God of God

by Mark Kraver

  “And Santa is Numen, not Yahweh because he was—”

  “Hibernating, correct. Understanding how to make a cherub would be like trying to explain how this 4K light-emitting-diode high-definition television worked to a Neanderthal,” Mac said, pointing to the flat screen hanging on the wall. He paused for a second, noting the TV static, and continued. “First you’d have to start talking about elemental atoms, electrons, and then electricity, not to mention how to read, write, and do arithmetic.”

  “I get your point,” Logan grinned. “But you wouldn’t have to go back to the Neanderthals to find a human too dumb to learn that stuff.” Logan heard giggling laughter inside her head, as if she was the one being laughed at. “Our brains are still so primitive. That’s why we need the Elohim born here on this world, so they can build the technology for our exodus to Heaven. Before our sun explodes into a red giant star.”

  “I do believe you have it,” Mac said, with great relief in his voice.

  “Who is this other you spoke about?” Conrad pressed for an answer.

  Mac nodded at the question, as if he too had wondered the same. “I’m not entirely sure. Many of us have seen from time to time another entity that looks like a seraph. It is very elusive and only interacts with Numen and the elders.”

  “I see,” Conrad said, clearly disappointed by the explanation. “Okay, well why did you mention keeping the equipment cold? Wouldn’t it be cold enough under the ice of Antarctica?”

  “Excellent question. Have you ever heard of a quantum computer?”

  “Sure, it’s experimental. Supposed to be really fast.”

  “Yes, it is, and hot. It is how we warm the subterranean complex of Atlantis. It is also one of our main products.”

  Both Logan and Conrad frowned, not following him.

  “The Antarctic and Greenland quantum computers—”

  Conrad leaned forward. “Whoa, whoa, Greenland?”

  Mac nodded his head, “—are connected relativistically through quantum entanglement to run the programming and machinery needed to control the Anti-Babel cherubim, and to warm the seas and produce oceans of freshwater.”

  “Freshwater?” Conrad questioned.

  “You’re telling me the quantum computers are the real reason why we’re experiencing global warming?” Logan asked. “You’re deliberately heating up the world? Is this a plan or an unfortunate byproduct?”

  “Oh, it is deliberate. As we speak, seas of under-ice freshwater are gushing out into the oceans at a rate never seen on this planet. It flows into the great oceans that circulate warm water around the globe, disrupting their deep currents, and making them become stagnant. Without this vital distribution of heat around the Earth, areas of the world normally warmed by these currents will begin to freeze. More ice on the planet means more sunlight reflected from the already diminishing sunlight, and the results will be…”

  “An Ice Age?” Logan spouted-out the first thing that came to her mind. “And I thought we had global warming to worry about.”

  “Right. An Ice Age of the likes not seen on Earth, ever.”

  “I don’t get it. This is all so you can run your stupid computers?” she asked, ignoring her inner voice.

  “That is part of it, but not all of it. The main overall reason for what is happening around the world is the exodus. The red giant cometh.”

  “How will this help the exodus?” Conrad asked.

  “Timing. Timing is everything. These questions will be answered in the future,” he said.

  Logan turned her eyes back to the TV and punched the remote to find a different news station not already consumed by the blackout. “There goes San Francisco. Washington, DC will be next, and then it will be us in about two hours,” she said, reaching for the last chicken thingy. “Are there any more of these non-amils? Why don’t you send one of those flying buzz bombers out to get some real food?”

  “It must be completely terrifying to not know what will happen when the blackout hits,” Conrad said, with another bloody productive cough. He took the remote from Logan and stared at the TV screen as he flipped through tens, maybe hundreds, of static channels.

  “If I’m the spokesperson for all of mankind, then I need to get out of here and speak,” Logan said, jumping up from the couch after watching another depressing newscaster disappear into static.

  “I’m pretty sure you are not supposed to leave this apartment until after the Anti-Babel passed,” Mac said.

  “Well, that’s too bad. People need to know what is coming, and I’m going to tell them,” she said, walking toward the door.

