The End-Time Foretellers

by Ran Weber

  “I don’t think he’s in any condition to go anywhere.”

  “Check,” I said, “you might be surprised.”

  He asked that I move aside and wait while he checked something on his phone. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I saw him nodding a few times.

  “Please,” he said, “go inside. Norman is fully conscious, interesting.”

  “Very interesting,” I said to myself aloud and drove inside with the vehicle. I parked in the main parking lot in front of the large villa.

  I leaped out of the car and went into the lobby. The receptionist gave me a suspicious look. I took out my FBI ID and showed it to her. She smiled apologetically and said in a low voice, “He hasn’t been given any medication today for some reason. I have no idea what he might do. If you are taking him in this state, the responsibility is yours. Just tell me if you want one of the orderlies to anesthetize or sedate him a little.”

  “No, it’s all right,” I said. I looked at the sofa in front of her. A man of about fifty, his hair carefully combed, sat in it, holding a bag in his hand. He had a small mustache and his hair had grayed, but I still recognized Norman Watts. He had a hollow look in his eyes and I was hoping I’d be able to get the information out of him. I turned my gaze back at the receptionist and filled out the forms.

  “Are you intending to get him back here?” she asked with some concern.

  “Maybe,” I said, “why?”

  “Oh, no reason,” she said and shrugged, “all in all, he’s all right. With the medication he’s also relatively quiet.”

  “Why did you take me out?” Norman sat beside me in the car all hunched up and holding the bag in his lap.

  “I’m supposed to transfer you to another facility.”

  “You’re not an agent.”

  “I’m not?”

  My phone vibrated. From the corner of my eye I saw that it was Rami. “I can sniff an agent a thousand miles away. You don’t smell or look like one.”

  “If I’m not an agent, then what am I?”

  “I don’t know,” said Norman and gazed at the winding road. “Maybe something else.”

  “You’re right,” I nodded.

  “I am?”

  “The End-Time Foretellers.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  83

  “Senator?”

  “Yes,” the senator answered impatiently.

  “We have a little problem.”

  “What happened?”

  “Norman has disappeared.”

  “What do you mean ‘disappeared?’”

  “He’s not in the facility.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Someone has taken him out of the facility.”

  “Taken him out?”

  “Yes. He said he was transferring him to a different facility. We weren’t able to obtain further information, because he said the new facility has a higher security clearance. It really is in the computer…”

  “Who authorized it?”

  “Excuse me, Sir?”

  “Who authorized this transfer?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Who took him out?”

  “An agent named David Peterson.”

  “Peterson!” said the senator and scratched his head. “I’ve heard that name today. Get me Harvey on the phone.”

  84

  Muir Woods, North of San Francisco, California

  “Get into the forest,” Norman suggested and rubbed his temples.

  A large sign that read “Muir Woods” towered in front of us. I took a sharp turn to the path leading into the forest. “Is it safe here?”

  “One hundred percent. They won’t look for us here, at least for the time being,” said Norman with the bitter smile of a man who is familiar with the System.

  I had prepared for my fateful meeting with Norman Watts. Based on the data I’d fished from Jim’s computer, Norman Watts was the man behind developing the system. After the system had become usable and was provided to Israel, there were many disagreements between Norman and those in authority. They could not afford to get rid of him, but could not allow him to roam about freely either. Incarceration in a state of sedation at a federal facility presented a convenient solution.

  My cell phone vibrated again. Rami could be a real pain sometimes. I decided to get back to him later. I had enough on my mind at the moment.

  I parked at the entrance to the forest and we both exited the vehicle. “Trees comfort me,” said Norman and spread his hands. “This is simply amazing. It’s wonderful here, isn’t it?”

  I wanted to answer, but he continued before I had the chance. “Just so you’d know, trees never have malicious intentions. They simply grow and live their lives. People, well, that’s a whole other story. Take ten minutes to connect with the trees,” said Norman and sat on a bench.

  “No need,” I said and sat beside him.

  “I insist,” he said. “Please give me ten minutes before we continue, I’m not going to try and run away.” Judging by the expression on his face, it was apparent that the effect of the medication was wearing off. “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. I need a few more minutes to get the medication out of my system. Good thing they hadn’t given me any today.” He paused for a moment and a spark ignited in his eyes. “You were the one who asked to take me off the meds today?”

  I smiled.

  “Anyway,” said Norman, “I can’t run anywhere, trust me and take ten minutes for a walk in the forest. This is an amazing forest, it’ll be worth your while,” he said in a softer tone. “And… can I use your cellphone? I have a brief call to make and you’ll have a little peace and quiet being without it for a few moments.”

  Distractedly, I handed him my cell phone and rose.

