The Lie (The Seekers Book 2)

by L R Clarke

  “Yes we have just left him. It is strange to have this new form; we are discovering things about it all the time. I can’t thank you enough Millie.”

  Millie was puzzled, “But I didn’t do anything, I was just blundering around looking for Oliver and things just kind of happened.”

  The Professor shook his head, “You followed the path and showed much courage. Now we must do the same.”

  Millie was suddenly sad, she realised he had come to say goodbye. “But the battle still rages, will it be safe to go now?”

  The Professor grinned, “We are to be instantly elevated – absolutely no problem at all.”

  There was another knock on the door and the Professor opened it to let in Amanaki and all the children. They had made a card for her and a small girl at the front held one tiny, yellow flower which she then handed to Millie. It was beautiful in its intensity and design. The little girl smiled, “It will never fade, “she whispered shyly, “it is one of us.”

  Millie had never seen anything like it before; imagine that, a flower that will never need watering and never die. “Thank you,” she managed, “I will treasure it always.”

  Amankai approached and handed her the card, “We have all signed it, thank you for saving us Millie, and we all hope to see you again one day.”

  Millie connected with his eyes and she felt a surge of emotion between them. She wasn’t used to being the centre of attention and was lost for words, but Winston saved her by interrupting, “Is anyone going to introduce me or do I have to do it myself?”

  “Oh the dog,” exclaimed the Professor, “we have only read of such things, how wonderful!”

  Winston was soon surrounded by admirers and all was well in his world.

  Two weeks later

  R uth Benton dropped the single red rose onto the brown coffin lid and turned to leave, everyone had been so kind but two funerals in two weeks had taken their toll. The church had been overflowing for that lovely young girl; they had decided to relay the service through speakers for all those outside. She had never seen anything like it in all her years. And to find out the poor girl was the youth group leader for their sister church was a further blow. She had recognised her powerful voice as soon as she started singing but she couldn’t actually see her from the chair. Her friend Joyce had eventually pulled her out and made sure she got home safely, but she was ill in bed for three days after that and during those three days her beloved George, by her side, was called to rest too.

  The rest of her small funeral party had gone on ahead, she had asked for five minutes alone. She turned to face the church. She knew George wasn’t in that box behind her, he was free and she would join him when the time was right. “We had a good innings Lord, thank you for that.”

  She knew also not to dwell on Becky’s death, the family would need all the support they could get and it was not her job to ask why. She leant heavily on her stick, the stiffness in both knees causing her to stumble through the deserted churchyard as she made her way slowly to the waiting cars. To the naked eye she looked a forlorn figure but her back was straight and her heart was at peace. Beside her the angelic escort walked proudly alongside, outstretched wings covering her diminutive frame. They could hear the heavenly anthem of course as their warrior marched steadily on and one day soon she would hear it for herself.

  I t was funny seeing Oliver with a shaved head, Millie decided it suited him somehow but Oliver hated it and couldn’t wait for his hair to grow back. He was still tired, but eating like a horse, and they were all pleased with his progress. Mum and dad were taking all the relatives home so the twins had the day to themselves. He was to be allowed home tomorrow anyway, but while confined to bed Oliver spent hours on the internet looking up creation websites, creation.com was his favourite. He had learnt so much since being introduced to Dominik. The evidence was out there and now he knew how to make sense of it he couldn’t stop reading.

  “Hey, did you know that the clock for mitochondrial Eve was calibrated by assuming that humans split off from apes 5 million years ago. This gave an estimate for Eve of hundreds of thousands of years, but when actual mutation rates are used the date is 6500 years.”

  “Yeah.” Millie laughed, “I did hear something like that.”

  Oliver looked up from his computer for the first time, “Really? Well did you also know that many dinosaur fossils actually include real bone – that means they are not rock yet and inside this bone they have found blood cells, haemoglobin, fragile proteins and soft tissue? They can only last thousands of years. This stuff has been known about since the early 1990’s but no-one talks about it. Surely someone should be asking how this could possibly be if they are supposed to be millions of years old?”

  Millie helped herself to some of his grapes, his locker was overflowing with healthy stuff - mum was determined to build up his strength again. She watched him as he devoured the information at his fingertips. He had always been excited by science, but now he could see how a world-view could affect your judgement. Oliver took a big gulp of his Coke; his one allowed treat, “Wow–look at these polystrate fossils.” He turned the screen around to show Millie.

