The New Reality

by Stephen Martino

  Marissa grabbed a few vials from her medical bag and injected two of them in the side of his neck. Within a few seconds the movements abruptly ended, leaving Jonathan in a pool of his own sweat and saliva.

  “You’re going to be O.K.,” Marissa said in a reassuring voice. “It’s all over now.”

  Jonathan slowly awakened. At first confused, he eventually regained his coherence.

  “I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you,” he said with a groggy tone to his voice. “What happened?”

  Marissa knelt down next to him. “Nothing that a little modern medicine can’t fix. How are you feeling now?”

  Jonathan would be lying if he said he was feeling anything other than horrible. His entire body hurt, and he felt as if his guts had been torn right out from his belly.

  “I’ve had better days.”

  It was certainly an understatement. He could barely keep his eyes open and wanted nothing more than to scream out in pain. It took immense mental discipline not to go mad.

  Marissa dabbed his brow with a wet wipe.

  As he lay under the palm tree his vision began to fade. The only thing left clearly within his sight were the few rays of light that trickled through the branches above. It reminded him of the carving he had seen back at Patmos of the sun. It seemed all too surreal at this moment.

  With the little strength he had left, Jonathan sat up and took out his Bible. Marissa attempted to keep him supine, but he lightly fought off her efforts.

  “Jonathan,” she said, “I insist. You must rest a little longer.”

  He wished a little rest would suffice. However, he had witnessed the final stages of The Disease with his own eyes and knew there was little time left. Despite all she had done for him his body could not go on much longer. He needed to remain alert, if just long enough, to do one last thing.

  Jonathan pulled out the circular coin-shaped object from his Bible and placed it onto his palm. The beams of light had given him a vision. Whether divine in nature or a hallucination from a dying brain, it seemed like everything at that moment made sense.

  “I finally understand,” he said. His breath was shallow and words seemed to be more mouthed than vocalized. “The cure for The Disease has been with us the whole time. We just didn’t know where to look.”

  “Really?” Marissa responded, skeptical of his admission. Because confusion commonly follows a seizure, she wondered if Jonathan was truly coherent at this point. It could be minutes or hours before someone in his condition would regain normal cognizance.

  “You just take it easy,” she said. “Save your energy for later. We still have a long flight ahead of us.”

  Marissa went to inject Jonathan with another vial, but he quickly grabbed her wrist before she could administer any further medication.

  “Please,” he pleaded. “Give me just a moment.”

  Unfortunately, he knew a moment might be all that he had left.

  Marissa placed the vial back into her bag and patted his head with the wipe. “Go on,” she said, hoping he might tire himself and fall asleep if he continued talking.

  Above the coin Hebrew letters appeared.

  “Do you know what it means?” Jonathan asked. He brought up a hard cough and cleared his throat.

  Marissa shrugged her shoulders.

  “It’s been in every one of the matrices that the code created,” he continued to say. “Whenever I place your name or any of our other companions’ names into the code, these letters cross them. Also, wherever The Disease or the places afflicted by it are mentioned, the same seven Hebrew letters always appear.”

  Multiple code matrices began to flash before them, one after the next. Important words and phrases were always circled, and in each new checkerboard pattern the same Hebrew letters always appeared.

  Marissa could no longer believe Jonathan spoke out of delirium. Despite his raspy, weak voice, he seemed more coherent now than he had for some time. “What does it mean?” she finally asked.

  “Alex Pella.”

  “What do you mean Alex Pella?” she responded in disbelief.

  “Alex Pella is the answer,” he reiterated. “The mathematical chance of finding his name in all of these matrices is basically zero, with odds being less than one in a hundred trillion.”

  “How can he be the answer?”

  Jonathan mustered a smile. “He isn’t, but his DNA is. John of Patmos saw Alex’s DNA over 2,000 years ago and carved it onto the cave. He must have thought it represented beams of light.” He looked at her intently, “We must now let those beams shine down upon mother earth and save us from extinction.”

