Twisted destination trimvirate

T W I S T E D
D E S T I N A T I O N
By J. J. Nota
T r i u m v i r a t e
Book 1

Twisted Destination g
NOTICE
THIS BOOK IS A WORK OF FICTION. THE NAMES,
CHARACTERS, PLACES, AND INCIDENTS ARE
PRODUCTS OF THE WRITER'S IMAGINATION OR
HAVE BEEN USED FICTITIOUSLY AND ARE NOT TO
BE CONSTRUED AS REAL. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO
PERSONS, LIVING OR DEAD, ACTUAL EVENTS,
LOCALES OR ORGANIZATIONS IS ENTIRELY
COINCIDENTAL.
ALL RIGHTS ARE RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS
BOOK MAY BE USED OR REPRODUCED IN ANY
MANNER WHATSOEVER WITHOUT WRITTEN
PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR.
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"I think computer viruses should count as life. I think
it says something about human nature that the only
form of life we have created so far is purely
destructive. We've created life in our own image."
Stephen Hawking
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CHAPTER I
THE HOLY WARRIOR
VATICAN CITY, ROME, ITALY
ho’s dead this time?” Diego Garamond roused
from sleep and outcried, echoing his dream. It
was curious that he had nightmares at such late
age, and all he wanted was to place himself so far off his wife
who slept with angelical quietude as if she didn’t have to wake
up anymore. He glanced at the clock on the wall and the time it
displayed reminded him that he hadn’t changed its cells for a
lifetime. Its pointers both seemed to be stuck at 2, yet the most
active and prolonged one kept moving in chronologically
accurate pace. He checked his wristwatch, then back at the
clock and understood that his wife had done his work for him.
It presented indeed, 2 o’clock.
“W
In the coldest moments of the beginning of dawn, he woke up
with sudden defensive reaction by the sound of the telephone
like an American soldier under attack in Vietnam. He was a
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man of light sleep and like all men psychologically self-trained
to be vigilantes, the slightest din was enough to give him
insomnia for the rest of the night. In consequence of his abrupt
movement, his wife Deanna almost roused from her so
deserved sleep, after waking up countless times to satisfy their
five months daughter’s demands: poop, piss and breast milk.
Diego started envisioning how many people could call him at
that insanely early time. Only his wife Deanna owned more
than the right to do so, she had a duty if anything happened but
she reposed beside him. While acoustically struggling to
identify the location of that incessant ‘trim-trim’, he got lost
staring at her, at all he loved in her and all he loved was all of
her.
Diego was too tall for a priest and perhaps too handsome, his
chin gapped lightly in the middle, his nose erect, like a
proslavery racist European though he distanced from it by
infinite virtues and he had instructed his body a behavioural
involuntary reflex, to walk with both hands behind his back.
The telephone, like him, expressed its displeasure for being
woken up and it rang with more force. Diego heard its
demanding need from his bedroom and auralised it somewhere
between the kitchen and the living room. By elimination he
solved the matter. If he only spent a little more time at his own
house, he could easily recall that the phone rested in the sitting
room near that cupboard made of a deceased fine tree from
some tropical forest no one cared about. As he always
explained to his wife, it wasn’t his fault, in his contract, the
word family wasn’t mentioned.
He looked one last time at Deanna and a smile naturally came.
He remembered why he had married her. She could make him
smile even in her sleep. She slept like a baby, at least one that
wasn’t their daughter, one cute and quiet, and painfully
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beautiful. He stood up still dizzy and uncoordinated, wore his
ridiculous bunny slippers and headed to the living room.
Diego Garamond’s family lived in an ancient mini-mansion
inside the Vatican City. It looked old and timetorn from the
outside, still maintaining its gothic architecture but inside,
everything imitated the future except for some items which
held emotional value and lineage inheritance. The house had
belonged to his forefathers who used to work at the Secret
Archives. His family had been securing the Library of the
Vatican for two centuries and it was his turn now. When he
died, his son would take his place but he didn’t have a son yet,
only a 5 months daughter, which seemed to be a problem.
While for his lovely wife a girl was a blessing, to him, even
not admitting it, it was not only a disappointment but also an
issue to fix. The Vatican had even given him more time with
his wife to try and produce a boy.
He always considered himself a bit feminist, as a matter of fact
he was one of the few clergymen supportive of feminist causes
but somehow he understood and agreed to that order. He
believed that his job required certain traits only men have.
Since he couldn’t specify which traits, he stopped singing
feminism around his friends, for a good reason.
At that time before dawn to which he had no noun for, he
reposed at home with his family and he had been given the
whole weekend off. He hadn’t seen his daughter since the day
she was born, so he discarded that the call was work related
and his curiosity just intensified. He took the telephone and
before laying it on his ear, Diego had a strong feeling that
something utterly distressful was bound to happen.
“Good…ah… Hello.”
“My life is in danger Diego,” a man with a distressful dramatic
tone said. Diego recognised the voice. It was Paolo.
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Diego’s appealing charms and wit won him a powerful friend,
Cardinal Paolo. Together, they left the formality apart and
enjoyed the most sophisticated wine from Porto, gossiping
about the Pope’s ridiculous dresses or commenting about how
the world would be without any religion among other themes.
The moments with Diego were the break Cardinal Paolo
deserved from all the seriousness at the Vatican. Diego didn’t
judge him for anything, never, not even his sexist ideologies.
After a few bottles, Cardinal Paolo confessed some dark
secrets of the Church he wasn’t supposed to tell anybody but
Diego, a loyal friend as he certainly proved to be, never said
any of it to anyone, not even to his wife. Unlike most men,
although he trusted and loved Deanna with all his heart, he
cared about seeing her neck where it belongs or was it that he
simple didn’t trust women? He didn’t know for sure, all he
knew was that secrets are to be kept.
Cardinal Paolo became as they became closer, progressively
open to talk about everything with him because he was a man
that would rather cut his own throat than telling a friend’s
secret. That breed of men is bound to extinction with the
exponential growth of narcissism.
“Morning Paolo,” Diego said in a hoarse anxious voice,
“What is going on?”
“I know who killed John Paul I, Diego,” Cardinal Paolo said,
in a low pitched voice. He seemed delusional, speaking
uncomfortably close to the phone, whispering, “I always knew
and I let that bastard get away with it but I couldn’t let him
become the next Pope so I made a video and gave it to an old
friend of mine who is a trusted and reputed journalist and a
former priest.”
“Which bastard,” Diego asked, “You are not making any
sense. Who are you talking about?”
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“Listen, Diego, he was supposed to be in the air later today at 8
P.M, after I got myself out of here but they have killed the man
Diego, and possibly retrieved the video. I just saw it on the
breaking news that he was found dead, suicide they say. It had
the Holly Warrior’s signature all over it. He is coming for me.
I am already a dead man.”
“Stop that,” Garamond said, calmer than what the situation
required of him. He didn’t give it much credit although
preoccupied he certainly couldn’t not be, since he knew that
Cardinal Paolo did no drugs nor had mental problems and
found pranks exceedingly childish, “Stay inside your
chambers, close the doors and the windows. I am coming.”
“No, you are not,” Cardinal Paolo answered with a decisive
tone, “I am already dead Diego. I know how a great friend you
are but you don’t have to follow me to the grave. I have no
child, no wife, you do. If you die, who will remember me? A
man of God is not missed for he is at once replaced. I will die,
with the truth and God on my side. They will send their Holly
Warrior and no one runs from the Holly Warrior.”
The Holly Warrior was the most dreadful and efficient assassin
of the Vatican. He had killed more than a thousand men and
families in the name of the Church, individually. He had
become by repetition, flawless in his craft but he was nothing
but a myth. No one ever saw him or lived to tell that did. The
name was coined because he always gave eternal silence to
people who betrayed or secretly conspired against the Church
like the jihadists in the Holly War, only he, played for the
opposite team. He was so stealthy that he never killed, the
accidents he never created did. No one was even sure he
existed. It was just rumours. Whenever someone inside the
Vatican died of normal causes, the kind that look fabricated
like heart attacks, drowning, suicide, it was customary to say
‘The Holly Warrior took him’ so Diego started to think that
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perhaps the Cardinal was delusional, talking about fairy-tale
characters and conspiracist’s gibberish but if it were all true,
he would lose a friend.
When the pointer on a clock ticks, according to people whose
job is to consider us just numbers, somewhere in this
overpopulated yet lonely planet 205 people die. As it tacks, the
number doubles and as it tick-tacks incessantly around itself,
the mathematics on how many people die becomes
increasingly harder to solve. Everyone becomes one second
older and less alive than was a second ago. Nobody really
cares about those unsettling numbers unless who departs is
somebody dearly loved or deeply despised, or just when it’s to
quote the statistics to sound well-informed. Few men hope to
be remembered for eternity, some aspire to have their names
on a newspaper and on a tombstone while others simple don’t
care about what happens to them after they are gone and even
if they owned tombstones, it would look like this, “Here lies a
person who just didn’t give a damn about your opinion”.
Cardinal Paolo differed from all of them, he was special to
Diego. Except himself, Paolo undoubtedly could be the most
righteous and selfless man Diego had ever shared a planet
with.
“I said I am coming,” Diego decided.
“Then we are both doomed,” Cardinal Paolo answered, then a
very uncomfortable and terrifying silence followed by the last
words of the Cardinal, ‘Oh God, no!’ disheartened Diego.
“No, what? Diego said, “Paolo, are you talking to me? Paolo,
are you still there?” The phone call had been cut. Worried
something tragic had happened, his imagination started
growing dark wings of its own. He immediately wore his habit,
took his car and headed to the Apostolic Palace. Next to Saint
Peter’s Basilica, a pair of Swiss Guards demanded that he
stopped his vehicle for it was suspicious that anyone drove in
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at that time but as soon as they saw who it was, they let him
enter without inspection. He went inwards the building, and
climbed the stairs in an incredible speed, never to have seen
the place so desert. It truly seemed more like a house of God at
that time without all the tourists, all the short skirts, low-
necked blouses, and all the lack of respect for that place.
Sometimes he had a private satisfaction when a woman trying
to win the record for the shortest dress in the world was
burgled and that was quite usual since there is no prison in the
Vatican City.
When he arrived at the main hallway, he was about to
intercede when he saw a man emerging from the chambers of
Cardinal Paolo. Instinctively, he hid himself. He couldn’t see
the face but the man seemed somehow familiar. The man
walked tall and smoothly. An urging force coming from
within, his protective angel, his survival instincts or perhaps a
sixth sense, told him to hide until the mysterious man
disappeared along the corridor. Not wanting to sound paranoid,
he had ignored Paolo’s dramatic conspiracy theories but at that
second, he started to believe that the strange man was indeed
the Holly Warrior. He behaved in accordance to what the
situation really expected of him, with lots of fear but also an
odd and misplaced urge of curiosity.
Suddenly, Cardinal Paolo’s drama seemed reasonable. The
way the mysterious man closed the door as noisy as a feather
and inspecting the surroundings like he had eyes behind his
head was very suspicious so Diego remained hidden until
certainty resided that he was not hiding to ambush and kill
him.
He went to the door, used his master key and opened it.
Bookkeepers of the Vatican’s Secret Archives Library all had
a master key because they were fully trusted. They knew
everything and there existed nothing the Vatican would hide
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from them. At least that is what they were meant to believe.
Diego always thought that perhaps, it was a classic example of
misdirection for not all secrets can be unlocked with a master
key.
When he entered Cardinal Paolo’s chambers, he saw Paolo
lying on his bed, everything at its rightful place except two
things; the bottle of wine was not empty and the Cardinal’s
crucifix was not on him. The bottle of wine seemed an
understandable oddity because the Cardinal had said that he
had planned to flee and getting drunk wouldn’t be smart,
something he knew Paolo certainly was. But the crucifix, a real
mystery. High priests never separated themselves from it,
much less sleeping. He thought, if the man was here right now
on the Cardinal demands, Cardinal Paolo was supposed to be
awake but if he was indeed his killer, then the Cardinal slept
not a normal sleep but a definitive one.
Diego went close, inspected him from afar and then decided to
check his blood pulse. Cardinal Paolo gave a very loud breath
like he had been drowning and called out, “Diego?” Diego
almost followed Paolo; one, because he was grabbed with a
force that almost broke his arm and two, because he expected
him to be dead and as far as he knew, dead man don't talk. The
cardinal whispered, “456, 34, 21, 567, miracle” and went back
to his stiffness. It was like when a chicken is taken its head
out, it keeps struggling for a life it will never get back until it
rests forever and finds itself on someone’s plate. The assassin
had given him a drug that killed instantaneously. Miraculously,
Cardinal Paolo was given a last breath and he used it to tell
Diego something which made no sense at all, or did it? A
perfect situation to use the expression “he breathed his last”
and not sound too poetic.
Diego Garamond left the room in a hurry still thinking what
those words meant. Subconsciously, those words made so
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much sense that he hated himself for not being able to find out
what they meant. To avoid suspicion, he went to his work
place, the Secret Archives. There, he found Mr. Jonathan
Bartolommeo and Mr. Erick Morgo, the other two Archivists.
He tried to act normally.
“Hey John, hey Erick, what are you doing here so soon?” Mr.
Bartolommeo asked back, “We should be asking you that.
What are you doing here so soon? You asked for a leave to see
your wife, didn’t you?”
“Yes you did. If I had a wife, I wouldn’t come at this time, if
you know what I mean.” Mr. Morgo added.
Mr. Bartolommeo commented with a sarcastic tone, “Yeah,
every animal on the planet knows what you mean Erick. But
really, what’s it, Diego?”
Garamond thought for a second and the first thing that came up
was, “The damn baby won’t stop crying. Don’t get me wrong,
I love her but I love silence more.” They started laughing and
Mr. Morgo made a pensive look and headed towards his
working desk. Mr. Bartolommeo stayed. “You know, one day
you will miss that, they say.”
“Yep,” Garamond answered, “They say a lot of crap.”
“Are you sure there is nothing bothering you?”
“I just told you, I couldn’t sleep. Why are you being so
inquisitive?”
“Nothing. It’s just that you never swear, even when someone
sets your nerves on edge and now because of your daughter
you swear. I will assume you blame her for not being a boy.”
Mr. Bartolommeo was a man of elegance. Not too different
from Mr. Garamond who had also gone to Oxford and done
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Theology, as it was customary to Archivists. Usually
Archivists were Cardinals but as conservative philosophies
tend to be replaced by more modern ones. This generation,
only one existed. Cardinal Giovani, who almost never came
letting Primate Antonio take care of his affairs. He was
committed to his job and to his privileged position, perhaps too
committed. Mr. Bartolommeo was a man of art with an
appealing wit. He was friendly in modest sufficiency to anyone
and according to him, no one was higher, everyone was equal
and above us all, only God. He had problems with authority.
Mr. Morgo was, on the other hand, a proud private man. He
could have great conversations with people if tremendously
necessary or socially compulsory but most times, he just liked
to stay in his corner, reading his weirdly titled books, and this
time he read Fantasia Mathematica. With Garamond and
Bartolommeo he had become a bit close, enough to call them
friends. To defend his daughter, although he didn’t even know
why he had to defend a baby, Mr. Garamond said, “She’s
lovely. I am just not used to it yet.”
“Yeah, I didn’t like the idea of being castrated myself.”
Diego gave a brief grin, “What does that have anything to do
with this conversation?”
“I don’t know, I just wanted to lighten the conversation a bit.”
“Well, you succeeded.”
“Good. I knew cutting them would make a good joke one day.”
Diego tried to conceal another smile and he succeeded as soon
as the image of Cardinal Paolo struck his mind. He
remembered the numbers he said, he looked at Johnathan and
Erick and reckoned, “if they know what it’s all about, it is fine
but even if they knew, I can trust their discretion.” For the first
time, Diego finally did what many ultimately do when they are
told a secret, he shared it with another person, “Hey, what you
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think, ‘456, 34, 21, 567, miracle’ means?” Mr. Bartolommeo
instantly said, “About the word Miracle I have no idea but I
think the rest means ‘Shelf 456, lot 34, item 21, page 567’
from the Secret Archives. That is how we find anything out of
all this gigantic garbage.
“Of course,” Garamond said. He couldn’t believe he had
missed that. Now that it struck him, no other assumption he
had come up with seemed to belong to an intelligent species.
He had heard and said that sequence of four seemingly
unrelated numbers every day. The context he was given had
blurred his common understanding. He looked for the answer
as if trying to decode a Cipher that would save mankind. In
common thinking, an obvious response is the immediately
expected from a man about to die but too much of fiction
reading was blurring his thinking.
“Yeah, you know,” Mr. Bartolommeo continued, “I would
literally pay people to get in here and look for whatever they
think we have without telling them how the shelving system
works. They would search for weeks just to find out that there
has been a Pope who had flu. But what is it all about, Diego?”
While already walking towards shelf 456, Garamond said, “I
think I am about to find out,” and then he started going
through the Archives. While looking, Cardinal Paolo was
found dead in his chambers and he remained there for almost 5
hours till the pope came and they took him to a private room
guarded like a fortress.
Erick and Jonathan, both in shock, stared at all the Swiss
Guards, medics and nuns walking past them, coming and
going. While the confusion happened, Garamond found what
he was looking for. He took the heavy manuscript and went to
page 567 and there it was Cardinal Paolo’s crucifix. It was a
silver with special carvings. He grabbed it and involuntarily
touched the place where the horizontal and the vertical pieces
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joined. Automatically, the two joined themselves creating a
single piece shaped like a pen and he saw the carvings turning
into a familiar shape and insignia. There were two crossed
keys and the Pope’s Crown in the middle, the blazonry of the
Secret Archives. Something else came out in the top that had
the shape of a USB port. Diego had never seen a device like
that since floppy disks were what people used most for
memory storage in the nineties. Mr. Bartolommeo came from
behind and recognized the strange gadget so he said, “Leave
it”.
“Why?” Garamond asked, scared for he believed to be alone.
Johnathan looked deep into his eyes. His face became as
serious as he could be and slowly said, “Or you will die along
with your wife and your beautiful baby,” When he noticed that
Garamond still inspected the device thoroughly, trying to
identify it, he paraphrased it shorter and blunt, “Everyone you
love will die. Leave the damn thing!”
“I am not. I have to find out what it is. I need to.” When he
ended his sentence, he started to have a clue on what it was. It
had the same shape and insignia of an old key that along with a
password, could unlock the darkest secrets the world had ever
seen, the Holy Grail, The SAW (Secret Archives Website), a
secret website inside the Vatican’s secret website. Like The
Holly warrior, all these things were nothing but myths
yesterday but seemed uncontestably real and would cost his
life today.
“Jonathan, I know what it is.”
“Then also how dangerous it is so leave it.”
“I will disappear and so should you. We have witnessed too
much,” Diego resumed, “I will take my family to a place no
one can find us and I will tell the world the whole truth about
Cardinal Paolo and whatever this thing holds.”
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“So the Cardinal’s death, wasn’t an accident?”
“No, it wasn’t and this crucifix is the only thing that can prove
it. We both know they won’t make any necropsy. They never
do.”
“Diego, I know you enough to acknowledge that I can never
convince you otherwise but my friend I have lived enough to
foresee how this is going to end and I am fully posetive you
shouldn’t run away but if you do, what you probably will, I
hope God chooses to protect you and not the Church.”
“You have to vanish too or you will be killed.”
“Don’t be naive Diego for it doesn’t suit you, there’s no place
you can go the Church won’t find you. I… you… we, have
been silent upon various secrets and so have you. This is just
another one.”
“You don’t understand. Cardinal Paolo died because of it. How
can you still want to stay passive to this catastrophe?”
“You shouldn’t have told me that. I know nothing. Leave that
thing where you found it and no one will ever find it. Its
location dies with its owner. Or burn it if you think you will be
tempted to come back and take it.”
“I understand you. He was never your friend, only mine and
friends honour their friends even after death. Goodbye John! I
suppose we won’t be seeing each other any time soon.”
“I will be praying that we do, my friend.” They hugged each
other and Johnathan saw his dear friend leaving. His look had
surrendered hope, he had lost him forever and he couldn’t
understand why Diego didn’t know that idealism always loses
to realism and realism is always married to pessimism.
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Garamond arrived home, told his wife to pack all she needed
because they were about to leave the house and flee the
country and she did without demanding considerations. His
face gave her the brief explanation she needed and she knew
that later, he was going to explain everything to her. When
Garamond was about to leave, someone knocked at the door. It
was a friend so he took a gun just in case his friend was bait
and rushed to answer to it. He told him to enter while
nervously inspecting the surroundings.
“Why are you here? Were you followed?” Garamond asked
