Idempotency (38 page)

Still, Korak persisted. He preached tirelessly, never taking a day off until his wife died of cancer, a decade after he’d started preaching in New York City. They could have utilized stem cells to save her, but Korak was resolute. God’s rules were not malleable, nor were they debatable. Slow and steady wins the race. God would repay their suffering in heaven.

But the slithering voice was persistent, too:
You could have saved her! She wanted to live—with you!—and you, pff, you simply talked her into dying. You’ve always had a way with words . . .

Months after his wife’s death, Korak sat alone in the back of his church. A grand church, built in the early 1900s, its windows once towered over the neighboring buildings. Nowadays, however, any incoming light had been occluded by the towering corporate office steeples encircling the building. There was even a tower built over and above the church. The church was being buried, and the irony had not been lost on Searle, or Searle’s slithering friend.

The church dies, Korak, and you simply let it happen! Just as you did with your wife.

Korak whispered a rejoinder, “You, my slithery friend, will pay for taking the cheap way out. Society—these people I preach to every Sunday—they will pay for their sins. I refuse to become them.”

Korak, have you considered that your rules—these oppressive rules that govern your life so stringently—were created by men?

“God. They were created by God.”

Men! Men wrote those books. Is man not sinful?

“The word of God cannot contain sin.”

But men wrote those words!

“How would you have me interpret them, then?” Searle asked in a louder whisper that echoed through his empty church. “How is my interpretation more holy than God’s?” This question sounded genuinely inquisitive.

Converse with God in your interpretations! Is God’s voice to you less powerful than his voice to unknown men that died thousands of years ago? You are a man just as they were!

Korak sighed. More weight pushing down on the soil of his mountain. So many decades of arguing with his friends, and colleagues, and society, and now he must argue with himself? He was so, so tired. The slithering voice, however, was vibrant and youthful, and Korak was attracted to it. It would be so easy, and yet, so wrong. He would not succumb. Never.

“You can ask me this question one thousand more times and the answer will remain
no.
”

Then I shall ask one thousand and one times.

Slowly, shuffling feet slid across the cold stone floor of the church. Korak turned slightly, and the pew in which he sat chirped as though he’d squashed a cricket. An older man slid into the pew over Searle’s right shoulder.

A beat passed before the voice spoke. “Hello, Reverend.”

Searle turned again, and leaned a robed arm over the back of the pew to better face the man. It took a moment, but Searle recognized him.

“Mr. Coglin, is it? Edward Coglin?” Searle asked.

“Reverend Coglin,” the man replied unctuously.

“Reverend? Forgive me, I hadn’t realized that you had attended seminary.”

“I did recently; I was ordained a few months back. I took in your sermon today, Reverend. I quite enjoyed it. You’re an effective orator.”

“Thank you. Call me Korak.”

“Korak.” He paused, then placed his hands on the worn brown wood of the pew in front of him. He brushed it, almost a petting motion. “The Church is dying, Korak. And yet the apocalypse will still come.”

This is a man who could help you . . .

“I’m sorry, Edward—“

“Reverend Coglin, please.”

Searle blinked, then continued, “Okay, Reverend, I don’t mean to be rude, but I do have a meeting in a few minutes. Did you need something specific from me? Or were you just dropping in?”

“Yes, Korak, I need something specific from you.” Coglin looked up, deep into Searle’s large blue eyes. “I need—” he paused for effect, then pointed at him while emphatically stating “—you!”

This man will lead people . . . people who don’t believe, he will lead them! He will lead you—

“Enough!” Korak spoke to his slithering voice, and Coglin started in surprise. “Forgive me, my patience is wafer thin today. I’m the pastor of one of the largest congregations in the greater Church, in one of the most challenging areas of our great country. I’m not sure how much more I could do—”

You can do so much more!

“You can do so much more!” Coglin echoed. “Please, have dinner with me tonight and hear me out. I have a very exciting plan!” Coglin’s energy was riveting. “I have standing behind me an elite leadership team from both clergy and business. I need someone just like you to assist me, Korak. No—I need you! And I usually get what I need.” Coglin smiled a smile that flew through the air and inserted itself directly into Korak’s bloodstream.

