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El Alto. 4,000 meters above sea level. Close enough to heaven for God to listen, too far for Him to care.
The wind came first.
A knife-cold, bone-thin wind that scraped over the rooftops of El Alto, lifting dust like it was peeling a scab off the earth. And through that wind walked Émilie—slow, deliberate, a cigarette dangling from her lips that somehow never blew out.
She carried a little brown bottle in her left hand.
Cheap Bolivian alcohol. Bought from a bruja in a witch-market that smelled of llama fetuses and cheap incense. The bruja swore it was “para la Pachamama.”
Émilie had smiled, paid extra, and didn’t ask questions.
She’d ask later, when she felt like ruining someone’s day.
Now she approached the mesa—the Pachamama mesa, arranged on a cloth whose pattern was older than the Conquistadores’ first sin. The shaman waited already, seated cross-legged, wrapped in colors that were somehow louder than the city’s chaos.
Behind him, two silhouettes:
Maria & Maria.
The twins who were not twins.
Both mothers. Both healers. Both chosen for something they couldn’t have named even if someone held a gun to their heads.
And a man in the shadows:
Lucius Morgenstern, leaning against a rock like boredom itself.
Ayahuasca humming in his veins, pupils dilated to the size of coins.
His smile—thin, knowing—belonged to someone who had watched empires rise, fall, and embarrass themselves.
Next to him:
Lukas Reinhardt — KSK.
German steel.
Smoking a pack of Gauloises like it was his sidearm.
He didn’t talk much.
He didn’t need to.
His silence was louder than most men’s sermons.
Émilie arrived last.
She always did that.
It gave her an entrance.
---
The Ritual Begins
The shaman greeted her with a nod.
A single nod.
Enough to tell her he respected her.
Not enough to suggest he liked her.
He gestured for the bottle.
She shook her head.
“No,” she said in French-colored Spanish.
“This part’s mine.”
She knelt, uncorked the bottle, and poured a thin stream of alcohol into the dirt.
The liquid hit the ground with a hiss, like the mountain itself was thirsty.
“Aymara Shalakuyu,” the shaman whispered.
An offering to the earth.
A surrender to something older than gods.
Lucius snorted.
“Every culture has its way of asking the universe not to screw them over,” he murmured.
“Some use prayers. Some use taxes. This one uses booze. Respect.”
Lukas exhaled smoke.
“No tequila jokes,” he warned.
Lucius raised both hands.
“I would never desecrate tequila.”
---
Émilie Steps Into the Circle
She stepped forward, her combat boots crunching on gravel.
Maria and Maria watched her with a quiet awe—as if they already sensed that fate clung to her like gunpowder.
“You’re late,” Lukas said.
She blew smoke into his face as an answer.
He didn’t flinch.
That was their love language.
The shaman spoke.
“It is time,” he said.
“A journey for the journeyers. Two women will walk backward through time. Two spirits will carry seeds into the past.”
Lucius smirked.
“‘Spirits.’ Cute word for what we’re doing.”
The shaman ignored him.
Everyone did eventually.
He laid out the mesa:
sugar figurines, coca leaves, colored wool, tiny symbols of wealth, health, death, rebirth.
Bolivia in miniature.
Humanity in metaphor.
Maria (the older one) swallowed.
Maria (the younger one) reached for her hand.
“You’re sure?” Émilie asked quietly.
“Yes,” said the older.
“Yes,” echoed the younger.
Lucius nodded.
“Good. Because the future depends on two women from El Alto performing the most beautifully illegal thing in the history of theology.”
Lukas deadpanned:
“If German intelligence asks: this never happened.”
Émilie cracked her neck.
“Relax. If they ask, we’ll just send them back in time too.”
Lucius laughed.
“Oh, don’t tempt me.”
---
The Mission
The shaman’s voice dropped into something darker.
“Two spirits will enter two bodies—Maria and Maria will become Maria and Maria.”
A paradox.
A prophecy.
A plot twist older than time.
