Sky Parlor: A NOVEL Read online

  The president’s tender fingers relished the rosy softness of Abigail’s skin and, drawing closer, his urgent lips again sought the eager surrender of her yielding, crimson mouth.

  “It is I, who shall be witness to your deaths, Apollonia.”

  Turning in the direction of the foreboding voice, Lincoln felt a surreal jolt of recognition at the sight of General Grant and another youthful gentleman standing before him, both armed with drawn, small caliber pistols.

  “This is highly irregular Ulysses,” the president snarled. “What the devil is the meaning of this?”

  “As you can well imagine, Mister President,” Grant’s reply dropped from his rigid lips like cold stones, “this is a coup d’ etat.”

  With an agile flick of her long fingers, Abigail quickly tucked the silver cube away into the secret compartment stitched into her blazer’s sleeve.

  “I told you, he may be in your very midst, Mister President,” Lincoln heard Abigail exclaim. “I should have recognized before now, Artemis’s odious nature – the cruel, soldier’s disguise he has not so surprisingly chosen. And Booth, to what do we owe such apparent malevolence,” Abigail enquired of the tall, youthful actor preparing to perform her rival’s evil bidding.

  “Unlike you, Mistress de Orleans, deity of the sun in mortal disguise, I don’t wish to be immortal,” Booth uttered, clenching his ivory teeth. “I only seek to be immortalized.”

  “And I shall seek to put an end to this utter treachery,” a determined Abigail declared.

  Abigail dashed forward to provide a shield of protection for the president. In the guise of General Grant, Artemis’s eyes molded into dark, bottomless clefts that for a moment, swallowed all traces of light and energy. Dread tolled like a cracked bell’s dooming alarm. Though within the palm of her determined hand, her silver cube had been deployed once more, it had mysteriously ceased to respond to the command of her iron will. Abigail felt her limbs seized with a strange, leaden weight.

  Had Artemis’s magic somehow managed to grow stronger over the centuries? Had he cast a perilous spell, she wondered?

  Abigail saw the pair of murderous, black pistol’s take aim. Tufts of white smoke billowed from the roaring gun barrels muffled by the sound-proofed walls of the dressing room. The twin assassins stood stone-faced amid the suffocating odor of the gunpowder’s gray cloud lingering over the pair of fallen bodies.

  “Sic semper tyrannis, thus always to tyrants,” Booth murmured.

  “Indeed, my dear Booth,” the general concurred with the young assassin’s sentiments. “Now,” the general instructed, “you will go with Corbett, my Sergeant at Arms, and guarded by the seventh cavalry, take the body of Abigail de Orleans by covered wagon to the designated location, just outside Washington at Port Royal. There will be a fresh horse in the barn. From there, you can speed to the coast and escape to Europe. Corbett will instruct his men to bury the body in the barn, then burn it. In a few days, while you’ve set sail for France to change your identity, all the papers will say Booth, Lincoln’s assassin, was shot dead in Port Royal by Boston Corbett, my Sergeant at Arms, who Secretary of War Edwin Stanton shall summarily reward with an accommodation. As for what happened to the president, I shall take care of everything here.”

  “Though I shall be known hereafter as a murderous villain, I’d never realized until now,” Booth said, “how even the ancient gods, while disguised as mortal beings, fight so fiercely while at war, and perhaps while even in the throes of romance.”

  “It is no wonder, an idealist such as the president fell so easily prey to my rival’s rather innocent, and sweet romantic charms. For long ago, I too loved her. And when we were in love, the world was at peace.”

  “I was not aware the world had ever been at peace, general,” Booth replied as puzzlement wrinkled his dark brow.

  “Oh yes, my boy, ours has been a strange romance. In the spirit realm, she and I are the respective light energies, projected from the sun and reflected from the moon, the spiritual male and female energy from which everything here on the physical plane manifests and becomes animated. This world is merely a reflection of our light, made in our image.”

  “Should you ever love her again, are you saying then, they’ll be no more war, no slavery, no strife here on this physical plane, that there then shall be everlasting light, and no darkness?” Booth wondered.