He does need you.

Korak sighed, acquiesced, then chuckled. “Okay, all right.” He raised his hands in defeat. “Even reverends have to eat, right? I will hear you out. But, I will tell you up front, I’m a tough sell.”

“I would be disappointed if you weren’t.”

Today, twenty years after that day in Korak’s church, the slithering voice was particularly strident. He could even hear it over the large, metallic clanging in the distance.

Still you wait! When is your payout, Korak? How long until you get to feel the victory you so dearly deserve?

While much of the planet had seen considerable drying in the past decades, a person could be fooled into thinking the opposite should the person spend any time on Haida Gwaii. Once colloquially known as the Charlottes, Haida Gwaii was an archipelago off the coast of British Columbia. Shaped like a tornado, the islands that made up Haida Gwaii totaled over 150 (give or take), though two main islands made up the over 10,000 square kilometers of landmass.
Perfect for a prison
, Coglin had said.

A light rain pattered the concrete slab beneath Searle’s feet. Searle let the rain bound off of his thinly shaven black hair. It rolled between the stubble, following his widow’s peak, before stopping reluctantly at his forehead, somehow knowledgeable of the idea that annoying Korak Searle was not a wise idea. But Searle didn’t mind today. In fact, he quite enjoyed it. The small, thin man standing next to him clearly didn’t share the same; he was clutching an umbrella that could double as a parachute should the small man decide to jump (or be pushed) off the ledge they were perched upon.

“Did you need anything else, Mr. Searle?”

“It’s
Reverend
Searle, Mr. Edenshaw.”

“Oh! I did not realize—apologies, Mist—uh, Reverend. Reverend Searle.”

“Go . . . go—do something, somewhere else, Edenshaw.”

“Yessir! Sorry, Reverend. I’m on it.”

Edenshaw’s footfalls splashed away behind Korak as he rolled his beady, glowing red eyes. Then he focused out upon the misty landscape in front of him. He was perched on a mountain, five hundred meters high, looking south. The sun was well hidden behind a thick cloud cover that desperately ached to give its water back to the earth. He could see the choppy ocean to his right, the Hecate Strait to his left, and if the clouds hadn’t been so low and puffy, he could have even seen the southern tip of Haida Gwaii and the Queen Charlotte Sound beyond it.

Searle witnessed destruction interpreted as resurrection surrounding his vista. Directly in front of him and one hundred meters below, an enormous building was mostly erected, its top slicked from the beating rain. Its structure followed the diamond shape of its smaller sibling. Searle was peering down upon the northernmost point of the Haida Gwaii Tobit facility. To the east and west, other partially erected structures stood: to the south, a barren swath of land lay ready for building the southernmost of the facility’s trapezoidal points. In total, the site was massive, nearly twice the size of the Titus facility.

Far in the distance, two metallic autoBuilders toiled in the earth. They were clearing the grounds for the southernmost section of the Haida Gwaii facility. From this distance, the autoBuilders appeared as toy robots, throwing toy punches at each other that failed to land, instead finding the earth. The ever-present mist caused the toy robots to appear grainy, almost black-and-white. The clangs and clacks of their choppers and chippers were hushed by the pattering rain. These massive robots almost appeared gentle from this distance, Searle thought. But he knew better.

Return to Titus. Accept the board’s offer to succeed Coglin after his passing.

“But that would require Coglin to not . . . live. In any form.”

Do the needful. Destroy Coglin and Dansby. Return to Titus!

“How can I justify such a betrayal? We’ve had our differences, but we’re partners,” Searle whispered, his thin lips barely moving.

Partners. That’s laughable. It is immoral what Coglin is doing to that pawn of a man, Dansby. Stop him. And accept your eventual place as the proper and righteous leader of the Titus effort.

“It is immoral, this is true. He’s cheating. He always cheats. But I can’t play Coglin’s Judas. I just can’t.”

You can and you will!

“He won’t listen to me, anyhow.” His lips mouthed imperceptibly.

Make him listen to you.

“And if he doesn’t?”

Then he should die as God intends. It is God’s will. It is the moral thing to do.