Lucius explained it in the only way he knew:
“You go back, you take the roles, you fix the lineage. Joseph stays the father. But the conception? We handle that. No metaphysics. No angel. Just modern medicine and a little bit of burglary.”
Lukas nodded.
“We need his… contribution.”
Émilie tapped the bottle of alcohol.
“We’ll get it. I’m fond of Catholic men. They’re predictable.”
Lucius sighed dramatically.
“Humanity gets one miracle. We’re just… quality-controlling it.”
---
The Tone Turns Dark
Wind screamed across the plateau.
Clouds rolled like bruises across the sky.
The shaman scattered coca leaves.
“Once you begin,” he warned,
“you cannot return unchanged.”
Lucius grinned.
“Oh, sweetheart. I haven’t been unchanged since Babylon.”
Émilie lit a new cigarette.
“Let’s teach God some Andean project management.”
Lukas chambered a round in his rifle, just in case fate got jumpy.
Maria and Maria stepped into the circle.
The shaman raised his hands.
The mountains listened.
The earth shifted.
Somewhere—too far to hear, too close to ignore—
history held its breath.
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The Hill Country Resonance
The road into the Judean hills was a ribbon of dust and heat, twisting like a half-remembered dream.
Maria walked slowly, one hand over the curve of her belly, the other wrapped in her shawl, guarding something older than prophecy and newer than fear.
Behind her walked the second woman — the one who should not exist yet.
The locals called her Miriam of the Wind, because she arrived out of nowhere, spoke quietly, and looked at people as if she saw their endings before their beginnings. In truth, she came from the high plateau above La Paz, from a future where the mountains were colder and the air thinner. But no one here could imagine such a thing.
So she stayed silent and let the desert name her.
“Your cousin lives just over the ridge,” Miriam said, adjusting the woven Andean shawl she refused to give up. It looked impossibly out of place among the olive trees — yet somehow belonged more than any Roman soldier ever would.
Maria nodded, her breath shaky.
“You feel it again?” Miriam asked.
Maria hesitated. “Just… movement. Like my son is listening.”
Miriam smiled — soft, wry, almost noir.
“Kids always listen. Even before they have ears. Especially the dangerous ones.”
Maria stopped. “Dangerous?”
Miriam sighed — a long, tired sound, like someone who’d fought too many battles in too many lifetimes.
“Look,” she said, “a child like yours doesn’t come into the world quietly. Some lives are lanterns. Others are lightning.”
Maria didn’t know how to answer that. So she kept walking.
The house appeared at the bend of the path — a simple stone dwelling with a small roof garden and two clay jars by the door. Yellow flowers leaned toward it like eager gossipers.
Inside, Elizabeth was waiting.
She stood the moment Maria entered, the late afternoon light catching her in a warm halo. Her hands were on her pregnant stomach, and her face — lined but luminous — brightened.
“Maria!” she cried.
And then it happened.
A shiver through the air.
A ripple of something ancient.
A sound like a bell struck underwater.
Elizabeth gasped as her child moved violently, as if leaping toward the one Maria carried.
Miriam felt it like a shockwave.
Something passed between the two unborn children — a wordless exchange. Recognition. Agreement. A pact older than scripture. A promise that one would walk ahead, clearing the brush, and the other would walk after, setting the world on fire.
Elizabeth steadied herself, tears forming.
“Blessed are you, Maria… and blessed is the fruit you carry.”
Maria exhaled in relief — and fear.
But Miriam?
Her expression hardened for a moment, noir-sharp.
Because she felt the tremor under the surface.
A premonition of blood, betrayal, miracles, knives in the dark.
The scent of Rome.
The weight of centuries.
She turned slightly, checking the doorway, as if expecting someone.
But only a desert breeze entered — carrying dust and a whisper.
They’re coming sooner than planned.
Miriam frowned.
“Lucius Morgenstern… Reinhardt… Émilie… you better hurry,” she murmured under her breath.
Elizabeth blinked. “What?”
Miriam flashed a quick smile — almost roguish.
“Nothing. Just… talking to angels.”
Maria laughed softly. “Do they answer?”
Miriam smirked, amused and tired all at once.
