“I’ll do much worse than that,” Brendan sneers.
“Would you stop being such a jerk, Brendan?” I say.
I turn to Farrell. “What about you, Tod?” I say. “You staying in the boat, or are you coming with me?”
46
FOUR HOURS OF FLYING AND driving gets us to the doorstep of Savannah’s new home she shares with Argentino in Columbia, Maryland. Officer Pete did more than just fly me, Farrell, and Brendan to Baltimore incognito, he rented the car for us and pointed out the locations of security cameras so that I could better avoid exposing the good side of my face to the facial recognition software of the federal government’s supercomputers. Pete also dyed my brown hair and eyebrows blond, bought me a pair of tennis shoes, Baltimore Ravens sweats and hoodie and, of all things, a poodle from a pet shop, hoping to further mask my identity. Thanks to the painful bruises in my legs and ankles, my limp adds another dimension to my disguise.
Farrell and Brendan were impressed with Pete’s work, but wouldn’t cooperate with his suggestions or my pleadings. Farrell would go no further than shaving his mustache, and Brendan would do no more than buy some second-hand store clothes and a cap.
When we discover Savannah’s home appears to be abandoned, I am tempted to despair. Not knowing where she has taken up residence, I don’t know what else to do beside head toward the New Body Research Center and pray for a miracle.
I sit at a roadside café one and a half miles from my company parking lot in downtown Baltimore, mulling over my options.
After twenty minutes of sipping cappuccinos on the outdoor patio, feeding stale pretzels to the poodle under our table, and watching the hovercars float by, my desperate brainstorming hasn’t come up with a single remedy. How can I get inside the New Body Research Center? Once inside, how can I intervene to protect my granddaughter and her clone before tomorrow morning?
“Why didn’t we figure out that we couldn’t figure this out before we flew into the lion’s den and before I shaved my mustache?” Farrell wipes his mouth with a napkin as he watches traffic pass by.
“Shh,” I plead. “Keep your voice down.”
“Maybe we’ll see your daughter’s car on the way,” Brendan proposes. “What’s she drive?”
“Uh, she’s got a convertible red hover-supercar, I think.”
Farrell straightens up. “Well, that can’t be too difficult to pick out of the crowd.”
“Plus a couple other cars.” Now, his shoulders droop. “Besides, this will not be a transfer, but a trade, Mary Nell for Nellie. Even if I can find Savannah and save Mary Nell, Nellie would then be sacrificed. I cannot think of any way to save them both.”
“Are there any other options?” Officer Pete leans in. “Let’s think.”
I sigh. “I’m completely in the dark. I just know God can do it, and He wants to do it. All we can do is show up and ask God to do His will. In refuting all of my medical justifications for abortion, my sister used to say that it was not God’s will that one of His children would perish.”
Pete chuckles at my choice of words.
“What?” I turn to him. “It’s in the Bible.”
“If it were God’s will, He’d do it. I was raised in church and I’m familiar enough with the Bible that I know God’s in control, right?”
Pete’s assertion piques my interest. “Oh, you think He’s got all this sin and murder under control?”
“I do, or He wouldn’t be God.”
“If evil was under God’s control,” I respond, “we’d be fighting God to fight evil.”
Pete and Brendan both jolt. “Huh?”
“If, if, a driver is under control of his car that runs over innocent people, or if an officer is under control of his weapon that kills innocent people, how aren’t they responsible? How aren’t they to blame for doing something God forbids—intentionally killing innocent people?”
Pete and Brendan both object simultaneously, but it’s Farrell who takes the floor.
“Pete, hold up, don’t you think God’s loving?” Farrell asks.
Pete takes a deep breath. “He is loving, but He is also all-powerful.”
“I agree.” Farrell nods. “Unless you define all-powerful in a way that contradicts the Bible’s description of God’s love and goodness.”
