by J A Bouma
The angle was odd, high and through a wall of windows, but the image was clear.
Noramericana was on fire. Still.
“Hello?” Ford said, a thud off-camera followed by the fuzz of distortion in the audio and video. He cleared his throat then asked again: “Hello, anyone there?”
Suddenly the picture swung up toward the ceiling of some flat then swooped down with a jiggly jerk, a face coming into view. It brightened and mouth widened into a smile.
“About time you answered my—”
The picture cut out with distorting fuzz, followed by a hiss of the audio.
Ford hit the workstation screen. Sasha complained and took over until the picture came back online.
“Sorry about that,” the mystery man continued. “It’s been a right wicked morning, as you all know. Just thankful I finally got through!” Dark hair, dark skin, he talked with a thicker twang than John Mark, pegging him from deep in the former American South. Maybe originally from Louisiana, which was unusual for black folk to live that far south of the Mason-Dixon after the Second Civil War. After all, it was partly fought to reclaim the glory of the Lost Cause, according to Pops.
“Actually, we are not knowing,” Nia said, coming over Ford’s shoulders.
“And who might you be, little missy? In fact, who’r all y’all?”
“John Mark Ford,” the man answered, “chief of operations with the Ministerium. Or, what’s left of it. This is Junia Kaminski, chief over at a deep submergence station in the Mediterranean with the Resistance. I’ve got James Ferraro here as well, the head honcho himself.”
“Nice to meet y’all. And boy am I glad to see you, Ford. Ryder Reeves, here. Went underground when …. was unleashed on Ichthus those many months ago, keeping a low … then when everything hit the fan across Solterra yesterday, and then more earlier in the day, well I very well nearly threw in the towel and—” The distorting fuzz and audio hiss was back, getting worse as the man tried explaining his lot in life.
Ford glanced at Alexander, worry written on his face.
The picture came back. “Sorry about that. Everything’s been spotty with DiviNet after it all started.”
“What can you tell us about what’s been going down?” Ford asked.
“See for yourself.” Reeves took the device to a balcony and turned the picture toward the fiery maw and billowing smoke below. He came back on: “As you can see, all hell’s broken loose, sir. Which is sorta obvious. What’s worse are the Enforcers that showed up to quarantine the area.”
“Enforcers?” Ford exclaimed, bending toward the screen.
“Yep. Caught sight of some Purifiers as well wandering down below. My guess is they’re fixin’ to round us all up and reprogram us who lived to tell the tale of the apocalypse raining down on us. That, and blame Ichthus for it all to begin with.”
Alexander stepped to Ford’s side. “Why do you say that?”
“And who might you be?”
Ford answered, “Alexander Zarruq. Master of the Order of Thaddeus.”
Reeves’s dark eyes got as round as Alexander’s father’s tea saucers. He exclaimed, “Master of the Order of Thadd—”
Ford let a curse slip as the feed cut out again. Several seconds ticked by before it came back.
“—trying to talk to you!”
“Ryder, my man, you cut out. Sounded like someone wanted to talk with Alexander.”
“You got that right!” Reeves laughed and whistled, surely excited.
Why was the mystery.
Alexander went to ask when he saw it.
A split second before it happened, just as the man opened his mouth to share more.
Balls of fire falling from the sky and slamming into the earth, consuming the world below. A broiling inferno rolling over what was left until it boiled up the apartment several stories up and cut out the feed completely.
The fate of Reeves unknown.
Chapter 14
The room fell silent for several minutes after the feed cut to black, the HVAC hum of the station the only soundtrack after the continued unfolding of God’s wrath seemed to consume their only lead on the ground.
Ford assumed what they had seen on those communiques from the field from hours ago was the worst of it—whatever it was. Seeing it all unfold live, right there in ultra-definition TV though…
That was crazier than a one-armed octopus!
And frighteningly scary, knowing that his homeland had been part of heaven’s judgment, God raining down the funk on his people. His family, even.
