Apocalypse Rising (Episode 1 of 4): A Christian Apocalyptic Sci-Fi Thriller (Ichthus Chronicles Book 5)

by J A Bouma

  Alexander quieted him down as the Regis replied: “And what will Panligo say and teach on the subject? How will it leverage this heretic’s teachings?”

  “That the Son is not unbegotten,” the Sacradi said, “nor a part of an unbegotten entity in any way, nor from anything in existence. Before he was begotten or created or defined or established as the supposed Son of God, he did not exist. For not only was he made, being born as a man, he was created—the Christ of faith as much as the Christ of history.”

  Ford whistled. “Some certified crazy right there.”

  “Quiet!” Father Jim snapped. “There is a ring of familiarity to all of this…”

  “But I and my colleagues,” Martin went on, “not to mention my kinship with those who were martyred as heretics from times past, were maligned because we have said the Son has a beginning, but God has no beginning. It is really quite simple: For it is clear to all that which is created did not exist before it came into being.”

  “What came into being has a beginning. That is a basic tenet of human existence,” Severus added.

  “Precisely! I was personally persecuted within the upper echelons of the Ministerium for saying that Jesus the Christ came from nonbeing, rising to prominence thanks to the Zeitgeist, due to a confluence of events within history marching forward in the backwater Roman province of Judea. We said this since he is not a portion of God nor of anything in existence. Instead, he was manufactured by his followers as something more than he was not, the decisive Council bestowing upon him his deity by those in power at the expense of the purer understanding of his consciousness, my kinship, my spiritual ancestors.”

  Father Jim sucked in a sudden breath. “My God…”

  “What’s the matter, Padre?” asked Alexander.

  The man stepped closer to the broadcaster. Before he could answer, the full-scale image of Alexander’s father continued: “Others have recognized what Panligo will teach: the Universe as the cause of all that happens, is absolutely alone without beginning, imbuing all with divine power, Jesus included. He was created apart from time by the confluence of historical realities in the Universe’s march. He is neither eternal nor co-eternal nor co-unbegotten with the Universe, nor does he have his being together with this divine principle, as some speak of relations. Therefore, the Universe and its principle of divine power stands before Jesus’ existence.”

  The feed suddenly went fritzy, the picture blurring and growing fuzzy before cutting out entirely.

  Alexander walked up to Father Jim, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Padre, what is it?”

  The man turned to him, eyes wide and face white. “The Republic has let slip the dogs of war. Again.”

  Chapter 10

  Father Jim was already several paces ahead by the time Alexander went back into the hallway, the whisper of Padre’s cassock echoing back to him through the station’s network of gun-metal gray corridors. He was heading somewhere fast, the revelations from the video of his father talking with Severus clearly shaking the man and sending him on a hunt.

  “What do you suppose that was about, homefry?” Ford said, coming up behind him.

  Nia joined him on the other side. “Da. What is it the cardinal is thinking about?”

  Alexander shook his head. “Not sure. But something clearly rattled the man.” He swallowed hard, adding: “Something my father said seems to have set him off.”

  “And running,” Ford said.

  Nia pushed past and started forward. “We should be running after the man then.”

  Alexander chased after her and Father Jim, followed closely by Ford and then the others. His heart picked up pace as they raced through the corridor. Pipes ran along the bulkhead hiding wires and carrying fluids throughout the station, the now familiar tanks following them along one wall with Galileo finning through the water bathed blue. A coppery taste was heavy on his tongue now, the traces of the initial adrenaline rush from seeing his father and listening to the conversation with the Patron—compounded by another jolt at yet another mystery wondering what Father had said that had sent the cardinal running who knew where through the station.

  They would soon find out.

  “Here we are,” Father Jim muttered, stopping at the familiar military-grade steel door, entry pad and biometric scanner affixed to the right on the wall.

  “Padre,” Alexander whispered as the cardinal went through the now-familiar routine. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  There was a ping of success and an audible unlocking of the door, the zipper lock unsnaking and doors parting. Without answering, the cardinal shoved inside.

  Alexander hesitated, but followed his direction, as did Ford and Nia close behind with the others trailing. They emerged into another dim room of the familiar sanitized, boring metal gray and steel. However, this one was different.

  It wasn’t a large room, about the size of a modest two-stall magnacar garage, for those who could afford it. The walls carried metal shelving that were lined by books, from top to bottom, with a small metal table anchored at the center and a couch against one wall. Made sense, given the station was a research center. And yet…

  Alexander stepped closer to one of the walls. It was clear these books didn’t belong. Titles ranged from Against Heresies by the early Church father Irenaeus to Saint Augustine’s City of God, from the Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica to the Institutes on the Christian Faith by the great Reformer John Calvin—which was an odd pairing!—on to Church Dogmatics by Karl Barth and N.T. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God, two of the greatest theologians of the 20th and 21st centuries.

