The Only Thing Scarier than a Monster is the Monster of a Man Who Creates It

DEDICATION

To mankind, who in his quest for fire is destined to get burned.

To PART ONE

Joe Frankenstein

ONE

Somewhere in the North Appalachian Mountains

Where are you oh painful memory? Where is it that you hide? How is it I can feel you, when no one else can see you? How do you weigh so much more than I? Why must you always make me cry?

        

“We want to see progress, Dr. Frankenstein.”

The “suit” standing before me spoke in a tone that conveyed more than subtle demand.

Well, so do I, I thought to myself. So do I.

Of course I never said this. That would give them the ability to scrutinize my every word and inflection. Instead, I tapped my fingers on the table and said nothing. With a little luck, they’d get tired of waiting and ask a more direct question.

The “we” demanding progress was the infamous Group of Five, as my team called them: three suits and a four-star general, along with their California-born project CIO Grant, a stocky, shaved-head man that I wouldn’t trust pouring my coffee. Of the group of five, I was the least intimidated by the four-star general, Mac, even though he had a strong physique. A fiftyish African-American and a veteran of several wars, he was a diehard soldier who kept to the old warrior code that prevented him from killing an unarmed enemy. And since I didn’t own any guns, I felt safe in his presence.

The three suits were a different matter. The coldness in their eyes and their stone-faced demeanor tagged them as killers of the worst kind – political serial killers. If you crossed them for any reason, you would either go missing, never to be heard from again, or the public might hear that some unfortunate accident befell you, or that you tragically committed suicide, courtesy of someone else pulling the trigger at their request. They claimed to be from the U.S. government, honoring the same Constitution I did, but there were no protected liberties in this room, or at this place.

Grant, if that was even his real name, was nothing more than their mouthpiece, a puppet sent to spy on us and the project to ensure our motives were pure and that we were working only for “the good guys” in this room.

“So, where are we, Joe?” he finally asked, using a more diplomatic tone. “And please explain in a language I can understand.”

I nervously glanced at the five other men in the room, but I found only hard eyes looking back at me.  They wouldn’t allow any of my other team members into this meeting, wanting me alone, isolated, and on edge. It gave them some modicum of control over me, as if their authority as government officials wasn’t enough. I would have been uncomfortable no matter how many people they allowed to accompany me to these meetings.

The only other person in the room was Rex.  Rex stood quietly in the back of the room, almost entirely obscured by shadows. He was what I considered the invisible man of my team, a shadow assigned as my bodyguard. The suits always told me that my life was too valuable to leave unprotected, but we all knew what that really meant. The secrets I knew were too valuable to go unguarded. Rex was essentially my prison warden.

As remote as this facility, an abandoned chemical factory, was from civilization, and as secretive as the program was, I couldn’t imagine how they thought anything would happen to me or who it was they thought might find me tucked away in the bowels of the Appalachian Mountains. Even if I wanted to “escape,” there was precious little I could do to escape. They owned and operated all the cars and trucks coming to and from campus, and we were miles from the nearest town. Besides, their measures to keep me here were no stronger than my will to stay. this secret project was my life’s work. It was in my DNA. They didn’t need intimidation to keep me here. My own will did that.

Regardless, Rex was always there ... just in case. He was my shadow, stoic, quiet, emotionless, and I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if someone had told me he was a robot. I always got the impression he could snap my neck like a toothpick even though I had never seen him act or speak aggressively. Who he answered to remained a mystery to me. He wasn’t military, but I never heard him answer to the suits. He was an avatar of some other anonymous entity within an equally anonymous entity, another government “body” with a vested interest in my work.

“Well?” Grant asked. “Where are we on the project?”

With no more stalling possible, I looked up to answer, but before I could, I caught the scent of this place, the old chemicals that occasionally seeped from the walls and sickened an already nervous stomach.  Those old chemicals had long been rendered inert. I was safe from everything but the eyes that stared at me, waiting impatiently.

“Unfortunately, sir,” I said. “The devil is in the details . . . in those annoying scientific details that don’t translate easily into plain English.”

I could see the suits withholding a wave of blustering about “damned scientific techies.” That regarded us as weak frail nerds still living in our parents’ basements, wasting the government’s time and money. They didn’t understand. They couldn’t understand what we did or were attempting to do.

Grant did a little. He grew up in Silicon Valley. His parents were techies, but he wasn’t. Growing up in the shadows of techies, he understood something of them, must have had some envy of them, most have known something of their world.

