The Matriarch Messiah

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I love God: I have no time left in which to hate the devil.

—Rabi'a al-Adawiyya,

eighth-century Persian philosopher and mystic

Skyline Boulevard above Silicon Valley, California

8:20 a.m. GMT-8, January 2, 2023

She could not say he was the last man she wanted to see at this moment, but he was near the top of the list. At nearly two-and-a-half meters tall, shy the length of her hand, a veritable giant, he fills the back seat of the MoxMover. Around his neck hangs his precious ancient bullhead pendant. She sneers as the monstrous man smiles. His straight white hair frames his modestly wrinkled long face with long earlobes.

"You?" she exclaims. "I told you I never wanted to see you face-to-face ever again. Not in this lifetime, nor any others, if this ancient matriarch DNA and past lives affliction Peter and I share means we will be two other people in another thousand years."

Zara taps her MoxWrap, refusing to engage this man's dark, dark eyes. A reflection of his heart, his soul, his power. Fury burns in her eyes as she spits out the words, "Go away and bother someone else. I will get another MoxMover. I am sure the world's most corrupt power broker, the head slave master of MoxWorld Holdings, has many better things to attend to than chat with a humble Kurdish woman seeking everything that he is not."

Her protestation is met with a malicious sneer befitting the magnate monster she has just described. And the great Alexander Murometz replies, "I am quite certain, my dear little Zara, there are not, nor will there ever be, any other MoxMovers that will come here to pick you up. It is me or several hours of a bloodletting, blistering hike in those boots of yours. My sources say your feet have become softer in all the wrong places."

This man not only has no respect for data privacy laws, he has no respect for any laws, since he thinks he is above it all. Zara stamps her feet out of frustration and the deep desire to find a more comfortable position for her tender spots. Still refusing to engage him eye to eye, she focuses on her MoxWrap, tapping away as she replies, "Then I will have Peter come back and pick me up. Now go somewhere else to bother someone more interesting than me. Someone who might not care that you are the devil incarnate."

With another malicious snort, the monstrous magnate grins and says back, "Yes. The devil incarnate who has looked after you all your life. Such a great evil man am I that I paid for your father's freedom from Saddam's t*****e prison. Twice even. A malevolently great devil who sponsored your theology and economics education with the Jesuits at Georgetown and your international business education at Moscow's National Research University."

"Yes, you, the monster who sent a naïve young woman to chase what she thought was love at Georgetown and Moscow, only to find you wanted her to compromise those men for your own devious purposes."

Hand to chin, Alexander says, "Ah, now I am a monster. But one who spent several months bribing all his corrupt connections to find out where the Daesh soldiers had hidden you. Who arranged for you to be rescued from those s*x slavers who violated, tormented, and tortured you and your cousins for nearly a year, and who helped you find redemption in killing all those involved. Freedom is never given, but taken, and it took a grand taker like me to free you and your father."

No longer facing him, with her stiffened back toward the MoxMover door, Zara answers, "You have played the guilt card for long enough. I repaid my debt to you four years ago when I left your service. And my family is clear of any obligation as well. How many lives did I end working for your personal security team? They are now spirits who haunt my nights. Did they deserve to be assassinated only because they were in your way? I told you four years ago—I told you when you kidn*pped me last spring, coercing me to join with Peter to find the black object—I am no longer that woman of hate, vengeance, and violence. I seek only to be a simple, humble Sufi like the saintly Rab'ia of Basra, who dedicated her life to be in the love of Xwedê. In the love of God."

"May I remind you, my dear," says the giant, "one can never repay one's debt to one's mother—in my case, your parental other."

"You may be a nephew of Sara, my great-grandmother, but you are not my parent," insists Zara.

The mists of fog have morphed into a fine drizzle. Zara's headscarf is matted and clinging tightly to her face. Dripping like a wet sheep in the rain, she tries in vain to wring part of her scarf dry.

A sneeze and the malicious magnate says, "My dear little Zara. My child. My dearest. Please come inside and be dry. I have your favorite style of headscarf in here. The finest lamb's wool from the Kurdish region of the former Iraq where you grew up. Why t*****e yourself when I am here to pamper you as my precious princess?"

