Turn or Burn

by Boo Walker

  “Harper,” I heard a man’s voice say.

  I turned and saw the man who branded me. Jameson Taylor.

  He’d tied a red bandana around his head. “Have you been treated well?” he asked with a slight crack of a smile. The two Dobermans were at his side.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “Francesca is safe and resting. We’ll go by and see her later. She’s got a big night tonight. I’m sure you have lots of questions. Follow me and we’ll talk. Someone wants to meet you.”

  As he spoke those words, I knew it was him who had been speaking to me while they had me strapped down.

  I looked behind me. The woman who’d led me out had disappeared. The three men were still there, though, standing at the door looking at us, making sure I didn’t do anything unacceptable. Truth was, there wasn’t anything I could do. Between the heavy lethargy and confusion still lingering from the tranquilizers, and the fact that my hands were locked up and that I was outnumbered, I had been rendered useless. Besides, they’d beaten all the fight out of me. I was a shadow of the man I’d been days ago, weeks ago, years ago. A picture of human decay.

  We took a well-traveled trail leading into the woods. The dogs ran ahead and the armed men followed us, hanging a few feet back. The leaves high up were dripping water from a recent rain. “How did you know where to find us?” I asked.

  He grinned. “Wendy Harrill called. Said you’d shaken her up some and that she’d told you Daniel’s name. Wasn’t too hard from there. I knew you’d go to his house. I also had a pretty good feeling you wouldn’t be calling the cops, so we knew it would be a good time to grab you. Even if you had called the cops, we would have just waited until our next opportunity.”

  “You know I am going to kill you, right?”

  “I don’t see how that is possible, but I am prepared to die.”

  “Good. Good.”

  We reached a clearing near the stream that I had heard earlier. A man was standing over a wooden table, working. As we drew near, he stopped and turned around.

  The man before me turned up one corner of his mouth, recognizing me. “Welcome, Harper.”

  I eyed him. “Abner,” I said. He acknowledged my greeting with a widening smile.

  CHAPTER 44

  Jameson walked away, leaving the two of us standing alone in the woods. Daniel Abner looked very much like a professor, from his slightly long hair to the John Lennon glasses to the hint of beard from his lazy shaving habit. He was a tall guy, maybe six foot three, and was in good shape. His dark brown hair was tucked behind his ears but wasn’t quite long enough for a ponytail.

  With two hands, he held up a very ornate cross that he’d been carving. A detailed and clean effort, though I held back my praise. There was a triskelion in the center where the two pieces of wood met. It was identical to the one above my waist.

  “I think I’m done,” he said. “Just in time for tonight.”

  “Good for you. That makes me really proud. My friend is dead, and now my comrade and I have been kidnapped and locked up by you kooks, and you shove your little hobby in my face like I give a damn. What are you doing, Abner? What do you want with us?”

  I could see a hint of rage light up deep behind his blue eyes, and I thought to myself that he’d certainly lost his mind. But he held back like a good man of the cloth. “You got in the way. Both of you did. I can’t have that. You running around all over town trying to figure out what we’re up to. Trying to punish us for killing your friend. That’s absurd. Your friend was a casualty of war. We all know that. You forced us to bring you in. But I’ve realized the two of you have come into our lives for a reason. Now, you are in the process of being saved. I am sorry it is so uncomfortable, but it’s the only way. One day, you’ll look back on all this and thank me. You will have found your way. We may even be friends.”

  “That’s why you tortured me? So you could save me?”

  “That’s why we are and will continue to torture you. Until you are one of us.”

  “That will take a long time.”

  He nodded his head and sighed. “I’m afraid you’re right. Longer than the others for sure. But in the end, they’ve all come around. You will too.”

  “You people are out of your heads.”

  “They say such things of all prophets.”

  “Prophets…that’s what you call yourselves. What war are you fighting, Abner?”

  “All in time. Let’s walk. I’d be happy to answer your questions.” He motioned with his hands. “Please follow me. Humor me for a little while.” He began walking back into the forest, finding another trail. I followed him.

  “Are you a man of God?”

  “No.”

  “That’s a shame. You will be, though. You have the triskelion on your skin now. It’s a mark of continuity and progress and rebirth. But I’m sure you know all this by now. All of those we have marked have come to see the light. You are on their path. Jesus said, Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life. It’s not too late for you. Not too late for any of you.”

  Turning his head toward me, he changed the subject. “I saw pictures of you before the Singularity Summit at Dr. Sebastian’s house. We figured you were a new member of the team. You almost caught one of my men the first day you showed up. He said you saw him in a neighbor’s window. That would not have been good.”

  “Why were you after the doctors?” I asked. “Why did you kill Dr. Kramer?”

  “I’ll tell you something now that you will not believe. We didn’t kill Dr. Kramer. We did try to get at Dr. Sebastian at the Summit. That was more of a test run, so to speak. To see how dedicated our new soldiers were. Turned out I was able to trust the women to attempt it, but they still weren’t ready. They failed at their mission. Instead, they killed your friend, Ted, which caused me great problems. You suddenly found a need to get involved. I tried to warn you, too. You had nothing to do with this, and you’ve fought for our country, so I offered you a way out.”