  “Wait! What are you to do? Stand on the side of a New York City sidewalk like some kind of psycho street walker telling everyone about Judgement Day?” Conrad asked, trying to bring her back to reality.

  “Well,” she said, pausing. “When you put it that way, it does sound a little ridiculous.”

  “Besides, I expect everyone is trying to escape to the North,” said Max.

  “That’s my point,” she said, turning for the door again.

  “Whoa, what point?” Conrad asked, heading her off at the doorway with a shooting pain in his side.

  “That people are frightened and are trying to escape this, whatever they think it is.”

  “Anti-Babel,” said Mac.

  “Whatever,” she said, pushing past Conrad into the private elevator. She pushed the ground level button and stood for a few seconds, holding the door open button. “Coming concubine?”

  Both Conrad and Mac looked at each other, and then jumped into the elevator as the doors began to shut. The ride down was quiet; there was just something about riding in an elevator. Despite the heated exchange that had preceded the ride, no one knew what to say while the doors were shut. When the doors popped opened at ground level the veil of silence broke.

  “You know I don’t like being called your concubine,” Conrad grumbled.

  “Then do something about it,” she said, walking towards the front doors of the seemingly vacant high-end apartment complex.

  “Who will you talk to?” asked Mac.

  “Not sure yet,” she said, walking out the apartment main doors and onto the deserted street. “Where is everyone?” she asked seeing the town completely empty of the usual crowded streets, snarled traffic jams and honking taxi cab drivers.

  “Everyone’s evacuated to the north. Canada maybe. They are all terrified of Judgement Day,” Mac guessed.

  “Now what?” Conrad asked. As he spoke, a stretched limousine with diplomatic flags squealed its tires around the corner.

  “Not sure,” Logan said dreamily, walking out into the street.

  “What are you doing?” yelled Conrad as he watched Logan step into the path of the on-coming oversized automobile. The limo was barreling toward her without stopping.

  Logan was standing still, challenging the limo to hit her, when she suddenly shot straight up into the air like a rocket. The limo squealed its tires to a stop, swerving to avoid hitting the spot where she had been a fraction of a second earlier.

  “¿Qué demonios hace usted?” shouted the driver, erupting from the limo brandishing a pistol. Logan could hear his words instantly translated inside her head: “What demon are you?” He looked up in the air at Logan levitating thirty feet over the road with his mouth agape. The back door of the limo slammed opened, and a silver haired man emerged who looked up in amazement.

  “Sir, back in the car,” the driver ordered.

  “I know who this is,” the dignitary said, putting out his hands to quiet his faithful driver. “Prophetess? Is that you?” he called up to Logan, noting that the floating spectacle looked a little fatter than he remembered. “I saw you at the UN building. Please, we are at your service.”

  Logan hovered, still feeling relieved she hadn’t misjudged her guardian cherubim, or she would have been flattened like a pancake by the massive car’s front bumper. She was looking at Conrad’s furious face, not sure if she wanted to come
down, when her two escorts began lowering her to the ground. Conrad stomped towards Logan, looking like he was readying to strangle her in the middle of the street, but was stopped by her flippant ‘talk to the hand’ gesture. Keeping her palm up toward Conrad, Logan turned to address the regal dignitary.

  “Kind sir, who are you, and where are you going?”

  “I am the Mexican Ambassador, Ricardo Vallejo, at your service.”

  “Oh, sorry to hear about your country,” she said, resting her hands on her enormous belly.

  “Sí, no one has heard a word from my country since the judgement consumed it.”

  Logan cast a stern look at Maximilian, stifling him before he could say a word.

  “And where are you headed?” she asked.

  “Saint Peter’s Catholic Church. Why do you ask?”

  “That is where we are heading as well. Do you have room for us in your limousine?” she asked, patting her distended belly with her hand.

  “Sí, but of course. It would be my honor,” the Ambassador said, bowing to her. “Carlos, help them,” he said, directing his driver to help them into the limo.