“Please try,” Grant finally said. “I think I can translate those pesky details for you,” he said with conviction, voice slightly above a whisper, his eyes and tone giving me no option but to answer. He probably could translate for me. I suspect he learned the techie language sitting at the breakfast table with his parents. As I watched him now, staring at me, waiting for an answer, I suspected also that he was a great disappointment to them. I suspect he long suffered the weight of that great disappointment of his parents, a disappointment he could never overcome by virtue of his poor genetics, and fled here, to this shadow world, in the dark walls of this shadowy place, to translate the pesky details of my tortuous, fearful babbling.

“Well, you all know we are trying to replace computer chips with the atom…to actually turn the atom into an operating system. We call that biostorage. If we can figure out how to use the atom in this way, we could, for example, be able to store the entire library of Congress in a single atom. And since our modern silicone chips, and indeed all life, literally contain trillions upon trillions of atoms, this new quantum computer will have unlimited storage capacity. It will be so fast that no system out there will be able to design a firewall to stop it. We could infiltrate other information systems around the world. The only way to stop it would be to completely power down the system. And ...”

“And?” asked Grant.

I realized my mistake the moment I spoke. I was getting ready to reveal some personal, unsupported ideas that I would need to thoroughly explain to assuage their concerns over the sluggishness of my progress. These were not the sort of men who welcomed ideas outside their predefined box.

        

Unfortunately, I had no choice now but to elaborate.

“There have been some recent events in the lab that have taken me in a slightly new direction,” I said.

Grant leaned forward. “Like what?”

“I think we can create a program in atoms, to grow DNA, an artificial DNA. I think we can create an artificial DNA, essentially, a life form that would assimilate other atoms into it without the need for electricity, internet, or radio waves. This would enable us to use a system we control to absorb other systems and become ours.”

“What’s the advantage of that?” Grant’s wheels were turning now.

 Come on, Grant. You can get this. “This wouldn’t be a simple program, but a life form that grows and assimilates other atoms into itself. So, instead of acting like a virus and getting into a system, it would absorb a system, and entire system. One of your agents could drop a hair sample on a computer and that computer would become ours. We could work from the outside into a system. It would be impossible to build a firewall against it. What if a bug, anything we could grow from this artificial DNA landed wherever we wanted and absorbed that system into its own? This is the idea.”

I stopped talking. There was more to the idea, but that was the layman’s version and required no translation from Grant. If I revealed the intricacies of my theories, the suits might think I lost my mind.

Perhaps they already did.

No one said anything. I couldn’t stand to bear the wall of silence separating me from the opposing five sets of eyes, so I dropped my gaze into my empty coffee cup and braced myself for the worst by not speaking until spoken to.

Finally, a couple of the suits used the long pause to scribble a few notes. They would not reveal what they thought of my idea. Revealing their personal opinions, and not that of the collective government agenda, would violate protocol. General Mac simply watched me with a grimace on his face. He gave off the aura of being as ill at ease with the suits as I was, both of us camouflaging with medals and computers. In his mind, as in mine, they were myopic control-freak bureaucrats. It was fanciful, but I thought he might be rooting for me.

“A new life form?” Grant asked.

All the suits leaned back. I couldn’t figure out what their body language meant.

Take the plunge. Nothing to lose here. “It would still be programmable, so more like a living computer, a biological computer.”

“Not a robot?”

I smiled slightly. “No, not in the classic sense. We build robots. This thing will grow and build itself. It will be composed of atoms from its environment, a living biological creature.”

“Will it breathe?” Grant asked, like a child.

“No, it shouldn’t.”

“Then how will it live?”

 “Good question. I think like a plant, getting its energy from light itself. This time, though, the computer will get its energy from all other energy, and like a plant, take that energy in order to grow and produce.” I was still babbling.

There was a pleasant pause when Grant’s eyes lit up. “I like it.” A reprieve? “How long before we give birth?”

I took a moment to think, to come up with a passable answer, but I was never able to lie well. I could see Grant work out the answer by watching my facial expression alone.

“You have no idea.” He sighed. “Do you?”

“No sir, I don’t.” I sighed back.

“Is it a lack of facilities?” He wasn’t being demeaning; he seemed to care about my answer.

“No, sir.”

“Is it a lack of funding?” Now his voice rose on a note of hope.

All I had to do was ask, but it wasn’t money. It was something money couldn’t buy, knowing how to give birth without a living womb.

“No, Grant.”

“Well, what’s the problem, then?”

Grant seemed less annoyed by my lack of progress and intellectually curious. That was the scariest thing about him. Every now and then, there was a twinkle of light in that soulless body to give me hope that we were on the same side, and that we were both white hats.

