by Mark Kraver
“I better inform the press box we’re maneuvering out of the vicinity, in case they call for a camera angle,” Frank said, now fully awake.
“It has been a hot and beautiful first half of play here in sunny South Florida. Dolphins trailing the Rams, thirty-one to nothing,” Mat Morris announced on live television to start the halftime commentary.
“Miami sure does miss the days of having one of the greatest quarterbacks ever to play the sport,” Bob Grist added.
“Well, I don’t know. Miami’s been playing terribly,” said Morris. “They haven’t had the ball long enough to mount the offense needed to put points on the scoreboard. The Rams’ offense is dominating the ball.”
“Those two fumbles and a pick-six didn’t help either,” Grist added.
“Exactly, if you can’t keep your hands on the ball to score, you lose the game. It’s that simple.”
“Hey, listen to this,” Grist interrupted. “This is from the crew of the Goodyear blimp. You know they’re up there with a bird’s-eye view of this place. They said that a small, fast-moving storm is headed right for us—”
“Maybe that’ll be the ticket to turn this game around. Who knows?”
“They’ll need more than a little storm to turn this game around. They’ll need a miracle,” Grist said, laughing.
“My God,” Morris gasped, as the sunlight abruptly diminished over the stadium. Banners on top of the large coliseum began to flutter wildly. “I see the edge of the storm coming over the stadium.”
“Wow, do you think we need a tornado warning? Look at those clouds swirl,” Grist said, looking down from the press box at the panic-stricken spectators surging towards the exits to get to shelter.
“I don’t know, there’d be no way to evacuate everyone in time.”
“Well there must be—” Grist stopped mid-sentence. “Do you, do you see that? There’s a funnel. I see a tornado starting to drop down. We need to take cover.” He pushed back his chair to get under the commentary desk, tugging on Morris’ arm to do the same.
As Morris began to back out of his own seat, he froze. “Oh my God,” he said, “it’s touching down on the fifty-yard line.”
Grist rose quickly to see what Morris was talking about. “That’s incredible. It’s spinning there on the field. Would you look at that? I’ve never seen such a thing.”
Logan didn’t notice the stadium appearing when the cloud cover began to swirl around her. She had been distracted by the sight of cars—tens, maybe hundreds of cars—pulling over to the side of the road so that drivers and passengers could get out and witness them passing overhead.
As their cloud began to ascend over the top of the stadium, Logan realized where they were going. She mused that showing up as Jesus and the Virgin Mary at a live NFL game would not only make the front page of every newspaper around the world, but the front page of every sports section, too.
The tornadic winds twisted without disrupting the football field stadium, and Numen created a bright flash of light that simulated lightning, followed by crackling thunder. Alien shock and awe, Logan guessed, before introducing Mother Mary and her son Jesus Christ to the cameras.
“What do you make of that?” Morris shouted, covering his ears as the windows of the press box shuttered.
As the seconds passed, it became evident that the strange funnel on the fifty-yard line wasn’t going anywhere. Even stranger, Morris and Grist could see no signs of damage to the stadium from the phenomenon’s entry onto the field.
“Is this part of the halftime show?” Grist shouted.
“I don’t think this is part of the show, do you? Is anyone hurt?”
After another minute of stunned silence, security guards—who apparently also noticed the storm seemed inexplicably harmless—scrambled out on the field to assess the situation and saw Logan standing amid the swirling windstorm. At shouting distance, they recognized the majestic icons above her and began to cower.
“Come closer,” Logan yelled. “We won’t hurt you.”
The guards looked at each other and walked forward.
“That’s close enough,” she shouted, when the guards were almost close enough to see through the bent light of the graviton emitters. “I need a microphone.”
“Sorry, lady. I don’t know what sort of performance you’re trying to pull off, but you have to leave,” one of the guards shouted. “The half-time show is supposed to start.”
She looked at Yahweh. “I was afraid of that.”
Yahweh responded, “Do not fear.”
“This crowd might turn ugly.” She looked at all the spectators still in the stands, their faces a mix of surprise and agitation, and wondered, What next?
Yahweh’s projection of Jesus grew as it turned to look into the eyes of every single individual still inside the stadium, until he and Numen’s image of Mary became enormous. When they were both standing as tall as the stadium, Yahweh spoke through the speaker system. “My children,” he roared, squelching the overtaxed system.
“What did it say? ‘My children’?” Grist asked.
“That’s what it sounded like to me,” Morris answered.
Adjusting the frequency and amplitude, Yahweh continued. “I have returned. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending, which is, and which was, and which is to come. The Almighty.” His voice boomed over the stadium and into every TV viewer’s living room across the world.
“I am he that lived and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. I have the keys of heaven, of hell and of death.”
“That sounds a little creepy, don’t you think?” Grist said.
Yahweh continued, “He that has an ear, let him hear what I say to all the religions of the Earth. To him that overcomes will I give to eat of the Tree of Life, which is in the midst of Paradise. He who overcomes shall not have his seed hurt by the second death.”
