The Future is a Present We Give Ourself

The Future is a Present We Give Ourselves

By

S. Patrick McCully



APPROXIMATE WORD COUNT: 4800


“Oh my God, that looks like a courier! The Judge’s know!” Jahin’s mother stepped away from the kitchen window, hoping she hadn’t been seen. “ They know and they’ve sent for my son!”

His parents tried to protect him, but Jahin’s future arrived in the form of an expressionless, cloaked man on a rainy Thursday morning. Jahin’s father, still sleepy from a long night at the lab, answered the knock at the door. The cloaked man handed Jahin’s father a small scroll, sealed with the red crossed scales of the Council. Jahin’s father broke open the seal and unrolled the scroll. The words shook him. He steadied himself against the frame of the door.

“There must be some mistake. Jahin is only sixteen.”

“There is no mistake. They are the judges, and they have summoned your son.”

The man stepped back from the door and disappeared into the rain. Jahin’s father sank into the chair by the door, the scroll falling limply from his hand. Jahin peered out from the kitchen. He snuck closer and reached for the scroll, but his father snatched it up.

“Father, I have already been before the council.”

“Yes, son, but they wish to see you again.”

In Jahin’s lifetime, people were only summoned before the council for two reasons, for judgment or for sentencing. All Moch’Aire citizens were judged at birth to confirm their life cycle. Judgments were made by the Council of Judges, each of whom ruled by the “sight”, their ability to read the past and future lives of others. Instead of seeing a single face before them, a Judge could see all of the faces masking the soul, reflections of past and future lives. Only two judgments were ever handed down: guilty or innocent. Innocent meant the start of a normal life. Guilty meant a sentence to the Somnutarium. A judgment of innocent still hung from Jahin’s bedroom wall, a proud reminder of his judgment.

***

Jahin and his parents were ushered into the huge semi-circular room of the Judges Sanctum. His parents sat in two chairs placed just inside the entrance. They timidly sat into the hard wooden seats, trying to be supportive, but wilting beneath the presence of the judges. Jahin was guided to the Great Seal of Truth in the center of the room. A thick marble slab curved around in front of him, forming a gigantic wall behind which the fifteen judges were seated. Jahin searched the judges for a sign of what to do, but their onyx robes and silent visages betrayed no emotion. Betrayed by his youth, he turned back to his parents for guidance.

“It’ll be all right, Jahin. Just cooperate and tell the truth.” His father’s tone was comforting, but barely concealed his own uneasiness. Jahin’s father was ashamed of the process, embarrassed that his son might not be normal.

Seated beside her husband, Jahin’s mother refused to make eye contact with her son, staring instead at the cold marble floor. In contrast to Jahin’s father, she was awe-struck by the process, but instead of pride, she felt fear that she had done something wrong. She knew that the sins of her past, the alcohol, the drugs, the parties, particularly when she was pregnant, would come back to her now. Somehow the council would prove her son unworthy and he would never forgive her.

“Who are you?” A voice boomed from the center of the council.

“My name is Jahin.”

“Is that all that you are? We shall see.” The voice was stilted, rehearsed, as if torn between asking the questions and merely reading them yet again for another unworthy candidate.

A door opened to the left of the chamber. A shadowed figure, wrapped in a gray tunic, stepped into the center of the room. It stepped in front of Jahin and pulled the hood back revealing a bearded man.

“Who is this man?” asked the hooded leader of the council.

Jahin steadied himself. He turned his head a bit to study the face before him. Images began to flash in his mind. Faces, some old, some new, raced past his consciousness, like the countless faces he saw in passing trams on his monthly trips to the city.

Jahin’s father recognized the confusion on his son’s face. He stepped forward and placed a hand on his son’s shoulder.

“It’s OK, son. If you don’t know, we can just walk away.”

Suddenly, the flood of images slowed and finally stopped, settling on a stable pair of images which seemed to fit the man as surely as if Jahin had known him for years.

“He is Evers Talon, a ship builder from the town of Comalt, near Rsal.” Jahin was surprised by his own answer. He could not recall ever meeting this man before and had no idea where either of the towns was located, if they existed at all.

The Council members turned toward each other, silently discussing something beneath their hoods.

The Council leader’s voice boomed again. A slender finger snaked out from under the judge’s robe, pointing directly at the man now known as Evers Talon.

“Who was this man?”

The cascade of images returned, whipping past Jahin, daring him to sort them out.

