Babel looked at Quentin. “While Jims builds our army, you and I will visit our new friend in the Barren Lands.” He paused once more and then asked something that had been bothering him, “Will the people of the world see us as different from the Klopph? Aren’t we the same as them if we overtake them by force?”
“A great number of the people alive today never lived under a Chokka government. You are concerned if they know we are any better?” Babel nodded. “What does your heart tell you?”
“It tells me that we are doing the right thing.” Babel answered without hesitation.
“Then it does not matter what others think. We will do what feel is right.”
“And if the people do not respond?’
“Then we have already lost.”
Babel considered Quentin’s words. He looked at Quentin. “I have vowed that I will avenge the death of my father, just as you have vowed to avenge the death of your family. This is personal. But as much as I want to kill the Keeper, I don’t want to enter this blindly out of rage.”
“Are you saying that you are?”
“I am saying that I am not. I will kill the Keeper to avenge my father and my grandparents. But that is not the reason I am choosing to start this war. I am starting this war because I am a Chokka. If I don’t, no one else will.”
“So it’s ego?”
“No, but it is what I know to be right.”
“You are our Császár.” Quentin answered. “We will follow you.”
Babel paused only briefly, giving his decision one final thought. Then he raised his head and straightened his back. “We go to war.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Quentin pushed his chair away from the desk. He had just finished cataloging the mainframe of the fortress and wasn’t sure how to react to what he found.
In the mainframe were designs for several projects on which his father was working. Most of the projects had either not been completed or had not been started but there were several that had. One especially fascinating tidbit – he had always considered the Pishacha to be naturally occurring but discovered that the Ministry of Science had created the Pishacha. “I wonder whose idea it was to work on that project?”
He kept digging and his interest was sparked by one particular project that had been completed many years prior: a reanimation machine. The project itself spanned back many decades before the death of his father.
In the early years, many of the subjects had died during the testing. Something about the radiation levels. As years went by however, the machine began to re-grow lost appendages of the test subjects. Quentin recognized some of the names of test subjects as various soldiers who had served in the Chokka military.
After ten years of testing, the first test subject was successfully brought back from the dead. Quentin looked at the name of the first successful test subject and was speechless. It was him.
His father had recorded numerous journal entries and Quentin read that his father had been very close to a breakthrough in the weeks leading up to his son’s death. In fact, his father had another test subject lined up for the day after Quentin’s death. Of course, Quentin’s death changed that.
His father had ordered Quentin’s body brought to the fortress. There he worked for nearly forty hours straight, working to perfect the machine. Finally, two days after Quentin’s death, his father used the machine and Quentin returned to life.
Quentin was stunned. He read his father’s words aloud:
Quentin has shown a complete recovery. In fact, there have been some other positive residual effects of the reanimation. Yesterday, Quentin cut himself on a broken test tube. The cut was superficial but bled severely. I could see the blood flowing but by the time I reached him, the blood had completely stopped. What’s more is that the cut completely disappeared. His body had healed itself almost instantly. I wonder what this will mean for him in the future?
“This is why I die and come back. There can be no other explanation.”
Quentin spent the next several hours combing through the historical archives. He ascertained designs and plans from not only his father but also many of the Ministers of Science before him. He discovered that the many of the abilities by many of the people in the world had been created by the Ministry of Science. These abilities, once absorbed by their test subjects, became part of the genetic makeup of those people. Then, those abilities were then passed down genetically from one generation to another.
“What does this mean for my children? Did I pass my reanimation on to them?” He dwelled on the question for some time but forced himself to stop. “My wife and children are dead. I have to accept that.”
He tried to exorcize the thought from his mind but it would not escape him. He kept imagining his children trapped inside of the burner of the Erőd. Each time the burner was fired, they would die, burned to death, only to be revived, still stuck in the burner to die that horrible death all over again.
“Are you alright?”
Quentin turned to see who had spoken. It was Babel. “Yes, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? You don’t look so well.”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay. So, what did you find?”
Quentin showed Babel what he had learned. Babel was amazed. “So that is why you return after you die.” Quentin nodded. He then showed Babel what he had learned about the some of the abilities of the world.
“Thanks for showing me.” Babel said aloud instead. “Let me know what else you find out. Also, I wanted
