Chapter 1

Lukas rubbed a hand over his face and slowly sat up in his cot. He tried to remind himself that today would be like any day, except that if he wasn’t successful … Well, his life was in God’s hands. And God had placed the science in the hands of him and his team.

Slowly, he slipped his bare feet onto the tiled floor, stood, and went to the window beside his cot. He preferred to keep the blind down while he slept. It kept out the constant, low glow so he could spend the nighttime hours in complete darkness, and it made his morning view that much more incredible when he opened the blind. He did this now, blinking against the yellow glare outside, and gave himself a few moments to stare out at the vast expanse of his home, their Paradise on Earth. 

The luminescent ceiling panels had already brightened, the light and heat and ultraviolet measurements meticulously calibrated to mimic the true sun, complete with the timing and rhythm of the Earth’s rotational cycles. Even this far underground, their timeline followed the natural order of things to near perfection, and when he did not think about it too hard, Lukas found himself able to forget sometimes where they were. 

For miles upon miles, the ceiling panels stretched endlessly before him in this vast underground cavern, shining down upon the Agricultural Sector. Directly below him at the base of the cavern wall in which his quarters had been built, the thick, lush grass grew right up against the rise of the grey stone. Then it gave way to an apple orchard, spanning some twenty acres, the tops of the trees a mere blur of green from where he stood so far above them. The plots of farmland spread seemingly without end—acres of rich soil sprouting corn, wheat, beans, potatoes, fruit in all varieties, greens in thousands of documented strains.

Lukas took all of it in as if he were seeing it for the first time, then turned from the window and padded across the small room toward the cabinet built into the far wall. The overhead lights blinked on as he moved, softly adding to the manufactured and no less stunning daylight streaming in through his window. He opened the cabinets to pull out what served as his daily uniform—slate-grey pants, thin and breathable yet durable, and a long-sleeved shirt of the same color that pulled easily over his head. 

On the low table beside the cabinets, a crystalline box no bigger than his hand pulsed to life, emitting a soft blue glow with each syllable of the steadfastly optimistic female voice emitting from it. “Lukas. It is First Dimming. Your presence is required in the Sector One Main Laboratory in one hour.”

With a pair of socks in hand, Lukas closed the cabinet doors and walked to the other end of the room. “Thanks. What’s the status of the power grid and energy lattices this morning?” He stopped at the small desk against the wall and set his socks beside the only other two items on the desk—a framed certificate with Hedge Master printed at the top in large, dark letters, his name slightly smaller beneath it; and the black, loose-fitting sparring uniform, pants and shirt both folded neatly, the frog-closure buttons of the shirt centered perfectly beneath the collar.  

“Both are fully operational,” the box replied. 

“They better be,” Lukas muttered, slipping his feet into his boots and lifting a leg onto the chair to tie the laces. 

“The Circle of Elders and the Teacher of Righteousness all send their best wishes for today’s final test run and—”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.” Lukas waved a hand as if the disembodied voice could see him, then lifted his other leg to finish lacing up his boots. “Just give me a rundown of the energy fields.”

“Solar flare activity is within normal limits. Electromagnetic field activity is within normal limits. There are no reports of geological anomalies. You have prepared contingencies for all eventualities. There is no reason for concern.” 

Lukas puffed out a sigh. “I wish I had your confidence.” 

“You now have fifty-two minutes until your presence is required in the Sector One Main Laboratory.”

“Yeah. Got it.” Finished with his boots, Lukas turned toward the plain door to his quarters. A bowl of apples rested on the short, low counter beside the door—the only color in the entire room—and he grabbed one of these. He couldn’t start with an empty stomach, but this was about as much as he could handle. 

Stepping out into the hallway, Lukas closed the door behind him and headed toward Sector One. 

The Qumranian Compound had all been cut into the very stone of these caverns, the endless maze of passages a blend of roughhewn walls and smooth, tiled floors lined by metal paneling, tracked lighting illuminating the wide spaces with a soft glow. When he finally reached Sector One after navigating turn after countless turn through the corridors—all of which he could make successfully in his sleep at this point—the hallways were even wider now and lit with an intense white fluorescence. Lukas walked quickly, his boots echoing softly down the hall, and another pair of footsteps matched his until another man in the same uniform with short brown hair turned into the hallway from the opposite end. 

