American Omens

  I know You hear me talking to You throughout the day, sometimes asking You questions, sometimes yelling at You, sometimes telling You to make things right.

  Will never had a problem questioning why God allowed terrible things to happen, like earthquakes and tsunamis and blizzards killing thousands. He thought of a writer typing out his story only to find it turning against him, so the writer simply deletes the story and starts a new one.

  God refused to delete His story. Instead, He ended up writing the most beautiful story one could ever imagine, giving His one and only Son to save the very story that had been deformed and distorted by the Enemy.

  It was easy to think about God in big terms like that, yet when it came to himself and his family, he expected and assumed more. He didn’t ask God outright why certain things were happening. Instead, Will assumed God was judging him too. For not witnessing enough or being good enough or strong enough.

  Enough of that nonsense.

  He knew better, but his flesh would overrule him too often. Will waded in guilt too often, while Amy simply wanted everybody to love a little more.

  “ ‘Love is of God, little children, so love everybody and all will be well,’ ” a voice spoke over the speakers in his car. “ ‘Thus speaks the devil, using Holy Scripture falsely for his evil purpose; and it is nothing short of tragic how many of God’s people are taken in by his sweet talk.’ ”

  It was Hutchence talking to him over the car’s speakers through his SYNAPSYS.

  “Hutchence?” Will asked, but the voice kept talking.

  “ ‘The shepherd becomes afraid to use his club and the wolf gets the sheep. The watchman is charmed into believing that there is no danger, and the city falls to the enemy without a shot. So Satan destroys us by appealing to our virtues.’ Some words from A. W. Tozer.”

  “Hey! How are you able to speak to me?” Will shouted.

  “One question, Will. Just one. Are you going to help us?”

  “I need answers.”

  “They’ll come in time. There’s only one answer that’s necessary right now. Will you join us?”

  Will let out a big sigh in the darkness of his car. “Yes.”

  “I’m ready, Will. Ready for the push.”

  There was silence, and Will called out Hutchence’s name several times, but he was gone. Soon there was nothing but the sound of the car engine and the tires on the road.

  Will tried once more to pray in the grip of a quiet dread as he drove, but he couldn’t. He waited for Hutchence’s voice to speak again. Instead, all he could hear was Pastor Brian’s words from their discussion earlier.

  “The Christian faith is either something that’s going to give you life, or it’s completely ludicrous. I choose life.”

  ELEVEN

  John the Baptist

  1.

  For five hours from Tulsa to Missouri, Cheyenne was trying to keep her body from shaking. Trying to keep from seeing the Parschauers’ bodies. Trying to keep from screaming or cursing. Trying to keep from forcing Jazz to pull the car over so she could throw up.

  They drove in silence for half the trip. Jazz knew how shaken she was, and he was letting her calm down. He looked shaken himself, but he showed it by an intense focus on the road, plus constant conversation with his LC for information. He asked about any news on the murders, and then he wanted to find out if he or Cheyenne was listed anywhere. But nothing came up for any of them.

  In those first couple of hours of processing everything, Cheyenne came to one definitive conclusion: she didn’t believe in the God her father had given his life to. She thought Jazz was a bit crazy, but then again, weren’t all artists? She still had questions, but she knew people were behind the deaths of the Parschauers, and she knew they had been killed specifically because of their faith. They weren’t religious extremists, nor were they part of the rioters protesting privacy intrusion. Tom and Susan were authentic folks, as the colloquialism went, and their faith was authentic as well. And they had been slaughtered because of this.

  Killed by the same corporation I used to work for. That Malek worked for.

  Her methodical mind replayed the words from those who had crossed her path.

  “Be careful,” Hoon, the man who gave her the note from her father, had said.

  Vice President Nakajima had warned her about her place in the company and about everything she knew: “The problem is that you have participated in many more campaigns and have been presented with much more sensitive material.”

  Then there was that mysterious voice talking to her through her SYNAPSYS, which was an impossibility, so perhaps she had imagined it. Yet the man’s words made more sense now than before: “This is your wake-up call, Cheyenne. You’ve been sleeping your whole life, dreaming those dreams.”

  All the work Malek and she had done on emotional algorithms was meant for good, meant for a better and more peaceful world. She had created a new set that saw beyond one’s physical actions and impressions, that looked deeper than what people bought and how they spent their time and whom they were with. These were simply part of the innovative technology inside an individual’s SYNAPSYS, algorithms the public didn’t know about, ones hidden behind the machinery and the user agreements Acatour and PASK had in place.

  Now she understood the truth behind what she had spent so much time working on. The very thing she was so proud to have been an architect for.

  “I’ve just been a tool they were using,” Cheyenne said, breaking the silence in the car.

  “Most people are.”

  “Yeah, but they haven’t helped Acatour invade people’s lives the way I have.”

  Jazz looked at her, surprised by her words. “What are you talking about?”

