The Golem and the Messiah - 3

Chapter 3: The Light of a Thousand Suns

The Indian summer passed quickly in the late autumn of 2038. The first bursts of cool air off the water seemed to defy the fiery warmth of the sun just setting in the west over New Jersey, while the final light of day cast a rose hue on the restaurants and storefronts along the Riegelmann Boardwalk. Maria turned her back to the anarchic sights, sounds and smells of Coney Island and adjusted her scarf against the chill. She removed her shoes and walked eastward toward Brighton Beach, the weathered gray planks of the boardwalk cool beneath her feet. Pausing for a moment to lean against the metal railing, she stared out to sea. A fine mist rose from the Atlantic in the distance, and the gentle salt spray of the shorebreak caressed her face. Below her an old couple strolled the beach hand-in-hand. The sight of them brought a veil of tears to her eyes. She envied their tranquility. Others strolled the boardwalk also: families with young children, bands of teens in excited oblivion and lovers out for an obligatory promenade, an intimate lull before the carnal storm. All members of a revolving but never-changing ensemble straight out of central casting. So it was that evening, she thought, and so it had been for generations.

The incessant eyes and ears of the Council seemed a world away, and she was grateful for the momentary distance. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. The salt air filled her with a primordial strength and steeled her soul, even while she wondered for the thousandth time that day, "How can I possibly tell Jake?"

The new life growing inside her was barely the size of a poppy seed at just under four weeks, but big enough to threaten her entire universe. Barely the size of a poppy seed and already a fugitive in a world where a new life without the explicit blessing of the Council was forbidden and terminated sans recours. Despite and precisely because of her state privilege and power, there would be no official future for her child, and certainly no future for her and Jake together once her pregnancy was obvious. "How can I possibly tell him?" she wondered yet again.

---

She’d taken the test early that morning at home before rushing out the door to work. “99.7% ACCURATE,” read the label on the box. The test results took mere seconds to manifest, just time enough for her to forget years of carefully cultured atheism. Still, her prayers had returned unrequited, and the 99.7% number rolled over and over through her mind like a bowling ball as her Moroccan blue Bentley emerged from the bright artificial daylight of the Midtown Tunnel into the overcast gray of Manhattan, now -- with the exception of Spanish Harlem, Chinatown and a few pockets south of the Williamsburg Bridge on the Lower East Side -- an exclusive enclave for the Ones, the rulers of the new media state and the latest generation of ambitious Young-Turk technodrones who aspired to replace them.

Maria spent the early morning sequestered in her corner office on the penthouse level of the Diversity Tower, a 90-story edifice that had replaced the MetLife building in the early 2030s and now rose like an immense steel and glass middle finger over the Beaux-Arts facade of Grand Central Station. Artifacts from various indigenous cultures, some long gone, others still intact but soon to disappear, adorned the walls and shelves of her office. Her desktop, fashioned from a single slab of back-lit Cristallo Imperiale quartzite, spilled on either side like waterfalls to the floor. The cutout in the front revealed her stunning legs, still sleek and persuasive. Dressed in an eggshell linen fitted blazer and skirt with a baby blue blouse and floral flats, she sat in a plush black leather executive chair and sipped a strong dark roast from a white mug imprinted with the blue MTA logo, an heirloom from her childhood in Jackson Heights, Queens. It had belonged once to her father, a former subway conductor whose job vanished in the spring of 2025, the year the trains were finally automated system-wide.

She had just turned twenty-five at the time. Recruited by every major white shoe firm in Manhattan when she graduated at the top of her class from Yale Law School at the age of twenty-two, she had just been appointed lead counsel in global mergers and acquisitions for a large midtown media law firm. Her reputation as a ruthless and predatory deal maker with unfailing instincts and a predisposition for Machiavellian intrigue belied her age but was well-earned nonetheless. “Maria will either make you rich or break you in half,” her predecessor remarked, just before she forced him out. “I don’t know which will cost you more.”

Her 110-hour work weeks awed her colleagues, and it was rumored that the senior partners at the firm feared her scorched-earth ambition as much as they admired her work ethic. In truth, the two were intrinsically linked and explained why she never entered an encounter unprepared to eviscerate her competition, usually in private conversations before or after important meetings, with an eidetic recall of the more lurid and less forgivable details of their private lives. Consequently, those who feared her most were those who thought they knew her best, those -- male and female clients and colleagues alike -- who fell prey to her exotic beauty in exchange for a reasonable return on her time, reserved only for the most powerful and influential among them. Not surprisingly, they proved not only the easiest to seduce, but also -- often as not -- the quickest to purchase her discretion. For Maria, anything and everything was negotiable, and in the end her meteoric rise to power surprised no one.

She sipped her coffee and remembered the last time she had spoken with her father, almost a year after his layoff from the MTA, in the fall of 2026. Though her office at the law firm was just twenty-five minutes from his home in Queens at the time, she rarely broke away from work long enough to visit. She placed video calls to him once or twice a week instead, always late at night when her patience was already thin and her eyes already red from fatigue. Mostly, she called just to hear his voice and assuage her guilt.

