Life, Liberty, & Pursuit of Justice

"I... I'd like that very much, Katherine. I think I love these two girls as much as you do. But the auto-docs have finally given them both clean bills of health. It wouldn't be right to imprint more tesseract memories on them, nor let them age here. It'll be easier on all of us if we send them back today."

"I know, and I agree" said Kathy, as she burped a sleeping Carly, and tucked her into her crib. "I took the pocket back to interface mode for about 15 minutes yesterday, and did a preliminary scan for a portal return. Their original incubators are still slightly radioactive from cobalt. I won't return them there. I picked a nice spot in the rear of the nurses' station down the hall. They're sure to be found within a few seconds of being returned, especially since Emily likes to yell over new places. I've also made two nice pure wool blankets in manufacturing, snow white, except for the dark grey wool of the lettering. I'd like to wrap each girl in one before we return them..."

"My God..." said Matt, as he read the message. "...What a wonderfully brilliant idea!"

A short time later, the head floor nurse was stunned to hear the healthy wail of a baby coming from behind her chair. Turning, she saw two infants wrapped in blankets, where she was sure there was just empty floor space a few seconds before. Within minutes, reports of the event spread to the reporters covering the bombing, and as stunned doctors examined the infants, the blankets were being stared at and reverently touched by everyone in the hospital that was capable of going to see them. The account of the event spread around the world, as did the message written on both blankets, in Arabic on one side, and Hebrew on the other: "STOP THE KILLING. SHARE THE LAND. LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR."

Chapter 4.

Matt continued to pet Kathy's foot on the Living room couch after the symphony ended, lost in thought. "Really great sound system," Kathy said after a while. "If you close your eyes, it sounds just like a live performance."

"Yeah. You wouldn't guess it with the 45-foot high ceiling, but it's true. The creature was a damn good audio technician. Another one of its many talents..." Matt said idly. It had been a week of Earth time since the Porto event. Kathy and Matt had dropped into a habit of jumping home for 64 seconds at the dawn of each day, and relaxing there for three days of play and combat practice. They were scheduled to return in 9 hours of local time, or 8 seconds of Earth time. They were about to head off to bed.

"The people tracking me have really stepped up their activity," said Kathy. "This week's news has really rattled Eternal Jihad. The outcome of their bomb wasn't at all what they wanted. They're super eager to get the spotlight off Porto. My guess is they'll make their move tomorrow. Friday is the holy day. It'll be their best chance..."

"Agreed. Perfect for us too, my day off. I'll be portal tracking you the whole time. Remember, any use of drugs to knock you out, I jump in immediately and we both go on offensive ops. No exceptions. I can barely accept using you as bait as it is...."

"It's worth the risk, Matthew. Having a young American female whom they'll probably threaten to behead is just what they think they need to grab back the world's attention. They're eager to let the world know they reject the message of Porto. We've got a good chance of me meeting someone in the senior leadership. We have to do this."

"Humph. They're not the only ones rejecting the message. Everyone I've talked to in Aramex thinks it's a CIA plot, even though there are two Muslim doctors in Porto swearing it's true. Everyone here thinks it's a Hollywood style fake. Actually, in some sense, I guess they're right. God didn't do this, we did! I wonder what the divine penalty is for impersonating God?"

"Well, we didn't sign God's name. We just gave a message that we both feel is God's true message. Regarding our salvation, I think we're still okay," Kathy said with a smile. "Israel has reacted positively. Their peace rally was more active than it has been in years. Not too much movement with their government, though. The control of the special interests of the settlers is still too strong. And as for the Pals, what a sad hopeless case. No movement for reconciliation at all. Hamas has that society sewed up tight. Anyone not for continuing the war of liberation is branded a Zionist collaborator, and we all know what comes next after that..."

Late next morning, just before noon, Kathy was coming out of a grocery market when the attack occurred. As she walked to cross the street with her bags, a car with dark tinted windows braked to a halt in front of her, and the rear door flew open. Someone behind her pushed her hard into the car, where two pair of muscular arms yanked her in. Kathy noticed that the few passersby were too stunned to help her. The attacker still outside closed the door, and the car drove off.