  “The work I’ve been doing at PASK. The creation of specific algorithms for SYNAPSYSes. That was called a miracle in our division by the select few who knew about it, of course. All I ever wanted—all I ever imagined—was helping people to become who they were supposed to be. Somehow they’re using these algorithms not only to monitor everybody but to control them. Not in an oppressive, totalitarian way, but rather in a hidden, manipulative way.”

  “All the technology and advancement since I’ve been alive has only been to further the power and corruption of the evil rulers of this world,” Jazz said. “Yet Jackson Heyford not only made history with his invention of the SYNAPSYS—science he stole from others, mind you—but he’s behind reaching Mars and finding a possible cure for cancer. He acts as if he simply wants to make this planet a better place.”

  “That’s what I believed,” Cheyenne said.

  “This stuff—what we just saw back there…This is real, and it’s been happening for a long time,” Jazz said. “Heyford’s a part of something that’s been around for decades. The world government. The New World Order. The Freemasons. The Illuminati. The deep state. The cabal. Names for secret societies that have become cartoons and comic books. Words that are punch lines. The figures change, and so do their names and networks. Yet the evil remains the same.”

  “I want to get back at them,” Cheyenne said, a surge of anger filling her. “Those men—the ones ultimately responsible for killing the Parschauers. I want to hurt them. To expose them. To take them down.”

  “Yeah, I hear you. I get it. And I like the sound in your voice.”

  “What sound?”

  “Fury,” Jazz said. “But it’s gotta be handled correctly. We have to be smart, because these people—as you know—are smarter. They find brilliant and talented people like you, and they suck them dry. They use them for whatever they want, to further their plans and goals. It’s always about more and more. Because ultimately Satan wants everything. Every living soul. Every bit of this earth and every second of time.”

  “I’ve never seen such evil in my life. At least not so close, not so in my face.”<
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  Jazz nodded, reaching over and clutching her hand briefly. “The Enemy may win a lot of battles down here, but he knows he can’t and won’t win the war. In the end every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. That’s no conspiracy, Cheyenne. That’s my hope. That’s where I put my fury.”

  Cheyenne looked out the window at the grassy fields of Missouri, at the trees on the hills in the background, at the patches of clouds pieced together like an unfinished crossword puzzle and showing the blue sky behind it. The fury began to subside, floating away like the ashes of a dwindling fire.

  “You make it sound so easy,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Believing in something you can’t see.”

  “Nah,” he said to her. “That’s not the hard part. It’s having to live in this world with faith while you see everybody else around you living without it.”

  2.

  So far, so good. Even after having his underground bunker discovered, Jazz was still anonymous to those following them. He was still able to use his SYNAPSYS to receive instructions. The destination they were told to go to was a suburb of St. Louis.

  “Who’s telling us to go there?” Cheyenne asked after Jazz informed her of their new destination.

  “A fellow musician I knew from back in the day. Someone no one’s paying any attention to. He’s in contact with Acrobat and is able to relay messages. A guy in a rock band communicating to a rapper and agreeing to meet in St. Louis isn’t worth getting suspicious about.”

  “Is every conversation and communication through a SYNAPSYS being monitored? I know those clashing with the government and with Acatour claim that, but I haven’t seen any proof of it while working at the PASK division.”

  “They have machines listening the same way they have machines driving cars and protecting streets and talking to us like spouses. And since they’re machines, they can still be predicted and manipulated. As long as nobody discovers my identity, communication through SYNAPSYS is okay.”

  The neighborhood they drove through was affluent with mansions sitting on huge lots. “Old money” was how Jazz described it. To see how much land some people owned was unbelievable. Thousands of people were crammed into tidy little apartments in the Incen Tower, yet out here a family of four or even a couple might own a ten-thousand-square-foot house on ten acres of land. That was exactly the sort of house they were driving up to.

  A side road led to another side road that led to a large metal gate that opened once it saw their Hummer coming. Then a winding road led to a white house on a hill, and only then did Cheyenne realize the road was, in fact, a driveway.

  “Who lives here?” Cheyenne asked, looking through the windshield at the two-story mansion that seemed to consist of several different additions.

  “This is my house,” Jazz said without any expression.

  “Are you serious?”

  He laughed. “No. Are you serious? I made good money but not this kind of money. Years ago this place was owned by a senator who eventually got run out of Congress for what they called corruption. But that’s another way to say they didn’t like his outspoken and ‘old school’ faith. And guess who led the charge to get him out?”

  “I imagine someone important,” Cheyenne said.

  “President Ozias Garrison, who was a pawn himself. They couldn’t kill the senator outright—not back then. That would have been too obvious. He no longer lives in this house, but he kept it in his family. His son owns it, and as it turns out, his son has been a valuable resource for us.”

  As the Hummer ascended the small hill the house sat on, they passed a ranch tucked away in the woods.

  “That’s where the housekeeper used to live,” Jazz said. “Now it’s empty.”

  An ornately designed one-story structure could be seen next to the mansion.

  “What’s that?” Cheyenne asked.

