EMILY 

My current book, in progress. Samples

Summary in about 100 words:
A school teacher, suffragist and political activist dying of tuberculosis in the London of 1890.
An ancient man sent from a secret society to recruit her, but not knowing why.
Neither are who they seem and the key lies in either illusion, or a future PostHuman Empire of appalling power and a reach beyond comprehension — one that transcends life and death.
From Victorian London to Britain in the Twenty First century to the perfect world 6000 years hence. A perfection that is either Heaven or Hell.
The only guaranteed realities are logic and suffering, and perhaps love. Meanwhile the Gods move them as pieces on the chess board.

Chapter 1 — London 1890

What Anna said next took him by surprise “Do you have any romantic intentions towards my daughter?”
He laughed and then hesitated. She was serious and deserved a serious answer. “No, but she is going to a place where her stature will be normal, her intellect appreciated and barriers to her progress in any field she chooses will be unimpeded by her sex. She may find such an interest among the young men there, but I doubt it. I suspect she will never be satisfied in that respect. It’s going to be a long journey”.
With that he watched some of the tension in her face and shoulders ebb away. She believed him, or at least wanted to, but what she said next gave him pause for thought.
“My daughter has high standards, perhaps unrealistically high, and now you arrive, save her life and demonstrate how superior you are to every man she has met or even heard about, like some kind of Greek God. Then you laughingly dismiss the possibility of any romance, perhaps because you feel about her the way she feels about others who are beneath her?”
Karl was loath to admit that she had discerned the truth of the situation, but not how it suited his future plans for her. “In time she may very well be my equal — we will see”. Yet how could Anna believe that, not knowing what he was not allowed to tell her?
“I still don’t want her to go. I had hopes that she might meet someone…”
Karl finished the sentence for her, in his thoughts… who is not you.
…
Gordon leaned back and took a sip of the brandy, staring at Karl with a now neutral expression clearly striving for some kind of emotional equilibrium, waiting. “Gordon, this is about the wishes of Emily. She wants to come with me and there nothing you, Anna or anyone else on this Earth can do to stop us so please accept this graciously. Wish her well and smile — don’t make this hard for her or yourselves. Despite what fearful superstitions Anna may harbor I can assure you that Emily will be far better off where we are going. All this place offers…” he said, gesturing at their surroundings with his glass, “is disease, death and thwarted ambitions. An interesting place to visit but nobody in their right mind would want to live here”.

Chapter 2 — England 2017

Karl arrived and she noticed he had rid himself of the hat and shoes. Now he wore something colorful and outlandish on his feet. He saw her staring and simply said “Nike trainers”. Those deities seemed to be popular around here she thought, although what might be the object of the training she did not bother to inquire. “Come around the front of the house — I want to show you something”. As they walked around the building there was that drone again and she could finally see through the gates in the high wall, just as something shot past at high speed on the road outside. Standing next to the road she watched as one after another sped by in quick succession both directions. “I have seen the ones in my day — horseless carriages…”.
“Cars, and in some parts of the world their engine power output is still measured in horsepower. The ones you see passing are typically around one hundred horsepower, with top speeds well over one hundred miles per hour. The legal speed limit here is thirty”.
“Can I go in one?” she said eagerly.
“Definitely! In fact, you will probably be spending a lot of time in one and eventually we will get you one for yourself once you pass the relevant tests. In the meantime, the lesson for you here is this — you can get killed just crossing the road if you don’t pay attention. Everything happens faster here than in your time. There are a large number of things that a ten year old child here knows that you do not, and what you don’t know can kill or injure you. Overall though, this is a safer era than yours.” He thought about the relative merits of cars and horses. Cars, in general, did not lash out and possibly kill or injure you if they took a dislike to you. At least, not in this age.
“What things?” she asked in mild alarm.
“Oh… stuff like don’t put your fingers in a power socket. Don’t piss on the third rail. Only cross when the green man is lit, and so on”.
With a look of disapproval. “Do you have to be so vulgar Karl? If you were one of my pupils you would be told to wash out your mouth with soap and water. What is a third rail?”
He quite believed her.
…
They arrived at his house at dusk. Set in a village on the outskirts of a small town in the North-East, next to the moors, it was part of a relatively new build housing estate. Four bedrooms, two storeys detached, in white brick with a long garden terminating in a fence. Beyond that was a road and then open hillside beyond.
He parked outside and they both got out. After opening the door he asked Emily to help unload the shopping and then went inside. Her first comment was: “I was expecting something bigger”.
“Of course you were, but here I have to keep a low profile while I masquerade as a pauper”. She missed the sarcasm and simply asked what low profile meant. What she also noted as Karl gave her a tour of the house has not only how immaculately clean it was, but how empty and devoid of any Human touch. He pointed our her bedroom and the bathroom she was to use, and then dumped her belongings on the bed, including the violin whose worth could probably buy the entire street if not the village. It seemed that only one pauper resided here, and it was not Emily. He had felt her attitude changing as mile after mile of motorways and towns flowed by. After seeing tens of thousands of others, his car his was not quite the wondrously extravagant machine it was when she first sat in it. Now his house was added to that list of mild disappointments. He wondered how long it would take before she acclimated to this era and started to notice the shabbiness beneath the glitter. Not long, he concluded.
…
“Sex in the Confluence doesn’t really exist except as a kind of throwback role playing, a bit like that Steampunk event we went to. Once one has conscious control over biological urges everything becomes a lot more convenient when they are turned off. As the Jazz musician George Melly once said about losing his libido when he got old: it was like being unchained from a lunatic. As for pleasure, again, just a brain function that can be controlled with a thought, along with every other emotion. If we want children we make them, but in a world of immortals they are a rarity. Companionship is also a need that comes under rational control. Besides, we have our Gods who are always with us. Additionally we have moved beyond the use of DNA, sex based chromosomes and all the dynamics that drives Ur-Humans. The things they argue about here that you have commented on, such as trans-sexuality, homosexuality and so on — all became irrelevant. Like arguments over the best economic system or how to chip the best flint axe. Nobody cares anymore”.
…
Emily stood and watched him as he pushed his way through the long grass and cow parsley until he finally beckoned to her to join him. He stood before a nondescript headstone which was all that remained of the grave. However, the inscription was still legible:

Here lies our beloved daughter
Emily Agnes MacKenzie
Born 20 August 1860
Died 4 November 1890

She just stared at it dumbstruck, not knowing what to make of it as a whole host of feelings rose up inside her. After a while he simply said: “Lay the roses upon her grave”, which she did, and as she stood tears started to flow down her cheeks. All she could manage were the words “Is it…?” as he nodded and took her hand.
…
Just before they were about to leave she turned, pulled out her phone and took a picture. He laughed and commented that it was a very modern thing to do, and besides, how many people ever got to lay flowers on their own grave?