  He didn’t spot any more recent titles. Then again, he was distracted by the unexpected sight. Only problem was, it didn’t at all smell like he expected it. Fresh, sanitized air with the traces of that oil and metallic smell from the main station flooded his senses. Not the old library scent of dank must and pulpy paper and sweet ink, as one would expect from such books stuffed in a confined space. And he was pretty sure he knew why.

  Ford whistled, craning his neck for a look around. “Digs are a bit cramped here compared to the last one, don’t ya think, chief?”

  Father Jim ignored him and began searching the shelves, a man on a mission who was looking desperate for answers.

  “What is this place?” Nia asked, following Ford’s moves.

  Alexander turned to her. “You don’t know?”

  Ford scoffed and crossed his arms. “Thought you were in command of this ship. Wouldn’t let nothing like this slip under my nose.”

  She stepped up to him and narrowed her eyes. “Only in recent months, cowboy. The Ministerium was setting up shop in these parts months before I was being brought on board.”

  “Then you’re in for quite the surprise, sister.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because these are the Vatican Archives,” Alexander explained. “Well, some of it anyway. Though you can access the rest if you want.”

  Nia snapped her head toward him with wide eyes. “That is being impossible. The Archives drowned in the sea when the waters were rising from climate change. OneWorld News said so.”

  Ford said, “That’s what the Ministerium wanted OneWorld News to report.”

  Alexander added, “And some of the precious manuscripts and documents and codices of the Church’s past did unfortunately sink to the bottom of the Mediterranean when the seas rose after the cataclysmic climate change events of the past half a century.”

  “Nice alliteration there, partner,” Ford said with a wink.

  He frowned. “Apparently Ichthus transferred the most important and vast majority of them into safe harbor, where they’re accessed now at the drop of a command.”

  “And now it appears from anywhere in the world.”

  “But that is still being impossible!” Nia exclaimed. “The Republic was banning books.”

  She was right. After the Reckoning, real books were hard to come by. Deforestati
on for paper production was a strict no-no that carried significant monetary and hard-labor penalties. So digital was the way the biblio-world went. Alexander was one of many who suspected the Republic outlawed paper production for reasons other than merely environmental protection: Information was much easier to control when it was in ones and zeros rather than ink and parchment. Who needed book burnings when they could be evaporated with a simple command input from the Patron or an AI algorithmic command line?

  Ford grinned. “That’s the beauty of this here set up.”

  Alexander added, “It’s all been uploaded into the Ministerium cloud.”

  “Digital?” Nia said with surprise. “It is looking real to me.”

  She eyed the space some more, walking up to a wall as Father Jim scurried around her, continuing his frantic search for something, raising a finger and muttering to himself before moving to another panel.

  “It was programmed to look that way, apparently,” Alexander said.

  Nia startled. “Programmed?”

  Before he could explain, Father Jim announced, “Qoheleth, bring up everything you can from the writings of Arius. Might as well throw in Athanasius and the Nicene Council as well.”

  Alexander smiled at the call word, Qoheleth. The purported author of the Book of Ecclesiastes. Thought it was just as clever now as the first time he heard it.

  “Granted,” a male Britannia-sounding voice echoed. The room instantly transformed into a selection of spine-out titles neatly arrayed across one of the walls.

  Ford whistled. “Some fine Ichthus ingenuity, that there is.”

  “What are those being?” Nia asked, taking a hesitant step to a wall.

  Alexander shrugged. “Books, what else?”

  The cardinal continued ignoring them, muttering to himself as he walked over to the metal table at the center of the room. He retrieved a familiar sapphire slate before heading for the shelves of digital titles arrayed on one panel.

  Alexander nodded toward the digital wall arrayed with titles. “Go ahead, touch it.”

  Nia furrowed her brow in confusion, then brought a hand up to the surface. Hesitating a moment, she touched the smooth-as-glass surface, her face scrunching up in confusion at what happened next. Alexander himself recalled being startled by the feeling. The image instantly rippled with red, blue, and green perturbation, like a stone dropped in a pond until it evened back out into the faux library of books.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “What is being the point of this?”

  “The point, my dear,” Father Jim finally said, “is to offer the Ministerium instant access to a billion-book digital archive from the storehouses of the Church’s knowledge.”

  “So we are being able to retrieve any book we want?”

  He nodded. “That’s right. The digital archives have preserved knowledge of all sorts during these dark times. Not just that which had been contained in the Vatican Archives before it sank beneath the sea, but all books from every corner of the world. As you’ll recall, it was the Church that preserved knowledge through the so-called Dark Ages—a misnomer if there ever was one! The Renaissance was only made possible by the studious and judicious care with which Christians sought, discovered, and preserved the wisdom that God himself ordained his creatures to possess.”

  “Fascinating…” Nia marveled.

