The Weather Composer:
Rise of the Mahdi
In 2021 an extinction level event occurs on Earth. Only one billion people survive the terrible repercussions of what becomes known as Sunrot.
The Rise of the Mahdi begins 12 years later when Terran Kahn—born on the first day of Sunrot— runs away from his nomadic tribe in northern Iran to satisfy his voracious thirst for knowledge. After a harrowing escape, Terran takes an entry exam at a school in Mashhad, Iran. The test determines that Terran possesses a “one-in-a-trillion intellect.” Terran immediately comes on the radar of the Faculty Research Center (FRC) in Denver, Colorado.
In a post-Sunrot world, humanity is unified through a world government called The Greater Nation, which places education as a top priority to restart humanity. Thus, the Faculty is a global institution that is established to find and nurture the best brains remaining, and Terran Kahn was the best of the best.
Trevor Stanton, the President of The Greater Nation, is convinced by Faculty leadership to extract Terran Kahn from Mashhad, Iran, where he was attending school. President Stanton’s primary initiative is known as the Technology Reboot Program, and central to its success, is finding the brightest minds to implement it.
Unknown to President Stanton, Terran Kahn was raised as the Mahdi. The Mahdi is a religious leader who was prophesied to be born on the eve of the End Times. The leadership of Terran’s tribe sends a team to Mashhad to return the boy to his people. Terran is their most important asset, because the Mahdi is analogous to the Second Coming of Mohammed.
A great battle ensues between those forces of The Greater Nation who want to extract Terran from Mashhad and utilize his intellectual gifts, and those tribal forces who want him to stay and live his life out as the Mahdi—the Great Unifier. Terran is caught in the middle. The battle lines are drawn in the school where Terran stays, and the various schemes to leave Mashhad for Denver are heroic, and oftentimes, life and death struggles.
Prologue
Terran Kahn was small for his age, hosted in a body that seemed in no hurry to grow up. He possessed the rarest of all gifts, a mind capable of dissecting the formidable forces of nature. As wild and untamed as these forces seemed, he knew they were still governed by the same laws that extended from the smallest particle to the largest structures of the cosmos, and in that fact, that common modesty, that thread of creation and destruction that wound its way through everything, he could envision something that no one else had seen: how to compose the forces of nature, namely, weather.
His vision had begun when he was only three years old. The earth had been scorched by drought in the wake of cataclysmic storms, and every resource ripped open to shrivel beneath the merciless sun. The populations of earth soon imploded, from ten billion to a mere nine-hundred million in a matter of twelve years. Twelve years! Communities were decimated across the food chain. The word extinction was on everyone’s lips.
Three classes of people emerged: the first class was the powerful leaders who curated and protected the remaining technologies after the crash of humanity; they were called Helios. The second class was known as the Faculty, and they were responsible for the critical knowledge of humanity, and to ensure its perpetuation. The third class was everyone who lacked the good fortune to be a member of Helios or the Faculty. This inauspicious class was known as the “third classes,” but only those within the highest circles of Helios used this term. Third classers were disorganized by comparative measure, and yet they managed to survive like a willful seed whose roots could not be bound.
It was to this third class that Terran belonged, at least initially.
He was, by any measure, bright. An orphan, as was the case for most of his generation. Orphanages were as plentiful as Burn Posts—the places where dead bodies were cremated. Most of the Burn Posts had been shut down by the fifth year, but the orphanages continued their expansion as children were herded into their care. Families had been ruined during the twelve years of drought, and it was at the orphanages that Helios leaders elected to build schools so the Faculty could transfer the salient knowledge to the next generation.
These orphanages were slowly retooled as boarding schools, and became known as Preserves. It was to these Preserves that Helios looked for humanity’s new footing to prevail once again on earth and resume its stewardship of the planet.
There was a name for the twelve-year drought, though third classers seldom used it, and then, only in an expletive context. The name was Sunrot. The near annihilation of humankind came at the hand of an overly active sun. (Much later, it would be understood to be a gamma ray explosion from a star millions of light years away that interacted with the sun, causing the sun’s energy to surge.) It had first taken down the power grids and satellite systems, plunging the world into chaos. That was its first bombardment of humanity. The ensuing weeks only got worse. Food supplies became choked. Mass riots erupted across the planet as people panicked for basic resources. Governments stepped in, clumsily as first, managing to subdue the initial riots, but couldn’t produce food and water in ample supply.
Two weeks after the grids went down, as rioting began its senseless rampage, the first storms hit, and they were the strongest ever recorded—by a large margin. Unfortunately, they were followed by earthquakes. The storms showcased the power of nature in ways that no one had seen before. Two-hundred miles per hour straight-line winds attacked entire regions of the globe; hurricanes and typhoons changed shorelines and toppled coastal cities. The death and destruction was utterly mind-numbing. Those who survived walked around in a daze, unsure of their next meal, drink of water or shelter. Millions had simply lost the will to live. And the storms kept coming.
After those first two weeks, earthquakes began to rumble across the planet. Most were in remote regions, but scientists knew the signs were not good. When the first earthquakes struck Japan, the entire Pacific Rim buckled, and tsunamis cut further into the coastlines of nearly every country. In Japan, the devastation was unimaginable. The entire west coast of the United States lost, on average, about forty miles of coastline—in a few places it was more than two hundred miles.
These orphanages were slowly retooled as boarding schools, and became known as Preserves. It was to these Preserves that Helios looked for humanity’s new footing to prevail once again on earth and resume its stewardship of the planet.
There was a name for the twelve-year drought, though third classers seldom used it, and then, only in an expletive context. The name was Sunrot. The near annihilation of humankind came at the hand of an overly active sun. (Much later, it would be understood to be a gamma ray explosion from a star millions of light years away that interacted with the sun, causing the sun’s energy to surge.) It had first taken down the power grids and satellite systems, plunging the world into chaos. That was its first bombardment of humanity. The ensuing weeks only got worse. Food supplies became choked. Mass riots erupted across the planet as people panicked for basic resources. Governments stepped in, clumsily as first, managing to subdue the initial riots, but couldn’t produce food and water in ample supply.
Two weeks after the grids went down, as rioting began its senseless rampage, the first storms hit, and they were the strongest ever recorded—by a large margin. Unfortunately, they were followed by earthquakes. The storms showcased the power of nature in ways that no one had seen before. Two-hundred miles per hour straight-line winds attacked entire regions of the globe; hurricanes and typhoons changed shorelines and toppled coastal cities. The death and destruction was utterly mind-numbing. Those who survived walked around in a daze, unsure of their next meal, drink of water or shelter. Millions had simply lost the will to live. And the storms kept coming.
After those first two weeks, earthquakes began to rumble across the planet. Most were in remote regions, but scientists knew the signs were not good. When the first earthquakes struck Japan, the entire Pacific Rim buckled, and tsunamis cut further into the coastlines of nearly every country. In Japan, the devastation was unimaginable. The entire west coast of the United States lost, on average, about forty miles of coastline—in a few places it was more than two hundred miles.
More earthquakes hit China, Turkey, Southern Russia, Egypt, Nova Scotia, Italy, Kenya and Pakistan. They crippled all hopes that the event which started the chaos would be short-lived, and the damage from the storms could be managed. This was an unmanageable, unimaginable event. In the first four weeks after the solar storms hit earth, nature had meted out over three billion deaths. The ensuing shock was absolute, constant, and crippling to everyone. The entire mood of the planet had been thrown into a deep well of hopelessness.
