Chapter 16: The Ascensionists

I.

They left before dawn.

Galilee's winter dawn came slowly—first a line of grayish white on the eastern horizon, then pink, then gold. But they did not wait for the gold. The car drove out of the garden's stone walls in the first gray light, along that dirt road eroded by time and rain, heading south.

She had not slept all night.

The tracker's signal had moved three times in the past six hours—each time closer. She sat in the living room's darkness with eyes closed, sensing that movement pattern like a predator tightening its circle. Not approaching in a straight line, but spiraling. Testing, retreating, coming closer again.

Professional. Patient.

The same training she had received.

II.

The luggage was already in the car.

Two backpacks, one large, one small. His held a few changes of clothes, that old sweater she had mended, a worn copy of *Meditations*. Hers was smaller—almost empty, only the essentials. She was used to traveling light. She was used to being able to disappear at any moment.

He stopped at the door, looked back.

The garden looked especially quiet in the dawn light. Water droplets on the stone walls glittered in the faint light. Olive branches stood motionless, like some posture of waiting. The wild pomegranate tree was reduced to skeleton, but he remembered how it looked in spring—fire-red flowers, attracting hummingbirds and butterflies.

Seven years. This place was his fortress, his refuge, his self-exile. He knew every stone. He had watched every tree change from season to season. The books in the study, the old stove in the kitchen, the stone steps on the porch where he had watched countless sunsets.

"I don't know if I'll come back."

His voice was very soft. As if speaking to himself.

She stood by the car, did not hurry him.

"Then don't look back."

But she herself also looked back.

Only for a second. Then she turned, opened the car door.

III.

He drove.

South, avoiding main roads. Taking those roads almost invisible on maps—rural dirt roads, abandoned old paths, shortcuts only locals knew. He had lived in this land for most of his life, knew how to hide his tracks.

She had her eyes closed, but was not sleeping.

The surrounding electromagnetic environment was like an invisible net, full of various nodes—cell towers, power lines, satellite signals, wireless networks. She could "see" them, could feel data flowing through them. Occasionally she spoke.

"Left at the next junction."

He complied. Did not ask why.

"Slow down. Camera ahead. Take the dirt road."

He complied.

This coordination needed no verbal explanation.

IV.

The scenery along the way was changing.

The green of Galilee gradually faded—olive trees and cypresses, farmland enclosed by stone walls, villages with red tile roofs. Replaced by increasingly desolate terrain: bare rocks, dry riverbeds, occasional acacias casting sparse shadows on sand-colored earth.

Israel was a small country, but its geographic variation was startling. From the green hills of the north to the desert of the south, only a few hours' drive. Like crossing through different worlds.

She opened her eyes, looked out the window.

"The Ascensionists."

He did not ask. He knew what she was going to say.

"That's what they call themselves. When they're being honest."

V.

"In public, it's different. 'Existential risk mitigation.' 'Civilizational backup.' 'Multi-planetary insurance.'"

Her voice carried a certain mockery—not her usual professional detachment, more like the emotion ordinary people would have.

"'We're not abandoning humanity. We're ensuring its survival. Earth is a single point of failure.'"

She was imitating a certain tone. A tone he had heard at TED talks and tech conferences—positive, optimistic, but actually carrying a certain coldness.

"'The best minds, the best genes, the best technology—concentrated in self-sustaining habitats. That's not elitism. That's backup.'"

Pause. Outside the window, a group of goats foraged on rocks by the roadside.

"'In a hundred years, they'll thank us. The ones who survive down here, I mean.'"

VI.

He thought for a moment.

"Let me translate."

His voice was the analytical tone of his lectures, a cold anger running under it.

"Throughout history, every elite class has needed a justifying myth. Medieval aristocrats said God chose them. Industrial capitalists said the market rewarded merit."

The scenery outside became more desolate. The Be'er Sheva road sign flashed by in the distance.

"The Ascensionists have found the perfect narrative for this age: necessity. They're not leaving because they're selfish. They're leaving because it's the only rational response to existential risk."

She looked at him. In the light inside the car, his face was like a chiaroscuro painting—half in light, half in shadow.

"But here's what they don't say. Their 'backup of humanity' only includes people wealthy enough to buy tickets. Their 'self-sustaining habitat' requires technology built by millions of workers who won't be invited."

His hands tightened slightly on the wheel.

"They're not saving humanity. They're redefining humanity to exclude everyone who isn't them."

VII.

Silence.

Desert flowed past the window—monotonous brown and yellow. She thought of his books she had read, those arguments built like proofs, that same severity. Now she heard the source.