  “Hmm...?” was all she could manage with a mouthful of fruit.

  “Can’t you see what they are? Vertical tree fossils that stand upright through many layers of rock strata.”

  “So?”

  “So ... if these layers represent millions of years – how did the trees get there? Also loads of artefacts have been found in coal – how did they get there?”

  Millie shrugged, “Well who decided they are all so old anyway?”

  “Exactly! When geologists argued you could only interpret the past from what is happening in the present, in other words, slow and gradual processes, they proposed enormous lengths of time.”

  Now even Millie was intrigued, “Well, what’s wrong with that?”

  “Well, that philosophy affected the interpretation of rocks for over a hundred years, but it ignored geological evidence that points to sudden and catastrophic events.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a global flood for one.”

  Millie frowned, “You mean like Noah?”

  “Well, some modern geologists are at last beginning to see the story of the rocks in a new light, but they will only go so far as local catastrophes. Despite lots of evidence they still don’t want to acknowledge a global flood. Did you know that in 2009 a whole herd of dinosaurs was found in Mongolia all facing the same direction and all well preserved? Most of them were in a crouching position, their limbs plunging into the underlying mud. Their hind legs were still bent showing they were trying to escape. They were buried so swiftly that the delicate bones in the eyes were preserved. How’s that for a catastrophe!”

  “Well one example doesn’t disprove a theory,” said Millie reaching for the laptop.

  “Yes, but I could have chosen thousands of other examples from other areas of science, especially genetic research. The whole- “particles to professor”- argument is completely unravelling.”

  Millie had found an article on DNA and was actually reading it. She hadn’t told Oliver yet what had happened to her, she would wait until he was stronger. Oliver pointed to a video link “That’s amazing to watch. Darwin knew nothing about genetics of course and the laws of genetics are not friendly to evolutionary theory. There are three billion DNA letters in the human genome and all life depends on specific information to survive and reproduce. DNA is amazing!”

  Millie nodded and read on “The DNA chains are not very stable though and are super sensitive to degradation, it is estimated that there are one million “lesions” in a normal cell every day. We have 100 trillion cells in our body so each cell goes through an enormous effort daily to maintain its complement of DNA.” She looked up from the screen – “What’s a million times 100 trillion?”

  Oliver laughed, “A lot.”

  “Well, that’s what it takes to keep our genome working in our
body every single day.”

  They were silent for a while. Millie read on, there was so much to take in it was overwhelming. She was never going to be as clever as Oliver, she knew that, but she realised she had simply accepted some things just because they were presented as “fact” – now she was determined to think for herself.

  When the consultant entered they were both deep in thought, so he coughed to gain their attention and pretended to examine some charts for a few seconds. “Sorry to interrupt, may I take a quick look at Oliver?”

  Millie slid off the bed as quickly as she could, she knew from mum she wasn’t supposed to sit on it. She grabbed the laptop from Oliver and settled in a chair instead. At first she ignored the young man with the floppy red hair, but when Oliver introduced him she was happy to talk, “Thanks for what you did for Oliver, you saved his life.”

  “He did more than that! Harry is the first doctor ever to perform that operation successfully. I am a modern miracle,” exclaimed Oliver raising his eyebrows at Millie in his enthusiasm. They both knew about the escort, but the young man had actually done the operation.

  He laughed off their praises, “Well they call me Houdini because of the near impossible situations my patients escape from, but originally all I wanted to be was an Olympic swimmer, so it just goes to show how life has a plan for us all.”

  Millie looked again at his features, then the penny dropped, it was him! The energetic youth racing up and down the pool had become Oliver’s surgeon. Millie was pleased he was happy now. The angry young man in his grief and misery had played a part in forming him, but he hadn’t let the bitterness take over. He was trying to heal others and he was succeeding. Millie felt tears forming and let her long hair fall over her face to conceal them, she was getting to be a real soppy thing in her old age.

  Chapter 28

  O liver couldn’t believe his mum had put balloons up! The outside of the house was covered in them. He wasn’t a kid anymore but it made him happy and it did look amazing. He was glad to be home. As he settled in his room for his afternoon nap, another reminder of his childhood, he couldn’t help thinking about Alana. He knew Millie had said they were not human but he still felt bad about leaving her behind. He wondered if she had ever been reunited with her “family”.