No country had been devastated more than China from the initial blows of Sunrot. Its citizens were completely overwhelmed by the resource constraints—especially water, but then disease swept in unseen, and made its march amid a starving and severely weakened populace. A strain of bird flu hit the Asian continent hard. It was like a third bombardment—following the storms and earthquakes—to the populations of both China and India, and no one could stop it. Travel had come to a grinding halt in those times. Nothing was imported or exported, and this was to the benefit of North and South America, because the bird flu never got a hold on its citizens.
A sinister withering of the food chain beset people in every area of earth. No one—fauna or flora—was excluded. Food stores were organized at the local level and nearly all societies were localized. Those that lacked resources—be it food or water—died, either from starvation, dehydration, or the onset of various diseases that quickly spread amid the breakdown of medical services. Suicide was routine.
By the second year of the Sunrot, most of the local citizenry had become self-sufficient in food production, but only those who were strong and enterprising made it that far. The weak and enfeebled died. There was no room for laziness. No refuge for the infirm. There were no social classes in those early days. Even the wealthiest were struggling to survive. All systems of law and order, in the first two years of Sunrot, were eroded to such a degree that murder for food was in the public domain. Fear and panic were the watchwords of those days, and no one wanted a return to that chaos.
In the third year of Sunrot, a global political presence emerged called Helios. Gradually, law and order returned to most local communities coincident with their ability to bring food production and water resources in balance to their populations. In years four and five, a degree of normalcy returned to many communities as they began to mature their food production. Helios continued to emerge as the global leader, helping to reshape humanity into a coherent system of commerce and local self-sufficiency.
They gradually took over the role of law and order, and began to have a local presence in major communities to help bring efficiencies to food production and water resources. After these areas were stabilized, the next gravest danger was the orphan communities. Children of any age were often left to fend for themselves. Families had degenerated into loosely organized communes, and children—especially young ones—were often seen as parasites that used up limited resources, and didn’t produce anything valuable to the community.
A self-imposed birth control fell over the globe’s human residents. When Helios came into power, the notion of birth control was already well established in most populations. But in year five, Helios began a forced sterilization program with woman over twenty-nine years old, and restricted families to one child. The institution of marriage was a requirement to have a child, and any child born out of wedlock was immediately taken and placed in one of the Preserves. Then offending parents were sterilized.
By the sixth year of Sunrot, the Preserves were a global phenomenon, and Helios instituted—through its Faculty—a comprehensive system to sort through the children in the Preserves in order to identify the brightest and most creative minds. Those selected were brought to special schools.
One of the major changes that occurred during the middle stages of Sunrot was the unification of the planet on the basis of language. English was chosen as the language of the realm, and all Preserves taught English, and only English. There were some exceptions, but these were in remote areas with limited populations that Helios had no interest in governing. Speaking English was considered the ticket to being inside the “tent” of Helios or what was called the Greater Nation.
The Greater Nation was the fusion of all nations, operating in cooperation to survive the Sunrot. Scientists of that time were struggling to understand the exact nature of the calamity’s onset and most importantly, its duration. All they knew was that intense solar weather caused the initial chain reaction that triggered magnetic disturbances so severe that the planet’s weather systems changed overnight. Within six months, the lack of rain, coupled to a severely overheated planet, conspired to reduce crop productivity by 84 percent.
It was a lot less clear as to how long the drought would last. Helios had to assume the drought was a constant, and no one could relent on rationing and preserving resources. In years seven and eight, new agencies were created to oversee the water preservation and food production processes for the Greater Nation.
A form of state socialism pervaded the Greater Nation, and infrastructure was gradually created to support the fledgling global society. The two largest agencies were Technology and Communications. Most of the major population centers were able to connect to the Internet through their local government centers. Individual Internet access was unavailable. The Internet had gone down for nearly four years. It was one of the first priorities of Helios, and a major reason that no one challenged their authority—they brought back the Internet. The Internet was a symbol of hope that the world was still connected and would eventually find its way to every citizen, as it had been before Sunrot.
Helios effectively owned and operated the Internet, and the Greater Nation was connected therein. By year nine, the Preserves were established on the Internet, and the Greater Nation curriculum was largely distributed through it. Computers were solar-powered, and Helios created the computers. There were no private companies producing computers, they were only produced by Helios and distributed through their agencies, which included the Preserves.
The Preserves or state boarding schools, provided only a basic education. Their highest purpose was to identify the brightest of the bright, and bring those students—whatever their age—to the Advanced Learning Institute of the Greater Nation (ALIGN). There were six of the ALIGN Centers on earth in year nine, each accommodating approximately one thousand students.
By the tenth year, Helios was deploying its technology to rebuild certain defensive weapons systems. While there were no wars among the member states of the Greater Nation, Helios framed the weapons development program as a precautionary readiness in the event there was ever an aggressor who would rise up against the Greater Nation. It was commonly accepted among third classers that the “aggressor” that was feared were terrorist enclaves that had survived in the Middle East, and remained unattached to the Greater Nation. These terrorist outposts were few in number, but they had a reputation as “Old Schoolers” who would never join the global community, and would fight to remain independent with their own language, customs, religion, and culture.
In year eleven, a new economy was implemented within the Greater Nation. All of the world’s great cities had fallen prey to entropy and disuse. The survivors were insufficient in size to manage the demanding infrastructures of major cities, thus, most of them had fallen into disuse and whatever resources could be stripped from them, had been taken and used to build rural, self-sufficient collectives that were more like communal farms than cities.
In most regions, a commune would grow by virtue of its proximity to a large city, the charisma of its leadership, and its complicity with Helios and the Faculty. These communities became cultural and economic centers. It was at these hubs that the ALIGN centers were established.
These communes became known as the New Cities of the Greater Nation and all of them were given names by Helios as identifiers of their unique stature. The capital of the Greater Nation was known as Olympia, and it was located thirty miles west of Washington D.C. It was here that the major agencies of the Greater Nation were established and Helios made its headquarters.
The leader of Helios was a man named Trevor Stanton. He had been a senator for four years before the time of Sunrot, and was one of the surviving members of Washington’s elite inner circle who had the resolve, education, connections, and sheer tenacity to become the leader of the new world. Ostensibly his leadership was neither singular nor supreme; each member nation had a leader that represented the interests of their particular nation. Each of these people shared power in the Greater Nation. Nevertheless it was understood that Trevor Stanton was the voice of the Greater Nation and his power was undeniable.
Wynton Jennings was the leader of the Technology agency and Marsha Owen was the leader of the Communications agency. Both of these leaders reported directly to Trevor Stanton, so it was commonly acknowledged among the three classes that Stanton was the King of the Greater Nation. Realistically, Stanton was responsible for “righting the ship.” The world had been unambiguously listing during the first years of sunrot, and it was Stanton’s dynamism that organized the formation of Helios and the lesser agencies that ultimately unified the global populations under the Greater Nation’s umbrella.
Stanton was forty-eight when Sunrot began. He was enjoying the peak of his career as a politician, and after only four years in the senate, rumors flourished that he was on a fast track to be President. What had distinguished him was his fierce independence. He was unaffiliated with either of the main parties, and it was this distancing that won him admiration in the circles of the common man.