  “Rest assured, in the future, when we both return here in another physical incarnation,” a contemplative Grant mused, “our ages old alchemical romance shall be given another chance to burn anew or die. It is then, this war, both here as it is in heaven, shall finally be won or lost, my boy,” the General replied, settling his cold eyes upon the pair of bloodied fallen. “And just as before throughout history, I shall emerge, victorious.”

  Artemis, in the guise of General Grant, reached down upon Abigail’s body to retrieve the silver cube.

  “I must confess, over the centuries, I’ve grown rather fond of provoking the chaos of war whenever I return to the physical plane, so that I might impose my own order. War and conflict, in whatever form, keeps the population sustainable, manageable. In three centuries or so, when America and its capital city are no longer recognizable, she and I, shall surely reincarnate and return to face one another again,” Artemis said while examining Abigail’s magical device. “It is then, however, war shall be fought on the battlefield of the mind, and in the heart, dear boy. But a war to end all others.”

  *

  For several weeks while the nation mourned its slain leader, an overcast gray’s morbid mosaic seemed to have forever blotted out the dim sliver of sun. While thousands gathered along the miles of railroad tracks for a funeral train that carried her husband’s remains, faithfully tracing the path of the president’s journey from Washington to his childhood home in Illinois, Mary Lincoln remained shrouded in darkness, alone in her White House bed chambers. Her only consolation seemed to be the solitary window view near her Maplewood rocking chair.

  For hours at a time, she glimpsed the buds blooming on the trees dotting the White House lawn just outside her bedchamber window, heard the melodic rejoicing of flocks of robins as they alighted on the sun gilded bark of their branches. Witnessing the cornucopia of life’s abundance teeming outside her bedroom’s darkened mausoleum, at last, she began to feel pangs of consolation. Once again, while peering beyond the paned window from beneath the shroud of her thick shawl, she swore she could hear the echo of her gloom begin to retreat like an exorcised demon’s absconding footsteps.

  Surrounded by solitude’s calming silence, she began to rejoice, sensing that, the shadows of darkness were beginning to flee from hope’s ray of light.

  Perhaps after all, death wasn’t a definitive end, but merely a transition to yet another life’s incarnation, another chance to feel spring’s caress of warm wind and a soft rain’s trickle upon one’s enlivened skin, to bask in the sweetness of violet-scented fresh air. The enveloping shadows surrounding her began to recede. Her face became aglow like a starry cosmos, a reflection of her renewed spirit beginning to sparkle with the ardent hope that someday, she would see her husband again.

  Then, the groaning creak of a door shattered her deep introspection.

  “Pardon, if I may Madame,” Mary heard the deep voice rumble. “But you have a visitor,” announced Clarence, her husband’s chief steward, “it is the honorable General, Ulysses S. Grant.”

  Turning away from the window’s vista encircled in a wreath of light, Mrs. Lincoln squinted into the darkness. She heard the thud of heavy boots against the hardwood floor. A familiar, bearded face emerged into the shaft of light knifing through the window.

  “Your son, Robert Todd, who as you know, has faithfully served as a captain in one of my battle regiments during the last phase of this great conflict, sends word about the burial of your husband’s remains, Lady,” a somber Grant related. “First, however, allow me to offer my sincere condolences,” the general added, removing his wide-br
immed blue hat. “Your husband was much beloved by the people. He will no doubt earn a place in history as one of the nation’s greatest leaders.”

  Mary heard the echo of her husband’s candid sentiments regarding the general, of his confession made to her shortly before Booth’s assassination and, she felt the plaguing dread of her former gloom retreat even further.

  “Though I thank you for your kind condolences, general,” Mary replied, “one cannot help but think, given my late husband’s reservations regarding your conduct during the war, that the young Mister Booth’s act of treachery was not performed alone. In fact, could it not be more accurate to say, such an act may have been carried out with the blessing of he who stands before me now?”