The men smiled at each other and met in front of the next passageway to Lukas’ left. “Good to know I’m not the only one running late this morning,” Lukas said.

 “You’re the only one who seems happy about it,” his cousin said, his jaw set tightly as he offered a wane smile. 

Lukas clapped his cousin on the shoulder. “Relax, Jesse. Five years of work, and we finally get to test it. We’ve been over every equation and simulation hundreds of times. The data doesn’t lie. Deborah will tell you the same thing.” 

Jesse frowned and took a deep breath. “I know.”

“After this successful run today—and it will be successful—we’ll prove to the Elders that we have nothing to fear from the Outsiders. This technology puts us a hundred years ahead of them. Maybe even a thousand. There’s nothing we won’t be able to do.” Together, they turned down the hallway branching in front of them toward the Main Laboratory. 

“I know,” Jesse repeated and rubbed the back of his head. “I just can’t help wondering about the unknown variables—”

“Well, we can’t account for those, can we?” Lukas said with a chuckle. He didn’t understand how his cousin could harbor so much doubt on a day like today. They were doing God’s work, and they would not fail. 

They reached the end of the corridor and the steel double doors of the Main Laboratory waiting for them. Grinning, Lukas pushed open the doors and gently nudged his cousin inside. Other than the living quarters, the Sector One laboratory complex boasted the highest number of rooms in which the underground walls of stone had been completely covered. One might even forget the thousands of tons of pressure resting above them this far underground. The walls were a smooth, sterile white, the tile floors polished nearly enough to see their own reflections. In the center of the Main Laboratory sat a wide, circular raised platform, surrounded by three curved consoles of equal length. 

Deborah and the rest of their staff already stood at these, glancing up from the computer monitors when Lukas and Jesse entered. Deborah smiled, her long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail above the same slate-grey uniform her brother and cousin wore. “It’s amazing how consistent you guys are in showing up late.” 

“We allowed for a thirty-minute gap in our schedule,” Lukas said. “I’d say we’re right on time.” He turned and elbowed Jesse in the ribs, who then stepped toward Deborah. 

“Right on time to get started on initial preparations.” Jesse rubbed his hands together and peered over his sister’s shoulder at the numbers scrolling across the monitor screen. 

“Everything’s already been done,” she said, leaning forward a little to meet Lukas’ gaze. “We’re all ready to go. Just had to wait for you two to show up.” Lukas smirked and came to join his cousins while Deborah leaned back and called out to the rest of their team. “Okay, everyone. Get to your stations. We’re about to begin.” As their team of eleven other scientists took up their positions at the consoles around the central platform, Jesse and Lukas stood on either side of Deborah, glancing together at the display on her monitor screen. “Just think,” she said, her voice low enough for just the three of them. “If this works, it changes everything. Lukas, you and I could go Outside—”

“Stop,” Lukas interrupted, glancing up at the research team getting to work around them. No one seemed to have heard her, and he forced a smile onto his face before continuing. “The Law is the law, Deb. Even suggesting something like that could bring this whole thing crumbling down around us. Not just our jobs.” He glanced down at her quickly, but she only stared straight ahead at the center platform, her expression unreadable. “We have an incredible opportunity, here. Resources and possibilities no one Outside could even dream of—”

Jesse cleared his throat. “The Law is the law,” he muttered, his voice strained with tension. “You could both be executed for treason. Please don’t talk about this here. Not now. I’d also suggest not ever.” 

“I’m not trying to fight the Law,” Lukas said. “I understand its meaning and the purposes behind it, and I support it fully. All I’m saying is we may be opening new avenues with our success today.”

“God gave us these tools for a reason, Jess,” Deborah said. “Could His plan really be for us to remain down here?”

“That’s heresy,” Jesse hissed through gritted teeth. “Lukas follows the Law, Deborah. In everything we do. Two thousand years we’ve been down here, God’s chosen people, blessed with His holy knowledge. The fruits of that gift are all around us. And this”—he gestured to the center platform and the low steel table resting upon it—“this is His promise fulfilled. If this is successful, we can ensure our safety until the Messiah comes.” 

“When this is successful,” Lukas corrected. They would not fail in this today; he felt it in his bones. What they accomplished would go down in the records for all posterity—how this team brought God’s knowledge to life in their hands. 

