by Rob Mclean
“Might make a Christian out of him yet.” Angela grinned and took his hand in both of hers.
“Ain’t nuthin’ wrong with that, is there?” Des appraised John with an approving look. John stood mute.
“I was just telling Des how incredible the sky-show was the other night.”
“Yeah, it was awesome,” John added.
“Awesome is a word for describing something the Lord does,” Des said. Angela nodded her agreement.
“Well, it was pretty close to it.” John conceded.
“Sure sounds like it was somethin’ special, Des nodded. “Me, I watched it on TV.”
With that, Des straightened and looked around for his fellow workers. He then put his hand on John’s back. “It sure been a pleasure meetin’ you folks, but I best be getting’ back to work - before they don’t miss me.”
He shook Angela’s hand before she got back into the car and then closed her door. He then turned to John and walked with him around to the driver’s side.
“I’d sure appreciate it if you didn’t mention any of this to my boss.” Des grasped John’s hand and shook it.
“Any of what? That you went to church?”
“Yeah, I don’t think either of our bosses need to be worrying themselves ‘bout our beliefs, do they?”
Surely it was none of Eloise’s business if he went to Church or not. But then, John suddenly realised that it, quite literally, was her business. With the alien visitor only giving help to those who had renounced religion, she would be very interested in his beliefs.
“No, of course not,” John mumbled his agreement.
“I don’t know about you, but I really need this job.”
‘Who doesn’t?” John thought. With his brother at college and his mother who couldn’t manage to make ends meet, John knew he couldn’t afford to lose his job either. John read in Des’s imploring expression, the implied threat that was in the gardener’s plea.
“Yeah, me too,” he said as he got in the car.
Des waved as they drove away.
“Nice surprise meeting Des,” Angela said. “Did you like him?”
“Yeah,” John watched Des turn and shuffle away in the rear-vision mirror. “Good thing you know him. Wouldn’t want you talking to any random guy.”
Angela raised her eyebrows, “Hey, I do think it’s really cute how you’re getting so jealous.” She gave him a sly grin and turned the radio on.
John pressed his lips together rather than try to tell her how much more dangerous a lone man could be than a known woman. Instead, he considered trying to explain about Eloise and her plans. He didn’t know how Angela would take it, with her straight upbringing, but he figured that honesty was best.
He snatched a glance. She was still grinning at him. “Yes?” she asked.
“Tell her,” his father’s voice spoke clearly inside his mind.
John knew it would be a lot easier to say nothing more about Eloise, but it would do nothing for her trust in him if she were to somehow find out later about his boss’s plans. If they were to have a proper relationship, then she was bound to find out eventually. So, despite his reservation, he said, “She wants me to father a child for her.”
“Excuse me?”
“Eloise, she’s in her late twenties, about to turn thirty, I don’t know. She’s got it in her head that she wants a baby and she wants me to do it.”
“Oh, my God-father,” Angela’s face fell and John knew then he had made a mistake telling her. “You can’t be serious.”
“Look, there’s no way it’s gonna happen,” he swiped his hand emphatically. “You gotta believe me.”
“You can’t work with her. It’s not right. You’ll have to find another job.”
“There’s not a lot around, you should know that.”
“At least get a transfer. You just can’t stay there.”
“She’s my line manager. If I try for a different job, she’ll get asked about me. Guaranteed she won’t be saying the right things.” John shrugged. “She won’t let me transfer either, unless I move to a different city and I don’t want to do that, not while my family’s here.” He reached over to hold her hand. “And you.”
Angela pulled her hand away and crossed her arms.
“I’m sorry…” he said.
“Sorry you told me about…” her pretty face soured, “all this.”
“No, I told you about it because I want you to trust me.”
“Trust you?” A stunned look of disbelief on her face told him exactly how much trust she had in him.
It hurt. He had always prided himself that he was reliable, dependable and above all trustworthy. Truth was that they barely knew each other. Trust was a gradual thing that built up over time and they had spent nowhere near enough time together. Combined with how she had been let down by her previous boyfriend and her mother’s cynical opinions on men in her ear, it was a no wonder she wasn’t big on trust.
“Yes,” John took a calming breath. “After looking after you at the Sportsman’s club, I think I’ve earned at least a bit of trust.”
Angela scowled in reply.
“Look, I’m a guy and unless I agree to it, physically it just can’t happen, can it?” John could see no flaw in Jarred’s logic.
“Yes but you’re a man,” she snapped.
They pulled up at a red light. “One hundred percent,” he said with a touch of pride.
“And men are weak.”
John was glad they were stopped at the lights, so he could take the time to study her expression. It worried him that she was serious.
“Yeah, most are,” he agreed, then jabbed his thumb to his chest, “but not this one.”
*
Angela wasn’t entirely thrilled to be spending her day being treated like some sort of a guinea pig.
“I don’t want to be wired up like a lab-rat and jabbed with needles.” She had said with crossed arms, but she eventually agreed to help Jarred. John suspected that she was worried that her real feelings for him might be revealed by Jarred’s technological wizardry, but had only agreed because she didn’t really think that it would actually work.
