Lovers of Babel (19 page)

Power.

July 7, 2134.
Aboard lightning rail from Ohio –
After my trip to Vatican City I decided to try and find Dr. Stein. Once I made it back home from Rome I booked another lighting rail ticket for the summer to see the doctor who, at the time, was teaching at University.

My train was supposed to
depart at 5 p.m. that day and would get to Ohio by 8 p.m. with no stops in between. I had a few hours to spare before leaving so I decided to do some last minute research on the Book of Wisdom. I turned on my Apple holopad and immediately felt a wake of exhaustion sweep over me. I realized I hadn’t slept for 24 hours since I was cramming to finish my thesis. I decided to forego my research and opted for a quick cat nap instead.

The feelin
g of cold slime running down my cheek woke me. I wasn’t pleased to see that it was my hairless cat licking my face. I opened my eyes still groggy from sleepiness and looked over at the floating numbers hovering on my nightstand. I shot up from my bed. It was 4:40!

I
threw on a pair of shoes and placed my holopad inside of my small suitcase. I grabbed my wallet and ran out the door. Once I got to the lightning rail boarding station the train was about to depart.

I shouted at the nearest train attendant to hold the train for me. I
was running toward the attendant who was just about to board.

“I have a ticket!”

“Sir, tickets are supposed to be checked at guest services outside the terminal,” the attendant said.

“Oh, please make this one exception for me. Please, I am going on important research and can’t afford to miss this train. Here, I have my ticket
and it has been paid for.”

I was begging her
.

She paused and looke
d at me inspecting my sincerity.

“Okay, but you must ride in the caboose. There aren’t enough seats left. Yours has already been taken.” 

“The caboose?”

The back of the train was where the crew slept and ate. It didn’t look nearly as immaculate as the passenger freight cars. The inside of the caboose was wood grain from floor to ceiling instead of all white like the passenger cars. The crew slept on bunk beds that were lined up towards the very back. The dining area was very small and during meal time the booths were packed with hungry workers. Despite the lackluster living conditions
, the crew seemed lively and upbeat, a stark contrast to the stuffy ambiance of the main rail cars.

The train attendant and
I boarded the caboose and the train took off immediately. There was a handful of staff workers sitting down in the booths looking at me.

“Hey guys, this is, uh,” the attendant looked at
me.

“
Amias.”

“
Amias, and he was late boarding the train so I’m doing him a favor and letting him ride with us,” she explained to her colleagues.

I nodded politely nodded at the crew then
walked self-consciously over to a seat further back near a window. The crew looked back at me.

“You look like a very important person, Mr.
Amias,” An old man with hint of an Irish accent and thick black eyebrows said.

I
was wearing my shiny platinum loafers that I received as a graduation gift from my father. I was also wearing black slacks and black turtleneck that drooped over my collar bone. My black hair was slicked back with hair gel. I’m sure to them I looked like a slam poet from the future.

I tried to hide my
shoes behind the seat in front of me, but the crew had already seen them.

“Those shoes you got, are they, silver?” The Irish man pried.

“They’re platinum,” I said trying not to give the man eye contact.

The Irish man got up fro
m his seat, walked over to me and sat in the chair in front of me. He turned around to face me and I was kicking myself for not waking up on time.

“Excuse me for prying. It’s just that we here haven’t had many opportunities to meet people of your status. Only those with enough credits are able to travel on the lighting rail and these days credits are harder to come by. So tell me Mr.
Amias, what exactly do you do?”

I
finally looked at the man.

“I’m a cognitive sc
ience researcher.”

“A
cogno-what?”

“I study the brain and human behavior.”    

“You get paid to study?”

“I have proposed many theories that have made tremendous breakthroughs in mind sciences and research.
I get
paid
to make history.”

“Ah!
A history maker!” The Irish man exclaimed.  “Fellas, we’ve got ourselves a historian in the building!”

His comrades howled in laughter.

“History. You know I find it funny that it’s only people like you who like talking about new history. You want to ignore past history and make your own imprint on future history as if what you have in here is more innovative than anything in existence,” the man pointed at my head. “When in reality there is nothing new under the sun. Research
that
my friend.”

The
man was about to get up from his seat.

“Nothing new?
That’s ridiculous. Our entire civilization has had to start from scratch,” I said.

“What do you know about starting over? You’re too young to know what the world was like before. If you were alive then, like me, you’d know that even though the fire burned this place into oblivion with not so much as one blade of grass left, it is impossible for anything to be truly original and that includes your clever ideas.” The man stood up and looked at
me.

“It’s called nature; human and inhuman nature that can never change. That’s the way this world was created and that’s the way it’ll end. No matter what bells and whistles the ‘system’ places on the environment wit
h technology always increasing; the human heart will remain as wicked and deceitful as ever.”

I sat up in my
seat.

“Where did you get that from?”

“What do you mean?” The Irish man asked.

“Your ideas aren’t original either according to your own theory. So, what book or person gave you
that information?”

The old man looked at me
and the corners of his mouth slightly rose.