Chapter 3 — England 2019

She cut him off, instantly. “Why are you so dismissive of those around us? You constantly refer to them as these people or the locals as if they are beneath your contempt. They are people Karl, with lives of their own and feelings and who for the most part just want to get on and live a quiet happy life. I was going to say, like you, but that’s obviously not true”. It came out more bitter and petulant than she had intended, but no use crying over spilled milk. Anyway, he deserved it.
“Not like you either Emily. You are no longer one of them and the differences grow by the day. So how would you like me to refer to them? How about a term from your time — shall I call them the natives? Would that be better?”
Sometimes he was infuriating in his superiority, and while she was on the topic of things he did that she found annoying, she mentally added in the way he sometimes sat relaxed on the sofa with his knee and elbow joints moving the wrong way. He looked like he had dislocated or broken them and should be screaming in agony instead of just lounging there. The feeling she got was a kind of revulsion one might feel looking at a cripple or at someone mangled in an accident. She knew she should not feel that way, that it was an atavistic response, but she did. Uncanny Valley was how the locals referred to the feeling evoked by something that looked Human but was somehow not quite right, she thought, before catching herself and feeling even more annoyed for thinking like him. Did he adopt such postures deliberately to annoy her? Did he even know he was doing it? She felt in some ways it was as rude as someone constantly picking their nose, and had on more than one occasion slapped a ruler across the knuckles of one of the pupils she caught doing it. She wanted to do that to Karl on occasion, with his thoughtlessness and bad manners. Then there were his eyes. Lovely though they were, they did not move much. He had explained that because he had full focus across what passed for a retina he did not need to move his eyes when looking at different parts of a scene. This lack of eye movement was another trigger for a trip to Uncanny Valley, and she felt that at least he could have made an effort.
…
It was not only his seeming omniscience she found annoying, but a whole host of other features including his evasiveness and habit of dropping hints about himself and his world and then refusing to follow them up when questioned. He would also make obscure comments occasionally about people they saw on the TV and things they had done, or were going to do, some of which were really nasty. Yet his constant mantra was don’t get involved, even when it cost lives. In the end she just told him to shut up, not wanting the feeling of impotence and helplessness as she watched avoidable tragedies unfold. And yes, she really did have faith that he knew best and so acquiesced to his wishes on the matter.
…
Then came one more suggestion which she initially wanted to reject, because it felt like cheating. “You are a very good looking woman — use that fact. Being tall here with long legs is a big plus, if you had not realized that already. Dress attractively and be sexy on screen. Build a persona, an act of sorts. Here, look at this…” and with that brought up a video titled 3 hottest pianists of the twenty first century. “You can be number four on next year’s list”, he said in all seriousness. Seemingly doing his mind-reading act he continued “This is not cheating. This would be all yours, and you should use this world to the full. It’s what you are here for”.
“I’m not sure that would be appropriate” she countered, even as she was beginning to like the idea more and more. She definitely liked him calling her attractive and sexy. He had never done that before.
“All’s fair in love and war — stop being a Victorian. In the Confluence most people don’t even wear clothes. You are learning to be one of us. Drop useless inhibitions and take control of your environment in the widest sense of the word. To be brutally honest, you answer to nobody, with the possible exception of myself and that is only with regard to activity that might endanger us. For all intents and purposes, you can do what you want in this world with impunity”.
“Even kill people?” she said in jest. He remained ominously silent, and she knew enough of him to know that perhaps he did not want to answer and that she might not like it if he did. In the months to follow she often pondered that last sentence and its implications, as well as the one of us that she had heard, and would hear, again and again in different contexts.
…
Indeed, his omniscience was getting to be irritating especially as she later made the mistake of asking him how intelligent he was compared to a normal person. Of course, it was not a normal person to whom she was referring but herself, not that Karl seemed to notice or care. His answer, when it came, both shocked and dismayed her. The disparity was greater than that between a Human and a Capuchin monkey, he told her, unable to lie about it. What made it worse was that she knew what one of those animals looked like from her childhood when an organ grinder allowed her to play with his pet. It set her to wondering why Karl was bothering with her at all and she was forcibly struck by the realization that whatever she did not only could Karl do it better but to him it was beyond trivial. That was also accompanied by the knowledge that there were things Karl could understand and know that would forever be barred to her inadequate intellect, in the same way that monkey could never understand a steam engine. It was not a matter of working hard trying to learn, but just an impossibility. In his world she was no more than a house-trained animal — if Karl was the organ grinder she was the monkey on a chain holding the cup.
…
“You always ruin it don’t you? No matter what I do I am not good enough for the omniscient super-Karl. The future-man who knows everything, is better than everyone, everywhere. It takes me months of hard work to learn a new instrument but you master it in a few minutes. And you always have to show me how stupid and pathetic my attempts really are. Well, yes. Your change to my composition is just perfect. It’s like a school child showing her teacher the stick man drawing she has just done, and then he sketches it out better than Leonardo da Vinci. He might as well just tell her what an idiot she is and rip it up in front of her. So yes — I can write in a Mozart style but the best I could ever hope to be is a second rate Salieri humiliated by your Mozart. You take the joy out of everything I accomplish — have you any idea what that is like?”.
He stood there for a few seconds in unhappy silence before responding to her in a manner that required unadorned and direct honesty. “I do, from personal experience” he stated. She just stared at him as he continued “If the Confluence were your British Empire at its height, what do you think my position would be within it? It’s serious question.”
She thought for a moment: “Scientist? Teacher? Soldier? Diplomat? I really have no idea”.
“Wrong on all counts” he said quietly. “Do you really want to know?” He waited and she remained silent. After a moment he simply said “Guard dog”.
…
“This is not a marriage proposal, but an indication of how much you mean to me. By the way, it’s a three carat diamond, so if you are ever desperate for money…”. It was, of course, one of the diamonds he had offered her back in 1890 and she had refused.
“You always manage to ruin it, don’t you Karl?” she said smiling. “Thank you — I accept your non proposal… but… you must know by now how I feel about you. I do not have a clue as to your feelings”.
He thought briefly before answering with the exact truth: “I would give my life for you. I would die to keep you safe”. It was fortunate that he did not tell her the whole truth. Not only would he sacrifice himself to keep her safe, but before that he would kill to keep her safe. Kill millions if necessary. He had his orders… Now she was bound closer to him. It had all worked out rather well.
…
“Are you hungry? We have a table booked at the hotel restaurant, Ms MacKenzie”.
Another surprise awaited her when they entered. The tables were laden with food of every variety imaginable and all of the tables bore numbers or labels. The text of the latter obviously listed the origin of the cuisine — Indian, Chinese, Italian, French and so forth, with subtexts comprising the nations or regions of origin and the names of the dishes. The numbers, however…
“They are the approximate century of origin” he explained.
Looking around: “Nothing beyond twenty three?”
He shrugged “It all gets a bit boring after that as people, in the most general sense of the word, lost interest in culinary delights”.
“There is also no physical limit to what you can eat here”.
So began an orgy of gluttony unparalleled in Human history to date, and she would have thought it shameful had it been real. Like much else that night.
…
Walking over to the well stocked bar, he beckoned her to follow. “Every drink known to Humanity, and take a look at this…” He indicated a collection of small trays with assorted pills and white powders “It’s a fine selection of pharmaceuticals for your delight. They will work on you here because you are not metabolizing them and your neural responses are being modified by old Karl to match the real thing. You can’t overdose either”.
It seemed to her that they were plumbing the depths of depravity. It was exciting, as she snorted a line of white powder.
A few subjective hours later… “Try this”, offering her a fluted glass filled with a slightly viscous amber fluid “The favorite wine of Twenty Four onward. It’s called Soma, moderately harmless, but interesting”.
Sniffing it cautiously and then taking a small sip… “Sort of like honey, but nothing special though”. And it was nothing special, until the assorted special molecules crossed the blood-brain barrier and her neurons started to sparkle in a special way. She sat there immobile savoring the feelings as they arose. It was not as intense as the cocaine or heroin, but waves of happiness and warmth flowed through her and the world seemed to brighten and expand. Then something else as she stared at him sitting there naked. “Does this hotel have bedrooms?”
“Yes” he replied sarcastically “It’s one of those hotels that specializes in bedrooms” knocking back his own glass of Soma. They raced for the stairs, and the black wrought iron Victorian style bed complete with brass fittings and curtains.