  Marissa tried to speak, but he silenced her with a finger to her lips. The holographic projection began to spin a few rotations until a large three-dimensional matrix emerged. Different Hebrew letters ran its width, length, and height, creating a box-like shape.

  The disc began to glow as Jonathan mentally reprogrammed the device. His eyes fluttered while his cheeks reddened. The man had merged with the machine. All the Hebrew letters in the hologram started to change multiple times a second, running the gambit of the whole alphabet.

  The hologram then began to elongate and rotate on a central axis until finally it stopped moving and the letters remained constant.

  “There it is,” Jonathan finally said. The words almost seemed ephemeral and they were spoken with little breath behind them. Marissa, however, could understand him completely.

  Within the center of the hologram different letters tuned red, green, white, blue, orange, or yellow and created a perfect double-helix pattern. Along the edges on both sides red and green alternated its entire length while the other colors matched in a reproducible fashion forming a ladder bridge between them.

  “You found the next layer to the code!” Marissa commented wide-eyed.

  Jonathan could only answer with, “Beams of light.”

  Marissa looked closely and saw that the same two letters formed the sugar-phosphate backbone of the DNA while another four letters made the matching base pairs that connected the two halves.

  Jonathan took a deep breath and leaned his head on the tree. His eyes closed slowly while his mouth remained smiling.

  “I have to get these results to Alex right away!” Marissa said. “We have to find out what this means at once. The world needs to know…”

  Before Marissa could finish her sentence, she noticed Jonathan’s lifeless body. His breath was gone and his cool, pulseless wrist told her that he had crossed over. No more suffering. She knew no medicine at this time could reverse the will of God. Jonathan had passed.

  Marissa leaned down on his shoulders and let out a tear. Death had taken another friend, and she could do nothing about it. Though it was the inevitable ending to all living things, death never proved easy to face.

  After mourning a little longer, Marissa placed the disc on her palm. As soon as it touched her skin, the double-helical DNA holographically appeared once again.

  Wiping off her face, Marissa grabbed Jonathan’s Bible and stood. She had remembered a moving passage in Luke about death and felt as if she needed to read it aloud.

  Marissa leafed through the Bible until she found the appropriate page. As she read, a few loose pieces of paper fell out of the book and floated gently to the ground.

  She did not notice them at first.

  After reading the passage, Marissa couldn’t help but wonder why she survived while so many other good people didn’t. Was it luck, chance, or divine purpose? Whatever the reason, she felt undeserving.

  A refreshing, cool breeze swept across the tiny island, causing the branches on the palm trees to sway with its gentle touch. The salty air brought Marissa back to her senses. There was no time to wallow in self-pity while billions were at risk of succumbing to The Disease’s ruthless grip.

  Marissa got on her knees and began to cover Jonathan’s body with the small pebbles on the beach. She hoped to protect his body so that later someone could return and retrieve
it for a proper burial.

  As she gathered some stones, her hands accidentally came across the papers that had fallen from the Bible. At first, she thought they were litter and was about to ignore them. However, a familiar smile on one of them caught her attention, and she knew this was not trash.

  The man appeared much younger, but she immediately recognized his identity. The soft facial features, thick hair, and unmistakable grin could be none other than Jonathan Maloney’s.

  She inspected the picture along with the other two that she had found next to it on the beach. Jonathan could be found in all three. In each he dressed in a long black robe and wore a bright white clerical collar.

  He never told us, Marissa thought.

  The man was a priest.

  In the first picture, what looked to be his biological family surrounded him. It appeared as if a celebration had commenced, maybe a wedding or some other joyous occasion, as smiles filled their faces.

  Marissa smiled as she looked at the other two photos. Though taken more recently, Jonathan still retained his charming and joyful appearance. His smile seemed contagious as all around him were aglow with happiness. He had a way of bringing out the best in others. She only wished she had more time to spend with him.