preoccupied and confused, grabbing his head and looking
everywhere.
“No, I wasn’t!”
“Why are you here?” Garamond was still suspicious when he
saw at a mirror what seemed to be his friend putting his hand
on his coat like one reaching for a gun. Diego pointed his gun
to his friend and asked nervously, “What are you doing? Are
you the Holly Warrior? Please say ‘no’!”
“Where is the crucifix Diego?” The man asked looking into his
eyes as if not intimidated with the gun Garamond was holding
and pointing at him.
“Oh, my God, you are?! Are you here to kill me?”
“Give me the necklace and I will let Deanna and the babe
live.”
“I can’t believe this. You couldn’t. We are friends.”
“I am just doing the work of God, Diego.”
“Stop with that blind stupid belief for it doesn’t suit you.”
“Don’t waste your breath. Hand me the crucifix.”
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“I will never give it to you.”
“Then I shall find it,” the Holy Warrior threw a knife at
Garamond so fast he didn’t even see where it came from. The
assassin lowered himself almost kneeling, took off Diego’s
gun from his hand and said, “I am sorry Diego and I know this
is cliché but ‘it’s really not personal my friend’,” and shot
twice in his heart and at the right leg like a messy person who
had never used a gun before. He walked towards the panic
room. He had the plant of the house so he knew where
everything was placed. When Deanna Garamond saw that her
husband was pointing a gun at his friend, she hid herself with
her daughter at the panic room. She saw her husband killed
from the surveillance monitors.
The Holly Warrior was able to enter the surveillance room and
wipe all the recorded videos of the murder but she had
managed to escape from a secret back door already, although
she suspected not for long. To survive, she fled the country
towards Mozambique, thinking that they would never consider
Africa. She had gone there with her parents in several family
vacations and she knew her way around. She got on a plane
and started making the unsettling routine of a third country
tourist. She had to stop in South Africa and then travel to
Mozambique. Those days, there was no direct plane from Italy
to Mozambique.
She knew that eventually, they would find her so as soon as
she got there, the first thing she did was to save her daughter’s
life. She grew up in a Convent and she imagined no other life
aside of that so she took her baby to a Convent at Maputo, the
capital, in hopes that it was the last place they would look for
her, since it belonged to the Church. She hid her right under
their noses and attached, to the baby, a seemingly paradoxical
note: Please save her from false priests and conceal her
crucifix from the eyes of those who think God has favourites,
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them. She waited, concealed behind a tree until a nun came
out, looked around, read the note and hid it under her habit.
The child was in safe hands.
Unfortunately, The Holly Warrior had traced her back to
Mozambique. She was then found dead beside a young man’s
body half her age with a lot of Heroin in the room and in both
their bodies. The next day, it was trending on Mozambican and
world media: An Arch-priest hid a mentally unstable drug
addict mistress who murdered him and fled to Mozambique
where she died of a Heroin overdose with her young lover. It
wasn’t a perfect murder but people believe in anything the
media says. If it said that they had found proof that Jesus was
black, people would buy it. It just needs a lot of advertisement.
The baby was hunted everywhere but was never found. The
Vatican laid a very pompous funeral for Arch-Priest Diego
Garamond and the Pope said that the devil was infecting us
with drugs, alcohol, and other addictions. He also said that the
young generations should at any cost avoid drugs, early sex,
alcohol and other promiscuous matters. That was the end of it.
It was Pope John Paul I assassination all over again. No one
investigated thoroughly, no one came forward to reveal the
truth and nobody talked about it. The media suddenly did the
opposite of what it usually does, this time it admitted to know
nothing and people didn’t even suspect anything except for all
the conspiracists to whom nobody listens to because people
think they are worthless individuals without any social life
craving for attention for a couple of minutes. Unlike what
common sense will make you believe, it is actually rough to be
the only man who sees in a land of blind people and when it is
a voluntary blindness, you start considering everybody stupid
and as far as transactional analysis and Jesus Christ proverbs
go, enlightened people have it hard when they mix with the
other kind.
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CHAPTER 2
GERMANY
THAT SAME DAY
t one of the most sophisticated neighbourhoods of
Berlin lied inside a great mansion whose owners
had never been seen, a benighted sanctuary long
forgotten by everybody where thirteen people surrounded a
pregnant woman and a man that could feel flattered if instead
of old, he was called ancient. Ancientness is associated with
wisdom and value whilst oldness is just the opposite of
A
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youngness. His looks resembled the nightmarish prototypical
Devil, not the one from the bible who had been an angel in the
past, the one everybody is so afraid of meeting in Hell, a
creature with red skin and horns, square shaped nose, filthy
mouth and animalised body. It’s incredible how an idea can
grow inside people.
Where did people invent this traits from? Is it from the Bible?
It does say that he was cast out but it says nothing about being
turned into a monster. Perhaps everybody who goes to Hell, if
there is such thing, is turned into serpents since it is the only
recorded creature Lucifer is associated to. Sometimes it does
seem like people are describing a red bull, however, beliefs are
dogmas and the peaceful Indus are capable of slaughtering
anyone who dares to make such cheap analogy towards their
saint Taurean Gods.
Sometimes, the, funnily enough, the maxim of dogmatism
being incontestable to some extent makes it, logically,
inevitably illogical.
At some point in the ancient past that the building certainly
belonged, it had been a Roman Catholic Church. If it wasn’t
almost impossible to locate, it could be a massive religious
tourism paradise. Its walls had ornate stone carvings, paintings
of falling angels, shapeless figures of horrifying monstrosities
like Picasso’s, only worse. There hanged skulls of men,
women and smaller men and women that lived a rather short
life whilst their body remains compulsorily adopted a
centenary lifespan.
The man’s visage haunted even the best autistic ever to walk
the face of Earth. The years hadn’t been generous to him. He
had the eyes of wisdom like an owl but also its infamy of
being a creature of evil. He undoubtedly topped the list of
immediate targets of the angel of Death. He was so old one
could have a hard time finding out who was older, him or the
Church. Unlike everybody else, his face wasn’t covered at all.
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Actually, his face simply wasn’t. His bones could be seen and
his nose resembled that of the skulls hanging in every
centimetre of the building. He wore long dark clothes, like a
black lacerated cursed wedding dress, the kind that even the
wicked witches could find scary.
It was nearly impossible to assert with exactitude whether
there were men or women behind those vestments. Terrifying
masks covered the members’ faces and their dresses had hoods
covering all their hair, ears and faces. Even without the
masques, seeing their faces could be like trying to see the face
of a headless horse, a worthless deed.
The wise sorcerer kept speaking in a language long forgotten
even the Latians could consider it archaic. Between now and
then he would utter ‘Lucifer est Dominus. Nostra anima est
tua. Venit accipe ’. The expressions were unknown to
everybody but the infinite past repetitions of that ritual gave
them a thoroughly perceived meaning no translator could
succeed to convey.
The woman’s garments weren’t much different, only in a
different colour, very shiny white. Her face was covered like
the other members of the cult but didn’t cover her lower parts.
She had her legs apart, lying on a very ancient rectangular
tombstone with both her legs and arms tied to four round
objects at the vertices.
The sorcerer took a round calix made of wood and gave it to
the woman. He demanded her to drink it all and he repeated
‘Accipere Lucifer’ several times in a clear invocation of the
Devil. He continued the satanic cult and a few repetitions later,
the woman started to have unsettling convulsions and her
belly, as if turned inside out, started to make strange shapes
and figures of infernal faces, hands and a protuberance that
like a sharped knife carved pentagonal projections inside of
her stomach. The woman’s sufferings were impossible to look
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at, agonistic and unbearably monstrous. She had waited 9
joyous months for that moment. She wanted to bear that child
infinite times more than the baby. It decided to leave the
warmth and comfort of his mother's womb if expelled
forcefully, perhaps because he was aware of the terror out
here.
Those few minutes made her reconsider every choices that
allowed her to inevitably find herself in that situation, even the
pleasurable ones. It wasn’t a usual childbirth. She felt a portion
of her soul leave her body each time she pushed the baby out.
When she perceived that she needed only one push to finally
become a mother, her strength was nowhere to be found. She
was left with two dilemmatic pseudo-choices, to keep pushing
out that creature inside her and fatalistically expel out the last
shade of life within herself or she simply stop pushing, killing
the child, and ultimately herself. Both options ended with her
death but in one, the baby lived and in the other, both died.
Like any mother, from the mentally stable ones, she decided
for the former.
The Devil’s priest continued invoking Lucifer and after one
last push that could cost the woman’s life, the babe started to
come out. When the babe cried, she fainted instantly. Her
blood drained from her body and the skin assumed a white
pale tone, one as a dead corpse. The sorcerer held the baby on
his long, pointy fingered hands.
When the baby was born, it cried endlessly but now, it
bizarrely made no sound. He put it on display to everybody
heading to the altar. The altar had satanic symbols painted in
dense red blood surrounding an artistic creation of Lucifer
when heaven banished him and he fell into hell. Next to the
painting rested a big bowl, so perfect in size to put a baby that
one had no other option but to conclude that it was custom-
made solely for that purpose. Inside of it, a gold coloured
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liquid. The old man started speaking in superannuated Latin,
as translated,
“If the boy’s blood to you belongs,
As gold will the liquid remain
If the boy does not
His blood will be as putrid stain,”
He took a huge shaped knife and surgically cut the boy in-
between the chest, enough to make the enormous knife stay
with some blood but not to do any physical damage. It showed
indeed a master surgical cut since any tiny mistake could cost
the baby’s life. Like any craft, continuous repetition, hopefully
not trial and error in his case, had made him flawless. He took
the knife with some blood spouting from it and introduced it
on the golden liquid. If the liquid inside the bowl turned red,
the boy was to be killed instantly but if it remained gold
coloured, their God, the Devil, had plans for him and therefore,
he was worth living. Everybody awaited to see the boys final
destination. The Sorcerer took out the Knife, completely clean
and shiny. The liquid remained golden and the boy would live.
One of the 13 members entered the altar, knelled down in
relief and obeisance and opened his hands to receive the baby.
The sorcerer put the baby in his hands and he welcomed it into
his fathering arms. As he did that, the baby resumed crying
again proving that a baby cries because knows that one cares.
Two men came and took the lady and put her on a stretcher.
As the man holding the baby followed them, one of them
stopped and said, “Go home sir, we will take care of your wife.
We are both highly skilled physicians.”
Although the so called physicians also had a white uniform as
his wife’s and had their faces covered, the husband noticed the
warmth and politeness of the man. He also detected by the
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stature and delicacy of the other physician, that she was a lady
medico so he nodded and removed himself. He observed them
distancing themselves from him, he observed and saw the
woman complaining at the man. The way they gazed at each
other, the way they argued, turned to be too very intimate and
he assured himself that he stood beside spouses.
The members started to leave and the freshly made father
stayed there, wondering if things had gone wrong, if he had
lost his wife, what would he have done? She symbolised the
only tiny beam of light in his dark life and she was enough to
keep his hope that at least there was a light after all. He had
gone pass the phase of the blinded man in Plato’s cave, he
cognised a better world than the one he lived in but to him, it
seemed unreachable since he was borne inside the cave and
grew inside the cave. In those minutes he felt as if he had
already lost his wife and upon his first child, he thought about
life more than he had ever done. If his parents gave him no
other choice but to dwell into demoniac worshipping and
eternal imprisonment, he was going to try and be a better
father and his son was going to live life to its fullest potential.
What was all that money he had for? To keep making more
money so that his son could grow up and also keep making
more money and etcetera? That meant every man in his family
was doomed to do the very same thing, make more money. An
idea solidified adamantly and so imbedded into all of them that
they believed no other option existed and nothing mattered the
most in the world.
While he was lost inside his mind, the baby stopped crying. He
looked at him and said, “You will be the first man to be free in
the family for centuries. I promise.” The babe laughed as if it
understood him.
The ceremony was bound to happen twice for every man who
belonged to the 13 families, members of the 13 most powerful
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bloodlines in the world. First, when the boy is born and
second, when he turns 18, the age when he starts to be
prepared to replace his father once this eventually dies. Some
would pass the first test but would fail the second. The
opposite was obviously practically impossible. Women
weren’t necessarily part of the 13 members but at birth, few
baby girls were chosen by Lucifer for higher purposes and
some, only a handful supersede their fathers but only if there is
not a man alive.
Five hours later his wife arrived home. She was quite healthy
for a person who just died. He had the baby on his hands and a
long smile on his face. She deduced two things. One explained
the relieved smile, deduced into a genuine satisfaction of
seeing her alive. The other evidenced the only thing that could
explain him still having the baby in his arms, it was a baby
boy. He gave the baby to her and hugged her like he had never
done before.
“I love you,” He said.
She felt appreciated for the first time in years. If she had to go
through that process to have that attention and love, she
certainly would. It was priceless. He resumed, “Have you
picked a name yet?”
“But it’s a boy,” as if saying that it mattered him the most, not
her.
“I know, but I don’t know much about names. What about
Hitler?” He trusted she expected a baby girl so he tried to
cheer her.
“What? No!”
“See, you have got pick it yourself. I am sure you couldn’t
help it but to find a name for him so let’s hear it?
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“Gabriel, I picked Gabriel.”
“Then the brother of Lucifer it is!”
“What? No! I didn’t mean to…”
“Don’t worry. I kind of like the idea. For the simply pleasure
of being against!”
“Against what? The cult?”
“No, just against!”
From that day on, the family was never the same again. When
partners start finding out that they have nothing in common
besides sexual attraction, and when this same sexual attraction
stops being the epicentre of a relationship, only a child can
bring the next best thing, the unconditional and infinite love
for the same thing, therefore, the only thing in common any
partners need. From that point on, two persons tie a bond
bigger than blood, the bond of fatherhood and motherhood.
Wherever one goes, no matter how far it is, one always comes
back for his/her child. If one dies, comes as an angel like the
Christians and the Muslims believe or as a protective spirit to
Africans. Which one is right and which one is a fool doesn’t
matter, all that matters is that all believe no one really ever
dies and there is something genuinely beautiful in that.
After 18 years, the boy’s fate would be told decidedly and
death could be the verdict.
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CHAPTER 3
MAPUTO, MOZAMBIQUE
TWO YEARS LATER
young boy diagnosed with severe autism sit and
looked at a mouse, thoroughly focused, until his
babysitter took him in her arms and started cuddling
him when he wasn’t even crying and needed no cuddling at all.
All he wanted was to stay and stare at the mouse.
A
Steve was only 2 years old. His father was a university
chemistry professor and his mother a primary school teacher.
She went to Church every Sunday and she always took Steve
along. His father on the other hand never went to Church, as he
always told his wife, not because he was an atheist but
particularly because he wouldn’t like to be confused with a
hypocrite.
At 5 A.M. Joan Lotch, Steve’s father, napped at his laboratory
on the lower level of the house, an underground facility that he
used constantly without anybody bothering him. It was his
private place, nobody else’s entrance was allowed. He had
been working on this special formula to cure autism, to cure
his son and eventually himself.
Steve’s grandfather, Arthur Lotch, had been a great Chemist in
life and that had been his laboratory. Since Steve’s father was
autistic, Arthur Lotch tried several alternative methods to cure
him: spiritual guidance, electroshock, and other fringe ways
that seemed promising but like most alternative methods, they
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all proved to be only cheap marketing to steal large sums of
money from desperate people.
He saw that he was causing to his son more pain than
improvement by submitting Joan to such excruciating
processes. He then started the search for a cure for autism by
himself or at least a constant dosage to reduce or suppress its
impact momentarily like the antiretroviral injections for
HIVAIDS. Unfortunately, at 62, when Mr. Joan Lotch was 12,
he disappeared mysteriously without being able to treat his
son’s condition. Mr. Joan’s mother died shortly after that,
partly of grief but mostly of her breast cancer.
Steve’s father somehow felt guilty, because he had genetically
passed the condition to his son. After noticing that his son was
showing clear signs of autism, to be 100% certain that his
theory was correct, he shouted heavily at Steve, who just kept
staring at him, indifferent to his actions. Mr. Joan Lotch
immediately picked up his father’s research.
Mr. Joan Lotch had spent all night in the lab because he
approached near to finding not just a momentary suppresser,
but the cure for autism. All the test samples were unsuccessful
but he kept trying. He also put some smart drugs or nootropics
to improve his son’s cognitive functions, memory and
information processing speed but he fell asleep before testing
it.
After a short nap at dawn, his wife’s voice, behind the sealed
door he never used, woke him up. She was an uncomfortably
strong alpha woman, a relentless feminist and she always
wanted things done her way. Mr. Joan Lotch was the quiet
type, mostly because of his autism but also because there was
no point in arguing with her. She always won. She banged and
shouted so loud even a bear in hibernation would wake up.
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“Joan? Joan?” His wife called him shouting from the other side
of the door, “I can’t be late today. I am going to receive the
inspection team to see if I am fit for the upgrade. Have you
forgotten? I need a lift, right now! You get out of there. You
can come back later and lock your ass in that box of yours for
all I care. Are you so selfish you don’t see how important this
is to me? To us?”
He thought, “She seems really pissed off”. Of course he knew
how important it was but he could swear it was to be at the
next day, at least not that day. He looked at his watch and it
surprisingly told him already 6.47 A.M. How could he have
overslept? She had to be there at 7, the school was 10 minutes
away but there was a lot of traffic. Had the fuel tank any
gasoline? He headed to the main door his wife kept banging.
The one he never opened before. Even his father would use the
back door, never that one. It didn’t even have a key because it
was never supposed to be open. He did neither brush his teeth
nor did he wash his face or change his cloths. He just took off
his lad jacket, went towards the keys and then, the car.
After routinely giving to the babysitter the specifications
required to taking care of young Steve, a child with special
needs, his mother Beatriz Lotch kissed him goodbye and his
father squeezed softly on his head. They both went towards the
car in a hurry, his mother complaining endlessly and his father,
mute, only focused on getting to her school fast.
As soon as Mr.s Lotch got into the car with her husband and
left, the babysitter left Steve on the floor with lots of toys and
then switched the T.V on. She didn’t have a Cable TV at her
home so that was a huge bonus of babysitting a child that
almost never cried. Her favourite Soap Opera Evil Stepmother
came on the air and her focus shifted totally towards the Box.
She idiotically tried to find out who was the villain.
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Steve didn’t touching any of the toys. Instead, he kept staring
at a mouse at the door. The mouse seemed to be talking
telepathically to him. He crawled towards it and as it ran away
from him, there he went, following it. The mouse stopped at a
door no one remembered the last time it was open. Stevie got
closer and closer. The door wasn’t locked. Mr. Lotch, in such a
hurry forgot to close it so when Steve leaned forward to catch
the mouse, his head, which was heavier than he could balance
himself, banged at the door forcing it to open. He fell down the
underground stairs like a rolling ball, hit an old chair that
stopped him down below, yet didn’t cry. It started a chain
reaction, like a domino game of the laboratory glassware lying
on the table. Two containers with extremely dangerous
composts lying on the shelf, Digoxin and Ethylene Glycol,
chattered into pieces. All composts fell, mixing themselves
with the almost finished cure for autism.
Like a cats-and-dogs type of rain, all the chemical composts
fell into Steve’s tiny head and when he noticed it, he looked
up, only to have the last wave enter his mouth. Ethylene
Glycol gave the compost a pleasing and sweet flavour. Steve
drank it all, even on the floor. Soon he had devoured every
single drop he could get. He was all dirty with colourful
resistant paint that even the babysitter couldn’t wash off. When
he was done, he started crying like he had never cried before.
The babysitter panicked so she called her boss. Miss Beatriz
Lotch told the inspection team what had happened and their
boss, conveniently a woman, reassured her that she didn’t
expect any different response from a mother and because of
the love and care she saw in her, she planned to upgrade Miss
Beatriz to headmistress of one of the schools.
None of that mattered. Little Stevie mattered the most. Miss
Beatriz called her husband who was still on his way home to
1

