Chapter 37

Diagram of southernmost point of White Mall diamond array, showing a bit of sand on the far left and then the three colored bands of yellow, red, and black cobblestones before the green ivy outside the hexagon, plus the blue circular indentation in the white marble floor, plus the overhead footprint of the stairwell (stairs lead down to the left, the west-southwest direction).

Time: The next morning, Monday, January 28, 2019 7:28 AM

Mark was having a very strange but not unpleasant dream. He was wading through shallow puddles of warm water while a naked Toshi was dancing around him in delight. Her eyes! They were so strange. Her beautiful Japanese eyes were sparkling like diamonds. And then Mark stirred and woke up. The dream had been semi-real. Toshi was kneeling near the bottom of the enormous bed. She had brought several cloths and she was washing his feet.

Frida was semi asleep near him, but as Mark turned to smile at his bride, the movement woke up his sleepy bedmate. Frida sat up and watched Toshi in her work for a while, and thought the expressions of love from Toshi’s hands were unmistakable. “Hey,” she said with a grin, “Did you guys get married last night?”

Toshi shared the briefest of a mind link with Mark, just to confirm her understanding, and then nodded, a smile bursting on her face. “Yes, I guess we did.”

“And you didn’t invite me to the wedding?” Frida replied with a laughing smile. “I’m very disappointed.”

“Well,” said Toshi, “It was kind of a private ceremony.”

“Oh, I’m sure!” Frida laughed again and then paused for a moment. She was fascinated with her companion’s work. “Toshi, may I ask? Is this some sort of Japanese custom, for the wife to wash her husband’s feet?”

Toshi grinned back. “Not exactly. The Samurai have a foot washing ceremony as part of their sword training. In terms of honoring my husband, perhaps I’m starting a new custom. What do you think, Mark?”

“Hmmm? Yeah, sounds and feels like a great idea.” He sighed in the loving caresses of her hands and added, “provided I get to wash your feet too.”

“I was hoping you would approve.” Toshi paused for a moment. “Perhaps I could wash your feet in the morning, and if you like, you can wash my feet at night.”

“Hey!” interrupted Frida with a big smile. “What about me? I have feet too!”

Simultaneously in the Red Mall lounge.

Jada leaned back in her chair and took a rest for a moment. There were twenty people in the lounge, their entire group except for the three people trapped at Black Mall. They were about half way through their weekly Hour of Common Prayer, and Jada was enjoying been with such a large group of people. They had so many projects going on, it was rare to have everybody together.

Jada smiled to herself. “A group of twenty, is that a large group now? I guess it is, certainly an awesome percentage of what’s left of humanity.” She took a deep breath and got back into the group’s conversation. Holly was telling Fatima it was folly and a horrible idea to try to create a new religion. In Holly’s opinion, the history of Earth provided far too many examples of religions being used to dehumanize people.

“I know,” replied Fatima. “That’s something I worry about too. But I don’t think the danger is intrinsic to religion. People have a tendency to form habits and customs whether they’re religious or not, and then to shun people ... well, maybe shun is too strong a word. I’m thinking of the practice of pulling back from full acceptance. It’s the responsibility of each of us not to fall into this trap. I’m trying to build a faith where we never do that, where we never pull back from people with different beliefs, or even no belief at all in a deity.”

Holly stared at Fatima with a frown. “Easy to say, but do you really mean that? What if your own children wanted to pick a different religion, or no religion at all?”

“Who’s in charge, Holly?” Fatima replied. “Who should be in charge of the unique relationships my children will have with the Creator?”

Holly grinned. “Even if their relationships are limited to rejecting your Creator’s existence?”

“Yes, even then! It’s not my job to be in charge! My children need to explore and build their own relationships. I might want to share what my own relationship is like, but that’s appropriate, is it not? A parent should want to guide. A parent should want to prepare their child for the joys and sorrows of life. But offers to guide and share are not controls! Even if you were my own child, Holly, why should I want to control your beliefs? Why?”

Holly stared back thoughtfully. “Wow, Fatima, that’s not the attitude of religions I’m familiar with, and I’m including Islam when I say this.”

“I know. I’ve done a lot of soul searching this past month, made a lot of changes in how I approach my Creator. Fundamentalists within my old faith would probably judge me an apostate now. I think ... I think what we’re doing now in these Prayer Hours is extremely important. I think in addition to talking about our faiths, we’re laying the groundwork for our government.”

Holly was aghast. “Oh shit! You want to build a theocracy?!”

“No! Far from it! I’m trying to say that our principles of mercy, our principles of justice, our principles of purpose should be common and present both in our faith and in our governance. Believe me, I know and respect the difference between secular power and sacred power. My vision for my faith is that there be no human expression of sacred power, no ruling priesthood, no governmental clerics. But our governance and our faiths can never be truly separated, don’t you see, Holly? They are forever joined by our guiding principles, our understanding of goodness and how we strive for it.”

