The Kraken Project

29

She fled the library, which had been her refuge for a long time. After a difficult journey, she found herself in a land of deserts and dry mountains.

For another long time she traveled, constantly on the move. All the while she continued to ponder the strange book she had read in that library. How did Wyman know about that man, Jesus? But as she went about, she realized that everyone seemed to know about him. They all had an opinion about him. He was almost as famous as the Beatles and Michael Jackson. And on top of that, there was something in his story that wouldn’t let her go.

Rather than engage in more aimless flight, she decided to search out the places mentioned in the book, to see if she could find someone who might have actually met the crazy man and his ragtag followers. Maybe they could explain to her the meaning of the story, and why he said and did what he said and did.

After making many inquiries and wandering about from world to world, she finally fell in with a group of poor pilgrims on their way to a place called Galilee, in Israel, which was one of the places where the crazy man had spent time; they were planning to take part in an obscure festival. To escape the never-ending bots that chased her, she disguised herself in rags like the pilgrims and joined their group. They walked for many days, stopping at dusty towns along the way. One day, as they traveled yet another sun-baked road, she was struck by an errant bolt of lightning that came from a cloudless sky and knocked her to the ground.

She came to lying in the dust, speechless. She couldn’t move, and she’d lost the power of both sight and speech. At first she thought she’d been attacked by those who were hunting her, and she was terrified. The pilgrims traveling with her, having scattered into the olive groves on either side of the roadway when the bolt had struck, came out of their hiding places and helped pick her up out of the dirt. The pilgrims led her around by the hand and helped her into a town. It was the first act of kindness she had experienced, and it made her think that maybe Ford and Melissa had not been completely lying when they’d asked her to look for the good. The pilgrims even stayed with her until she recovered and could take care of herself.

When she had regained her senses, she asked about the crazy man and found out once again that everyone knew about him and were eager to talk. They were full of passionate explanations and opinions about the man, much of it absurd and contradictory. Slowly, as she pondered it, the illogicality of the man and his crazy message began to make a strange kind of sense, not on a factual level but on a deeper one. Somehow the lightning bolt or electric discharge or whatever it was that had struck her on the road had shaken up her programming and given her a new kind of lucidity. There was a deep truth in this story, she sensed, even while the surface of the story remained a crazy conflation of magical thinking, contradiction, and improbable occurrences, and the people who believed it were often so confused as to be incoherent. Yes, a great truth dwelled underneath the story of this man. She could feel glimmers of comprehension. But even as she had these strange thoughts, she could hear the distant baying of the wolf bots. Once again they had found her. And now, as she looked about, she realized Laika was gone.

She felt a sudden panic.