“You are a perceptive young man, I see. You want to know where I got my wisdom, because there isn’t too much of the stuff floating around these days. I can tell you one thing, surviving the apocalypse didn’t help humanity in the way of wisdom. If anything, we’ve gotten more arrogant. Lad, when I was your age my father had an old worn out book that he used to read from. It talked about so many things having to do with life and the soul. It even predicted the future. He would read to me every
night before bed and without me realizing, I had changed my whole attitude about the world. We were in the wake of total and complete destruction, but with the knowledge that I gained from that book I had no fear of what would become of me. I knew, somehow, that everything would work out for goodness sake,” the man said.

There was a long pause that went through the cabin. The crew members looked to be meditating on the old man’s words.

“Was that book called The Book of Wisdom?”

The old man nodded his head still reflecting on his words.

“I thought that book became illegal before the apocalypse and that it was forbidden to even talk about it.”

“Lad, there were and still are many things that the powers that be want to hide from us. Things that are ultimately good for us are made to look bad until everything we thought was good in the world is an enemy of the state. But in Ireland we ignored that foolishness and stood by the truth. They may have been able to take away the physical book from us, but not the wisdom in our hearts.”

“Why did they want to eliminate something that seems so harmless?” I asked.

“Oh there is nothing harmless about that book. They wanted to destroy the book, because it was the most harmful thing to ever happen to the twenty second century.”

I was startled by the strength in the man’s words. 

“There is great power in the heart of a man who has nothing to fear,
Amias. This is exactly what they wanted to prevent.”

8:20.
Ohio later that night. –
The train arrived here only 20 minutes behind its expected arrival time. I stopped by a food stand in front of the station to grab a bite to eat then went to my hotel to get some rest. In the morning I will ride to Columbus University to pay an impromptu visit to Dr. Stein

July 8 10:15 – When I arrived at Columbus, t
he doctor was on a break from lecturing on a theory about how the absence of the sun in daily life would cause the citizens of the Underground to experience changes within their molecular structure due to the lack of natural vitamin D; consequently, human beings would evolve into people who are particularly nocturnal.  Dr. Stein was sitting in his antique wooden rocking chair and fiddling with his sparse grey hair contemplating the results of the day’s lecture when I walked into his office.

“U
h, can I help you find someone?”

The doctor l
ooked at me with a queer look on his face.

“Hello Dr. Stein, I’m
Amias Riley. You don’t know me, but I’m a type of science researcher myself. I’ve come here because I came across a dissertation you wrote while in the old world and was wondering if I could have a confidential discussion with you about the contents of your research.”

Dr. Stein looked surprised. “Well, Mr. Riley, how confidential is this going to be? Does there need to be a contract of some sort?”

“Is it legal to put The Book of Wisdom into a contract?”

The doctor’s expression turned serious. He rose from his seat and walked over to the door of his office and closed it. Then he turned to look at
me.

“The Book of Wisdom?
I haven’t heard the name in years. Why is it that a stranger has come to my office unannounced to discuss a book that no longer exists?”

“Is that why you closed your door Dr. Stein?
Because you didn’t want anyone to hear our silly conversation about an ancient text that has gone extinct?”

I
sat down in the chair across from Dr. Stein’s desk.

He
laughed then walked back to his chair.

“What is it that you wanted to discuss, Mr. Riley? I
can squeeze in a little time for a history lesson.”

“In your dissertation you expressed that your research came from the actual book. You happened to come across one of the only
books in existence at that time.”

“Well, yes I did. It would’ve been quite hard to write an entire dissertation on a book without having read it.
Amias – can I call you Amias – what exactly do you want?”

“In your paper you talk about an old religious speaker named Alex Leon who owned the last copy of the Book of Wisdom. That was the exact book
you used for your dissertation.”

“Well yes that would be the correct conclusion to make. By the time I got my hands on the book, however, Mr. Leon had been dead for a long time. Why do you mention him?” Dr. Stein asked curiously.

“From what I gathered from my research about Mr. Leon I know that he had kids and grandkids. I found that out after you submitted your dissertation. Bits and pieces were released to the public and this sparked a debate. One of the leading voices in the debate was German Leon, Alex Leon’s great great great grandson.”

The doctor paused.

“You want to find him? What exactly will you ask him, Amias? The Underground is vast and the destruction from the apocalypse was too. Is it answers you want, or the actual Book of Wisdom? Because if you think that book is floating around here, you’re insane.”

Dr. Stein stood up from his seat.

I stood up too.

“Am I? That book caused a civil war. You remember that don’t you doctor? I know for a fact that somebody somewhere protected that book from total destruction.”

“And you think that person is Alex Leon’s long lost great grandson? Well, I certainly couldn’t begin to know if that were the case. But even if I did, why on earth would I give that information to a complete stranger? You look pretty young Amias. You don’t know of the old world. Let me enlighten you. That book is dangerous. It was forbidden to read before Armageddon and I suspect it still is. Do yourself a favor young man: focus your research on less controversial topics.”

Dr. Stein was walking toward the door. 

“What a shame. I expected you to be more passionate about this, seeing as how you dedicated years of your life’s work on it. You wrote that dissertation with so much conviction, but now you seem completely uninterested in even holding a discussion about it. Mm…I wonder if the Authorities have anything to do with that.”