  “By blowing up my car?”

  “You needed to know I was serious.”

  “What do you mean, you didn’t kill Kramer?”

  “We had nothing to do with it.” He said it in that kind of prideful, confident way that told me he very well could be telling the truth.

  “Who did it then?” I asked, not believing anything he was saying.

  “It’s not important.”

  “Are we done here?”

  We’d taken a loop through the woods and were closer to the main house. The sun had dropped behind the trees and it was cooler now. Toward the middle of the field, in between the house and the cabins where they had tortured me, there was something going on. People were gathering. He asked me to sit in the grass with him and I did so.

  “That’s my home,” he said, pointing toward the white Victorian. A cylindrical tower on the left side reached well past the rest of the roof. “We’ve been here a long time. We used to all try to cram into the house but eventually we outgrew the house and the barn. That’s why we built cabins like the one you were in. It’s really a healing kind of place.” He sighed. “So this is us…The Soldiers of the Second Coming.”

  “Your own little asylum.”

  He gave a fake laugh. “You have no idea why we’re here, do you?”

  “Let’s see…from what I’ve gathered so far…you people are scared of cell phones. You kidnap and abuse prostitutes. You brand people. And you think your son is going to be Jesus Christ. That about sum it up?”

  He soaked that in for a moment. “That’s a jaded way of looking at it. We are not scared of cell phones. In fact, we do use cell phones. We are not scared of technology. We fear God and that is all. I know that we, as a race, are on the wrong track. Technology is a dangerous game. Up to now, we’ve used it to enhance our lives in a more sterile fashion, in an organic way. Cell phones make it easier to communicate. Anesthesiologists make the pain go away. Computers make communication easier. But there has
come a time now where technology has become the end and not the means.” He turned to me. “So you wonder why we are here?”

  “Enlighten me.”

  The scripture started coming out of his mouth and his voice changed. “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was nothing but evil. We are here to work our way to heaven. Technology is now getting in the way of that. Our imagination is dredging up the devil. There are biologists finding ways to alter our chromosomes in order to stop degenerating. Changing the way God made us…trying to keep us from dying.

  “Scientists, like Sebastian and Kramer, are trying to unite man and machine, encouraging some sort of radical evolution that I can assure you will end with the Lord’s abandonment. Engineers are attempting to create nanobots that can multiply on their own. Multiply on their own! We are just asking for machines to take over. To kill us off.”

  He fiddled with a stick that he picked up off the ground as he continued. “We are not Neo-Luddites. We are conservative bio-ethicists. We are the ones who will make sure other humans don’t cross the boundaries, that they won’t worship false idols. Christ will come again, by my seed, and He will come soon, and we will beg God for this honor and will plead for His mercy and ask that He forgive us for who we have become.”

  “Good talk,” I said. “I strongly advise you get on some medication. Never before have I met someone more screwed up than me. Until now. Where is Francesca?”

  “Close by.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’s being treated with the utmost respect.”

  “You need to let her go. She has nothing to do with all this.”

  “She has everything to do with all this!”

  “You are out of your goddamned mind.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  CHAPTER 45

  As a blanket of blackness swallowed the farm, Daniel Abner led me back into the camp. My mind was still loopy from the pharmaceuticals, but what came into view as we approached camp was beyond even the most severe of hallucinations.

  Out in the field, we came upon an outdoor church of sorts, lit up in great splendor with torches standing free in the ground. A wooden cross—the same one Abner had been working on earlier—stood on an altar amongst hundreds of multi-colored flowers. Two women in white stood next to it.

  The benches were full. It must have been everyone in the camp, maybe one-hundred-and-fifty strong. They all rose and turned as we drew near. A woman came up and helped Abner slip a white pulpit robe over his head. Then she handed him a silver stole that he took and placed around his neck. He looked at me and smiled. “See you in a little while, my new friend.”

  Jameson appeared and took me by the arm. He led me back behind the benches, and we stayed standing, watching the scene. Everyone’s eyes followed Abner as he approached the altar. He motioned for them to sit. I hadn’t paid attention to the two women in white until that moment. They were standing together on a diagonal, facing the people. Two men stood directly behind them, and it was clear the women were not there of their own accord. They held bouquets of white lilies in their hands and more lilies in their hair—those same Madonna lilies—and it looked like their hands were tied in front of them.

  The one closest to me was Francesca. The uneven and sporadic light of the torch made it hard to read her face but I could see her fear. Luan Sebastian, the doctor’s wife, stood next to her, sharing a similar look, both looking into the night with glassy eyes. What was Luan doing there?

  “They look beautiful, don’t they?” Jameson asked.

  I knew Francesca wouldn’t have been so cooperative had she not been fully convinced that there was no other way. We had to play the game for a moment. Surely, at some point, we would find a window of escape. She had to have the same thought. The opportunity would come sooner rather than later if we showed them that we were easy to control. We would build trust with our captors, and then they would let down their guard—if only for just a second. I would be there to take advantage. So for now, I had to comply quietly and observe this disturbing horror without interfering.