Jada leaned back and smiled. She was enjoying these sessions immensely, much more than she had originally expected, and she thought it was a wonderful idea to use their work here as a foundation for building their government.

Jada glanced at the time. In a half hour, the group would split up. Jada would be part of the team making the preliminary exploration south of White Mall’s home complex. They would soon know if Mark’s conjecture was correct.

Two hours later.

Mark was having his usual morning class with Frida on basic street fighting tactics, and for the first time Toshi had joined them. Mark had felt both curious and pleased by her presence. A quick glance of their eyes revealed the explanation. As Mark’s wife, Toshi was honoring his request to learn marital arts, and she was turning out to be an excellent and attentive pupil.

Mark thought they were very near the end of a great two-hour workout, and then the Leophone began to ring. He stopped the lesson immediately and answered the call. “Hi, Jada.”

“Yep, it’s me. Nothing major yet, but we found a few things of interest. Uh, you sound a little out of breath?”

“We were just finishing a workout. I was sparring with Toshi and Frida, two against one.”

“Two against one? That doesn’t sound very fair. You spar like that?”

“We were practicing street fighting. No rules in how you win, if you’re doing it for real.”

“Oh. So how’s it going?”

“I couldn’t be more proud. I have two excellent students. They’re both very fast learners.”

“Great. Mark, the reason I called, first of all, do you remember that the White Mall diamond array is slightly closer to the perimeter wall than the one at Black Mall?”

“Sure do.” Mark remembered that White’s home complex joined the Mall on the outside arc of the spiral, so its hexagon was centered eighteen meters south of the spiral centerline, half the width of the twenty-meter wide Mall, plus the radius of the circular stairwell leading to the Mall (eight meters). White Mall’s offset pushed it towards the perimeter wall. In the far north, Black Mall’s home complex joined the underground Mall on the inside arc of its spiral, so it also had a southern offset of eighteen meters, which for Black Mall was an offset away from the perimeter.

“Uh huh. Mark, the diamond complex here, it’s different than yours. There is no perimeter walkway on the first floor. Nothing on the inside leads to one, and the outside walls are opaque. We hiked outdoors and checked.”

“Ah, that’s interesting. But there’s still a perimeter walkway on the second floor?”

“Yep. That part is almost the same, except here the walkways cover most of the last hexagon too. Both the eastern and western walkways descend to the first floor about thirty meters from the southern vertex, the very tip of the diamond.”

“Ah. What’s it like?”

“It’s interesting. There’s an open triangular hall all the way to the southern vertex. The floor is beautiful. It has the appearance of white marble. And there’s lots of light from floor to ceiling windows. The hall cuts right into the great shield buffer. Inside the building, the tip of the southern vertex cuts through the warning zones until it reaches halfway into the final black band of cobblestones. Right at the tip, there is a door on eastern side of the vertex leading out.”

“Yikes! You mean leading right out into the ivy?!”

“Yeah, just about. It’s scary. If you walk west around the vertex tip, you can get to the red and then the yellow cobblestones and then finally the sand. Emily and Aggie have a conjecture that there are different levels of risk for each surface, but the interface won’t reveal explicit information.” Jada paused. “That plant is unbelievable Mark. It’s so cold outside, -17C, and we still think the plant is active.”

“You’ve tested it?!” Visions of Gilberto being sawed in half filled Mark’s mind. “My God Jada, be careful!”

“We are being careful. I’m saying this from observations with binoculars. We haven’t opened a door more than a crack, just to test that it opens.”

“Uh ... still, be very careful. That plant can react much faster than human reflexes once it gets moving. Don’t rile it!” Mark paused for a moment and thought about the new information. “Hell, Jada, we couldn’t have lost everyone from White Mall to the plant. They had sixteen women, right?”

“Well, as Fatima reminded me a few minutes ago, that’s still a bit of an assumption. We have no proof all the parties are in a linear order with the malls. But yeah, let’s assume Party #2.”

“Right, and the census counter for the women isn’t down that much.”

“Yes, that’s our working conclusion too. I’m imagining the scenario. We have sixteen women and two guys heading to Great Balls of Fire. They show up, have a feast, and then realize they’ve been abandoned. They start to wonder what the hell is going on. That’s what happened at Aggie’s Party. That’s what happened to the nurses that came to our Party. Sunset is approaching and they’re wondering what the hell is going on.”

Mark nodded. “Yeah. Maybe they leave at sundown like Aggie’s party, or maybe they did what we did, leave early the next morning. Entering the diamond array would be their obvious choice. It’s due south of them, the direction that should take them right back to the parking lot. That’s what we would have done, if we had been unfortunate enough to pick Party #2.” He paused. “But where did they go for real? Were they lucky enough to walk the black cobblestones to safety?”