The Prophet of Queens

by Glenn Kleier

  “Where’s Stan?” he asked, laptop in hand. “I need something.”

  “Guarding the tent. And speaking of duties, I need to make a grocery run. Mind if I borrow your car?” Hers was way past trustworthy.

  “I won’t be a moment,” he said, “I’ll drive you. You shouldn’t go by yourself.”

  Was he being protective, or simply didn’t want her driving his Mercedes?

  Shortly, he returned, Ariel grabbed the grocery list, and they left.

  She was seldom in Max’s company alone these days, by choice. But he was the right choice for a bodyguard. Strong, fearless—albeit, his temper was a worry. An odd blend of brute and brilliance. And despite all their time together, Ariel felt no closer to unraveling him.

  As they headed for town, he switched on the radio. A national, live talk show hosted by a pompous blowhard they both despised.

  “Please,” Ariel said. But he ignored her. She never understood why he subjected himself to such aggravation. The host was in a heated exchange with a caller, interrupting him:

  “No-no-no. Federal research grants are nothing but glorified welfare. Most of these so-called ‘researchers’ never worked for a real, for-profit company. They spend more time raising funds than doing science. It’s a racket, like everything else government gets its tentacles into.”

  The caller fired back, “That ‘racket’ is responsible for tremendous breakthroughs. The computer. The Internet. Lasers. Nanotechnology. Mapping the human genome and brain. On and on. All a direct result of federal funding.”

  “You neglect to mention the huge number of projects that fail.”

  “Even counting failures, return on investment for the country is enormous, a thousandfold. Research creates new industries, jobs, medical advances—”

  Dial tone, and the host snorted, “Folks, the real issue here isn’t R&D. It’s who’s doing it, and who’s funding it. Bureaucrats think they know better than the private sector. They blow our tax dollars on projects no corporation in its right mind would ever touch.”

  Max yelled at the radio, “Because private industry doesn’t do pure research, you asshole. All it cares about are profits. Short-term profits.”

  “Millions of tax dollars these scammers flush down the hole,” the host continued. “Including the biggest buck-sucker of them all—that massive black hole up in Talawanda. Nuclear colliders aren’t just a waste of billions, folks, they risk our lives. The entire planet!

  “Fortunately, there’s new legislation to yank TPC’s funding. But to succeed, the white hats on Capitol Hill need your support. So I’m asking you, for the sake of your kids, grandkids, God and country, drop what you’re doing, get on the horn, call your senator and representative, and demand they pull the plug—”

  Ariel switched the radio off to say, “And to think we’re siding with that jerk against TPC!”

  Max said nothing.

  They rode in silence past endless waves of brown cornstalks, arriving in town to find it quiet on a Monday morning, grocery nearly deserted. As Max steered their cart down an aisle, Ariel asked the question uppermost in her mind. “Are you making any progress on your Grand Plan?”

  “In fact,” he said, “we are. A little more refinement and we’ll roll it out for review.”

  Against all odds, Ariel felt heartened. She smiled a hopeful smile. “If anyone can figure this out,” she said, “it’s you.”

  Max halted. Ariel, too. And before she realized, he grabbed her, pressed her against a dairy case, and kissed her hard on the lips. She was stunned. But she didn’t stop him, emotions flooding. Finally, she regained her senses and pushed him off, sputtering and reeling.

  He stood there in that cocksure way of his, and she felt herself flush head to foot. For an instant, she’d fallen under his spell once more, allowing him a moment she’d sworn would never repeat. And now he knew…

  Turning, cursing herself, she fled.

  And rode home pressed silently against the passenger door.

  That night, Ariel sat up late in her room reading, trying to wash Max from her mind. She finished Scott Butterfield’s novel, Infinitiman—far as he’d gotten, anyway. A cliffhanger about America in peril, on the precipice of doom, and no ending.

  Uncanny how the story foresaw the country’s current state of affairs. Unscrupulous rulers sacrificing the well-being of the many for the special interests of the wealthy and powerful few. A government that promoted reactionary ideologies over reason and science; manipulating, dividing, breeding fear and distrust. A depressing read.