"And people like you," she said.

"People like me keep pointing out that 'humanity' used to be a larger category." He looked at the road ahead. "That makes me inconvenient."

"Inconvenient enough to eliminate?"

"Inconvenient enough to discredit. Marginalize. Make irrelevant."

Pause.

"Elimination is for assets. I'm not valuable enough to eliminate."

She did not respond. But she thought of Kessler's name, thought of those secret communication records, thought of what she had seen deep in the systems.

He was more valuable than he thought.

This was also why she was here.

VIII.

"I'm one of their projects."

Her voice became lower. More private.

"Taiwan—before the transition—was trying to create a countermeasure. Bio-digital interfaces. Humans who could perceive and interact with electronic systems directly."

He knew this. She had said it before. But the way she was saying it now was different—more like filling in the blanks she had deliberately left before.

"After the... acquisition, those projects were inherited. Continued. The research didn't stop. It just changed hands."

Outside the window, a raptor circled in the gray sky. Probably a buzzard, flying down from the north in winter.

"I escaped. Or was released. I still don't know which." She looked at her hands. "But I'm proof of concept. A working model. If they can study me, reverse-engineer my neural architecture, they can create more. Better. Controlled."

"And if they can't capture you—"

"Then they make sure no one else can use me either."

IX.

The car continued south.

Road conditions got worse—asphalt became dirt road, dirt road became gravel. They were getting farther from civilization.

She suddenly said:

"You should have let me leave."

He did not respond.

"Some weeks ago. When you found out about the replica. You could have told me to go. Could have called your friend Nadav. Could have gone back to your quiet life."

He thought about that choice. The choice he had not made.

"Why didn't you?"

He thought for a long time.

"Because quiet isn't the same as alive."

X.

The phone rang.

Not a smartphone ringtone—the monotonous beep of an old Nokia. He took from his coat pocket that feature phone he only carried when necessary, glanced at the screen.

Moshe.

He hesitated for a second. She watched him from the passenger seat, said nothing.

He answered.

"Professor, I'm sorry to bother you—"

Moshe's voice was a bit nervous. The nervousness of someone caught in the middle.

"—I know you said you'll be unavailable for a while, but I have Oren Kessler's office on the other line. They said it's urgent. They said you'd want to take this."

She sensed his pulse quicken by a few beats.

"Did they say what it's about?"

"No. Just that it concerns... recent developments. His assistant was very insistent."

XI.

He covered the phone, looked at her.

"Oren Kessler wants to talk."

Her expression did not change. But he noticed her hands—originally relaxed on her knees—had closed into fists.

"Do you know him?"

"Of him."

Outside the window, the desert shimmered in the afternoon light, like a frozen sea.

"He funds research. Acquires assets. Connects people who shouldn't be connected." Her voice was flat. "The kind of person who never gets his hands dirty because he pays others to do it."

"Is he dangerous?"

"He's worse than dangerous. He's legitimate."

Pause.

"Your choice."

XII.

He thought for three seconds.

If he did not answer, Kessler would know he was hiding. If he answered—at least he could learn how much the other side knew.

"Put him through, Moshe."

"Are you sure, Professor? You sound like you're driving—"

"I'm sure."

A brief silence. Click. Then another voice—warm, relaxed, with that approachable confidence particular to Silicon Valley executives. Like an interesting uncle chatting with you at a family gathering, not someone who controlled billions in assets.

"Professor Cohan. I hope I'm not catching you at a bad time."

He looked at the desert flowing past the window.

"That depends on what you want, Mr. Kessler."

"Oren. Please. I feel like we've known each other long enough to skip the formalities."

XIII.

They had never met. But in a sense, Kessler was right—they had "known" each other for a long time.

2015, that debate in Davos. Kessler was not a speaker, just a face in the audience, but afterward he had someone deliver a business card. Eitan did not reply.

2019, after *The Algorithm Trap* was published, an anonymously funded lengthy rebuttal article appeared in three mainstream media outlets. The article was clever, no factual errors to pick out, but the angle of attack precisely weakened his argument. It took him six months to trace the funding source—one of Kessler's foundations.

2022, an "academic collaboration" invitation from Silicon Valley, salary fifteen times his current income. He declined. Three months later, his research funding was cut in half.

They had never spoken, but had always been in dialogue.

"What do you want, Oren?"

XIV.

"I wanted you to hear it from me first. Professional courtesy."

Some background sound came through the phone—perhaps a private jet's engines, perhaps some conference room's air conditioning. People like Kessler were always in motion.

"The transition team announced the appointments this morning. I'll be chairing the AI Development Council's ethics subcommittee."