Kathy was held face down on the rear floor of the car, a booted foot pushing into the back of her neck, while a gag was forced into her mouth, and tied around her head. A hood was then placed over her head. Kathy was in total darkness, and she felt her arms yanked roughly behind her back and secured with steel handcuffs. She was held in this uncomfortable position on the floor for several minutes, as hands roughly and completely frisked her body. She was then yanked up by her neck and thrown into a sitting position between two of her attackers.

"One sound from you, just one, and I'll slit your throat. Behave, and you'll be okay."

"Oh, I bet you tell that to all the girls you pick up, Mr. Muscles," Kathy thought, as she nodded her head to signal understanding. Kathy sensed the attacker sigh in satisfaction at her compliance, and he began to relax a little. "Actually," she thought, "you guys were pretty smooth. You must practice this an awful lot."

"Status report?" chirped Matt, a brief burst of gravitons from a tracking portal. "5 by 5" Kathy chirped back with gravitons, a code that meant the mission was proceeding within acceptable parameters. The attackers could sense nothing.

The car trip lasted for hours. Matt would ping Kathy occasionally to let her know he was still with her. Kathy was actually beginning to get a bit bored, in spite of it being stuffy to breathe under the hood, when the man on her left started to grope her breasts.

"Oh, nuts," thought Kathy in resignation. Kathy heard a weird chirp from Matt, which she decided to interpret as a growl. She smiled, and chirped back a signal for him to take it easy.

"What are you doing?" came a voice from the front of the car.

"Just testing the female American dog again for weapons," came the reply on her left.

"Let me help!" said a voice on her right. Hands from Kathy's right joined in, and soon both of her nipples were being pulled. Kathy bore it in silence.

"Ha!" laughed the voice on her left, "the dog's body is stiff with fear."

"?" chirped Matt.

"5 by 5" Kathy chirped back, as she tried to puzzle out the man's comment. Her nipples had not swollen under the cruel treatment. She finally decided that the man had misinterpreted her body carriage. Kathy's muscles were toned to inhuman quality. If her attacker had bothered to take her pulse as he was pushing his fingers into her breasts, he would have realized her heart was beating at a calm 56 beats a minute. But he never bothered.

"Operations control is the other way," came a voice from the front.

"I've been cleared by operations," said the driver. "Our leaders want to inspire our followers. We're going straight to video production with our demands. Al Jezeera will already be there when we arrive. The Americans and their Zionist masters will learn what big mistakes they are making. This interrogation is going to show our fury. The Accountant himself will personally oversee all of this."

"!" chirped Matt. "!!!"

"Calm down!" Kathy chirped back, but she felt a rush of excitement too, one which she was very, very careful to hide. This was a development beyond their wildest hopes.

"Do you forgive me, cross believer, for checking you for weapons again?" came the laughing voice on her left, as her nipple was pinched again. A deadly soft voice whispered in her ear, "Will you turn the other breast for me?"

Kathy calmly decided it would be best not to respond, but she also decided to treat the question seriously. "I do forgive you, voice on my left," Kathy thought. "Utterly and completely. You are still God's child, and thus worthy of forgiveness. It's tragic that you ask only in jest. I forgive you, and in pursuit and in love of justice, I still stand against you."

Several hours later, the car ride finally ended and Kathy was led from the car into a quiet house. From the air temperature, Kathy guessed it was just past sundown, and a ping of her echo gravitons told her the house was small and very isolated. She was forced into a kneeling position, and held in it for over an hour. During the time, she heard several other cars pull up, and most of their occupants enter the room. Then she heard a convoy of many cars pull up, and the opening and closing of numerous car doors. A large crowd of people entered the room. A man walked by Kathy and sat in a large, comfortable chair in front of her. "Well done. Allah be praised! You have done Allah's will. This is just what we need!" said the voice. "Unclean female dog, are you frightened? Are you frightened that you cannot see?"