She had watched him grow old in absentia on the screen in front of her. What little remained of his vitality after the deaths of her mother and brother had withered away in recent months, stolen from him by incessant self-imposed solitude and the despair of benign neglect. That night she caught her breath when he appeared, ashen and ghostly, on the screen in front of her. She worried for a brief moment that his body had already abandoned him. Only his soul persisted, she thought, and she imagined him swirling now through the universe as a collection of weightless, lifeless electrons, alighting finally on her screen like a murder of digital crows. The image shocked her. She started to voice her concern for him, but he interrupted her: “Bella niña,” he said, “your mother, God rest her soul, would not want to watch you work these hours,” He smiled wanly. “There are more important things, you know.”

Exhausted from another 15-hour day, Maria had no patience for his rebuke, however gentle or well-intended. “Papa,” she said in a clipped tone reserved for certain clients and colleagues, “I won’t live my life underground as a little cog in a big machine.” She regretted her words the moment they left her lips, but it was already too late. He seemed to sink away in pained retreat on the screen, as if mortally wounded. “Papa,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”

She yearned for him to forgive her trespass, but he turned his face away in shame. Several seconds later, just before the screen went dark, she heard him say again, this time in a near whisper, “There are more important things.”

Two days passed before she was alerted by a colleague to a small story buried deep in the morning newsfeed about a former subway conductor found dead by a neighbor the night before in his home, apparently hanged by his own hand. Three days later her father’s body lay in repose in a small funeral home chapel in Corona, Queens. Dozens of distant family members, former MTA colleagues, community leaders and friends paid their last respects, but Maria was not among them. She waited until late that night then woke the funeral director with a phone call from her office to his direct line at home. “I want to see my father,” she said.

“How did you get this number?” he asked, only half-awake.

“I want to see my father,” she repeated.

“You can come tomorrow morning, Señorita Maria. He’ll remain in the chapel until the funeral at 2pm.”

“No,” she said. “I want to see my father now.”

An hour later, Funeral Director Señor Jesus Castillo, a slight man with a thin gray mustache and gentle old-world demeanor, was dressed in his funeral best when he unlocked the door of the chapel and showed her in. He extended his hand, “It’s good to see you again after so many years, señorita,” he said softly with tired eyes. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

She took his hand and held it for a moment. “Thank you, Señor Castillo,” she said. “Let me compensate you for your troubles at this hour.” She started to reach into her purse but he stopped her with a gentle wave.

“Everyone loved your Papa.” he said. “I was lucky enough to know him for many years. I remember how his face lit up like a thousand suns whenever you walked into the room. Como mil soles. He was so proud of your success." Maria smiled softly but couldn’t recall much of anything from her years alone with her father, much less the light of a thousand suns. Señor Castillo motioned to a casket of polished brass and ebony. “I spared no expense, per your request,” he said. “Would you like to see him?” She nodded and he turned to open the casket. “Again, we are all very sorry for your loss, señorita,” he said, turning back to her. “I will leave you now in peace.” Funeral Director Señor Castillo bowed slightly at the waist, excused himself and left the chapel.

Maria walked up to her father’s casket, steadied herself for a moment on the brass side rail and looked down at his face: more at peace now, she thought, than while he was alive. Keenly aware of their final moment together, she tried but failed once again to cry for his sake. This time, however, her tear ducts weren’t the only parts of her to mutiny; her knees betrayed her also, but not right away. She felt herself sway side to side for several seconds before they buckled, her eyes half-closed when the floor finally rose up to meet her. She sat dazed and expressionless on the carpet in the dim light of the chapel, staring blankly out at the empty chairs arrayed at eye level in neat rows. She tried to imagine her father’s mourners seated in the chairs but could summon only faceless shadows like a ghostly tribunal from the haze of her fatigue. She wondered briefly how it was possible for a daughter to know so little about her own father. Some years later she would learn much more, but not until after she learned the lessons of false pride, and not until after she learned how to reach out for help. Exhausted, she slipped off her shoes and fell asleep on the chapel floor with the sweet perfume of her mother’s panettone wrapped around her like a shawl.

Hours later as the sunrise chased the night, she rose to her feet and composed herself. She walked over to the guestbook just inside the chapel door, studied it page-by-page for several minutes then called a car and returned to her office.

---

How she yearned for her mother that morning in her office high atop the Diversity Tower eleven years later. The little life inside her threatened to turn her entire universe upside down, and it was all she could do not to scream out loud. Although she longed more than anything to hear her mother’s whisper in her ear again at that moment, although she ached in her soul to ask her a thousand questions, all she could think about was what she needed to do before meeting with Jake that evening. She hardly noticed the sweet aroma of warm abbracci that reached out to embrace her.

---

She ended her stroll on the boardwalk that evening outside a Russian restaurant in Brighton Beach. Jake was already there when she entered, seated at a small table draped with a white linen tablecloth. On it was a bottle of iced vodka and a small jar of caviar with a delicate bone spoon in a bowl of crushed ice next to a plate of fresh blini and crème fraiche.