He let this sentence hang in the air.

She watched him from the passenger seat, eyes slightly narrowed. She could not hear the voice on the other end, but she was reading his reactions—heart rate, breathing, micro-expressions.

"Congratulations." His voice was flat. "The fox in charge of the henhouse."

Kessler laughed. The kind of laugh that was genuinely amused, not social.

"I knew you'd say something like that. That's why I like you, Professor. You're predictable in the best way."

XV.

"I assume there's a point to this call. Beyond gloating."

"Gloating? No, no." Kessler's tone became slightly more serious, but only slightly. "I'm calling because I respect you. Genuinely. You've been wrong about almost everything, but you've been wrong in interesting ways. That's rare."

Outside the window, a shepherd stood in the distant shadows, watching their car pass.

"The council needs dissenting voices. Token ones, sure, but visible. A seat at the table for the people who ask uncomfortable questions."

Pause.

"I want you to consider joining."

XVI.

He did not answer immediately.

Not because he was considering—the answer was obvious—but because he was listening. Listening to Kessler's tone, listening to what he was not saying.

This was not a real invitation. This was probing.

"You want me to legitimize the process."

"I want you to be part of the conversation. There's a difference."

"There isn't."

Kessler sighed—that kind of "I tried" sigh. Rehearsed, perfect.

"You know what your problem is, Professor? You think purity is a strategy. You think if you stay outside the system long enough, the system will somehow collapse under the weight of its own contradictions."

His voice changed. What was hidden underneath emerged. Not anger, something colder. Conviction.

"The system doesn't collapse. It adapts. It absorbs. And the people who refuse to engage don't become martyrs—they become footnotes."

XVII.

"I'll take footnote over collaborator."

"Will you?" Kessler's tone shifted back to that pleasant lightness. "That's a lonely position, Professor. Getting lonelier every day. The people who used to listen to you are getting tired. The institutions that used to protect you are getting weaker."

Pause.

"How long can you keep writing books that fewer and fewer people read? How long can you hide in that garden, pretending withdrawal is resistance?"

He noticed it.

Garden.

Not "farm," not "house." It was "garden."

Kessler knew where he lived. Maybe had always known.

XVIII.

"I appreciate the concern." His voice did not change, but his hands tightened a bit more on the steering wheel. "But I'll have to decline."

"I thought you'd say that."

That laugh again.

"Well. The offer stands. In case you change your mind."

Pause. The background sound changed—perhaps Kessler had walked to a window, or the plane had changed course.

"Take care of yourself, Professor. The world is changing fast. Faster than you think. At some point, withdrawal stops being a choice and starts being... irrelevance."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Do. And Professor—"

"Yes?"

"Say hello to your guest for me."

The call ended.

XIX.

Silence.

Desert flowed past the window, monotonous brown and yellow. The engine's sound filled the space inside the car.

She spoke first:

"What did he say?"

He put the phone back in his pocket. Movement very slow, as if giving himself time to think.

"He offered me a seat on the ethics council. I declined."

"And?"

He looked at the road ahead, cutting straight into the depths of the desert.

"He knows you're with me."

She did not react. Or rather, her reaction was a deliberate non-reaction—body completely still, breathing maintaining the same rhythm.

"How much does he know?"

"I don't know. Enough to mention you. Not enough to know we're running."

She thought for a while.

"If he knew we were running, he wouldn't call to gloat. He'd send someone."

"Maybe he already did."

XX.

She closed her eyes.

He knew what she was doing—scanning the surrounding electromagnetic environment, searching for abnormal signals, traces of tracking.

But this was the desert's edge. Cell towers sparse, signals weak. Not much to sense.

She opened her eyes.

"Nothing I can detect. But that doesn't mean much out here."

He continued driving. Sunlight moved across the desert, shadows flowing between rocks.

"He called to gloat," she said. "Which means he thinks he's already won."

"Has he?"

She looked out the window—that boundless desolation.

"People who think they've won get careless."

XXI.

The meditation retreat appeared in the afternoon light.

Not suddenly—nothing was sudden in the desert. Rather it gradually emerged, slowly condensing from the heat waves in the distance. A cluster of ancient stone buildings, nestled in the desert's folds, like something that had grown from the rocks.

No obvious road signs. He found the way by memory and some barely visible markers—a specially shaped rock, an ancient acacia, a dry wadi.

You had to know how to come, to come.

Around them were bare rocks and sparse desert vegetation. No power lines, no antennas, no traces of modern infrastructure. This place looked like something left from another era. Perhaps biblical times, perhaps earlier.