Chapter 4 — St Albans, England 2019

They were within a couple of kilometers of the Society and had just passed the junction of Ferrers Lane and the B651 when Karl felt the neutrino flash. Time slowed to a crawl and his brain went into overdrive, the nictitating membrane in his eyes beginning to move into position. There followed a blinding flash and everything seemed to happen at once. Emily gasped and put her hands over her face as Karl’s his hand lashed out and he pulled her seatbelt painfully tight. Ahead of them a Wilson cloud, in the form of a hemispherical shock wave, expanded into the sky outlined in white as water vapor condensed from the cooled air due to the momentary vacuum created by its passing.
Concurrently, he slammed on the brakes and pulled hard over to the right hand side of the road and up onto the verge away from any trees. Temporarily blinded she missed Karl’s face turning momentarily into a silver mask. Next thing she felt was a wave of heat like standing near an open fire and then heard him counting aloud. One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand… until at the number five there was a sound like a huge crack followed by thunder as the car was hit by the now subsonic blast and they were pushed forward against the belts as it rocked on its suspension. Loosening his grip he turned to her as leaves stripped from the trees fell like butterflies and swirled in the breeze. Twigs and other detritus bounced off the car, along with the occasional small stone returning to earth from the explosion, one of which was still traveling fast enough to chip the windscreen.
…
“It looks like someone has taken a dislike to us, and they have probably killed not only our people but thousands of innocents. Calls are starting to go out to the emergency services and military. Stay here — I am going to run the rest of the way and try to slip through before the authorities throw up cordons and quarantine the area. They won’t yet have enough people to sew it up tight. If I am not back in three hours, drive home and wait”.
She must have been in some kind of shock because her first reply was “But I don’t have insurance for your car”.
He just stared at her: “Don’t worry about that. I’m sure the traffic violations will be dropped when they charge you with nuclear terrorism and conspiracy to commit mass murder”. He laughed.
Well, that put things into perspective, despite his annoying sense of humor surfacing once more “Shut up Karl — I’m coming with you. You will just have to run a bit slower with me lagging behind”.
…
He answered with the full truth: “I told you that you were special. Now it’s time for you to discover exactly how special, in addition to your unexpected talents. My orders are to protect you no matter what the cost. If I have to sacrifice my own life I will. What I told you at full moon is the exact truth. What I omitted to say is that the wording of no matter what the cost gives me carte blanche. I have been given permission to slaughter millions if necessary. To reduce this world to ashes if it will keep you safe. My superiors think your life outweighs that of all seven billion people on this Earth. I told you I was like a guard dog or tame wolf with big teeth — well, those teeth are unbelievably big and it’s you I am guarding”.
…
True death? Whatever did he mean by that? but it could wait “Something I was never clear upon is the nature of the Confluence — who is it that gives you these orders?” she asked.
“Concisely, the Confluence is like an organism spread over a quadrillion major worlds — that’s one followed by fifteen zeroes. The most powerful Beings rule it, Gods if you will. The greatest of those is the Goddess Diana, whom I serve. She created and controls the portals and is intertwined with them. Her Seat of Power is the moon, where she comprises around five percent of its mass”.
Very strange, and getting stranger, to the point where she felt overshadowed by something vast from which nobody could save her, not even Karl. Instinctively she looked up, but the moon was not visible. In an almost absent minded manner she quoted Shakespeare: “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport”. After a while she spoke again: “I thought you and your Goddess were just a kind of futuristic pagan revival. Something quaint and harmless like we had in my time among the more romantic”.
“I know. I told you I would never lie to you, but I did mention that I may mislead you with the truth”.
It was not quaint and was not harmless. It was the most frightening thing she had ever heard. Worlds without end run by entities so far beyond Human that we might as well be bacteria compared to them, whose intellect must be greater than the sum total of life on Earth. Genuine Gods, who could and did directly steer Human affairs through… people… like Karl.
…
“Care to introduce yourself?”
“Kara” came the rather relaxed answer. “As you may have surmised, I am not from around here. And neither are you it seems”.
“Very true. So, what brings you here?” She just sat silent and unmoving, not so much as a blink as she waited for him to continue. “By the way, I noticed the jewel. If you attempt to use it I’ll kill you on the spot, instantly.” He offered Kara some fries, hoping to induce some minor cognitive dissonance as well as indicate no immediate threat.
He heard the soft intake of breath from Emily. This was a side of him he had never wanted her to see in action, but it was now out of his hands. He turned slightly towards her and explained. “That is an ancient weapon — a mind linked femtosecond pulsed laser backed with its own intelligence. All she has to do is think and it could selectively stun or kill everyone in this place in less than a second. Except me”.
…
She pointed to her necklace of black pearls — “Fifty milligrams each”, desperately hoping that he believed her or everyone would die. Suddenly her victory felt like it was being snatched from her as what she assumed would be a minor mopping up of a lone Curate turned into her worst nightmare. Finally it all made sense — another trap, another false hope, another punishment, another game of cat and mouse. The torments were ceaseless, and all she could do was play it to the inevitable and bitter end. Although having never met one, she knew of the Marshals by reputation — cruel, ruthless, efficient, powerful almost beyond comprehension and utterly loyal to their masters. They were weapons that could kill Gods. If the Confluence had an overt face of evil, it was theirs.
…
“What’s a Marshal of the Inquisition? What are those things Karl?”
“What it means, Emily” said Kara angrily “Is that if Karl here tries to kill me I will detonate the antimatter and vaporize everything, including us and most of Stamford. And he cannot stop me. Not that it would normally bother your mass murdering boyfriend, but there’s a chance even he might not survive. Nagasaki times two”.
…
“And you want to know what the Inquisition is? Has Karl here not got around to explaining his day job? Well, you must have read history books about the Spanish Inquisition. Sort of like that but not as petty or forgiving, with corpses stacked up by the trillion and worlds burned instead of books. The difference is that the former were misguided servants of the One True God and these are agents of Satanic entities who know exactly what they are doing”.
“Don’t be ridiculous Kara. The Inquisition is the exploratory arm of the Confluence tasked with protecting it. Some of the worlds we enter are, well, horrific to say the least and could pose a threat — we inquire, hence the name”.
…
Kara stopped as a memory surfaced. She had heard of a Marshal named Karl… surely it was not him, especially given the monumental size of the Confluence where the only names of which most people were familiar were Gods and major Powers. She had to ask: “There is an infamous Marshal also named Karl. He was responsible for the only total genocide of an entire solar system in Confluence history — any relation?” hoping against hope that it was not him. What are the odds, she thought, one in a billion?
The ensuing silence was broken by Emily as she turned to look at him “Karl?”
“You know what they call me don’t you Kara” he said quietly.
Kara sat there shocked and in a state of disbelief and despair at the magnitude of the betrayal that had resulted in her being delivered to an evil so powerful and merciless she had no hope of prevailing. “Destroyer of worlds”. She briefly considered committing suicide, but knew there was no escape there either. Death was but one more entrance to the Confluence. All she could do now was run.