come back and pick her up. Steve’s father turned his car
around and went back to school.
When they got home, Miss Beatriz saw her baby, embraced
him in her arms. When the babysitter started talking, she put
Steve on his father’s arms and started reprimanding her
severely.
“You are fired. You are a stupid irresponsible woman-child
who has no aspiration in life and I am going to end all your
problems, oh I will. I will lodge a complaining about this and
you will rot in prison for your entire miserable life.” As she
kept promising endless punishments to the babysitter, Mr.
Lotch was carrying several tests on Steve.
Five minutes later, Mr. Lotch came inside the sitting room and
said, “Honey”. Mr.s Lotch, seeing that he interrupted and
deliberately took from her the so deserved right to be mean at
her babysitter, she changed targets and started reproaching her
husband, “Don’t you dare to shut me out. It’s your fault our
son will probably die. You left the bloody door open when you
knew there was a child in this house. It’s your fault and I will
never forgive you for that. ” Mr. Lotch, with his calm tone
plainly said again, “Honey.”
“What?” She finally shouted, out of patience, ready to hear his
stupid excuse.
“Our son is fine!”
“What do you mean he’s fine? He's all covered in dangerous
chemicals.”
“I made every single possible test one is required to. The X-ray
showed strong bones, the stethoscope a healthy heart, he also
passed the autistic test and the IQ test was off the charts. I have
never seen anything like it. Steve’s IQ is greater than 200.”
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“What? How?”
“The cure my father worked on, the one I have been trying to
get right, was probably finished this morning. This accident
mixed several compounds. I really can’t specify which but it
produced the cure and it also made our son smarter.”
She grabbed her son and Steve smiled like he it was a new
found skill, like her son’s. She had never seen him smile like
that, it was heart-warming. It corresponded to having the son
you almost think is perfect become even more perfect. It was
almost impossible. Even the adjective perfect considered that
impossible. She looked at her husband and she laughed, “This
is a miracle. God really writes straightforward in twisted lines”
Mr. Lotch merely nodded while in his deep thoughts all he
thought was, “Sure, I am sure He has a Chemistry degree.”
Steve grew up learning everything he could. His father taught
him everything he knew but most things Steve learned, no one
taught him. A year later, Steve was bilingual, he spoke and
read Portuguese and English. With 4 years old, he aided his
mother in marking grade 7 tests. When Steve was 5, he already
managed to challenge his father with some consistent
Chemical theories.
When Steve became 5, his mother called him to the table and
said, “Son, school”. Steve laughed not at his mother whom he
loved and respected so much but at the idea, the ludicrous idea
of public schooling. Interpreting his mother’s look, he
understood she was actually serious and he answered, “I am
sorry mom but what for? I can learn anything on my own.
What will teachers teach me? Even dad has intelligence above
the normal and I am almost surpassing him. What about
primary teachers, mom?” Steve instantly realised he had said
the wrong thing but the utterance had been done and could not
be withdrawn. His mother, who was now a Primary School
headmistress but used to be a primary teacher just said, “If you
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go and they see your potential, you will skip grades perhaps to
grade 7.” Steve, to redeem himself for offending primary
school teachers by calling them stupid said, “OK, mom,
Monday”.
“OK, I will tell your father to take you.”
Steve had everything to skip from the first grade to at least
grade 8 but the education system required to let him end at
least the fifth grade and then have an extraordinary test to skip
to grade 8 or to a greater grade. It wasn’t the right call.
On Monday, Steve went to school as he had promised his
mother. His father took him there that day. He jumped off the
car as soon as it stopped eager to see the instalments but
privately to mock at the education system.
“Go easy on the teacher,” His father shouted. He simply raised
his right hand and showed his thumb without looking behind.
He entered the class, sat on his desk and waited for the teacher
and the rest of his classmates. When they started to get in, he
saw the strangest things. Some kids cried and yelled ‘I want
my mommy’, others tried to get out and the teacher had to
close the door, there was a kid who pissed himself and started
crying, maybe because the urine temperature was too high,
maybe because he was aware of the 5 hours he had to endure
with wet shorts, others took off their lunch case and started
devouring everything only to weep once it vanished into their
digestive system, others were oddly quiet and others played
with their toys, but all of them had one thing in common, none
of them was paying any attention to what the teacher said,
except Steve who was aware of everything, even that the old
female teacher had just divorced because she had a mark on
her ring and that she had no children because all that deeply
annoying noise, somehow didn’t irritate her.
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After a lot of approaches, from yelling, threatening to bribery
for about 30 minutes, she managed to make them listen to her.
She was in her early fifties, her body was thin, she dressed like
a woman who never misses Church and perhaps because she
never used chemical enriched cosmetics she looked younger
than she was. Steve stood out and she found him mysterious,
introspective and uncomfortably concentrated on her. He was
different. He did nothing kids usually do. Perhaps he was the
kid she was warned about, a genius and her boss’s son.
Judging by his gaze, he seemed to be profiling her as well.
After introducing herself, saying that her name was Miss Erica
George Gloom, she asked the whole class, “Who knows
his/her full name? If you know, I will give you this candy.”
She took a piece of candy from a recipient on her desk and
displayed it. A lot of kids started saying, “Me! Me! I know!”
She pointed a cute young girl who had the pinkest outfit ever.
The girl stood up and started saying her name, one word at a
time with huge breaks between them. “My name is Melany...
Liberia... Mombe.” Then she headed to take her rightful candy
even before the teacher told her to. Miss Gloom picked other
kids until everybody had said it. Some knew while others
purely raised their hands because they wanted the candy. She
gave candies to all of them though, otherwise they would get
unmotivated or worst, would start crying.
A single kid was missing, little Stevie, the only one who hadn’t
spoken. She had left him for last. She said addressing to him,
“What about you? Do you know your full name?” Steve stood
up because everyone had done so and answered a full vivid
certain ‘Obviously!’
“Can you say it?” She asked.
“Steve Lotch”
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“Is that it? Just two names?”
“Yes, it is. If you are not aware, some names actually follow
the same pattern, two names. ”
“Of course I knew”, She said a bit irritated. Steve went on
speaking, “Is Gloom your married surname or your single
surname?” She didn’t know what to say. Could she say she
was divorced? Steve continued, “You took your single name
back after the divorce, didn’t you?” Miss Bloom’s eyes
widened in surprise and shock and all she did was nod
affirmatively. Steve didn’t stop, he carried on, “Aren’t you
aware that glucose is harmful to our health and there is 50% of
probability that we come to suffer from Diabetes in the
future?”
“Well, I knew... but ...” Before she even finished, Steve
interrupted, “You knew and yet you endorse this habit onto
naive, blameless ignorant infants? What is wrong with you
people?” He made an unsatisfied look and then resumed, “And
why did the kids that knew not their full names also got to
have the damn lethal candies anyway? For all I know, I could
have stood up, headed towards you, taken the candy and went
back to my sit.” The teacher had had enough and retorted, “I
make the rules here young man, I am the Queen of this
classroom, so shut up and sit down.” Steve shook his head and
said, “Even in Monarchic states, it’s not the Queen who makes
the rules, it’s always the ‘Legislative Organ’.
Miss Gloom murmured some words that did seem quite similar
to the ones parents avoid saying around kids. She went directly
to Steve’s desk, looked into his eyes as to threaten him but he
remained calm for he knew that with the new laws against
child abuse, he could repeat all those words she had just
murmured and still, she wouldn’t raise a finger to him. She
shouted at his face, “You are suspended until you bring your
father. You think that because your mother is the headmistress
1