Looking into the white skies that spawned the drizzle pummeling her eyes, she wonders why the heavens have not been favorable to her this morning. Soaked, Zara concedes and begins to enter the MoxMover. She hesitates, and then points to the man with the munched Mini Cooper. "We should help him."

"No, my dear. I do not help such diminutive plebes who think to deceive their loved ones without a world-changing reason. No, I do not think that man wants anyone to know he was up here. You see, there is a chalet nearby, where he spent the night with someone he should not have." Alexander taps on his MoxWrap and a virtual screen appears. "He is already working on his alibi on his MoxWrap as we speak."

Zara snorts. Another example of her Sasha's disrespect for individual privacy. She folds her arms across her damp chest and gazes out upon the c*****e across the glistening road, smeared with the dead cousins of Sammy the Slug.

She turns back to sneer at Sasha, only to be met by the glint in his eye. She exclaims, "You monster. You arranged this m******e. The trip to that big French bicycle race. You arranged for it to be offered on their Mox devices, did you not? You timed this accident to happen. You arranged for that man to have his affair up here and you likely made him rush out just at this moment to cause this accident. You made that traffic jam stalling the ambulance. Why? Why nearly kill everyone in sight to get to me?"

"My dear Zara, you would do well not to rant so madly to others. They might wrongly conclude your psychiatric impairments you suffered in that year of t*****e of all things venereal have come back. Those psychological afflictions my medical experts tried to patch up, have they relapsed? Be careful, someone might think you were still suffering severe paranoid schizophrenia."

Her buttons pushed—no, insensitively smushed—she lets out a quick exhale through her nose, closes her eyes, and slowly inhales. Exactly the remedy one of those medical experts instructed.

That man. He knows exactly how to disarm and defeat the strongest psyche. And hers. Strong on the outside, but devastated on the inside. Well, an inner psyche on the mend since she met Peter.

Her face dripping, her eyebrows set to fierce, her eyes play chicken with his. Then the image comes back to her. They saw him one time, Peter and she, when they bonded near the object.

She breaks the eyeball chicken match. "You," she yells with finger pointed. "We saw your face on one of those monstrous giants who violated the women of the matriarch's family, who enslaved their men in deadly labor camps. You are one of them. No wonder you are such a misogynistic sadist. No better than all those who have tortured, imprisoned, and violated the Kurds for centuries."

"Tsk, tsk, tsk," utters the giant man, letting out another sneeze, then rubbing his nose. "The kettle calling the crucible black. When was the last time you looked at yourself? Because I am naturally gifted with height, out of prejudice, out of fear, out of intolerance, you call me a monstrous giant. Look at yourself."

Poor Zara. She straightens her back and gazes away from this man as she stands defiantly outside the MoxMover. Yes, she is of the same size as a pro woman basketball player. But she is still shorter than her accuser.

The nerve of that man, turning her accusation against her. Dripping and shivering in the cold, damp mountain breeze, Zara stomps her feet again. Legend tells stories of the saintly Rab'ia making a carpet fly. If only she could do the same and fly back home to her sunny warm mountain, to her spot where she shared peace with her father. Whoever coined the term "sunny" California certainly did not live on this mountain overlooking San Francisco.

Surrender is her only remaining choice. She gives the black MoxMover a once-over. Nodules along the length of the roof, along the front hood over the lights, and along the rear bumpers. "I take it this is not your grandfather's MoxMover."

"No, my dear, it is my presidential security model. I have loaned several to the US president. This is one of his West Coast fleet. My latest security technology equips it. It can defend and defeat air, armor, and commando attacks. Is that not right, Moxy?"

A firm female voice responds, "Yes. I am tasked with keeping you safe, Mr. Murometz. Would you like me to scan Ms. Khatum for weapons?"

He dismisses Moxy's request with a hand wave as Zara enters the advanced AI-guided self-driving vehicle. Solar-powered, using no fossil fuels, requiring no recharging, emitting no greenhouse gasses. Satellite-guided using information gathered from surrounding vehicles' onboard navigation systems along with occupants' and nearby pedestrians' Mox devices. Light years beyond competitors' ill-fated attempts to develop self-driving cars.