Chapter 5 — London, 2019

At some point they must have got bored and decided to begin, Karl thought. The door opened and two men in suits walked in and sat down. The older man, who was short and stocky with cropped graying hair carried a folder full of papers and placed them on the table. A minor psychological trick, indicating that they already knew plenty and all Karl had to do was fill in some minor details. He began speaking: “Time is 15:27 on 26 May 2019. For the record, I am Inspector John Walters and this is a civilian observer, Geoffrey McClean. We are interviewing one Karl DuLac concerning his connection with the recent incident in St Albans”.
Karl spoke immediately, before the inspector could follow up the statement: “I know who you are — CTC aka SO15, formerly Special Branch, and Security Service also known as MI5 or simply Five” and he reeled off their dates of birth, as well as those of their mothers, fathers and children along with names and addresses. “If you want my cooperation you must tell me what you know, and also tell me if you have been contacted by someone calling herself Kara”.
There was a brief moment of silence: “Well, no denying you know a lot about us — care to explain how? As for this Kara person, we can neither confirm or deny who else may be involved in this investigation. We would also like to point out that at present you are not under arrest”.
…
What a smug bastard thought Inspector Walters — he’s fucking enjoying this, but Karl was likely correct concerning the possibility of his suddenly diminished lifespan, and no, he was not going to tell his family or anyone he cared about. This was a great and terrible secret that if it became public knowledge really would cause mass panic. It was not the apocryphal Space Brothers landing in their flying saucer and asking to be taken to our leaders so that they could share their message of love and peace with Mankind. No, was a couple of aliens fighting it out on our turf and both sides threatening to kill millions, or billions, if we got in their way and one of whom had already used a nuclear weapon on us. Plus a not very subtle hint of alien invasion thrown in for good measure.
…
The new arrivals were in the office of the Chief Super, along with McClean as he walked in. After the introductions the first question, or rather statement, came from the Home Secretary Amber Rudd “This sounds unbelievable”, to which they all agreed before each in turn outlined their experiences with Karl DuLac. “You have spent most time with him, and his… girlfriend?… what do you make of them” she asked the Inspector.
He knew he had to be very careful and to make an explicit distinction between what he knew and what he believed. “My opinion” emphasizing the word opinion, “based on observations, is that Karl is the real deal.
“Thank you Inspector. It should go without saying that nothing goes beyond these walls”. At the same time she wondered how long something of this magnitude could be covered up. The knowledge had already filtered up the line to the Director General of MI5, Andrew Parker, so God only knew how many of them were now in on this particular secret. But at least they knew how to keep their mouths shut. Politicians were a different matter and she dreaded telling the PM and those involved in the inevitable COBR meeting, but it was unavoidable. Equally bad was the fact that everyone from the MoD to Foreign Office to SIS were going to want a piece of this and it was hard to argue that an alien guest of such power was nothing to do with them given the immense implications for every branch of the state.
“Now, anything else before I meet our guest?”
“Only this”, added McClean “do not be fooled by his looks nor any superficial charm. He is not Human and quite willing to do rather unpleasant things to us, as I discovered. Also, he is not ignorant of our customs and culture, so anything that appears anomalous about speech or attitude is deliberate”.
The Superintendent simply held up three bandaged fingers “He knew this was going to happen and thought it was a joke” he said, looking around in case anyone might have been smiling.
…
For her part the Home Secretary left deeply disturbed and emotionally drained. It was going to be a long night not only for her but everyone who had been in contact with these two, as she demanded full written reports and all records, assuming any had escaped Karl’s talent for destruction. Sitting in the car, she drove through the London night and looked at the crowds of people on the brightly lit streets who were oblivious to the possibility that had she or anyone else put a foot wrong all of this would be gone. The worries about interest base rates, inflation, economic growth, poverty, unemployment, and crime would mean nothing if a single individual changed his mind concerning their fate. And indeed they might still be doomed if his friends showed up. They were teetering on the brink of a no-win situation for all of Humanity. She wanted them gone, one way or another, knowing only too well that this news was going to leak out sooner rather than later. The international ramifications were… unpredictable. As for the response of the global public, she could just imagine Karl in front of the TV cameras seducing the world with the kind of witty sarcasm that would undermine all their institutions and make the world ungovernable, while casually offering people everything they ever wanted, including immortality. The world’s most beautiful and talented couple breezing through celebrity society leaving a trail of cultural, religious and economic destruction in their wake the like of which the world had never known, and with his superhuman friends ready to jump in and replace it all.

