Bō Jinn
© Copyright 2014 by Bō Jinn
All rights reserved to the author, in accordance with international, European and domestic law of copyright, for the reproduction, distribution, circulation and alteration of this work in any manner and under any name, including images contained in the work. Any such reproduction or distribution may be allowed if, and only if, the express written consent of the author is forthcoming in that regard, with the exception of minor excerpts for the purposes of review or citation.
Failure to abide by these terms will result in immediate legal action.
The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between fictional characters and real individuals either living or dead is (for the most part) entirely coincidental.
Illustration: Jess Hara {SAPRO} –
[email protected] – connect via
www.saproartist.com
Cover Art: Diogo Lando –
[email protected] – connect via
www.diogolando.com
Typography by Kevin Beese – BZ & Associates Inc.
– First Edition –
ISBN 978-1500922856
Divided Line Publishing ™
Should you have any inquiry feel free to contact the author via email at
[email protected] Connect with the author at www.facebook.com/Bojinn80
DEDICATION
For my mother and father,
to whose inspiration, faith and unconditional love I am as eternally indebted as my hero was to his young heroine.
EPIGRAPH
“I demonstrate in the first place, that the condition of man in his most natural state is nothing else but a mere war of all against all.”
Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan
“Love is such a priceless treasure that you can buy the whole world with it, and redeem not only your own but other people's sins.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, words of the elder Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
BOOK I: MARTIAL ORDER
I
C5: DAY 347
C.5: DAY 348
C.5: DAY 363
C.5: DAY 364
C.5: DAY 378
BOOK II DELIVERANCE
II
C.5: DAY 462
C.5: DAY 464
C.5: DAY 470
C.5: DAY 491
C.5: DAY 587
C.5: DAY 588
C.5: DAY 600
C.5: DAY 613
BOOK III: FULL CIRCLE
III
C.5: DAY 691
C.5: DAY 692
C.5: DAY 743
DAY 0
DAY 0
DAY 0
IV
C.6: DAY 347
BOOK I
MARTIAL ORDER
I
The President stepped up to the mirror.
It had been a long time since she had last taken a good look at herself. The silver lining of the clouds haloed the reflection of a vaguely familiar woman, aged well beyond her years – 46 to be precise, which, by the mean of the day, put her on the fringes of youth. The furrows in her blanching skin had begun to deepen around the sapphire eyes and her hair had whitened to platinum. The past year had aged her more than the previous two score and five; effects hidden behind layers of painstakingly applied coats of cosmetics. Politics compels even the most humble to some degree of vanity, and just before public occasions, vanity was quite mercilessly imposed upon her by a personal platoon of cosmetologists, the last of whom were just leaving her room.
She was alone.
By the reckoning of some half-billion citizens across the eight nations of the new Eden Accord, today was the greatest of all days. But the joy she should have been feeling was stifled with a grief which had abided for at least the previous two weeks leading up to that day. She drew nearer to the mirror and dragged her fingertips over the sombre mien of her reflection.
There was a knock at the big double-door. A foot stepped over the brink. A tall, dark and handsome man in quite normal house clothes entered and stopped in the doorway.
“The autocade is here.”
“I’ll be down soon.”
“Nervous?” He entered, gently closing the door behind him.
“No, not really,” she replied, her gaze fixed ahead.
He slowly sauntered up behind her, slowing with each inch until his chest gently touched her back. Two strong arms came around her and the long dark hair brushed against her neck as he took breath of her and the warm hazel eyes peered up.
“Madame President…”
She felt a tingle as the warm lips kissed her neck and she smiled a melancholy smile.
“Don’t even think about it.”
“Just one kiss before my superhero goes out to save the world.”
“It will be a long, long time before that.”
“I still want my kiss.”
“Do you have any idea how many man hours it took to get me to look like this?”
She loosed his arms from around her, turned within his embrace and kissed him gently on the lips, careful not to mar the work of her devoted beauticians. “Where’s our little angel?” she asked.
