Chapter 6

Kathy's very first act out of P2 was to modify the temporal controls and push the pocket into balance mode. She reduced the time contraction in M0 and P6, allowing her to push P2 from maximum contraction to maximum dilation. P2 was now running 4,096 times more slowly than Earth, and M0 and P6 running 4,096 times faster than Earth. Kathy and Matt spent the next three days working furiously on the data from Mr. Ata's laptop. At the end of their analysis and program setup, a total of 195 seconds of Earth time had elapsed since Kathy had teleported the Accountant away from Earth.

"Well," said Matt, "it's set to go. All that's left is to switch M0 to interface mode, and engage the programs."

"Who did you finally decide would steal cell 16's money, the Spanish team in charge of isotope procurement?"

"The cell running the safe houses in France. This plan is so brilliant, Kathy! With the accountant's complete records, we have a fiscal map of everything. I don't think even the caliph knew what a stickler for details that guy was. The caliph would be horrified to know the entire fiscal layout of Eternal Jihad was being carried around in one laptop! Who would have guessed they have over $6.6B of liquid assets? And once I push this button, with our knowledge from the laptop and the tesseract's technology, the following will happen: Within two seconds, the $6.6B will disappear. Gone. Totally, permanently gone. The money withdrawn into bit-bucket oblivion. For that brief period of time, we'll have total interbank control. And we'll spoof the withdrawal addresses of all the control agents! Each cell will think the some other cell has stolen its money! With the incredible news of the monument writing coming out of the Middle East, each cell will think that the other cells have panicked, and are trying to run off with the money. Hell hath no fury as a terrorist who's been ripped off. When the smoke clears, I wonder if anyone in Eternal Jihad will be left alive?"

Kathy flipped the master M0 temporal switch, and a second later engaged programs FISCAL-0 and GALILEE-0. "I've started the terraforming project too. You were so correct to design it. Our God is a God of abundance. I'm very happy to give the world back the Sea of Galilee the way is was before people spoiled it... I must say, Matthew, I did have a few second thoughts about FISCAL-0 over the last three days. Deceiving your enemies into killing themselves, is this a Christian response to terrorism? My heart is a peace with this now, but it took some thinking to get there... What did you finally do with the caliph's personal assets?"

"There's a Pashtun tribe on the Afghani border he's hanging out with, bankrolling them big-time. The caliph and the entire tribe are bankrupt now. They'll find irrefutable bank wire evidence that the tribe's money was transferred by the caliph's top lieutenants to another rival tribe, one that's been trying to curry the caliph's favor as his protector. I wouldn't want to be the caliph when he wakes up this morning."

Four days later...

"Well, it wasn't as if we didn't try..." said Matthew quietly. "At least Eternal Jihad is history. News of the caliph's death is spreading around the world, and his cells are so actively killing each other, they're becoming quite visible to the police. The sequencer projections of 80% of the organization killed or in custody within the first week appears right on schedule..."

"It's ironic, Matthew. Eternal Jihad had been in existence for 12 years, just the same amount of time from 1933 to 1945, the existence of the thousand-year Reich." Kathy's face broke into a smile. "And why the sad face on our other efforts? The Sea of Galilee is pristine, surrounded by beautiful parks filled with orchards. And I would guess from the demonstrations that almost all the Israelis want reconciliation... Well, not their government, and not the settlers... It's interesting how the settlers have concentrated in Jerusalem, desperate to see that the Pals don't get any of it... How stubborn can you get?"

"In the Middle East, Kathy, the word stubborn takes on a definition all its own..."

"But the Pals! This is really encouraging, Matt! Their peace rally led by their intellectuals was huge! Hamas is furious!"

"And Hamas has the guns! And the Israeli government has the guns! All the decision makers are against what we're trying to do. And the government of the Kingdom is sand- blasting your message off the Ka'ba."

"Matthew, Matthew, think big! We didn't come this far just to let the idiots of hate and religious superiority run the show! We've got the technology for terraforming. Take a look at program PORTAL-0. Those guys in Mecca and Jerusalem have got to understand that they just can't mess around with me on this. The cycle of hate will end, I swear it! Even if I have to take these cities down to their bedrock!"

"My God, My God!" said Matt a few minutes later, as he studied the program. "Kathy, are you serious?!"

One day later...

The process started as a single portal. Entering the Earth's atmosphere, it began to bifurcate rapidly, swelling in number to well over ten million in less than a minute. Every man, woman, and child in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank found themselves standing in the parks by the banks of Galilee, the adults naked, the children in clothes. And then the vacant city of Jerusalem disappeared, old and new, pizza shops and discos, quarters and neighborhoods, gates, walls, cathedrals, minarets, temples, basilicas, and mosques; over four thousand years of human history destroyed as the city was taken down to its bedrock, and then rebuilt as a garden...

The walls between Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank disappeared. As the portals continued to bifurcate, all the unattended guns, bullets, tanks, barbed wire, jet fighters and suicide-belts were suddenly crushed in the singularity at the center of the galaxy.

In Mecca, the entire mosque area of Masjid al-Haram was engulfed by a tremendous rainstorm, and when the waters cleared, there remained a simple plain of granite over the site, with a single word doubly carved across its huge expanse of acres. In Arabic and Hebrew, the word was LOVE.

One week later...

"Well, that's the end of it, Kathy. The last of the revelers are leaving the parks, and the readings here say that all the portals have shut down. Everything is back under human control."

"I'm so glad. I never liked us taking on the responsibility of porting sick people into the Egyptian hospitals. I'm glad they were so gracious about it."

"Well, if Allah makes a sick person appear at your hospital, it's hard to say no... We did a good job of keeping the small children with their parents. There aren't that many missing person issues left."

"What was the final tally on the double-ports?"

"Just under 300,000. Mostly Jewish settlers. The population of Hamas diehards was surprisingly small. They're in internment camps now. The interim Israeli-Palestinian government is debating whether to re-admit them. They seem to be leaning to giving them a second chance. That was the most brilliant part of your idea, Kathy, having the portals on standby, and taking any violent person at Galilee straight to Mecca."

"Seeing all the dances of reconciliation that first night at Galilee! It made all the work worthwhile. All the naked adults joining in each other's dances, not caring about the old nationalities... YES!"

"The latest talks by the interim government suggest they're heading into a loose confederation, one Arabic, one Jewish, keeping Jerusalem a shared garden, no rebuilding at all. It's all that we could have hoped for... You know Kathy, when we were learning Hebrew; I noticed that the name Jerusalem translates to Foundation of the Two-Fold Peace. Perhaps as a garden, the city can finally live up to the true meaning of its name..."