  Father Maloney.

  Marissa placed the pictures back into the Bible. Time to determine what the strand of DNA in the code meant.

  Chapter 38

  A sharp, stabbing pain in his neck suddenly brought Alex back to consciousness. Though his body wanted to continue sleeping, he willed his heavy eyelids to stay open. Alex blinked a few times to adapt to his new surroundings. At first, he saw only dark shadows gliding across a field of blurred light. He tried to squinting in order to bring his vision into better focus.

  “Wake up all of them!” a voice bellowed next to him. “They may also be of some use to us.”

  Where am I?

  As Alex’s vision began to return, he quickly realized only that he had been surrounded by an array of military personnel all dressed in green with the UAA falcon on their shoulders. William and Guri sat motionless to either side of him with their heads down.

  Alex tried to stand but felt as if he weighed two tons. He was only a few inches off the seat but the staggering pressure on his body caused him to immediately collapse and gasp for air. He tried to push himself up but his arms felt equally heavy.

  Gravity accelerators!

  Alex knew fighting would be futile and that any further attempts to get off the seat would only prove counterproductive. The gravity accelerator had him pinned to the chair. The weight of his own body would crush him to death if he again tried to stand.

  A familiar-appearing soldier went over to Guri and William and injected a syringe into both their necks. Alex recognized the man’s eyes and nose but could not place where he had seen him before. Was it someone that he encountered at Megiddo or Crete? He could not tell.

  Guri and William slowly began to awaken. Like Alex, they soon learned of the gravity dampeners and quickly stopped all resistance.

  With effort, William turned to Alex and gave him a look as if to say, I told you so.

  Alex had to admit, William’s seemingly unjustifiable paranoia back at Patmos seemed painfully justifiable at this moment. He had let his guard down, and they had been captured as a result. They were lucky the UAA hadn’t killed them on the spot.

  Alex wondered why Father Kritikos worked with the UAA. It seemed like such an unholy alliance.

  He thought another moment and then looked straight at the soldier with the syringe. He met the man’s eyes with a glaring stare. “Father Kritikos!” he exclaimed. Alex knew he recognized this man.

  The soldier smiled smugly.

  “You’re no man of the cloth,” Alex said, realizing this imposter’s true identity. “What did you do with the priests back at the monastery?”

  “Let’s just say,” he responded with a familiar voice, “that I wasn’t burning wood when you arrived on Patmos.”

  Alex felt sickened by the man’s remorseless confession. Had he any dignity or sense of honor? Killing the innocent was an act of cowardice. He wanted to wring the man’s neck for what he had done.

  “I see we have already made friends here,” a voice resounded from behind a line of soldiers.

  Alex knew immediately from whom it came. The pompous cadence and the self-serving intonation made the man’s identity undeniable.

  To no surprise, Ari Lesmana waltzed out from behind the soldiers. Dressed in ceremonial Arab garb, he held his head high and approached his guests.

  “Is this guy for real?” William mumbled.

  Guri began to tremble in his seat. For a comic book loving hermit, the situation became too overwhelming. Sweat poured down his brow, and his face looked like a ripe tomato.

  “Breathe slowly,” Alex whispered. “Don’t show him you’re scared.”

  Alex’s comforting words did nothing to expunge Guri’s anxiety. He felt as if he were about to have a nervous breakdown. Plus, the weight of the gravity accelerators on his body only proved to exacerbate the suffocating feeling that had overtaken him.

  “Stop whimpering!” Masika said as she accompanied her husband through the line of soldiers. “You disgust me! You all do!”

  She spit on the floor as if to tell them they were no better than the ground that she walked on.

  “Charming isn’t she?” William muttered just softly enough for only Alex to hear.

  Masika’s reputation preceded her. Though the UAA attempted to minimize her role within the government, many understood her influence on Ari. Therefore, Alex did not seem surprised to see her by his side at this moment.