A tremor grabbed hold of his hand. He clenched it into a fist and glanced at Nia then to Alexander, not wanting anyone to see his show of weakness. His chest began thumping away and the air was heavy in his chest. He took a breath and closed his eyes, counting backwards from a hundred. No way he’d let the Grip get ahold of him while the world burned.
Who knew walking into 2125 would bring the end of the world as he knew it. The apocalypse, of all things!
Crazier than a one-armed octopus, yessiree.
And scarier than his toothless meemaw gumming in to plant a wet kiss on his cheeks!
Growing up, he’d been schooled in the finer points of the end times, Meemaw and Ma both drilling into him the Left Behind theology Father Jim had dismissed. It was meant to scare him straight, keep him on the straight and narrow with the threat of the impending rapture, with Jesus snatching people from Earth to Heaven and leaving the rest to suffer seven years of hell. Didn’t take, but now that he was living it, and now that his own family could be in the crosshairs…
No more of this standing around business. Enough jibber-jabbering. Enough getting caught with their pants down around the ankles at the mercy of the Republic and the apocalyptic doom.
It was go time.
Suddenly, there was a rush of pesky questions rising to the surface: What was Ichthus to do about it all, about the apocalypse? What were average Christians to do now that the seventh seal was opened and the seven trumpets of judgment were about to be let loose? What was he himself supposed to do about it, the guy who had persecuted the Church and enabled the Republic to throw its own version of the Book of Revelation at ‘em?
He didn't know the answers—to any of the big fat question marks. But he aimed to find out.
On the double.
Ford clenched his jaw with resolve and turned to Nia. “How many underwater ponies you got stabled in this joint?”
She squinted one eye at him with skepticism. “We are having four PSVs.”
“Including our own yellow submarine?”
“Nyet. That is being extra.”
He grinned. “That should be enough.”
“Enough for what?” Alexander asked.
“For answers.”
“Where are you getting these answers?” Nia asked.
Ford pointed at the portable workstation. “Back there.”
The room fell silent for a beat, as if trying to work out the haywire plan he was hatching.
“Wait a minute…” Alexander finally said, the lightbulb clicking on. “You mean Noramericana, don’t you?”
“Yessiree, Bob.”
“Golly,” Lucy said. “After what we all just witnessed?”
Father Jim said, “I’m not so sure about this plan of yours, John Mark.”
Ford ran a frustrated hand across his close-cropped hair. You and me both, chief, he wanted to say. Instead, he launched into his defense.
He folded his arms. “Think about it. All we’ve got to go on are the videos sent from a handful of former Ministerium members of the Resistance and some good ol’ boy who seemed dialed into the Order Remnant. In fact, the lad seemed like there was more to share. And given part of our mission the past year has been trying to hunt down and root out the remaining faith-defenders, I’d say it’s imperative we figure out what went down back in Noramericana.” He paused, catching his breath and throat catching as he added: “Back home.”
“I suppose th
e man does have a point,” the cardinal said.
“We need boots on the ground,” Ford continued. “To see for ourselves what this whole apocalypse is anyway—and what the hot Hades the Republic is trying to cover up.”
“Literally,” Lucy quipped.
“Righto. The way I figure it, if we can get a visual we might leverage it for the Ichthus Resistance. Maybe record it and get it up on DiviNet like we did with all that time-travel footage. And if there’s a pocket of the Remnant hunkered down nearby as well, then maybe they’re the break we need to get the Church back in the ring with Panligo—with the Republic even.”
He looked to Alexander, knowing the man was part of the decision tree, given his role in the Ministerium as Order Master.
Alexander seemed to consider this, then nodded. “Makes sense to me.”
“I suppose there’s some sense in it as well,” Father Jim added.
Nia sighed. “And I am having some contacts in some of the more backwater outposts along the way that could be of use. Because there is no way you are being able to cross the Atlantic in any of the hydrocrafts we are docking.”