Actually, Kathy could see everything. She had engaged combat mode echolocation a few moments before, and had a precise multi-point stereographic 3-D display in her mind, tracking the position of each of the 27 men in the room. Kathy could also see the bright echoes of Matt's pings from the portal, as he also was preparing for combat mode echolocation. The mission plan was for Kathy to decide when to begin offensive ops. Kathy decided there was no reason to wait. She made her final preparation, and then reached with her mind and used a powerful skill that Matt had discovered during their last year in the tesseract, remote differential teleportation. Within a distance of about 30 feet of their bodies, Kathy and Matt could create a tight space fold, a disk of up to 1 cm in diameter and less than a micron thick. Then, they could shear the space fold. The shear could cut anything, even tesseract metal. The links in the handcuffs parted. Kathy kept them pressed together with her fingers. Then she reached out with a shearing space fold to the man sitting before her in the chair. After a second, the man sighed and rested back into the chair, appearing to consider Kathy in deep thought.

But he wasn't resting at all. Kathy had completely severed his spinal cord above the first vertebra, and the man had lost all body control. Kathy was expecting shouts, and spent close to 800 milliseconds reconsidering her situation when they did not occur. She finally decided it was time to go to offensive operations anyway, and pinged Matt the go code just before teleporting 5 feet up and 16 feet to her left.

Kathy felt Matt's combat pings as he entered the room, and she snapped her body into a spin kick, using differential teleporting to accelerate her strike foot to over 200 mph before impacting the skull of her first target. Two milliseconds after impact and after seven inches of penetration, Kathy jumped to her next target location, selecting a boosted elbow strike to shatter the next skull.

The room was alive with echo gravitons. Kathy and Matt were using them to lock their current targets, and also to paint their next four to five target selections with descending levels of illumination. By keeping track of each other's attack patterns, they were able to tightly coordinate their offense, achieving the attacking potential of a single integrated mind attacking with two bodies. Together, they were crushing skulls faster than six per second.

After 4 seconds of offense, the battle was over, 26 men in the room were dead. It had been so bewildering to the men and was over so quickly that no one had even shouted. Matt jumped outside and easily killed the 14 lookouts stationed around the house. He then retrieved a laptop from the backseat of a large BMW. By the time he jumped back into the room, Kathy had removed the hood from around her head and the gag from her mouth. Matt noticed that tears were streaming from her eyes.

"It's not like practice, is it?" he said quietly.

"Oh, no," sobbed Kathy. "Not like practice. It's so easy not to enjoy this! Look at all these people here, Matt. Ten, twenty years ago, they were all teenagers, or younger. Learning to explore their worlds, having hopes for their futures, excitements in kissing their first pretty girls, dreams of their future families, fantasies of sexuality and romance... All that potential, Matt, all that potential for joy and fulfillment, lost! Lost to their stupid, stupid hate!"

Matt said nothing, but his hand came up and he gently brushed away one of the tears from Kathy's cheek.

"Matt, will you do the more difficult part? Jump to the pocket and handle the body disposal? I'll handle the Accountant..."

Matt nodded and jumped. The portal he had used to enter the room was still active, and a few seconds later it began to bifurcate, splitting again and again. The bodies around the room then started rapidly to disappear.

Kathy walked over to the Accountant. It had been close to a minute since he had taken his last breath, and Kathy could see the look of distress in his eyes. His entire body was also sliding into shock. Cut off from the control center of the autonomic nervous system, his heartbeat was beginning to become erratic.

Kathy gazed into his eyes, and saw a little hate, but mostly just bewilderment, and.... embarrassment? Understanding set in. "Oh, don't be embarrassed about voiding your bladder," Kathy said kindly. "You couldn't help it. It's not your fault. I'll clean you. Come, Mr. Accountant. You are in serious need of medical attention, and I know just the place for you to get it." Kathy easily lifted the limp man to her shoulders, wrapped her arms around his back, differential teleported several feet into the air, wrapped her legs around his hips, and jumped to pocket medical.

Chapter 5.

Day 0

The man slowly woke from a peaceful rest, and reached up with his hand to scratch his nose. "What a weird dream," he thought. "What a bizarre, stupid dream." He suddenly realized he had no idea where he was. He became fully awake in an instant, looked around the room, and felt fear gripping at his heart. He had never been in a room anything like this, and had no idea how he got here. He was in a large, cubical room, with a ceiling of 23 feet. There was the bed that he now sitting on, a table, a desk, a few chairs, and a corner of the room that seemed to contain a sink, toilet, and shower. Turning his head, he gazed at the last corner of the room. It held a comfortable reading chair, a prayer mat, and a several large shelves of books. On the wall above the books was a 24-hour clock showing 00:43:28 and ticking. Above that was a counter that was currently registering zero.

