The New Reality

by Stephen Martino

  “Let’s commence with something simple.” He looked at his palm and said, “We’ll begin our search with the word Neurono-Tek.”

  A holographic grid of Hebrew letters appeared above the disc with certain groups of letters circled, like a child’s word search game. Below the grid, revealed the key to translate the code.

  Alex and Marissa looked especially skeptical at the holograph before them. If they hadn’t witnessed Jonathan’s kindness, bravery, and intelligence firsthand, they would have immediately dismissed this code as some charade or hoax.

  Jonathan sensed what they were thinking. “I can assure you that I’m not some run-of-the-mill nut or in some kind of cult. What you see before you is 99.9997% mathematically significant. If you take another work such as War and Peace or even the four books of the New Testament by the apostles, the results would not be the same.”

  He diffused the situation, but Alex remained skeptical. The whole idea of creating a word search still seemed sophomoric, if not ridiculous.

  William twirled his finger next to his head when Jonathan wasn’t looking to insinuate the man’s loss of sanity.

  Jonathan continued without hesitation, “The Hebrew translation of the word Neurono-Tek only occurs once in the whole string of 304,805 letters and immediately next to it brain, Samantha Mancini, Alex Pella, and hospital all appear. I can assure you this is no coincidence and is mathematically significant.”

  Alex could not disagree. In fact, after looking at it once again, it did begin to pique his interest. “So what does the computer do to create this matrix?”

  “It begins by searching the Hebrew Torah for the word Neurono-Tek, starting at the first letter of the text. It then begins to look for every possible skip sequence up to a few thousand letters to form the word. If the computer cannot find the word, it goes to the second letter of the text and checks the skip sequences all the way until it reaches the last letter of the Torah.”

  The grid slowly spun around its axis, giving them all a better view of the matrix.

  “Because the skip pattern of Neurono-Tek is 3,245 letters, each row in the grid will subsequently be 3,245 letters while the amount of columns will be 94—which is simply 304,805 divided by 3,245. And what you see before you is just the essential portion of the grid. It’s rather simple to create but fantastic to interpret.”

  “Call me stupid,” William interjected with granola stuck between his teeth, “but I still don’t understand how you made that grid.”

  “Here’s a simpler example. If you had a text consisting of say 100 letters and were searching for a particular word with a skip pattern of twenty letters, each row subsequently would be twenty letters while there would be only five columns.”

  William nodded his head, feigning to accept the explanation. All the while he looked at Marissa’s bag, hoping she had some kind of anti-psychotic medication to give Jonathan before they headed home.

  “I’m not going to disagree with you that it is mathematically significant, nor can I contradict that the combination of letter grids that can be created is almost infinite,” Alex interjected, “but I still am skeptical that this code can somehow predict the future.”

  “That’s the art of reading it,” Jonathan explained with a smile on his face. “And I can assure you, it’s taken years of practice to learn how to properly interpret it.”

  “But why now?” Alex continued to ask. “What makes the year 2081 in the Bible code so special?”

  “It’s not 2081 that is encoded but the Hebrew year 5841, which runs from September 14, 2080 to October 3, 2081.”

  The holographic image faded away and multiple new grids appeared in succession, each with different letters circled. It produced almost a hypnotizing-like effect to watch.

  “When reading the Bible code,” Jonathan explained, “one must search for patterns, words, or phrases that are repeated. The Hebrew year 5841 is just one of those precise instances. When looking at the grids here every time the number is present, it is crossed with words and phrases such as Millions Will Die, The Earth Will Change Forever, It Will Confuse Many, death and The Disease. The chance of seeing such combinations is about one in two trillion.”

  “I like those odds!” William said facetiously.

  “Is this how you found me?” Alex asked.

  “That’s precisely correct,” Jonathan responded. “Interestingly, your name was one of the most prolific in the entire code, with a total of 32 different hits. The nearest other word that came closest to that was twelve.” He took a pause and looked Alex in the eye. “Most importantly, wherever The Disease was mentioned, so was your name. The two were inseparable.”

  Alex could not help but ruminate on what his parents once told him about being genetically special. What did that mean? And more importantly, did it have any bearing on their circumstances now?

  “Is my name in there?” William asked, finally interested in the code. “If it is, I’m sure the words handsome, good looking and Texas Longhorn would not be far from it.”

  “All your names are,” Jonathan explained, “and they are all associated, at some point, with The Disease.”

  “That’s remarkable,” Marissa commented.

  “Let me show you the particular grid that led us here.”

  The holographic image quickly changed into a new word search pattern with different subsets of letters circled.

  “There’s Crete,” Alex pointed out, “where we found Guri and Megiddo where we are now, along with the year.”

  He looked at the grid and said aloud what everyone was thinking, “So next I guess we’re off to the island of Patmos?”

  “Anywhere is fine but this hell hole,” William gasped. “I want nothing more to do with Armageddon or Megiddo or any other Biblical crap! I just hope this island of Patmos is full of alcohol and scantily-clad women.”