“And there’s no way,” Lucy added, “that we’re making the journey in one of those deep submergence vehicles that carts people across the Atlantic.”
Ford raised a brow. “We?”
She gave him a punch in the shoulder. “No way are you traipsin’ halfway across the world without your new sidekick after all we’ve been through!”
“Wouldn’t think of it.”
“I might be persuaded to join as well,” Nia said. “For the sake of Ichthus, of course.”
“I am being persuaded too!” Sasha added, jumping to his feet and joining the small group.
“Splendid!” Ford laughed and clapped his hands together, finding a surprising eagerness to get back into the fray of it all—against the Republic even, with their Enforcers and Purifiers, the Stingrays and Trackers, the Quellers and Neutralizers, and all the rest.
Perhaps because of the Republic with their Enforcers and Purifiers, the Stingrays and Trackers, the Quellers and Neutralizers, and all the rest! Getting even had been a flaw.
“Sounds like we’re all operating from the same playbook. Any more questions before we get to it?”
“I’ve got one more thing,” Alexander said.
“And what’s that?”
“For Padre,” he said, turning to Father Jim.
The man raised his head. “Yes, Alex, what is it?”
“Earlier, before the blasted station started shaking and, well, everything else that went down—earlier you were answering John Mark’s questions about the confusion surrounding Jesus, both inside and outside Ichthus. Seems especially important now given what we’ve witnessed, what the world is experiencing, and what we promised that agent.”
“Indeed, it is vitally important.”
Ford went to complain about the rabbit trail now that they’d gotten their marching orders, eager to get to it. But then he thought better of it. There might be something to that side of it, the side he didn’t quite get about that Arius fella.
So he took a breath. “Yeah, care to elaborate, chief?”
Father Jim took the sapphire slate resting on the metal table, then stood. “I have been having a think about the latter which is directly tied to the former.”
“What do you mean by that? You think the apocalypse is somehow connected to questions around Jesus’ identity and that Arius fella?”
He smiled. “Perhaps you should sit down for this one.” He sauntered to one of the panels still showcasing a number of tomes from the Ministerium Archives.
“You were wondering, John Mark,” Father Jim said across the room, “about why there has been confusion about who Jesus is and what he came to do, both outside and inside the Church. Isn’t that right?”
Ford nodded. “Yeah, something like that. Outside I can understand, but why inside Ichthus? Seems to me we should be the ones with the clearest impression, given he’s the guy behind our faith and all.”
The cardinal laughed. “You would think that’s right, wouldn’t you.”
“Again, how so?” Ford asked, folding his arms with impatience and trying to move it along.
“Have a think about it. Outside the Church, Jesus is viewed as one religious teacher among many. There’s Buddha, Muhammed, Krishna. And then Jesus of Nazareth.”
“A sort of Gandhi on steroids, right?” Alexander offered.
Ford snorted a laugh; not a bad visual. “Gandhi on steroids. That fella from the Indian province of Asiatica way back when. Nice.”
“But it’s true, isn’t it?” Father Jim said. “Which of course makes sense in our ultramodern polytheistic world. It’s always been this way, really. The one true God and Lord standing amongst the other so-called gods and lords, as the Apostle Paul says. So this confusion about the person of Jesus outside the Church is understandable. And to some extent it makes sense that people inside the Church would be confused as well, because throughout Church history there’s been confusion.”
“But what is being so confusing about Jesus, about who he is?” Nia asked.
“More or less, the confusion has boiled down to his nature,” Alexander offered. “Who he is as God, which also has implications for the nature of his work as well—his death on the cross, paying the price for our rebellion in our place, and whatnot.”
Father Jim nodded. “Impressive, Master Zarruq. You’re right.”
Ford leaned over and whispered, “Teacher’s pet.”
Alexander frowned and smacked his arm. Ford yelped with a grin.