  Grant squared his broad shoulders. As he inhaled a long breath, Mary Lincoln secretly delighted as she saw the general flinch. Then, the javelin tip of an ironic notion speared at her mind:

  Had the victorious warmonger blinked at the sight of his adversary – invincible Goliath shrinking from the sight of meek David?

  “My dear lady,” Grant moved to assure, “have you not considered such an accusation, made without due cause, may be grossly unfair? For, I served the president with honor, and I would no more wish the harm that has come to him and his family than I would wish it on my own.”

  As if a chorus of angels had swooped down to prop her up, Mary unwrapped herself from her sarcophagus of black shawls and rose from her rocking chair.

  “Surely, you do realize, General,” Mary began in a voice colder than the wind of the arctic tundra. Her eye’s colorful pastiche grew fierce with a tinge of darkness. “You’ve only succeeded in creating a martyr for those who toil in the cause of everlasting peace.”

  Beneath his thick forested beard, Grant’s lips pursed.

  “I’m afraid my lady, you’ve been the victim of ill-counsel. There are some, wrong-headed, who would accuse me of things that were not of my doing nor were such acts my ultimate responsibility.”

  Mary Lincoln’s eyes narrowed. As she straightened the backbone of her wren-like frame, Mary’s fists clenched into tight balls.

  “No, you are my enemy, general, and I’m afraid,” she fumed, “the enemy of mankind. You will pay for your treachery, though perhaps not in this life, but, and God willing, in the next. Now Sir, get out of my sight.”

  ACT II

  7

  Sky Parlor, America’s capital megalopolis

  (sometime in the 24th century)

  From the dizzying perch of his mountaintop palace, Artemis – known as Garth Ulysses in this earthly incarnation – beheld the breathtaking span of his new kingdom.

  “Congratulations, Mister President,” Garth Ulysses heard the deep voice of Plato Charlemagne, Chief of his Supreme ‘Sustainability’ Council. “This month’s algorithms show our approval ratings are at an all-time crest among both ‘saints’ and ‘breeders’.”

  “I trust the techs who worked to rig such favorable numbers weren’t too expensive this time,” a sardonic President Ulysses remarked. “I do hope compensating their efforts didn’t significantly dent our secret but considerable stash of UIC credits that we have either stolen from the people or made up out of thin air to look like genuine assets?”

  “It did not, Mister President,” Plato replied as he tapped the holographic spread sheet hovering before his sober gaze, “In fact, they were bought rather cheaply and many, in lieu of credits, were happy to receive an entire month, free of charge, with the latest and most potent upgrade of Doctor Zoe’s VR narco-cube.”

  Surrounded by Sky Parlor’s vast megalopolis, stretching from the boundaries of what was formerly known as Boston to the environs of the former District of Columbia, President Ulysses marveled at the chaotic urban sprawl, deluged in a glittering storm of neon. In an age when the idea of heroes and gods from ages long past had been reduced to mere dust, windblown by the faintest whispers, he somehow began to wish men had not become such malleable clay within his sculpting hands.

  Is it truly such a great prize, that I should be given dominion over a wasteland such as this?

  Like a restless beast, the city lumbered on a meandering path for numberless miles beneath the foreboding sky’s dark silk. As it clawed toward the far ocean’s horizon, it grew ravenous, devouring the landscape until all was barren.

  Glimpsing the quicksilver moon – a forlorn shard of mist suspended in a starless galaxy – Ulysses found his thoughts preoccupied with a lingering vision. Though emanating from three centuries past, the clear vision still rose in his mind brighter than a dawn’s morning sun. Then, stretching his gaze to the farthest horizon, he focused his coal black eyes, contemplating those glum pockets of forbidding darkness beyond the domed city’s towering walls from which the brilliant light’s rainbow corona seemed to flee. He imagined the husk of ruins crumbling beneath the blanketing darkness, the mists of memories left long ago decayed.