  For all Butterfield’s oddity, Ariel found him intriguing. A would-be revolutionary tilting at impossible odds. In his fantasy life, anyway. In reality, he appeared cynical and disengaged. A sad, frustrated, troubled soul who’d turned his back on the world to fight fictional foes.

  Ariel switched to her journal to record her thoughts, but she’d not gotten far when she stopped, recalling the creepy idea Max had stuck in her head earlier.

  The sensation of someone watching over her shoulder.

  Chapter 60

  Four days later, Friday, October 19, 9:05 am, Talawanda

  For the first time since encountering the enigmatic vortex weeks ago, Ariel was able to catch her breath. Peace and calm had returned to the farmhouse. The past few days, the men were so preoccupied with Max’s secretive research, Ariel had hardly seen them. They’d been holed up in each other’s rooms mumbling together, coming out only when necessary for meals or to take watch over the vortex, refusing to discuss their work. Meanwhile, Tia mostly kept to herself.

  Ariel had used the time to read, tidy up the house, and play with Newton. But her respite was coming to an unpleasant end. Later this morning, she and Tia were due in court for a hearing in their “hit-and-run” accident. They would have to face their nemesis protesters once more, and depending on the judge’s decision, they could be looking at a trial, lawyers, fines, who knew?

  There came a tap at her door and Tia’s tiny voice.

  “Am I disturbing you?”

  “No-no, come in.”

  Ariel sat up, and Tia joined her on the bed.

  “I changed my mind,” Tia said. “I think Stan should take us to the courthouse.”

  Ariel puzzled. “But Max is better protection if there’s trouble.”

  “He’s also trouble. Not just his temper. What if our judge is the one who heard his assault case last winter? You want Max for a character reference?”

  “Have you told him?”

  “It was his idea.”

  That didn’t sound like Max, he was always spoiling for a fight.

  Tia clarified, “He’s too busy with his ‘Grand Plan.’”

  In fact, Ariel had never seen the men so absorbed. Constantly on their laptops. Up early, up late. The few times she’d glimpsed their screens, they were reading The New York Times archives.

  “Fishy,” Tia said. “Steady drumbeat of quiet from those two.”

  “Maybe Stan will open up on the drive today.”

  “Either he talks, or we all have a come-to-Jesus over lunch. Two weeks till Butterfield’s fire. I want to know if Max is on to something.”

  Stan gave up little on the way to the courthouse. All he’d say was that Max was “a genius,” and they’d soon see why. But as Tia made clear, “soon” meant when they got back home.

  Things could not have gone better with the judge. A black lady who’d seen and heard it all, siding with Ariel and Tia, warning the two men that to press their case was a huge mistake.

  On their way home, Tia growled, “We should’ve counter-sued. At the least we could’ve forced the bastards to pay your car repairs.”

  Ariel’s hand flew to her heart. “Make them madder than they already are? I’ll gladly pay never to see those two again.”

  Stan agreed. “The way they were glaring at you. Scary.”

  Indeed. The smaller man had paid Ariel discreet gestures, running a finger across his throat. And when the hearing conclude
d, the big man with the red beard and Celtic tattoos made a pistol of his hand and fired it at her. The bailiff had wisely detained the men until Ariel and her friends were safely on their way.

  It was 11:30 when they got back, Max there to greet them out in the front yard, pacing, hands cupped behind his back. Ariel knew that look. He was wrestling something. Something serious.

  “Well, you’re not in jail,” he said as they piled out of the truck. “How’d it go?”

  “Our way,” Tia said. “Over.”

  He looked pleased. “Excellent. I need you in a good mood. I need your help.”

  “Another snag?” Stan asked.

  “A big one.”

  They filed into the house to gather in the living room, and Max resumed pacing as the others took seats. He looked wrung out.

  “I didn’t want to go into this yet,” he began, “but something unexpected came up. The Plan Stan and I are working on? It will work. If I can get over this hurdle.”

  Ariel could see the conviction in his eyes. He stopped and turned to Tia. “What would you give to toss the Dark Agers out of power and send Filby and Thornton packing?”

  She scoffed.