“Every Qumranian scientist knows the Outside world has changed,” Deborah added. “Even you can’t disagree, Jesse. And we’ve changed. What if we could live in peace with those above? What if—”

“That’s enough,” Lukas interrupted, not wanting to encourage his cousin’s outlandish thinking. “Conjecture doesn’t produce results, does it? Until we perform this last test, nothing is certain. So let’s get to work, huh?” This was what they were meant to do, not sit around and argue law and theology. Jesse and Deborah both turned to look at him, and despite the strain in Jesse’s brow and the flush rising up Deborah’s cheeks, they both nodded. Jesse left the station and headed toward the next console over. Lukas stepped forward toward the center platform. “You made all the final adjustments?” he asked, turning back to glance between Deborah and Mark, another of the top-rated scientists on their team standing right beside her.

Mark nodded. “We set your new parameters and adjusted the internal web fields. We’re good to go.” 

Lukas gave a curt nod and continued his path toward the platform. “Jesse, set the codes for five minutes into the future. Return time at thirty seconds from now. Deborah, I want maximum data on this. Everything the web fields affect. The whole region, not just the lab.” 

“Got it,” she said behind him.

 With a deep breath of anticipation, Lukas stepped up onto the platform and approached the stainless steel table there. He gazed down at the quantum sphere in the center of the table—their final test, the product of so much hard work and dedication. About a foot in diameter, the sphere swirled with an opaque transparency, constantly shifting like cream stirred into a cup of coffee. Tendrils of circuitry lay beneath the sphere’s surface, coiling around each other, floating in stasis there as if they were only waiting for Lukas to bring them to life. And that was exactly what he intended to do. 

Raising his right hand, which held as steady as his certainty, Lukas eyed the sphere and plunged his hand slowly and carefully into the swirling mass, passing through the exterior membrane as if it were water. The circuitry inside blinked to life, unfurling like so many snakes to entwine around his outstretched fingers with just enough pressure to assure him they’d made the connection. “All right,” he called, unable to look away from the sphere, feeling the power of God’s gifted knowledge humming around his hand. “Give me a countdown.” 

“Five. Four. Three. Two. One.” 

The circuitry glowed into a bright white, like metal coils heating over a flame, then the glow burst out from his hand, through the sphere, and past his body to encompass him, the table, and the center platform. He glanced up at the glowing, fluid dome curving above him, then turned his head to meet Deborah’s wide-eyed gaze. He only caught a brief glimpse of Jesse next before a blue wave of light followed the first, growing and then bursting around him. A blast of icy cold trembled through his fingers, up his arm, and into each follicle of his scalp before another blinding flash erupted through the Main Laboratory. And then Lukas couldn’t see anything at all.

Chapter 2

Deborah blinked against the glaring blue flash on the center platform, taking a brief moment to remind herself that this was supposed to happen. Lukas, the steel table, and the quantum orb were gone. She punched in the new timing sequence to count down five minutes. Licking her lips, she turned to her brother at the next console over, and Jesse met her wide-eyed gaze, looking as pale with anticipation as she felt. 

He cleared his throat. “Watch the monitors,” he instructed the team. “Look for any anomalies in the web field, even if it seems insignificant. Deborah, everything looking good on your end?”

She glanced back down at her screen, the numbers working in her mind almost as quickly as they sorted themselves out in front of her. “Yes. All the readings are consistent and still within the viable range.” And still, even the hard proof before her wasn’t enough to combat her racing heart or the fact that her sweaty fingers had nearly slipped on the control keys. If they’d made even one mistake—one tiny miscalculation—they could have just sent Lukas anywhere in space and time … or nowhere at all. That thought was agonizingly unbearable, so she forced herself to focus instead on the timer she’d started again at zero. 

The lab had never been so quiet, the unspoken tension quivering in the air like a web spun between each one of them, caught in a soft breeze. When the timer reached twenty-eight seconds, Deborah opened her mouth to announce it, but Jesse beat her to it.

“It should be right…”

The huge globe of blue light burst into existence around the central platform, blinding Deborah again with another twinge of heart-shocking cold that gave her goosebumps beneath her long-sleeved top. Just as quickly, the blue faded into a warmer amber, shrinking in on itself until the light disappeared completely and revealed their results.