Per capita loss of life during the first year of Sunrot was the lowest in the United States, when compared to any other nation. Its systems of food production, food stores, water resources, and disease control allowed Stanton to exert his leadership across party lines and rise in stature quickly and visibly. He had seized the idea to enable communes to be developed by using the resources of the cities. He had placed disease control as a top priority. This single decision proved to be the most powerful of all, and was probably the key reason he was given the mantle of leadership within Helios.
Amid the ensuing chaos in the early days of Sunrot, leadership was not a democratic proposition. Communications were down, no travel, no Internet, every man, woman and child—at least the strong ones—were on their own, seeking one thing: survive another day. There were no debates, no elections, and no party system.
To most, it was destiny, but for Stanton himself, he relished the idea of resetting the economy, trade, culture, religion, science, every not-so-shiny particle that comprised humankind. He liked the whole concept of a rebirth for humanity, and the fact that he was in the center of it all, only made his exhilaration all the more gripping.
Never before had the entire world’s citizenry been unified against a common enemy, and in this case, that enemy was an overactive plasma furnace some 93 million miles away.
In the twelfth and final year of Sunrot, Helios was a strong and vibrant organization that ruled the Greater Nation with growing competence. Communal cities were beginning to stabilize. New hope was abounding that a major change was afoot. Weather patterns seemed to be stabilizing. Food production was rapidly growing. Infrastructure was being built to accommodate people’s comfort, and there was a growing sense of stability in nearly all regions.
The decaying presence of cities was the most vivid reminder that something was massively wrong. Gone was the expertise to run cities, airports, traffic systems, waterworks—all of the hundreds of systems that intermesh. The populace of the United States was one-tenth of its former self, and it was better off than any other nation. The sheer loss of human knowhow forced humanity to retreat to a simpler life.
The Greater Nation, under Helios’ encouragement, had elected to focus its limited resources on technology and communication, and develop a global educational system to identify the new minds that would bring humankind to a new understanding of its environment and once again, as it had done for centuries before, master it, mold it, and if need be, exploit it.
The words of Mother Teresa were etched over the main doorway of every Preserve. They were the words that Trevor Stanton and Marsha Owen had agreed would grace every school. It was the rallying cry of the new generation. However, these words were reserved for the Preserves, the six ALIGN Centers had a different message, though it was unwritten. It was the message that if you were so fortunate to end up at an ALIGN Center, then you were the vanguard of the new humanity. You were its leaders, its scientists, its politicians, its technologists, its teachers… its hope.
From a global society of nine-hundred million, about six-thousand of the brightest students were selected to attend the ALIGN Centers. The precise manner in which students were identified was a mystery to all but those within the highest reaches of the Faculty, the organization responsible for ensuring that the human species would pass from its darkest hour to once again reclaim its stature as the technological wunderkind of the planet. It was the Faculty’s role to supply Helios with the brightest of the bright, so its Technology and Communications agencies were well stocked with prodigious IQs.
The curriculum of the Preserves was focused on three things: basic skills, learning a special skill, and readiness for a trade skill. By the time students graduated, they would be well-versed in the basic skills of reading, writing, humanities, and arithmetic they would possess a “gift” for a special skill, like hunting, weaving, carpentry or local leadership; and they would be ready for an apprenticeship in their chosen trade.
In the case of the ALIGN Centers, the curriculum had a heavy emphasis on technology and the sciences—specifically, software programming, engineering, chemistry, medicine, physics, and all of the other right-brain activities that make the world a better and safer place. At least, that’s what the students were taught.
Many of the pre-Sunrot technologies were sufficiently intact to enable reverse engineering, yet the simple fact was that too few experts remained to know how to fix the broken technologies or build new ones that were better. Helios was well aware of this problem, and its Technology agency was working to identify and collect the most critical, surviving technologies and work with the Faculty of the ALIGN Centers to fix or reverse-engineer them. It was the elite Faculty instructors of the ALIGN Centers whom Trevor Stanton held in the highest regard, because they were the ones who would sculpt the new generation of geniuses to repair—perhaps even improve—the pre-Sunrot technologies.
The Faculty was divided into those who served the needs of the Preserve, and those who taught and administered to the ALIGN Centers. The leader of the Faculty was a young professor from Yale. The professor had been the head of Yale’s English department, and because Stanton wanted English to be the language of choice for the Greater Nation, he offered the position to young and ambitious Josh Sinclair.
Josh was a tenacious leader within the Faculty. In many ways, the Faculty was the single most challenging position because of its charter to provide a uniform, global educational program that was practical—in the case of the Preserves; and masterfully challenging—in the case of the ALIGN Centers. The goal to make English the global language had been a tough sell, but then Helios brought back the Internet, and Trevor Stanton had proven that his leadership was superior to any of his contemporaries.
Josh Sinclair was only thirty-two, but had been widely regarded as the most competent department head at Yale and certainly its most charismatic leader. He was as bold as he was brilliant, and nothing ever seemed to come between him and an opportunity to expand his personal influence.
Mashhad was the second largest city in Iran with a community of nearly three million citizens before Sunrot, and only about six-hundred thousand in the twelfth year. It had fared better than Tehran—much better. Mashhad had always been known to be a protected city, and when Sunrot hit, true to its mystical reputation, it was spared the brunt of the storms, floods, and earthquakes that beset other cities in the Middle East.
It was the only major city in the region that had not lost its entire infrastructure, and its population, while reduced by seventy percent, had one of the highest survival rates on the planet. It was one of the reasons that a Preserve was established there in the eleventh year.
Iran, like many of the nations of the Middle East, had been reluctant to join the Greater Nation. Its new leader, Aban Molavi was educated at Cambridge and Harvard, and had previous relationships with both Washington D.C. and London as an attaché to the Iranian Ambassador to the United States. Trevor Stanton worked diligently to bring Iran into the Greater Nations. While he was ultimately successful, there were many tribes that condemned the decision and chose to live unaligned as “Old Schoolers”—their handle, courtesy of Helios.
It was a cool afternoon in Mashhad, mid-October in the twelfth year, when a young boy, dressed in scraps of linen cloth draped around his thin frame like a mummy, collapsed on a street amid a throng of people. The street bordered the market square in Mashhad, and people ignored the young boy, who was face-down in the middle of the dirt street. He was disheveled, dirty, dusty, and mostly unconscious. A few years earlier, he would have been left for dead, but on this day, a young woman knelt down and poked him in the ribs.
“Are you alive?” she asked.
The young boy could only manage a faint moan.
The woman turned the boy onto his back and held his head in her left hand. “Here, drink some water.”
Behind the woman was a young girl, perhaps five or six years old, watching the scene with great interest. “Who is he, Mother?”
“I don’t know. From his look I would say he’s lost… maybe from one the Pashtun clans. It’s hard to say for certain.”
“Will he die?”
The woman poured some water into the mouth of the boy, most of it spilled down his chin. She poured some water into her hand and then splashed it on his face, softly slapping his cheek. “Wake up, boy. Drink some water.”
His eyes flashed open for a brief moment, blinking uncontrollably in the bright sunlight. “I am Terran Ahmad Khan. Where is your school?” As his raspy words emptied into the open market, they were quickly absorbed by the din of bartering in the nearby market, and the boy lost consciousness.