  “There is a way,” he insisted. “But it’ll mean opening your mind to a compromise.”

  Tia raised a brow. “You mean, opening the wormhole to more butterflies?”

  “Exactly. Butterflies be damned, let’s do what has to be done.”

  Ariel was afraid to ask. “Which is?”

  “Reverse the last presidential election.”

  Confused, Ariel looked to Tia, who replied coldly, “He’s saying, we should tamper with the election four years ago. Steal it from Filby and throw it to Shackleton.”

  Ariel gaped at Max. “But-but what will that do to us? Our pasts? Our futures? All that’s happened to us between then and now. Everything would change.”

  “Yes. For the better. We’ll be able to keep our jobs here. TPC won’t have a mob at its gates. We’ll have a government that values science and wormholes—presuming we rediscover ours.”

  Aghast, Ariel cried, “We can’t be sure of any of that. Anything could happen. We could all be dead. The world could end!”

  “Highly unlikely in just four years. Think. Shackleton’s flaws aside, she supported science. If she’d beaten Filby, we’d surely be the better for it. She was ahead in the polls, she’d be president today if it weren’t for that video. Thornton hijacked the election, Filby turned the country into a theocracy, and now we’ve stumbled onto a way to undo it. Yes, there’s risk. And well worth it.”

  Tia buried her face in her hands. “You are certifiably nuts.”

  “Please,” Stan told her, “hear him out.”

  Tia calmed, and Max resumed pacing.

  “It’s pretty straightforward, he said. To change the election, we stop the Shackleton video from going public.”

  As a Congressional investigation later disclosed, the video that damned Shackleton’s presidential bid was released the Sunday before the election by Reverend Penbrook Thornton. Thornton had kept it secret from the public beforehand, and within hours, the video was a viral rage, all over the news. Shackleton went into hiding, the race over before the polls even opened Tuesday morning.

  Prior to the video, Shackleton had been an astute legislator. A reformist with a pro-science agenda that would have served the country well. Afterward, she faded into obscurity, and Thornton was never called to account. The Dark Agers had maneuvered to quash the investigation.

  Tia snapped, “How do you propose we stop Thornton from releasing the tape? Bribe him?”

  “Money isn’t Thornton’s hot button. And from what Stan’s NSA contacts say, Thornton has no skeletons. Blackmail is out.”

  Stan confirmed, “Squeaky clean.”

  Max paid Ariel a long look. “The way we reach Thornton is through his faith. Through you.”

  As if altering the past weren’t bad enough, the idea of Ariel confronting the towering figure of her youth sent her heart reeling.

  “No way,” she said. “I can’t argue theology, I’m not qualified.”

  Even if she found the courage, her knowledge of scripture was paltry. She stood no chance debating the scruples of that horrid video with the likes of Penbrook Thornton.

  “Relax,” Max said, “that’s not what I need from you, I’ll get to that. Like I said, Thornton’s hot button is his faith, and for our purposes, his Achilles heel. It plays right into our hands.”

  He stopped pacing to face Tia. “Thornton’s a Fundamentalist, yes? He believes God knows all, including the future. We also know the future. Four years of it, anyway. Ergo, from Thornton’s perspective in the past, we’re God.”

  Stan said, “The Law of Transitive Property. If A equals B, and B equals C, A equals C.”

  Max said, “And we use it to our advantage.”

  Tia snorted. “Your Grand Plan is to play God to Thornton?”

  “Not directly. We’ll have a go-between carry our message. Scott Butterfield.”

  Tia threw up her hands. “Even if it isn’t suicide for us to contact Butterfield, do you honestly think he could get Thornton to meet with him? Much less finagle that video away? A bowl of noodles has more charisma than Butterfield.”

  “Butterfield’s sharper than you think.”

  Tia eyed Max closely. “You know something about him I don’t?”

  Max didn’t respond, and Tia’s face darkened.

  “I’ll be damned,” she hissed. “You already contacted him.”

  She spun on Stan. “And you knew! You’re helping him!” On fire, she cried, “Traitors. Both of you. You broke our pact.”