“Well, Grant, it’s like trying to put a man on the moon for the first time,” I said, referencing the first analogy that popped into my mind. “We’re trying to achieve something that has never been done. We’re pushing technology to the limits, trying to harness a space so infinitesimally small we can barely even see it with instruments.”

“I’m glad you said that, Joe.” Grant said, smothering that twinkle of light behind a wry smile. Now, I couldn’t tell if he was happy or lying. My hope in Grant faded again. “I’m glad you said that,” he continued, “This is like the moon race. We have to win at all costs. Second place is the same as last place. We live in a technologically driven society and if we don’t get this computer first, then we lose. The only way we survive as a society, as a free people, is if we maintain our technological edge. If a rogue state, another country, even a private entity develops the quantum computer before we do, it puts us all at risk. At best, they would know all we know. Worst case, they shut us down and send us back to the Stone Age. Worst-worst case is something we don’t even want to contemplate.”

There was nothing like a little psychological warfare waged against me by my own spooks, literally putting the burden of the “free” world literally on my shoulders. If the project failed, the United States and its allies would lose the technological cold war. Our enemies would know all our secrets, see every operation we played against them coming from a mile away. I knew what this technology was capable of, so I knew his concerns were valid. Knowing them as I did, I wasn’t convinced “we” were really the good guys. I wasn’t sure if anyone was.

In that uncomfortable silence, something happened that had never happened. Rex, who had just hung up his cell phone, rose from his discreet corner and quietly approached me.

“Joe,” he said in a voice loud enough to convey that the meeting was now over, “your wife has gone into labor.”

My god. Julie.

Only General Mac looked at me with recognizable human emotion. “Then you better get your butt out of here. Double time.”

Grant had one final question.

“Is she due?”

“No,” I said, and hurriedly left with Rex.

TWO

In the wee hours of the morning, a baby girl was born.  She was my baby girl, my first baby, the only baby I would ever hold, Olivia.  

Life didn’t come easy for Olivia.  My wife, Julie, struggled and struggled to get her out.  After twenty hours of labor, though, little Olivia finally came in the wee morning hours.  We were all exhausted, none more so than Julie.  And when Olivia finally came, the doctor held her up for all to see and proclaimed “It’s a girl.” Julie, still reeling from exhaustion, mustered the energy to raise her head from the pillow and ask, “Does she have all her fingers and toes?”  I told her she did.  It was the only relief I was able to give to her during those last twenty hours.  Julie’s head dropped back to the pillow.  Her work was done.

The doctor carried Olivia to the front of the bed and gently put her into Julie’s tired waiting arms.  A smile crossed her lips.  She put her nose against Olivia’s head and smelled her, closing her eyes as she took in that fresh aroma of her new baby.  Olivia cried, and Julie cried softly in joy at the sound of her newborn baby.  

Then Julie, in pain, asked me to take her.  As I took Olivia, Julie once again closed her eyes--this time, for the last time.  She never opened them again.  I would never see her big brown eyes again.  I would never again feel the warmth of her hand.  I would never again have a chance to say, I love you.  The monitors let out a long tone, letting us all know her heart stopped.  It never started again.  

Everyone screamed and shouted to revive her.  There was no monitor to my heart, and no one knew that in that moment, my heart died too.  I held Olivia and cried, overwhelmed with sorrow at the loss of Julie.  

Through my tears, I saw Olivia open her eyes for the first time.  She was wrapped in that little pink blanket, looking at me.  Her innocent eyes penetrated down deep into the dead heart of a husband and gave it life again, a new life as a new father.  I whispered a prayer of thanks, of joy, for God blessing me with that little girl who now stared at me with eyes of hope.  I knew my life wasn’t over.  I was overjoyed with happiness and sadness at the same time.

Yet this isn’t the story about the birth of my baby girl Olivia, but about her death.

***

Julie once told me that she wanted to be cremated, that a big funeral wasn’t worth the expense.  But it was.  I could not rid myself of the image of the first time I ever saw her face, sitting in a restaurant on our first date, a blind date at that. But I wasn’t blind.  She was beautiful.  She was as beautiful on the inside and she was on the outside.  

It may have been a blind date, but from that moment, I could see only the beauty of her face, her smile, the lure of her eyes, and could only desire the touch of her hand.  Despite her wishes to be cremated, I could not reduce those memories so easily now to mere ashes.  I would have given anything for her, everything for her, including my life which wouldn’t have gone on except for Olivia. I loved Olivia so much, and I loved Julie so much, that I wasn’t sure how I could have loved both of them had Julie survived. I was spared that dilemma.  

