John Schettler - Anvil of Fate

“I’ll call her,” said Kelly. “It’s going to be a bit of a shock to her when she finds I’m alive. I hope this wasn’t too hard on her—on any of you. But thank you for believing in me… in my life.”

Paul just smiled, and they sat there, quiet for a moment. Then Kelly was up off his chair, suddenly energized. “Get the Golem reports up on the history module! Let’s see what’s wrong. I’ll call Maeve. And Nordhausen—make some more coffee . It’s going to be a long morning.”

Paul smiled and flipped a console switch to activate the history module. The Golems had been trawling the Internet for hours now, searching for anomalies and comparing them to the preserved record of the original history in the active RAM Bank. He settled into a chair and turned on the reporting application. The instant the module activated an alarm went off again.

“Christ almighty!” Paul rushed over to the monitor with Nordhausen on his heels. “We’ve got a major alert. Why didn’t we get a call on the cell net?”

“The damn phone is in your briefcase, Paul. Remember?” And it did ring, twice , just as we were leaving the Harney Science Center.”

“Right,” said Paul, but their attention was immediately riveted on the screen. The lines of amber and red on the data chart were a bad sign. Something was terribly amiss, and the Meridians were showing stress fractures all over the screen.

“Good God,” said Nordhausen. “We’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest when we pulled Kelly out! They must be running some kind of counter-operation, and with a vengeance.“

Paul thought for a moment. “No, if those cell phone calls were coming from the Golem alert system, then the variations were detected well before we pulled Kelly out. I saw the red warning light on the Golem Module, but there was no time to deal with it until now. Kelly was my only priority. But you may be right that someone’s running an operation.”

The system was set to display a series of horizontal bars, each one coded by subject: Politics, Sciences, Arts, Religion. The list ran down the left margin of the screen. The top of the chart displayed dates in 100 year increments, the rightmost being set to the early years of the 21st Century, their time. They could know nothing of the centuries beyond this moment, but had a good look at the past. Green lines indicated very little variation in the Meridian for the given subject area, the darker the color the better. Amber indicated minor variations, which would grow progressively darker through the orange spectrum until they turned red, a major variation.

And the screen was blood red.

Paul stared at it, aghast. He clicked on the line for religion and a popup box appeared to indicate the percentage of variation. The number was alarmingly high, 87.9% deviation from the RAM Bank data! And even as he watch the figure was ticking deeper into the red. 87.93%… 87.95%… He selected a button that would display key missing elements and was stunned by the first few entries. Judaism, Holy Catholic Church, Church Of England, Quakers, Coptic Orthodox, Methodist Church, Reformation, Lutheran Church, Presbyterian Church, Pentecostals, Anabaptists, Baptists, Mormons, Hasidism, Bahai’ism… The list ran on.

“What does this mean?” Nordhausen was shocked. “It’s listing the Holy Catholic Church in deep red. Does that mean—”

“It’s gone,” said Paul, equally dismayed. “Along with all the other branches of the religion. Christendom has been literally wiped off the Meridian!”

“That’s impossible!”The professor could not believe what he was seeing. “You can’t just eradicate an entire religious paradigm like that. What could they have done?”

“Oh? How many offerings have you burned to Zeus lately?” said Paul. “The religions of the Mayans, Romans, and Greeks, were basically wiped out a thousand years ago. I’m sure there are residual elements of Christianity in the world this data comes from, but the organized religions of the Christian West appear to have met their end. Judaism too… but when?” He began to scroll backwards in time, following the line and noting the color lightening to ochre, orange, and amber as he scrolled back through the centuries. He overlaid the political spectrum in another screen layer, seeing the same basic pattern.

“Looks like Columbus never discovered America either,” he said flatly. He continued to scroll back along the Time Meridians until he saw the lines lightening and color shifting to green around the beginning of the 8th century.

“There!” Nordhausen pointed to the demarcation of green and yellow. “Zoom in on that century.” A click of the mouse displayed the whole of the 8th century on the screen now. It wasn’t long before the solid green began to fade and resolve to amber.

“What was going on, Robert? You’re the historian.”

The professor looked up at the ceiling, digging for facts in his memory now. “Well, Europe was still divided, east and west, with the Byzantine empire still intact and the remnant of the barbarian tribes, Visigoths, Lombards, Franks, Bulgars all in the mix in central Europe, and Nordic influences pressuring England.”

“What about Islamic history?”

“The Umayyad Dynasty was building up a fairly significant empire, when they could stop quarreling amongst themselves. They had crossed into Spain and Italy, and were also waging war with the Byzantines… Just a moment,” he had a sudden thought. “What was the date now?” Instead he pointed. Zoom in there, Paul, just where the green resolves to that lime color, then avocado yellow.”

“What is it?” Paul could not suppress his curiosity.”

“It has to be that period, make it 730, or there abouts.”

Paul selected the decade 730-740 and the screen refreshed to display those years. The color coding was much more detailed now.

“Yes,” said Nordhausen as he stroked his chin. “It was a fairly significant time. The Venerable Bede had written of the signs in the heavens, a comet that appeared in 729 that indicated mankind was threatened with calamities by day and night. But the real threat to Europe was right there,” he pointed. “I did a unit on this for the university. I was basically teaching the history as defined by significant military conflict of the given era. You would have loved it. But, in any case, Odo of Aquitaine had been fending off the Islamic incursions across the Pyrenees into France. He stopped them at Toulouse in the early 720s when he caught them by surprise, but ten years later they were back and he suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of the River Garonne. It was a massacre. The scribes wrote that God alone knows the number that were slain there. Odo had been a bit of a loose cannon, stubbornly independent in Aquitaine, unwilling to ally himself with the Franks to the north, but this setback chastened him severely. He was forced to seek help from Charles, the Frankish Mayor of the Palace, and had to pledge his fealty to secure his support. Together they raised another army and marched south… Can you give me a map?”

Paul was able to get a Google map up on an adjacent screen, zooming in on central France. “Where?” he asked.

“Poitiers,” said Nordhausen definitively. “Poitiers! Sometimes called the Battle of Tours as well. It was actually fought about here,” he pointed, “at the confluence of these two rivers between the two cities. Closer to Poitiers, I suppose. Charles and Odo prevailed, and it put a stop to these incursions once and for all, at least in this region.”

“Which Charles are we talking about?” asked Paul.