“Looks like she had a little trouble lately.”
“I know,” Deut said. “I asked her about it, but I don’t speak dog. Why don’t you ask her and translate for me.”
“Sure,” Jace said, already tired of the joke, “but first let’s go inside where it’s warm. He opened the door for them. “Let me put this stuff down, and I’ll make us some coffee. Can you stay awhile? Or tea, if you prefer.”
“Thank you, tea would be nice, but we can’t stay long. We came because Gabriel said you had a tablet we could look at.”
“Has he been spying on me?”
“I’m sorry; I don’t know. He says we should look at the news. Can we do that?”
Jace hadn’t used his iPad since Scrappy showed up, and he didn’t know where it was.
“Why? What’s on the news?”
They came inside the house and removed their outerwear while Crissy Lou took a quick tour of the rooms with her nose. Kinda like Proverbs had.
“His arrival,” Deut said.
“Whose arrival?”
“His. Gabriel’s.”
“You know what? I have something even better than a tablet for watching the news.” He showed her his ring, eager to impress the hell out of her.
“You can watch TV on your ring? Must make a pretty tiny picture.”
“Just wait; you’ll see.” He led her and the dog to the living room and cleared space on the couch (inadvertently uncovering the iPad). He was about to rock her medieval world. When they were seated, he said, “Scrappy, show us the news headlines.”
At once, a room-sized waterfall of media headlines scrolled in bold letters from the ceiling. Most were some variation of: BREAKING NEWS — UFO over NYC.
The WaPo site was featuring a livestream from Central Park. Jace pointed at it and said, “That one, but make it vurt.” He winked at Deut. Prepare to be amazed.
Jace’s living room became a snowy field in Central Park, lit by flood lights on poles. Jace’s couch was part of the police barricade, and hundreds of spectators pressed against it from behind, stomping their feet to stay warm and blowing into their hands. Jace turned to Deut with a huge grin on his face but was met with a total lack of reaction.
“You don’t see it?” he said.
“See what?”
“Central Park, the crowds, the excitement.”
“Uh, no.”
“Can you hear it?”
She paused to listen. The dog, at her feet, cocked an ear to listen too.
“Is that the ocean?” she said.
He shook his head no. “Scrappy, why can’t Deut see or hear you?”
Unknown. My display and audio are both available to her.
Jace looked at Deut suspiciously. “My ring says you should be able to see and hear it.”
Deut shook her head. “So, you named your ring Scrappy?”
Jace sighed and told Scrappy to kill the vurt. He picked up the iPad and switched it on. Its battery had no charge, but that didn’t seem to stop it from operating. His news aggregator produced a list of headlines, and he clicked on the same livestream as before. A tiny, flat depiction of the Central Park scene appeared on the screen, and he handed it to Deut. An unseen announcer was speaking:
The confirmation this morning that the mysterious Planet X will indeed strike the Earth has ignited fear and unrest around the globe. Initial forecasts claiming the rogue planet would not collide with Earth but pass harmlessly by have been updated. Today NASA, along with ESA and other agencies have released a statement confirming, with high confidence, that on its current course, Planet X will strike Earth on Friday, March 8 at 04:09 Universal Time.
“Can you see it now?” Jace said, though it was obvious she was watching something. “Can you hear it?”
“Yes, thank you.” She rested the tablet in her lap and turned it so he could watch too.
A few hours after the grim announcement, the White House released a statement with more astonishing news. According to officials in the Pentagon, the government has been contacted by a “celestial emissary” who was reported to be en route to meet with officials to discuss possible interventions. Pentagon sources say the extra-terrestrial message included detailed information, currently undisclosed, that confirmed the authenticity of the contact and ruled out any possibility of a hoax.
The government has not revealed the timing of the emissary’s arrival or its location, but unsubstantiated rumors name the field known as The Great Lawn in New York’s Central Park as the landing zone. Thousands of New Yorkers have subsequently filled the park in order to witness what will be, if true, the first modern contact between Earthlings and alien beings.
“Did Gabriel tell you what to expect?”
“Only that it has to do with my mission.”
“Does that mean you know what your mission is?”
“No.”
“Well, tell me when you know, okay?”
She glanced at him and said, “Sure, if you want.”
“I do.”
A SHOUT WENT up in Central Park as spectators behind the police lines began to point their phones at the sky where a strange, dazzling object was slowly descending.
“Here it comes!” Jace said, unable to contain his own excitement. Soon he could make the object out; it appeared to be a large metallic disk.
“A flying saucer?” he said. “That’s the best you can come up with? Why not a flying police box?”
Deut gave him a funny look.
“You don’t see a flying saucer?” he said.
She shook her head.
“Then what do you see?”
“A pillowy cloud.”
Of course she did.
The saucer, or cloud, deployed no rockets or thrusters but set gently down in the Central Park field.
“Oh, and it’s got a big tent on top of it,” Deut added.
Why not?
Nothing further seemed to happen for a very long time. The New York crowd grew restless as emboldened spectators crossed the police lines and sprinted into the field to get a closer look at the spacecraft/tent, only to be chased down, rounded up, and dragged back to the barricades by uniformed officers.