  I walked away from Norman with mixed feelings. I knew that putting too much pressure on him right away won’t do me any good. If he didn’t want to tell me the secret of how to get to the code, even somersaulting in the air wouldn’t help. I preferred to let go and take a walk in the forest for a few minutes just as he’d suggested.

  I had never visited such a forest. The trees were hundreds, or even a thousand years old, towering dozens of feet up into the air. Some had openings that allowed you to stand inside their trunk. The openings looked as if they had been caused by fires that had taken place in the forest over the years.

  A pleasant wind blew and the air was cool and refreshing. How does it feel to live in a place like this? I wondered, far from all the noise and commotion.

  I remembered Binyamin and the way he sometimes liked to seclude himself. He said the best place for doing that was a forest. Now, here I was in a forest. What should I talk about? I asked myself. Binyamin had said it was all right not to talk at all at first. He said that being secluded from other people, in contact with yourself, that was big enough already. He was right, it felt good. Alone in the forest without communicating with anyone, without any pretenses, without behaviors that had to do with other people. Alone with the silence.

  I closed my eyes. I sought something inside, a shred of an idea, or something to say. It felt forced, but there was also something about it, about standing completely by myself, without talking to anyone, without dealing with my life, a feeling of “zooming-out”, a “timeout” from my life.

  I opened my eyes in fear. How could I have left Norman alone with my cellphone?

  I quickly made my way back to the bench where I’d left Norman. It was empty. Norman had vanished and so did my cellphone.

  85

  Tel Aviv

  “So where is he if he’s not in San Francisco?” Rami roared into the receiver.

  “I have no idea,” Ehud answered calmly.

  “What do you mean? He doesn’t answer my calls. Are you telling me you have no idea wh
ere he is?”

  “Rami,” said Ehud, “you know that he doesn’t report anything to me. I already told you, he’s doing what he feels like, whenever he feels like doing it. Maybe he’s with the Iranians now and not in San Francisco. Maybe this whole trip thing was just one big charade.”

  “Iranians?” asked Rami, “what are you blabbering about?”

  “He didn’t tell you about meeting with the Iranians and getting money from them?”

  “Ehud, you’re getting on my nerves.”

  “I have pictures.”

  Silence.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have pictures of his meeting, or one of his meetings, with the Iranians. I’ll gladly send them to you. There’s one specific picture depicting the envelope with the money they’d given him.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Should I send them to you?”

  86

  Muir Woods, North of San Francisco, California

  Even a novice wouldn’t have made such a mistake, I thought. Who knows where he’d gone to? Even if he hadn’t run away, perhaps the medication had clouded his mind and he was now dancing with fairies and butterflies in some remote part of the forest.

  I tried to remember if I heard a PA system, or something similar in the forest. I thought about reporting that my brother, who is a bit mentally deranged, had gotten lost, but couldn’t see any park rangers about.

  I messed up big time, I said to myself while running and scanning the forest. From far away, I could see a figure that reminded me of him. It was holding a cellphone and talking passionately. I got closer, it was Norman.

  “Yes, mother,” he whispered into the cellphone, “I have to hang up.” He looked at me with embarrassment. “Explaining to your mother that you weren’t able to call her because you were in a federal prison isn’t easy.” He returned my cellphone and with it, the regular rhythm of my heart, which slowly returned to normal.

  “I was worried,” I said.

  He looked at me and pointed at the vast forest. “Some forest, eh?”

  We started walking together. Slowly.

  “Tell me,” I asked, “why are there so many burnt trunks? Isn’t it possible to prevent fires in a place like this?”

  “They tried to prevent the fires. Understand, these trees have been here for hundreds of years. They got along just fine before we came along, they didn’t need our interference. Nature doesn’t need our interference at all, we ruin everything. We think we understand what is good and what isn’t, but nature doesn’t like our forced order. We need to take apart the violent mechanisms we’ve built, let the forces of nature do their work. The rangers,” he said seriously, “thought that the fires should be stopped and put them out as soon as they started.”

  “And?”

  “The fires are part of the cycle of nature. When they stopped the fires, the trees began to die. The trees need these fires. The fire destroys all the bushes, ferns and vegetation that sometimes suffocate the trees, but it also helps them. Once they started letting the trees burn, they saw that it wasn’t so bad. The trees here survive it, at least the natural fires. I don’t know if they survive the fires caused by stupid hikers. But fires are a part of nature. You need to destroy something in order for it to regrow, that’s the way nature works. The seed has to enter the soil and rot, it is only then that a new tree can grow. You can’t hold on to the past. You can’t stop these fires by force. The fire is not our enemy.”

  “It isn’t?” I asked.