They listened to the radio in silence most of the way to the university. News reports interspersed the music and ‘thoughts of the day’ mini-sermons regularly every half-hour. The news service reported that tens of thousands had drowned or been trampled to their deaths during Kumbh Mela in India, the first country to see the sky-show. People had panicked when the unheralded meteor showers started, resulting in untold injury and deaths.
Similar chaos had followed in Mecca. Thousands had been crushed underfoot and killed when the crowds similarly surged and stampeded when they too saw the sky falling.
There was even a report of an elderly lady in Arkansas, who suffered a fatal heart attack when she was surprised by the sky-show while putting her cat out for the night. That brought a smile to John’s face.
“What’s so funny about an old lady dying?” Angela asked. Her mood hadn’t improved during the trip.
“I can’t figure how they can compare one little old lady here to thousands dying overseas,” he shrugged.
They had arrived at the University of Southern California. John craned his neck around checking landmarks against the map Jarred had sent him on his phone.
“It all makes sense if you see the truth behind it all.”
“The truth?” John only half listened as he made a turn through a roundabout.
“In Revelations they talk about a third of the stars falling from the sky.”
“Does it?” John had read the last book in the Bible recently, as it had become topical lately. He wasn’t the best student, but he couldn’t remember exactly what it had said. It was full of dire warnings, none of which he could see actually happening without a giant-sized magic wand.
“Well, something like that,” she frowned. “I can’t remember exactly. Mom would know.”
John caught sight of Jarred, standing
at a pay-station. He had his I-pod cords in his ears and was busy studying his phone. He remained oblivious to them as they parked. It wasn’t until John tapped him on his shoulder that Jarred looked up.
“Hey man, wassup?” Jarred said too loudly before pulling out his ear-pieces.
“Oh just talking about the sky-show.” John nodded to Angela, “and stuff in the Bible.”
Jarred scratched his head as if that would help activate his memory. “That would be Revelations 8:12,” he frowned with concentration. “The bit about the fourth trumpet?”
Angela nodded with wide-eyed astonishment. “Yeah, that would be it.”
John gave her a nudge. “See, he’s not just a pretty face.”
“Well, I can see how you might think it might be related,” Jarred said, ignoring his brother’s jibe with seasoned ease. He turned and led them out of the car-park and towards his building. “If I remember rightly, it talks about a third of the sky going dark, as well as a third of the moon and sun.”
“That’s right, I think,” Angela agreed.
“Well, that didn’t happen,” Jarred said with uncharacteristic tact. “But you have to wonder if there wasn’t some maliciousness behind it.”
“How do you mean?” John asked as they climbed a few steps leading into a tree-lined courtyard.
“The sky-show was totally unannounced. All that the envoy said was that there was going to be some nocturnal display for world peace. They didn’t say where or when it would start, so when the meteors started lighting up the sky in Bangladesh, there was mayhem.”
They followed Jarred between a mixture of older, ornate sandstone and granite buildings dwarfed by their newer concrete and glass neighbours.
“But it was overshadowed by the mass hysteria that followed soon after in the Indian mega-cities. They had no warning either. To them it would have seemed like the end of the world, like Shiva on P.C.P.”
“And then again in Mecca,” Angela added.
“Yeah, but they did Tehran before that.” Jarred grinned. “You should have seen the chaos there. They were already shitting themselves, waiting for the death-rays. It wouldn’t have taken much to spook them…”
They had made their way to a glass double door, which Jarred pushed open without missing a step. John saw a sign on the door that read ‘Welcome to the Noosphere.’ He had little time to ponder what that meant, but he did see that someone had scrawled in an extra ‘b’.
“Then there was Mecca,” Jarred continued, as he strode down a fluoro lit corridor, “and the stampede at the Haj. By the time they got to Jerusalem, there had been enough reports to warn people what to expect, so the panic wasn’t so bad from then on.”
“So?” John asked. He wasn’t sure Jarred hadn’t wandered off track.
“So they could have started the sky-show anywhere, but they chose to start it with the heavily religious countries, knowing that by the time it got around to Europe, the U.S. and China, the panic wouldn’t be a problem.”
“Do you think they did it deliberately?” John asked.
“Of course they did,” Angela answered. “Like he said, they could have started anywhere. It was an act of evil.”
“They had to start somewhere,” John said. He looked to Jarred for support.
Jarred opened his mouth to say something, but Angela cut him off. “They didn’t have to put on their sky-show at all. At the very least, they could have told us what to expect.”
“And ruin the surprise?” John tried to make a joke of it to lighten her mood. ‘C’mon, it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as exciting if we knew exactly what to expect beforehand.”
“No, they had to put on the sky-show if only to show us what they’re capable of,” Jarred interjected with a raised finger. “Although I’d be inclined to see it as an example of Hanlon’s Law.”
Angela and John exchanged blank looks.
“Hanlon’s Law,” Jarred continued as if he always knew he would have to explain, “states that we shouldn’t attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
“You’re not saying the aliens are stupid?” John asked.