The hardest part of Julie’s funeral was not planning it, that part was easy.  The funeral home plans it for you. The hardest part is saying goodbye, forever, to someone you love. The funeral home can’t tell you how to do that. You can’t buy the right words. Nothing can be scripted, because the emotions don’t follow a script.

What I dreaded most was the moment when I would have to stand in front of everyone and say goodbye to Julie for the last time - that I didn’t want to do. In some way, I didn’t want the pain of picking coffins and flowers to be over. Because when I was doing those things, it was as if I were shopping for her, that somehow, I was doing something special for her.  It was the moment after the shopping that I was dreading.  For in that moment, I would have to say goodbye to Julie for the last time – it was a moment I dreaded.

But that moment came, and stood there I did, at a small podium in that large church with Julie lying next to me for the last time, her eyes closed, sleeping in that coffin, waiting patiently for me to say my final goodbye before being locked away from me, the sun, the fresh air and her friends forever, to be buried, six feet under, forever hidden from everything she knew and loved, hidden from everything but our hearts.

I stood uneasily in front of that large congregation, trying to find the right words, trying to muster any words through my burning throat and tears.  And through my tears, I looked to Olivia, being held now in the arms of my childless, husbandless, homely sister Mary, who sat next to my paid security man Rex, always an arm’s length away from me, and my Grant, with his fat head and even fatter glasses.  Mary’s shoulders were slumped, and not just in grief. Her back suffered the weight of so many years of disappointment, Julie’s death the latest.

The feelings in me swelled. Should I curse God publicly for taking Julie from me, or thank him for the love I shared with her, the baby I had with her, a love and a baby that my sister Mary now holding Olivia would never know?  Olivia smiled and cooed in Mary’s arms.  Poor Olivia, she didn’t know yet that she was motherless.  That painful realization was yet to come.  Should I curse God for leaving her motherless, or thank him for making me a father?  

Mary watched me.  In my moment of despair, of pain, standing in front of that sea of black, searching for the right words, she looked at me as if I was blessed--blessed for having known the love of marriage and its painful ending, blessed to have a child, two things she prayed for nightly as she poured her loneliness into her pillow, and then slept, waking up to teach at a local Montessori kindergarten, and then go home again, to eat alone.  I thought of one of her favorite poems and the line “Oh captain, my captain.” Through her subtle strength, I found mine, and the words I needed to get through this moment, the words I needed to say goodbye to Julie.

It was no longer my grief, but our shared sorrow.

“It would be easy,” I began, “to be mad at God.  I have to admit I’ve struggled with that, struggled at the pain of my loss, and in that process, lashed out at God as the cause.”

Though the words began flowing, they never came easy for me.  I wasn’t a speaker. I worked in a lab, unaccustomed to standing in front of people, most of whom I barely knew.

“As I stand here, I don’t know if I should curse God for taking my wife and the mother of my daughter, or thank Him for bringing such a beautiful wife into my life who gave me this beautiful daughter.”

I continued thinking out loud.

“I’ve always known that in life you’re only promised death and taxes. I always knew when to pay my taxes, but never knew when I would have to pay death. In my own vanity, I thought that promise of death was my death, but I know now that the most painful death is not our own, but to witness the death of one we loved so dearly.”

All eyes were on me, but I couldn’t look back. I could only look down, deep inside, looking for words to express my feelings.

“I don’t guess there’s ever a good time for death, certainly not ever a time any of us would choose, and thus God reserves that decision for Himself, because death is a decision none of us would be capable of making.  Thus it is a choice reserved to none but God.  It cannot be an easy one for Him or Her.  And, we cannot know His reason, for no reason would ever seem reasonable to the living.”

I heard Mary weep. I looked up to her. I had rarely seen her cry, if ever, and it saddened me to see her cry for me, when she had never cried for herself. Rex didn’t cry. But warriors never cried on the outside, did they? As for Grant, I could never see the subtlety of the emotion in his eyes behind those thick glasses.

I met the gaze of the crowd. “I knew, and Julie knew, that neither of us would live forever, yet I’m standing here wondering why I was left behind.  Why was I left to raise this beautiful daughter?  Why not Julie, who would be far more capable, far more deserving of this baby girl than me?  I can only presume that it’s because I was not ready for Heaven, not ready for such an honor, not yet capable of passing through its gates, not worthy of its promise of everlasting life without pain, without worry.  Certainly, Julie was more deserving of Heaven than I. Of that I’m sure. I’m not a substitute for Julie, but somehow Olivia was entrusted to me, by God, to show me that there are more important things in life than my work. I stand here and surrender to God’s will even though I don’t understand it.”