  The house was quiet now. Dad was at the shop, mum was resting before her evening shift and Millie had gone to see Becky’s family. She had taken the news badly and was finding it hard to lose her best friend in such a way. Millie had changed, he thought, she was softer somehow. He sighed, he had missed saying goodbye to Quark too, being ill was rubbish. He closed the iPad - that was enough research for one day. He stretched out his long limbs and yawned, he would snooze for an hour only, and that way he would still sleep well at night.

  The heavy curtains were drawn against the late afternoon sun and Oliver was surprised when they began to stir. The portal opened quickly and Quark stepped through, bowing immediately to Oliver, “Greetings, Your Highness it is good to see you looking so well.”

  Oliver sat up straight, “Quark! Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, indeed. We secured a major victory without too many losses. Michael sends his warmest regards and he has asked me to give you this.” From out of nowhere Quark produced a silver coin and handed it to Oliver.

  “The liberator! How did you get it?”

  “We cleared that whole sector and removed the hybrids from the Arena. They will not be experimented on again.”

  “So Alana is safe?”

  Quark nodded.

  “But what was it all for? What was the point of the game? Nobody seemed to be watching. Oh, except the monitors of course.”

  “The Fallen were keeping records, to see which artificial intelligence was developing the most successful traits for their purposes. They were trying to create transhumans. ”

  Oliver was confused, “But why?”

  Quark shrugged his tiny shoulders, “Their time is limited but they will never give up. They want dominion over you and the Earth, if they can corrupt the seed it makes things more complicated.”

  Oliver turned the disc over in his fingers, “I didn’t really help much this time did I?”

  Quark tapped his fingers together and looked genuinely perplexed, “Why do you think that?”

  Oliver was glum, “Well I just stumbled around in the dark, I didn’t even help Millie.”

  “On the contrary,” Quark threw out his hands, “you probably saved her life and countless others.”

  “I did?”

  Quark positively beamed with enlightenment, “It took me some time to work it out, but when Samael said the scroll was missing I realised what had happened.”

  “You mean the one Adam and Eve had?”

  “Indeed, but when you retrieved it the scroll was not in its original form.”

  Oliver thought back to the metal cylinder, “Why didn’t you recognise me?”

  “Because I didn’t know you then of course.”

  “Oh, I see. I think.”

  Quark started pacing up and down the room, “Lucifer took the scroll prior to his banishment. It contained, as you know, the original Word in Heavenly language. He hoped to use it in his schemes, but to do so he needed the Word and the Blood.”

  “And?”

  “And he only had one. The scroll sealed itself as soon as he was thrown out of the Third Heavens, he couldn’t even open it without a Child of the Garden. They simply archived it and had it guarded.”

  Oliver shuddered. “The snake.”

  Quark turned around, “He was no match for you, especially with your anointing.”

  “So when Millie arrived they thought they had both.”

  “If you had not removed the scroll who knows what the outcome would have been...”

  Suddenly there was a scratching at the door and Winston barked. Quark made himself scarce but reappeared when he knew it was only Winston. “Greetings. You must be pleased to have the twins back.”

  Winston jumped on the bed and put his little head on one side, “Humph,” he conceded. “Anymore daft adventures lined up?”

  Quark laughed but then became serious, “Out of my hands I’m afraid, but I do owe you all an apology for getting you caught up in this one.”

  “How come?” asked Oliver.

  Quark was flustered, “Well ... I kind of...messed up with the loops, I sent you in the spirit to somewhere you should never have gone. That was why you were missing from the Book of Life and how you became catalogued in the Library of the Dead. I inadvertently created the problem myself. And poor Millie almost lost her life in the most perilous of places.”

  Oliver was philosophical about it, “But if I hadn’t gone they would still have the scroll.”

  Winston scratched behind his ear, “Funny thing this finding stuff. Seems to me it all worked out as it should in the end.”

  Quark tapped his fingers together and smiled at them both, “Indeed, old friend, indeed.”

  To continue with the adventure, go to www.lrclarke.com and join my VIP reading group for details of the final novel in the Seekers series.