“Wouldn’t it be hypocritical to forbid murder and simultaneously permit it, Pete? Brandon?” They turn to me, Pete twiddling his thumbs and Brendan keeping his hand wrapped around a pistol in the pocket of his red windbreaker. “What would you think if Tod helped prosecute those who were killing dupes while all along he was having a clone created and primed for him to murder and assume his body? Wouldn’t that be hypocritical? Shouldn’t Farrell also be arrested?”
Pete purses his lips and looks down at his twiddling thumbs.
“If something happened that wasn’t God’s will,” Officer Pete speculates, “then God wouldn’t be sovereign.”
“Better that than sinful,” I respond.
“That’s heresy!” Pete objects.
“It is?” I turn to Farrell. “I don’t know the Bible very well, I’m just thinking through it.”
“Oh, they’re just being protective of their orthodoxy,” Farrell says. “You’re not a heretic.”
Pete acts offended and looks away down the road.
“Pete, hey, Pete,” Farrell calls his name until Pete’s eyes fix on Farrell’s. “Better His power be restrained by His love than He violate His own law mandating love, setting a poor moral example for angels and men. Tell me, what does the Bible say the angels cry as they worship around His throne?”
He shrugs.
“Holy, holy, holy,” Brendan answers.
Farrell nods. “Yes. Not power, power, power.”
“Really?” I say. Farrell nods.
“Murder is not God’s will.” Farrell taps his index finger against the table with each syllable. “Why doesn’t He stop it? I don’t know, but I am confident there’s a reason consistent with His love and His law. And I know that just because it looks like murderers get away with it today, there will be a day of reckoning. The first will be last, and the last first. We shouldn’t mistake God’s long-suffering for tolerance. He will punish all unforsaken sin.”
I point in the direction of the New Body Research Center. “I know right from wrong, and I know God is good. What more do you need to know to realize that what they conspire to do to my granddaughter tomorrow morning is not God’s will? Do I need the Bible to know that any more than I need the Bible to know two plus equals four?”
I head toward the bathroom and Brendan gets up to follow.
As soon as I’m inside and see the bathroom empty, my heart begins to be weighed down with grief over what is happening to my family, my grandchildren. I begin to pray fervently for Mary Nell to be saved. I’m aware that Brendan is behind me watching my outburst, but I don’t care. I’m desperate.
“So you want God’s will, huh?”
I think it’s Brendan’s voice behind me, but then I hear a thump, and I turn to see Brendan has slumped to the floor. A hooded person is standing there with a spray can in his hand. He stretches it to me, and I back up and open my mouth to scream, but before I can, he has sprayed the white substance into my face.
Instantly, a darkness overcomes me.
47
I OPEN MY EYES TO a blinding light shining in my face. All around me is blackness. My hands are tied behind my back. The first words that come out of my mouth are, “Oh no, not again.”
A figure steps between me and the light. “What are you doing here?”
I squint to try to see the facial features of the man whose voice I vaguely recognize. “I suppose you kidnapped me and carried me here.”
“When you’re hanging by a thread over a hellish death, you don’t mock the hand that holds the thread. What are you doing in Baltimore?”
“Where’s the man I was with?”
“Brendan Carpenter’s fine.”
�
�How did I . . . ?”
He sighs and interrupts, “Oh, the wasted space of lesser mortals’ minds. Please, spare me your dozen questions. Tell me why you’re here, or I will draw it out of you quickly with pain.”
I wince at the man’s threat of violence. Is there any reason to withhold the truth? “My granddaughter, Mary Nell, is due to be traded in for her clone tomorrow morning.”
“The one you kidnapped . . . ”
“Kidnapped? No.” I shake my head side to side. “No.”
“Why are the two Alabama intelligence agents, Tod Farrell and Brendan Carpenter, and the Georgia police officer Pete Kragg with you?”
I’m stumped. He knows their identities. How?
“Do you work for the government?”
He sighs anxiously. “Please, answer my questions simply and quickly.”
“You’re wrong about that.”
“About what? Causing you pain?”
“No, about me fearing it. I’m not scared to die.”
