinced that it was no ordinary flight. Well, I couldn’t recall any such news, though I admit that we were a bit preoccupied that night.”

“To say the least,” said Maeve. “If I recall, you were kibitzing with Paul over whether the mission to see Shakespeare’s The Tempest was going to happen, and scheming on how to get backstage if it did.”

“Right you are, my good lady. But that said, I decided to see if we had anything on that story in the RAM Bank here, and was very surprised to find the plane was reported to have landed safely at La Palma an hour before the eruption—the incident we prevented perpetrated by Ra’id Husan al Din. Yet the history as it stands now reports that flight crashed. The Golems put me on to it. Useful little creatures, eh?”

“Golem Bank 7,” said Kelly. “The same group I called my lost sheep on the last mission. They’ve been pretty industrious these last few days.”

Maeve raised her eyebrows, immediately interested. “You’ve got my attention,” she said, waiting.

“So I got data on the passenger manifest and began checking all names against established records. In our RAM Bank data there were fourteen passengers on that flight, and they all seemed to be checking out—a few business travelers, tourists and all. But on this altered Meridian there were fifteen passengers, and the odd man out turned out to be a Mr. Kenan Tanzir, an Algerian Berber. So I immediately focused all my search efforts on him.

“A proverbial Person of Interest if ever there was one,” said Maeve.

“Exactly!” The professor’s cheeks reddened with obvious excitement. The search quickly produced conflicts between data in the altered Meridian and information we have in the RAM Bank here. Thank God for Golem 7 and the RAM Bank.”

“Well, you can thank me first,” said Kelly with a smile.

“It seems there is no Mr. Kenan Tanzir in our RAM Bank data—at least no inkling of the man as he presents himself in the altered Meridian. He was supposedly just another business passenger, a realtor actually, representing a buyer for a villa on the island. Yet in the history we know, what we want to call our Prime Meridian now, this man simply doesn’t exist—and I found out why.”

Paul swiveled his chair, directly facing the professor now, as Maeve folded her arms, waiting.

“I had to do genealogical searches, and I was vexed by the possibility that this name was merely an alias, but enough clues turned up in the data stream. I followed him backwards from the time of the flight. It originated in Oran, you see, and that evening he spent the night in Le Méridien Oran Hotel.”