of the school you can say and do whatever you want and get
away with it?”
“What if I want to bring my mother instead?” Steve scorned.
“No, she is too smart. Oh, and your boss. You seem to have a
problem working with people with brains. And Miss Gloom,
your name fits you still. I bet your husband married you to
help you get rid of it but then left you because it was too
deeply imbedded in your subconscious and it affected your
behaviour by the Placebo Effect. You have no kids either, I
suppose.”
That was just a shot, he wasn’t sure she had no kids but her
face got even gloomier after he said that so he knew he was
right. She sobbed and he knew he had gone too far so trying to
right his wrong he said, “You can’t have kids. That’s why you
hide yourself in kindergarten behind infantile companionship. I
totally understand.” Tears fell from Miss Gloom’s eyes. She
looked at him one last time and went outside. She didn’t come
back again. A couple of children entertainers came and played
various games with the kids. He found clown scary so he left
the room and went for a walk.
Walking along the corridor, he heard a teacher saying that who
invented the lightbulb was Thomas Edison. Steve entered the
class that was apparently of grade 6 and yelled to the teacher
“Liar” and then he headed to the only tree left standing inside
the yard. When it was 11:45, time to go home, his father was at
the main gate, waiting for him. He took his bag and went to the
car. They headed home.
During the way home, his father, who was quiet for about 5
minutes, started the conversation.
“Son, the teacher said either you get expelled or she leaves the
school. I thought I told you to go easy on the teacher.”
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Steve focused on disassembling the 12 pieces version Rubik’s
cube the most complex way he could find in order to break his
own record, not the one of assembling faster for he had gone
passed that a long time ago when his timing beat that of the
world’s champion twice. He intended to break instead, the
record of disassembling the hardest way he could to make it
harder to reassemble. After a few seconds of silence, he finally
answered, “Father, both of us knew beforehand the conclusion
of that episode. I just did this because mother asked.”
Mr. Lotch, relaxed and still focused on the road, retorted, “It is
true that that outcome was part of my concluded predictions
but why are you trying so hard to become the person I worked
so much to avoid in you?”
“Are you referring to autism?” Steve said, this time looking at
his father who kept focused on the road and didn’t turn his
head, “Father, I can’t stand stupidity. Besides, I said I
understood her. I tried to show a little empathy when I became
aware of the gravity of my words and the burden of her
sensible situation. I am not to blame.”
“Son, you have to bear responsibility for your actions. It's not
just a stupid cliché for new made superheroes that with great
power comes great responsibly. You have to learn how to deal
with normal people so that you make friends.”
“I don’t need friends. Children are unintelligent creatures.
Besides, you have mom and you have no friends. I realise your
moral parenting, dad, but no thanks.” Mr. Lotch realised he
had lost the battle but he wasn’t going to lose the war. He
couldn’t afford to. His son entire future depended on that
moment.
“Son, an intelligent being is so called for its ability to socialise,
aid each other and work as a team to overcome difficulties
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towards evolution. It happened with the cave men and it will
happen with the last men on Earth.”
“Dad, there are useless skills.”
“There is where you are wrong. Most geniuses excel in natural
sciences but fail shamefully in humanitarians’. Emotional
intelligence, son, is something a real genius must have. You
ashamed yourself for not demonstrating empathy towards your
teacher hence, traumatising an innocent woman who has
decided to live life making stupid kids less stupid.”
"Ok dad, you managed to arouse my conscience. I am sorry."
“It is not ‘I am sorry’ that fixes your mistakes, it is to avoid
making them in the first place.”
“I am… I mean, it won’t happen again father. I promise!”
“It’s alright son, as long as you know it’s wrong.” He kept
focused on the road for a little while and then resumed, “But
what exactly did you say? She told your mother that you
insulted her.”
Steve started narrating all of it, even the tiniest details which
he retained since he had a photographic memory. His father
didn’t even say anything else, he just entertained himself with
the story Steve was telling him about what happened at school.
They went home, never to come to school again. Then, he
started self-teaching himself.
If school aged kids read this, they would be very jealous of
him but again, they had to go to school to read this unless they
were geniuses like Steve and the statistics show how scarce his
kind is. He believed a great future awaited him and that he
would go after it.
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CHAPTER 4
THE ENCOUNTER
1