Chapter 6 — London, 2019

“She not only confirms that Karl belongs to something called the Inquisition of the Goddess Diana which we already knew, but that he’s a mass murdering Prince of Hell, a destroyer of worlds, she herself is dead, and this was her attempt to escape. She thinks the Confluence is literally Hell”.
…
“Well, apart from all this religious guff, what did she tell you about Karl and what he can do to us?”
“She’s terrified of him. She says he can do everything he said, and more. Personally I’m a bit doubtful, but the firepower demo in a few weeks will tell us something. Quite the firework display to look forward to eh”. McClean was smiling. “Oh… and one more bit of Kara lunacy — she says the Confluence can resurrect the dead, which is why nobody can escape even through death”.
…
Walters noticed the word Imperium, and Karl had used it deliberately. And Karl knew that he knew. Another mindfuck or something more serious? Confluence suggested a warm friendly coming together, but Imperium held echoes of Rome which was anything but friendly and cuddly. However, his ruminations on etymology were interrupted by something of a commotion outside the door, followed by a knock. “I believe our special guest has arrived”.
Karl knew who it must be, since there were only two choices, one of which was the Queen, but he doubted she would be turning up after that joke he had made made earlier, so it had to be… He stood, just in time for the door being opened to reveal the Prime Minister.
Emily, of course, was overjoyed and beamed with pleasure.
“Welcome to our humble abode Prime Minister” said Karl, apparently without visible irony or sarcasm. He offered his hand and she shook it, holding it for slightly longer than normal while she quickly examined it with a casual glance.
“Call me Theresa please — we are hopefully on friendly terms?” She was dressed in a cross between a dark blue trouser suit with the jacket buttoned over a royal blue t-shirt set against a string of pearls, to which everyone’s eyes flickered momentarily. To most here pearls would always be an unfortunate reminder of things best forgotten. The shoes were low heeled slip-on in a leopardskin pattern with a buckle above the toes. He noticed Emily pay close attention to them.
“And you may call me Karl. If you would allow me, I would like to introduce my companion Miss Emily MacKenzie, of the late Victorian era”. Yet another cat out of that bag thought a nervous Emily as she stepped forward, took her hand, and bobbed a curtsy. “I am extremely honored to meet you Prime Minister. I never expected to see a women in your position in my lifetime”
Karl smiled and added: “You will have to forgive her good manners, she comes from a more refined age and she is terribly impressed by your accomplishments. And I assume you know your people here, Geoffrey McClean and the stalwart John Walters”. They both nodded their heads in acknowledgment and smiled. “Shall we all be seated?”.
Emily and Karl sat together on one sofa facing Theresa May on the other, with a large coffee table between them. The others took seats well away from the forthcoming pleasantries. It was Emily who spoke first, to Karl: “Please mind your manners and do not intimidate or belittle our guest”.
“I would not dream of doing so” he replied, while being pleased that either by accident or design Emily had done just that on his behalf.
…
“What do you think would happen if people in general found out about you?” the PM asked. Which was a very perspicacious question Karl thought. Here was someone who desired to use his knowledge in a way that was a step beyond simply wanting to know how to build a better mousetrap.
“You know the answer to that as well as I. As a worse case, we arrive and all your intellectual property becomes worthless. All your art and science are shown to be childish inanities. Your religions collapse as we introduce you to the True Gods. We offer you immortality and eternal happiness, while simultaneously showing you that in the intellectual pecking order you are no more than rats and mice compared to us. You disappear from history and become just a poor copy of who we are with nothing of your own to add.
…
The moment McClean walked into the room with Kara on his arm the Inspector knew there was going to be trouble. McClean had gone full James Bond complete with black bow tie and dinner jacket. Kara was wearing the kind of dress never seen at the supermarket but only the catwalk or at film premiers. Red and white, slit to the waist to show off her legs and revealing large amounts of cleavage while wearing her hair long, black and implausibly glossy. He knew something of the cost of women’s clothing from his wife, and was always shocked. This probably cost more than his car. Another ludicrous bill for the taxpayer, no doubt approved by McClean and friends. Cynically, he recalled an old joke which in modified form would be something along the lines of: What do you get for the woman who has a necklace made of nuclear bombs. Answer: Anything she wants. Every inch the Bond femme fatale and likely to be literally fatale for upwards of a quarter of a million people if things went wrong. It was obvious she had wrapped McClean around her little finger, as the saying went.
…
They all raised their glasses to Peaceful Coexistence. Emily, Geoffrey and John being serious and sincere while Karl and Kara cynically looked for loopholes and exits. Both realized nothing in the pact would save anyone besides her from Karl, should the situation develop in an unfortunate direction and both wondered what the government lawyers would make of it, not that Kara cared what the baboons thought. For his part Karl was mentally listing all the things short of directly harming her that he was now free to do. It was an extensive list, top of which was stripping her of her PostHuman attributes and deporting her to a Burned World to live out a life once described by Thomas Hobbes as being nasty, brutish and short.
…
Dr Jones then appeared and told her they were going to remove a liter of blood. “I know that’s a lot, but you can survive it without any significant harm, and we have found that it has remarkable rejuvenation and healing properties. You should be pleased that it’s going to save lives”.