A blare of horns and flashing lights causes her to dive into the back seat, almost landing on the monstrous man. His brows pointed into a V formation, his eyes as dark as obsidian disks, her Sasha helps her sit upright as he commands, "Moxy, chase that attacker and take out his tires."

The MoxMover rockets from standstill to sixty miles per hour in one point four seconds, stabilizing at ten feet from the offending pickup truck's bumper. A blue beam emanates from the front nodules, and the pickup's rear tires explode. The doomed truck goes into a tailspin on the slick road, crashing into the aged trunk of a redwood.

As the MoxMover speeds innocently off, Zara screams, "We must stop and make sure the passengers are okay."

Alexander smiles as if he had the best meal a man could have and stares forward, saying simply, "Moxy, please take us to Peter's mother's house."

"But the pickup's passengers…we must make sure they get medical care," pleads a frantic Zara. "Moxy, turn around and call for paramedics."

The Moxy voice politely responds, "My protocols do not include your command. Mr. Murometz, would you wish to include Ms. Khatum in my command protocols?"

"No, Moxy. Not until she regains her rational sense. She must understand that anyone who endangers my dearest Zara will be subject to counterattack by my forces. No one endangers my family without lethal repercussions."

Zara curls down into the farthest corner of the back seat, away from this madman, her eyes beading down into tiny ruble-sized pupils. "You are not family, Sasha. You are plain mean. I pray you treat Peter better than you do me."

Towel in hand, Alexander says, "Here, my dear. Dry yourself off. Remember when you dived off my yacht and swam back to the Crimean coast? You suffered from pneumonia for weeks."

A snarl, a pause, then she grabs the towel he hands her, removes her headscarf, and dries her straight dark brown hair, rubbing her long earlobes in the warmth of the towel. If one squinted, one could imagine Sasha qualified as mahram—someone she could remove her headscarf in front of. Given the situation, Zara gives him the unorthodox benefit of the doubt. She hides her face in the towel, shaking her head at this morning's turn of events.

The man to whom she had loaned her soul after he saved her from the Daesh brushes her cheek with the black lamb's wool scarf with red and gold embroidery.

Bracing herself with her hands as the MoxMover blasts through the hairpin turns down Highway 92, Zara peers at him. "Do not think you can bribe me with the memory of my grandmother's scarf, which I lost in London when those Islamophobic boys tried to violate me. I have not forgiven you for abducting me after Ramadan last spring, forcing me to compromise my vow not to bear arms again so you could recover the two halves of the precious black monolithic object you said were the root of Peter's family's ancient legend." She grabs the utterly silky-soft scarf from him. "And I have not forgotten either how you tried to kill us last June on that pier jutting into the ominous Black Sea."

Head atilt, eyes asquint, and with a stifled sneeze, the monstrous man replies, "Nor have I forgotten how I saved the world by reuniting the two halves of the legendary black object, which evaporated back to the heavens whence they first came."

He nestles back into his seat with lips pouted. "And then the massive electromagnetic pulse emitted by the objects shut down all the modern military hardware deployed from southern Russia all the way down to Palestine. The hotspots of the world neutralized." He turns to Zara and asks, "And who by chance equipped those military forces, made them addicted to those modern AI tech advances? I stopped the third world war from happening. I am the hero everyone should worship."

"Hero? Right," protests Zara. "You arranged for all those countries to be in the same spot at the same time, armed with all your advanced AI tech they bought at premium pricing. And you arranged for them to be purely mad at each other. Enough to nuke each other." She turns to glare out the back window. "Just like you made victims of Peter's poor simple, innocent, God-worshipping banana slugs. You, the hero who everyone knows is the villain."

With a dismissive puff of air through his thin, mean lips, the giant man says, "Speaking of my dear boy, have I not done for Peter what I have always done for you? Taken care of his deepest wishes? Once he has taken care of those two self-indulgent cyclists, Peter should be heading to his appointment with MoxWorld's finest public relation specialist, who will prep him for his first novel's book signing event. MoxMedia's newest company, MoxReads, selected his book and eleven others for its debut. I think he has already forgiven me for having pointed his own g*n at his head and pulling the trigger."

