by Mark Kraver
Mac was standing close to the television to better hear what the talking heads were saying about Jesus and Mary visiting Mecca, Saudi Arabia. He turned around, confused.
“You make a better door than a window.”
He was still confused.
“Get out of the way—the TV.”
“Oh,” Mac moved out of the way and looked down at what she was eating. “You know, that’s not chicken,” he said.
Logan stopped chewing a half-eaten morsel.
“It’s called non-amil. Tissue cultured cells packed with mitochondria that can be flavored into pretty much anything you can imagine, and then some.”
Logan didn’t know what to do. Spit it out or swallow it whole?
“It’s still meat. Just not derived from antibiotic and hormone pumped livestock animals full of lead and other heavy metals. Get it? Non-animal? Eat up. Everyone on earth will be eating it soon. It’s the only humane way to eat animal type protein, don’t you think?”
Logan bit her lower lip, her primitive gut craving more, but the origins of the food gnawed at her psyche like eating live worms.
“God what I’d do for a donut right now,” she complained, throwing down the rest of the nugget in her hand.
“And that’s another thing gone wrong on Earth,” Mac said.
“What? Donuts?”
“Carbohydrates. Homo sapiens were never meant to eat carbohydrates. At least not like we do today.”
“No more donuts?”
“I’ll make this simple. What does a cow eat?”
“I bet it would eat a donut.”
“Grass. Hay. Cows eat vegetation. Now, what does a tiger eat?”
“Cows?”
“Yes, meat. What did humans eat before the Agricultural Era population explosion? Before we got smart enough to plant the first seed in the ground to raise grain crops? Not donuts,” he said, shaking his head, sensing a smart-ass answer coming. “Meat, fats, vegetation, fruits, nuts, tubers, and tons and tons of…insects.”
“Oh man, you’re not going to make me eat bugs, are you?” Logan grimaced. “Especially not cockroaches.”
“What? You take a couple of handfuls of live roaches gut-loaded with spices, sauté them with sun-dried tomatoes and garlic in some lemon, basil, olive oil sauce until their wings fall off, and then spread them over a cauliflower crusted pizza. Amazing,” he said, smacking his lips, reminiscing about one of his mother’s recipes.
“Yuck, what kind of Italian are you?” she spat.
“What? You liked it the other day?”
“Oh my god, I’m throwing-up.”
“Listen, if you had grown up eating insects, you’d think nothing of it. I’m saying that humans were never made to eat carbohydrates like we do today. Our physiology didn’t evolve to handle it. Like cows cannot eat meat nor tigers eat hay. Our bodies don’t know what to do with all it. What little carbohydrates we did eat pre-agriculturally—fruits, the occasional honeycomb—were used that day for survival, and any leftovers went directly into fat, triglycerides, cholesterol. Humans are genetically addicted to carbohydrates for a good reason. It allowed our species to survive from feast to famine to feast without starving to death between kills. That’s why the genus Homo are good survivors.”
Logan smiled triumphantly. “See? We need donuts to survive.”
Mac shook his head and looked to the television. A new pair of faces had appeared but the words “Judgement Day?” scrolling across the news ticker suggested they were debating the same topic the last pair had chewed on for an hour.
He walked closer to where Logan sat eyeing her remaining non-amil. “No, we don’t,” he said. “Carbohydrates were never intended to help us survive from breakfast, lunch to dinner. The modern industrialized diet is more than sixty percent carbohydrates. It’s all basically turning into sugar, and the human physiology doesn’t know what to do with all the excess. It becomes toxic, causing an inflammatory response in every cell in our body, from our toes to the tip of our nose.”
“Sugar, huh. Is that why we have so many chubby children?”
“It’s not just the children. Child and adult obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, strokes, cancer. And don’t get me started on epigenetic changes to the maxilla that causes mouth breathing, posture problems, and obstructive sleep apnea.” Mac sat on one of the couches and shook his head in disgust. “If the Anti-Babel hadn’t come when it did, the next big class action lawsuit on the planet would have been against the sugar industry. It would have been bigger than even the tobacco lawsuit. Name the disease process, and it’ll be connected to our poor diet, somehow.”
“Vince’s cancer?”
Mac didn’t answer; he just looked at Logan, the frustration in his eyes softening into something more sympathetic.
“Mac are you a doctor, too?”
Their conversation was interrupted by a CNN special report by correspondent Chick Blizzard:
“The fleet, the entire Fourth Fleet, was consumed by the so-called Judgement Day blackout in the Persian Gulf, leaving Israel to rely on their Iron Dome missile defense system against what could be a nuclear strike by Iran. Our sources from the Pentagon confirmed before the loss of the fleet all its firepower had been concentrated on Iran between the thirtieth and thirty-third parallels. We should know within a few precious hours if nuclear Armageddon will wreak havoc in the Middle East…”
“Your Lord sure picked a bad time to leave the world in my hands,” Logan said, shaking her head at the television.
“Our Lord,” Mac was quick to remind.
“Right.”
The CNN special news report continued:
“This is just in from our international desk in Amman, Jordan. Karen Lamb reports the Iranian missile assault has intensified.”
