The Last Day

by Glenn Kleier

  A staff assistant timidly raised her hand. “I know this is going to sound ridiculous to everyone, but should we really rule out the possibility that she might be a genuine Messiah, a holy person sent by God?”

  Hunter nearly choked on his coffee.

  Sullivan was quick to shut him down. “None of that! We'll respect all points of view at this table!”

  The cameraman apologized and Erin addressed the question.

  “If we make the assumption that she's a true Messiah, then we have to ask ourselves why. What purpose would it serve a supreme being to send a female envoy to convey His message? And why would God allow her to mimic the life of His Son? To parallel the origins of Christ with a birth in Bethlehem, a Sermon on the Mount? It confuses Christ's message; it doesn't make theological sense, if you ask me.”

  “But maybe God has a separate message for women?” the female staff member suggested.

  “Yeah! Or maybe God's looking to balance the scales with women?” someone else volunteered.

  “Right!” Cissy snorted, contemptuously. “God's going politically correct on us!”

  Sullivan raised his hand to bring the proceedings under control. “I suggest we leave the philosophizing to the philosophers and stick to the issues at hand. Let's turn our attention to developing a substantive report on these controversial New Beatitudes, shall we?”

  33

  The Vatican, Rome, Italy 11:00 A.M., Friday, January 7, 2000

  Nicholas had heard so much about yesterday's controversial New Sermon on the Mount that he'd been eagerly looking forward to viewing it. There was a sense of relief in him now. The universal consensus that this purported New Messiah was female had removed any of his subconscious fears that the world was experiencing the Second Coming. At best, she could be no more than a prophetess.

  Nonetheless, the pope had had a background examination run on the Reverend Richard Fischer. It had revealed him to be a onetime carnival barker, alcoholic, drifter and sometime Bible salesman before finding his niche as an evangelical. This would add credence to the conventional Vatican wisdom that yesterday's Sermon on the Mount II media sensation was nothing more than a clever marketing scheme concocted to exploit the current millenarian fad.

  Nicholas had asked his respected confidant, Prefect Antonio di Concerci, who'd already seen this video, to join him. Meeting in the anteroom outside the palace's small movie theater, they entered together, walking midway down the aisle, taking seats next to each other in the otherwise deserted room.

  “What is the status of your Millennial Decree, Holiness?” di Concerci asked, making conversation as they awaited the start of the tape. The cardinal was referring to Nicholas's long-awaited encyclical on materialism.

  “It's finished, Tony. I've merely been awaiting the appropriate time to issue it. I didn't see how it could receive the attention it warrants under recent conditions. However, now that we seem to have safely crossed this bothersome millennium barrier, I believe I shall have it released next week.”

  The theater darkened and the video began. The pontiff was unconsciously drawn forward in his seat as the picture opened on a breathtaking, distant, predawn shot of the mount crowned in glowing lights and cloaked with vast crowds that spilled down the slopes into pockets of lingering fog.

  Nicholas frowned. Not with displeasure, but with deepening wonderment as the first rays of morning broke the horizon, irradiating the stage from behind. He folded his hands tightly together as the stirring music crescendoed and the Messiah began her transcendent march to the altar.

  The first clear image of the New Messiah took him quite by surprise.

  “She is an angel!” Nicholas exclaimed in full appreciation, and di Concerci glanced at him, nodding gravely.

  The pope absorbed the rest of the video engrossed in silence.

  At its conclusion, after a period of quiet reflection, di Concerci finally spoke. “Wouldn't you agree this is a female, Holy Father?”

  The pope's eyes finally focused on his associate and he responded in a thoughtful tone. “Oh yes, yes. This is most assuredly a female. And with such a commanding presence!”

  “She has a certain gift of oratory,” di Concerci conceded. “What's your assessment of her possible authenticity?”

  Nicholas looked back at the blank screen as if the answer lay there. “I came here quite prepared to brand her a fraud, Antonio,” he admitted. “Certainly, as a female, she cannot be a Messiah. But perhaps she could be a prophetess. I would like to understand better her affiliation with these Samaritans, who she really is, and where she comes from. There's an ethereal quality about her. We simply need to learn more.”

