We headed south on Route 22 for a few miles. There were no other cars on the road, all the homes and businesses were dark. The seasons stopped cycling; it was autumn everywhere now and colored leaves rained down on the windshield like drops of thick, wet paint. We turned off onto a side road at Ardenheim and up an old dirt logging road into the mountains with the headlights of both cars shut off, hitting ruts and splashing through mud puddles. The car I was riding in finally stopped, and my car following behind stopped as well, then turned and backed itself off the log road into a grove of pine trees, crushing branches as it moved until it was covered with pine boughs and could no longer be seen in the moonlight. Its engine shut off and a moment later, the videocassette suddenly vanished from my lap, as if it had been a mirage all along. The car I was riding in backed its way down the logging road in the direction from which we had come and drove out onto the highway, turning its lights back on. Very strange, I thought, very strange. But I had seen far stranger things in Shemaya-and I had nothing better to do-so I decided to play along.
The driverless sedan with me sitting in the backseat continued traveling south through the night to Route 522, then along Route 322 east toward Harrisburg. This was the same route I took when traveling between Delaware and Huntingdon, and I began to suspect that Nana and Luas had somehow contrived all of this as a way of bringing me back home. The radio came on, switching itself between country music stations as the signals faded, proving to me that my mind was not in control of the car-I rarely listened to country music. When we reached Lancaster, the car turned onto Route 30 east, then south onto Route 41 through the rolling farmland of southern Chester County and toward Delaware, as I had suspected. But before crossing the state line, we turned off onto a winding secondary road, following this for a time until we turned again onto a smaller country lane. There were no streetlights or power lines now; the sky was coal black, without the hope of stars or the kind solace of the moon. The last uninhabited home passed from view miles ago, asleep in the cool harvest air pregnant with the scent of decaying leaves and apples. Finally, the pavement ended and we were traveling on a gravel road descending a steep ravine through woods and ending on rutted tracks leading through an open, overgrown field, then back into more woods and down an even steeper slope.
The tracks ended at a crumbling cinderblock building protruding from the ground like an ugly scab. Its windowless walls stood barely one-story tall and were pocked with black streaks of mold and a leprosy of flaking white paint; it resembled the shell of an abandoned industrial building and looked out of place in the country. I had the feeling I had been there before, although I remembered no such place.
The gear selector moved itself to park, the engine shut off, and the doors unlocked. I got out of the car and walked up to the building, lit by the yellow glare of the headlights. The cloying stench of manure and mushrooms-the same odor I had smelled in the convenience store in my dreams-made the air heavy and difficult to breathe. Pulling open the worm-eaten door, I was fearful now even though I knew there could be nothing to harm me. As I stepped inside, bright daylight erupted across the sky, like a thermonuclear explosion, vaporizing the building, the car, the woods, and my own body.
I find myself within the bedchamber of a great Roman palace, a chamber as immense and splendid as the Pantheon itself. White stone columns soar into the bowl of a fantastic marble dome overhead; beneath it sits a glittering golden bed surrounded by divans covered in plush crimson fabric. Standing in front of this bed, bloated and nude, is the Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar. At his feet, groaning and pleading for mercy, lies his wife, Poppaea, fully clothed and several months pregnant with his child. Her white gown is streaked red between her legs.
“You ungrateful whore!” Nero bellows as he drives his foot deep into Poppaea’s abdomen. “I put Octavia’s head on a platter for your amusement and this is how you repay me, by ridiculing me!” He kicks her again, more savagely, and this time her ribs give way, cracking and breaking like twigs. Poppaea gasps for air, blood drools from her mouth.
“Get out of my sight!”
Poppaea does not rise. Nero strikes another blow to her stomach, then turns and walks from the bedchamber with his hands on his hips, soaked with sweat from the exertion, his penis flapping from side to side against his heavy thighs, like a wagging finger. He orders his servants to have her removed and bring him a meal before he takes his afternoon nap.
The Roman palace vanishes just as suddenly as it had appeared. In its place emerges the outline of the Urartu Chamber with Luas standing at its center; the faceless creature from the monolith whispers something in his ear then returns to its home inside the monolith. I am sitting, now, on one of the observer chairs in the back of the Chamber. I have no idea how I’ve gotten from the cinderblock building, to Nero’s palace, to the Urartu Chamber. Luas walks over to speak to me.
“Hello, Brek,” he says. “I’m sorry you had to see that. How was your visit back home?”
“You just presented Nero?” I say, astonished by what I have just seen.
The Urartu Chamber disappears, and now we’re standing in the corridor leading back to the train shed.
“Yes, foul character, isn’t he?”
“But he died two thousand years ago-”
“And I’ve been representing him ever since,” Luas says. “The presentation usually ends here, or just after he has the boy Sporus castrated and takes him for his wife. When I return to the Chamber the next day, I’m informed a final decision on his fate still hasn’t been made and I must present his case again.” Luas sighs. “This is my job, it seems, to try Nero’s soul every day for eternity, even though a decision is never made. Seems God isn’t quite ready to make up his mind about this one.”
“Didn’t you say we only present the close cases,” I ask.
“Yes, well, there are two sides to every story, aren’t there? It may seem strange, but Nero did have some redeeming qualities, not unlike Toby Bowles. I never get to them during the presentation, of course, but he had them. Anyway, ours is not to wonder why. Nero is a postulant here and we treat him like all the rest. Just be happy he isn’t one of your clients.”
We start walking toward the train shed, but Luas leads me around a corner and into another corridor I hadn’t seen before, so unfathomably long that I’m unable to see the end of it stretching beyond the horizon and out into space. It has the appearance of a vast courthouse annex, with thousands of identical offices lining both sides of the corridor, each with tall, slender wooden doors and transoms closed tight; florescent tubes bathe the walls in the uniform and compassionless light of bureaucracy.
We continue walking. “So,” I say, still stunned by the trial, “Nero and Toby Bowles are treated the same way-nothing they did right their entire lives is heard in the Chamber. What’s the point of conducting a trial at all-if you can even call it that? Why not just send them straight to hell?”
“Back to that again, are we?” Luas says. “There is no Bill of Rights in Shemaya. The procedural protections in which you placed such great faith as an attorney on earth are entirely unnecessary here. No lie can go unexposed in the Urartu Chamber, and no truth remains hidden. Justice is guaranteed as long as the presenters remain unbiased and do nothing to tip the scales.”
“But how can there be justice if all sides of the case aren’t presented?”