The Click

Oliver Hitchcock arrived at Washington Regis International Airport early. As

soon as his passport was electronically logged in and he passed through an eye scan to establish his identity, he debated whether to call Kathy. The previous evening she had called to tell him Christopher was running a low grade temperature. He decided not to call. It would only worry her more. Instead, he hopped on a high speed people mover divided into fast and slow lanes, the former requiring overhead gripping bars given how fast it floated over its tracks. Even though he was in no particular rush, Hitch chose the fast lane, he always chose the fast lane regardless the circumstances, and reached his gate area in enough time to have a leisurely breakfast.

After nabbing the only vacant table and punching in his order on a small device sitting next to the catsup and pepper sauce, a dumb waiter it was called, a glassy-eyed server in a stained brown Feast & Fly uniform eventually brought out his meal. A recent copy of Washington Now had been left on the seat. The cover story: The Proud History of Washington Regis International Airport. He thumbed through the article and had to laugh. The very airport he was sitting in exemplified state of the art use of federal tax dollars so that senators and congressmen could fly in style. ’The rich and the powerful from inside the beltway are carried into the airport on high speed, solar powered air- rail in a matter of minutes, and fly out on jets made of light weight plastellic material, a unique combination of plastic and metal—jets faster than a speeding laser ray.’ Well that was a bit of an exaggeration. But the economy was surely thriving as the cover story claimed; wellness prevailed, and the population had been stable for decades—peace and prosperity like never before, all thanks to God and the Cūtocracy. It was clear who wrote that article.

“The world may be at peace, but not me,” Hitch shot back at the cover story. After finishing breakfast and paying his tab on the dumb waiter by joining it to the

App on his scud, he headed for the gate just as the agent there announce his flight to

Mumbai was delayed, something about a faulty warning light that required checking. Well some state of the art things never change. Just when he decided to call Kathy, his scud RANG. She must have read his mind. Christopher’s V-Mark seemed a little bluer than it had been. She wasn’t one to check it as often as he had, that was too frightening, but her son’s behavior bothered her too much to ignore it. “Keep an eye on him,” was about all Oliver could say. “And have Ralph check his V-Mark if it continues to change.”

On the flight to Mumbai, all of two hours and twenty minutes, Hitch reflected on the circumstances that brought him there. The immense Data Retrieval & Search Center that Julian made available did not impress him at first. He had expected a grand ballroom packed with endless bays of computer terminals and mammoth size holographic screens. Instead, he found himself sitting in what at one time appeared to be a large walk-in maintenance closet containing a single input/output shell and a small solid screen mounted over it, much like the relics in the National Technology Museum. However, he quickly learned how fast and thorough it was. Every thought he blurted into the handheld microphone produced down the screen an index of possible leads he would have never considered. Nevertheless, after several hours of chasing his own tail, it seemed, he learned no more than he already knew … except! Except for the fact that he was not the only one who had been interested in the few links relating to dissidents alluding to the idea that the Click might be a fraud. Apparently others had tried to retrieve those links from not only the very same computation shell he sat at in the Company’s maintenance closet but from other computation shells around the world. There had been dozens of hits with no success. Who were those dissidents? How long ago was it? And who else was looking for them? Humm, Oliver Hitchcock wondered just as the flight attendant interrupted his thoughts and asked what he might like to drink. “Everything you have,” he quickly responded but settled on bourbon over ice.

He would still be nowhere had he not received a call from his friend, Rajiv Nadu. Surprisingly coincidental and a bit strange he thought, as he finished up his drink and looked for the flight attendant. Strange or not, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see for himself. He doubted anything would come of it, but at least it was an excuse to visit

Mumbai once again and some of the gang he worked with way back when. Besides, he needed a break from Kathy and her … Damn it! That wasn’t fair he thought as the attendant approached again.