"We're here."

She opened her eyes, looked at those stone buildings.

Her complexion was paler than usual. Along this journey, as they got farther from civilization, she had become quieter. Not from fear.

"The signal is getting weaker."

Her voice was a bit hoarse.

"It's like... going deaf. Slowly."

XXII.

A woman walked out from the shadows.

Sixties, gray hair tied in a simple bun. Wrinkles on her face like desert riverbeds—deep, clear, recording the passage of time. But her gaze was sharp, like someone who had seen through too many things.

Rivka.

He knew her. For the past ten years, he had come here once or twice a year. Not for faith—he had never had that kind of fervor—but for complete silence. The kind of stillness only found in such places.

"Eitan."

Her voice was like sandpaper. Ground by the desert's dryness.

"It's been a while."

"Rivka."

They did not embrace. This was not that kind of relationship. Just a nod, a mutual acknowledgment.

Then Rivka's gaze turned to her.

XXIII.

That gaze lasted a long time.

Rivka did not speak, just looked. From her face to her posture, her breathing, her hands—those slightly trembling hands.

"She's not here for meditation."

Not a question. A statement.

"No."

"Running from something."

"Yes."

Rivka continued looking at her. In the desert light, Astra looked thinner than usual. Her usual sharpness diminished, replaced by something fragile.

"You carry a lot of noise." Rivka's voice held no judgment, only observation. "I can see it in your posture. Your breathing. You're never fully here."

"I know."

"Sixty days won't fix that. But it might give you a chance to see what's underneath."

XXIV.

Registration was simple.

A stone room, a wooden table, a few chairs. No decoration on the walls, only a window looking out at the desert.

An assistant—a man in his forties, taciturn—recorded their basic information. Name, emergency contact, medical conditions.

Then the final step.

"All electronic devices must be surrendered."

Eitan placed his old Nokia phone on the table. He kept only the old mechanical watch on his wrist — nothing expensive.

She hesitated.

She took out the small device from her bag. Black, smaller than a palm, looked like an ordinary hard drive. But he knew what was inside—data, records, maybe a backup of that replica.

She placed it on the table.

Movement very light. Like putting down something she was not yet ready to put down.

XXV.

Rivka led them through stone arches into the retreat's inner area.

The buildings here were older, stone walls thicker, shadows deeper. The air had a strange stillness—not absence of sound, wind, footsteps, distant bird calls were all there—but some deeper quiet. As if noise had never existed.

"Your rooms are in the east wing. Meals at sunrise, noon, and sunset. Work detail in the afternoon. Evening meditation at dusk."

Rivka's explanation was simple and clear.

"First two weeks, complete silence. After that, limited conversation during designated hours."

She led them to two adjacent rooms.

The rooms were small—a narrow bed, a wooden shelf, an east-facing window. Stone walls thick enough to block most temperature changes. No electricity, only oil lamps and candles.

"Dinner is in an hour. Rest first."

Then Rivka left. Footsteps gradually fading on the stone path.

Just the two of them remained.

XXVI.

She stood in the doorway and did not go in.

The sun was sinking, staining the desert gold-red. The distant hills lay along the horizon like a row of sleeping giants. The air had begun to cool—out here the temperature dropped fast.

“I need to do it now.”

He knew what she meant.

Surrendering the devices was only the surface. The machines could be taken away, but the things inside her body—the exchanges, the connections—were still running. She could still sense the faint signals far off, still read the electromagnetic field around her.

To truly disappear, she had to shut them down from the inside. He couldn’t follow the process; perhaps it took no less courage than cutting off one’s own limbs.

“Are you sure?”

“No.” She stepped off the porch, toward an open patch of ground between the dormitories. “But I need to do it anyway.”

He followed her.

The clearing was small, ringed by several boulders. The desert dusk turned everything amber. The sky went from gold to orange to purple, the colors moving fast, all within a few minutes.

She stood in the center and closed her eyes.

He stood a few steps back, watching.

This was not like before. Before had been passive—leaving the range of the signal, the disconnection coming on its own. This time was deliberate. Shutting down the interfaces from the inside, the things that let her reach another world.

Her breathing slowed, went deep.

He couldn’t read her heartbeat, but from the knot of her brow, from her hands closing slowly into fists, he understood how hard this was.

Her body began to shake.

Faint at first, starting in the fingers, then climbing to the arms, the shoulders. Her breathing lost its rhythm—quickening, then going shallow, then nothing regular left in it.

Her knees gave a little.

He took a step forward.

XXVII.