The massive Jesus figure turned and looked around the stadium with arms outstretched. “But I have many things against you, because you have dropped stumbling blocks before righteousness, and committed offenses against the Earth that supports you. I know your works, your charity, your service, your faiths, and your patience, and the last to be more than the first. Repent, or I will come to you quickly and fight against you with the sword of my mouth and hand.”
The giant figure of Jesus lifted its arms for emphasis. “Behold, I have set before you an open door that no man can shut, for thou hast little strength and little time for the task. But I will deliver you and give you the morning star, that your seed will dine with me at Heaven.”
Saying these last words, Yahweh began to vanish inside the reappearing windstorm. The tornado took shape obscuring everyone’s view of the majestic figures as it reached into the sky. Yahweh left the stadium with these parting words: “I have returned to judge the quick and the dead, and my kingdom shall have no end.”
The tornado on the fifty-yard line returned to the air leaving behind a bolt of lightning and boom of thunder that, when subsided, left a deafening gasp on everyone’s lips.
The significance of the image and message finally dawned on the spectators in the stadium and players mingling with halftime performers on the field in confusion. Small groups of people began to kneel in prayer circles. Solemn words of prayer reverberated through the crowded stadium as each person realized they had witnessed something transcending the prejudices of ecumenical differences.
“Are we still on the air?” Morris asked into his mouthpiece.
“Stand by. Three, two, one,” said the producer. Morris could see the producer on one of the small screens; he was pointing forcefully at the stunned announcers and cameramen.
“I don’t know what to say.” Morris said, looking into the television camera. He turned to the field monitors, watching the slow-moving crowds in the stands continue to bunch into small groups and begin bowing their heads in prayer.
“I don’t know how the game can continue,” Grist said.
“It’s kinda lik
e the rapture, except no one is missing. At least—” Morris looked around the room. “—no one up here in the press box.”
“Okay, all right,” Grist said, holding his hand against his ear. He could see the producer waving his hands frantically and hissing at Grist through his earpiece to start talking about something—anything. Grist looked directly at the camera. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re cutting to a station break while we link this telecast to our national desk in New York, so we can continue the coverage of this mysterious happening at this stadium. Stand by.”
The storm cloud moved north-by-northeast from the stadium at half the speed of the cars driving along US 1. From every direction, it appeared that Jesus and Mother Mary were riding in the base of the cloud.
As news of the cloud hit the airwaves, people in the Miami-Dade area came out of their houses and stopped their cars along busy highways to glimpse the holy sight. Even weather junkies with their eyes glued to the television saw the divine event when Weather Channel personalities began following it on the radar.
The entire world was disrupted by the news that Jesus had returned for Judgement Day.
Inside the connectome, questions arose:
“Was it your idea to impersonate a deity?” Lanochee asked.
“Numen had planned every event up to that point. A few things even surprised me,” said Yahweh.
“But Numen is a bio-mechanical seraph,” Nadira said.
“When Numen was issued to me, I asked for my neural engrams and my father’s humor to be impressed on his subatomic network. The newly patterned algorithms were not well tested, and it apparently left room for improvisation.”
Chapter 25
The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.
Samuel Adams, 1722-1803, Earth
Library of Souls
Stargate
Chief of Staff, George Haney, stood in the doorway of the Oval Office and took a deep breath. “Mr. President,” he said, with the tone of voice he withheld for the most serious of matters, “I have something to discuss with you.”
The President, sitting at his desk watching the TV, didn’t look up right away. He was trying to gather his senses after an all-day vigil in the Situation Room. In just twenty-four hours, a blackout in communications had enveloped nearly half of South America, Australia and South Africa and now it was creeping towards his own country. The fact that no one around the world could figure out what the hell was causing the blackout was driving him crazy.
Haney took his silence as consent to enter.
“Oh hell, what is it now?” mumbled the President as the doors closed behind his most trusted advisor. “The Iranians haven’t nuked Israel yet, have they?”
“No sir,” said Haney.
“Hijackers haven’t taken another oil tanker?”
“No sir.”
“Where is that blackout now?”
“It has crossed the Tropic of Capricorn and is accelerating. That reminds me, the Ambassador of Mexico has been waiting to see you about the borders.”
“Good God, I hate talking with that guy. His English sounds like he has a whole potato in his mouth. My God, a quarter of the world is inside this blackout, and he wants to bother me with illegal immigration. Come on, really? I need to get back to the Situation Room. You talk to him, tell him the borders are staying closed,” he said, standing.
“We are still monitoring everything very closely,” Haney said.
“And?” the President asked. He was waiting to understand why his quiet TV time had been interrupted.
“We have another situation. Let me fill in some background. About five days ago NASA launched a minor satellite sponsored by SETI,” he said, fumbling through the paperwork he had carried in with him.