Lukas turned to look at them over his shoulder with a grin. “How’d we do?” Mark let out a whoop of triumph behind her, nearly making Deborah leap out of her own skin. Jesse gave a surprised chuckle, and then Lukas erupted into his own burst of laughter. “All right. First part’s over. We’re not done yet, people. Someone help me clear the table and the machine off the platform. Gotta be ready for the next stage.” 

“I got it,” Jesse said and left his station at the center console, nearly skipping toward the platform in his excitement. Lukas slowly slid his hand out of the quantum orb, giving the circuitry time to uncoil from his fingers. Their lights dimmed and faded, but the orb still swirled endlessly. Together, the men lifted the table from the platform and eased it off. The quantum orb trembled in its cradle bolted to the table, but it held even when Jesse’s back foot didn’t take the full step off the platform and his heel bounced against the edge of it. Deborah took in a sharp breath, feeling lightheaded and nauseous. But her cousin and brother safely delivered the steel table to the lab’s tiled floors, and everyone fixed their eyes once more on the platform.

Deborah caught Lukas’ gaze, and he offered her a ridiculously overconfident wink. Then he clapped a hand on Jesse’s shoulder, shook him just a little, and waited. When the timer reached the five-minute mark, the blue glow erupted a third time to engulf the platform. Deborah turned her head against the glare; the next time they used this machine, she better remember to bring a heavier jacket against the instant drop in temperature. This time, the web field remained around the platform, though the light dimmed slightly to reveal what was inside. There stood Lukas, his hand in the quantum orb upon the table. She glanced quickly from the newly arrived version of him—the Lukas from five minutes ago, looking a bit shocked and yet still entirely certain—to the Lukas of the present with his hand on Jesse’s shoulder. The two identical figures grinned at each other and waved like children catching sight of their best friend, and then the entire web field vanished, leaving nothing behind but the cleared, empty platform. 

The silence in the lab was deafening. Lukas turned around to address the team, opening his arms in mock insult. “What, you can’t handle two of me in the same place at the same time? C’mon, people. There’s your proof. We warped time.” He paused, then shook his arms again and shouted, “We can control time!”

The team burst into cheers all around them, and Deborah found herself laughing hysterically, burying her face in her hands. She vaguely heard her brother mutter, “Maybe we should have had you step out of the lab. I don’t know if we calculated all the risks of two of you in the same place—”

“It was only thirty seconds, Jesse,” Lukas replied. Deborah lowered her hands from her face to watch the exchange. Lukas had his hand on Jesse’s shoulder again, leaning in until their foreheads almost touched. “Thirty seconds of success. Life-changing success.”

Jesse seemed to finally catch the contagious excitement churning through the lab, and his frown of concern melted into a goofy grin. “We did it.”

Seeing her brother relax made Deborah feel even better; what they’d just done was nothing short of a miracle, and despite all the work they still had ahead of them, this changed everything. Taking a deep breath, she lifted her gaze in a silent prayer of thanks, then froze. Something shimmered in the air between Lukas and the platform—a wavering, slightly skewed, humanoid form. She blinked and looked again, but it was gone. Maybe they should wear protective eyewear next time against the glare of the web field. 

Linda appeared beside her, the only other woman on their team, and nudged Deborah with a shoulder. “They’ll be getting drunk tonight and raving about this for the next twenty-four hours.” 

Deborah turned to her with a wry smile and folded her arms. “That doesn’t sound too bad. I think they deserve it.” Linda laughed and walked around the console to shake hands with the rest of the team. 

“The next thing we do,” Lukas started, speaking to them all, “is to send the data to the Circle of Elders. We still have to collect it all, sort it out into analyzed evidence. I would have invited them to join us today, but I didn’t want to ruin the surprise.” That brought a round of relieved laughter from the team.

Deborah watched her cousin in his element, directing and congratulating, encouraging everyone on the enormous breakthrough they’d just witnessed. She couldn’t believe this day had finally come, and she couldn’t wait to get started on their next steps for securing the safety of the future—everyone’s future. The prospect of what that might mean brought her earlier conversation with Jesse and Lukas to mind. With the manipulation of time at their fingertips came so many other possibilities for technological advancements—for real defenses to be built; greatly superior medical capabilities; boosting agricultural production. Why would they have to use it against so many people Outside when they could put it to use for the greater good of every living soul on this Earth?