At that, Grant stirred in his seat, and I did see his eyes widen behind those fat glasses at the thought I might find Olivia more important than my work.  

“There was a time, I admit, when I questioned the existence of God, but not anymore.  When I held Olivia for the first time, when her eyes brought my broken heart back to life, I knew in that moment that there was something more.  As a new father, I understood why we call God our Father in Heaven, and how He too became a Father that day, all over again, to Olivia.  And as Olivia sits here now, not knowing what’s happening here, and thus happy in Mary’s arms at the funeral of a mother she will never know, that’s proof to me that God loves you, me, all of us, and that someday we will understand, but not today.”

Now was the moment I dreaded.  Now was the moment when I would finally have to literally say good-bye to Julie and let her go and be placed underground, away from my sight and touch forever.

“Until that day arrives, I have to say goodbye to my wife and tell her one last time that I love her.” I turned to Julie, looked at her resting there, and told her, “I love you Julie and always will.”

I walked to her, bent over, and gave her a final, a last kiss goodbye in her laced wooden bed, and whispered in her ear, “I love you.”

Somehow, I felt she heard me.  I believed she did.  I believed that she felt the kiss and that it sent her through the gates of Heaven, never looking back, soaring into a place which did not suffer the pain of separation, a place that would never know the pain of death for the ones you love, who could enjoy life, without fear of what the future might take from you. A place where you could live forever without the promise of death.

***

The minister for Saint Elisabeth, which Julie’s parents belonged to, said a few last words at the gravesite.  Praising a recent showing of Julie’s work titled “Origins of Love”. Praising her as a person, a wife, a daughter, a mother. He was a stranger to me, although I attended enough sermons with Julie to protect my spirit and hers, and what I didn’t attend, she attended for me.

The unfortunate minister was not a bad sort, but I was beyond his aid. He tried uncomfortably to comfort me at the gravesite.  He wasn’t much help to anyone but Julie’s parents, who sobbed uncontrollably now at the prospect of covering their baby girl with dirt.

How much more would they sob if they knew that this wasn’t really going to be Julie’s gravesite?  Sure, it looked like the real thing, but who really ever waited to see the gravediggers bury the coffin?

Julie wouldn’t be buried here.  Her parents would never be told the truth about Julie’s final resting place.  This hole, filled with dirt and the stone her parents picked out for her, would remain, but Julie’s body in its casket would go with me, back to where I lived, in our frontier stronghold way up in the remote Appalachian Mountains, with Mary, Olivia, Rex, Grant, and my co-workers. Julie’s casket would travel in the back of a refrigerated semi back to our citadel home, where Julie would be interred closer to my heart.

 This way, Julie’s parents could visit her in peace and without complications. If they knew Julie’s body was with me, they would want to come there. But I couldn’t have them come visit me. It was not allowed.

Not telling them the truth did not bother me. Maybe I was too used to a life of deception, but it was deception for their own good, so it wasn’t a lie.  There’s a difference between deception and a lie.  Deception is a play on perception. As long as the grave marker inscribed with Julie’s name was there, at the graveyard where they felt safe and comforted, then in their perceptions, Julie was there and they could see her.

Grant arranged my unorthodox solution.  He was good at that.  He often did what I requested, as long as it meshed with what they wanted.  So the trick for me, the art to my happiness, was making my interest coalesce with their interest--a marriage of sorts.

“I need to be able to visit my wife and grieve for her whenever I please,” I told Grant. “If I drive all the way to Saint Elisabeth’s to visit her every day, that takes precious time away from our work. Our work can’t tolerate the time lost because I’m grieving at the distant gravesite of my dead wife. We’re in a race against time, against the world, remember? And I’m leading Team USA in the race that will forever change the world as we know it.”  

I expected to have a long battle with Grant over my request to bury her on government ground, but there was no battle. The cold logic of having her near me easily prevailed.

My in-laws would be happy thinking Julie was here. I would be happy because she would be there. Everyone wins.  Besides, asking them to spirit away a body, well, that’s the kind of thing they actually liked to do.

The only thing that Grant had not planned was Mary coming with us.  I was waiting to throw him that curveball until after they agreed on Julie’s burial site.  I knew he would flip out.  He didn’t like the unknown variable, or the stress of being between them and me in that uncomfortable moment of indecision. Mary had no idea what I did, what I worked on, and was not “cleared” to be anywhere near the project.  But, that needed changing.