Apart from his name, the only word the woman understood was school, as the boy had a strange dialect. She looked around for help, but seeing that no one shared her interest in the boy, she put her arms under him and stood to her feet, carrying the limp body, with her young daughter in tow.
Parto carefully set Terran down on a concrete table outside the Preserve entrance. She looked around, worried that she may have done something illegal or unseemly by taking the boy. The streets were relatively quiet, and no one took any notice of her, so she told her daughter to wait by Terran while she went inside to find someone.
As she opened the door she glanced at some writings above it, and quietly cursed at them, English! She walked down a hallway and noticed an office to her right, its door open. A small, kindly looking man looked up and motioned her in. He was hunched over slightly, and looked to be in his mid-sixties.
“You look lost…” He observed. “I’m the office manager. Can I help you find something?”
Parto smiled awkwardly, feeling her face flush. “I found one of your students… or… I think he’s one your students.”
“You found one of our students?” The office manager repeated; his face suddenly perplexed. “I didn’t know any were missing.”
“Do you have a student… a Terran Ahmad Khan?”
The office manager glanced at his monitor, clicked a few buttons, and mouthed the words: Terran Ahmad Khan. “How’s his first name spelled?”
“I… I don’t know. I just met him. He’s very frail… maybe even dying.”
“Odd first name… where is this boy?”
“He’s lying on a table just outside,” Parto said. “I carried him from the market square. He’d collapsed in the middle of the street. He said something about a school… I thought perhaps he was a student here.”
“No one by that name in our school,” the man announced, standing to his feet. “And while there’re many Khans, no one with that first name…”
“What should I do with him?” Parto asked.
“Let’s have a look.”
The two walked out to the entrance in silence, the sound of their shoes echoing against the cool stone walls of the hallway.
When they arrived outside at the entrance, they found Parto’s daughter, who, like a sentinel, stood next to Terran’s lifeless body. “He said something when you were gone,” she said softly, studying the face of the Office Manager.
“What did he say?” Parto asked.
“I don’t know… I couldn’t understand it.”
The office manager examined him for a moment, checked his pulse, and placed his ear on the boy’s chest. “Heart’s beating just fine.” He pulled out a piece of paper and a pen and scribbled something on it, and handed it to Parto. “That’s our doctor’s address. Find him and tell him to come immediately. I’ll see to this boy’s needs in the meantime.” He leaned down to pick up Terran, paused for a moment, looking at Parto. “Do you know the way?”
Parto looked down at the note, her face confused, then slowly nodded. “It’s the old drugstore on—”
“Yes, yes, that’s the place. Go, and please, be as quick as you can.”
“He’ll ask me your name… the doctor, he doesn’t know me.”
“Just tell him that Hamid from the Preserve needs his help—it might be an emergency, so convince him to hurry. Okay?”
Parto looked down the street in the direction of the doctor’s office. “Wouldn’t it be quicker if we took the boy to him? It’s only three blocks away. The boy is light.”
Hamid sighed, furrowing his brow. “I’m old, I can’t walk fast… my back is lame, I can carry him to my office, but more than that, I’m—”
“I can carry him,” Parto offered. “I already carried him from the market square—a longer distance.”
“I can’t let you carry this boy. It’s a disgrace.” In the next moment, Hamid snapped his fingers. “Wait one moment, I’ll be right back.”
A few minutes later two teenage boys came running through the entrance and stopped in front of Parto. “Is that the boy?” the larger of the two asked, pointing.
Parto nodded, hesitantly.
“We’re supposed to run him to the doctor.”
Parto put out her arms as if to say, “Then, by all means, do so.”
The two boys grabbed Terran—one underneath his shoulders and the other his ankles, and began to trot awkwardly in the direction of the doctor’s office. They were already a hundred feet down the block when Hamid came out of the school panting.
Parto looked between the boys and Hamid. “Should I go with them?”
“You seem to be his guardian angel… go.” Hamid smiled.
Parto grabbed her daughter’s hand and they walked off, following the boys who were already turning the corner down the street.
“Tell Dr. Najafi I said hello,” Hamid half-shouted.
Parto glanced back and nodded, but kept her focus on the street. The streets could be dangerous to walk due to the debris, cracks, even the occasional clump of seemingly immortal weeds.
Before they arrived at the doctor’s office, Terran’s carriers were already running back to the school, and as they passed they waved politely. “He’s with the doctor,” the larger boy said, only slowing down for a moment.
Parto managed a weak nod and kept walking at a brisk pace. Why am I getting involved? What can I do anyway?
She entered the doctor’s office and looked around for any signs of life. It was empty.
There was no sign on the door that said “Doctor’s Office” or any indication that a doctor was inside, but the address that Hamid had written down was exactly where she was. This had been an old drugstore before Sunrot—mostly for ice-cream and candies—Parto was sure, but it was now a dilapidated room with empty shelving and little else.
“Hello?” Parto said, her voice quivering a little. It was cold inside. There was one large window, but no lights, only unlit candles punctuated the shelves and an empty glass display. She thought she heard a muffled voice. “Wait here, Dorri,” she whispered, “I’ll be right back.”
A door in the back of the room was closed, but Parto sensed activity behind it, and knocked gently on the door, opening it cautiously.
As she poked her head into the adjoining room, she saw the back of a large man, leaning over a table. Barren shelves bordered the upper reaches of the rectangular room, where a dozen candles shone their light. A pair of feet could be seen, but nothing else, though Parto recognized the bare feet as Terran’s.
Parto cleared her throat. “Excuse me, are you Dr. Najafi?”
Without turning around, the man spoke quietly. “I am.”
Parto opened the door a little wider, but stayed on the threshold, quieting her voice to a near-whisper. “My name is Parto, and I found the boy in the market square, passed out. I carried him to the school, and Hamid told me to take the boy to you.”
“Yes, well, I know how to fix him, but I have no equipment. It was all taken from me years ago. We’ll have to pray that Allah has plans for this boy, for if he does not, he might be calling him home this very hour.”
Parto frowned, not sure how to respond. “…is there anything I can do?”
“Pray. There’s little more than that. He needs more than I can provide. I doubt he’s had any food or water for several days. His body’s shut down to conserve energy, but sometimes it reaches the point of no return, and I’m not sure if that point has passed.”
Dr. Najafi straightened up and turned to face Parto. He was about forty years old, close-cropped hair with tinges of gray at the temple. He was tall and thick. His eyes were slow and methodical in their appraisal of Parto. “Are you alone?”
“My daughter, Dorri, is with me.”
“Maybe she can pray, too.”
Parto looked away from his stare. “My faith died with the Sunrot. I don’t pray anymore. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t question your reason, just your timing. This boy… he needs something more than I can provide, and he needs it now.”
“Mother, I can pray,” Dorri announced.
Parto smiled thinly, looking down at her daughter who had, as usual, not listened to her instructions to stay in the outer room. Dorri’s black eyes dominated her elfin face.
“If you want, go ahead,” Parto whispered.
Dr. Najafi stepped back and motioned to Dorri to approach the boy’s body, which remained motionless on the table. He was wrapped in a light blue wool blanket and occasionally his eyes would roll beneath his eyelids, as if he were dreaming. Dorri walked tentatively to his side and took his limp hand in hers.
