A Vision of Fire

When Abby said “burn victim,” Caitlin felt herself tense. She wondered if that would always happen, going forward.

Their call ended and she lay back. Her eyes closed, her mind closed, and she was asleep again.

Three hours later, when Caitlin was fully awake and caffeinated, the tabby Arfa draped across her lap, she opened her computer and her e-mail. At the top of the list was one from Ben, subject line: 2.5M hits in 4 hrs. Caitlin clicked on the attached video — and she was watching brightly painted trucks full of men and lumber driving into something like a shopping center in India, but a wrecked, distressed shopping center. It looked as if it had been through a hurricane. The men piled out of the trucks and hurried to greet the few people who were edging cautiously toward them from nearby houses. Then the video jumped to show construction — men repairing domed roofs — and people setting up long tables with lunch.

Caitlin called Ben and he picked up immediately.

“What am I watching?” she said, smiling as she saw little kids helping to drag planks toward a blasted shop front.

“The solution to all our problems,” he said. “This video was posted at around noon Jammu time and it went viral faster than any video in history. This shopping center saw a showdown between armed forces with guns, bombs, you name it. That’s what I was watching the night after we — after I stayed over. Apparently, truckloads of Pakistanis and Indians just converged on the city and now they’re rebuilding everything, the temple, the stores, the cinema. When the video went viral there was an international outcry calling for reconciliation. Both delegations showed up this morning to make a deal. It was — actually, it was very strange, like they’d all woken from a fever or something.”

“That’s amazing,” Caitlin said. “It’s too…”

“Impossible?” Ben asked. “Nevertheless, that was all it took. Supposed enemies treating each other as people, with dignity. Cooperation. Kindness.”

“And the governments listened,” she mused.

“Listened? This was just the face-saving grassroots stuff they were praying for.”

“What does that mean for Kashmir?”

“We’re not sure,” Ben said. “Both governments agreed to pull their troops from the region. It’ll take some effort before they actually do it, but the ambassador and his counterpart are hard at work on that now. He has a second wind, I’ll tell you that.” Ben chuckled. “Actually, I guess I don’t have to tell you that.”

“How is Maanik?”

“The ambassador said she’s herself again.”

“Specifics?”

“She has her energy back, her joy, her enthusiasm, and she’s been on the phone with her friends nonstop.”

“Does she remember anything?”

“Honestly, Cai, nobody wants to ask her. She was told she had a very bad lung infection and she didn’t question it.”

“What about the dog?”

“He’s fine too,” Ben said. “That was the third thing I asked: how’s the world, how’s Maanik, how’s Jack London.”

“He’s a part of this somehow,” Caitlin said. “Like the snake in Haiti, possibly even those rats that massed downtown.”

“Odd grouping, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would.”

“Any idea how they’re connected?”

“None,” she admitted. But the claw tips of the crescent symbol flashed through her brain.

“Speaking of which, you and the snake showed up in a YouTube video,” Ben said.

“What?”

“Yeah. I’ll send you the link. Don’t worry. Only a couple hundred hits. You haven’t gone viral.”

“Am I identified?” she asked.

“Not by name,” he replied. “Now I have one more question before I head back into the conference room. How are you?”

She chuckled mirthlessly. “Honestly? I have no idea. My brain is present and accounted for but… there’s been a shift of some kind.” She extended a hand toward the little sliver of Hudson River she could see outside the window. “There’s something… different. I can’t explain it.”

“You self-hypnotized into quite a state,” Ben said. “I’m not surprised you’re a little disoriented.”

“Disoriented but connected.”

“To what?”

“I don’t know that either.” She let her hand drop. “To something.”

There was more to say, a lot more, but Caitlin let it go. Everything she’d experienced would require a great deal more reflection and investigation.

“Can I assume that whatever it was, whatever they were, they’re gone now?” Ben asked.

“I’m not sure. I’m not sure they were ever here.”

“If by ‘here’ you mean ‘on earth,’ the linguistic evidence certainly supports their existence,” Ben said. “You and Maanik didn’t make that up.”

“No,” Caitlin agreed. “But a civilization that may have existed before we began recording history… a civilization that still seems to have active moving parts, probably did make it up.”

“And — group hug — a civilization you and I seem to have discovered,” he added proudly.

“That too. It’s a very big idea to process.”

“One which I’m thrilled to investigate,” he said. “I was looking at the data from yesterday. There are a lot of new words and two of them kept repeating, something about ‘those of spirit’ and ‘those of mechanism.’ ”