She blinked, seeing the wavering outline of a human form oscillating in the air again just above her cousin, only this time, it was larger. Lukas seemed oblivious, as did everyone else, so caught up in their excitement. But it had been too much time since the glare of the web field for this to be a retinal afterimage. And it was moving. 

Trying to both listen to Lukas’ speech and watch this strange new image at the same time, Deborah found herself wondering if this was one of those risks about which Jesse had seemed so concerned. She glanced down at her monitor again, scanning the data, flipping through what they’d already captured. Their system had caught absolutely nothing outside the normal ranges. 

“This is the single greatest invention in the history of mankind,” Lukas said, then lowered his head and looked each of his team members in the eye. “I am so proud of all of you and the years of work you’ve put into this—” His sentence stopped as if someone had pressed pause on the entire moment. The victorious scientists all looked at him with eager anticipation, smiles widening at what had to be another of their team leader’s many gags. But it went on just a second too long, and it looked like Lukas had stopped breathing.

“Lukas?” Jesse asked, leaning forward to catch his cousin’s gaze. Lukas let out a thin sigh and lowered his hands by his side, but he stared blankly ahead at nothing. “What’s going on?” 

Lukas brushed past him and walked stiffly through the ring of scientists who had just been listening so intently to his celebratory speech. He moved around Deborah’s control console and stopped beside her to open one of the drawers at hip level. His fingers wrapped around the red globe of the energy phaser kept for security, sliding it effortlessly into one of the side pockets of his gray pants. 

“What are you going to do with that?” Deborah tried to whisper, feeling herself tremble when she wondered if he’d changed his mind about the protocol with the Circle of Elders. Had he seen something when he jumped through time? But this wasn’t Lukas; she leaned forward to try to get him to look at her, but his gaze slid across her face as if she didn’t exist at all. This close, the sight of his eyes horrified her—glazed over without the natural shine of alertness; darkened as if covered by a thin black veil.

When he stepped in front of her, focused intently on her command console, Deborah was too stunned to resist the force of his body nudging her aside. “Lukas?” she said again, then jerked her head up to find her brother. “Jesse, something’s wrong—”

A whirring tap came from the command console. Lukas’ fingers moved with inhuman speed across the keys, his hands blurring in her vision. Deborah’s stomach dropped as if she’d just fallen from a two-story window, and she could only stare. 

“What’s going on?” Jesse called, but Deborah couldn’t answer. She could barely even breathe. “Deb? Lukas?”

Lukas turned and headed back around the console, completely oblivious to his cousins’ concern. The other scientists watched him in confusion, and then he approached the steel table and the quantum orb resting there. He plunged his hand through the membrane, bringing the circuitry to life again. 

“Hey,” Jesse called. “We haven’t—” The circuitry lights pulsed around Lukas’ hand in the startup sequence. Jesse ran toward his own console and vaulted over it, sliding on the floor and catching himself with a hand on the console’s edge. He typed furiously at the keys, though it seemed impossibly slow now after what Deborah had just witnessed.

That thought sparked Deborah into action, her terror momentarily forgotten when she realized what was about to happen. “Get away from the table!” Most of the team had already backed away at this point, but Mark had been too focused on Lukas’ odd behavior. With a low hum, the first-stage web field blossomed from the center of the quantum orb. It enveloped Lukas and washed over Mark’s rigid form, which blistered out of existence with a metallic stench because he did not have the orb’s circuitry to ground him against the energy blast. 

Linda shrieked, and Jesse shouted from his console, “Deb, he’s set it for A.D. 1 and the sequence is locked. I can’t get in. I don’t know—”

“Lukas!” Deborah’s throat burned with the force of her scream, but even that did nothing to get his attention. He didn’t turn back to look at any of them before the freezing, blue explosion of the web field seemed to take all the air out of the room, and then he was gone. 