“Only when they’re drunk.”
Elizabeth looked scandalized.
Maria giggled behind her hand.
The unborn children moved again.
Outside, the sun sank behind the Judean hills.
And fate — quietly, inexorably — leaned forward.
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LOBBY SCENE — “THE WATCHERS IN THE GLASSHOUSE”
The Lobby was unusually quiet tonight.
That alone was suspicious.
An infinite hall of impossible geometry — half observatory, half mountain temple — hummed like a machine trying to remember a song. The translucent floor showed the timelines drifting below like glowing rivers of molten text. You could lean over and watch centuries pass. You could fall through if you weren’t careful.
No one fell tonight. Three figures stood at the railing, watching the world turn.
Rabia al-Adawiyya
barefoot, radiant, wrapped in plain linen, the kind of woman who could silence empires with one gentle sentence.
Mallku Mayu,
an Aymara elder whose weathered brown hands held a woven pouch of coca leaves. His eyes were two black marbles of mountain-night: ancient, amused, and entirely unimpressed by linear time.
Bēl-ibni,
Babylonian astrologer, former advisor to kings, draped in indigo robes embroidered with constellations that no longer existed. His beard looked like a well-curated nebula.
Below them — far below — the scene flickered like a candle:
two young Andean women preparing to step into the birth of Christ, to become the Marias history would mistake for locals of Judea.
Rabia broke the silence first.
Rabia:
“They walk with fear… but also with a strange joy. That is the mark of people chosen for something heavy.”
Mallku snorted a soft laugh.
Mallku:
“‘Chosen’ is the word people use when they don’t want to say ‘volunteered by spirits without being asked.’”
He chewed a coca leaf and spat thoughtfully over the cosmic railing. The spit vanished into the timeline with a soft pop of displaced reality.
Bēl-ibni leaned forward, squinting at the shimmer.
Bēl-ibni:
“Look at the constellation above them. See how the stars bend? Someone down there is tampering with probability.”
Rabia smiled.
A smile like warm water washing over stone.
Rabia:
“Yes. The one they call Lucius Morgenstern meddles again.”
Mallku made a face.
Mallku:
“That pale trickster with the London accent? Always stirring pots he has no business touching.”
Bēl-ibni:
“Tricksters always approach holy moments sideways. It is the only angle they can bear.”
Below them, the timeline sharpened:
the older Maria packing herbs into a clay bowl,
the younger Maria testing her voice in quiet prayer,
the thin, ember-colored light of a Judean dawn rising where it had no business rising on Andean skin.
Rabia rested her chin on her hands and sighed a soft, grateful sigh.
Rabia:
“People think miracles are loud. They are not.
Miracles are decisions — made by frightened people who act with love anyway.”
Mallku nodded.
Mallku:
“And they are never clean. Always messy. Always absurd. The spirits love drama.”
Bēl-ibni frowned, his fingers tracing an invisible map in the air.
Bēl-ibni:
“But this… this is new. The pattern is shifting. Three paths are weaving into one.”
Rabia tilted her head.
Rabia:
“Three?”
Bēl-ibni:
“The mother. The cousin. And someone else… someone who was never meant to stand near the light.”
Mallku popped another coca leaf into his mouth.
Mallku:
“The one with too many regrets and not enough forgiveness?”
Rabia’s smile dimmed but warmed.
Rabia:
“Ah. Yes. Him.”
They watched silently as the two Marias passed through a veil of dust and dawn, stepping toward their impossible destiny.
Bēl-ibni exhaled.
Bēl-ibni:
“This will upset the priests.”
Rabia laughed like wind chimes.
Rabia:
“Good. Anything that shakes men who believe they speak for God is a mercy.”
Mallku spat over the edge again.
Mallku:
“And besides… history was always too small a bowl for women like these.”
Rabia nodded.
Rabia:
“Let the world think it knows the story.
We will watch the real one unfold.”
They leaned on the railing and watched the two young women walk into the most dangerous miracle in human memory.
And somewhere far below — in the Andes, in El Alto, in Judea, in every century at once — the timeline trembled like a drumhead, waiting for its first strike.