  “This room, like the one from the old Ministerium HQ, which has been replicated across our very own sector of DiviNet thanks to Sasha, here—” Father Jim patted Sasha on the back, who grinned and puffed out his chest with pride. “Just like the original, this one gives us access to nearly the entire storehouse of knowledge across the full spectrum of humanity. Using machine learning algorithms, the Archives not only catalogues but cross-checks the vault of knowledge with other bits and bobs of information and sources. And Solterra thinks we’re just a bunch of rubes stuck in the Stone Age.” Father Jim huffed and shook his head, fiddling with the sapphire slate. “At any rate, it’s quite simple, really. You walk over to the shelves and search for your book. When you find it, simply tap once, then again for it to be instantly delivered to the device. It’s quite magical, really. Now, observe and be amazed…”

  He brought the sapphire tablet near a particular set of tomes that lined the wall on the middle shelf, the others surrounding it instantly dimmed while three remained brightly lit. Father Jim touched the middle volume, and the others joined the other books in dimmed darkness. He tapped it again, and it shone with an almost golden brilliance, a faint halo of rainbow light ringing it.

  “There we go,” the cardinal announced.

  “What did you find?” Alexander asked, craning over his shoulder.

  Father Jim cleared his throat and read aloud:

  We are not able to listen to these kinds of impieties, even if the heretics threaten us with ten thousand deaths. But what do we say and think and what have we previously taught and do we presently teach? That the Son is not unbegotten, nor a part of an unbegotten entity in any way, nor from anything in existence, but that he is subsisting in will and intention before time and before the ages, full of grace and truth, God, the only-begotten, unchangeable. Before he was begotten, or created, or defined, or established, he did not exist. We are persecuted because we have said the Son has a beginning but God has no beginning, and for saying he came from non-being. But we said this since he is not a portion of God nor of anything in existence. That is why we are persecuted; you know the rest.

  “What the hot Hades is that nonsense about?” Ford asked, face twisted up with confusion.

  “And who the hey-ho-day was spouting the nonsense?” Lucy asked, wearing the same face.

  Father Jim answered, “The nonsense the man was spouting, John Mark, was on the doctrine of Jesus Christ’s nature. And the one spouting it, Luciana Jane, was none other than Arius of Alexandria.”

  “Who is this Arius fellow being?” Nia asked.

  Alexander answered, “Not is, was. And one of the greatest heretics that stormed the stage of the ancient Church, if I recall correctly.”

  Father Jim nodded. “You do recall correctly. Although I’m not surprised, given your top-notch education,” he added with a wink.

  He smiled. “That I did, thanks to a fine teacher.”

  “At any rate, the man was a bishop birthed from the cradle of your people’s country, actually, who—”

  “From Tripolitania?” Alexander exclaimed. “The heretic from my ancestor’s lands…” he whispered, recalling what Father had said.

  “He was indeed a Libyan presbyter serving the Church of North Africa and across those lands decades before taking up residence in Alexandria where he breathed the toxic fumes of his heretical, unorthodox teachings, exchanging the truth of Jesus Christ for a lie built on philosophical speculation and humanistic dogma.”

  “Tell us what you really think, chief…” Ford said.

  “If I recall,” Alexander added, “he was also one of the chief architects of the teachings that led to the Council of Nicaea.”

  “Right you are again,” Father Jim said.

  “And what, pray tell,” Nia said, “was the man teaching that was being so problematic?”

  “That there was a time when Jesus, God the Son, was not,” Alexander answered.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, that Jesus was not in the same sense eternally God as God the Father is.”

  The woman crossed her arms and furrowed her brow. “I am not understanding your meaning.”

  “You and me both, sister,” Ford agreed.

  “Arianism is a non-Trinitarian Christological doctrine,” Father Jim added, “which asserts the belief that Jesus Christ as the Son of God was created by God the Father at a certain point in time, so that the Son of God became a creature distinct from the Father and is therefore subordinate to him and of a different substance, while also being God as Son.”

  Ford stared dumbly. “Yeah, for those of us not raised in the Church and not attend
ing any fancy-shmancy Ichthus training schools, you’re gonna have to ease the cookies down to the lower shelf on this one. Because that was crazier than a one-legged mule.”

  Alexander explained, “What Padre means is, Arius challenged the prevailing orthodox view of Christian beliefs that taught Jesus Christ, the Son of God come in the flesh, was himself God in the same way the Father was—existing from eternity past without having been created.”

  “Recall the creed that sits at the heart of Ichthus’s faith,” Father cleared his throat, then recited from memory:

  We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.

  We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

  We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

  “Ahh, yes,” Nia said. “I am recognizing that as the Nicene Creed.”

  “Very good, young lady. You are correct. Christianity’s central creed, litigated precisely because of Arius’s false teachings concerning Jesus Christ.”

  “Which part?” Ford asked, brow still furrowed with confusion.

  Alexander answered, reciting: “‘We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.’ As the Council concluded, begotten, not made, and being of the same essential being as the Father were crucial to the Church’s understanding of right beliefs when it came to Jesus’ personhood.”