The MindSet Chronicles: Book One - The Deletion

Copyright © 2023 by Steve Truitt, LLC. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Publishing Services provided by Paper Raven Books LLC Printed in the United States of America First Printing, 2023 Paperback ISBN: 979-8-9876452-1-5 Hardback ISBN: 979-8-9876452-2-2 eBook ISBN: 979-8-9876452-0-8 For Kim When wireless is perfectly applied, the whole Earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face. -Nikola Tesla Prologue Morocco 1914 Adilah awoke on her own, so excited for the day her mother didn’t even have to open the drapes as she usually did to get her out of bed. It was a warm Sunday, and all the people of the town were heading to the square. This would be her first participation in an event she had only heard about. Her father had not allowed her to go before, but now she was eleven years old, and the rule was that townspeople eleven years and above could go. She hopped out of bed and draped her kaftan over her head, completely forgetting to slip on her sandals or brush the knots from her long, black hair. “We must go!” her father bellowed from the courtyard in the center of their modest riad. Adilah breezed past the kitchen, snatching a date and some grapes, shoving them into her mouth as quickly as possible. Once she reached the door, she joined her mother and father, and they began their journey toward town. From as far away as a few dozen meters, she could hear the chants of the people already assembled in the village square. She knew shopkeepers, teachers, parents, and friends would all gather. She heard her father tell her once of a man who killed his neighbor’s goat for food. He was strung up and stoned to death there, right in front of everyone. He told the story with such a casual, disconnected tone that she simply assumed that public stonings were a natural course of life in her village. And they were. As the family approached the square, Adilah’s heart began to race. She could feel the pulsing energy coming from the assembled crowd, now making up a large circle around the center. Through the few slips of daylight that broke between the mass of bodies, jostling each other to gain a favorable position, she thought she could make out the shape of someone, standing against what looked like a wooden pole. She held her father’s hand tightly as they wiggled past the people shouting at the figure. “Devil!” one man screamed. “Sorceress!” another one belted out. Her father was one of the tallest men in the village, Adilah believed, and he made easy work of pulling her and her mother through the crowd to the front of the clearing. There Adilah could see clearly the object of the crowd’s rage. A woman older than her mother, perhaps thirty-five or so, was tied to a tall wooden pole. Her veil had been stripped from her head, exposing her face and ragged black hair. “Is it the Spanish who took her veil?” she asked her father. “No,” he replied. “She has done this to herself. She has practiced in the dark arts of witchery. She will be stoned for it.” Adilah looked at the woman, noticing her face was worn and fearful. Her eyes were bloodshot. For a moment, Adilah thought that the woman had looked directly at her, but she wasn’t sure. The painful expression on her face caused Adilah to feel a moment of sadness. “She looks so scared, Baba,” Adilah said. “Maybe she could apologize, promise never to do these things again?” “That is not the way our law works, Hamama.” Adilah loved it when he called her that. “She has committed a crime against Allah and must be punished.” The anger of the crowd swelled. Adilah could feel the emotion and the anger wash over her. The rhythmic chanting turned even louder. “Witch! Witch! Witch!” the crowd chanted over and over until the very air around Adilah felt as if it was pulsating. “Witch!” she cried spontaneously, surprising herself. “Witch!” she yelled again, this time with more conviction, more force. Her breath got shorter as she felt her heartbeat speed up to match the cacophony of chanting. Soon her curiosity turned to rage, so much so that she didn’t even notice that her father had left her side only to return holding a large woven basket holding several small rocks. He stopped before her and held the basket out, beckoning her to take a stone. Adilah looked into her father’s eyes. Never before had she seen this look on his face, which occurred to her as a man disconnected from himself and the world, bound only by duty. He was offering her an opportunity, and she knew she should take it and be proud of herself for doing so. She reached into the basket and grabbed the largest stone she could hold. It felt solid. Cold. Jagged. She moved her fingers over its edges, discovering its landscape as she continued her chant with the crowd. Looking around, she saw her father had already passed out stones to many others who were holding them tightly in their hands, ready to propel them at their intended target. “Silence!” a man shouted, as the crowd’s chanting shrunk to a din of whispers. Adilah’s father approached her again and stood before her. She was nervous but energized; her grip on the rock was compromised by the sweat building in her palm. “Adilah,” her father beckoned, “you are first.”