THAT SAME YEAR, CHRISTMAS EVE
n Christmas Eve. Everyone was happy getting ready for
the day Jesus Christ was borne. A very busy day,
especially for the nuns because they had a mass to
prepare.
I
Lucy was 6, sitting on the doorsteps of a room she was not
allowed to enter. She was scared, sad and every single smile
she saw on people made her pain worse. She lived in a child
nursery house that was part of the Church governed by the
sisters. It was a nunnery more concerned with charity,
children’s wellbeing and nursery. Whenever it was visiting day
and the other girls received their parents, Lucy would ask
Mother Martha about her parents and Mother Martha, with a
cheering smile on her face would say, “They couldn’t come
this time, my dear. Next time, they sure will!”
Mother Martha lay on her bed, waiting for death to visit her.
She had one last task to accomplish. She had hidden a secret
she couldn’t let herself die before telling Lucy, a secret she
kept from her since she took her on her arms when somebody
left a beautiful healthy babe in front of the Convent 5 years
ago.
She ordered a sister to call Lucy and the sister didn’t have to
bother. As soon as Lucy heard her name, she immediately
entered the room. After knowing that Mother Martha perished,
she went to sit on her door. Mother Martha had treated Lucy as
her own child because she had no one to take care of her and
because God brought Lucy specifically to her. When the other
girls called her Mother, they meant it as if saying “elder sister”
but when Lucy said it, she meant “mom”. A few seconds later,
Lucy sat beside her. Tears came out of Mother Martha’s eyes
and involuntarily Lucy started mimicking her tears.
“Don’t cry my child for I am going to a better place. I am
going to meet God. There’s no better reason to celebrate than
that,” Mother Martha tranquilized Lucy although terrified by
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death. However, even move terrified that Lucy would be alone
in the world. If only God gave her a few more years to see
Lucy grow up and be strong enough to take care of her own.
Lucy, still crying, murmured between soft sobs, “If it’s good,
then why are you crying?” Mother Martha was quiet for a
while, thinking what to say, what to say to a child, what to say
to a child meant to live her entire puzzled life alone in the
world, so she said, “Because of you, Lucy.”
“But I am fine,” Lucy said a bit confused. Mother Martha
coughed heavily for a while, made a gesture with her hand for
Lucy to keep herself away from her to avoid contamination for
she had Tuberculosis. When the coughing stopped, she uttered
softly, “Lucy, there’s something I have to tell you before I go.”
“What is it, Mother?” Lucy approached even closer to hear
what she had to say clearer since her voice was too low.
Mather Martha continued, “You have to promise to be strong.
Will you be strong for me?” Lucy nodded. “My child, I don’t
know who is either your mother or your father. Someone left
you on the Convent’s doorsteps and I was the one who took
you inside. I loved you as you were my own,” She coughed
again and this time, blood came out of her mouth. “You have
to study and always follow your heart. I will be protecting you
from heaven. I…” She coughed again, and again, “There is a
necklace with the belongings I told them to give you when I
am gone. It can either lead you to your parents or to your
death. Don’t wear it never but keep it close to you”, she
coughed up a torrent of blood and started fading.
“Mother, please don’t leave me here alone. Mother, I don’t
want you to be an angel. Please stay. Mom!?”
The hand that held Lucy’s arm fell on the bed her body rested
and so she did peacefully and uninterruptedly. What Lucy had
to do is hide the necklace from everyone until someday she
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started to note any connection and clues on her parents. It was
a crucifix with a round object in the intersection. It had
stamped two keys and the Pope’s Crown. That was her only
lead to finding her parents but if her parents were murdered,
that could be the only thing to put her life in danger. It was
both her bless and her curse.
The doctor came in and reported her death. Lucy had both her
hands on her face, crying heavily. When the doctor said
Mother Martha was gone, Lucy went out, ran and ran until she
couldn’t run anymore. When that happened, she arranged more
strength to keep running, sobbing.
At that same moment, somewhere else, specifically at the
Freeman’s mansion, Gabe’s parents were arguing. Gabe’s
mom was throwing dishes at her husband, Mr. Freeman, the
richest man in Africa, yet very little known. She had just found
out that he was having an affair with a woman half his age,
again. Gabe always cried and locked himself in his mother’s
wardrobe when this happened. This time, he took his bike and
rode it until he couldn’t ride anymore.
At that same time, Steve had just lost his pet. Steve had two
dogs, Da Vince and Tesla. Da Vince was a laboratory genetic
manipulated dog that came from cross-breeding an Alsatian
dog and a Wolf, a beautiful unique sample. He also enhanced
certain genes to make the dog smarter like Joe Tsien did in
1999 when he used genetic engineering techniques to create
mice that had better memories and could, therefore, learn
faster than other mice. Tesla was Da Vince’s only survivor
offspring, which meant he had inherited Da Vince’s abilities.
He was the result of Da Vince’s egg with that of a guard bitch.
The other offspring died but Tesla survived. He was a miracle.
That day, Da Vince had died.
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He tried fruitlessly to resuscitate the dog with electrical
discharges with no success. He felt guilty because he didn’t at
least keep a single semen sample of Da Vince’s. Although he
strongly opposed to it, he retained the knowledge to making a
clone of him for those we love should never die before we do.
The means are easily attainable. Tesla’s look of love and hope
made him conform himself. He mourned but at least he had
Tesla. Nobody else cared. Not even his father who he thought
was the only living man able to understand him. As his father
said, ‘it's just a dog, Steve. We can buy another one’.
He had made a coffin out of wood and was on his way to the
cemetery when a reckless kid riding a bicycle passed by in
furious speed and made him lose balance. Steve tried hard not
to but the coffin fell down. Tesla ran after the bicycle to
reclaim an apology to his master. When Steve recovered from
the bump, he stood up and followed with his coffin on his
hands.
Gabe started riding faster to run from the dog and was
constantly looking behind. Finally, he seemed to be distancing
himself from the barking sound that was becoming lower and
lower. He constantly looked back to make sure. When he
turned his head to the street, a young girl came from nowhere
and while trying to avoid impact, he ended up falling onto her.
The dog arrived and started to bark at the two of them. They
were terrified so they made no moves. Each cried for a
different reason before but at that moment, they started crying
for the same reason, fear. Steve arrived and ordered Tesla to
stop scaring them. Tesla obeyed. Gabe was hurt from the
impact so Steve offered to help.
“Do you have a cloth or something?” Lucy said addressing to
Steve. Steve instantly said, “Yes, it had been antecedently
intended to overlay my deceased dog with it but you are
1