Korak sighed. In the distance, the mammoth toy robots continued their battle. The blur of the clouds was such that the toys began to appear intertwined as one. And in Korak’s mind, a battle between penitence and pretense was raging with similar ambiguity.

Reverend Coglin sat at the head of a long wooden table. The table was made of a dark cherry and was lacquered so thoroughly that Coglin could see too much detail in his aged reflection. The wrinkles on his face ran so deep that he figured he was a few years away from being mistaken for Jupiter’s crust-covered moon, Europa. Coglin’s mind further fled from the topic at hand, wondering if he, like Europa, also had plodding, elephantlike cephalopods living underneath his cracked crust of skin. He made a brief decision to one day create a facility that orbited Titan; the mining alone would pay for the effort. Amused at this train of thought, Coglin cracked a wide smile, turning the crevices in his cheeks into canyons.

“I fail to see the humor, Reverend.” The masculine voice emanated from a holoVid ten meters away at the far end of the table. Two other holoVids sat unmoving on each side of the man speaking.

Coglin looked toward his counterpart at the opposite end of the table. A dawning sun was gleaming through the opaque eastern wall of the top-floor corner conference room. The walls were partially keeping the dangerous rays at bay, yet it was still too bright for Coglin’s preference. He inwardly cursed himself for not changing the opacity setting prior to the meeting.

“Senator, if you can’t see God’s beauty in all things, then I feel sincerely sorry for you.”

“God’s beauty left your rosy cheeks decades ago, Coglin.” On his holoVid, the senator sat with folded arms that seemed to rest twenty centimeters off the table. He was a man of average height, in his late thirties. His hair was the color of the night sky, and starlike flecks of white were interspersed within the slicked-back styling. His shoulders were broad and covered tightly by a well-apportioned suit. “Now answer the question, this time with metrics.”

“We’re 90 percent operational at 60 percent capacity. We figure another—”

“Only 60 percent? I trust I needn’t remind you of the forthcoming Mexican presidential election?”

“Nope, you needn’t remind me.” Coglin smiled again.

“Nor of my own campaign aspirations for next year?”

Coglin slowly leaned back in his chair. He wished that it would have creaked like the old wooden chair in his Pacific Northwest office. He raised a hand to his chin, then drew a deep, raspy breath prior to speaking. “Senator, when I approached your father with this idea over twenty-five painstaking years ago, after our previously failed attempts, I did so because he was an honorable, God-fearing man, a true believer. One of the good guys. We shared a desire to save mankind from the tyranny of sin. And yet, for all my efforts, here I sit coddling the boundless ego of his son.”

“Your speeches of the old days are lost on me, Coglin. Times change. My father didn’t understand that. Neither do you. Frankly, it doesn’t matter—the board is on my side. You need to produce or I’ll find someone who can.”

“Empty threats. I’m the majority stakeholder. We both know I could crush you within ten minutes.” Coglin took a deep breath and cleared his throat, not bothering to cover his mouth. He continued more softly, “Harry, your father would be so disappointed in you. When was the last time you attended service?”

“Jesus Christ, Coglin. Enough proselytizing. Your days as a majority stakeholder in NRS are numbered, in lockstep with the disease that’s eating away at your lungs. How many days do you have left on this earth, Coglin? Has your good doctor given you an updated prognosis?”

A distressed look brushed across Coglin’s face, but it was gone in an instant. In its place, he flashed a confident smile. “I’m a phoenix, Harry. You should know that about me. This isn’t the first time I’ve been down and it won’t be the last. Besides, no one else could run this operation.”

“What’s the saying, Edward? ‘Pride goeth before the fall’? Or in your case, before the summer. We know you aren’t expected to live through July, and as such we’ve recently taken action to identify your successor. The board has signed off on it. You have one foot in the grave, and the other one is losing blood flow. I was going to save this bit of news for our Q-two board meeting, but what the hell—carpe diem.”

Rev. Coglin paused a beat, then quietly stated, “Searle.”

“Does it really matter who it is, Ed?”

It was the senator’s turn to lean back in his seat. His two assistants were distracted by their BUIs, waving their hands in front of them as if swatting flies.

“Fantastic. He’ll make a fine successor. I’ve trained him for over twenty years—he’s practically kin.”