After finishing his second bourbon, the cabin lights turned off and the hypersonic plane cruised in the dark, most of the passengers reading by overhead light, some taking a catnap. Hitch, on the other, sat hard against the back of his seat studying the space between him and the seat in front of him. He was happy to be in first class where leg room was plentiful. He focused on such trivialities in an attempt to relax all the body parts. Not working so well. Too many things to think about. He unbuckled and strolled to the back of the plane for still another another drink. A female attendant, Egyptian, in her forties, attractive, headed his way. He turned sideways to let her pass.

Just as she did, an elderly black woman rolled out of her seat and landed at Hitch’s feet, trembling in fear, hands to her ears grasping.

“No. … Please, I’m not ready. I can’t …”

Hitch dropped to his knees, took her hand, looked into her eyes. The same desperation he saw in Edna’s eyes the night she ... As the woman shook, he imagined hearing the CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, that rang so loudly in her last moments.

The flight attendant was now hovering over the two of them. Hitch looked up. “Do something, for Christ’s sake.”

“Sir, please get out from the aisle. One of my colleagues is getting a bag.” “Bag?”

“A body bag. Now, please step away.” Without saying more she walked back up the aisle leaving Hitch staring at her back.

“She’s not even …” Hitch dropped closer to the woman and embraced her. He swore he heard another CLICK, then a final sigh before she went limp in his arms.

Suddenly Hitch felt a hand grab at his shoulder, hard. He swung around, ready to strike. The flight attendant now standing over him, a man in his forties, stepped back, frightened at first, then agitated.

“Sir, please! International policy requires us to …” He stepped aside and two other flight attendants swooped in and placed the deceased women in a bright orange body bag, then zipped it up.

Hitch did little to prevent the disbelief and disgust permeating through his body from showing on his face. The Egyptian flight attendant looked on shaking her head. “You have no idea how many of these we see, all coming out of your country.”

Hitch was only half listening as he watched the bright orange bag being dragged down the aisle toward the back of the plane. What astonished him most were the other passengers. They seemed to take little notice. “Only you Americans seem to think it’s okay to fly while in the throes of the Click.”

Enough! Hitch had enough. He glared past her, went back to his seat and growled to himself.

After passing through customs, Rajiv greeted him with a hug and they drove on a cushion of air from the airport to the Union Hospital in Chembur, a suburb of Mumbai on the east coast. Most of the way there, Rajiv made small talk seemingly trying to avoid how it was he found Nagasi in the first place and why he thought there was a connection between him and Hitch’s promise to Edna, a promise Rajiv recalled from their time at the cemetery.

Finally, after Hitch could no longer take the small talk, he coaxed his good friend to open up. According to Rajiv, he happened to be visiting a relative at the hospital when he came upon Nagasi, a very old Ethiopian Jew, in the next room. Initially they thought Nagasi had Alzheimer’s. Although rare, it was one of the diseases the past two hundred years and medicine had not been able to cure entirely. While Nagasi claimed he was hit by a bicycle crossing the street, he got everyone’s attention when he began babbling something about the ERAM-V vaccine being a death sentence. Rajiv was told he kept alternating between a state of delusion and total control of reality, mostly the former according to the doctors, as he continued to mumble about the vaccine and insisted on referring to it as a death sentence. The old Jew claimed he was 102 years old and again the doctors were convinced he was mixed up. But Rajiv wasn’t so sure, especially after

Nagasi kept jabbering about all his people living just as long, some even longer deep in the jungle.

So, maybe coincidences happen, Hitch thought as they pulled into the hospital parking lot. A few minutes later he and Rajiv were standing at an opened door looking in on Nagasi who was either sound asleep or unconscious. He surely looked old, Hitch thought. He had shoulder length gray-white hair and a goatee and his skin was black with blotches of chalky gray, proof he probably wasn’t exaggerating too much about his age.

“This talk, people even older in the jungle. You believe that shit?” “Storytelling and mythology are part of Indian culture, my friend. Like all

cultures, sometimes we believe what we want to believe.” “Do we know where he lives?”

