RENAISSANCE 2.0/Book 4 - Sample Chapters

Chapter 165

Abbas and Asád trudged through the snow, Abbas wondering, if this was the end of the world, why didn't it just end already, put them out of their misery? 

Moments later, they stopped, as much to catch their breath as to catch their bearings. 

"Do you see it?" Asád gazed through the field glasses.  

Abbas wiped his goggles with his gloves. The winds were gusting so the snow fallen to the ground around them was swirling as badly as if they were in a storm. "In this weather," he said shivering, "Could be a damn mirage." 

"No, it's the HAARP site. Acres of radio towers spread out like that. In the middle of nowhere. What else could it be?" 

The towers were firing up. Emitting a strange, eerie electrical hum. The dishes changing their configuration. Asád followed the arc of the dishes to a point in the sky.  

An overflying jet was knocked out of the air like a bug zapped by an ultraviolet light. There was no actual concentrated beam directed at the craft. Instead, there was a force field extending over the entire sky that, once penetrated, sounded the craft's death knell. 

They watched the plane crash and burn.  

Jeeps were already heading to the crash site to make sure no one walked away. 

"I guess it's true what they say, about it being a force field against alien invasion," Abbas said. 

"Just one of many purported uses, depending on the exact nature of the harmonics being utilized, and the dishes' trajectories. At a different frequency, it can send shock waves through the Earth to trigger earthquakes anywhere on the globe. As the story goes: Haiti's earthquake was meant for Castro's Cuba, but they were still learning to focus the beam. I'm guessing they were recently testing it again, and that's what got them on our radar." 

"We're starting to sound like a couple conspiracy nuts." Abbas checked the ground around the towers for human activity, and the base station controlling the towers, as well.  

"Amateur astronomers have discovered most of the interesting Earth-like planets over the last few years. Just because they lacked official credibility, didn't make the work they did any less profound. The people tracking the emanations coming from this station are no different." 

"So, what do we do? This place is as much tactical survival in case of an alien invasion as it is tactical threat." 

"Alien invasion? Yeah, right, now who sounds like the conspiracy nut?" Asád rubbed his gloved hands together in an effort to warm them, and batted his ears, already covered with earmuffs, to get additional circulation going to them. 

"Don't look now, but the last time there were this many reported UFO sightings in history was World War II, when things were looking dicey, as well, as to the future of civilization. Things go in cycles. And I'm betting not all of those aliens doing the sightseeing are here to wish us well." 

Asád sighed. "I guess we hang out and freeze our nuts off until we get further orders. One thing for sure, this place may have been built for a good many things; splitting the planet in two isn't one of them." 

Asád bit into his falafel sandwich, and drank Turkish coffee from his thermos.  

Abbas reached for his hookah. The glass water-bong had cracked under the shifting of the backpack's items. Luckily, Abbas thought to bring some crazy glue along, which he used to fix the two ends of the pipe back together, before lighting up.  

Taking a hit and exhaling slowly, he relaxed, despite the bone-chilling cold. "A couple of Arabs in Alaska. Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. What did the first Arab say to the other?" 

Asád laughed. "Chill out?" He coughed up blood. "Nearly forgot about the TB. Passion for causes is hell on the health." 

"Why are Arab soccer teams so shitty?" Abbas asked, playing the comedian to distract Asád from his medical problems. 

"Why?" 

"Every time they get a corner, they set up shop."  

Asád laugh so hard, the coughed up more blood. "You're going to kill me." 

"I should be so merciful as to save you from freezing your ass off." Abbas crumbled the frozen moisture from his eyes between his fingertips to unstick his eyelids. "When is the only time you can spit in a Persian woman's face?" 

"When?" 

"When her moustache is on fire." 

Asád laughed, and coughed up more blood, only less this time.  

"See, I cleared your lungs for you. Why is the Afghan air force so easy to train?" 

"Why?" 

"You only have to train them to take off." 

This time Asád coughed-no more blood. His face brightened; he showed Abbas his hands. 

"I expect to be paid for the therapy." 

"Seriously, what the hell are we doing out here?" Asád asked. 

"I joined the underground to escape persecution. I was tired being looked at as if I was here to blow up America. Figured I'd have a tight group of people around me who'd appreciate me for me." 

Asád dusted the snow off his hair. "Don't look now, but blowing up things is what we do." 

"You know what I mean." 

"Yeah, I do." He slid up his pants legs, patted his Flex-Foot Cheetah carbon fibre transtibial prostheses. "When I lost both my legs from the knees down, figured I'd come to America, get a couple bionic replacements, go play superhero fighting in a war that actually made sense; that wasn't just some feudal rivalry dating back to when man discovered fire."  

"Kids?" 

Asád lowered his jeans over his bionic legs. "That's the other thing. Thought it might be nice to have some kids I actually outlived. The three I had died strapping bombs to themselves. I made myself an authority on the Koran so there was no twisted argument they could use on me that I couldn't twist back on them. A lot of good it did me. Parents are nothing compared to peers." 

Abbas fought to catch his breath after taking a hit off his bong. "I have a wife. She teaches English at Yale. Still keeps herself covered up in protest of what we do to women in Afghanistan. None of her students know what she looks like. They fall in love with her and feel the pain of never knowing her beyond the eyes they can discern through the slits of her veil. Being as it's English at Yale, she rarely has to explain the ass-backwards logic of her stance." 

Asád laughed. "Why are you here instead of with her?" 

"It's difficult for an Arab man to be upstaged by his wife, even one who knows better." 

Asád took another bite of his sandwich, and talked with his mouth half full. "Explaining why I haven't made much progress on finding a wife and settling down. How can a man be undone by his prejudices, even when he knows they are ridiculous?" 

"The same way a man can crouch freezing his ass off in the snow at the edge of the world for some idealistic cause he can barely articulate. It matters less the form of madness, more the fact that habits take less mental energy than constantly changing how you come at the world."