  Inside the limo, Conrad sank into the deep seat next to Logan. “Why church?” he asked, maintaining a tight smile and barely moving his lips as he spoke closely into Logan’s ear.

  “What else is open?” she asked, similarly smiling as she settled into the spacious backseat.

  Logan, Conrad, and Maximilian sat on one side of the luxurious limo, and the Ambassador sat on the other. It was almost as awkward as standing in an elevator.

  “The blackout should be hitting Washington about now,” the Ambassador commented, looking at his flashy counterfeit Rolex.

  “And thus, endeth partisan gridlock,” said Mac, receiving a sharp elbow to the ribs and the stare of death from Logan.

  Chapter 64

  All religions must be tolerated... for every man must get to heaven in his own way.

  Epictetus, 55-135, Earth

  Library of Souls

  Talking Donkey

  Conrad stood quietly reading the back of a dusty pamphlet he’d picked up off the ground. Saint Peter’s Catholic Church has stood on the island of Manhattan for over 200 years, originally built outside the city limits due to anti-Catholic sentiments. It now serves as a beacon of religious worship for over two million New York City Catholics—a time capsule of faith nestled under colossal, sky-scraping fingers pointing to heaven.

  Logan stood under the massive Greek columns thinking about the last time she had been in a church. “You remember the last time you went to church?” she asked Conrad. She noticed the way he was leaning against a ‘no parking’ sign, trying to steady himself.

  Clutching his side in pain, Conrad nodded weakly. He’d lost a great deal of blood, both externally through coughing and internally from the oozing of malignant tumors eroding his vessels, and he was feeling dizzy.

  “Yes. Yes, I do,” he answered with a sigh, followed by a violent bloody productive cough. He dropped the pamphlet and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. For all of Conrad’s ailments and weaknesses, memory was never a problem. He could remember the last conversation he’d had with his church pastor as a teenager. It wasn’t a fond memory. He remembered asking the gentle older man why in the Old Testament God was so mean, and in the New Testament God was so good. How could his pastor have known that not answering his question and telling him to go back to Sunday school would shape Conrad’s religious beliefs for the rest of his life? Or that the exchange would be why he went into astrophysics in the first place?

  “Come on concubine,” she said, gesturing to both Conrad and Maximilian with a wink and a crooked little smile as she tore open a non-amil cheese stick package with her teeth. She stuffed the entire contents into her mouth in a very unladylike manner, then reached out to take Conrad’s arm.

  He fell into step next to Logan, allowing her to steady him. “You know I hate being called that,” he said with a groan.

  “I know, I know,” she said, grasping his arm tighter as they approached the marble staircase.

  “And I’m not your concubine, either,” Maximilian said disdainfully, stepping past the couple and moving more quickly up the steps.

  “You sure?” she asked, tossing him another crooked little smile.

  Maximilian rolled his eyes and said “Yeah!” over his shoulder.

  The three continued up the stairs in silence. As they reached the top, the tapping sound of the Mexican Ambassador’s patent leather shoes and his driver rushing up caused them to turn and wait while the two suited men ascend the massive stairs.

  “You would think a deserted city would have better parking,” said the Ambassador, breathlessly, as their group moved into the narthex of the church.

  “Your driver couldn’t park the limo right up front?” Conrad asked.

  “No, it is against the law. I tried to make one last phone call, and besides, Carlos is my friend. I wanted to help him one more time before—” he stopped and pursed his lips together, looking around in a way that everyone knew what he meant.

  Walking into the cathedral they were hit immediately with the stale smell of body odor and mildew. As their eyes adjusted to the dimmer light, they saw a group of about two dozen bearded men with elaborately decorated skull caps and long white robes being ushered into the reserved back row pews of the already-crowded church. It was Yusef and his jihadi brethren leading Saeed to attend service at the cathedral.