"Forgive you? Not me," says Zara. "You shot me seven times in the chest. If not for two layers of body armor, I would not be here. And then you tried to shoot Peter."

The monstrous magnate touches scars around his hands and adds, "Forgiveness. Something we both need to do more of. And I have magnanimously forgiven Peter for handing me that g*n primed to backfire in my hands and face. Perhaps you should be like him. Forgive this old man as you would forgive an errant father. For this old man needs you more than ever. I need someone who I can trust explicitly."

Yet again, he has hit another one of her buttons with devilish precision. She exhales prominently. Something about this man brings out the worst in her. Ever since she kissed his cheek after he awaited with the medevac team receiving the MoxWorld commando team that extracted her from those Daesh slavers, he had claimed his deemed right to her in all ways possible, training her to be his most effective, and MoxWorld's most soulless, black ops specialist. But she is no longer that fragile, broken girl. She is in command of her body, her mind, and particularly her soul. Now and forever.

"A father," protests Zara. "You could only hope to be one percent of my father. He loved me for who I am. Not like you, who only pretend to love me when you need me to do dirty deeds. You are still manipulating us. What is your endgame in toying with Peter's heart? His secret desire to be an author after a decade editing others' words? Know that I hate you for what you do to the innocent. Your evil surpasses that of Saddam, Assad, the Daesh. All of whom I fought in the name of our people's freedom."

She turns to him, finger pointed between his darkened, obsidian disk eyes. "If you do anything that brings harm to Peter, I will inflict upon you what you strong-armed me into doing to so many others."

His response? Not what she expected. With an ear-to-ear grin, he takes her pointed finger and pets her hand. "That passion. That fervor. I am so proud of my girl. You embody the age-old saying—if you love someone, you will do anything for them."

She is taken aback by his remark. Did Sara not say this came from an ancient ancestor? How did he find out about it? However he did, he continues to find buttons within her she never knew about.

"You really do love my boy Peter. Your passions reveal your true self," posits Alexander.

She shivers with a deep breath, her head quivering back and forth, buttons being smashed again and again. What are lies and what are truths coming from the world's most manipulative master?

He places her palm on his chest as he states, "I seek deliverance. I am destined for deliverance. And only you can bring me deliverance. The 'you' who Peter will help bring to her fullest being, your real essence. But only if you commit to him. As a woman. And he your husband. She who wants pearls has to dive into the sea."

Zara takes her hand back, revolted that he keeps using traditional Kurdish sayings to seduce her will. Her body is hers, as is her soul. She again protests, "Peter is not your son. No more than I am your daughter. You may think so, as you have tried to buy your way into the graces of my family. You may be my grandmother's second cousin. You may have the same ancient matriarch DNA that Peter and I share. But you are not my relative. You are not family."

That smugness returns as he points to her MoxWrap. "My dear. Am I not family? Look."

Gasp is all she can do as her eyes lock onto the image on her MoxWrap, flying back and forth as she tries to formulate words for what is in her mind. "How? How? This is my family's secret."

A sinister snort from her tall tormentor. "Yes, I know. You were sworn to secrecy. You could only tell your husband about it. And yet, you told Peter. What does that say about how you really feel about him?"

He makes an obscene gesture with his right index finger penetrating a tunnel formed by his left fingers, at which she narrows her eyes at him. He says, "You only need to consummate your love for each other tonight and you can fulfill what you have already signaled to your ancestors by your mere act of confiding in him."

She turns away from him, tightening her thighs together, her head still quivering.

"Look at your MoxWrap again," says the manipulative magnate. "My gift to you, my dearest."

A bigger gasp, and Zara replies, "But my great-grandfather said this was an unknown dead language, possibly spoken by those who preceded the Kurds. How did you translate it?"

With her lightning-fast reflexes, she turns and slaps his face, producing a thunderous sound. "You stole this. You and your microdrones. Shame on you."