“I’ll get that tea now,” Jace said, going to the kitchen. As the water came to a boil, he noticed the pharmacy package on the counter where he’d left it. Bubble-wrapped inside were two small glass bottles, like the kind used for eyedrops and tinctures. They were filled with a clear fluid. Each bottle had a paper label featuring a tiny portrait of a man.
The man on one of the bottles was young and handsome in a metrosexual way, with a trim beard and long, wavy hair that reached his shoulders. He looked directly at the viewer with loving, melting eyes.
The man on the other bottle was old and tired-looking and turned slightly away in a stiff, formal pose. His beard was long, white, and scruffy. It concealed his ears and reached all the way to the dome of his bald head.
So that there be no possibility of confusion, the first bottle was labeled JESUS and the second one DARWIN.
“Uh, Found One?” he said. “Like, what the frick?”
IN CENTRAL PARK people began shouting again as fuselage panels/tent flaps were drawn aside, and a wide metallic/wooden ramp unfolded and extended to touch the ground.
“This is it!” Jace said.
He expected to see the sausage-limbed alien come strutting down the ramp, but instead a giant metallic robot appeared at the open hatch. For all the world, it looked like an oversized version of the Oscar statuette, except that it was silvery instead of gold.
“What do you see?” he said.
“An angel.”
“Gabe?”
“No, some other angel. A herald; he has a trumpet.” The trumpet looked exactly like the sparkly glass trumpet her father had found on the river flats, the one Beezus had stolen.
“What’s he doing?”
“Nothing; standing there.”
Jace’s Oscar wasn’t doing anything either, except scannin
g the scene with its cycloptic, ruby-colored eye. Then, finally, it trundled down the ramp and took a position next to it, facing the crowd. It raised its arm, and silence fell upon the scene. In a machine-like voice it spoke:
Greetings, citizens of Earth. A Visitor from the Organization of Federated Worlds has arrived in peace to consult with you about the disaster that looms in your sky. Your planet is under attack by a criminal intergalactic mining consortium called Bak’uhtoon that has torn a rent in the fabric of spacetime to hurl a projectile at you. Your scientific community is tracking this projectile, which is a planet called Pipnonia. It is from the Tateen system. The imminent collision of Pipnonia and Earth will destroy both planets utterly, annihilating all Earth life. When both resource-rich planets are reduced to rubble, the Bak’uhtoon consortium will take what resources it covets back through its wormhole to its home system.
Jace snuck a glance at Deut, who was enthralled by whatever she was seeing. The giant robot continued:
The Prime Directive of the Federated Worlds prohibits contact with species that have not attained a sufficient level of technological and cultural sophistication. Earth falls below the threshold for first contact. Nevertheless, the Grand Council has made an exception in your case. This is because you are clearly an innocent party in a heinous case of attempted speciocide. Therefore, it has dispatched the Visitor to you as its ambassador. The Visitor invites you to send representatives from each organized population group to meet with it in this location on Thursday, January 24, 2013, at 20:00 UTC in order to explore your options for avoiding catastrophic extermination. Make no delay in this course, for the intervention window is narrow.
The robot paused and began its message again from the beginning in Spanish.
“Nice,” Jace said.
“It’s more than nice.” Deut was flush with excitement. “It means Satan will be defeated.”
“I almost hate to ask, but what did the angel say?”
“That Satan has taken advantage of the overwhelming flood of sin and depravity of the last few generations to twist Father God’s plan and try to destroy Earth before the Final Battle. We can’t let that happen; so Gabriel has called a meeting in the Savior’s name of leading religious and non-believer leaders from around the world to lead all men in prayer and confession.” She turned fierce eyes upon him. “Oh, Jace, won’t you join us? Every soul counts, and it would mean so much to me.”
He almost said yes. He wanted to say yes. If he were a lying creep, he would have said yes.
THEY WATCHED THE scene for another half hour, but the heralds were only repeating their messages in different languages, and Crissy Lou, who had been patiently napping in front of the stove the whole time, finally went to the door and whined to go out.
“I’m coming,” Deut said, getting up off the couch. “I should go. BJ will be wondering; I told her I’d only be gone for a little while.” She went to the door and put on her parka. “Thank you, ranger, for letting me watch it with you. I’m sorry Satan wouldn’t let you see what was truly going on. I’ll pray that next time you’ll be able to.”
Jace offered her the iPad to take with her.
“Don’t you need it?” she said. “Oh, I forgot; you can watch your ring. In that case I’d be happy to borrow it.” She slipped the tablet under her arm. “I’m sure BJ will want to watch it too.”
“Thank you for coming.” Jace said. “Let’s do this again. You know you and Crissy Lou are always welcome.”
“Thank you.”
“How about tomorrow?”
That seemed to please her. “Maybe. For sure when the world leaders start to show up.”
“Yeah, that ought to be interesting.” And terribly unsettling to watch when you know what’s about to happen to them.
Crissy Lou, who’d heard enough, began scratching the door.
AS SOON AS his guests were gone, Jace said, “Bring the park scene back but only about yay big.” He held out his hands. “And put it on the coffee table.” With a wet heavy snow starting to fall in New York, the display now resembled an oversized snow globe.