  Over time, while smothered in ravaging fear, Sky Parlor’s population had been convinced they were to blame for the woes of mother earth. While educated to believe they were threatened by nature’s wrath – unpredictable climate disasters such as forest fires, earthquakes, floods and destructive super storms that plagued entire swaths of the North American continent – and made to feel guilt-ridden over their “unsustainable carbon footprint” upon the land, the shepherded survivors huddled beneath Sky Parlor’s immense crystalline dome and holographic sky, and agreed to submit themselves to the will of the Supreme Sustainability Council. Because most of the population of Sky Parlor believed they were kept safe from the desecrated and uninhabitable land and foul air poisoned by the ‘Great Rapture‘ outside the city’s immense walls, Ulysses’ centuries-long yearning had now come to fruition: complete control over a land, its people, and their very thoughts and perceptions. Since Lincoln’s assassination – the last time he and Apollonia had been on earth together – her holographic technology, along with the further development of cameras, television and portable digital technologies, combined with manufactured conflicts whether real or imagined, had been used to gain control of mortal hearts and minds.

  Ulysses shimmered with pride. Others had done his bidding with strategic use of climate changing technologies, to fool the world’s masses into believing they were responsible for the ‘Great Rapture’ – with the help of his scientific minions over many decades – he had secretly planned and executed. Now, while incarcerated in Sky Parlor’s megalopolis, America’s remaining “sustainable” population had been conditioned to become their own prison wardens. As he had predicted to Edwin Stanton centuries ago, the battlefield of war had become the plane of human consciousness.

  The bombardment of psychological warfare’s siege had proved far deadlier and destructive when compared to the guns, bayonets, and cannons of yesterday’s standing armies.

  Though for this life’s incarnation, he had chosen to transfer his immortal spirit into a sustainable, artificially intelligent, Nano-technological ‘smart’ unit or “s.a.i.n.t.”, his insatiable thirst and hunger for the sweet tang of organic flesh and blood’s adrenochrome still remained.

  For a moment, he relished eclipsing victory over his spiritual rival to change the course of human history. During those long eras following Lincoln’s legendary martyrdom, the world, fearful to remain anything other than silent and obedient, had been coaxed like a shepherd’s cattle then led straight into the slaughter paddock. In crude desperation though, like suckling infants to a mother’s breast, they still cleaved to freedom’s obsolete notion. They still believed those formerly held in bondage from the distant past had been granted liberty when, in fact, slavery’s clasping chains had merely been made invisible to all.

  Though he relished triumph, caution’s faint alarm still chimed.

  Despite his control over humanity’s destiny, his triumph had been but one battle’s victory in an epic war. He began to recognize too; Apollonia would not so easily forgive an injury. After deep rumination, he sensed the time for
her return had no doubt arrived. While still and silent in reflection and, though he tried to stifle apprehension’s nagging ache, it persisted. The probability he would once more cross his rival’s path was too great to deny. Whether this time she sought revenge or should attempt to rekindle the still smoldering embers of tender memories, ultimately – he felt seduced into thinking – it did not matter.

  She must be denied, now and forever.

  While his dark brow molded with consternation and turning, but for a moment, away from the palatial window view of his black marble palace adorned with alabaster Corinthian columns, he again considered Apollonia, knowing that now, more than ever, he must take care to moor himself to good fortune’s blessing, should it choose to abandon him.

  I must not allow her to enflame former passions while in this incarnation, otherwise all is lost!

  Though through the spacious window, he noticed a creeping fog’s ghostly gloom begin to dim the city’s neon radiance, his striking face began to crease with a satisfied grin. From the reflection of the moon that, through a palatial window, now emerged full and bright, Ulysses’ synthetic skin shone like polished silver. Still, he found himself nagged with a troubling consideration. Surely, with his dominion over this urban nightmare, Apollonia would soon enough make her presence known. Then, finding himself besieged with a stab of regret, his smile began to wither. Even if the passage of centuries had banished Apollonia’s vivid image to the most remote islands of past memory, he somehow could not pretend her return from exile did not harbor some remnant of intrigue, perhaps even romantic longing.

  After several millennia, did he still truly love her, he began to mull, or did he merely cherish the notion of her as his worthy adversary?

  But how, he wondered, would she choose to reappear in this incarnation and under what mortal identity?