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Draft Scene – “Time, Explained Poorly (and Then Better)”
The wind at 4,000 meters didn’t howl — it scraped.
Like sandpaper against the sky.
The mesa burned low in the center of the circle, fat sparks popping like impatient spirits.
Lucifer sat cross-legged on a woven Aymara blanket, pupils just a shade too wide, breathing like someone who had recently made questionable decisions involving Amazonian botanicals.
Émilie stomped up last, boots dusty, breath thin in the altitude.
“Okay,” she said. “We’re all here. Magic mountain time. Can we please begin? Because it’s fucking freezing.”
Lukas Reinhardt, wrapped in his Bundeswehr jacket, lit another Goloise.
“Before we ‘begin’, Lucifer should finally explain the important part,” he said, exhaling blue smoke.
“How exactly do we send information back in time? M&M deserve clarity.”
The Shaman looked up briefly, the flames reflected in his eyes.
He said nothing — old mountains rarely spoke first.
Lucifer stretched, cracked his neck, and smiled in that irritatingly beautiful way of his.
“Oh, Lukas, Lukas … my dear Teutonic Achilles.”
He tapped ash from Émilie’s cigarette without asking.
“You want the technical explanation or the one your mortal brain can actually digest?”
“Both,” Émilie said. “But start with the real one. I want to see how pretentious you get before you dumb it down.”
Lucifer grinned.
“Very well.”
He raised his hands, fingers shimmering faintly in the ritual smoke.
---
Part I — The Pretentious Version
“When a system folds into itself,” Lucifer began,
“the boundary conditions of a re-entrant space allow recursive states to propagate across non-linear temporal domains.”
Lukas blinked. “What.”
“Quiet,” Émilie whispered. “He’s in lecture mode.”
Lucifer continued, voice smooth as obsidian:
“Information doesn’t travel through time.
It re-enters at previously unoccupied distinctions.”
He drew Spencer-Brown symbols into the dust with a feather.
“Time is a topological illusion. Once you know how to mark and unmark inside a recursive boundary, you can—”
“Bro,” Émilie cut in.
“Are you trying to impress the mountains?”
Lucifer sighed dramatically.
“You humans are philistines.”
---
Part II — The ELI5 Version
He wiped the symbols away with the back of his hand.
“Fine. Listen carefully.”
He pointed at the mesa fire.
“Imagine time is a giant circle. No beginning. No end. Just a loop.”
The flames leaned as if listening.
“Now imagine you write a message on the inside of the loop.
Not on the outside, not on the timeline you see — but inside the damn ring.”
He traced a circle in the air.
“That inner message doesn’t move backwards.
It simply appears at the part of the loop where it belongs.”
Émilie nodded slowly.
“So… not time travel. Just telling the universe to show the message earlier.”
“YES,” Lucifer said, delighted.
“And because the universe is lazy and hates arguments, it obeys.”
Lukas frowned.
“So the message appears in the past because… it was always there?”
“Exactly!” Lucifer clapped his hands.
“Now you’re beginning to sound like someone who might survive chapter five.”
Émilie smirked.
“So the two Marias receive their instructions because they were always meant to.
No paradox. No grandfather bullshit.”
Lucifer winked.
“If you don’t fuck with the loop, the loop doesn’t fuck with you.”
The Shaman nodded approvingly — or maybe he was just agreeing with the spirits in his drink.
---
Part III — The Lucifer Flavor
Lucifer leaned in, lowering his voice.
“And here’s the part you two always forget:
You’re not sending orders into the past.
You’re sending influence.
Whispers.
Impulses.
Dreams that feel more like memories.”
Émilie shivered.
“That’s… actually elegant.”
Lucifer tilted his head proudly.
“Of course it is. I invented elegance.”
Lukas stubbed out his cigarette.
“Can we begin the ritual now?”
Lucifer rose to his feet, cloak catching the Andean wind.
“Yes.
Let’s tear open the universe — politely.”
And the mesa flames rose like the breath of old gods.
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EPT