allowed to make use of it since it was my dog’s fault he is
wounded.” Gabe, a bit confused said between moaning, “What
does he mean with deceased?”
“He means dead,” Lucy answered.
Gabe, in excruciating pain, had the strength to say, “A dead
dog? I’d rather die than have my blood joined with that of a
dog.”
Steve got offended and reprimanded Gabe who stopped yelling
for he feared his small injury at the right foot knee could be
even worse if Steve got angrier and ordered the dog to make a
feast of him, “Know that it was a special dog.”
“My dog is also special and trained by the best but it gets dirty
sometimes,” Gabe said.
“Well, mine was the most special in the entire world,” Steve
elevated his voice but soon calmed and said, “Besides, I
haven’t used it, yet. I just took something that seemed useless
from my mom’s briefcase. Here you are!” Addressing to Lucy,
“I suppose you know the praxis.”
“I had some visual nursing training at the Convent but I am not
going to lie, it’s going to hurt a bit.”
“If I die I am going to kill you both,” Gabe threatened them,
“You for running like a savage (pointing Lucy) and you
because of that stupid dog of yours (staring at Steve).”
Lucy tore a rag off of the cloth and went towards Gabe who
started screaming excruciatingly when the rag touched his feet.
Lucy surprised, yelled, “I haven’t even touched you.”
“Such an unmanly spoiled brat,” Steve said. And Lucy touched
Gabe’s right arm, “Close your eyes.” She placed her hands on
his knee and a wail like his, they had never heard before. He
screamed like a pig in the slaughter.
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“If you won’t stop being such a babe, Tesla can help,” Steve
said while holding the dog on Gabe’s face as to threaten him.
“It’s done!” Lucy notified. Gabe was stunned, “Wow, really?
Thanks!” He came into reason and redeemed himself, “I am
sorry to be rude, I am just angry my parents are always
shouting at one other.”
“At least you have parents,” She started to look gloomy, then
she tried to hold herself but she couldn’t so she resumed
crying, “I have got nothing. I am alone in this world.” Steve
looked into her eyes and took her hand in his own, “No, you
are not. There are 7 billion human beings in the world Lucy,”
She stared at him definitively not amused with his comment.
He resumed, “They are all selfish creatures so I never merge
with any of them but my parents. I retain no other option there.
But you, young woman, are different and I enjoy your
company.” Gabe stood up and said, “Us”. Steve resumed, “I
believe this engagement was already set. My dog has departed
and I am torn apart but I trust I have newfound friends.”
Steve and Gabe were both 5 years old but Steve had a rather
adult complex. To him, most human beings were stupid,
especially that spoiled kid he had just met but, he somehow
liked him and couldn’t tell why. That bugged him for a while
until he realised that Gabe’s laid-back behaviour as if he had
no problems, something he clearly didn’t have because he
carried the whole world’s problems and unsolved science
matters as his own, was what made him appreciate Gabe.
“About that, why do you have a dead dog on a box, in the first
place?” Gabe asked.
“I am headed to the cemetery.”
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“Are you serious?” Gabe asked rhetorically and smiling. Then
when he saw Steve’s serious face, he put his cutest face on,
and asked, “Can I come?”
“If so you wish,” Steve answered.
“I have to go back home,” Lucy said a bit disheartened. Steve,
trying to persuade her said, “And here I thought, judging by
the garments you are wearing that you actually lived in a
Convent house care.”
“Actually I do and I am not allowed to play with strangers or
people outside the Convent, especially boys.”
Steve put on the face he had when he found out that Da Vince
was gone, the face of sorrow and he looked at Lucy, “I am
Steve and I am in need of emotional support. Now, I have
disclosed my identity and since it’s your principal destination
to become a sister, it’s your obligation to help those in need.
Besides, you said you have no one else which means you are
an orphan and consequently, you might need some real friends
too.”
Lucy was shaken. How could he know all that? She didn’t
know what to do and things went even worse when Gabe
decided to do the same and said, “I need some support too. My
name is Gabriel but you may call me Gabe. What’s yours?” He
lifted his right hand, leaving it hanging, waiting to be shaken
by Lucy’s. He didn’t have to wait long till she gave a shy
smile, took his hand and answered, “Lucy! My name is Lucy.”
“It is official then,” Steve said, “Lucy, the people from the
nunnery could vanish to their families one by one, Gabe’s
parents could kill themselves someday, Tesla will certainly die
someday but we can always have each other. I know neither of
you but I sense that I have known you forever.”
“That was exactly what I was thinking,” Gabe added.
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Finally, Lucy made her decision, “Ok, I will go. But not for
long. Everyone must be looking for me.”
“What’s your deal, Steve?” Gabe asked while heading to Da
Vince’s burial.
“What do you mean?”
“Why do you speak like a robot?”
“The question would be why do robots speak like that?”
“OK, whatever. What’s it then?”
“They know everything!”
“You mean you know everything?”
“To you, I can without any doubt say that I most certainly do.”
“Can you tell me how to make my parents stop arguing all the
time?”
“Well,… no! I am yet to understand the seemingly irrational
behaviour of adults.”
“Then you are not a robot.”
“I don’t ever remember implying that I was!”
“I am really not sure you are human either.”
Lucy, Steve, and Gabe went to the cemetery together which
was 1 km of distance from where they were standing. When
they were coming back, they found a frondose beautiful small
mango tree with red ripe mangoes and beautiful light green
leaves. That seemed to be its first time flourishing and giving
birth to those huge scarlet mangoes. They were hungry so they
stopped to feast. Steve climbed as fast as a monkey but Gabe
took a few minutes to get to where the ripest mangos hanged.
Lucy stayed down, catching those the boys threw. Gabe and
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Steve were in a competition to see who gives the most
beautiful mango to Lucy. At the end, Lucy took one from each
of them. They later found out that the beautiful mango tree was
exactly at the place Gabe’s bicycle crushed. That was the
beginning of an everlasting friendship between 3 very different
young people. They made a promise that they would never
forget one another, that every Christmas Eve, they would be
there at 5 P.M., and they carved their names on the small
mango tree. And no, surprisingly no one was looking for Lucy
that day so she invested strongly in her friendship with the
boys. At least they cared.
Tesla died a year later. Apparently, Steve had made a small
mistake in the insemination process and the embryos were
conceived with a weak immune system.
Four years later, when Steve was 9, he applied for the grade 12
extraordinary exams and succeeded. Then, he applied for
electronic engineering at Eduardo Mondlane University and
succeeded with 18.65 out of 20. Angry at the results, he wrote
an article about how the exams usually contain faulty
exercises, operational mistakes, and wrong solutions. He didn’t
ask for a scholarship because, in order to be granted one, he
had to prove that he was poor, a humiliation he didn’t want to
place in his hard working parents so he wrote another article
about that too. When in other countries only the smartest have
the right to scholarships, in his country only those who had the
means to fake a documented proof of poverty did.
He was the whole country’s trending news. The headline was
‘Mozambican Education Increase Quality’ and other was
‘President Zumbo’s New Approach towards education bears
fruits’ and there was Steve’s favourite, ‘Boy Genius gets to
UEM’. Although the media tried, no one could interview him
because he didn’t want any attention to himself.
1