  Ariel had never seen her so incensed. Stan turned bright red, shrinking to the end of the couch, as far removed as possible.

  “How could you?” Tia howled at him, waving a blind hand at Max. “I expect it from Machiavelli, here. But you? I trusted you!”

  Stan replied in a pitiful voice, “Now, Tia, keep an open mind.”

  She appeared about to explode, and Ariel jumped to calm her with a hug.

  Max and Stan exchanged uneasy looks, and Max said, “In fairness, this was all my idea. When I told Stan, he was upset, too. But I convinced him it’ll work.”

  Tia broke out of Ariel’s grasp and paced the room, arms crossed.

  Max allowed her a moment, then continued, “I got the idea the day we learned Butterfield shared our universe. Like you, I thought we were finished. But on my own, I searched the news archives, hoping for something to spark an idea. And finally, I came across a Times article. A bus accident in Queens, still a few days off, Butterfield time.

  “I recalled from Butterfield’s journal he took a bus to work. The accident was on his route, at the right time, and the article said passengers were taken to Queens General. I hacked the hospital files to find Butterfield’s name among them. He was only slightly injured, and released.”

  Ariel said, “What possible help was that?”

  “I wasn’t sure at first. The accident hadn’t happened to Butterfield yet. I figured there had to be a way to leverage it. So, I went back to the archives looking for something bigger to grab his attention. And I found it. An explosion the day before in Brooklyn. Not terrorism, a bona fide accident. News Butterfield was bound to hear about. While you three were in the house and I was out guarding the tent, I sent him an email predicting the blast.”

  Tia’s jaw tensed.

  “…I recalled from Butterfield’s personal log, he feared his apartment was haunted by an evil spirit. All I had to do was make him believe the spirit was godsent. And what better way than with a prophecy? I worded it so he wouldn’t know where the explosion would be, and couldn’t prevent it—” Max nodded to Tia, “keeping butterflies to a minimum.”

  It didn’t appear to lessen her anger.

  Ariel asked, “Did he reply to your email?”

  “No. He was at work and probably thought it spam. In any event, the day of the explosion, I se
nt a second email warning him not to take the bus the next morning. Given my first prediction bore out, I figured he’d listen. I kept watch on the hospital admissions, curious to see how Time would handle the change. Would Butterfield’s name vanish in a flash, or what?

  “But nothing changed. Turns out, Butterfield blew off my warning and took the bus, anyway.” Max smiled. “The last time he ignored me. After the accident, I sent a third email, and he was home to receive it, recuperating.”

  “What did it say?” Ariel asked.

  “I predicted another disaster. I’d found an article about high winds toppling a crane in the Bronx that night. Again, I kept the wording vague so he wouldn’t know enough to interfere. But this time, he emailed me right back. Upset, confused, demanding an explanation.”

  “And?”

  “Time to set the hook. I told him I was a herald of the Lord, and that the Lord had chosen him for His messenger.”

  Tia covered her eyes, and Max countered, “I gave this a lot of thought. How does a nobody like Butterfield connect with a bigwig like Thornton? Especially with Thornton in the throes of the election back then. Email? Phone? Drop by his house? For my Plan to work, we’ve got to make Butterfield into someone Thornton will respect. And we do that by giving him ‘God-cred.’ We make him a prophet.”

  Stan emerged from detention, cheeks still rosy from Tia’s tongue-lashing. He said, “We’ve got all the tools at hand. Full digital archives of the New York Times.”

  Max explained, “The idea is to feed Butterfield a few sensational stories, have him take them public, and bingo. His predictions come true, the media picks up on it, and overnight he’s a sensation. A modern-day Elias. Thornton can’t help but notice, and then he’ll accept a meeting.” He paced again. “It worked like a charm. At first. The crane collapse got Butterfield aboard, and I built on it. I sent him on other tasks to see if he could handle the pressure. He proved he could.”

  Tia was winding up again, and Max hastened to add, “I took precautions not to disturb the timeline. I picked events that would play out the same, irrespective of Butterfield. I sent him to a Yankee’s game to help a fan struck by a baseball—prior to it happening. The fan would have survived, regardless.”