  Marissa smirked, knowing all too well the history of Patmos. “William,” she said, “I have good news and bad news about Patmos. The good news is that it’s a beautiful island with picturesque scenery. The bad news is that the island was evacuated six months ago because of its proximity to Astipalea. It’s also where John wrote the Book of Revelation.”

  “You mean John Chimmerman, the famous author?” William asked. “I have a few of his books, but I’ve never heard of that one.”

  “No, John, the Roman citizen, exiled to Patmos because of his Christian beliefs in the first century A.D.,” Marissa said.

  William shook his head, still not understanding her point.

  “There he had a vision from God about the last days on earth. It’s where the number 666 originates and the four horseman of the Apocalypse was first written.”

  William summed up his feelings in four words, “Son of a bitch!”

  He put his head down in disgust. On the mosaic floor where he was standing, he noticed a medallion pattern with two fish in its center. They appeared to be swimming in opposite directions with one above the other. It looked like the focal point to the room and because of their original haste, it had gone unnoticed.

  Momentarily forgetting about Patmos, he said aloud, “What’s up with the fish?”

  Marissa walked over and examined them closer. “I read that fish were the first symbol used in the early Christian church, hundreds of years before the adoption of the Constantine cross.”

  Jonathan added, “That’s correct. Because the original Christians considered themselves fishers of men and due to the Gospel of John where he mentioned how Jesus fed a crowd of 5,000 from two fish, this symbol became the cornerstone of the early religion, much like the cross is now. Plus, many of the apostles were fishermen before following Jesus.”

  Alex looked on the mosaic floor at an inscription in Greek letters. “I wonder what this means?”

  Guri said, “The God-loving woman named Akeptous has offered this table to God Jesus Christ as a memorial.”

  William looked shocked. “You read Greek?”

  “I’m fluent in both an
cient Greek and Latin,” he responded while squinting. “You can say I’m a connoisseur of dead languages.”

  “What does this one say?” William then asked, pointing to an inscription next to him.

  Guri squinted even harder. “You must remember Primillajand, Kyriake, and Dorothea and Chreste.”

  “What does that mean?” William asked.

  “I don’t think it’s supposed to mean anything in particular. They’re probably just four women who passed away before this church had been built and this is a small memorial.”

  Alex checked the infrared disrupter while the rest continued to examine the floor. It kept them all occupied as they bided their time before an escape to their Stratoskimmer became possible.

  Alex checked his videre contact lens, examining the satellite view of the area. While the rest of the group kept themselves occupied, he watched for the perfect opportunity for their escape. Patmos was their next destination. Though this island potentially held the key to the world’s salvation, it also possibly marked the site of their graves.

  Chapter 25

  The sheer volume of technology and electrical machinery in the bunker overwhelmed the necroids and began to distract them from their intended prey, Samantha Mancini. Because the glass-enclosed autopsy room held the most energy-consuming machinery, a few of the necroids began to break off from the pack and scurry over to the glass encasement.

  Samantha instantly recognized what these bugs wanted. As more of them became distracted, she continued rummaging through the crate, all the time still watching these little beasts out of one of her eyes.

  A half dozen of the necroids continued marching towards her. It would only take one to cause a serious injury or even death.

  “My epitaph will not read ‘Eaten to Death by Necroids’!” Samantha said aloud. “It’s either me or you that has to go. And I can tell you right now I’m not leaving!”

  Samantha certainly was a fighter. Clawing her way out of nothing, she climbed to the top of all of her classes while financing her education entirely by herself. She despised laziness and vowed never to quit anything she started.

  She viewed this attack by the necroids as more of a challenge than a threat. Although she had seen what occurred on the surface, it did not thwart her determination, nor did it invoke any sense of overwhelming fear.

  “Ah ha!” she yelled at an octave below what would set the necroids off into another frenzied state. “Bite into this!”

  A few high-powered cylindrical electrical cells placed within the crate caught Samantha’s attention. Even though the bunker contained its own internal power source, a backup supply of electrical cells had been provided in case of an emergency.

  Samantha slowly grabbed one of the gray cylinders, attempting not to make any sudden movements. She was familiar with this type of electrical cell and had utilized them in the past for a few of her experiments. One thing that stuck out about them was their instability and how they needed a specially-trained electrician to install them.

  The six necroids continued to approach. Their beady red eyes glared up at Samantha while their teeth made a chomping noise in anticipation of another human meal.

  The gray cylinder contained a black top that Samantha slowly unscrewed. At first difficult to turn, it quickly opened after a little extra pressure. Holding the top, she separated its inner components from the outer cylinder.

  Attached to the top was an assortment of wiring, electrodes, and small orange disks that surrounded a long inner, green tube. Samantha slowly placed the gray cylinder back into the crate and looked closely at the electrical cell’s inner mechanics.

  Although she had no specially-trained electrician to activate it, Samantha believed that she knew enough about them to figure things out for herself.

  Or so she hoped.

  She then began to adjust the electrodes and wiring into proper alignment. With the conclusion of each step, the tube began to glow brighter until its luminosity became almost unbearable to the naked eye.