Olivia needed a mother, someone to raise her and tend to her day-to-day needs. Even though I would be there, I couldn’t take my attention away from the project in order to change diapers, feed, and give her the constant love, tenderness, affection, that all kids need, especially infants.  Someone would have to fill that role for Olivia. And that someone was Olivia’s Aunt Mary. Another instance in which my interest meshed with their interest. Olivia would be cared for and I could devote my life to the work of creating a new life, one that they could control better than me.

I wouldn’t let Olivia grow up motherless, at least not without someone who would love her as a mother.  Mary would surely do that, even though I hadn’t asked her yet.  I didn’t have to.  She hadn’t put Olivia down since I handed Olivia to her in the hospital and asked her to watch and care for her while I planned Julie’s funeral.  

Mary took Olivia willingly.  She wanted a baby but was physically incapable.  Julie’s untimely death answered barren Mary’s prayer to be a mother.  She got the chance to have a child that would never know any woman’s love but her own. I knew, even without asking, that Mary prayed for me to ask her to raise Olivia. I could see it in her eyes.

I sat in the metal folding chair next to the coffin, waiting for the minister to finish. Afterwards, I stood and politely waited for the long line of well-wishers to hug me, cry, and express their sympathy.  I never once held Olivia during the graveside service.  I was busy shaking hands and fielding hugs, excuse enough for Mary to continue holding the baby and bond.  

The last two to leave were Richard and Kathy, Julie’s parents.  Of course, Grant and Rex were still there, waiting patiently at the black limos, which looked like funeral home limos, but weren’t. In their dark suits, standing so quietly beside the limo, Rex and Grant passed for funeral home directors, so that not even Richard and Kathy questioned who they were, not on this day with so much tragedy.  

Kathy held Olivia one last time.  An afternoon shower mirroring their tears hurried their departure, and in haste Kathy kissed me.  They, like Mary, knew nothing about my work.

Richard left with a handshake. “Take good care of her,” he said nodding to Olivia. “Call us.”

I choked and couldn’t say anything in reply.  Instead, I nodded.  He nodded back and gave me a hug.  

Mary and I stood alone under the white funeral tent. The rain started to pour down the sides and form puddles in the neatly cut grass of the cemetery. This was the hour Mary dreaded, the moment she would hand over Olivia to me.  Tears welled in her eyes. She smelled, as always, of apples.

I looked at her.  She looked back, as if she knew what I would say.  

“Mary.”

“.Yes?”

“I need you to do me a favor.”

“Anything. All you have to do is ask.”

“It’s a big one.”

She canted her head, trying to understand.

“I need you to quit your teaching job. Come with me, live with Olivia and me, and raise her, with me.”

She cried anew. Those were the only tears of joy shed that day.

*****

After a long drive, we held a second service at Julie’s actual grave on campus.  

Julie Frankenstein

So Beloved by Everyone She Deserved Two Resting Places

Now, as a small gathering of my coworkers surrounded Julie’s headstone, I saw Mary in a new light. The love on her face for Olivia bestowed a beauty I had never seen in the flat line of her lips, in her oily skin, and in her tiny hazel eyes. Her health was always good; she always took care of herself and maintained a slim figure, but she never attracted any much-needed attention, or many friends.

Mary’s best friend was Julie. My wife found in Mary a sister of the heart and a kindness that doesn’t grow in the heart of the vain, a selflessness of spirit that is not separated from God by the temptations of the devil. They were the closest of friends.

One night, when Julie was seven months pregnant, she put my hand on her belly and said, “Mary will be a wonderful godmother and second Mom to our baby.”

They planned each day to raise the baby together, not because Julie felt sorry for my spinster sister, but because she wanted Olivia to see Mary for who she was. Julie saw what others could not, that Mary was the most beautiful woman in the world.

How prophetic were Julie’s words, that Mary would be a wonderful second Mom to Olivia, and as I’d already thought, the only Mom Olivia would know,

The second service ended with little fanfare, and I soon found myself leading Mary up to what would now be our shared quarters.

THREE

The campus hardly made for a traditional home. You couldn’t call an abandoned chemical factory shuttered long ago by bankruptcy a home. Commandeered by the federal government as a hazardous waste site, the site was supposedly awaiting cleanup of potentially dangerous chemicals, and was secretly run on nuclear power generated from a decommissioned submarine, to keep it off the grid; nobody wanted the public electric company sniffing around. The site didn’t even appear on Google Earth—our team made sure of that. We even had a codename for the place: Alcatraz. There was no water around it, but it was as dreary and difficult to escape.

I mentioned none of this as Mary paused to look at the Warning Do Not Enter Hazardous Chemicals signs, her expression anxious and confused from all the events that transpired since Julie’s death.