  “What do you make of this ‘New Light’ she speaks of, Holiness? This ‘New Revelation’?”

  “Those are the two aspects of her Beatitudes I find disturbing,” the pope asserted. “The rest of her message, as far as I could tell, is benign and uplifting. It will be interesting to see how far she takes this and what, if anything, we hear next from her. We must keep a close eye on this situation, my friend.”

  “I quite agree.”

  “If this woman is the product of some duplicity,” Nicholas added, “we must quickly root it out. The sooner we do this, the faster we can restore our world congregation to normality. I'm greatly concerned about the state of Holy Mother Church right now, Tony. Support around the world is down substantially, both spiritual and financial. No event in the last hundred years has impacted the Church as severely as all these disturbing millennial phenomena.”

  34

  WNN headquarters, Jerusalem, Israel 8:49 A.M., Monday, January 10, 2000

  Erin Cross's audience appeal in the well-received telecast of her Beatitudes analysis did not go unnoticed by upper-level WNN officials. She was quickly assigned several follow-up opportunities during the coming week to offer her additional on-camera experience, another step in grooming her for a more visible future with the network. There was even talk that WNN International was considering a long-term pairing of Feldman and Cross as a highly attractive media couple.

  News in the Negev laboratory investigations, however, was not so positive. The search teams continued to be thwarted in their efforts to uncover any pertinent data. Worse still, developments on the messianic front were also wanting. Nothing had been forthcoming from the uncooperative Samaritans, and nothing had been seen of the angelic young woman since last Thursday's electrifying Sermon on the Mount. For lack of a better alternative, the same TV coverage of the sermon and the popular Beatitudes analysis had aired repeatedly on WNN all weekend. Every possible significance of the new messianic appearance had now been explored on every network by every conceivable expert.

  In desperation, at the conclusion of the morning staff meeting, Sullivan made the decision to finally break with the Japanese astronomers’ survivor/Messiah story.

  “Even if it eventually proves inaccurate,” he justified, “at the very least, it may apply pressure in the right places and shake some facts out of all this damned secrecy.”

  35

  UVDA Israeli military airfield, southern Negev 9:16 P.M., Monday, January 10, 2000

  Chief of Staff Major General Mosha Zerim was alarmed.

  “This New Messiah person, one of our personnel from the institute!” he exclaimed to his colleagues. “Is this possible?” He was joined in his military conference room by Senior General Alleza Goene, Commander Benjamin Roth and Intelligence Commander David Lazzlo. All three had flown in from various points in response to WNN's latest news report.

  “No, Mosha,” Benjamin Roth assured him, “we are virtually certain that this Messiah, as she's called, is not one of our laboratory personnel.”

  “Correct Mosha,” Alleza Goene agreed. “We've gone to the extent of making electronic image comparisons of the woman with photographs of all female institute personnel, even those not on duty the night of the attack, and we have no matches. None. This Messiah appears to be younger than most of our female staff. Late teens
or early twenties, perhaps. And none of the women at the institute were even close in bone structure, height, weight or complexion.”

  “Who, then, is this mysterious Messiah?” Zerim asked.

  “We don't know yet,” Roth admitted, and gestured to David Lazzlo, seated across from him. “We put the Intelligence Department on it at a routine request of the Knesset even before the survivor allegation surfaced. So far, nothing.”

  Lazzlo nodded to verify this and added, “But if she's Israeli, we'll identify her soon enough.”

  “The only witnesses claiming to have seen a survivor are those Japanese astronomers,” Goene reminded everyone, “the same ones who started the meteorite rumor our intelligence commander here is so fond of.”

  Goene stole a quick glance at Lazzlo and continued. “We interrogated the Japanese thoroughly and believe that any victim they may have come in contact with must have been injured outside the institute grounds—a Bedouin woman perhaps. At any rate, we revoked their visas and deported them. They'll be no more trouble to us.”