  “The pool house. Some place, huh? I’ve only been here once myself.”

  “What are we doing here?”

  “This is our safe house. There’s just one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We won’t actually be going into the house. We’ll be staying in their bunker.”

  3.

  To call this a bunker was like calling the Incen Tower tall. They parked in a garage and then proceeded to a doorway that didn’t go up to the house but revealed a set of steps descending into darkness. Cheyenne followed Jazz into the black space, holding his arm as he took the steps slowly. Finally, at the bottom they opened another door that led to warm, glowing colors and the feel of an exotic hotel getaway.

  Normally she would have marveled at the small fountain with running water they passed in the entryway or the black-and-white photography hanging in select places on the walls. The main room they entered had an entire digital wall broadcasting a live shot from some Caribbean beach, making it seem as if they could step right onto the sand and drift into the ocean. A table in front of the two plush couches contained a variety of food: fruit in bowls, cheese and meats on one dish, pastries on another.

  “The senator’s son is a big fan of mine. Sometimes that still comes in handy,” Jazz said with his big grin as he grabbed an apple.

  She didn’t smile back. “Where’s the restroom?”

  “I think it’s the first door down the hallway.”

  Once inside, she locked the door and then moved to the sink to turn on the faucet. The cold water felt good on her hands and even better on her face. She sipped it even though there was bottled water outside in the living room. For a moment she looked at herself in the mirror, realizing it had been days since she took a shower or bothered with makeup. Not that she ever wore much of it anyway.

  Not only did the eyes looking back at her appear tired and anxious; they also carried grief. And the longer she looked, the more the grief began to swell and fall down her cheeks. She closed her eyes and thought of the Parschauers and then began to weep. A slight cry came out of her throat, surprising her, and she cupped her mouth to avoid Jazz hearing her. She didn’t worry about him thinking she wasn’t tough. Cheyenne knew she was tough and could deal with emotions. But she didn’t want to hear any more talk about God and hope and joy. Not now.

  You show up, and my father disappears. You show up again with Jazz, and soon we’re being hunted down. And once again You show up with the couple, only to see them sacrificed for some reason.

  This didn’t make sense.

  Wiping the tears away, she could hear her father talking about those thoughts. “That’s called a prayer, Cheyenne. You’re talking to God. We all do that, even those of us who don’t believe in Him.”

  She remembered her father telling her this shortly before he disappeared. The memory made her cry even more.

  Stop, Chy. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

  Life hadn’t given her much room for self-pity, and she wasn’t going to let it slip in now. With her mother leaving for whatever reason when Cheyenne was in kindergarten and her father working so many hours when she was in grade school, Cheyenne grew up fast and figured things out for herself.

  So figure things out now. What’s the next step? Leave faith out of this, and get rid of those Daddy issues.

  She swallowed, ran warm water from the faucet this time, and splashed it on her face. Her mind tried to drift to the calculating machine she used to be at Incen, the one that kept working on perfecting algorithms to operate as individuals. To function as perfect individuals and not weak ones. Yet she couldn’t get herself to grasp the facts. Instead, the emotion continued to drown her.

  It wasn’t every day she saw a couple of dead bodies. Grisly too. The memories of stumbling upon them would never leave her.

  Taking a breath, she wiped around the edges of her eyes and widened them, then went back to find Jazz and figure out what was next. Not
hing could make her heart stop hurting.

  As she entered the big room again, Cheyenne realized she was mistaken.

  “Hey, sweetie.”

  She stopped, her mouth opening and letting out a very loud gasp. If Jazz weren’t standing beside him with a giant smile, she would have known she was dreaming.

  “Daddy?” The word surprised her, and she said it more as a question than a comment.

  Her father rushed to her without another word and embraced her as she heard herself start to cry again.

  “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  She knew this wasn’t a dream, because she would never imagine those words herself. They definitely came from her father. He was alive and breathing and holding his baby girl in his arms.

  4.

  It took her a while to compose herself, to stop crying and to sit down next to her father on the couch. Jazz brought her some coffee, then excused himself, saying they surely had lots to talk about.

  One of her father’s best attributes was his smile. It was the reassuring and gentle spark that a parent should have, and Keith Burne had seemed to have it his whole life, from the snapshots of him giggling as a baby to the wedding pictures with her mother. Even now with the serious expression he wore, she could still see her dad’s warmth behind his glance.

  “I’m sorry about everything that’s happened,” he said. “Especially back in Tulsa.”

  “That was terrible.”

  “I know. Chy, at least you can understand now the true gravity of the situation.”

  She took a deep breath. “I do, but I don’t understand the situation. Not fully.”

  “I know. There are certain things I’ve wanted—I’ve needed—to tell you. But as I said in my note to you, I went about things the wrong way the last time we talked. I’ve regretted it and have prayed that God would give me another chance to talk to you. I was passionate, but I was also stubborn, and I didn’t take into account how you might feel and all the things you might be questioning. The things you’re surely still questioning.”