“I am small. I am just a little girl, but I ask that this boy be made good again. I pray that he lives. Spare this one, Allah. You have taken so many… my brother and father… cousins, uncles and aunts. Leave him. He can be my brother. I would like a brother. Please… let him stay. He is good. I don’t know how I know this, but I do. This one is good.” She patted Terran’s lifeless hand.
Dr. Najafi locked eyes with Parto for a moment and smiled, and then bowed his head as if he were praying, too.
“He wanted to know where the school was,” Dorri continued quietly. “He wants to learn, Allah. Let him learn, please. He will bring something to this world that is missing. He will bring good. Please, Allah, let him live. Please spare him…” Dorri paused as if she were trying to find the right words. “If you want us to believe in you, make him good again… we’ll believe in you again.”
Dr. Najafi intoned in a whispered voice. “Ameen.”
Dorri placed Terran’s hand back on the table and kissed his cheek. Parto stepped forward and put her arm around Dorri. “That was a very nice prayer.”
“Yes, very well done, indeed,” said Dr. Najafi.
“Allah will not let him die,” Dorri announced with a confident tone.
“Really… and how do you know that?” Parto asked.
“When I was praying, I felt it.”
“Felt what?”
“That Allah was listening.”
The day had barely dawned when Terran began to cough. The sound woke Dr. Najafi first, but soon Parto stirred as well. The two stood around the boy, offering him water, which he drank eagerly.
“This is a miracle,” Dr. Najafi said excitedly. “I feared we’d awaken to a corpse. Allah listened!” He looked at Parto with fire in his eyes.
The boy spoke in a strange dialect. “Is this the school? Are you my teachers?”
Dr. Najafi and Parto looked at one another with vacant stares. Neither of them could understand what Terran said.
“The dialect is similar to Kurdish, but I don’t understand it. Do you?”
Parto shook her head.
“Where am I?” Terran asked. “Who are you?”
They knew he was asking questions, but apart from the word “school” none of the other words made sense to them.
Dr. Najafi brought Terran a bowl of bread. “Eat?”
Terran took the bread and devoured it. His chewing brought his questions to an abrupt end.
Parto smiled, watching him eat. “He’s very hungry. Where do you think he’s from?”
“Pashtun… maybe some obscure Afghani tribe. Possibly he’s Baluch. I don’t know.”
Dr. Najafi bent down and looked into the boy’s face. “Do you understand me?”
Terran’s eyes immediately narrowed in confusion.
“He probably understands us as well as we understand him.” Dr. Najafi confided. “The Preserve is probably the best place to take him—someone there will know his dialect.”
“Do you see, Mother, I told you Allah was listening.” Dorri was awake, watching the boy eat his bread. She got up from the makeshift bed on the floor and went to Terran and put out her arms. He scrutinized her like someone who had never seen a child. He stopped eating; his entire face became motionless, staring at Dorri. “Don’t you want a hug?” Dorri asked.
Terran put the bread down on the bed and spread his arms out, mirroring Dorri, who then leaned in and put her arms around him—mostly his knees, but it was the closest thing she could hug, because Terran was sitting on the table and she was standing on the floor. Terran looked bewildered by the gesture, unsure of what it meant.
Dorri stepped back, pointing to her chest. “You’re my brother, now.”
Terran stayed still, as his arms slowly descended to his sides, and then one arm, with its index finger extended, touched his chest. “You’re my brother, now.”
He spoke it in perfect Farsi, exactly in the same rhythm as Dorri had moments earlier. Both Parto and Dr. Najafi looked at one another in amazement.
Dorri chuckled. “No, I’m your sister. You’re my brother.”
Terran shook his head slightly. “School?” He pointed to the room’s walls. “Teachers?” He pointed to Dr. Najafi and Parto.
“He thinks we’re teachers,” said Dr. Najafi. “Let’s see if he can walk.”
Dr. Najafi helped Terran off the table and supported him to see if he had the strength to walk. “He seems fine. I’ve never seen such a recovery before. But these kids from the mountains are built tough. I’ll walk with you to the school.”
At the mention of the word, “school,” Terran grabbed Dr. Najafi’s sleeve. “School?”
Dr. Najafi nodded forcefully. “Yes, we’ll go there now.” He took Terran by the arm and led him out the door, and the four of them made their way to the Preserve.
It was still early when they arrived, a little past seven in the morning and the school was just waking up. Dr. Najafi went inside to find Hamid. He knocked on the office door, and down the hallway he heard the shuffle of feet. “I’m coming. Hold on.”
“Hamid, it’s Dr. Najafi.”
Hamid tuned the corner and bowed slightly. “Ah, Doctor, it’s good to see you. I hope you’re here with good news on your lips.”
“The boy, Terran Khan, lives. He’s outside right now.”
“Excellent, what’s his story?”
“He’s a mystery. He speaks a dialect we’re not familiar with—”
“The woman and… the little girl, are they still with him?”
“Yes,” Dr. Najafi said, nodding.
“What do you want me to do?” Hamid asked, unlocking his office door and motioning for the Doctor to follow.
“Who is your best student… with languages?”
“We only teach English. You know that, my good Doctor.”
“You have no records of the language skills of your students?”
Hamid shook his head, and then snapped his finger and looked at his wristwatch. “The kids are having their breakfast right now, we could have the boy come into the cafeteria and say something, if anyone recognizes the dialect, we’d have ourselves a translator.”
“Okay, I’ll get the boy and you can lead us to the cafeteria.”
A few minutes later, Dr. Najafi’s group, escorted by Hamid, entered a large room consisting of long tables and about three hundred students of varying ages and gender. The Preserves—as part of their mission—were open to anyone between the age of six and sixteen. It was a ten-year curriculum, but most of the students, regardless of their age, were in their first year, because the Preserve in Mashhad was relatively new.
The noise in the room was mostly of utensils on metal plates. There were a few laughs and chit chat, but it was obvious to any astute observer that the students were trained for efficient eating so they could get to their classes on time. Hamid walked to a raised stage on the far end of the cafeteria and clapped his hands sharply. “Quiet, please. I’d like to gather your attention on a mystery we are trying to solve.”
An immediate hush fell over the room, while the students craned their necks to watch Hamid speak.
“A boy has come to our school who speaks a dialect none of us is familiar with. I’m going to have him say something, and if any of you recognizes the dialect, raise your hand. Okay?”
A chorus of voices responded. “Yes, Mister Mokri.”
Parto noticed a few teachers leaning against the wall, curious about the mysterious boy. Dr. Najafi led Terran to the podium and motioned to the assembled students, as if he was telling Terran to introduce himself. Terran looked between the assembled students and Dr. Najafi, but seemed to have no idea that he was supposed to speak. Dr. Najafi put his hand to his mouth and thrust it outward, signaling to the boy that he should say something. The boy mimicked the gesture, and the students instantly giggled. Dr. Najafi pointed to the students. “School.”
Terran’s eyes lit up. “School?”
Terran’s body was still wrapped in the blue blanket, his face had been cleaned, but the rest of his body remained dusty and dirty. His hair was mostly straight and long, reaching his shoulders. His face was thin, as was his entire body, but there was a strength to his physique that was undeniable. Standing next to Dr. Najafi, he looked particularly small, but there was a quality about him that seemed authoritative. Perhaps it was his unaffected demeanor in front of the students or his square jawbone, or his wide-set eyes that looked unflinchingly at the world before him.