Chapter 3

A.D. 1 – The Province of Judea, Bethlehem

Against the brilliant glow of the eastern sunrise, a shadowed form blurred across the dazzling desert sand. Clouds of dust billowed in its wake, leaving the scent of burnt earth and charred metal behind the thing that moved too quickly to be of this Earth. Over rolling dunes and past rising peaks of harsh, unrelenting stone, baked by the sun into a merciless wilderness, the figure sped. Its shadow shortened behind it as the sun rose to its zenith, and still, the dark thing did not stop the straight, terrible line of its singular purpose beneath the suffocating heat.

When finally the sun glowed fiery red in the west and winked over The Sea of Salt, the otherworldly thing ceased its unnatural pursuit and stopped beneath the curving arch of white and brown stone. The gust of wind behind it brought a surprised squawk from the chickens pecking at the fine sand, and they spread their wings and hopped away from the man standing now in their midst. 

The peddlers stared in animosity toward such a stranger and in no little fear of the man dressed so strangely and in such dark colors beneath the desert sun. None of them interfered, choosing instead to watch and wait, whispering to neighbors when he passed and hoping he would not stop to ask of them what they knew not one of them could answer. The man continued toward the other end of the small, dry settlement until he reached the wide, dusty square home of baked clay and the stable fashioned against the back wall. A donkey brayed inside, and the man’s figure cast a long, terrible shadow across the dirt and the straw and the thin, tired family huddled within. 

“May I help you?” From where he lay atop a pile of straw, the man with a long brown beard and exhausted eyes looked up at their strange visitor. 

The oddly dressed stranger slowly removed from his pocket a red orb, glistening brightly as the only color here when the sun’s fading light reflected off its surface. From the orb itself shot a thin stream of blazing light, searing into the man’s chest and filling the stable with the nauseating odor of singed flesh. The bearded man slumped sideways into the straw, smoke curling from the gaping hole in his chest. A scream erupted from the woman reclining beside him, and she threw her body across the babe, swaddled in rags, who had been lying between his parents. 

With another hiss and whir, the orb in the stranger’s hand turned its fury upon the woman as well, her selfless act of defending her innocent child unnoticed—ineffective. The babe did not once cry out as it stared up at the blank void of the stranger’s eyes within an expressionless face, nearly crushed beneath the dead weight of his mother’s lifeless arm. For a moment, the whole of existence flashed behind the infant’s calm brown gaze—worlds upon worlds, time unending, Love and Light and what any other man might only call rapture. Then another red flash of light erupted, and the infant silently joined its parents. 

The donkey brayed again, its eyes rolling as it jerked its head up and down against the thin wooden rails of its pen. Outside, the chickens screeched and flapped about the yard, turning on each other to scratch and peck those closest in their terror. 

Without a word, the stranger turned away from the bodies inside the stable, took one step forward, then burst across the dirt to resume its unearthly speed. The pillar of stacked stones supporting the town’s welcoming archway rumbled and cracked when the dark thing streaked past. The force of the stranger’s departure upturned the vendors’ tables and sent crates and thin tents flying against the sunbaked walls of the buildings. The foundation of the town itself seemed to shudder in the ensuing stillness, left to endure the coming darkness of night.

To be continued...

• Update #5 - Merry Christmas! Dec. 16, 2023

  If you enjoyed The Last Qumranian, you will love, TIN CANS: The Girl with Red and Black Hair
  https://a.co/d/hJCFgX1

  Both make a great Christmas gift.😳😂
  
  Read …

  ---

• Update #4 - Open your Digital Copy of The Last Qumranian Nov. 7, 2019

  Hey Amazing Peeps!

  The Reviews have been AMAZING, The Last Qumranian has sold out of Amazon 3 TIMES already, and it has been Number One in …

  ---

• Update #3 - The writing of the book... Oct. 11, 2018

  Great news!

  We've finished the first writing draft of The Last Qumranian!

  Currently, the book is under review to look for mistakes, typos, spelling …

  ---

• Update #2 - The Pre-Orders are Doing GREAT!!! Oct. 9, 2018

  Thank you soooo much!!! 

  There have been Almost 1100 Pre-Ordered Copies of The Last Qumranian!!! WOW!!! Yay!!!
  

  Help us continue the MOMENTUM we’ve been creating through …

  ---

• Update #1 - Getting closer to our goal Sept. 26, 2018

  Hey, everyone!

  I wanted to first thank each of you for your support in my journey to securing a Big 5 publisher to spread my …

  ---