“Robert Tanner, a blacksmith who was killed when a horse was startled in a thunderstorm.”

“Who will he become?”

“He will become Jankin Leard, Mayor of the town of Johast.”

Fourteen of the fifteen council members stood up in unison, turned around and walked through the doorway behind the leader’s chair. After several moments, the remaining judge stood, his dark visage towering over Jahin.

His mother held her breath, waiting nervously for the next words from the cloaked leader of the Council.

“Come forward.”

Jahin hesitated and caught a quick glance at his sobbing mother. His first steps were tentative, his legs still trembling beneath him, but he somehow made his way to the side of the remaining judge. Jahin could not see the man beneath the hood, but he could feel the eyes boring through him, probing for some hidden defect.

“Come with me, young Jahin.”

Jahin’s mother let out a sigh and let her face drop into her hands, relieved that she had not tainted her only child.

The cloaked man turned and walked toward the door immediately behind him. He waved his hand to usher Jahin through the door. As Jahin passed, the man grabbed his wrist, stopping Jahin in the doorway.

“I am Horin, the Chief Judge. From here on, I will be your teacher and you will be mine.”

Jahin stepped through the doorway, away from his past and his parents, toward his future.
***

“Jahin, I’m sure you have many questions.” Horin now spoke with a tender, compassionate tone. “This Inner Chamber is the place you will find the answers. Like others before you, this room is the place where all judges learn about things others cannot know.”

Horin led Jahin to a circular room lined with paintings, carvings, and sculptures that depicted all aspects of recorded time and many eras that were not familiar to Jahin. Horin placed his hand on Jahin’s shoulder, pointed at a faded painting hanging in the center of the room and began the first lesson.

“According to the teachings of Alrin the first all living things possess a soul that is reborn when the first life ceases. Each soul is imprinted with the aura of lives it has led and will lead. The auras reveal all that a person was and all that they will be. You have the ability to read these auras. You have been chosen to be a judge, to sit on the council and judge citizens by their past, present, and future deeds.”

“There must be some mistake. I have seen these auras before, around others, but I see nothing but your face when I look at you.”

“You have the sight, young Jahin, but Judges are forbidden to read each other. The knowledge of one’s future is difficult for all but the most powerful judges to confront.”

Horin pointed at a dusty carving on the wall, a fine etching carved into a large marble slab.

“When Alrin revealed that he had the sight, he was persecuted as a heretic and a charlatan. But mortality proved to be his ally, as his critics passed from the earth and new citizens were born as he predicted. While he too passed on, his predictions came to pass and believers were born from the bridge he built between the past, present and future. This bridge became a cornerstone of Moch’Aire society, guiding our customs, our laws, and eventually our daily lives. Death was no longer an evil slowly stalking mankind, but a harbinger of hope for the future. Many citizens, realizing that reincarnation is not based on race, gender or other factors, began a movement to improve the condition of all people through progressive and sweeping attacks on poverty, famine, and other blights on mankind. Aging and infirmity were no longer prisons trapping people within the confines of their own limitations. Diseases would no longer run their course. Suicide became a reasonable means to escape pain, suffering, and misery. People would simply end their current life in gleeful hope for the possibilities of the next.”

Horin’s hand swept across the room, settling on a collage of religious images.

“Religions sprang up to deal with the changes. Life became something to explore rather than endure. Instead of making the most out of each life, the greater good became a more powerful motivating force. By improving mankind, each person would ensure a better world for their future lives. Thus it was that greed, and lust became relegated to our history books.”

“But, not all aspects of society were positive and bright. Our system could not account for the most vile and despicable of humankind. In centuries past, the death penalty was used against the most heinous criminals. As we soon learned, murders were often committed by the same person through his successive life-spans, or as Comel used to say ‘Murder comes with you’. A criminal executed for murder would retain the same tendencies upon his return in a new body. Therefore, execution became freedom, a freedom to kill again. The criminal justice system adapted and sought ways to incarcerate a criminal despite the passing of the body in which the crimes were committed. Thus came the Somnutarium.”

“The Somnutarium is part prison and part sanitarium. Cryogenics and nanotechnology preserve their bodies while drugs suspended their thoughts. A sentence to the Somnutarium means an eternity suspended between life and death, never shedding the current life for a new one, forever denied the basic right to die that was the birthright of all Moch’Aire citizens.”