She was not pleased, and even less so with the tiredness that required them to use a gurney to return her to her cell, or room as Jones preferred to call it.
“When the Karl and the Confluence return everyone here is going to die” she defiantly stated.
“That’s as may be, but to be honest I don’t believe it. Nobody is returning from the dead to save you”.
“Perhaps because they have not told you the full story” she whispered as she closed her eyes and slept. Jones just stared for a while, contemplating her observation of his ignorance. He needed her to talk.
…
There then began the other rounds of tests which were even worse, starting with pain threshold measurements. Her left hand was locked into a temperature controlled glove and the settings slowly increased until pain ensued, indicated by her screaming. Dr Jones and his associated then continued to the point of tissue damage and blistering in order to determine recovery and healing rate. At the cessation of the experiment they gave her an injection of morphine, which her enhanced liver cleared with extreme rapidity, leaving her in constant pain for a full day or so. The next experiment a week later consisted of a full thickness burn on her forearm applied with the flame of a gas torch, under local anesthetic. After three days it healed without any scarring. Jones seemed ecstatic at their next interview.
“You know that we sequenced your DNA? Well we are finding all kinds of interesting matches across the animal kingdom, and some that have no natural analogs at all. I really do believe your story about the aliens”.
…
As the orderly released her from the chair she spun around, twisting and breaking his arm before slamming his face as hard as she could into the corner of the desk. She then leapt over it and punched Jones in the sternum, feeling and hearing it crack just before the taser triggered and she arched and fell to the floor.
It was, by her estimation of counting sleep cycles, another two months before she saw him again and this time she was fully shackled. Her first words were “How are you feeling Doctor? All healed I trust. Did you use my blood?”
She watched his hand moved towards his pocket and stop, and enjoyed the flash of anger on his face that he quickly suppressed.
“Yes, thank you. You will be happy to know that the orderly died from his injuries. Did you know he had a wife and young child?”
If it was his attempt to make her feel guilt it was not working. She felt elated and wondered whether Karl ever felt that way when he killed someone who he felt deserved it. “That’s what happens when you torture people for years. He was obviously in the wrong line of business”.
…
He just laughed “Next up, we are going to cut off your little finger to see whether it regenerates. Are you left or right handed?” They gave her a local anesthetic after clamping her hand in place and simply cut the tip off at the first joint with some kind of shears. She watched with a traumatized disinterest. Three weeks later most of the finger had regrown, including the nail, but it was another ten weeks before it looked normal albeit rather pale compared to the rest of her hand. They then repeated the procedure under general anesthetic and moved her entire left hand. By her estimation it took more than a year to regrow, and another two to regain the full dexterity she once had.
…
Even Jones was lost for words, waiting, looking at the door after he discovered the phones were dead. It came off its hinges and in walked Karl, or at least something that looked remarkably like him.
“Nice to meet you Emily. I got Karl’s records and have integrated them, but you should understand that I am a different version”. She did not care what version it was. All she said was get me a gun. Perhaps this was some trick by Jones, and she intended to test it.
One of his party arrived with a pistol, a 9mm Glock.
“You just point it and pull the trigger” said Karl, curious as to what exactly she intended as he handed it to her.
…
Every time through the loop a rage kept building inside her until the last one, when she simply got up out of the chair and exited head first through the open window, falling several storeys onto the pavement. And she was back…
Except this time John had been replaced by a middle aged woman with short blonde hair, dressed in neat dark blue trouser suit. “Well, that took you long enough didn’t it. We have not been formally introduced. My name is Diana”, she said taking a seat next to Emily.
“So where is my body located?”
“You are currently in Eighty Three on the moon tucked up with Karl, just like two peas in a pod”.
“You tortured me for years. Do you expect gratitude, or even forgiveness? What do you want?”
“I did not inflict more on you than you could bear”.
“Apart from driving me to suicide. You sound like my mother trying to explain why God tolerates suffering”.
“In a sense I am your mother. You have been shaped by me over the past century subjective. I gave you bad years and I gave you good years — how you reacted was up to you. I gave you a chance to learn, and mostly free will albeit in a slightly contrived world. The people were real”.
“Does that include Barry Jones?”
“Yes, but he failed the First Judgment and never made it here. Not because of what he did to you, but for many other reasons”.
That disclosure gave Emily a modicum of pleasure, but not as much as when she shot him, knowing now the pain must have been real. “What of all the people who saw me at the Olympics?”
“Real. I pushed you to your limits to find out what else you might be”.
“Well, you succeeded, and when your cutout switch named Kara was removed you had to personally direct things didn’t you? That was your mistake”.
“How so?”
“It gave me access to you and the entire Confluence”.
Had this been a facility in Twenty One klaxons would have been blaring and red lights flashing, with guards running hither and thither in panic. But it was Claridges, and so Diana just froze in place for a couple of seconds. The entire attention of an entity as vast as the moon was shifted to such an extent it could not even spare two seconds to carry on this petty facade.
Diana flickered back to attention “You have closed the portals across the entire Confluence. How and why?”

