Conceived in Liberty
By Don Canaan
()
About this ebook
In 2063, archaeologists discovered a hermetically-sealed box containing a memoir, a birth certificate for a child named Mobius (father unknown), and a male chastity belt.
What if a fate worse than a catastrophic virus threatened our lives in the American monarchy founded by Benedict Arnold after he defeated George Washington's ragtag revolutionary army? Arnold referred to the then-British puppet nation as the Union of Royal American States.
In 2063, the ruler of the URAS was Queen Alyssa, whose family descended from Benedict's distant cousin, King Abraham I. Monarchs usually ascended to the throne by murdering a previous ruler. And so, Alyssa killed her father, who had inherited the throne from King Donald the Trump.
The new paranoid queen suffered from nightmares in which undocumented aliens from another planet breached King Donald's sky wall to usurp her throne and enslave her subjects.
In this comedic, sci-fi, time-traveling romp through history, the queen asks a young scientist, Tamar Weaver, to travel into the past and repair the fabric of time so that Alyssa's reign could continue unhindered.
During Tamar's 1863 adventure in the royal capital of New York City, she experiences events that she believes caused the rip in time.
Changing fate is not so simple for Tamar. She encounters historical figures in non-whitewashed situations, never before documented in history books. Traveling into the past causes Tamar to become 17 years younger. Her journey becomes fraught with assassination, love and a transformed life as the mother of monarchs.
The mind-boggling plot concludes with an ending that the listener could never imagine; a conclusion that only could be imagined in the Twilight Zone.
Don Canaan
Don Canaan went from a Bronx tenement to success in television news film, immigration to Israel, return to the U.S. and then to print journalism. He edited news film and documentaries for NBC News in New York, receiving a joint editorial commendation (as Donald Swerdlow) for Producer Fred Freed’s “American White Paper: Organized Crime in the United States.” In 1974, Canaan immigrated to Israel as part of an American group planning to found and settle in the new city of Yamit in the Sinai, north of El Arish. Upon returning to the U.S, Canaan became a unemployment statistic because news film had been superseded by videotape, which was controlled by a different union.. Ohio State University's School of Journalism came to the rescue with an offer to earn a master's degree while serving as an assistant in its TV news workshop. Canaan was hired as staff writer and photographer for The American Israelite in Cincinnati where he enterprised many stories.. His series, "Jews in Ohio's Prisons: Does Anybody Care?" won first place for best weekly journalism in Ohio from the State of Ohio Bar Association. . He is the author of “Horror in Hocking County” (a true-crime documentation of alleged satanic murders.
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Conceived in Liberty - Don Canaan
Chapter 1
He moped to school gloomy and sad, and took his flogging, along with Joe Harper, for playing hookey the day before.
(Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer)
––––––––
On a gorgeous June day in 2044, Chauvin High School junior Tamar Weaver, wearing a trendy T-shirt whose literary purpose was solely to annoy adults, entered the building in the city of New York, the capital of the Union of Royal American States (URAS).
She remained in school for only one period and then escaped; her grandparents had always called the escape playing hooky.
On the term's final day, after a quick bus trip downtown, Tamar joined a group of time travelers from AT&T, Advanced Time and Tours. Their next stop would be the Mercy Crystal Palace in the year 1863.
As Tamar and the travelers arrived at the massive glass auditorium, an area surrounded by rundown shops and unpaved streets, she saw the reigning monarch, Abraham Lincoln, sitting attentively listening to a former slave, Sojourner Truth, tell her story.
The bespectacled, bearded king was seated in a box overlooking the stage. His eyeglasses happened to reflect a slight movement of the curtain directly behind him and he instinctively moved his chair aside.
Seated in the ballroom, a few rows in front of the other time travelers, Tamar did not see the man that had moved the curtain. Suddenly, two gunshots reverberated through the room.
––––––––
––––––––
The audience panicked and the room started to empty. Tamar, a budding journalist, noted in a small journal that she always carried with her, some key words describing what had happened.
She later appended those notes to read that everything written in this journal is the truth. If, in the future, I experience other adventures, I hope that I can reweave the fabric of time. Hopefully, I will be able to correct both my history as well as yours.
Eventually, Tamar's journal would be placed into a hermetically-sealed container and hidden in a location where it would be discovered by future archaeologists.
***
I'm older now and hopefully wiser,
Tamar wrote. It's 2063 and the URAS has been peaceful since World War III ended in 2031. The ruler is Queen Alyssa. But unless certain modifications are made in the loom's threads, peace won't be able to be sustained.
The queen told me that her nightmares have continued and that, she believes, world peace will be violated by an external enemy; undocumented aliens she called them.
The queen said those revelations were revealed to her in a book, which the aliens showed to her.
I'm not a fool or a fraud, and I don't care whether anyone believes me or not. But I honestly think that my impact on the events that I have described have directly led you to read about it today,
Tamar said. That's why this manuscript was sealed to withstand the ravages of time, as well as the cockroaches that wanted to feast on it.
Way back when, during the 1939 World's Fair in New York City, the ancient internal combustion engine vehicle manufacturer General Motors explained in its motion picture. 'To New Horizons,' that 'We are all interested in the future as that is where we are going to spend the rest of our lives.'