***
The first day of teaching turned to a week, then a month and soon Jahin was seated beside Horin staring down from the Judge’s seats passing judgment on the rest of Moch’Aire. He had been a judge for three years now, but the nightmares were coming more frequently. His days were spent reading other people’s auras, but his nights were filled with terrible images of death and destruction. Even here in the Council Chambers, he could still taste the tart, copper taste of the blood. His eyes still burned from the smoke. His nose stung from the putrid smell of burning flesh.

The nightmares always seemed quite real to him, but last night’s hung in his mind, like a photograph of a childhood memory. He remembered walking down a littered, windswept, street, stepping over prostate bodies of the recently deceased. Every building was in ruin.
Men recoiled at the sight of him. The sun and light fled before him. His left hand clutched a gun. His skin was torn and scorched and blood flowed from several wounds, yet he felt no pain. A great laughter echoed through the streets. He tried to pinpoint the laughter but it seemed to erupt all around him.

“Is there no one left to stand against me? Am I so powerful, that everyone cowers before me? I am what I see. I am the future.”

The words hung in the air, an open challenge to anyone foolish enough to wander into the abattoir that filled the once bustling city street. The voice around him was unsettling, but familiar. It was his voice.

His voice. His hands. His gun. His destruction. But Horin had declared him a judge, a protector. It was his job to see these images in the auras of others. It was his job to exact punishment. Maybe it was stress, a series of bad dreams concocted by his imagination? But what if they were true? What should he do? If he told anyone, particularly the other judges; the future he saw would place him in the Somnutarium, suspended forever between life and death, never again experiencing the dawn of birth or the return of life and love. If he did not tell them, then his premonitions would come true. The blood of untold innocents would stain his hands.

“The deaths of those people, their bloody, violent deaths will be on my hands, unless…”

***

Jahin went about his normal duties, facing the other judges each day, expecting his secret to be revealed through his face or his actions or his aura. Many of the people he judged were faces that he saw in his dreams, faces that he saw broken and torn, calling out to him for mercy. No longer faceless, they had escaped from his dreams and walked through his waking thoughts. They forced him to smell the burning flesh, to taste the warm blood and to hear their tortured screams.

Jahin began keeping a journal, a morose testament to a future he hoped to prevent. It swelled with details of his dreams that might provide some clue of the tragedy to come. After a month of entries, he awoke with a clue freshly burned into his mind from another nightmare. A single word: “Anares”. The word slid off his lips and began to disappear from his memory. He quickly grabbed his journal from the nightstand and scribbled the word in the margin. “Anares”. His memory settled a bit and he remembered how the word had emerged in the dream. It was screamed in terror by another victim falling before his blade. “Anares”. It was a name, his name, the name of the man torturing Jahin’s dreams and haunting his waking thoughts. The name of the man he would become, the name of the man Jahin had to stop.

***

A week of soul searching passed for Jahin and his burden. Sleep became a unique torture for Jahin. He welcomed the chance to uncover more about this strange future, but often woke retching at the horrors his subconscious had to endure. Like Nietzsche’s abyss, his demons stared back at him, daring him to live his life, reminding him of the horrors that death would unleash. As long as he was alive, the demon within him was contained, unable to contaminate the next vessel that he now called Anares.

Protective clothing and a first aid kit became his traveling companions. He prepared immaculate meals at home to avoid tainted foods. He worked from home and walked to the Council chambers, dodging auto accidents and traffic mishaps. He mapped routes that led him outside the crowded throngs of people packing the city streets. But this path might tempt the Hedons, a dark subculture bent on achieving the greatest possible thrill from the current life by abusing the promise of a future one. Although many Hedons had been judged and sentenced to the Somnutarium, there were other ways to hurt another human that were less obvious to the Judges.

Jahin weighed the odds of death by violence and death by accident and paid a visit to an old friend at the museum for a help. He left with a rusty, ancient revolver and six bullets, a frighteningly small weapon in days past, but a powerful tool in an age where lethal weapons had been banned. The gun spent its days tucked within his coat pocket, never straying far from his ready grasp.


***

The stress of dodging shadows and hiding his secret slowly began to overwhelm him. The Somnutarium awaited him if he revealed his visions. The blood of thousands would flow from his hands if he failed on his mission. Anares became a recurring theme in his dreams, dealing death to anyone who heard it. Somehow, somewhere, he found the strength to look past the horror and seek clues to his future. One night, a curse born from his own lips rewarded his suffering.