Her hardest open-palm strike, and he only smiles even bigger. "So impetuous. I do love you so. You are so much like me when I was your age. Maybe you should come back to MoxWorld. You could run it one day."

"In your dreams," she scoffs. "I plan to quit the post you created for me as MoxWorld's Head of Turkish-Kurdish relations. I naïvely imagined our world's problems would be solved if your empire injected capital into the region. Now, they no longer fight with bullets. They fight with verbal a***e and threats. And me caught in between. I want to become like Rabi'a and devote myself to the love of Xwedê. Me, my lambs, and my mountains back home."

Her eyes back on her MoxWrap, reading the translations, she says, "Oh my. The black object was only a stepping stone to something far more ominous."

"My dear, I used Father Jean-Paul and his access to the Vatican's vast historical records to solve the Gollinger family's oral tradition in order to find the black object. What he did not have access to was why I needed the object to get to the true end goal. My father raised me to find the source of the blue light. That black object was only a means to activate yours and Peter's dormant genes for what is to come. You and he must procreate. Your child will allow you to find the blue light."

Ignoring him, Zara reexamines the photo of the document the translation is based upon. "This is not the parchment Sara left for me. This is someone's transcribed copy."

The giant innocently turns aside. "Well, as they say, I persuaded someone, someone very lovely, to hand-write me a copy." He turns back to her. "Somewhat forcefully persuaded, if you must know."

She scoffs again. "I put nothing beneath you." She continues to study the translation. "This describes the pathway to Xwedê. This is how I can be with Her."

Still with all smugness, he adds, "And the pathway to my deliverance. Which, by the way, can only be made by you. And only if you are bearing the child of Peter."

Zara crosses her legs, turning away from him again, and stares out the window at the Crystal Springs Reservoir as the MoxMover takes a side road back to Peter's mother's home. She turns back to him, legs still pointed to the door, and says, "There lies the beginning of a number of nonnegotiable problems. First, my body is mine. Not yours. Not anyone else's. Second, I cannot bear children. Those Daesh savages' t*****e methods made sure of that. These scars on the outside of my body pale compared to what they did to the inside." She lays her hands atop her lower abdomen.

"I am fully aware of your medical report. Tell me, did not Mary's mother Saint Anne have a miraculous pregnancy? The Immaculate Conception. The objects have made you and Peter two unique beings. People of miracles."

What is it about Peter that makes her unable to commit to lifelong bonding? This thought has haunted her for the many months since they first found a higher-order love together. But this is not the time nor the place to resolve this question, so she redirects. "Then there is the incompleteness of this parchment's text. It says what exists, but not how we find it."

"You forget, my dear. My father and Peter's great-grandfather and grandfather worked together during World War II in Crimea. My father never knew the exact location of the caverns. But Peter's grandfather, Nikolas, did not take the secrets of the caverns in Crimea to his grave. He left Peter his diaries, coded to protect them from the wrong eyes. I have had MoxWorld's best cryptologists working on the answer, but the code is something that only Peter knows. But you know him. He has no idea of what lies within him."

Zara smiles as she pictures the innocent ignorance Peter emits every waking minute of his life.

"My little Zara, with your love—not just the spiritual love that you two share but your intimate, physical love—you and only you can empower him to c***k the code."

Her buttons smashed again. She stomps her feet on the floorboard. "Oh, do not play that game again. You told me the last time I had to have s*x with Peter to solve the mystery of the matriarch to find the object. You lied. Peter, he's genuine. He could have taken advantage of the situation for his own lascivious pleasure, but he respected me and found that the secret for the two of us to transcend is not s****l, but spiritual."

The giant puts his chin in his hand, nostrils flared. That V in the eyebrows returns. His eyes bear down into hers. His obsidian circles are fully darkened. "Very well, then," he states. "We play hardball. Moxy, get the president of Russia."

MoxWorld's vastly superior AI answer to the eighth-generation versions of the other digital giants' virtual assistants, Moxy replies, "Would you like his secure line this time?"

"No, I want my private direct line to him."