“Death can be a wave of pleasurable euphoria compared to more severe forms of suffering. If you think that little intramuscular paralytic injected into your facial nerve to disguise your appearance was a painful injection, it is nothing compared to what I can do to you.”
What is he talking about? Ah, he’s referring to the weakness in the left side of my face. He thinks I injected medicine into my jaw to intentionally disfigure my face. I turn my gaze from the shadow of this clearly cruel creature and look down at the floor. It appears as if I will not be able to save my girls. “I’m in God’s hands,” I mumble gloomily. “Do what you will.”
My comment has his quick tongue momentarily paralyzed. He stands still with his arms crossed over his chest. Finally, he asks in a softer tone, “Tell me, why are those men with you?”
“To help me.”
“Help you do what?”
“Help me save Mary Nell.” I clear my throat. “And Nellie, her, uh, clone.”
“Do you know how many defective people like your precious little Mary Nell and how many clones like Nellie you and your company have butchered?”
“All too well. I live with the guilt. The pain of knowing it’s all my fault.”
“Oh, you’re being too hard on yourself. It’s not just your fault. Some people pay for the killing. Then there are the doctors who do the killing and the cutting, the scientists who do the experimenting, the lawyers and bureaucrats who justify it. All of them deserve to suffer.”
I gaze to where his eyes would be if I could see into the blackness of his shadowy face. “They are suffering.”
The man leans in to me and screams in my face. “If they all breathe one more breath that isn’t a scream of utter terror, it’s more than they deserve!”
The hot steam of his words pains my ears and makes me gasp. This man certainly has a personal stake in the suffering of those associated with this industry. His unnatural outrage makes my heart speed up and a cold sweat break out on my brow. I attempt to subjugate my involuntary autonomic outburst through intentionally turning my thoughts and my prayers to God. I close my eyes and pray for Mary Nell and her new best friend Nellie. God, protect them. Save them. I am willing to even die for their sakes.
“They should all suffer!” he shouts. “And they will suffer. That’s my will! My will be done!”
“Yes, they will suffer. You know about the rapid-onset dementia? It’s going to bankrupt the company probably. Everybody that’s received a new body . . . ”
“I know all about it. I know they’re blaming you for it.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“And I know it won’t bankrupt the company. You’ll modify your protocol, amend your contracts to obtain informed consent, and the killing will continue. See, if you tell a crack addict that 90% of crack needles on the street are contaminated with some horrible pathogen, they still abuse. The addiction blinds him to the statistical realities of his actions. He convinces himself that he will be that lucky person who will have all the pleasure and none of the pain. Just like you Americans, drunk with pleasure and Hollywood waste, to risk your sanity and two million ameros for just the rare chance that you’ll get immortality without the downside.”
“I can stop it. If you want to stop the killing, then help me.”
He takes a step back, and laughs a hard cackle. “Help you do what? Save your own skin and blood, your family? What about all the other innocent people condemned to die in the course of your human farming, your slave-trading?”
“Help me save them all, if you can. If you can’t, just help me save . . . ” I hesitate. I will not rely upon limited man to do what only an unlimited God can do. And I will not rest content with saving only those close to me. No, Tamara was right. We need to love “the least of these”—all of God’s children, especially those least likely to be rescued. “I may not be able to save them all today, but I know I need to save Mary Nell—and her clone. Once they are safe, I have offered to turn myself in to the Alabama authorities who are with me today. They’re going to prosecute me under their new state law, defy the predictable judicial nullification of it, and if they succeed, then several other states are going to join them.”
As I say this, he back-peddles until he is behind the light. I squint from its brightness. “I am doing what I can do. What about you? What are you doing? Why don’t you help us save them?”
“Us? You mean you and those three men that are with you?”
“And the leadership of seven states. And God.”
“God? Why doesn’t the big shot just do it then?”
“He wants to! What we’re doing is not His will! It’s not. Our duty is to believe and obey, and let Him work His miracle and do what a loving God loves to do. Save people. Help people. Alleviate suffering. Do justice.”