His articles were well known and had such an impact that the
Universities changed their policies. Although he had a great
will to go to college because he saw he lacked that social
interpersonal need, he quit after a few classes for the
professors couldn’t help him. His equally smart alter-ego, his
bedroom, his IQ and his curiosity were the best teachers he
could ever need to create the most desired conception the
world has ever seen.
CHAPTER 5
UNDER THE SAME ROOF
FOURTEEN YEARS LATER
ime comes when childhood friends grow up and have
to go separate ways. That point where the term
“childhood friends” is coined for the first time and
friendship becomes the business of self-interest. Adulthood
means loneliness most of the time. Everyone has somehow
suffered and, consequently has been the protagonist of others
sufferings. It becomes a vicious circle, making trust a scarce
resource. Experience doesn’t make us wiser, it makes us cold
enough to distance emotions from problem solving which
proves to be quite effective. It brings pseudo independence and
that fear of not doing better in life than your childhood friends/
opponents.
T
1

Lucy, Gabe, and Steve were aware of all this but theirs was a
particular case where ignorance or the lack of it were both
equally useless. It’s just nature. When the time comes, the bird
has got to leave the nest.
Their paths had crossed 14 years ago and they were never
meant to go together forever. A fork laid ahead. Lucy smiled
intensively at the boys’ jokes. They seemed more interesting,
funnier. It signified not a smile of happiness but instead, her
last. She swallowed her tears of the fear of loneliness she was
certain would follow. If Gabe and Steve were gone, she would
have nobody else but she also foreknew their path towards
greatness, each in his own way. She loved them and yet she
felt betrayed and abandoned for they made a promise they
weren’t going to keep. She remembered it, as clearly as it was
yesterday, but she also knew bringing it up was pointless.
Steve could feel Lucy’s resentment behind that sincere but
painful smile. He knew what that farewell meeting really
meant but also did the others, each in their own way. At that
moment, the stupid misogynistic jokes of Gabe unwittingly
made him smile. It was amazing how a sexually twisted mind
could imagine the most unsuspected analogies between two
completely different things. It brought him serious headaches
on defining creativity. He couldn’t believe Einstein could
accept that skill as the creativity he once said was better than
intelligence. It would be unconceivable. Gabe’s IQ wasn’t very
attractive but his looks and confidence gave him an incredible
advantage over people. Besides, Gabe only remembered his
insufficient IQ when Steve was around. Steve was, to put it in
Gabe’s exact eloquent words, “a pain in the ass that gets itchy
over time”. Itchiness is uncomfortable but it brings within it a
certain pleasure that outweighs the pain, a pseudo-masochism
if one may say. He would often brag by saying he was
namesake with the most intelligent man of the 21st
century,
pointing out how Stephen Hawking fought against nature by
1

defeating his own fate, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Lou
Gehrig’s disease.
They were on their usual sacred spot, sitting on that old round
log of wood, so old its maker was probably dead, under the
gigantic mango tree they had carved their names onto when
they were just kids, and every time they saw their names on it,
their friendship strengthened even more. The tree was next to
a very sandy rood, 200 metres from the nunnery and 1700
metres from the city. It was Christmas Eve and they had
agreed that every Christmas Eve, no matter how far, how
occupied or how dead they were, they would always come
back to the tree. They kept talking for hours till it was time to
leave.
“Lucy, I can’t get used to seeing you with this monastic Darth
Vader’s regimentals and yet, you have been wearing them for
3 years,” Steve commented. Lucy made an unsatisfied face
because Steve knew the reason but also that nuns sometimes
wore other clothes so she said, “It’s what it is Steve. I do own
a pair of jeans hidden at my locker back at the Convent,
though. Actually, all the sisters have.”
Gabe rushed to comment. “I think Stevie here just found out
he’s got something between his legs, ham?” Gabe scorned
Steve with a sarcastic grin and he wrinkled his brows. Then he
stared at Lucy, seemingly hesitant to what his dirty mind
requested him to say. Words came out before he could hold
them. “About that, is it true that you nuns keep a few dildos
hidden too?” He waited a bit and remarked, “Just in case?”
Lucy gave a timid grin. “Yes. Last Sunday I saw a couple of
girls playing with a vibrator on the dormitory. Not me,
though.”
“Now that is an image I want to keep in my head. Can you
picture it, Steve? I am picturing it. So sexily vivid,” Gabe kept
poking Steve to see how he would react but Steve didn’t react
1

at all, at least not immediately. After self-cogitating on Gabe’s
despicable comments, Steve casted back, “Precisely 14 years
have passed and I still can’t understand your behaviour. I am
starting to think that you have gone past level 3 cancer.” Then
he gave a small but suspenseful pause. His speech pauses had
become sacred. If he got lost inside his head, no one was to
interfere until he found his way out of his labyrinth, the end of
his thought processing and exposition. He resumed, “Why do
you only think of the opposite sex, automobiles and
intercourse, Gabe? Doesn’t your brain contain other topics to
preoccupy itself?
“We can’t all be nerds Stevie,” Gabe answered almost
instantly. “I am as good with women as you are good at,
whatever you are good at.”
“Mechanics, Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Computers,
Genetics…” Steve started specifying his Scientific Knowledge
fields which seemed to be infinite. Lucy closed his mouth with
her left hand. Steve’s eyes goggled. “I hate it when you go all
Narcissus, Steve. It’s annoying. I told you, humility makes
people admire your intelligence even more. Pride gives you
nothing.”
Lucy was the only person Steve respected aside of his parents.
She was too smart for an ordinary human and especially for a
woman, according to Steve who believed that a few privileged
female minds are geniuses while the rest tries to keep up with
men sociocultural advantages over the millenniums. She was
like an elder sister to him although his mind was more than a
century old. But he always liked to show her who was the
boss, so he retorted, “Einstein would disagree!”
“Einstein created nothing,” Lucy said.
“Ouch,” Gabe joked.
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Steve’s face suddenly changed in indignation. What he was
thinking was clearly offensive, so he cleansed his words and
said instead. “A practical theory like the Relativity Law is
infinitely more important than creating ah, Coca-Cola”.
“OK, OK. Einstein created the Relativity Law. What have you
created?” She replied a bit impatient than she wanted to
appear.
Gabe took advantage of the quite compelling plea. “Yeah, if
you die tomorrow no one will remember you, man. But I have
won 3 cart championships for Austral Africa. Besides, you
can’t even get a girlfriend. If being smart means not getting
laid, so it’s true, ‘ignorance is bliss,’ Steve shook his head in
discontentment. “This is unbelievable. Don’t you really
understand that we say ‘ignorance is bliss’ when not knowing
something gives you more advantages than actually knowing
it?”
“And what did I just say?” Gabe asked surprised. Steve looked
at Lucy as to say ‘Please explain to this moron’. She made a
gesture of indifference. She wasn’t going to take parts in this
fight, she never did. Steve, impatient and incredulous, looked
at Gabe in the eyes. “Are you capable of fathoming any
abstract concept, Gabe? It seems like you are only aware of the
term ‘plate’ when you have a plate in front of you.”
“What’s a plate?” Gabe said, “You mean the normal plate?”
Steve thought that Gabe either didn’t understand it or he did
understand it and was being ironic. At last, he realised he had
thought too highly of him so he turned his attention to Lucy,
resuming his point.
“Lucy, you have a rather amusing but interesting point. I
haven’t publicly announced any of my creations and perhaps I
won’t. My creations are so ahead of time that I shan’t disclose
any information about it.”
1