“For you, Eria Crizal! Your blackened womb spawned me and now I send these souls to spring forth anew that I may have more to wet my blade.”

Jahin awoke with a start, his body quivering. He wiped the sweat from his face, and quickly scribbled the name into his journal. He raced to his computer and typed in the name. He found no immediate results but located a small community in distant New Grenta that claimed to be the home of the Crizal family. Perhaps the answer to his future lay in that city’s present.

***

Flapping tents and pushy salesmen littered the New Grenta central market. The market had a reputation as a place to find anything, and that included information, something Jahin was willing to reward pay handsomely. Jahin kept his ceremonial onyx judge’s robe in a satchel over his shoulder, draping himself in a white tunic and tan leggings, typical for a traveler to New Grenta. He quickly learned that he could open many doors by simply rummaging through his money purse while talking to the locals, who were quite willing to trade knowledge for currency.

Jahin’s first stop was a man bearing an aura of honest work and decency. Jahin approached the man with two coins in his hand.

“I am looking for a local woman. Her name is Eria Crizal”

“There is no woman here by that name.”

“A pity.” Jahin pulled two more coins from his purse and made them dance across his fingers. He flipped them leisurely in his hand and began to walk away.

“Wait! There is a young girl called ‘Sunshine’. I think her name is Eria. But she is only fourteen.”

“Eria? Show me where to find her.” Jahin pulled another two coins from his purse, intent on keeping the man’s attention. His other hand snaked into the pocket of his tunic, running over the coarse, rusted metal of the ancient revolver, loaded and ready to do Jahin’s bidding.

The man led Jahin to the south side of the market where a young girl was carrying a wicker basket of oranges in one hand and cradling a dozen more in the folds of her apron.

“Eria Crizal?” asked Jahin.

“Yes, sir. Do I know you?” She struggled to balance the weight of the basket against the shifting oranges in her apron, but her pleasant smile veiled any discomfort. The fourteen-year old merchant’s daughter had come to town to trade the fruits of her father’s labor for milk, eggs, and honey. She set her basket down and studied Jahin. Her steady brown eyes melted his resolve.

“Um…no, I just…I just wanted to know where I could find some fresh tomatoes.” He removed his hand from his tunic, letting the cold steel revolver settle back into his pocket.

“Mr. Aithen sells the freshest here. He charges a lot, but his stand is just down this row.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Jahin silently cursed himself as he turned and walked away. His body had betrayed him. How could he turn away from his mission? He had come face to face with the woman who would bear his terrible sins upon the Earth, and let her walk away. He buried his face in his hands, fighting back the tears of his disgrace. He hoped there was another way. There had to be.

***

The countless days without sleep finally overtook him and he collapsed on the bed of his hotel room. The dreams found him again, hiding there in his humid room in rural New Grenta. They taunted him, tortured him, dared him to confront them. He could not hide. He could not elude them. All he could think of was to make them go away. And the only way to do that was to change the future, to ensure that the nightmare never happens. He had failed in his quest to kill her, but he had other options. He was a judge, one of the supreme rulers of Moch’Aire. He would simply ask her to forgo parenthood in the name of the Council. She had to agree. That would save the people in his dreams from their fate.

He knew that his story would be difficult to believe, so he chose to confront her in the finery of a Council Judge; the bold onyx robe that demanded respect. He found her at her father’s market, washing fruit to be sold at the bazaar.

“Yes, your Honor?”

“I am called Jahin. I am a Judge of the Council.”

“Yes, I remember you from yesterday. How can I help you?”

“Do you know of the sight?”

“Yes, you can see the auras around each of us. It allows you to determine the best course for us.”

“Very good, my child.” The words scraped past his lips but somehow he made them sound genuine.

“Child? Oh yes. Dear Sir, can I beg a favor of you?”

“Of course, but a favor given demands a favor returned.”

“I cannot refuse a Judge, but I would be so honored if you could read the aura of my child?”

“Your child? But you have no children.”

“Not yet. The doctor tells me I am pregnant and my firstborn will arrive any day now.”

Jahin could see the bulge beneath her tunic, no longer hidden beneath the folds of her loose apron.

“Can you tell anything about him? Can you read the aura inside me?”

Jahin stepped back as her words cut through him. If she was pregnant, then her unborn child was due to receive a soul, Jahin’s soul.

“I am out of time” he exclaimed. “It’s too late!”

“Excuse me, your Honor?”

“I am sorry, ma’am, but I am out of time.”