  A man pinned a microphone to Abner’s silver stole and then went back to his seat in the front row, where he put on headphones and picked up a professional video camera, resting it on his shoulder. It was the kind of camera you might see during the filming of a movie. Much larger than anything for personal use. He and Abner communicated for a moment, testing the mic, and then Abner turned his back to us.

  What was I about to witness?

  CHAPTER 46

  “All rise,” Abner said loudly, raising his hands, still facing the altar. It was clear the microphone he’d put on earlier was only for recording purposes. He didn’t need a mic. His voice carried well over the pews and across the open field.

  The people stood.

  He led them in a hymn I’d never heard before. Jameson, standing next to me, joined in with his low, gravelly voice. He was surprisingly on pitch. Though I have pretty strong pipes, I didn’t know the words. They sang, “Lo! He comes with clouds descending, once for favored sinners slain. Thousand thousand saints attending, swell the triumph of His train. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! God appears on earth to reign.” You get the idea.

  Francesca couldn’t see me, as there was no light where we stood. I wondered what they’d done to her. It was out of some dark nightmare, what I was looking at, and I knew she felt the same way.

  As they finished singing, Abner turned and motioned for his flock to take their seats. They obeyed.

  He clasped his hands together. “Blow ye the trumpet in Zion,” he began, “and sound an alarm on my holy mountain. Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble. For the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand.”

  He spoke with all the power and grace of similar preachers I’d seen on television. He’d clearly found his calling, so to speak, and I could see very quickly how he’d captured these people’s hearts. He’d turned them all crazy, and I kept thinking about David Koresh and Waco, Texas, and all his wives and children, and Jim Jones and the Jonestown he created in Guyana, South America, where almost one thousand people committed suicide. Those were the kind of people I’d dealt with all my life, but most of my enemies had been of other religions. The extremists I’d been fighting had been Muslims, but they were no different than Christian radical extremists. Misled is the word that comes to mind first.

  “Brothers and sisters,” Abner said as he lowered his hands, “the day of the Lord is coming, and we have been chosen to be the soldiers of His return. I can think of no greater honor and I accept with all my heart. I believe we all do.”

  A round of Amen’s ran around his congregation.

  He lowered his voice. “As many of you have heard me say before, I am not a Neo-Luddite. I don’t have a problem with technology, but there has to be a line. Right now, there is not one.”

  He paused and the people nodded.

  “We must draw a line because there is a point of no return—an event horizon as these Singularists call it—and we are not far from it. We are toying with forces that we will not be able to control. We are eating from the Tree of Knowledge. We are trying to become God!” He backed off. “I’ll tell you right now that I don’t want to know what’s on the other side. It’s not God’s Kingdom. I know that. It’s the end of our race. It’s the end of our chances of ever walking along beside Him in Heaven and seeing our loved ones again. Jesus said, But he that denies me before men shall be denied before the angels of God.”

  Abner went quiet for a moment and looked around at his people, who were captivated by his words. Even the young children were wrapped up in them.

  “I believe in the good in people, and I believe that we can get through to—” he pointed at the camera, “many of you, who have no idea what is going on. You don’t know about the Singularity. Some of you don’t know what the future might bring if we don’t pull back the reins of techn
ology. Well, I am here to warn you. Tomorrow will be a wake-up call. Many will suffer, but it will save so many more. We do this for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as it is our duty.” He whispered, “Amen.”

  They came back with a quiet, “Amen,” and I wondered what the hell he was talking about. What was going to happen tomorrow?

  He looked directly at the camera. “I’m hoping some of you who see this video find this as terrifying as I do. I’m hoping you do your homework and figure out that I’m telling you the truth. They want to take what makes you you and find a way to upload it into hardware. Then from there they can load you into some kind of virtual world where you can live in a video game, or you can be installed into a non-biological substrate or carrier and have a robotic body that will never age. They want to find a way we can live longer. A way we sinners can sidestep the pain and suffering that is our responsibility to endure. We’re here to learn lessons, brothers and sisters, not to find shortcuts. Some of you will think I’m crazy, but these are facts.”

  I thought he was crazy, whether they were facts or not.

  He shook his finger and raised the pitch of his voice. “Go look into what DARPA is doing. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Go find out what they’re up to. They’re the ones funding Dr. Sebastian and Dr. Kramer’s work in combining man and machine. And guess where that money comes from. From you! From the taxpayers! If there is a promise of building a stronger soldier, a promise of winning the next war, then our government will find a way to fund it. Even if that means reconstructing a soldier’s DNA, playing with forces that are undoubtedly evil. They are counting on the fact that you didn’t know that. You didn’t know that we as a race are trying to play God. Well, wake up!”

  Abner kept talking and I was growing weary of it. I looked around. Someone was looking at me from the congregation. I squinted my eyes and made out the face of Elvin. He saw that I had noticed him and quickly turned back around.