“Those are to keep the public away,” I said. “The campus doesn’t exactly smell like a flower garden, but they spent enough money cleaning up most of the site and it’s safe. Those two buildings you can see from the road were left untouchedto keep up the pretense.”

Mary nodded in relief as we proceeded deeper into the complex, which gave her a reassuring view of a modern two-story building built on two acres of tree-shaded land bordering a national forest reserve.

Running on silent power, the building was quiet, the skylights washing the lobby with anemic light. I glanced at furnishings and local artwork I passed a thousand times, their shapes and colors meaningless blurs. I was back in body, but not in mind, and I wanted to head underground straightaway, to avoid the apartment that would now be my only home. My life was about to shrink to the borders where I stood, and I wondered what the future would bring.

Not wanting to run into anyone in the elevator, I hurried with Mary to the stairs. The second floor apartment allocated to me was spacious, large enough to house a family. Ironically, that hadn’t changed, only the dynamics of who would constitute the family.

Rounding the bend to the end of the hall, I saw someone waiting for us by my apartment door.

Dr. Sasha Uribe, one of my closest colleagues, remained quiet as my sister and I approached with Olivia. Tall and striking, Sasha suited the place, since her dusky skin blended into a stylish dark mourning suit, making her almost meld into the background of the dimly lit hallway. As we approached, I opened my mouth to speak, but was cut off as Sasha put her hand on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry I missed the service,” she said, her eyes darting from my face to Mary’s. “Someone had to be down in the lab, Grant insisted. Carl and Morgan are going now.”

“I understand,” I said as I moved to unlock the door.

Sasha restrained me, her hand gripping my shoulder even tighter. “I’m not going to say I know how you feel,” she said. “I’m not even going to say it will get easier with time, and that you’re going to be okay.” I looked up at her with gratitude. “What I will say is that I’m here if you need me. All of you.”

I nodded again, and Sasha stepped aside as I scanned my palm to unlock the door. The door clicked and opened into a spacious, brightly lit contemporary two-bedroom apartment with one-and-a-half baths, a full kitchen, a dining area, and a family media area. I let Sasha and Mary enter first so that Olivia’s cheerful gurgling would purge the somber air. It was clear she was a happy child, and her presence, a living, breathing remnant of Julie, was to be my salvation.

“Mary, can I help you settle in?” Sasha asked. “I can make some calls to get whatever you need for Olivia. Money is no object for us here.” She gave us a knowing smile.

Mary, cuddling Olivia, meandered around inspecting everything, clearly overwhelmed. I know she didn’t expect such an upheaval when I asked her to take care of Olivia, and I was determined that we would help each other cope.

“Yes . . . Sasha,” she said. “Thanks. I . . . didn’t expect . . . this.”

Sasha glanced at me. A look passed between us, and I was grateful to have her as a friend.

“Then let’s get started,” she said, showing Mary around our new home. “I’ll see you later, Joe?”

I took the cue. I was expected to be back at work, today, ready to make up for the time lost on something as petty as the death of my wife. I should have felt anger or indignation, but those emotions had long since drained out of me, and I enjoyed losing myself in my work. I walked out of the room, ready to get lost inside the tiniest of places – the atom.

The atom. How could something so small be so big?

A bit like Olivia, I thought.

*****

My first stop, after leaving my apartment, was The Hull. A place so unique it even had its own VPN and Internet domain, https://thehull.hull.

Sprawling like a vast subterranean city, The Hull was accessible by taking the elevator down more floors than I wanted to count. I had to swipe my keycard twice upon reaching my underground destination. Silently the elevator doors opened on a tunnel of hewn rock with handrails running throughout. Labyrinthine, humming with computer equipment, antiseptic, the corridors and rooms of the underground facility we all called The Hull was my world twelve hours a day, five, six, sometimes seven days a week. Now, I practically lived here in the firefly-yellow lights of the corridors.

I approached an anonymous metal door with a battery of security cameras and pressed my hand against a glowing palm scanner. I also wore my ID badge, the color-coded card imbedded with a chip that only my immediate team wore. Cleared for entry.

Not surprisingly, my colleagues Carl Ravenel and Morgan Dionne were at their seats when I entered. Carl was the first to acknowledge me from a bank of computers, his kindly, bloodhound face bearing a mournful expression even in the best of times. Tall, greying, and built like a Viking, he looked at me with sad dark eyes. Morgan guzzled coffee, his head buried in some printouts. In his late twenties, he was the archetypal nerd, his black, curly hair blending into thick eyebrows and glasses that rivaled Grant’s. No one here cared about how he looked, and I’m sure he felt comfort in that.