Over the next hour, the man explored his room. He thought he had the disposal chute figured out, and the other chute was full of puzzles. It had provided him with a lunch after he started to test the controls. He was very surprised the food was of such high quality, very tasty, though he didn't recognize the various fruits at all. The most amazing thing about the room was that there were no doors or windows. The walls and floor felt like highly polished stone. How did he get in here? He assumed there was a secret entrance. Perhaps in the roof...

Turning, he gasped in surprise. In the center of the room stood a young, beautiful woman, wearing a white robe tied with a golden rope. Her feet were bare, the robe not reaching her ankles, and she wore no veil. Recognition set in. "You!" he shouted.

"Yes, it's me. Hello, Mr. Ata."

A brief look of shock appeared on the man's face. "You know my name?"

"Yes. I'll get right to the point. I want to offer you the possibility for a trip back to where we met. If you cooperate, you can be there within an hour."

"And in exchange?"

"I want all the bank accounts, transfer routing codes, and fiscal node locations of Eternal Jihad. I want the names and locations of all your funding control agents. I want the decryption codes to your organization's complete sub-ledger. And I mean complete. I'll know if anything is withheld."

"HA! Never!"

"Never is a long time, Mr. Ata, perhaps a lifetime. You will find that I am very patient. Do you see that clock there? I will return in 100 days to offer you this same choice. If you still refuse, I will return again in an additional 200 days, then 400 days, and then 800 days, and so on, until either you agree or die. I respect your right to choose death. The choice is yours."

"Don't make me laugh. No interrogation is like that. No one could be that patient."

"Please look in my eyes and hear the ring of truth in my voice, as I speak the following words. I am that patient."

Mr. Ata's face broke into a nervous grin. He stepped closer to Kathy. "I demand a lawyer! This is against the Geneva convention!"

"I've never signed it. There will be no lawyers. Your demand is rather amusing. I don't think the interrogation you had intended for me would have met Geneva's humanity standards... Another major point, you cannot count on any further medical care while you're here. Your pain and death will be considered your choice. Weigh your choices carefully... I don't do this from cruelty. If you want new clothes or towels or bed linens, just throw the old ones in the disposal chute. As often as you like. You are free to keep this place as clean or as messy as you like..."

"Did you also capture any of my followers?"

"At the house? No, they're all dead."

"What! All?"

"Yes, everyone, including the 14 sentries outside."

Mr. Ata looked furious. "And did you give them a filthy Christian burial?"

"No, actually. They were given a rather singular burial... I did weep for them though. All deaths of Allah's children deserve to be wept." Kathy turned to face away from his hateful gaze.

"Wait! Don't go. Perhaps I'll tell you what you want to know." The man moved closer to Kathy. "Tell me, where is this place?"

"I call it P2."

"Peetu? Where is that?" The man was almost within striking distance of Kathy.

"Just P2."

"No, I mean what country!"

"I won't answer that. Think about your choice, Mr. Ata. I will return in 100 days."

"Wait! Which way should I face when I pray? Which direction is Mecca?"

"Oh!" said Kathy, "The qibla, a valid request. Let me think." With the moon locked into maintaining its same face to the Earth, the question actually did have a constant answer. In her thoughts, Kathy aligned the pocket with the lunar geometry. The direction could have been anywhere, but by chance was quite horizontal. The man kept inching towards Kathy. Kathy pointed and said, "Face the bookshelves from my current position."

The man twisted his body into a spin kick, aiming for Kathy's abdomen. Kathy teleported as his head was turned away from her. The man lost his balance when his foot failed to connect, and he fell on the floor hard. He sprang up, and then howled in dismay and confusion into the empty room.

Kathy sat down by Matt by the temporal control console in M0. "Well," said Kathy, "that went pretty much as I expected."

"Do you want to go to Day 100 now?" asked Matt. "If I go all the way to interface mode, we can be there in less than a second."

"I just might, soon. But not right now. I'm getting an idea, something monumental. Ha, literally. It's an idea about monuments, and how so such of this hatred seems to be tied to them... Matt, our home tesseract is running in interface mode right now, right?"