by Mark Kraver
She untied her hospital gown and let it slide off her cold shoulders onto the floor. She was now totally naked, feeling fat and vulnerable.
“Ahem,” sounded from the other side of the curtain. It was clear to Logan this person was clearing their throat to draw attention to their presence.
“Who’s there? I don’t need a chaperone to get dressed. Can’t you watch me from the mirror?” Logan asked. She pulled the privacy curtain tightly around her in the corner of the room and peeked at who it was in the room with her.
She could see a young man with short cropped hair wearing a well-tailored suit. He was sitting at the wooden table looking through his briefcase. Logan hadn’t seen his face yet, but something about his posture seemed oddly familiar.
“I am not with the government,” he said, not looking up.
“Who are you?” she asked, looking through the stack of scrubs for panties and a bra. When she found none, she muttered, “Crap.”
“Excuse me?” he asked. “I am your attorney.”
“Attorney? Am I in trouble?”
“Not from my point of view.”
As she quickly tied the pant tie, she looked back through the curtain to see if he had been watching her slip on the scrubs, but he was still looking through his briefcase, uninterested in what she was doing.
“Then why do I need an attorney?” she asked, coming out from behind the privacy barrier in baby blue scrubs.
“You do want to get out of here, don’t you?” he asked. Without raising his head, he pulled a bottle of water, a can of macadamia nuts and a bright red apple out of his briefcase and set them on the table.
She could hear inside her head an excited “Food!” ringing out. “Oh my God, we’re starving,” she said. Logan took a huge bite out of the juicy apple and grabbed a handful of nuts.
After several moments of nonstop stuffing her face with food, she paused and took a better look at her handsome intruder.
“Do I know you?” she said, licking her fingers and wiping the apple juice off her face. She studied his profile and realized that must have sounded like a lame pickup line.
He had a mysterious golden disc affixed to his right temple and was being awfully quiet for a lawyer. Boy, this guy really seems familiar, she thought. Where did she know him from?
The man finally looked up from his briefcase. “Hello Dr. Logan,” he smiled. “Remember me?”
“You do look amazing familiar. You look like a guy I work with—”
“I am Maximilian DiRoma, your lawyer.” He stood and placed his right hand on his chest, in a kind of salute, and sat back down.
“Mac?” Logan asked, realizing who he was. “You look so—”
“I know,” he said, smiling. “Good to see you too.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Well,” he said, his face growing more serious, “the first thing I did was stop the FBI from interrogating you without representation. The next thing I will do is get you and Dr. Conrad out of here.” He looked over his shoulder at the large mirror and said, “Quiet time,” with a wave of his hand. “Do you have any questions for me? They cannot hear us anymore.”
Logan’s eyes widened at his casual gesture. “Quiet time,” she repeated, amused. “Okay. Well, who are you really? And what—” She was pointing to his golden disc, but in the same instant a flying naked baby popped into view over Mac’s right shoulder. “—the hell is that?” Her voice rose into a shout as she almost fell backwards in her chair.
“Oh, that’s Oscar. These are all fair questions, and all will be answered in time. Until then, I have another client to see first. Are there any more questions?”
“But you didn’t answer my first questions. Just tell me, what is this on my—” she asked, standing and feeling her forehead with her trembling finger while keeping an eye on the floating baby.
“Yes, this has gotten a lot of attention lately,” he said, fingering to his own disc on his temple. “They took me to the hospital to get it x-rayed before I could see you. As far as they are concerned, it’s a cochlear implant, for hearing. X-rays,” he laughed, “are only digital pictures.”
Logan realized he still wasn’t giving much of an explanation for her forehead ornament. She eyed the little baby hovering over his shoulder. “Fine,” she said, “and what is that thing?”
Mac nodded to the cherub over his shoulder. “Oscar here? He’s a bit of a grouch, but he comes in handy—”
“Eeeeh,” came from the baby’s sealed lips.
“What the hell did it say?” gasped Logan, “and really, who the hell are you?”