The screen switched to a dark-haired woman with a colorful head scarf speaking solemnly to the camera.
“Over the past hour, Iran has rapidly accelerated their assault on the Israeli countryside. There are multiple reports of missiles falling through holes in the Iron Dome missile defense system and reaching the ground. Government leaders are frantic to intercept as many incoming missiles as possible, fearing one may be armed with a nuclear warhead. The blackout, dubbed Judgement Day, has already consumed the lower half of the country, and seems to be protecting them from rocket attack, leaving the north of the country to receive the brunt of the assault…”
It was turning into a long day of nonstop channel surfing. Logan sat on the big couch, switching from one news channel to the next, following coverage of the blackout as it moved from latitude to latitude to keep her mind from Conrad, who just moments earlier had snorted awake next to her, coughing up red phlegm into his wadded bloody rag, and then fell back to sleep.
Why was he so sick? she wondered. He looks like he is going die any minute, even before the Anti-Babel arrives. Logan watched and listened to the TV for the first sign of a nuclear Armageddon in the Middle East, but no mention came. Mac thought it would spoil their fun if he told them the cherubim spreading out across the world would automatically stop a nuclear weapons detonation anywhere on Earth, so he kept silent.
Eventually Logan lost interest in world affairs and became preoccupied with what she was eating. Before placing each piece of food into her mouth, she first looked at it closely, then smelled it for a few seconds, then touched it gingerly with her tongue. This attentiveness was helping to keep her entrenched in deep denial about Conrad’s condition and provided an excuse to give Mac the silent treatment. She was likewise absorbed with her baby’s rapidly growing knowledge base. It was like one non-stop questions and answering session inside her head that usually terminated with Logan reaching the ends of her stored biochemical neural pathway on the subject in question.
Logan’s two cherubim protector-guardians, Melvin and Theodore, appeared next to her. They were buzzing around acting crazy as usual, clearly wanting to cheer her up.
Logan set a piece of no
n-amil on her plate and exhaled. “I wondered where you went,” Logan said, a small smile playing on her lips. “Numen told me you have been watching over me all of my life?”
The two shy babies looked at each other and nodded their heads, laughing and squeaking like nutty cartoon characters.
“Which one of you helped me on my organic chemistry tests?”
After they both looked up, the one on the right raised his hand and waved it like he’d won a prize.
“I thank you for that. It was tougher than I thought. Drinking heavily the night before didn’t help much either, I’m guessing.”
The little cherub shook its finger at her and made a clicking sound of disapproval.
“What? It was college. It was fun. Give me a break. Your name is Melvin, right?”
The little cherub frowned and said in a low voice, “Theodore.”
“Okay, sorry. Which one of you got me my job with SETI?”
Theodore raise his hand again, and waved it excitedly, while Melvin crossed his arms and frowned. He obviously wanted to contribute to the little game Logan was playing.
“Okay, way to go, Theo. Now, who helps me picked out my clothing in the morning?”
Finally, Melvin erupted with excitement, waving his hand in Theo’s face and almost provoking a skirmish.
“Okay, calm down. I said calm down,” she scolded them, noting Mac’s disapproving mannerism as he watched them interact. “Which one of you helped me pick out the gravestone for my foster dad?”
The two cherubim looked at each other, and then both turned towards her with a solemn tone and pointed at her with their little fingers.
Logan sat for a few seconds reminiscing, “Now I don’t feel like such an automaton.”
She faded back to watching the television news stations. When Atlanta and Los Angeles were swallowed up by the blackout within five minutes of each other, everything seemed so surreal. Conrad was awake now, feeling a little perked up by his nap. He put his arm around Logan as they watched the coverage of LA turn to static; they both felt a connection to the area, that was where their work, home, friends, and colleagues were.
“Did you know Harold was a Russian spy?” Max said, breaking the monotony.
“What?” asked Logan.
“You’re kidding me,” exclaimed Conrad. “Big old Harold from Pasadena? He was transferred from Keesler to SETI, wasn’t he?” He would have thought he looked to unimportant and homespun to be living a double life as a Russian spy.
“He informed his cousin, who’s a Russian analyst, of both the Black Sea and Sudanese satellite signal locations.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“Me too,” she said.
“Don’t worry, those other two signals are now secure. Our Lord visited...”
“You mean that’s where he went after he dumped us off at the UN?” she said, frowning. “He’s been all over the TV. Mecca, Saudi Arabia? What’s that all about?”
“I sense you disapprove of the preparatory phase of the genesis?” he asked.
“You’re damn right.”
The blank look on Maximilian’s face spoke volumes. He had been raised all his life in Atlantis waiting for this very moment in time, so it was almost inconceivable to him that she would oppose the genesis while understanding so little about the big picture.
Logan saw the confusion in his face and felt her anger deflate just a little. She tried to think of why she was so angry. There were so many factors. She was upset with the loss of her parents, the path of her career, Conrad’s cancer, the constant subconscious chatter. And, of course, Numen and Yahweh leaving her to deal with all their fallout. She breathed and said simply, “He’s turned my life upside down.”