  Zerim was somewhat reassured. “Defense Minister Tamin will be relieved to hear this. False allegations by the media are of no consequence, but we'll suffer severe repercussions from both the prime minister and the Knesset if we fail to contain every aspect of this accursed Negev operation.”

  “Then there's still one more contingency we must cover,” Lazzlo warned, and all eyes turned to him. “We must consider the possibility, however remote it may be, that one of the test subjects survived the explosion. Particularly one of the enhanced subjects.”

  Goene scoffed.

  “I must point out,” Lazzlo explained, “that the apparent age of the New Messiah approximates that of the test subjects. The sex, of course, is correct. If we intend to ‘contain every aspect of this accursed Negev operation,’” Lazzlo quoted Mosha Zerim, “then we must ensure against the worst possible scenario. And proof to the outside world of the existence of an enhanced test subject would most surely be the worst possible scenario.”

  Zerim looked back and forth quickly from Goene to Roth with escalating concern.

  Goene drammed his fingers on the tabletop and turned to Lazzlo with undisguised contempt. “Now you go beyond ridiculous. If you understood anything about the physical limitations of the test subjects, you'd know they were totally incapable of escape. Since the moment they were first gestated, none of them, especially the enhanced subjects, were ever outside their vessels, nor taken off their umbilicals!

  “The main subject of the infusion nao never taken her first step, nor crawled, for that matter! She was in the final stages of an extremely delicate, totally uncertain experiment with far greater odds of failure than success. We don't even know if she could see, hear, speak or function with any degree of normality.

  “Even assuming that one of them could have survived the initial explosion, how could she have escaped her sealed tank? How could she have found her way out of the facility? And done so in the few seconds remaining before the entire laboratory was vaporized? There were no close exits to the bottom level. There wasn't enough time!”

  “General,” Lazzlo responded calmly, “we know from eyewitnesses in patrol details outside the perimeter fence that there was a delayed explosion after the initial impact. Technicians on the bottom level, if not immediately overcome by toxic fumes, may have had enough time to release one of the test subjects. Wouldn't a scientist's instincts have been to rescue the end product of five years of development and millions of shekels of investment?

  “Perhaps this technician dragged the subject outside through a rupture in the wall of the structure, then returned to help others, only to die in the final explosion. Bedouins investigating the accident could later have come across the survivor, just as the Japanese astronomers claim.”

  Despite himself, Goene was taken aback by this scenario. “Surely you aren't suggesting that this Messiah character is the infusion subject?’

  “No,” Lazzlo answered, and then quickly countered, “although it isn't outside the realm of possibility. No one living knows what the test subjects looked like. As you are well aware, this was a highly classified project. Few researchers at the institute even knew the true nature of die operation. And those who did weren't allowed to take work home with them. Whatever records there were, they were all destroyed in die explosion.”

  Mosha Zerim, who, intentionally, never had more than a rudimentary connection with the project, was growing increasingly nervous. “Alleza, you and Ben were at the facility several times to review operations. Didn't you examine the subjects?”

  Goene shrugged. “All of them were wearing cranial monitors whenever I toured the facility.”

  Zerim was aghast. “You mean we have no mechanism for identifying a subject, if indeed one of them has survived?”

  “Yes, there's a way.” Benjamin Roth finally rejoined the conversation. “At least there's a way to identify the two enhanced subjects, and they're the only ones who could expose the operation, anyway. If you'll recall, there were originally four test subject embryos. Three of them had the Leveque biocircuitry chips implanted in their brains during their fifth month of development. The remaining fetus was left unaltered to serve as a control. One died as a result of the implant procedure, the rest survived, at least until the attack on the installation.

  “To identify an enhanced subject, all that's necessary is to X-ray or CAT-scan the cranium. The enhanced subjects were the only ones carrying Leveque biomicrochips, which would easily show up on X-ray. The one control subject had no such devices and would appear normal and pose no threat to us.”