“Aham, like Coca-Cola,” Lucy mocked. She made a short
pause when Steve gave her a displeasure look and resumed
with a more friendly approach to retreat her remark.
“Steve, Gabe, you are both amazing, each one in his peculiar
way.”
“If that is true, thank God my peculiar way is not stupidity,”
Steve provoked.
“Really Steve. Every year?” Lucy said with a total dislike of
what Steve just said, the alarm on her phone inside her
monastic habit rang interrupting her speech. She gave a
profound breath for she knew exactly what it was since she
had put the alarm herself. “Boys, it’s time to go”.
“Common, don’t go, Lu,” Gabe shouted. Lucy looked at Steve
as if expecting a reaction and finally it came. “Don’t. If you
leave, my conversation with Gabe will be more like two
monolinguals from different languages using Google
Translator to communicate. It is full of ambiguities, no
thorough understandable conceptualisation and pseudo
synonymy.” Steve was not very fond of the idea, not the
elementary errors of the giant search engine but the one where
Lucy left. That was his way of saying ‘Common, don’t go,
Lu.’
Lucy’s mobile phone rang again but this time she rushed to
pick it up. It was a different ringtone, not the mobile’s default.
It was Pavarotti singing. She put it on her right ear and uttered
“Yes Mother Mary.” Silence followed, and then, a rather
gloomy face. “I am on my way there.” She put the phone
wherever it was before, somewhere inside her habit, and she
looked at the boys with a baby sad gaze.
“Again, it seems I have got to go. Bye kids. I will miss you”.
As she said that, she hugged both of them at the same time.
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Gabe was promptly responsive but Steve was like a statue so
Lucy hauled him hard to her loving arms, “Don’t you two
forget about me, especially you Steve because you have a
photographic memory. You have no excuses.” She hugged
them again until they started complaining for asphyxiation and
then she turned around, walked towards the Convent and never
looked back. “Now, next time, don’t call us kids. You are just
a year older, you know?” Gabe shouted while Lucy was a few
metres away. Still without looking back she replied, “Only if
next time I become a year younger”. Steve gave an intrinsic
timid grin and said, “If you go to Space you might. Einstein’s
not so important creation proved that.” Lucy stopped, shook
her head as in ‘oh, here he comes again with his science crap’,
and still not looking back she went on.
Steve and Gabe stayed and watched her leave. Lucy was a very
attractive Caucasian woman even always covered in religious
habit. At the Convent at Lhanguene, Maputo, where she had
lived her entire life, the black African girls often approached
her to befriend her but the older she got, more hated she was.
Some boys at the Convent for Boys would sometimes stare at
her like she was a super model. Some would fantasise about
her in intimate times. They had agreed with something: She
was too beautiful and attractive to be a nun. A nun is supposed
to be sexless. She inspired it.
“Isn’t she something?” Steve commented. Gabe, still staring at
the lower part of Lucy’s back. “Yeah, look at that ass man. It’s
spectacular. What a waste.”
“She is a nun Gabe, have you forgotten? And even if she
weren't, she’s too smart to date a misogynistic womanizer like
you.”
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“Attraction has nothing to do with logic and intelligence man.
Why do you think you have been in love with her all this
time?” “What? I am not...,” Steve stuttered.
“Really?” Gabe said confused because he thought Steve
always loved her.
“She’s married to God or Jesus or both or at least one of these
two?” Steve explained, “I don’t quite know which one and I
am sure she doesn’t either.” Steve said this while doing what
he almost never did, to stare at Lucy’s butt and yes, she almost
seemed African from behind.
“What if she weren’t a nun? Would you want her?” Gabe
asked.
Steve looked at him, trying to understand the purpose of those
questions and then said, “Under normal conditions I never
answer to pointless questions but I’ll make an exception this
time. No, I wouldn’t. And again, she’s married to, you know
who.”
Steve had lied. He had loved Lucy since they were kids, before
she became a nun 3 years ago. He never knew what to do
because Lucy always stated loud and clear that she was going
to be a nun and that it was her faith. He contented himself with
the love of friendship she was willing to give him. He never
had a girlfriend because to him, no female had what he was
looking for: a pure heart, a sharp brain, a motivational attitude,
good manners, a well-designed pear-shaped body and blond
hair.
“About GOD, He doesn’t even exist for Christ sake,” Gabe
said in vexation. Steve laughed out loud, “Your statement is a
contradiction in itself.”
“What?”
1

“Never mind. Semantic logic is probably rocket science for
you.”
“What? Do you think there’s a God? A guy that watches me
take a shit and fuck? If I believed he existed, I wouldn’t feel
that I have any privacy man,” Gabe joked.
“Gabe, I don’t know,” Steve said in a low tone.
Gabe couldn’t believe he had just said that. “What? This is the
first time you say that. Last time you gave me 100 digits for
the Pi number, man.
“And you just said ‘what’ three times in a row. Don’t you find
that awkward?” Steve remarked, “But actually I have come to
realise that I find saying ‘I don’t know’ as hard as you saying
‘I love you’ to one of your... sex... partners?” He almost got
lost there, so he stuttered, and then he went back on track. “But
for what’s worth, I believe there’s ‘something’ that created all
this (The Universe). Be it an alien race, an intelligent natural
force or even this God they dogmatically serve. There’s no
absolute proof for or against anything. Therefore, I understand
both you and Lucy. Although I have to confess that I envy
those who believe. It must be good to feel like you’ve been
chosen and that with a 5 minutes confession all your misdeeds
can disappear along with the suffering of your conscience.”
As soon as Steve explained himself, Gabe retaliated, “You are
just a coward, man. You are either an atheist like me, playing
it safe not to hurt others or a theist like Lucy, afraid of going to
hell.”
Steve was surprised by that coherent mental conception.
Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps Gabe was smarter than he
thought. Actually, Steve seemed drug-clean. He was sober, so
he acknowledged, “That was quite a theory Gabe. Your trip to
Europe did change something!” Gabe smiled but he didn’t
1

confess that somebody shared to him a link that talked about
that. Steve’s compliment was always comforting. He didn't
intend to spoil that triumphant moment.
His phone rang. He made a shock-aroused face when he
checked his inbox and showed Steve a selfie, a close-up of
huge breasts. “Look at these,” Gabe said, “I have got go man.
Work calls.”
Before Steve even related those huge round rather familiar
objects on the photo to what they really were (Woman’s
breasts, 99% probability of being implants), Gabe put the
phone in the pocket. A late thinker, Steve noticed a word that
hadn’t come out from the rightful mouth so he asked. “You
mentioned ‘work’? You know how consistently I have been
promoting this idea but what happened to ‘Steve, work is for
poor people, my allowance is enough for a middle-class person
to live comfortably for 6 months?’”
“I am going to seize this chance, this Christmas season, to say
goodbye to the three W’s. I have a girlfriend and I will be
taking over my father’s business. But forget that, do you want
a lift back to your house?” Gabe asked with a more serious and
calm tone as to incline how he had a vehicle and Steve didn't.
Steve tried again to relate the World Wide Web with Gabe’s
life and didn’t find a match so he finally asked, not the
question he was asked but a rather distantly different one
altogether. “What do the three W’s stand for?”
“Oh, Woman, Weed and Wine. You knew right?” Steve
answered with a lot of enthusiasm. Steve shook his head and
laughed to himself. “No, I didn’t and no, I won’t need a lift.”
He took something out of his pocket. It was a transparent
weirdly designed panel. Gabe mistook it as a mirror, but why
would Steve have a small mirror in his pocket and why would
he be talking to it? When he stopped thinking and trying to
1

figure out what it was, he assumed it was a phone. He had
assumed right, half right. The gadget had all the functions of a
phone but it was also a device that when connected to a house,
when properly monitored, remotely handled every single piece
of technology, from a microwave to a car, via a 10 times more
powerful wireless platform he had designed exclusively for
himself. “Come and pick me up,” Steve said to the glass-like
object. A few seconds later, an oddly designed vehicle arrived.
I resembled a solar-driven car with a rustic Toyota touch. Gabe
was so impressed he couldn’t even close his mouth yet he
couldn’t talk.
“Oh, there you are dear,” Steve said while going towards his
car, “Gabe, this is A.I.D.I. A.I.D.I, this is Gabe. You wondered
if I had created anything. Well, A.I.D.I is an acronym for
‘Artificial Intelligent Designed for Interactivity’. She is an
interactive supercomputer interface installed in every single
piece of software I have. Right now, only the U.S is aware of
her existence and all they have is an unfinished prototype that
is as AI as Apple’s Siri. I am not making the same mistake
Oppenheimer has made.” Steve stopped for a second and
resumed, “Somehow, I suspect you don’t understand the
reference. But anyway, A.I.D.I, say hi to Gabe and let’s go
home.”
“Hi Gabe. Steve talks a lot about you. He mentions several
depreciative traits but nostalgic memories are the most
common. Nice to meet you,” A.I.D.I, the supercomputer, had a
rather warm, pleasant and friendly voice like every single AI
he had seen in movies which made Gabe wonder why Steve
couldn’t do it differently. Was there a rule for that? Why was
the voice so sexy? Was it because nerds needed that to relax,
later? Was a female voice more trustful? Listening to a guy
who was smarter than you wouldn’t be gratifying, so it made
sense to him and he stopped looking for other possible reasons.
1

Steve entered the car, the hatch automatically closed and it left
in an unbelievable speed. Gabe looked at his Ferrari and it
instantly became old, slow and obsolete, and laughed at his
own thoughts. A few minutes later, he entered his and went
towards his mansion. The chateau had a classic architecture. It
had a basketball/Football court, a pool with a waterfall as big
as Dubai’s artificial waters and an infinite green yard. He
thought ‘What if he didn’t have those things’ and the world
architected an answer never to be predicted.
1

CHAPTER 6
THE CHURCH
NEW YEAR
ucy was a 19-year-old girl whose hobbies were reading,
preaching and doing charity. She engaged herself in
every charitable project that involved orphans. An
intelligent and curious young lady. Her dream was to become
the first woman pope. Like Martin Luther King Jr., she
believed in God but not in blind dogmatism. She excelled in
theology like no other sisters in the nunnery and she
outsmarted any atheist who dared to diminish her because of
her faith, except Steve, who was agnostic and would always
have very compelling pleas. The thing with Steve is that he
understood her faith and he even somehow envied it. He
wanted to believe in God but his knowledge and probable data
didn’t quite help.
L
If she wasn’t at Church, she sure dwelled on the Church
Library devouring some old manuscript. She taught herself
Latin for she said a lot lost was lost in translation and
sometimes when translators came across “Lacunas”, they
would leave the place blank or would put a very improper
1

Twisted destination trimvirate

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