“You have been a critical element to the…”
“Genesis?” she snapped, cutting Mac off as her temper flared again.
“Now that’s the old Dr. Katherine Logan I’m used to,” he said with a wry smile and wink to Conrad, who had a little smile on his face as well.
“You’re an actor,” Logan said. “A faker. A spy. A spy for what? Atlantis? What kind of guy are you, anyway?”
“I was playing my part. That’s all. Like you,” Mac said calmly.
Logan shook her head in disagreement. “Yeah, but you knew you were playing. I didn’t.”
“Hey, check this out,” Conrad said, erupting into another bloody cough that he tried to hide by pointing to the TV. It was a newscast from WUNC-TV in Wilmington, North Carolina, showing the launch of the rocket that had sent their satellite into space. “He said something about our satellite launch.”
The announcer sat in front of the camera with a head bandage that covered one eye.
“…it was designed to detect radio signals based on the frequency of the water molecule. This made some sense due the fact that life as we know it is based on liquid water…”
“That really sounds lame now that I think about it,” Logan said, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Was this the true purpose of this satellite? I think not. Shortly after it was launched the satellite was thought to have malfunctioned. Something from Earth was interfering with its signal, causing an investigation that uncovered buried artifacts in Florida. This is footage from that discovery caught on camera from the air by Fort Myers member station WINK.”
On the TV screen a film clip showed the edited version of a crane lifting three large metallic objects out of a hole that consumed half a house, then lowering them gentle onto flatbed trucks.
“This unusual display of eminent domain by the FBI did not receive much national coverage because the very next day, the ‘Cloud of Christ’ captured the world’s attention.”
The TV screen transitioned to the figure of Christ looming over the Miami football game.
“This event began the thirteen hundred-mile, thirty-three-hour East Coast trek that sank this country into turmoil. It included a gunman’s attack on the cloud in Georgia, and a helicopter crash for which both my cameraman, Joey Campolo, and pilot, Barney Holloway, were killed. I suffered a broken arm and the loss of my left eye in the collision with the cloud as we were filming the miraculous event passing Wrightsville Beach.”
Photos of both victims showed on the screen.
“A miraculous event indeed that culminated in a spectacular alien tongue lashing against all humanity at the UN Building. Yes, I believe this is not Jesus coming to Earth for Judgement Day, but instead an alien invasion. An invasion designed to trick and deceive the religiously naive people of this planet. Designed to turn our heads away while they cover the world with this blackout. No one knows what this blackout really is…”
“I do,” said Mac. Logan hushed him.
“…but one thing is for sure, it is not Judgement Day, and those of us who are the most righteous will surely not wake tomorrow in the lap of God. Don’t believe everything you—”
The transmission ended in static.
“What happened? Blackout?” Conrad asked.
“I don’t know, but he’s got it pretty much figured out,” Logan said.
“All this blackout BS came out of Antarctica, right?” Conrad asked Mac.
Max frowned. “The Anti-Babel came out of Atlantis, yes.”
“Tell me about Atlantis. What’s it all about?” he asked.
Logan turned her attention away from the TV, leaned back on the couch, crossed her legs, and placed her hands on her distended belly, giving Maximilian her undivided attention. “Go ahead, I’m listening too, Mac,” she said. “You don’t mind me calling you Mac, do you?”
He didn’t answer Logan’s question and began speaking with a slight wistfulness. “Atlantis is my home. The only home I have ever known.”
“Lucky you,” Logan interrupted.
“Let him tell his story,” Conrad said, putting his arm around her.
“It is located on the continent of Antarctica under what your explorers named the Queen Maud Mountain Range.”
“Wait a minute. I thou
ght Atlantis was somewhere around Greece?” asked Conrad.
“We moved,” Mac said. “It is a continuous series of subterranean ice domes and tunnels where we live and work.”
“Work? Work on what?” asked Conrad.
“We grow food, produce heat, and other such things.”
“Like?” he prompted.
“Anti-Babel cherubim.”
“Cherubim? Like Theo and Melvin?” Logan asked, glancing around for the creatures.
“Yes and no. Our cherubim here are more sophisticated,” he said as Theo, Melvin, Bullet, and Oscar paraded proudly across the living room.
“How does one make a flying naked baby in the first place?” asked Conrad.
“Yeah, and whose idea was it to make them naked?” added Logan.
“I don’t know.”
“What?” Conrad looked skeptical. “You don’t know how they are built or why they are naked?”
“I don’t know, I wasn’t in the manufacturing sect. But they don’t understand either. We were used as a workforce to keep equipment cold and to supply raw materials. We didn’t design them or even put them together. That was done by Numen and—” Mac paused thoughtfully, then added “—the other.”
“What? You’re telling me the people of Atlantis, who are supposed to be the most intelligent people in the world, are used as slave labor?” asked Logan, ignoring Conrad who was pulling gently on her shoulder in a stop interrupting way.
“Keep going,” Conrad said. “Who was this other?”
But Mac was already answering Logan. “I wouldn’t call it slavery, exactly. The easiest analogy I have to offer is we are helpers.”
“Like Santa’s helpers, the elves?” he asked.
“Right.”