The Click

The Rose Garden cottage where everything that was spiritual in DanSheba took

place sat up the hill at the foot of the mountain. It was surrounded by a fence so thick with red, white, and yellow roses one had to pass through the gate to see the front door. The cottage itself, constructed of the shiny stone chipped away from the mountainside, seemed to pop out of a fairytale, Meta remember thinking when she saw it the day she arrived in DanSheba with her mother that first time. And on Friday nights the cottage and backyard filled up with villagers who wanted to light Shabbat candles together. How she always loved the Rose Garden cottage Meta said to herself as she and Oliver Hitchcock walked up the hill toward the large crowd gathering out front.

“How are they doing?” Meta asked.

“Christopher’s in a coma but Elana says that’s good. It slows down the progression.” Hitch shrugged.

“And Kathy?”

“Ringthaller gave her a sedative and she’s sleeping, finally.”

“In that case why don’t you take a deep breath and relax. I think you need it. Hopefully your president will disclose the Smotecal Decretum to the world, DanSheba will live to see another day, and Christopher will grow older than we all could have imagined.”

Hitch shrugged again. Then stopped and looked at Meta. “But how does this Decretum thing fit into The Click? I never did understand that from what you gave me.”

“It both condemns and exonerates the Ecclesian Church. As the ERAM plague intensified, Smotec Innocent urged the Cūtocracy to begin dispensing a Clickless vaccine they had stored up thanks to my great granduncle Jonathan. The Cūtocracy wanted to wait until the Click was ready, apparently months and millions of deaths later. A vote by the Council was taken and everyone except Innocent’s representative voted to wait.

Innocent’s Decretum instructed him to vote NO, to dispense the Clickless serum immediately.”

“So the Church was against geriatric euthanasia. How does that condemn it?” Meta stopped, picked up a wildflower and smelled it, then turned back to Oliver.

“Because Innocent knew about the Click from the beginning and the Cūtocracy’s plan to delay the Clickless vaccine until they could incorporate the time bomb, knowing that millions would die needlessly and future generations would die prematurely. He and the Church chose to keep everything secret in the name of population control, and to weaken the arguments for birth control. After so many people died in the ERAM plague, the church needed more babies to shore up its following and the Cūtocracy needed to make sure the church coffers were overflowing.”

“And these Tarsusian extremists like Julian, were... are, still part of the Church?” Meta blew the petals from the wildflower as she walked on, toward the crowd

waiting at the cottage, and Hitch followed her lead. “Yes, but apparently they were not aware of the conspiracy of silence between the Church and the Cūtocracy and tolerated the Cūtocrats only because they believed the Click was truly the work of God.”

As they approached the cottage, a DanSheban videographer with her equipment greeted them. “We’re ready to go, if you are,” she said to Meta.

Meta nodded, then turned to Oliver. “In the end, because of your president, the world will know the truth. And with God’s help, ironically, both the Cūtocracy and the Church will be expunged from the Earth along with the Click.”

Hitch stood there speechless. Meta recognized the look. He hadn’t expected such vitriol. He’ll get over it, she thought. After all he hasn’t lived nearly as long as her knowing what the Church perpetuated in the name of their extreme dogma. With that, she allowed the videographer to escort her to the camera set up in front of the cottage and took a deep breath, taking in the mixed aroma of all the roses of different colors, reds and whites and yellows.

Rosewall guided one of the barges and a small carrier from East Mumbai into the jungle thicket. They were going to survey the area he told the other fleet commanders. Once they were far enough away and needed to know which forks to take, he had Rousseau turn on her Blue Cube causing the HS-Screen to appear. She was caught off guard when she realized that Elana Wu was no longer transmitting. “Damn. She probably flushed the bug down the toilet.”

Rosewall laughed as he stepped up to the Blue Cube and began tapping away. “Not a problem. It automatically saved her location.”

Sure enough, a dot over DanSheba began pulsating. They plugged that information into the navigation system on the carrier and it did all the work, that is, until it steered them toward this magnificent waterfall.

“Holy shit!” Rousseau stood at the bow and gawked at God’s creation in front of

her.

Rosewall stood next to her in a panic, growling out orders into his ship phone to stop. He then ran below deck and gathered around a navigation screen with members of his crew and Rousseau.

“If we’re going to get to DanSheba without circling around all of India we have to go through the falls,” one of the crewmembers said. “According to this, it’s hiding the entrance to a cavern of sorts which leads out here.” He pointed to the river on the other side of the mountain.

After double and triple checking that conclusion, Rosewall gave the orders to plunge through the center of the falls since they weren’t sure how wide the opening was. First they had to tie down and waterproof everything on deck that couldn’t be carried below which took them several hours.

Finally they made the plunge and swiftly found themselves on the other side, in a cavern and water as calm as the waterfall was turbulent. By the time the sun began setting, they were approaching the DanSheban wharf and made no attempt to hide that fact. Twenty minutes later, Rousseau found herself looking down on the village from her seat in a VAMA helicopter chuckling. “This has to be a joke,” she radioed back to

Rosewall, then scurried over all parts of the village making sure she was seen, hoping

Hitchcock would get a glimpse of her. While fondling the controls of a pair of stingray

laser guns on opposite sides of the helicopter as if they were Oliver’s private parts, she

was even hoping her bravado would wake up the Israelis, but no such luck.

After returning to the carrier, she jumped out and strolled to Rosewall who was

standing on deck talking on his scud. Rosewall seeing her approach turned it to speaker

mode.

“It’s smaller than a gnat’s ass. We can level it in ten minutes,” Rousseau insisted.

“No. Not until I say. The U.S. president has a meeting scheduled at the Ecclesian Embassy. Let her make a fool of herself, then I’ll give you the go-ahead,” High Minister McGivney demanded.

After clicking off, Rosewall turned to Rousseau. “We’ll see,” he said as both gazed out into a void of blackness, in the direction of DanSheba where not a flicker of light could be seen, where Rousseau was sure the Israeli and Indian troops … and Hitchcock were staring back.