His eyes lit the room when he saw her. “Finally!” he called out, his voice alive. Dressed in a tailored suit of khaki green merino wool with a beige cashmere crewneck and matching suede loafers, his six-foot-four-inch frame unfolded like a carpenter’s rule as he rose from his chair to give her a soft kiss on the cheek.

She noted his smile and the life in his eyes as she sat across from him, then thought of the little life inside her and choked back a tear. “Como mil soles,” she said with a sad smile.

“Como what?” he asked, still smiling like a schoolboy.

“Your eyes,” she said. “Como mil soles. Like a thousand suns.” She felt terribly, irredeemably alone.

He reached out and put his hand on hers. She trembled. “Are you cold?” he asked, suddenly concerned.

Rather than answer him right away, she turned for a moment to stare at the front entrance of the restaurant and the large picture windows that framed the boardwalk in the distance. Beyond that, she knew, was the shorebreak and the sea and the wind and the salt spray. Beyond them, she knew, was a vastness that swallowed all things. She felt impossibly small and powerless.

---

The Great Culture War ended in the spring of 2030, when a coterie of commercial technomedia elite in New York City, Los Angeles, the Greater San Francisco Bay Area, the Silicon Valley and Washington DC purchased bloodless coups in their respective markets and declared their independence as vassal-state members of the new Utopian Federation. The handful of municipal and union leaders who couldn’t be bought outright or otherwise refused to cooperate were summarily destroyed in the media, forced to resign, or worse. Within a week, Diversity Councils were established in each new jurisdiction with the supreme power to author, impose and enforce uniform cultural narratives through regional offices of what would soon become the most feared and efficient security apparatus of the new Federation: the Hate Crime Authority. By the next spring, more than twenty million citizens of the Utopian Federation had already fled their jurisdictions for greener, less oppressive pastures.

For Jake Kassman, Founder and Chairman of AllCorp, the world’s largest advertising and media holding group, the Utopian Federation was an adolescent dream come true. His co-conspirator was an ambitious and brilliant young attorney with eyes like fire agates who had seduced him one evening two years earlier at a museum charity event. She stole his heart that night, along with a few less valuable assets, and joined him that summer on the Diversity Council as co-owner and operator of Greater New York City.

---

“How will he react?” she wondered again that morning in her office. Only one action item remained on the screen in front of her: the first extension of the GreenChoice Act. Passed by unanimous Diversity Council consent six years earlier, the GreenChoice Act decreed mandatory abortions for any and all unauthorized pregnancies in an effort to impose and enforce negative population growth, a critically acclaimed objective of the Council’s comprehensive GreenFuture response to climate change.

The extension authorization for the GreenChoice Act in front of her that morning had already been approved by the Council and required just two signatures for ratification: one for the sponsor and one for the co-sponsor. Jake had already affixed his electronic signature to the sponsor line, and now the blank co-sponsor line awaited hers. It seemed to taunt her as she picked up her stylus. She stared from a moment at the gleaming gold barrel in her hand, wrapped with a red urushi lacquer dragon engaged in the Sisyphean act of devouring itself, tail first. “What have I done?” she asked herself.

There was no immediate consequence of her decision not to sign the GreenChoice Act extension that morning. No lightning bolts or thunderclaps. Only a resolute sadness and momentary resignation. She left it unsigned, then got up and went to the window. Midtown Manhattan stretched out below her. Farther to the south, Brooklyn waited.

She called for her car and returned later that morning to her townhouse on Fifth Avenue, directly across from Central Park. Once back in the sanctuary of her study, two flights up from the private courtyard in the rear of the building, she sat down at her Queen Anne writing desk in front of the window and recalled from memory a few select names from the guest registry of Señor Jesus Castillo’s funeral home more than a decade before. Most of the leaves from the Norway maple outside the window had already turned and fallen to the courtyard below, covering the red brick pavers of the patio in a soft yellow blanket that stirred in the late morning breeze. Maria picked up her untraceable and made some calls.

---

Only remnant pale indigos remained of the sunset palette outside the picture windows of the Russian restaurant that evening. Maria imagined herself dying with the light. Normally alive with patrons at this time of year, the dining room was empty except for her and Jake; she had placed a phone call to the proprietor early that morning to assure their privacy. But now the empty room seemed like a prison. What good was the privilege of privacy, she wondered, if she could never truly speak her mind, if her deepest thoughts and words could never leave her lips without destroying her or someone she loved? What good were endless power and wealth if all they conferred in the end were more expansive and opulent prisons?

Jake watched his lover with a mounting concern. She seemed suddenly frail, tentative and unsure, all things he had never seen in her before. He simply didn’t know what to say or do except to lean in and ask, “Are you okay?”

Maria smiled softly at him and shook her head. “No,” she said. “I’m not.” She knew at that exact moment that her life was over. The indigo sky outside dropped like a silent curtain on her world. “I’m pregnant,” she told him.

A bolt of naked fear rattled Jake’s bones. He straightened in his chair as her words reached deep into his soul, and he watched her eyes search his with a plaintive terror. Moments later he buried his face in his hands. “This is the worst of all possible things,” he told her quietly. When he finally looked up at her again, Maria discovered that only a few seconds in a lifetime of seconds were required to extinguish the light of a thousand suns.