And the two larger-than-average human beings stare at each other in détente for a minute until Moxy says, "I have the president for you."

"Sasha, my friend. What is so urgent that you must interrupt my cabinet meeting with your ultra-private line?" says the president in Russian.

Grinning away, Alexander responds in Russian, "You flatter me by calling me a friend. Our last call, you called me something much viler. I know you would have me executed if you could find a way to replace how I pump up your economy. That and the security of all those votes I get swayed your way, inside and outside Russia."

The line is momentarily silent apart from the president's breathing. And then he speaks. "You must want something very gravely to extort me so early in the conversation. Did I not invade the Ukraine for you and your hunt for mythical pyramids? What more can you demand?"

"Yes, no pyramids this time. I want the city of Siirt in the Anatolian Kurdish State nuked within the hour."

Siirt is her home. Zara gasps as she searches the MoxMover interior for an off button, or at least a weapon she could use to stop this monster. If she could have been born one of those fashionistas like Mei, she would have eight-centimeter-long stiletto pump spikes to puncture his neck. There is no way she can do anything with these boots other than stomp on his monstrous, ocean-liner-like feet.

Before she can raise her right booted foot, the Russian president replies, "But, Sasha, the ramifications of a nuclear attack so close to Turkey must be considered. Even though they are barely a NATO nation, thanks to your interference, those Americans will make objections, threats, and worse, sanctions."

Alexander lets loose a giant-sized scoff. "No worries, my comrade, my next call will be to the President of the United States, who also has a laundry list of a guilt card with me."

A sigh over the line, and the president replies, "Very well, Sasha. But the price this time will be more than just guaranteeing the next election for me. I have a few other countries' elections I would like guaranteed as well."

That giant grin back again, Alexander replies, "Very well yourself. Let me know which countries' elections you want fixed, but more importantly, when your nuclear forces will launch their attack."

The line goes silent and Moxy asks, "Mr. Murometz, would you like me to dial the American president on your private line?"

Before he can answer, Zara stomps on his feet, which only seems to cause her patron giant more pleasure. "You cannot destroy my home, my grandmother, my mother. They are your relatives too."

"Ah, good," replies Alexander with the smirk of smirks. "The truth comes out. I am family after all."

She stomps on his feet even harder. "You are just plain evil. And you must stop that attack. It is not right."

"My dear Zara, that is called negotiation leverage. You studied how to do this in your business master's program in Moscow. The fate of your home and your family is in your capable hands. Have a child with Peter so you can access the blue light for your own good. And of course, my good. Or have your family, friends, and neighbors vaporized. Very simple."

Now she beats on him with her fists as she screams, "This is pure insanity. You cannot ask that a city be destroyed just to force a poor Kurdish woman to submit her body, her womb, to your will. You cannot."

"You misjudge me," he says, no longer smiling. "I have done so before and will do so again. Now that the black object has activated the dormant genes in you and Peter, this quest to solve the legend of the blue light supersedes any other principle, moral, or concern. Moxy, how long until Moscow will be able to launch their nuclear assets?"

Moxy replies, "Fourteen minutes. Would you like me to get the US president for you now?"

Head into her hands, Zara cries out, "You cannot do this. Human life is too sacred for you to destroy just so you can own my body. Did you not hear me? My womb can no longer bear a child. I have been left barren by the will of Xwedê. My punishment for abandoning Her to chase those men in the military. Something I will always atone for."

She kneels at his feet and gazes up to meet his blackened eyes, emotionlessly focused on her, a flattened line between his thin lips, his head nodding ever so slightly. And then he leans down to kiss her forehead. "My child, you do have the best wishes for mankind in your heart. Your soul is no longer the darkened place it once was. The first of many changes your exposure to the object will bring upon you. You are ready for what is to come."

Moxy interrupts this precious moment, asking, "Twelve minutes until Russian cruise missiles are deployed. Do you still wish me to dial the American president?"

Alexander smiles at Zara kneeling subserviently at his feet. A sneeze, a rub of the nose, and he gathers the black lamb's wool headscarf and delicately wraps it around her head and neck, then says, "Moxy, end the nuclear attack demo program."