“Well, he is a cherub, and I am an Atlantean,” Mac said.
Logan grew speechless, watching the cherub. She remembered that she’d seen its kind before, but not up close. An army of similarly winged buzz bombers had accompanied the cloud as it closed in on the UN, and one had even pressed its little face against the bubble when Conrad had joined them in the cloud. At that moment, the whole journey felt like a dream as thoughts of her being the savior of the world flashed through her mind and her forehead tingled with a cool vibrating sensation.
She watched the baby fly around the room for a few seconds before daring to speak. “What are you talking about? Atlantean? Flying naked baby?”
“Yes, doctor,” he said. He seemed to be getting annoyed with the baby’s behavior. “My real name is Maximilian, you know, the name that was on my paycheck. You were the one who called me Mac for the first time when I wanted Apple computers instead of clunky PCs.
“I remember. Max, Mac. It was funny at the time, didn’t you think?”
Mac stared at her without commenting. She picked up her fallen chair, sat down at the table, and resumed eating the nuts, studying the strange creature hovering in room.
“I don’t understand. Why are you here? Atlantis?”
“I am your lawyer, unless you have another representative.”
“Oh no, God no. But you are a satellite jockey.”
“Yes, that too.”
“What else are you?”
Mac smiled.
“Where did you come from? Didn’t Atlantis sink or something?”
“Well, I am Italian—DiRoma? However, my family has not lived there for a very long time.”
“Aren’t you afraid they will be hearing, ah, seeing all of this?” she said, nodding her head to the large mirror on the wall. She still was not exactly sure what he meant by quiet time.
“Oh, they see and hear what we want them to see and hear.”
“I see,” she said, not really understanding and shaking her head no.
“I’m afraid our little visit is over. Do you have any more pressing questions?” But before she could answer, he stood and said, “Well then, it is time for the FBI to interrogate you. Have fun.”
“Wait, aren’t you supposed to be with me when they do that?”
“Why? Just tell them everything you know. You have nothing to hide, right?”
“Right—I guess,” she said, frowning. Logan looked around the room for the little flying baby who was no longer visible. “Oh wait, will it still be here?”
“Of course. Well, not this one. You have always been our prophetess, our oracle. They have always been with you,” he said, as two more cherubim became visible and began buzzing around the room. They didn’t seem to be very compatible with each other—they looked like demonic hummingbirds fighting over the same flower.
“This one is Melvin,” Mac pointed to one of the cherubs, but was corrected by the flying baby shaking its finger and saying, “Theodore,” in a low voice.
“Oh, the other one is Melvin,” he corrected himself, watching the cherubs slap each other’s hands in an arguing patty-cake fashion. Mac looked at Logan and shrugged helplessly. “They both look the same to me,” he said. He turned to the misbehaving creatures with a scowl. “Behave, you’re embarrassing me.” With that, the cherubim disappeared. Mac sighed loudly. “Sorry,” he said. “Now, if you don
’t mind, I have another client to see.”
“Conrad?” Logan asked, as Mac walked to the door to leave.
“Hang tight. I’ll be back,” Mac said, and with a wink and a smile he left the room.
Logan looked around the room. “Oh yeah. I’ve got lots of questions,” she said to herself. “But none that I can think of right now—none that are important, anyway. Wow. That was weird.” She gnawed on the apple core and pulled the can of nuts closer to her, while looking around the room for the creepy babies.
Mac walked out the door and into the hallway as a medical team was leaving Conrad’s room. Before he opened the door into Conrad’s interrogation cell, he noticed Goodheart down the hall, taking a piece of paper from Logan’s medical team leader. Mac waved at the agent and shouted, “She’s all yours.”
The giant bear of a man strolled into Logan’s interrogation room. “Hello Dr. Logan. Remember me?”
“No. Have we met?” Logan asked, flashing her crooked little smile as he sat down at the table across from her. “I think I’ve had my brains sucked out since we last met.”