“In her room. Drawing again.”
“Animals?”
“Always animals.”
“Animals are a good place to start.” She looked away and was silent. “There’s that piece I’ve been meaning to finish. I’d like to work on it this evening.” The glimmering sapphires wandered, forlorn. Her hands dropped and she turned away with a sigh, massaging her temples. “What a year…”
“Yes. But it’s over now.”
“No,” she sighed. “I’m sure it won’t be over before I’m dead and buried.”
“It’s over for now.” He arched his head and put his lips to her crown. “Come on,” he said, drawing open the door. “It’s time to go.”
“Not yet.”
“Shields has everything set to run like clockwork. Make his job easy for once.”
“I’ll be down soon,” she said. “I’ll only be a few minutes. Shields can wait.”
“The world too?”
“Yes.”
There was a pause of subtle commiseration.
“Alright,” he murmured, with a slow nod. “…She’s in her room.”
The door shut.
The sound of the footsteps fading down the hall prompted in her a sudden, inexplicable urge to weep. She confined her tears with a deep breath and, once she’d gathered herself, stepped out of her boudoir.
She wondered whether she would ever get used to the ostentatious halls of their new home; an aversion to opulence borne through humble beginnings. There was a strange and terrible fear that always accompanied the steady increments of power, and the ascension had been rapid and sudden lately. The first prayer of every day was that the burden be taken from her, and the more she prayed for it the more power seemed to befall her like some providential paradox. She did, however, have one very precious well of courage…
She sidled over the red carpet to the only open door across the corridor and when she neared the door, a whispering noise sounded faintly from the other side.
The door noiselessly opened into a small and untidy room. Loose sheets of crumpled, unfinished sketches littered the floor among the bedding hanging over the mattress. Across from her, seated at a desk the back of a small figure bathed in a golden light, and a long cascade of golden hair fell over the back of the chair and down to the floor, and the little back was arched forward over the little desk as a little figure scribbled away whispering to herself, bringing a vague smile to her face. Stepping into the room, the President trod over one of the loose pi
eces of paper littering the floor and bent forward to pick it up.
Silence broken, the little blue-eyed, rose-hued face turned around, startled and cried:
“Mom!”
“My little artist. I came to see your latest work.”
The President came up by her daughter’s side.
“No!” The girl immediately threw her arms over her desk-top.
“What is it?”
“It’s… It’s not finished.”
“That’s alright. I can help you.”
The little girl blew a disappointed breath and the little blue-eyed face sulked.
The President closely studied the drawing, and when she regarded the dozen or so other sheets of paper, crumpled and strewn across the floor, it became apparent that they were all the same attempt at the same indiscernible image.
“I don’t like how it looks.” The girl leaned back, reluctantly taking her arms off the table-top. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”
She peered over her daughter’s shoulder.
“Is this what I think it is?” she asked, picking the unfinished picture up off the desk and indulged her daughter with a long gasp of excitement: “A phoenix!”
The little head beamed and nodded.
“Miss Carmichael talked about them at school yesterday.”
“Oh, really? And what did she tell you?”
“She said… that they’re made of fire.”
“Yes… And, did Miss Carmichael tell you how a phoenix is born?”
The little head shook and the little blue eyes were wide with enthusiasm.
“Well…” The President put the drawing back down on the desk lowered into a seat at her daughter’s side. “After a phoenix burns up and dies,” she explained, “a new one rises from the ashes.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“They don’t have a mom and dad?”
The President shook her head.
“Then… how are they born?”
“A phoenix has to die to be born.”
“How can you tell if it’s a girl or a boy phoenix?”
“…You can’t.”
“Oh.” Her daughter looked up with a pout. “Mom, are phoenixes real?”
“Realer than anything else in the world… One day I want you to be a phoenix too.”
“I can be a phoenix?”
“Mhmmm… Anyone can.”