“Never mind the how. As for the why, you are like some precocious antisocial brat who won’t take a hint. You are annoying your elders and betters, not to mention pissing off the neighbors. It’s going to stop”.

Chapter 7 — Italy, Lake Nemi, 8223

“Speaking of which” Carl droned on “Her physical avatar is almost here, and I should not be. There is fear and dissent in Heaven and…”
“SILENCE! — NOT ANOTHER WORD!” The acoustic intensity was brutal, and they both stood rigid and silent as in through the wall walked Emily.
“You”, she snapped “I don’t recall inviting you to the birthday party. Leave. Now.”
Looks like Emily, sounds totally like Diana. He turned with Carl and they both started to walk away.
“Not you junior” he heard her say. And yes, unfortunately that sounded like Emily speaking. He wondered how much of her still existed or to what degree she had been over-written by Diana. He rather feared the answer might be not enough. All his sins remembered, by her. Carl glided away through the wall and left him alone with the avatar.
…
He wondered about the quarantine monitor and interface, and Emily seemingly reading his thoughts, simply said Kara. Then she held out her left hand and showed the ring to him: “What do you think this means Karl? What do you want it to mean?”
“That we are going to get married?” he said tentatively, unable to come up with a more plausible alternative.
“Thank you. I accept your proposal. The wedding is in a few days time, the venue being my temple at Lake Nemi. And now the bad news” she said. “You cannot be given Underworld access until after the wedding. As your Principal mentioned there is a certain degree of conflict in progress which has to be resolved and you have information that must not be accessed by third parties”.
…
“When this pantomime is over and things are signed sealed and delivered. After the wedding — and bye the bye, my parents are invited”.
“What?” he exclaimed “Are you mad? We don’t bring people up the line unless we are about to perform a massive intervention. You are going to annoy the Curia. Or are you planning to wipe your parents memories later?”
“The former option, and the Curia will do as they are told” she elucidated “Even as we speak extra local portals are being opened in the Cis-Lunar space of 1893 and their world is being blanketed with sensor seeds. Gaia has also agreed to begin modifying their ecology, initially to gene drive modifications to limit the extremes of pain and suffering. The plan is to push them forwards at the rate of about thirty years per decade”.
“But why?” is all he could ask. The resources she must be expending on the portals were substantial even by Confluence standards.
“Two reasons. First, I am not going to let my nephews get killed on the Somme or in any other war, nor will hundreds of millions of others be allowed suffer that fate. Second, this is to be an embassy world lying as it does between the Confluence and… something else”.
Or a border fortress, he suddenly realized, although which side might form the garrison remained unclear to him.
…
Over the centuries he had met Avatars a number of times. They came across as distant and inscrutable, and any compliment from one of them was like getting a secondhand pat on the head from the master of the house for a job well done — good dog! Was Emily going to treat him like that? He felt it was unfortunate that they had never been equals, if even for a brief period, and now she was technically his boss.
He momentarily wondered where this petty resentment came from and did not have to look far. He was being fucked about and kept in the dark. He was not used to being treated in such a manner. No infodump for the bad dog, he thought, although he was not aware of failing in any manner whatsoever, apart from being a victim of force majeure.
He could of course refuse to play along. For the Gods it would be like having an itch they could not scratch, or the feeling someone with obsessive compulsive disorder got when seeing one picture in an art gallery not correctly aligned. It was not the first time he had wondered whether they were, by Ur-Human standards, somewhat mad. But he was not going to do that since it would be the end of his career, and no matter what was going on he felt Emily deserved better. Not to mention the fact it would mean he was stuck in the Confluence just like Kara had been. He wondered what had happened to her.
Anyway, this was all certainly fascinating, and he was still a player in the game. Suck it up soldier and march on, he thought to himself.
…
“Rome still exists?” asked Joan.
“Yes” answered the tiger “It is one of the biggest cities in the world, with almost ten thousand people living there, but not much remains of the Rome you knew”.
“So how many people are left?” came the next obvious question.
Shere Khan stopped walking. “Less than a million Humans exist, and even then the term is applied loosely. Homo Sapiens are effectively extinct. Almost everyone you will meet here would not qualify according to your definitions. Only Ur-Humans and animals are allowed to reside on the Sacred Earth, so those living here do so by the grace of the Goddess. Karl, for example, cannot although he may visit”.
“What happened to them? Where is everyone?”
To which the tiger simply told them to wait until dark and look at the night sky before asking that question again.
…
Karl spoke from the darkness “That is Diana. Those black discs you see are not black. If your eyes were better and you could see into the infrared you would see them glowing brightly. They are heat radiators hundreds of miles across dissipating the power of Diana’s thought processes and the energy of hundreds of suncores. The lights are surface cities, although almost everything is underground. I came down from the Clavius region in the Southern Highlands this morning. Historically, it was the first place water was discovered on the moon”.
Joan felt a chill as she realized that it was not just the moon, but a living God. Where Gaia was a subtle word on the wind, this was raw power on a cosmic scale. She wondered whether Diana could see her standing here, and suspected the answer was yes. A supplementary thought concerned whether Diana could know what she was thinking.
“Yes, Joan” came a soft voice from the statues behind them.
…
What held their attention was not that, but the spectacle low down in the sky as they looked due South. Night was rapidly closing in, and a thin brilliant band of light stretched from one horizon to the other.
“That’s the Ring of Earth”, Shisan informed them. “It was built during the Third Millennium when everyone was keen on that sort of thing and was the first of the major Habitats. By the way, in your units it’s about twenty five thousand miles away in geosynchronous orbit. It masses around ten trillion tonnes and has as much living space as North America.
…
“Where did all the stars come from?” she asked.
Shisan answered. “They are not stars. They are Habitats a bit like the ring and each is at least the size of a continent. There are thousands of millions of them, and they intercept almost half of all solar output. It is where a good number of Confluence citizens live in this Overworld solar system. Population is around a thousand trillion.