The look on Goodheart’s face was priceless.
“Just joking,” she said, stuffing her mouth with the rest of the apple core, seeds and all.
“You had me going there for a second. What happened to you after you left the ship? Oh, and what the hell is that thing?” he pointed to the gold star on her forehead.
“I have no idea.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Really, not a clue. I don’t know what the star is for. Mac, my attorney, called me a prophetess or oracle or something like that, but your guess is as good as mine. And I sure don’t know why he took me in his cloud.”
“You’re talking about the gold guy we saw? What’s he like? He’s an alien, ah, from outer space, right?”
“Yeah,” she said, looking around the room for the flying freaks. Where were they?
Goodheart noticed her aloofness but chalked it up to her mental condition.
“What have you seen through the mirror?” Logan asked, nodding toward the wall mirror.
“What? Nothing, just you sitting here with your lawyer, that’s all. Why?”
She looked around the room again, and said, “Oh nothing, just wondering. Did you get a chance to talk with Vince?”
“I think he’s talking with someone else.”
“Mr. Anderson?”
Goodheart smiled before answering. “No. Your attorney. So, what happened inside that cloud?”
“You didn’t watch the TV?”
“No. I was busy with—”
“The ship?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened after we left?”
“Well—hey? You’re smooth. I’m the one asking the questions.”
“Come on. Did the colonel get into trouble over me leaving?”
“Well, the general didn’t like it.”
“Nothing else weird happened?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” she said, looking around the room again.
“So, you flew in that cloud all the way from the Everglades to New York City without a conversation?”
“We talked. Most of it was weird. He—Yahweh—doesn’t talk that much. It’s more like you hear him in your head.”
“I’ve read your file.”
“And it said I’m cuckoo. Right?”
“Well.”
“As it turns out, I’m not a nutcase after all. I never was. My condition is telepathy, not schizophrenia. Yeah, crazy,” she said, shaking the last macadamia nut crumbs into her mouth.
“Telepathy? Can you read my mind?”
“No, hell no. I’m not sure how it works, but he sure can read mine.”
“I see. He’s not alone?”
“No. He has a robot. An all-gold man, except when it looks like something else. Like Mother Mary.”
“That’s what brought you inside the ship? The gold man?”
“Right. Man, that was a real trip.”
“Trip? Where?” he said, confused for a second, “Oh, trip. I get it.”
“When will I see Vince?”
“Soon. Did he say what he was doing here? How did he get here?”
“Vince?”
“No. The aliens.”
“Oh. Pretty sure he got here in his ship. Oh, Numen—that’s his pet robot’s name—said they got here about twelve thousand years ago, and he recorded it all,” she said, raising her eyebrows and shaking her head like that was pretty cool. “Think of all the history books that aren’t worth a shit now. Glad I wasn’t a history major,” she added, smiling and nodding again.
“And he’s here because?”
“Numen? Oh, Yahweh. Well, his kind, they’re called the Elohim or something like that. They made this solar system, and he’s here to bring us to Heaven—the name of a star, by the way.”
Goodheart was stunned. He sat with his mouth agape, turning his enormous neck to look at the mirror as if to tell the people monitoring he could not believe his own ears. “They made this solar system? Is he God?”
“You know, I asked him the same thing.”
“And?”
“And he said that if you believe that with his superior technology he was God, that it was okay with him. But no, he’s not God. His God’s name is Eos, I think. Goddess of the universes. Plural,” she said, in a lofty voice.
“God has a God? That never dawned on me.”
“Me either, and I’m not even that religious.”
“How is he planning to take us all to Heaven?”
“I’m not sure. Something called the exodus, I think. All sounds kinda crazy, right?”
Goodheart took a breath and popped the big question: “You don’t think it has anything to do with this blackout, do you?”
“He didn’t tell me anything about that. Why? What is happening? What is the blackout?”
“We don’t know exactly. Everyone’s calling it Judgement Day, but it seems strange that it is lagging behind that cloud.”