“What is wrong with my baby? What did you read from him? “

“I can’t! No! Nothing! Not yet. He is …he is too young. Yes, I can not read him until he is born.”

Jahin turned from the woman and raced down the street. For the second time, he turned away from the chance to confront the nightmares. He tucked himself into his hotel room and hid beneath the thin, fraying sheets of his bed, hiding his tears from everyone except himself.

Was he so weak that he would condemn the world, instead of spill the blood of this insignificant woman he had struggled so hard to find? Had he run out of options?

He crawled out from his hotel late that evening and found solace in the bottom of a bottle at a local café. Hours melted into days as Jahin sat at the café, alternately drowning his fears and plumbing the depths of his soul. Then it hit him. He was a judge, one of the chosen. He would simply command her to give up the child’s life. She had to respect his wishes. If the baby was killed before it was born, it could not receive the soul that will guide it. This would break the cycle which he had foreseen.

***

Jahin returned to the marketplace and threw enough coins around to learn where Eria lived. He found her washing dishes in her mother’s kitchen. The doors were unlocked, as was the custom in the town, and no one else was home. Jahin knocked at the door.

“My Judge. Your Honor. What are you doing here? Can I be of more assistance?”

“Eria, your unborn child will soon receive a soul. I can see it. His aura is filled with death and misery, of blood and tears and flames. Your son will be the architect of a destruction that no one has seen before. It is my burden that I must know. It is your burden that you are his mother.”

“This cannot be.”

“It is. I am a judge. I have seen it.”

“What should I do?”

“You cannot bear this child.”

“But he is my son, my first child. I cannot do what you ask of me.”

“His life will mean the death of thousands.”

“I…I cannot do what you ask. Forgive me.” Eria’s face grew white. She collapsed to the floor.

Jahin stepped forward to help her. His left hand brushed the bulge in his left pocket and he remembered why he brought it. His hand snaked into his pocket and withdrew the .38 revolver.

“Listen to me! You have no choice! This child must not be born!”

“He is my son. I cannot let him die.”

Jahin felt the pressure of the cold steel trigger beneath his index finger, pulsing in time with his racing heartbeat. His finger gently squeezed, each ounce of pressure bringing the gun closer to firing. Closer to killing the woman standing before him. Closer to killing the woman that would bear his soul back into the world.

The floor creaked behind Jahin. He turned to see a man holding a threshing scythe in calloused, field-worn hands.

“What are you doing with my daughter? Why is she crying? Get away from her! Eria, child, run away now!”

Jahin turned to look closer at the man, but instinctively kept the gun pointed at the frightened girl crouched on the kitchen floor.

“My friend, as Teren Smat, you would have understood. Shol Crizal, I need you to understand now!”

“Judge or not, you can’t threaten my daughter!” The man stepped forward, raising the blade high over his head.

“Father, No!”

Eria’s plea drew Jahin’s attention for a fateful moment. Jahin began to speak but caught a glimpse of the scythe as it swung through the air toward his head. The force of the blow sent a shockwave through Jahin’s body. His fingers tensed, causing the gun to discharge in his hand.

Jahin doubled over from the pain to his head. As he fell to the floor, he noticed that Eria‘s hands were clutching her chest and deep crimson spread beneath them. His eyes were locked on her as she slumped to the floor.

The voice of Eria’s father cut into Jahin’s ears. “What have you done? You’ve shot my daughter!”

Jahin rolled to one side to see Eria’s father standing over him, the scythe raised high over his head. He searched his memory for a prayer to recite as the blade sliced down toward him. He never felt the blade that cut through him and ended his life.

A thick, choking, darkness swept over him as his blood flowed onto the floor. It surrounded him, squeezing him, drowning him. He could not breathe. He could not see. He could not hear. He could not feel at all. He was consumed by the darkness.

Then all was white. He was weightless, floating through space. He was hovering, floating. A deep thrumming kept a steady pace around him. He blinked heavily to open his eyes and saw a small hand drifting in front of him. It was a child’s hand, a baby’s hand. It was his hand. A soft voice echoed around him: a female voice, a girl’s voice. He heard doctors rustling around. Then he heard a familiar voice, the voice of Horin, his mentor.

“I am honored to be the judge of your child, Ms. Crizal. I see greatness in his past. I see the aura of a man I once knew. I see greatness in his future.” Horin beamed, his face struggling to conceal his joy. “I am certain I will see this child again.”

~THE END~