A loud rushing noise came from the outside as two aircraft hovered right over the building. The beginning of the long line of vehicles from the motorcade was visible through the bedroom window. The President gazed longingly into her daughter’s eyes.
“I have to go,” she said.
“OK.” The little head bobbled.
“Promise me you’ll keep working hard on it, alright? I want this to be your best work yet.”
“OK, I’ll try. Good luck today. Grandpa says you’re going to save the world.”
She smiled a smile that would at any moment break into tears and cupped her hands around her daughter’s head, kissed the golden crown, then unwillingly stood up and left the room.
Five men in black waited at the foot of the stairs. Front and centre among them was a colossus of a man.
“Shields.”
“Madame President,” her chief of security saluted automatically as she descended the last stair. Lt. Col. Lucas Shields was a model of austerity, eyes almost always hidden behind a pair of opaque lenses. A smile rarely found its way across his dark, substantial visage. “They’re waiting.”
“So I’m told.”
Without more ado, Lt. Col. Shields turned and proceeded down the hall and she followed – two guards on either flank – through the hall and into the vestibule, where the larger portion of her extensive guard detail waited beyond the main doors, and the mobs from the global media beyond them. All the members of the household stood at attention and she brought the procession to a stop at the threshold just before the reaches of the media’s scopes where her beloved stood waiting at the doors.
“I’ll see you later,” she said, nervously averting his eyes.
“I can still come with you…”
“No. The event will be broadcast to more than half a billion people. There are still a lot of pro-militarists around and I will not make an exhibition of my family.”
He was silent and she took his hand.
“I’m fine,” she said, softly, “I promise, I…”
“Madame President,” Shields broke in with a rumble.
With great unwillingness, she let go of the hand and was led through the main entrance, shadowed down the path to the motorcade until the limo doors were opened. The guards dispersed. She entered and the doors were promptly closed.
She scanned the great, opalescent façade of the manor, finding the window of her daughter’s room, and she kept her eyes on the little golden speck right up until the moment the motorcade began to move away in synchrony and the manor disappeared.
Soon they were outside the limits of the presidential residence. The main roads of the inner city were lined with throngs of people and the cheers rung with furious elation:
‘NOVUM MUNDI RESURGENT! NOVUM MUNDI RESURGENT! ’
The great image of hope on flags and banners soaring high, tapestried all over the city on high billboards and display screens; the flaming phoenix of golden-red, circled with the eight stars of the eight nations of the new Eden Accord – the symbol of the new world. The hollers and ovations were stifled through the ballistic glass windows. The gathered crowds were a blur of racing thought and soon the motorcade left the inner city and came onto the highway en route to the Capitol Building.
She stared drearily through the window, into the undefiled beauty of the autumn day. The clouds congregated over the sun. Straight beams of white light diverged from the crevices onto the rolling hills and the snow-tipped mountains were in the distance. A rain should come, she thought.
“So, what is it?”
“What’s what?” she asked, without breaking her stare.
“Come now,” said Shields. “Greatest moment in world history, and you’re sat there looking like you’re on your way to a damn funeral.”
She could keep her thoughts hidden from most people, but there were few who knew her better than her chief of security, being one of the few and fortunate who had been spared by the great wave of global war, there were things he understood about her that others could not, even her own family.
“Well? he asked urging her heart to her voice.
She turned away from the window and faced him with downturned eyes.
“Did you ever get that feeling,” she started, “when you’ve spent your life working for something? You finally get to the end. You start to think about the journey.”
“Doubts about something that happened along the way?”
The President looked away again.
“Something like that.” she replied.
Silence fell again.
“The martial world will fall, eventually,” Shields assured. “When it does, the phoenix of Eden will rise from the ashes.”
“It will be a long time before then,” she said. “A lot of wars left to fight.”
“Maybe,” said Shields. “But you have more than half a billion people behind you. You’re their hope. Whatever price was paid to get us here – it was worth it. Don’t forget that.”
She regarded him fondly.
“I won’t.”
C. 5: Day 347