Terran walked to the edge of the stage on which the podium stood, staring out at the students. The room was absolutely quiet as he looked among them, as one would do if they were trying to select one person on the merit of a singular, unique characteristic. His eyes finally rested on a teacher who was watching him. Terran turned to the teacher and held out his arm. “You are my blood, are you not?”
The teacher, eyes locked with Terran’s, nodded.
“You can understand him?” Hamid asked.
“I can,” the teacher replied.
Hamid clapped his hands together sharply twice. “Okay, children, go back to your breakfast and hurry to your classes.”
“Let’s go to my office,” Hamid said as he walked by the teacher. “You can come, too, if you want,” he added turning back to Dr. Najafi, Parto and Dorri.
Hamid walked hand-in-hand with Terran, while the rest of the group solemnly walked behind them. Every once in a while Terran would look behind, seemingly to make sure the teacher was still following. The dark limits of language had finally been pierced, and Terran Khan was soon to become knowable.
Chapter 1
The Faculty
The biggest disease today is not leprosy or cancer or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for, deserted by everybody. The greatest evil is the lack of love and charity, the terrible indifference towards one’s neighbor who lives at the roadside, the victim of exploitation, corruption, poverty, and disease.
- Mother Teresa
The words of Mother Teresa were etched over the main doorway of every Preserve. They were the words that Trevor Stanton and Marsha Owen had agreed would grace every school. It was the rallying cry of the new generation. However, these words were reserved for the Preserves, the six ALIGN Centers had a different message, though it was unwritten. It was the message that if you were so fortunate to end up at an ALIGN Center, then you were the vanguard of the new humanity. You were its leaders, its scientists, its politicians, its technologists, its teachers… its hope.
From a global society of nine-hundred million, about six-thousand of the brightest students were selected to attend the ALIGN Centers. The precise manner in which students were identified was a mystery to all but those within the highest reaches of the Faculty, the organization responsible for ensuring that the human species would pass from its darkest hour to once again reclaim its stature as the technological wunderkind of the planet. It was the Faculty’s role to supply Helios with the brightest of the bright, so its Technology and Communications agencies were well stocked with prodigious IQs.
The curriculum of the Preserves was focused on three things: basic skills, learning a special skill, and readiness for a trade skill. By the time students graduated, they would be well-versed in the basic skills of reading, writing, humanities, and arithmetic they would possess a “gift” for a special skill, like hunting, weaving, carpentry or local leadership; and they would be ready for an apprenticeship in their chosen trade.
In the case of the ALIGN Centers, the curriculum had a heavy emphasis on technology and the sciences—specifically, software programming, engineering, chemistry, medicine, physics, and all of the other right-brain activities that make the world a better and safer place. At least, that’s what the students were taught.
Many of the pre-Sunrot technologies were sufficiently intact to enable reverse engineering, yet the simple fact was that too few experts remained to know how to fix the broken technologies or build new ones that were better. Helios was well aware of this problem, and its Technology agency was working to identify and collect the most critical, surviving technologies and work with the Faculty of the ALIGN Centers to fix or reverse-engineer them. It was the elite Faculty instructors of the ALIGN Centers whom Trevor Stanton held in the highest regard, because they were the ones who would sculpt the new generation of geniuses to repair—perhaps even improve—the pre-Sunrot technologies.
The Faculty was divided into those who served the needs of the Preserve, and those who taught and administered to the ALIGN Centers. The leader of the Faculty was a young professor from Yale. The professor had been the head of Yale’s English department, and because Stanton wanted English to be the language of choice for the Greater Nation, he offered the position to young and ambitious Josh Sinclair.
Josh was a tenacious leader within the Faculty. In many ways, the Faculty was the single most challenging position because of its charter to provide a uniform, global educational program that was practical—in the case of the Preserves; and masterfully challenging—in the case of the ALIGN Centers. The goal to make English the global language had been a tough sell, but then Helios brought back the Internet, and Trevor Stanton had proven that his leadership was superior to any of his contemporaries.
Josh Sinclair was only thirty-two, but had been widely regarded as the most competent department head at Yale and certainly its most charismatic leader. He was as bold as he was brilliant, and nothing ever seemed to come between him and an opportunity to expand his personal influence.
Chapter 2
School
It was the only major city in the region that had not lost its entire infrastructure, and its population, while reduced by seventy percent, had one of the highest survival rates on the planet. It was one of the reasons that a Preserve was established there in the eleventh year.
Iran, like many of the nations of the Middle East, had been reluctant to join the Greater Nation. Its new leader, Aban Molavi was educated at Cambridge and Harvard, and had previous relationships with both Washington D.C. and London as an attaché to the Iranian Ambassador to the United States. Trevor Stanton worked diligently to bring Iran into the Greater Nations. While he was ultimately successful, there were many tribes that condemned the decision and chose to live unaligned as “Old Schoolers”—their handle, courtesy of Helios.
It was a cool afternoon in Mashhad, mid-October in the twelfth year, when a young boy, dressed in scraps of linen cloth draped around his thin frame like a mummy, collapsed on a street amid a throng of people. The street bordered the market square in Mashhad, and people ignored the young boy, who was face-down in the middle of the dirt street. He was disheveled, dirty, dusty, and mostly unconscious. A few years earlier, he would have been left for dead, but on this day, a young woman knelt down and poked him in the ribs.
“Are you alive?” she asked.
The young boy could only manage a faint moan.
The woman turned the boy onto his back and held his head in her left hand. “Here, drink some water.”
Behind the woman was a young girl, perhaps five or six years old, watching the scene with great interest. “Who is he, Mother?”
“I don’t know. From his look I would say he’s lost… maybe from one the Pashtun clans. It’s hard to say for certain.”
“Will he die?”
The woman poured some water into the mouth of the boy, most of it spilled down his chin. She poured some water into her hand and then splashed it on his face, softly slapping his cheek. “Wake up, boy. Drink some water.”
His eyes flashed open for a brief moment, blinking uncontrollably in the bright sunlight. “I am Terran Ahmad Khan. Where is your school?” As his raspy words emptied into the open market, they were quickly absorbed by the din of bartering in the nearby market, and the boy lost consciousness.
Apart from his name, the only word the woman understood was school, as the boy had a strange dialect. She looked around for help, but seeing that no one shared her interest in the boy, she put her arms under him and stood to her feet, carrying the limp body, with her young daughter in tow.
Chapter 3
Listening
As she opened the door she glanced at some writings above it, and quietly cursed at them, English! She walked down a hallway and noticed an office to her right, its door open. A small, kindly looking man looked up and motioned her in. He was hunched over slightly, and looked to be in his mid-sixties.
“You look lost…” He observed. “I’m the office manager. Can I help you find something?”
Parto smiled awkwardly, feeling her face flush. “I found one of your students… or… I think he’s one your students.”
“You found one of our students?” The office manager repeated; his face suddenly perplexed. “I didn’t know any were missing.”
“Do you have a student… a Terran Ahmad Khan?”
The office manager glanced at his monitor, clicked a few buttons, and mouthed the words: Terran Ahmad Khan. “How’s his first name spelled?”