  The Muslim men had come out of respect for the charity they had received since their miraculous awakening on the Manhattan Bridge, after their cargo ship was blown to smithereens. They had been working for room and board at the Catholic mission’s soup line and attending English as a second language classes, where the jihadists had been making much progress. Saeed, who already possessed a good command of the language was now not only blind but had developed a crippling tinnitus in his ears since the blast, so he was having trouble discerning words, especially those that were non-native.

  Yusef was glad the Catholic Church wasn’t a pushy, zealous organization. In fact, it was surprisingly benign, something Yusef hadn’t expected. He had plenty of experience with his own religion’s charitable organizations, and this was a pleasant respite. Yusef had decided for the entire group to go to the Judgement Day Mass at the cathedral because everyone else at the mission was attending, and they had nowhere else to go.

  “What is this place, Yusef?” his blind uncle asked louder than usual with alarm.

  “We are paying respects to your benefactors, hold your voice down.”

  “Is this a place for prayer?”

  Yusef looked around the ornately decorated building, confused about how to answer. He caught sight of several parishioners on their knees in an adjacent pew and used his foot to flop down the kneeling bench in front of them. He didn’t have the nerve to tell his terrorist uncle he was in the lair of cross worshipping infidels.

  The Ambassador became agitated looking at his shiny watch, “I will introduce you to the Archbishop. I see him right up front. Wait, where is he going?” The Ambassador scanned the area around them, momentarily assuming the role of host. “Make yourselves comfortable,” he said. “I will go and find the Archbishop.” He dipped his right fingers into a wall mounted vessel of holy water, anointed himself with the sign of a cross over his face and chest, and trotted down the long aisle towards to the front of the church.

  “You think we need to do that?” Logan asked, pointing to the water.

  Conrad smirked, “You’re asking me?”

  “Only if you’re Catholic, I think. But it wouldn’t hurt,” Maximilian said, urging her to try.

  Logan hesitated a moment, fearing what the water would feel like, then dipped her fingers and imitated what she had seen the Ambassador do. Walking into the crowded sanctuary, she inadvertently touched the star on her forehead and instantly felt self-conscious. “God, I wish I wore my hoodie,” she mumbled under her breath.

/>   “Learn to wear it with pride,” a voice whispered. “You’ve earned it.”

  Startled, she swung around with a twinkle in her eye to look behind her, almost knocking into Conrad who had chosen not to anoint himself with the water.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “God?” Logan blinked her eyes slowly as the realization hit that the sound had been in her own head.

  Conrad remained quiet, assessing her.

  “Don’t look at me like I’m crazy,” she said. “I know what I heard.” Logan looked at Maximilian. “He’s here isn’t he?”

  Mac looked up at the soaring ceiling as if trying to detect a presence and then shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, he’s here all right. God is here,” she said out loud, receiving several ‘Praise the Lord’ comments from the nearby parishioners. She leaned in toward Mac and whispered, “I mean Numen.”

  “Curious, your concept of God. Not just yours, Dr. Logan, but mankind in general,” Maximilian whispered back. His eyes were taking in the ornate sanctuary and elaborate distant glowing alter. The pews were completely full.

  “You don’t believe in God?” Conrad asked Maximilian, overhearing his comment.

  “God? Of course, I do. Don’t you?” countered Maximilian. “Eos, Goddess of the Universes.”

  “Goddess?” asked Logan, smiling.

  “Universes?” added Conrad.

  “Oh look, the Ambassador is trying to get our attention,” Maximilian said, noticing a hand waving in front of the altar. “I think he wants us to come up front.”

  “Great,” she said with regret in her voice.

  “You’re the one who wanted to spread the word. Here’s your chance,” Conrad said, pushing her on her butt to get her moving.

  “Whoa,” she squeaked, startled by the shove. Her hand raised to her forehead and covered the prominent star for a brief instance before she regained her composure, pushed her shoulders back, and took a deep breath. She remembered what she had heard inside her head, ‘Wear it with pride. You’ve earned it.’ Walking down the middle aisle of the crowded cathedral, people whispered and stared at her passing.