“Early on,” the cardinal continued, “some people couldn’t wrap their minds around the idea that the Creator would stoop so low as to become a creature—bearing all the trappings of creatureliness. Like hunger and sleep and—”
“Constipation and smelly armpits?” Ford added. The room moaned collectively. “What?”
Father Jim returned with a frown. “Something like that. Remember what the Book of Hebrews makes clear: God did in fact take upon himself flesh and blood. John wrote in his Gospel that ‘God became flesh and moved into the neighborhood,’ as one Bible translation puts it.”
“In other words, God became a real live human being,” Alexander said. “That God, well, Jesus was really human.”
“That’s exactly right.”
The cardinal returned to his seat. The man set the tablet down on the metal table, wrapping one arm around his waist, propping an elbow on his hand and raising the other to his chin. Ford imagined he was assuming a pose he’d honed from Oxford. He just hoped the man wasn’t in lecture mode, because school definitely wasn’t his strong suit!
“I am getting confused,” Nia said.
“You and me both, sister,” Ford muttered.
She smiled and went on, “So Jesus was being a real live human. This is seeming pretty basic to me, so what is this having to do with this Arius character? I thought what he was teaching was something about his divinity.”
“I was getting to that, Junia. Because as with the confusion over Jesus’ humanity, early in the Church’s history there was confusion over Jesus’ deity. Some believed Jesus the man was adopted by the Father to become the Son of God—that there was a time when Jesus was not God, and only later became God.”
Alexander added, “Which is the heresy we call Arianism, named after the Alexandrian priest.”
“Exactly. To clarify what I said earlier, putting the cookies on the lower shelf as you requested, John Mark…” the cardinal threw Ford a wink; the man smiled and nodded. “What I meant to say was that the false teacher Arius maintained that the Son of God was created by the Father and was therefore neither coeternal with him, nor consubstantial. Meaning, Jesus neither existed from the beginning of time nor was he of one substance with God the Father.”
“Because in essence,” Alexander said, “what Arius was saying is, Jesus wasn’t really God, isn’t that right?”
Father Ji
m nodded. “If Jesus was created and later adopted, then he was a creature and not co-equal with the Father. And frankly, it matters because there is a sort of a new kind of Arianism today, perpetuated by progressive Christians who would seek to reimagine a new kind of Christianity for our multi-faith world. This Jesus is said to be divine, not God. A sort of Gandhi by nature of his moral example and life illustrating the universal human ideal of love—only on steroids, as you put it, Master Zarruq,” he said with a chuckle. “Like Arius’ Jesus, this one isn’t the real Jesus either. It is fake.”
Ford nodded, then frowned. “Yeah, I don’t follow, chief.”
Father Jim offered a huff, as if exasperated. Before he could respond, Alexander intervened. “Maybe this would help.”
The cardinal nodded and offered a hand. “By all means, Master Zarruq.”
“Central to the Christian faith are the three words Jesus is God.”
“Yeah, sure. I get that,” Ford said. “That’s basic.”
“Basic, yes. But you won’t find certain progressive Christians voicing those three important words, much less non-Christians. Instead, they’ll say things like Jesus is ‘the very movement of God in flesh and blood’ or Jesus is ‘the divine in flesh and blood.’”
“But he is being God in the flesh and blood, isn’t he?” Nia said. “You said it yourself. Or the Book of Hebrews is, saying that Jesus was sharing in our flesh and blood.”
Alexander nodded. “True, but notice that, like Arius, these kinds of Christians insist that Jesus is divine. While this language seems right, it isn’t. It’s code language for Jesus being this really good guy who lived the best possible life—who lived divinely.”
“A Gandhi on steroids,” Ford said.
“That’s exactly right, John Mark,” Father Jim said. “The Jesus you find in progressive Christian theology is described as a teacher and a liver of divine goodness, peace, and love. For them, Jesus the man simply showed the world what it means to be human, what it means to live a meaningful existence on this earth that's heavenly, rather than hellish. He is made out to be nothing more than a guru. Certainly not God.”