  “No!” he cried, “our true enemy is our fixation, our attempt to fixate the ecosystem, to decide what’s good and what isn’t. Who are we to decide for the forest whether or not it needs fires? We are not smarter than the forest.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “This terrible system we’ve developed is also ruining the political ecosystem in the Middle East, destroys an equilibrium created over the course of years!” He fixed the glasses on his nose and smoothed his mustache with his fingers.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The balance. There was a great political balance there; no country was truly able to threaten the other. Now, with the Pillar of Fire, Israel has an absolute advantage over its neighbors. Israel can decide to attack all the neighboring countries and no country could attack it back! This is truly terrible,” he said with sorrow.

  I felt like tossing him over the bridge situated down the road but stopped myself. I wanted to hear what he had to say.

  It was a wooden bridge, like a hanging deck designed to allow small animals pass under it. The forest was very soothing, not a very fitting backdrop for our conversation. Small ferns were entangled about the thick trees, birds chirped and a small water stream flowed next to us. A true fairytale forest.

  “But then you’ve had a wonderful idea, didn’t you?”

  “Exactly!” he said and his eyes woke. “I built a back door into the system…” he paused for a moment. “You didn’t hear it from me, right?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be successful?” he looked aside and then came closer. “I mean to say, you intend to pass on the code to the Iranians, right?”

  “What do you think? If I’ve managed to get all the way to you.”

  “Wonderful,” said Norman and smoothed his mustache again.

  “In short, it doesn’t really matter how the system recognizes the code on the internet, but it draws it online in real time and stops working for a period of time that will allow the missiles to infiltrate. This will be a deterring factor for the Israeli government!” he said with pride.

  “So I understand it is virtually impossible for someone to find out where to ‘plant’ the code on the internet.”

  “Not only is it impossible,” said Norman secretively, “you need to plant the information in three different places, and actually, not on exactly on the internet. Let’s just say that it needs to be planted in places that have a heavy information security system. You can’t just break into such places and plant a code in them. Only the American president has direct access.”

  “I understand,” I said. “And that’s it?”

  “What do you mean ‘that’s it?’”

  “The moment the president sends a simple code to these three places, the system stops working?”

  “Simple? Who said anything about simple?”

  “I just made an assumption.”

  “No, no. Not simple at all,” he got excited. “Every code contains hundreds of thousands of characters.”

  “Hundreds of thousands of characters?” I asked with mock admiration.

  “Yes!” he declared.

  “But…” I scratched my head, “that’s a huge code. How do you even…”

  “Oh,” said Norman and smiled, “actually, every image on the internet can serve as a code. An image is composed of thousands, or millions of binary numbers serving as its digital representation. Roughly speaking, you could say that a black dot is represented by a zero, while a white dot is represented by a one.”

  “I understand,” I said. I decided continuing to feign ignorance would be to my advantage. “So if there is an image of a black line with a white dot in the middle, it could serve as a code for zero, zero, zero, one, zero, zero, zero?”

  “Exactly!” he said. “You catch up quickly.”

  “But… it has to be a landscape picture, for example?”

  “Not really,” he said and came a little closer, “you won’t believe what code I chose. The army doesn’t care, the president received a USB flash drive with the code. As far as they are concerned, it’s a code with hundreds of thousands of bits, they don’t even know what is supposed to come out. The moment the president sends the code to the three places, it will appear there like the original image, understand?”

  “Sort
of. So… is this a picture of someone you know?” I smiled. “You’ve decided to put a picture of yourself?”

  “Not really,” he said, “the code is actually a scanned and encoded text of a song I really love. The text encoded as an image is actually a long code planted into the system. It’s my little pleasure, that song, I love it so much. And getting it with the same exact print, with the changing shades of the paper… that’s virtually impossible! Genius. Simply genius!”

  “Impressive!” I said.

  “Thanks,” said Norman with a shy smile. “My mother always said I have an artist’s soul. Where can an artist express himself in the disgusting environment of the army? This is how I put my own individual stamp on things. This song is what will save the world from all this aggressiveness! Only the songs can make a difference. Do you understand the irony?”

  “Hold on, and what exactly do you do with that song?”

  “You need to scan it into the computer, save it… I’ll explain it so you’d understand the genius involved,” he said vainly. “You scan the song with a resolution of 1,200 dots per inch, and then save it in PDF format in maximum quality. The trick is to save it in a less standard resolution… it doesn’t matter which exactly at the moment, but not 1,200 DPI, or not even 600, or 300. Those resolutions are too standard, yes?”

  I nodded. I started to feel strange.

  “It doesn’t make a lot of difference, visually speaking, but there is something in the algorithm reading the song, such little distortions in the resolution provide the exact information. Understand?” he cried excitedly. “People read the song on the newspaper and think this is about the song itself. I read it and realize that it is actually a digital code. Everything is a digital code! Everything you see around you – trees, birds and people, everything is digital codes.”

  “All right,” I said gravely.

  He flashed a satisfied smile. “What do you say? Amazing, isn’t it?”

  “Could I possibly see the song?” I asked with restraint.