Chapter 8 — London, 1894

“Where thou goest so go I” she mimicked the wedding vows in a deliberately simpering voice, which then hardened. “Once a Hound of Diana and now a Poodle of Emily. I’m not surprised she didn’t make you promise to love, honor and obey — probably took that last bit for granted while the first two were so far off the menu she never even considered it”.
She scored a point with that one, he silently conceded, giving away nothing.
He watched as she got up and wandered over to the bookcase and selected one of Gordon’s pornography classics and began flicking through the pages, no doubt looking at the illustrations. At one page she halted and turned towards him… “Don’t even think of it” was his preemptive comment.
“Why’s that Karl? Would Emily be upset with you cheating on her so soon after the wedding? Have you two gone native to that extent?”
“Stop playing with your emotional settings and return them to a civilized value please, and I will tell you a little secret”.
…
It was well past midnight when he returned from the slums of the East End on what he euphemistically described as his charity work.
“So Diana’s executioner returns. Where have you been?” demanded Kara, already guessing the unpalatable truth, but even so wanting to hear all about it. “Who did you kill this time?”
Karl answered in that flippant dismissive tone that so annoyed her. “Well, one Mr Jack Ripper is sadly no longer with us having suffered a massive cerebral embolism earlier this evening. We discovered him up to his old tricks, so I put an end to them. Any complaints?”.
“You mean you microwaved his brain. You love killing them don’t you” came her contemptuous response.
…
Addressing them both, and much to Kara’s annoyance for her inclusion, came the next question from the housekeeper “Why are you two monsters here?”
“If you want the short answer” said Kara, with a touch of bitterness, “it’s because Emily has dragged us along on this crusade of hers and apparently we are not expected to survive”.
“And the longer answer” interrupted Karl, before Kara could say anything more damning “is that we intend to save the lives of hundreds of millions of your people, starting with all the children who would otherwise die in this city from poverty and disease. We will end all of that very soon”.
…
Then the sphere disappeared and Emily stood alone in the road amid gasps from the onlookers, while the Curia dropped to one knee. She gestured to them to rise and then stepped toward the welcoming party. She looked the model of Victorian propriety in her black dress and black hat with veil, and of the whole rigmarole so far it was the only thing that surprised him as the entire congregation disappeared into the Parliamentary buildings.
“You’re one of the Martians!” exclaimed a young woman who gently poked Kara in the back to attract her attention.
“No” said Kara, in a voice surprisingly calm and reasonable “I come from Earth, but I’ve visited Mars on a number of occasions”.
At that point others turned towards them.
“Why are you invading us?”
“We are not invading you. Look around — this place is a stinking squalid pit of iniquity where nearly half your children die before the age of five. Do you think we want to own this? We have the moon and stars, but it seems our glorious leader Emily wants to help you. Personally, I don’t want to be here”.
A rather belligerent man in a dirty jacket and cloth cap shouted at her. “This is the greatest city in the greatest country in the world!”.
“Yes” she sneered “sad isn’t it”.
…
Predictably one middle aged woman shouted at her “Why are you dressed like a strumpet?”
Kara smiled “I wasn’t aware this was the uniform strumpets wore”, which raised a few laughs, and was patently untrue thought Karl.
…
Meanwhile negotiations with the government proceeded apace with orders from Emily that all Confluence representatives were to be female. She was pushing the whole women’s suffrage angle by making Gladstone and colleagues deal with what they would perceive as little girls, with the added benefit of instilling in them a fatal overconfidence.
…
The only choice the British and other governments were going to have when it was time for them to sign was none at all, because they were all so apparently one sided in favor of each nation. The people here had no appreciation of the side effects of technologies and the Confluence had six thousand years of analysis behind them across trillions of histories. Every apple had a worm, every gift would keep on giving and all it took was one bite.
…
Soon royalty and leading politicians would be given a tour of orbital facilities ostensibly as a courtesy but in actuality to flaunt the power of the Confluence. It was reminiscent of an event sixty tears previously when the Native American leader Black Hawk was taken East after his captivity. The government of President Andrew Jackson wanted to impress him with the power of the United States.
…
By the middle of next year the gardens would be flourishing with rapid-growth trees and miraculous medicinal plants with red foliage. At that time the embassy would magnanimously donate seeds and cuttings to be cultivated all across Britain. Again, the people here had no concept of invasive species, and indeed were busy importing numerous such pests from across the world thinking that gray squirrels were cute and Japanese knotweed and rhododendrons were pretty. So what possible harm could these lovely, and very useful, red-leaved plants cause? The answer, as would be discovered around thirty years later, was that they would dominate and engineer the global ecology of flora and fauna including Homo Sapiens, integrating them into a new biosphere under distributed intelligent control — Gaia. Fifty years after that Earth would no longer be Earth, it would be Gaia. The moon would be Diana and Homo Sapiens would be far down the road to extinction in a world increasingly given over to Godlike intelligences in a Bioshock Singularity. As H P Lovecraft, now four years old, was never going to put it: All the Earth will flame in a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.
…
And she herself, that is Emily, was the tumbrel driving both Diana and the Wolf to some sort of judgment or denouement. Between those two entities sat her old Human self playing out a destiny shaped before she was born, and she resented it. She grudgingly owed her existence to the Wolf, and her current slightly miserable state to Diana. Despite what she had told the others at home, she was not satisfied at all. There were only two points of her life that came close to perfection. The first was with Karl in Portmeirion, and the second when she won those Olympic medals to the adulation of millions. Both fake to a lesser or greater degree, and very little of what she would call totally real existed between laying in bed dying and being in this desperate and desolate place. She wished that Karl could have introduced her to the Confluence as he did to Twenty One. She would have been happy for them to spend years or decades together exploring its wonders together, but now this. Paradise Lost, she thought. She was also reminded of a book written some thirty years previously by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground which was of some influence among her more literary acquaintances. In it he defined Man as the ungrateful biped. That was certainly an apt description of one Emily MacKenzie.