  Lazzlo, staring reflectively at the table through all this, turned toward Goene and Roth. “Both of you saw at least the bodies of the subjects. You must have some idea of their apparent height, weight, shape.”

  “They were all encased in tanks of dark-colored fluid,” Goene explained, “on their sides, their limbs doubled up. It would be impossible to estimate with any accuracy.”

  “Then answer me this,” Lazzlo asked, “is there anything you saw in those vessels to rule out the possibility that this New Messiah might be a test subject?”

  Goene wasn't ready to concede his position. “Lazzlo, you saw the broadcast. The woman on that stage spoke a dozen foreign languages. Fluently. With perfect accents. How could someone born yesterday, quite literally, accomplish such a feat?”

  Lazzlo leveled his gaze at Goene and replied in an even voice. “Easily. If the infusion process was successful.”

  There was a dead stillness, and then Zerim folded his hands, placed them on the table in front of him and bowed his head. “Alleza. Ben. Did either of you see anything in those containment vessels that would rule out the possibility that this Messiah might be one of the test subjects?”

  Goene looked long and hard at David Lazzlo. “No,” he said softly.

  And Benjamin Roth concurred.

  “Then we have no choice,” Zerim declared. “As soon as it can be arranged, I want this Messiah person located and discreetly transported to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem for immediate X-ray. Alleza, you take charge of this operation and make damn sure it's carried out in absolute secrecy. Obviously, with all the media attention and publicity this woman is receiving, you must take great pains to acquire her quietly. If you find she's one of the enhanced subjects, you will hold her in confinement until further directions from Defense Minister Tamin.”

  A tired Mosha Zerim pushed back his chair and rose. The others rose with him.

  “You can rely on me,” Goene answered.

  Zerim took some relief in knowing that there was no more efficient or capable a soldier.

  “One more thing, Mosha.” Benjamin Roth raised a last, disturbing issue. “If this Messiah does prove to be one of our enhanced subjects, she carries the only Leveque neurochips in existence. The technology is priceless, to say the least. Recovering the microchips would help offset some of the staggering toll we're suffering from the loss of th
e institute.”

  Zerim acknowledged the point and they filed out of the room.

  The last to leave, Lazzlo placed his hand on the shoulder of Benjamin Roth in front of him and the older officer turned. “Tell me, Benjamin,” Lazzlo asked. “Can these microchips be removed without seriously injuring or killing their host?”

  Roth stared into the earnest eyes of his subordinate. “I don't know, David.” His face grew troubled. “I honestly don't know.”

  36

  WNN headquarters, Jerusalem, Israel 9:46 A.M., Tuesday, January 11, 2000

  A disgruntled former Samaritan underling named Thomas Brannan contacted Feldman's office with privileged information to offer. A good piece of intelligence these days would quickly go to the highest bidder, and WNN had cultivated a reputation for top dollar, promptly paid. But surprisingly, in this instance, the ill-at-ease, disheveled Samaritan that Feldman confronted wasn't interested in money. This was a moral issue with him.

  “It's all a sham, Mr. Feldman,” the anguished man cried. “The Messiah's gone.”

  Feldman was stunned.

  “She's been gone since the Friday after Her sermon. They had Her locked in a room, kept away from everyone. No windows, always guarded. And then they go in Friday morning to give Her breakfast and She's disappeared. Not a trace. They don't know how She got out. The security camera shows She didn't come through the door. I think She was brokenhearted at all the greed and evil, Mr. Feldman. I think She just gave up on all of us and went back to heaven.”

  “Tell me, Mr. Brannan,” Feldman asked, “did you spend any time with the Messiah? Talk with her? Get to know her at all? What's she like?”

  The man looked up and his eyes seemed to enter another world. “Oh, Mr. Feldman, She was wonderful. Incredible. No two ways about it, She was divine. Heavenly! But no, I didn't get to talk with Her or even see Her much—mostly just in passin’ as they took Her here and there. But She was so beautiful. Her skin just glowed. Mostly, though, it was what She did when She looked at you!