“I… I don’t know. I just met him. He’s very frail… maybe even dying.”
“Odd first name… where is this boy?”
“He’s lying on a table just outside,” Parto said. “I carried him from the market square. He’d collapsed in the middle of the street. He said something about a school… I thought perhaps he was a student here.”
“No one by that name in our school,” the man announced, standing to his feet. “And while there’re many Khans, no one with that first name…”
“What should I do with him?” Parto asked.
“Let’s have a look.”
The two walked out to the entrance in silence, the sound of their shoes echoing against the cool stone walls of the hallway.
When they arrived outside at the entrance, they found Parto’s daughter, who, like a sentinel, stood next to Terran’s lifeless body. “He said something when you were gone,” she said softly, studying the face of the Office Manager.
“What did he say?” Parto asked.
“I don’t know… I couldn’t understand it.”
The office manager examined him for a moment, checked his pulse, and placed his ear on the boy’s chest. “Heart’s beating just fine.” He pulled out a piece of paper and a pen and scribbled something on it, and handed it to Parto. “That’s our doctor’s address. Find him and tell him to come immediately. I’ll see to this boy’s needs in the meantime.” He leaned down to pick up Terran, paused for a moment, looking at Parto. “Do you know the way?”
Parto looked down at the note, her face confused, then slowly nodded. “It’s the old drugstore on—”
“Yes, yes, that’s the place. Go, and please, be as quick as you can.”
“He’ll ask me your name… the doctor, he doesn’t know me.”
“Just tell him that Hamid from the Preserve needs his help—it might be an emergency, so convince him to hurry. Okay?”
Parto looked down the street in the direction of the doctor’s office. “Wouldn’t it be quicker if we took the boy to him? It’s only three blocks away. The boy is light.”
Hamid sighed, furrowing his brow. “I’m old, I can’t walk fast… my back is lame, I can carry him to my office, but more than that, I’m—”
“I can carry him,” Parto offered. “I already carried him from the market square—a longer distance.”
“I can’t let you carry this boy. It’s a disgrace.” In the next moment, Hamid snapped his fingers. “Wait one moment, I’ll be right back.”
A few minutes later two teenage boys came running through the entrance and stopped in front of Parto. “Is that the boy?” the larger of the two asked, pointing.
Parto nodded, hesitantly.
“We’re supposed to run him to the doctor.”
Parto put out her arms as if to say, “Then, by all means, do so.”
The two boys grabbed Terran—one underneath his shoulders and the other his ankles, and began to trot awkwardly in the direction of the doctor’s office. They were already a hundred feet down the block when Hamid came out of the school panting.
Parto looked between the boys and Hamid. “Should I go with them?”
“You seem to be his guardian angel… go.” Hamid smiled.
Parto grabbed her daughter’s hand and they walked off, following the boys who were already turning the corner down the street.
“Tell Dr. Najafi I said hello,” Hamid half-shouted.
Parto glanced back and nodded, but kept her focus on the street. The streets could be dangerous to walk due to the debris, cracks, even the occasional clump of seemingly immortal weeds.
Before they arrived at the doctor’s office, Terran’s carriers were already running back to the school, and as they passed they waved politely. “He’s with the doctor,” the larger boy said, only slowing down for a moment.
Parto managed a weak nod and kept walking at a brisk pace. Why am I getting involved? What can I do anyway?
She entered the doctor’s office and looked around for any signs of life. It was empty.
There was no sign on the door that said “Doctor’s Office” or any indication that a doctor was inside, but the address that Hamid had written down was exactly where she was. This had been an old drugstore before Sunrot—mostly for ice-cream and candies—Parto was sure, but it was now a dilapidated room with empty shelving and little else.
“Hello?” Parto said, her voice quivering a little. It was cold inside. There was one large window, but no lights, only unlit candles punctuated the shelves and an empty glass display. She thought she heard a muffled voice. “Wait here, Dorri,” she whispered, “I’ll be right back.”
A door in the back of the room was closed, but Parto sensed activity behind it, and knocked gently on the door, opening it cautiously.
As she poked her head into the adjoining room, she saw the back of a large man, leaning over a table. Barren shelves bordered the upper reaches of the rectangular room, where a dozen candles shone their light. A pair of feet could be seen, but nothing else, though Parto recognized the bare feet as Terran’s.
Parto cleared her throat. “Excuse me, are you Dr. Najafi?”
Without turning around, the man spoke quietly. “I am.”
Parto opened the door a little wider, but stayed on the threshold, quieting her voice to a near-whisper. “My name is Parto, and I found the boy in the market square, passed out. I carried him to the school, and Hamid told me to take the boy to you.”
“Yes, well, I know how to fix him, but I have no equipment. It was all taken from me years ago. We’ll have to pray that Allah has plans for this boy, for if he does not, he might be calling him home this very hour.”
Parto frowned, not sure how to respond. “…is there anything I can do?”
“Pray. There’s little more than that. He needs more than I can provide. I doubt he’s had any food or water for several days. His body’s shut down to conserve energy, but sometimes it reaches the point of no return, and I’m not sure if that point has passed.”
Dr. Najafi straightened up and turned to face Parto. He was about forty years old, close-cropped hair with tinges of gray at the temple. He was tall and thick. His eyes were slow and methodical in their appraisal of Parto. “Are you alone?”
“My daughter, Dorri, is with me.”
“Maybe she can pray, too.”
Parto looked away from his stare. “My faith died with the Sunrot. I don’t pray anymore. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t question your reason, just your timing. This boy… he needs something more than I can provide, and he needs it now.”
“Mother, I can pray,” Dorri announced.
Parto smiled thinly, looking down at her daughter who had, as usual, not listened to her instructions to stay in the outer room. Dorri’s black eyes dominated her elfin face.
“If you want, go ahead,” Parto whispered.
Dr. Najafi stepped back and motioned to Dorri to approach the boy’s body, which remained motionless on the table. He was wrapped in a light blue wool blanket and occasionally his eyes would roll beneath his eyelids, as if he were dreaming. Dorri walked tentatively to his side and took his limp hand in hers.
“I am small. I am just a little girl, but I ask that this boy be made good again. I pray that he lives. Spare this one, Allah. You have taken so many… my brother and father… cousins, uncles and aunts. Leave him. He can be my brother. I would like a brother. Please… let him stay. He is good. I don’t know how I know this, but I do. This one is good.” She patted Terran’s lifeless hand.
Dr. Najafi locked eyes with Parto for a moment and smiled, and then bowed his head as if he were praying, too.
“He wanted to know where the school was,” Dorri continued quietly. “He wants to learn, Allah. Let him learn, please. He will bring something to this world that is missing. He will bring good. Please, Allah, let him live. Please spare him…” Dorri paused as if she were trying to find the right words. “If you want us to believe in you, make him good again… we’ll believe in you again.”
Dr. Najafi intoned in a whispered voice. “Ameen.”
Dorri placed Terran’s hand back on the table and kissed his cheek. Parto stepped forward and put her arm around Dorri. “That was a very nice prayer.”
“Yes, very well done, indeed,” said Dr. Najafi.
“Allah will not let him die,” Dorri announced with a confident tone.
“Really… and how do you know that?” Parto asked.