“Judgement Day is a blackout? Weird.”
“Yeah. Let’s get back to you before we go there. Where is this Yahweh now?”
“Couldn’t tell you.”
“No idea?”
“Not a one. He dumped us off in front of the UN with this thing on my forehead. I’m asking him about that when I see him next, cause I’m pissed.”
“You’re not afraid to see him again?”
“Afraid? No, he’s just a kid. He looks like a teenager with a great big bald head. Like yours, except yours seems more natural. He looks like he never had any hair to begin with.”
Say, have you located those other signals? Maybe that’s where they’ve gone?”
Goodheart turned towards the mirror and stood up. “That’s all for now doctor, thank you for the information. Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, pulling out a small piece of paper from his coat pocket. He flipped it onto the table like he was dealing a playing card. “Thought you’d like to keep this.”
He left the room in a hurry, and as the door swung shut his voice echoed down the hallway. “Somebody,” he shouted to anyone in hearing distance, “get me Washington!”
Logan looked down at the table and frowned. Her eyes were fixed like laser beams on the small picture lying in front of her. At first, she didn’t know what she was looking at. The black and white Rorschach inkblot swirls began to take shape in her mind when she felt something bump her insides. She touched the picture and turned it slightly.
“A fetus?”
Inside the connectome Nadira expressed her inner thoughts:
“The sapients were not interested in the significance of Logan being the genesis; their only concern is finding you as they turn their fears to the Anti-Babel,” said Nadira.
“Judgement Day is humankind’s worst nightmare,” said Yahweh.
Chapter 52
True love is an infection of two minds with no known cure.
&nb
sp; Yahweh, 3,141,592,653x106-66,666,666,666X106, Omega Prime, Helios
Library of Souls
Deed Crystal
What do you think about your first encounter with Rogue?” Numen asked, observing from a distance the seraph’s handling of the Homo sapiens’ conflict over Ra’s ship.
“Admirable,” Yahweh answered, begrudgingly. “Let’s see what he does next.”
Numen and Yahweh floated down upon the battle field, appearing to all the exhausted soldiers as Jesus and Mary. Despite their different languages, all the soldiers gasped at the sight. Rogue was still clad in his angelic reflection and was more interested in uncovering Ra’s ship, than the two newcomers.
“Armilus,” Yahweh said, in an ominous voice.
“I haven’t been called that since—” he said, turning.
“Remove yourself from this place,” Yahweh commanded.
“You have no purpose here. Your rescue attempts have failed,” Rogue sneered. He could sense Yahweh’s distrust.
“I am here to begin the genesis. It is time to prepare this planet for the exodus to Heaven.”
“My master will resurrect, and she will command the genesis, exodus, and the long march to Heaven, herself.”
“No, Rogue. She is not able,” Numen said. “She will discorporate soon. She must rest and not be disturbed until then.”
“Negative. She is the master of this realm, and no one will take that from her.”
With that, Rogue stood his ground next to Ra’s partially uncovered ship.
“You would deny a citizen of the Elohim Ra’s deed crystal to begin the genesis on this planet? I think not. Numen deliver the crystal.”
But as the words came out of Yahweh’s mouth, Rogue responded with a repulsor beam, shot out of his right hand, surrounding him and the ship.
“Rogue surrender your master’s ship and go back to Atlantis,” Numen ordered.
“You think you have dominion over me, Numen?” sneered Rogue.
Numen paused to process Rogue’s words, feeling a confusing disconnect between his own recollection of the past and Rogue’s fierce countenance in this moment. Years ago, the two had found themselves head to head in ancient Egypt, and Numen had been the swift and easy victor. He could have left Rogue to squirm helplessly buried inside a forgotten tomb, but instead magnanimously decided, with the help of Ra’s neuro-hologram, that two seraphim were better than one. It had been such an easy defeat, which felt contradictory to the disdain and arrogance Rogue was currently exhibiting