“No, not stupid,” Jarred’s face contorted as he searched for the right word. “More like ignorant.”
“No,” Angela said, “they knew exactly what they were doing.” Her frown deepened.
Jarred stopped outside a wooden door that was, as far as John could tell, no different from any of the others, except for the numbers painted on the door-frame.
“Here we are,” Jarred announced as he pushed the door open. Inside, the room was lined with tables and benches. Every square inch of bench space was covered with a profusion of paper, or folders, or computer keyboards and monitors. The walls were lined with bookshelves filled with dusty hard-cover textbooks. They looked as if they hadn’t been look at for many generations, judging by the dust on them and the nick-knacks in front of them.
“Is this it?” John asked. Despite Jarred having been at university for over four years, John had never seen where his half-brother spent his days.
“Pretty much,” Jarred shrugged. “The Prof is down the corridor. He’s going over some data just in. It looks like something pretty big is going to happen in New York soon.”
“Like what?” Angela asked.
Jarred shrugged. “That’s the frustrating thing. We can predict that something big will happen, but we have absolutely no way of knowing what form it will take.”
“Maybe the alien space-ship will drop in for a visit?” John grinned.
“Who knows? We’ll find out soon enough.” Jarred went back to his guided tour. “Anyway, my egg is next door.”
“Egg?” both John and Angela asked in unison.
“That’s what we call the random number generator.”
“Can we see it?” Angela asked.
“Of course,” Jarred said as he opened another door. “You have to, so you have a focus.”
He led them through to a much smaller room filled with electrical equipment. On a table was a silver, metallic box with wires coming out of it.
“Here it is,” Jarred said with pride.
“That’s all it is?” John couldn’t hide his amusement. “Looks like something you’ve rigged up yourself.”
“It is.” Jarred gave him a ‘what would you expect’ look. “It’s not like you can buy them at Walmart. This one, I made myself. It’s not as sophisticated as the rest of the eggs linked into the Human Consciousness Project, but it’ll do for our purposes.”
“Okay, so what happens now?” John pushed up his sleeves. “What do we have to do?”
“Well, I take some baseline readings. Then I get one of you to concentrate on the egg,” he patted the silver box. “Then the other partner does it, then you do it together.”
“And that’s it?” Angela raised an eyebrow.
“Pretty much.”
“So not going to wire us up and jab us with needles?” John asked with a grin at Angela. She responded with a tight-lipped frown.
“No.” Jarred shook his head. “Can’t imagine what would make you think that.”
John just gave him a shrug and an innocent look.
“You just sit and think, concentrate, meditate, pray or whatever at the egg and try to make it produce less random numbers. We’ll do it for a minute each time and if time permits, do three runs.” He cleared away some papers from a swivel chair and swung it towards Angela. “Ladies first?”
“No,” she pulled at John’s arm. “You go first.”
“Okay.” John sat himself down.
Jarred went to a computer screen and with a few clacks on the keyboard, brought up a screen and typed in John’s details. He turned to Angela. “It’s important that both you and I don’t think about the egg while he is.”
Angela nodded, leaned back against a bench and folded her arms to wait.
“Okay,” Jarred jabbed at the keyboard, “Whenever you’re ready bro’.”
John n
odded and closed his eyes. He imagined the little silver box pushing out an assembly line of numbers. He visualised them all coming out the same. All ones, a line of ones marching like North Korean soldiers in identical uniforms in perfect synchrony.
His mind then drifted to a funny YouTube clip he once saw making fun of goose-stepping North Koreans. He smiled at the memory.
“Okay time’s up,” Jarred voice reminded John that he had gotten off task.
Angela took her turn. John watched as she readied herself. She sat with a straight back and cupped one upturned hand within the other in her lap. She closed her eyes and lifted her chin. To John she looked like she was deep in prayer, just like she did in church.
He briefly wondered if her method would be more successful than his, not that it was a competition. He figured that it should be, after all she had been praying almost all her life. She certainly looked like she knew what she was doing, like an athlete limbering up before the event.
Jarred gave the word to start and her features instantly transformed with concentration. Her brow creased and her eyebrows pressed together as she focussed her thoughts. John thought he could see her lips moving as she breathed.
He could imagine that she was blitzing the test, going for gold. He suddenly felt both incredibly proud of her and the effort she was putting in and the fact that this amazing woman was choosing to be with him. ‘You go girl,’ he thought. A wide grin stretched across his face as he watched the strained expression on her pretty face.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Jarred called an end to her efforts. He leaned back and shook his head in disbelief. “That was pretty damn good,” he scratched the back of his head. “It got better the longer it went on.” He fixed John with a sour look, “Not like yours.”
“Yeah, okay, so I’m new at this.” John smiled at Angela. “You ready for the team event?”
She gave him a resigned frown and nodded.
“So how do you want to do this?” John asked.
“What do you mean?”
“As a team,” he would have thought it had been obvious. Maybe being an only child, she wasn’t much of a team player?