“That’s good. Monitor it for me, and if anything happens, alert me, okay?”
Yes, boss.
“Now get me Found One.”
The alien appeared before him.
“I’ll bet you think you’re one clever little alien to twist what she saw like that.”
“This one has already explained the limits of human perception.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember. But what about this?” Jace went to the kitchen counter to retrieve the eyedropper bottles. “Jesus? Darwin? I assume these are from you?”
“They are.”
“What’s in them?” He opened one of the bottles and sniffed it. It didn’t smell like anything in particular.
“Those are human epigenetic effect antagonists.”
“Say what now?”
“You have repeatedly complained to this one how Deut’s religious faith acts as a barrier to your desired relationship with her. This one is offering you a means to remove that barrier.”
Jace looked at the bottles again.
“Think of them as acting together like a dimmer switch,” Found One continued. “With a few drops of these two drugs, you can fine tune the intensity of a person’s religious faith. You can create religious fanaticism on one extreme and militant atheism on the other, as well as all the stops between.”
“Something like that is possible?”
“Yes. You humans are big bundles of epigenetic switches. You have switches for controlling everything from your set weight, addiction to tobacco and other substances, sexual appetite, and fascination with spectator sports to personality traits like shyness, introversion/extraversion, aggressiveness, and credulity. Someday, if you survive long enough as a species, you’ll learn how to operate these switches at will. Obesity, addiction, abuse and a host of other behavioral issues will be cured with simple drugs like these.”
“Go on,” Jace said as he went to the kitchen to make dinner. “You’re saying religion is an addiction?”
“No, not at all. Religious faith is a sensible adaptive response and quite functional in the evolutionary history of your species. It is not insane, ignorant, or irrational, as you like to claim. In fact, this one has encountered thousands of intelligent species throughout the universe that practice religious faith. Not surprisingly, this one has discovered that the same bone-headed tendency toward machine love also selects for a belief in supreme beings. Combine a rigid skeleton, a big brain, and a bony skull, and what do you get? A god.”
Over the next several hours, the alien entity laid out the biological basis underlying religious faith in humans. [See Dialog with the Alien on Faith] It was well past Jace’s bedtime before they took a break.
“Let me see if I’ve got this right,” Jace said, holding up the DARWIN bottle. “If I put a drop of this one into Deut’s tea, she’ll go from being a fundy Christian fanatic to a plain-old Sunday pew warmer. More drops and she’ll go from spiritual but not religious to agnostic, all the way to atheist. That’s what you’re saying?”
“Essentially, yes.”
The more Jace thought about this, the more agitated he became. “How dare you?” he said at last.
“What do you mean?”
“I respect women!” Jace declared. “To suggest I slip Deut a drug to change her personal belief in God just so I can be with her is . . . is a violation of her personal freedom and integrity! It’s brainwashing. It’s the same as rape! It’s mental rape, and fuck you, Sausage Boy, for even suggesting it.” He tossed the bottle into the trash.
The alien seemed unfazed. “You are the one suggesting such a violation. This one is suggesting nothing of the sort.”
“Oh, no?” Jace said. “Then what was your point in giving me those drugs?”
“This one is offering you the means to dose yourself. If you love Deut as much as you claim, why not try going over to her side for a while? Experien
ce the joy of embracing Jesus as your Savior. Confess your sins. Worship the Father with cries of Alleluia. Experience forgiveness for your transgressions like you never thought possible. Make yourself acceptable to the Prophecy family and meet your lady love on the hallowed ground of matrimony. You understand that she loves you too, right? But she can’t go home with you the way you are now. In other words, ranger, convert yourself.”
Jace gaped at the alien, speechless.
“That’s right. If you truly love Deuteronomy, as you claim, then make a sacrifice and take a few drops of JESUS. Don’t expect her to change for you; change yourself for her. That’s what this one is suggesting by offering you this tremendous gift. You’ll make her happy and this one’s job a lot easier.
“By becoming a Christian?”
“Why not? It might improve your life. If not, this one has also gifted you with the antidote. Take a few drops of DARWIN and go back to being your God-hating secular humanist self. It’s entirely up to you.”
KB2 1.0
BRADD TAPPED ON the bedroom door and opened it a crack. The governor was lying on top of their super-king-sized bed watching the wall-to-wall coverage of the alien visitor. Bradd came in and showed her his phone.
“State business?” she said.
“I’m not sure. It’s Lieutenant General Kato’s office at JBER.”
Vera sat up and reached for the phone. “It must be about my issue with the National Guard.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Hello,” she said into the phone. “This is Governor Tetlin. What can I do for you?”
“Good afternoon, governor,” said an unfamiliar voice on the other end. “This is Lieutenant Crowley in General Kato’s office. The general asked me to call you to arrange your transportation.”
Vera glanced at Bradd. “Transportation to where?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were already briefed. Your name is on the list of dignitaries the non-terrestrial emissary has requested to attend its convocation in New York on Thursday. The president has authorized the Air Force to transport you there, and I’m calling to arrange a car to pick you up.”
Glassing the Orgachine Page 31