“The search for extraterrestrial life?” the President asked, sitting back down with a skeptical look on his face.
“Intelligence, yes sir.”
“Oh my God, don’t tell me the Stargate is true,” the President said, half joking.
“Not exactly. However, they did find signals.”
“And how many millions of lightyears away are they from us?” the President asked, peering over the top of his glasses with the look of 'You’re kidding me.'
“After some investigation the signal’s origins were found to be coming from Earth.”
“Signals from Earth? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Yes sir, three have been picked up, as far as we can tell; Florida, the horn of Africa, and the Black Sea off the coast of Bulgaria. We’ve already recovered artifacts from the Cape Coral site, but the others may prove to be more difficult.”
“Florida? What was it?”
“It appears to be three large separate metallic objects that were buried next to a house. Yesterday, the FBI dug it up, destroying the house—”
“What? Destroyed a house? They weren’t democrats, were they?” the President said, smiling. This was, he was beginning to suspect, just a joke.
“And they transported the pieces deep into the Everglades.”
“Why the Everglades?”
“There is a large abandoned air strip out there that is isolated and secure called the Big Cypress Swamp Jetport. It’s used for training now. The artifacts are stored in an old hangar.”
“What is it?”
“The artifacts? Still working that out. But wait. It gets better.”
“Really?” The president’s smile had vanished. Haney was being too detailed, too earnest; maybe this wasn’t a joke.
“A report an hour ago from a Colonel Solomon, Army Intelligence loaned to Space Command, states that the largest of the three objects opened revealing a golden alien and—wait.” He held up a hand to stave off the President’s interruption. “That was right before Mother Mary appeared and pulled a woman inside.”
The President sat up straight with his mouth agape.
“Ten minutes later the woman came out and wanted to be taken to—”
“Our leader?”
“A press conference.”
“A press conference? What? We didn’t let them go, did we?”
“It seems ‘we’ didn’t have any choice in the matter. The two aliens, that looked like Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary by the way, floated her off site inside a cloud toward the Miami area.”
“Jesus Christ? There’s two of them?”
Haney pursed his lips together and nodded.
“Who’s this woman? Is she on our side?”
“Her name is Dr. Katherine Logan. Astrophysicist from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. She’s the one in charge of the SETI satellite.”
The president put both hands to his forehead. “What in the—” He stopped to watch the lively scenes of the NFL game on the TV. The field and stands rich in colors of the Dolphins and the Rams grounded his cluttered mind with a familiar reality, as the first half appeared to have just finished and commentators were reviewing the stats.
“Rams are kicking Miami’s butt,” the President laughed. Haney shrugged; he was still reading more of the report. “How long have you known about these—aliens?”
“Not long. However, some of my staff have been following it much longer.”
“Where are they now?” the President asked, exasperated at yet another crazy thing to worry about.
“As of a few minutes ago it, ah, they were still headed toward Miami.”
“My God, trying to evacuate the Miami area will be a nightmare—what a bottleneck and their roads suck. Are there any signs of a threat?”
“None that we can ascertain.”
“A press conference, huh? What’s that going to cause? Panic? Is this a prelude to invasion? What do they want? What are we going to do about them?”
“Unknown, sir.”
“I hate that answer, I want it to be known, I want to know everything, now! Get defense and
the Joint Chiefs on this right now,” the President ordered, slamming his fist down on his antique desk.
Haney picked up his briefcase and headed towards the door.
“Wait,” the President shouted, holding up one hand and looking at the TV screen. “What the hell?”
Chapter 26
We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed.
Thomas Fuller, 1608-1661, Earth
Library of Souls
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The TV was the only monitor getting attention in the satellite lab. Every channel was reporting the amazing phenomenon that taken place during the NFL game.
A young female reporter was interviewing a woman screaming and crying outside the stadium. “Oh my God, Christ has risen. My babies are going to heaven. My babies—” she screamed at the camera and fell sobbing into the arms of a man who stood next to her.
The man continued the interview for her. “He came down like a giant tornado,” he wailed trembling. “It was awesome. His eyes were looking directly at me. It was—” He stopped speaking and broke down crying as well, so the reporter moved onto the next person for an interview.
“What the hell’s going on? Is this cloud some kind a joke?” Conrad asked the room without looking away from the TV. “And what’s happening with that blackout?”
“H-have you heard from L-logan on va-va-vacation yet?” asked Mac, his eyes equally captivated by the news.
“Vacation my ass,” Conrad shot back. “A few days ago, she said she hated Florida, and now she’s vacationing there? She didn’t even tell me where she was going. She’s down there looking at that artifact. What kind of explanation is an RFI artifact? If they’ve found it, why the hell hasn’t someone turned it off?”
“Maybe that’s why she’s down there. To find out,” said Booger.
“If she wanted to see it first-hand, she just had to ask. I wish she was back here with all of this crazy shit happening around the world,” raved Conrad.