“When I was praying, I felt it.”
“Felt what?”
“That Allah was listening.”
Chapter 4
Cafeteria
The day had barely dawned when Terran began to cough. The sound woke Dr. Najafi first, but soon Parto stirred as well. The two stood around the boy, offering him water, which he drank eagerly.
“This is a miracle,” Dr. Najafi said excitedly. “I feared we’d awaken to a corpse. Allah listened!” He looked at Parto with fire in his eyes.
The boy spoke in a strange dialect. “Is this the school? Are you my teachers?”
Dr. Najafi and Parto looked at one another with vacant stares. Neither of them could understand what Terran said.
“The dialect is similar to Kurdish, but I don’t understand it. Do you?”
Parto shook her head.
“Where am I?” Terran asked. “Who are you?”
They knew he was asking questions, but apart from the word “school” none of the other words made sense to them.
Dr. Najafi brought Terran a bowl of bread. “Eat?”
Terran took the bread and devoured it. His chewing brought his questions to an abrupt end.
Parto smiled, watching him eat. “He’s very hungry. Where do you think he’s from?”
“Pashtun… maybe some obscure Afghani tribe. Possibly he’s Baluch. I don’t know.”
Dr. Najafi bent down and looked into the boy’s face. “Do you understand me?”
Terran’s eyes immediately narrowed in confusion.
“He probably understands us as well as we understand him.” Dr. Najafi confided. “The Preserve is probably the best place to take him—someone there will know his dialect.”
“Do you see, Mother, I told you Allah was listening.” Dorri was awake, watching the boy eat his bread. She got up from the makeshift bed on the floor and went to Terran and put out her arms. He scrutinized her like someone who had never seen a child. He stopped eating; his entire face became motionless, staring at Dorri. “Don’t you want a hug?” Dorri asked.
Terran put the bread down on the bed and spread his arms out, mirroring Dorri, who then leaned in and put her arms around him—mostly his knees, but it was the closest thing she could hug, because Terran was sitting on the table and she was standing on the floor. Terran looked bewildered by the gesture, unsure of what it meant.
Dorri stepped back, pointing to her chest. “You’re my brother, now.”
Terran stayed still, as his arms slowly descended to his sides, and then one arm, with its index finger extended, touched his chest. “You’re my brother, now.”
He spoke it in perfect Farsi, exactly in the same rhythm as Dorri had moments earlier. Both Parto and Dr. Najafi looked at one another in amazement.
Dorri chuckled. “No, I’m your sister. You’re my brother.”
Terran shook his head slightly. “School?” He pointed to the room’s walls. “Teachers?” He pointed to Dr. Najafi and Parto.
“He thinks we’re teachers,” said Dr. Najafi. “Let’s see if he can walk.”
Dr. Najafi helped Terran off the table and supported him to see if he had the strength to walk. “He seems fine. I’ve never seen such a recovery before. But these kids from the mountains are built tough. I’ll walk with you to the school.”
At the mention of the word, “school,” Terran grabbed Dr. Najafi’s sleeve. “School?”
Dr. Najafi nodded forcefully. “Yes, we’ll go there now.” He took Terran by the arm and led him out the door, and the four of them made their way to the Preserve.
It was still early when they arrived, a little past seven in the morning and the school was just waking up. Dr. Najafi went inside to find Hamid. He knocked on the office door, and down the hallway he heard the shuffle of feet. “I’m coming. Hold on.”
“Hamid, it’s Dr. Najafi.”
Hamid tuned the corner and bowed slightly. “Ah, Doctor, it’s good to see you. I hope you’re here with good news on your lips.”
“The boy, Terran Khan, lives. He’s outside right now.”
“Excellent, what’s his story?”
“He’s a mystery. He speaks a dialect we’re not familiar with—”
“The woman and… the little girl, are they still with him?”
“Yes,” Dr. Najafi said, nodding.
“What do you want me to do?” Hamid asked, unlocking his office door and motioning for the Doctor to follow.
“Who is your best student… with languages?”
“We only teach English. You know that, my good Doctor.”
“You have no records of the language skills of your students?”
Hamid shook his head, and then snapped his finger and looked at his wristwatch. “The kids are having their breakfast right now, we could have the boy come into the cafeteria and say something, if anyone recognizes the dialect, we’d have ourselves a translator.”
“Okay, I’ll get the boy and you can lead us to the cafeteria.”
A few minutes later, Dr. Najafi’s group, escorted by Hamid, entered a large room consisting of long tables and about three hundred students of varying ages and gender. The Preserves—as part of their mission—were open to anyone between the age of six and sixteen. It was a ten-year curriculum, but most of the students, regardless of their age, were in their first year, because the Preserve in Mashhad was relatively new.
The noise in the room was mostly of utensils on metal plates. There were a few laughs and chit chat, but it was obvious to any astute observer that the students were trained for efficient eating so they could get to their classes on time. Hamid walked to a raised stage on the far end of the cafeteria and clapped his hands sharply. “Quiet, please. I’d like to gather your attention on a mystery we are trying to solve.”
An immediate hush fell over the room, while the students craned their necks to watch Hamid speak.
“A boy has come to our school who speaks a dialect none of us is familiar with. I’m going to have him say something, and if any of you recognizes the dialect, raise your hand. Okay?”
A chorus of voices responded. “Yes, Mister Mokri.”
Parto noticed a few teachers leaning against the wall, curious about the mysterious boy. Dr. Najafi led Terran to the podium and motioned to the assembled students, as if he was telling Terran to introduce himself. Terran looked between the assembled students and Dr. Najafi, but seemed to have no idea that he was supposed to speak. Dr. Najafi put his hand to his mouth and thrust it outward, signaling to the boy that he should say something. The boy mimicked the gesture, and the students instantly giggled. Dr. Najafi pointed to the students. “School.”
Terran’s eyes lit up. “School?”
Terran’s body was still wrapped in the blue blanket, his face had been cleaned, but the rest of his body remained dusty and dirty. His hair was mostly straight and long, reaching his shoulders. His face was thin, as was his entire body, but there was a strength to his physique that was undeniable. Standing next to Dr. Najafi, he looked particularly small, but there was a quality about him that seemed authoritative. Perhaps it was his unaffected demeanor in front of the students or his square jawbone, or his wide-set eyes that looked unflinchingly at the world before him.
Terran walked to the edge of the stage on which the podium stood, staring out at the students. The room was absolutely quiet as he looked among them, as one would do if they were trying to select one person on the merit of a singular, unique characteristic. His eyes finally rested on a teacher who was watching him. Terran turned to the teacher and held out his arm. “You are my blood, are you not?”
The teacher, eyes locked with Terran’s, nodded.
“You can understand him?” Hamid asked.
“I can,” the teacher replied.
Hamid clapped his hands together sharply twice. “Okay, children, go back to your breakfast and hurry to your classes.”
“Let’s go to my office,” Hamid said as he walked by the teacher. “You can come, too, if you want,” he added turning back to Dr. Najafi, Parto and Dorri.
Hamid walked hand-in-hand with Terran, while the rest of the group solemnly walked behind them. Every once in a while Terran would look behind, seemingly to make sure the teacher was still following. The dark limits of language had finally been pierced, and Terran Khan was soon to become knowable.
This completes the free sample of The Weather Composer
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