“I assume in the area. As I understand it, he was once the principal at the Jewish School of Learning not far from here.”

“Jewish School of Learning?”

Rajiv put Oliver in touch with the head librarian at the city library, a Mrs. Ambika Patel, who spent most of her working life in Mumbai in the Research and Analyst Wing of India’s counterpart to the CIA, as an R&AW analyst, before switching professions. Hitch rented a convertible, punched the address into the auto pilot/navigation system which glided him to the city library with little effort on his part. He still wasn’t convinced this trip would lead anywhere but he’s come this far and there was a certain strangeness in that fellow, Nagasi, that seemed authentic.

Considering how Hitchcock found Ambika Patel, she willingly shared some information with him. She confirmed Rajiv’s understanding that Nagasi was the principal in a very private gated village, the Jewish School of Learning, just outside Chembur, a short distance from Mumbai’s east coast. Everyone referred to it as the Black Jews’ Village or merely School of Learning because its inhabitants included only the black Jews and because it was mostly made up of school houses for the village children from kindergarten through high school. Nagasi and the teachers lived in a separate home in

more or less the center of the village while the children and some parents lived in adjacent apartment buildings.

After visiting with Mrs. Patel, Hitch went to the village, but unfortunately, it was closed down and everyone gone—just disappeared; he was told by several locals hanging around the chained up front gate supporting a large red and white NO TRESPASSING sign. They also told him the Village of Learning had its own grocery store, and bank believe it or not, and that the villagers mostly kept to themselves, although they ran a small fleet of fishing boats and sold some of their catch to the locals. No one was entirely sure where they went or came from. Apparently most of the neighborhood imagined a hidden city deep in the jungle but that was because everyone seemed to romanticize these strange people and their ways.

Later that evening, well after dark, Hitch returned to the Jewish Village of Learning, this time with Rajiv. A solid brick wall almost as tall as Oliver surrounded the entire village which sat on at least a dozen acres. It was huge, he thought after walking the entire perimeter, huge and solid. The only entrance was through the main gate constructed of thick steel posts that complemented the impervious wall. Between the steel posts they could see neglected landscape and debris held captive by the tallness of the walls and the absence of people. The apparent need for privacy and fortification begged the two onlookers to search the entire village, and scaling the wall was their best option. Before they did, however, they waited for the VAMA vehicles patrolling the streets to vanish. Christ! Even in this remote outpost across the world those bastards maintained a vigilance that could not be missed. Hitch never liked VAMA and now he even liked it less.

He happened to be a master at smithing other people’s locks. As a result, they had little difficulty keying their way into the buildings and wound up spending nearly four hours searching the classrooms, offices and personal residences. The village interior had been meticulously cleaned of any solid evidence that might have incriminated the fleeing occupants. The whiteboards were white, the wastebaskets empty, the drawers and closets void of even the leftover lint from clothing. And yet, all the tables, chairs, desks, beds,

digital book readers, even computation shells void of incriminating data, appeared as if they hadn’t been moved during the cleansing process. Red dots were placed on all those items which meant they stayed according to a poster on the wall. Anything with green dots they were to take with them. It was as if the village citizens knew someone would be there in the middle of the night begging for a hint of who they were but not where they went. What better clues than the things they used on a daily basis, especially their book readers and the books they read.

The book that received most of Hitch’s attention had fallen behind a heater. It had a green dot on its spine: It might as well have been a sign saying read me! And Hitch did, quickly, as Rajiv busied himself scavenging other areas. It was entitled The First Coming and as best as he could gather it was about a community of Jews waiting for the Messiah to come.

“Hitch, we must hurry,” he heard Rajiv shout from another room. He closed the book and debated. Should he or should he not take it. He touched the green dot and looked at the heater. How did it get there? It was as if someone left it there on purpose . That thought and curiosity won the day. He stuck it behind his waistband under his shirt and went looking for his companion.