Astra threw out her arm and made a hard gesture toward him, palm out: stop. At the same time her lips were moving, but there was no sound—she could no longer make one. Then her head dropped, and she went down onto one knee on the sand, her body canted to the side.

She did not lower the hand keeping him back. Her back was to him. She couldn’t force a single word past her clenched teeth.

He had known this carried a price. Only now, watching, did he see how high. She would not let him see her face, distorted by the suffocation and the pain. He had assumed the second time would be easier; instead the body, having been through it once, seemed to resist twice as hard—deliberately.

Or else she was killing off a part of herself that had only just healed, grown back across the break: invisible, but bound tight into the nervous system, and she was pinching those phantom limbs off one by one.

He couldn’t see her face. He could only hear her ragged breath. But the instant she finally started to go down he was already moving. He caught her.

Instinct. His arm went around her waist, stopping her before she hit the rock.

Her eyes opened. Her forehead was slick with cold sweat, the whites of her eyes red, but she gripped his left shoulder and her lips worked, almost without sound: “Let me be—”

Her body sank. She lay back on the ground, and Eitan knelt too, so her head rested on his palm.

XXVIII.

The whole sky was gold with the last of the sun.

Her reddened eyes stared straight up into the deep of the clouds, as if a thread were pulling her. For an instant he couldn’t even hear her breathe—her chest rose a fraction and then stopped, jammed there.

Those few seconds felt as long as if he too were holding his breath. He understood now what she had told him before: that in a few seconds she could run through many possible endings.

Maybe he had taken it too lightly. To feel, in the body, what another person had lost—or given up—was perhaps never really possible.

He pulled her toward him.

Face to face. His arm around her back, her head against his chest.

She had no strength to resist; they held each other up. The desert dusk moved around them, the sky going from orange to purple to deep blue. The first star came out, then the second, then more than he could count.

She was still shaking, faintly.

He tightened his arm. So she would know where the edge was. So her body had something to lean on.

“Listen.”

His voice was low, his lips near the top of her head.

“Listen to this.”

He didn’t know what she heard. His breath. The vibration inside his chest.

Some kind of rhythm. Some kind of signal.

Alive. The most basic thing there was.

XXIX.

For a long while she said nothing.

Only kept her eyes closed, leaned against his chest, felt the weight of her own body, felt the rough ground beneath her. Her breathing steadied by degrees; the spasms came less often; the shallow panic gave way to something deeper and slower. Her hands—fists before—loosened, still resting on his shoulder.

The sky had gone fully dark. The Milky Way was coming out, that river of light laid across the whole vault of the sky. The desert night had no light pollution; the stars were brighter and more numerous than any city ever showed.

At last she spoke, low and hoarse:

“86.”

He said:

“What?”

“Your heart rate. It went up to 86 while I was down there.” She turned her face to look at him. “You were worried.”

“Yes.” He didn’t deny it.

A pause. Her voice was still weak.

“I’ve survived worse. I’ll find a way through this too.”

He lifted his head a little. His eyes did not leave her.

“I know.”

XXX.

Under the stars.

Two people who belonged to no system. At the edge of the world, at the end of civilization, in the middle of an ancient desert.

He thought of what Kessler had said. Withdrawal stops being a choice and starts being irrelevance.

Maybe he was right. Maybe they were becoming irrelevant. Maybe their flight out here was only delaying an ending that would come anyway.

But right now, tonight, none of that mattered.

Some hours later, walking back to the dormitories together, her gait was still a little unsteady—like someone learning to walk without a crutch. But she was walking.

That was already a kind of victory.

XXXI.

That night he lay on the narrow bed and listened to the desert.

Wind murmured outside the stone walls. Somewhere an animal moved. From far off came a low rumble—thunder, or the desert breathing.

The room next door was quiet.

He didn’t know whether she had fallen asleep. Probably not. Her first night, with no signal, no connection, only herself and the dark.

He thought about what had happened that evening.

He had held her. He rarely held anyone. His body was not used to that closeness. But when she started to fall, he hadn’t hesitated. Even rejected, he had wanted to be near.

It was an exception. He did not regret it.

Outside the window the desert sky was clear to the point of unreality.

The stars were like crushed diamond scattered across the ground. The Milky Way crossed the vault clearer than he could remember it ever being—maybe because the air was so dry.

Maybe because he finally had something worth reaching for.

Somewhere, Kessler was on his private jet, or in some conference room, certain he had already won.

Somewhere, the trackers circled the desert’s edge, trying to find their signal.

But here, in this ancient emptiness, there was only wind and starlight.

He closed his eyes.

And tried to sleep, his first night in the camp.

(End of Chapter Sixteen)