I know that I'm taking a risk by sharing the following tales with you, and that you might think, at the very least, that it's an exaggeration (or that I'm crazy or not the most rational person you've ever encountered), but I'm inviting you to accompany me on my journeys, which will inspire you to ask 'what if and what's next.'
Chapter 2
The world is supposed to be full of possibilities, but they narrow down to pretty few in most personal experience. There's lots of good fish in the sea, but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring. If you're not mackerel or herring yourself you are likely to find very few good fish in the sea.
Lady Chatterley's Lover
When the time travelers entered the Crystal Palace, all that Tamar saw through the glass windows was a distorted image of a fading street. The murmur of crackling whips had been superseded by the excitement of voices in the building's meeting halls. The massive structure appeared to have its own purifying ambience.
The Alternative Time and Tours group entered an auditorium, a room with raised curtained boxes overlooking a large orchestral floor and stage. There, Sojourner Truth stood erect, seemingly praying on what appeared to be a pulpit.
She was tall, probably over six feet. Her head was erect, her eyes pierced the air, and her clothing flowed with strength similar to a rainbow's initial attempt to punctuate the sky after a thunderstorm. The former slave wasn't exactly bad-looking or good-looking; she just gazed out at the audience and waited for the hubbub to dissipate.
The accordion-type blinds on the glass ceiling darkened and the room took on the appearance of a country church. A memory went through Tamar's head as she glanced up at King Abraham—a memory of an animatronics Disneyland version of King Robert Lincoln, the king's son, walking and talking to a human audience that was watching him.
I remember reading in our history books,
Tamar thought, about how kindly King Barack, back in 2015, selected a turkey, which he named Abe. In the palace's Rose Garden he reprieved it from being slaughtered and eaten on that Thanksgiving Day.
He told reporters for the Royal Enquirer that Abe would spend its remaining life in the Children's Zoo at the Bronx Zoological Park. Semantically, that promise was honored until Christmas Day. That's when Abe was removed from the park, slaughtered and roasted for a state dinner being held for His Royal Highness, Suleiman V, the self-appointed caliph of Baghdad.
But this was no Disneyland, and Prince Robert was a real person who would eventually assume the throne. Sojourner Truth was also a real person-a woman that fought her way to freedom and who wanted all people to be free, black and white, men and women.
Prince Robert was sitting next to his father in the box overlooking the stage.
Two rows behind Tamar sat a young woman, a woman whose eyes appeared to be observing everyone in the audience and who, surprisingly, looked like a younger version of Chauvin's guidance counselor, Eloise de Sade. At Chauvin, de Sade never kept it a secret that she had the ability to astral project herself into historical settings.
The tour guide and the rest of AT&T's group were seated several rows in back of Tamar. And because Tamar sat apart from the group, she did not notice the tour guide winking multiple times in the direction of the monarch's box.
Robert observed that winking and hurriedly excused himself. He asked the king's bodyguard, John Frederick Parker, to show him the location of the restroom.
Parker, a member of the Metropolitan Police Force, had been assigned that very evening to guard the king while he attended Sojourner Truth's presentation. His orders were to sit just outside the box's door and prevent any intruders from entering.
Parker previously had a spotty relationship with his superiors, appearing before the Police Board for transgressions such as sleeping on duty, visiting a house of prostitution, firing a pistol through a window and using abusive and insulting language. Yet, because he reportedly was a distant relative of Queen Mary Todd Lincoln, he was assigned the duty of protecting the monarch.
As the two men proceeded down a hallway, they passed an actor costumed as Hamlet apparently on the way to his dressing room. Parker and Robert Lincoln assumed that he had just come from an adjoining theater. The two men decided not to return to King Abraham's box, preferring to watch the lecture from a better vantage point.
The monarch also noticed the man's winking. King Abraham had learned code during the Mexican War and became terrified when he translated the winking code as the word now.
Sojourner Truth spoke with an accent, an accent of a person whose native language was not English; an accent of someone that did not know how to read or write.
There was much commotion in the room. Many in the audience were against her speaking and had been forced to come by their spouses. Sojourner calmed the overflowing crowd.
Well children, what’s all dis talking ‘bout? Dat man over dar say dat women needs to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches, and to hob the best place everywhere. Nobody heer helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gibes me my best place. And isn't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm!
***
Sojourner Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York in 1797 as Isabella Baumfree. Her first language was Dutch and in 1826 she escaped with her infant daughter, Sophia, to freedom. In 1828, after going to court to recover her son, Peter, Isabella became the first woman of color to win such a case against a white man.
In 1843, Baumfree told her friends that the Spirit calls me, and I must go.
She renamed herself Sojourner Truth and gained national recognition throughout the kingdom as an abolitionist.
***
Tamar's dialect translator pendant
was attached to her earlobe and disguised as an oversized ear-ring. That, along with the period's clothing that was fitted to her body when they arrived in 1863, allowed the tourists to blend in and understand all that took place.
I've plowed and I've planted and I've gathered the crop and put it into the barn. And no man was able to do the amount of work that I could. So aren't I a woman? In addition to working more than a man and eating like a man when I could get the food without being whipped too much by the master; doesn't that show that I'm a person?
"I've given birth to 13 children, most of who were taken from me and sold to