  “Dr. Alex Pella,” Ari said. “How nice of you and your friends to join us here at my palatial estate in Tabas.”

  So that’s where they took us, Alex contemplated. This place did look more elegant than a regular governmental building. The room around them seemed like something that would be used for entertaining or maybe even a ballroom dance. High ceilings, crystal chandeliers, and golden-framed works of art along the walls made this place a spectacular sight.

  Masika walked over to Guri and squeezed his cheeks together with one hand. “Why do you speak to these sniveling cowards as equals?” She pushed his head back while releasing her grip. “I despise even looking at them.”

  Guri could not help but break out in sobs. He sounded like a wounded dog. William didn’t know if he should feel bad for the man or burst out in laughter at the sound he made.

  Alex felt a hand squeeze his shoulder. Though it caused no real pain, it did make him twitch in surprise. “This is no way to conduct a civilized interrogation,” scolded the interloper standing behind him.

  Masika glowered at him in response.

  “Good work SattAr,” Ari commended.

  As the man walked from behind them, they instantly recognized his face. The person who had been hunting them down since this excursion began stood right before them, and they could do nothing but sit helplessly on their chairs and watch.

  “Crap!” William sputtered. “Just when I thought this day couldn’t get any worse.”

  “And Albert Rosenberg once said we should not underestimate you,” Ari commented, more to exalt himself than to belittle Alex. “I think it is obvious that it is you who should not have underestimated the UAA.”

  Like it was a fair fight, Alex thought. An elite Special Ops team versus an unarmed bunch of civilians without any military training.

  Just then Alex realized the name Ari had uttered. Albert Rosenberg. At first he thought he misunderstood. “Did you say Albert Rosenberg?”

  “That I did,” Ari responded nonchalantly.

  Alex instantly knew the collaboration between the two meant trouble. Albert was one of the most brilliant men he had ever met. His recent political and economic successes represented just the pinnacle of a long and triumphant career. There must be a reason why he would associate with a megalomaniac fascist such
as Ari Lesmana.

  Obviously, Albert had been using Ari as some sort of pawn in his overall bid for world domination. There would be no other logical reason for him to conspire with the man. Ari’s ego obviously blinded him from the truth, and Albert most likely played him like a marionette.

  “It has come to my understanding that you have found the cure for The Disease,” Ari went on to say.

  “Sure,” scoffed William sarcastically. “And we also found the fountain of youth and the lost city of Atlantis along the way.”

  He received a quick response with the backhand of Masika’s fist across the face. Blood oozed out from the side of his lip but despite wanting to cower in fear, William would not give her or any of them the pleasure of seeing him flinch.

  Guri’s moaning began to pick up momentum at the sight of William being struck. The wailing reached a new level in annoyance and pitch. Between the moans, he would cry or mumble incoherently.

  “I said stop it!” Masika insisted.

  Her command only proved to exacerbate his wailing. If they didn’t administer a tranquilizer soon, he would be headed for a nervous breakdown.

  “He doesn’t know anything,” Alex implored. “Let him go.” He looked at William. “Let them both go. I’ll tell you everything you need to know. Just give Guri something to calm his nerves before he gives himself a heart attack.”

  William whipped his neck to the side and looked directly at Alex. He knew his friend didn’t have the cure and was bluffing. Though admirable, he couldn’t let Alex take the fall by himself. “The truth is,” he loudly exclaimed, “Alex only knows part of the cure. I know the rest.”

  Alex kept a blank stare, trying not to show any emotion. Though he wanted to contradict William at this moment, he knew it would now be futile. He admired his friend’s bravery but also wished he would keep his mouth shut. Alex had gotten William into this predicament and felt like he should be the one to take all the responsibility. He did not need to endanger either William or Guri anymore at this point.

  “Regardless of who knows what,” Ari said, “You are all invited to stay here at my estate until I have a full and total disclosure of the cure.”