Face ashen, mouth agape, Zara quietly says, "You mean, that was a trick?"

"My virtual reality systems are superb, are they not? Even the Russian cabinet would not have been able to discern that was not their president. Even better, nor would the best voice recognition software of any country be able to determine that th was not their commander-in-chief. Soon, I will be able to have him sitting in here with us and you would not know the difference."

Zara gets up and sits away from him again. "You are evil. Pure evil. Hell is not hot enough for the likes of you."

"Compliments will get you everywhere with me. But only your compliments," he says with a face that beams as if 'he's had the world's finest meal.

He turns his head to gaze outside and adds, "If the threat of nuclear war sparked such terror in your soul, then you need to help me, help yourself find the cavern of the blue light. And if the world takes a turn for the worse and is on the edge of nuclear war, then you and Peter must bring another black object to be bonded with the source of that blue light."

"Oh no, you are not going to get me to chase another black object," she retorts.

"When that missile of utter devastation is falling on your beloved people, you will reconsider. I watch our Father Jean-Paul's secret search for another black object. And Mei also has another search that should elucidate its location. You, my dear, you must work on your relationship with Peter."

Her head turns, facing the other window. A long stream of air is released from the depths of her lungs through her nose as she pushes her head into the window, nodding.

"So, I take it we have a deal. You will let Peter father your child," asserts Alexander.

Face scrunched up into something hideous, she protests, "You have not heard me. It is not possible."

"My dear Zara, you please me that you do not say you do not love him. Only that a physical impediment prevents you from loving him in that way."

Zara glances down, mulling the profoundness of his insinuations. The second time during this car ride he has caught her.

"My little Zara. If not with you, Peter is going to have to be a parent with some other woman with the right genetics. Only a woman with the matriarch's DNA who is with child can access the blue light. If not you, who? He must be that woman's child's father."

Glancing out the window again, she sees only stands of coastal pine trees. The MoxMover has parked in an isolated area away from the highway. And what she has never imagined would happen has. His hand is firmly placed upon her upper thigh.

"What do you think you are doing?" she yells as she tries to remove his monstrous hand from her.

As she tries to put his hand into a painful wristlock with no success, he scoffs. Her eyes are open wide, painfully wide. His face only reflects signs of pleasure, not pain, at her woeful attempt to deter his advance. Her chest caves with pressure, as if crushed by one of Saddam's tanks used to squash prisoners' heads in the Anfal Campaign.

Pins and needles prickle throughout her face, and in her head, logic triumphs over brute force. She says, "Why would you have saved me from the Daesh if this is what you wanted to do to me all along?"

Taking his hand back, he scoffs again. "My dear. If I wanted to have you in that way, I would have done so years ago. But for reasons we cannot discuss now, you are the one woman in the entire world I cannot touch in that way. Every other woman exists for my pleasure. But you? You are truly special. I need you with me in a different way."

Her head shakes ever so slightly side to side, eyelids still open to their extreme limit. But after a deep exhale, she says, "Then why the touch? Why are we parked where no one can rescue me?"

His hand approaches her again. She grabs it, ready to fight in vain for her dignity, for her honor. But he clasps his fingers lightly around hers and says, "I need you to be with me in the way you say you do with Peter. That way in which you can see the ancients."

"I did not think you believed in how Peter and I bond."

Head tilted down at her, he peers out the top edge of his eyelids and sneers. "Don't think I haven't bonded with my share of women who have the ancients' genes. Passionately—pleasurably so, at that. But with you, I cannot do so in the way other gene-afflicted women have learned to receive love from me."

"Why do you need to bond with me in that way?" she asks as she pushes her back well into the door on her side of the MoxMover, pulling her headscarf tighter around her face and neck with her free hand.

Pushing her fingers up against his, both palms pressed together, he says, "It is not I who needs to bond with you in that way, but you to me. For only if you do will you understand your path to fulfill your great-grandmother Sara's wishes."