“You and God, huh? And your little ‘Star Chamber’ of justice.” He heaves a belly laugh.
I furrow my brow. “God won’t be mocked.”
“Well, for a God who won’t allow Himself to be mocked, there’s a whole lot of people doing it.”
“He won’t let them get away with it.”
“The old, wait-and-you’ll-see-I’m-right proof. Yet God continues to tarry as the suffering continues with no end in sight. Is this horrible injustice one more thing your God won’t prevent because of His commitment to let our wills remain free? Or can’t do, because He’s impotent? Or maybe He doesn’t require Himself to be as loving as He requires us to be?”
“Hey!”
“Oh, don’t get so offended. If God allows it, so should you. So, tell me about this great plan your God has given you to save every clone from dying?”
I take a deep breath. I don’t have a plan, but it’s probably not wise to tell him that.
I hear his breathing rate pick up. He steps closer, casting a shadow across my face. “You don’t have a plan, do you?”
“Not yet,” I finally admit. “You obviously want to save them. Tell me your plan, and I’ll help you.”
He crosses his arms over his chest and steps to the side of the light. I listen for an answer. I begin to search the shadows for his figure, but the light is too intensely bright to see anything except his right leg and arm.
“Oh, I see,” I sneer, “that’s the kind of person you are. Curse the darkness, damn the blood-guilty, and do nothing to help the helpless. For a man with so little mercy, you sure are going to need it on Judgment Day, for God will show no mercy for those who show no mercy.” I pause, expecting a witty come-back, but I hear nothing. I plunge the sword deeper. “You swing your gavel against others to your own peril, for as you judge, you will be judged.”
I hear the faint clapping of his footsteps retreating across the carpeted floor.
The overhead light comes on. I’m in what looks like a hotel bedroom, facing a twin bed. I fix my eyes upon the face of a man I never thought I would see.
“Jeremy Porter?” I try to not act surprised.
He pulls the hoodie down around h
is neck and sits on the bed in front of me. The last time I saw him, he pulled a trigger of a gun that was aimed at my face.
“I think you have to have a soul to stand before God on Judgment Day, Dr. Verity, so I might not be invited.”
Briefly, he has given me a glimpse of what lies behind his veneer of lawless brutality. Behind those words is a man despairing, hopeless. Those words are his excuse for his own evil.
“If you don’t have a soul, then you’re not a person, are you?” He raises his eyes to meet mine. “If you’re not a person, then neither are your brothers and sisters, and what then is wrong with killing your brothers and sisters locked up in the New Body Research Center? Hmm? Why’s it any more wrong to do it to you than it is to do it to a bug or a rock?”
He leans forward with his elbows on his knees, and clenches his fists. “God—if there is one—is not good.”
What are the chances that my last thirty minutes of conversation with the Farrell, Brendan, and Pete helped equip me, a biblically-illiterate newborn Christian, on how to defend my faith under such scrutiny?
“What do you find so humorous?” he barks with rage in his eyes.
“I’m chuckling because I’ve been where you’re at, and almost envy you because of the euphoria of the revelation you’re about to experience.”
“Really?”
“If there’s no good God, Jeremy, then there’s nothing wrong with killing people, is there?” I smirk at the doubt in his eyes. “You know it’s wrong to intentionally kill an innocent person, for Redd Cranton to hurt a scared and lonely little boy, as evidenced by your righteous fury over it. Thus, you know there’s a good God.”
“Well, if there is a God, then He’s not as strong as you make Him out to be.”
“And He’s worthy of your love for precisely that reason.”
He jolts, surprised at my response.
“Jeremy, God is not so powerful as to be unable to genuinely love. Love makes Him vulnerable . . . ”
“Vulnerable?”
“Yes, vulnerable! He’s freely susceptible to grief and sadness. My sister told me several times that God was grieved over my sin. She quoted from Exodus that He was actually sorry that He made man, and regretted doing it.”
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