  The last step would usually be to place the inner section back into the gray cylinder. However, Samantha had other intentions.

  “I hope you’re hungry,” she announced with a smile.

  Samantha edged out from behind the console and rolled the activated cell into the mix of the six approaching necroids.

  “Watch out. It may give you a little indigestion.”

  The necroids instantly turned their attention to the glowing tube. The thought of devouring Samantha dissipated in the presence of such a large electrical generator. It was the necroid equivalent of the mother lode.

  Instinctively, the creatures attacked the electrical cell without regard for one another. Chewing on the wires, gnawing at the tube, and climbing over each other, they acted as if they had not eaten for weeks.

  Electrical sparks began to shoot out from the tube and the green glow began to waver with each new discharge. The necroids’ eyes were aglow as the electricity filled their circuits and charged their bodies. Nothing stopped their voracious appetite.

  Like a kernel of cooked corn, the first necroid exploded with a bang. Its remnants spread throughout the bunker, sparks still emanating from each of the pieces. In succession, the other bugs attached to the tube began to burst.

  The last of the necroids would not relinquish its meal despite the fates of the others. The electrical power load started to overheat its circuits and, unlike the others, it began to catch fire. Through the flame, the necroid continued to feast. Undeterred by its melting body and failing circuitry, the bug dug its teeth deep in the tube until the green glow finally abated.

  The necroid had conquered its meal. In doing so, its body had melted into the tube’s wiring and the two were now permanently joined.

  A single red eye still glowed ominously. The necroid survived but posed no further threat to Samantha or to any other electrical power supply. It had eaten its last meal.

  “That’s kind of creepy,” Samantha said aloud.

  The remaining necroids continued to scurry along the glass encasement to the autopsy room. Like flies on a lone light bulb, they would not leave the site.

  Samantha cautiously walked towards them. Under her bare feet she could feel small bits of the destroyed necroids crunching while she walked. Some of the pieces were still hot to the touch. Samantha winced in pain and bit her lower lip, never letting out even a minor whimper.

  Someone owes me a pedicure after this!

  Samantha realized that tempting the remaining necroids with another electrical cell would not be possible. Nothing seemed to deter them from wanting to enter the autopsy room. They hadn’t noticed at all when she rolled out the activated cylinder towards the other bugs.

  Some of the necroids gnawed at the encasement. Flakes of glass and polymerized monofilaments, which created the clear façade, fell to the ground. It would not be long before one broke through the barrier and entered the room.

  A large piece of necroid caught Samantha’s eye just as she was about to step down upon it. Although mostly intact, it was slightly charred and still smoldering.

  Samantha cautiously knelt down and began to examine it. She fanned her hand in the air to dissipate any potentially harmful fumes.

  These things get uglier the closer you get.

  Only the hindquarters of the necroid were still present; two legs and the end of its torso were all that was left. A gelatinous gray substance oozed out from its open cavity. Samantha nudged the bug with one of her long fingernails to get a better look inside it.

  She was shocked by its contents. She found what appeared to be small internal organs and an array of circuitry wound together in a symbiotic relationship, each intermingling indistinguishably from one another.

  Alex would love to see this!

  A spark momentarily lit up the cavity, better exposing the internal contents. Unlike its exterior, the inside contained a mix of dark red and gray colors that contrasted to its stark, black exoskeleton.

 
; “What’s this thing supposed to be,” Samantha whispered, “a machine or some sort of bug?”

  Further analysis would have to wait. If the necroids entered the autopsy room, it would create such a major setback that further research on The Disease at Neurono-Tek might take another month to get restarted.

  The sound of the necroids’ teeth gnawing at the glass became louder and more annoying. It was as if a thousand people were running their fingernails across a blackboard at once. If these bugs didn’t kill her, the sounds they made would quickly drive her insane.

  I just want to smash those things against the glass!

  A metal box labeled Liquid Oxygen next to the autopsy room suddenly caught her eye. Although the thought of taking one of those tanks and battering the necroids one by one crossed her mind, she realized such an endeavor would prove suicidal. They would attack her long before she could finish off one of them.

  Before walking over to the central console, she looked back at the liquid oxygen tanks once again. A grin slowly formed on her face, much like the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland.

  Without a second thought, she went over to the box and snapped open its padlock. She slowly opened up the lid, hoping it would not create any undue noises. Inside were four sleek, pale-blue tanks topped with silver nozzles.

  Let’s just hope this works!

  While facing the autopsy room, Samantha took one of the tanks out of the box and unscrewed the top nozzle. A chilling blue liquid quickly shot out from the tank, evaporating into the air within seconds.

  Like holding a fire hose, Samantha grabbed the cylinder with both hands and began to cover the entire glass wall of the autopsy room with the liquid oxygen. The necroids instantly froze as the spray covered their bodies, turning them a glistening blue.

  Within seconds, the grinding sound ended as the devilish bugs fell from the glass and smashed into hundreds of pieces upon hitting the floor.