A silent pause, their hands still laced together, and she feels perspiration build where her palm is pressed against his. She remembers how Peter ingeniously figured out that physical s*x was not the only way he could bond with her. She takes his fingers and wets them with her palm, then moistens his index and middle fingers with her lips and tongue. Likewise, she puts her fingers up to his lips for him to lick.

Her wetted finger upon his temple and his upon hers, she says, "Close your eyes and focus on my breathing."

And then it happens.

Not the harmony, beauty, and bliss of bonding with Peter, but clouds—angry black ones. Swirling, twisting, and shouting. The type one sees out the plane window when flying through a thunderstorm.

Through the storm, through the haze, the image of a woman comes forth. Like her, but not her. Scared like her, backed into a corner with a giant staring at her.

Darkness. They are in a mud hut. Spears and bow and arrow hang from the wall. A blanket made of animal hide covers her. It is the time of the ancients. And the giant gets up, which sends the poor scared woman scrabbling to pull her meager blanket tighter against her.

Eyes wide open again, Zara screams. "I can't. I can't—I've seen too much pain like hers. I can't watch this."

Giving her the comfort of physical space, the modern-day giant, her Sasha, leans back against his side of the MoxMover.

"My dearest Zara. I too have seen this same vision with another who bonded with me, in the correct way as said by the ancients. Intensely, passionately so. That woman you see and that giant have something to do with the blue light you are to seek. You must understand her life if you are to solve the mystery of the blue light. And from that woman, you will find for me my path, what I must complete."

Shivering. Not from the cold, but from having lived a moment of an ancient originator's life. Not Nanshe, whose name Peter had called Zara in one of their bonding sessions, but someone like Nanshe.

Zara finally replies, "I cannot. I cannot be with Peter like you ask. I cannot bear his child."

The strained expression on his giant face eases, while his fierce gaze softens. He gently caresses her knee and soothingly speaks, "It must be painful for you knowing that the Daesh destroyed that part of your womanhood with such brutality. May your tormented soul find solace that MoxWorld medical genetics continues to advance. What we could not heal back then may become possible soon. Your 'cannot' may soon turn into 'can'."

Teary eyes droop down, fixed upon the floor as creases span across her forehead. She ponders, Could I ever? Is 'cannot' because they destroyed my womb and all that leads to it? Or is it simply that Peter and I are cat and dog—complete opposites rather than the perfect halves of an apple, as the ancients' prophecy claimed?

Silence as the MoxMover begins to move again. Twenty minutes of no words spoken, only Zara staring at her boots, which suffocate her aching feet. Finally, the MoxMover stops in front of Samantha Gollinger's house, the childhood world of her son Peter and daughter Michaela, and where Zara and Peter are staying while MoxWorld retrofits Peter's new condo with the latest security systems.

The monstrous man breaks the silence. "Peter's mother would want you as her daughter-in-law. You have been here a dozen times since meeting her. You know this is your new family as well as I do."

"Again, you are wrong," protests Zara. "I only want to follow the path of Rabi'a. She was and I am celibate by choice, and only in love with Xwedê."

Shaking his head, he replies, "If not you, Zara, then if you want to find God, if you want to fulfill Sara's dying request, you must help Peter find the woman who can make our destiny possible. Read for me what the translation of your great-grandmother's parchment says. I want to know you know this by heart."

Zara gazes at her MoxWrap and says, "With her miraculous child within, she met Her."

Shaking his head, the giant interrupts. "It says Him."

Undeterred, Zara continues, "Only with child could she have found Her. The blue light. The final point. The only point. The end and the beginning. And she who has been with the light knows that only another like her bearing a child can free her to be with the light. The blue light. The child of her child will one day return with a miraculous child and the cycle continues. So is the love of our God."

"Good," he replies. "You understand well what you must do. There are those who seek to betray me within MoxWorld, like the mole you killed on the last mission. You and Peter, I trust. I need you to remember this day for what is about to come."

Torn, Zara leaves the MoxMover, unsure whether to be angry, afraid, or in awe. Two steps to the house, she turns back and leans into the MoxMover to kiss the giant's cheek.

"That is for translating my great-grandmother Sara's parchment. She would have wanted to give you that kiss. That is the last affection you are to see from me."