An uncomfortable silence fell. No one ever seemed to know what to say to a widower.

“How are you, Joe?” Carl finally asked.

“I’m doing okay, thanks.”

They hesitated, waiting for my lead.

“Thank you for coming this morning,” I finally said, feeling that I was somehow talking in a confessional box, “You didn’t have to.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it,” Carl said without hesitation.

“Me neither,” Morgan said, his voice Elvis smooth.

Another awkward silence as I gazed around the banks of computer screens that surrounded me like stars. The lighting, supposedly designed to mimic natural light, seemed too bright and not even the presence of bonsais, Hawaiian bromeliads for color, and lush ferns softened the glass and metal angularity of the station. The coffee Morgan drank was a Sumatran bean five times stronger than anything local. It smelled overpowering and bitter. For the first time in my many years here, the walls seemed to close in and squeeze me.

All I wanted to do was run through the doors and out of the complex until I emerged into the freshness of the rain, but I knew nothing would cleanse the pain from my heart. Carl and Morgan glimpsed this in my eyes, and both turned away.

I glanced at my exit to freedom over my shoulder, and then back at Carl and Morgan.

I walked toward the second secure entrance to the lab. “Let’s get to work.”

*****

I watched the outside from a security camera. By late afternoon the rain stopped and the sun made a feeble attempt to break through the scattering clouds. Raindrops sparkled from foliage like diamond teardrops, and the serenade of birds cast a sliver of cheerfulness onto the gravesite. Too much of a distraction, perhaps, but my mind wandered constantly to the grave, even as I plodded through the motions of a routine committed to memory.

Nobody bothered me, nobody pressured me, and even Carl and Morgan kept their distance. I suppose they were surprised that I came to the Hull, expecting me I would mourn in my apartment.

A call interrupted my calculations. “Hey.” Sasha’s voice echoed. “How’s it going? You boys managing without me?”

“It’s going,” I said.

“Coming along here too, Joe. Mary and I gave your new casa a woman’s touch. Rex is helping too ,” she said with a wry smile in her voice. “I sent him out with a lengthy shopping list for baby things. It’s the first time I’ve seen him scared. It’s good for him. He needs to toughen up. I think I’ll send him out more often for Olivia’s diapers to keep him tough.”

We shared a laugh interrupted by Olivia’s cry in the background.

“Gotta go,” said Sasha. “Time to eat.”

It made me cry too, on the inside, but not because I was hungry. Her cry reminded me again of Julie, and that Julie wasn’t there to feed her baby.  

“Thanks, Sasha,” I said, but, like at the church, it was hard to speak.

Later that day, I returned to Julie’s grave and stared at the coffin, which was still draped with flowers from the morning ceremony, the centerpiece was a heart-shaped wreath of red roses with photos of Olivia and me woven in between. I also added a letter, which took me an hour to write in handwriting distorted from broken, shaking fingers.

The site was now cleared of the several rows of folding chairs that occupied the space earlier in the day, and I was spared the looks sorrow from colleagues and staff. It was more comforting here, at this decrepit chemical factory, than at the church. We were a small community of like minded people drawn together through the purpose of our work. We lived a simple life undistracted by the politics of the day.

I enjoyed leading this small group; like being a father to Olivia, it gave me purpose. It too was something I loved. I felt sometimes like Columbus and his small crew exploring for a brave new world. The sun finally broke through the clouds, revealing a pristine blue sky.

Even in this place, working for the tax men of all tax men, I found peace. My wife was here. My daughter was here, and now my sister. My few colleagues, my only friends, were here. The sky was blue. My life continued.

FOUR

Five Years Later

Five years was a long time to wait, not for Julie’s grave to be dug, but with the hope that I could bury her memory so deep with my work that I could go a day without thinking about her, but that day never came. Each day of the next five years was filled with Olivia, and every joy I had watching Olivia’s milestones was tempered with the thought, “I wish Julie could see this too.” I could never fully enjoy any of Olivia’s “firsts” like her first bath, her first step, or even her first word, “Momma.” She called Mary Momma. I was happy for Mary, but a little sad every time I heard it, because it made me think of Julie. The words momma made me miss Julie.

I often buried myself in my work down The Hull to escape my life above ground. There in the hull, surrounded by our equipment, I wasn’t constantly reminded of what I lost, of what Olivia would never have, her mother.

Mary was a good mother.  She directed me with all the authority of a true Mom. “This water is too hot! Right, Olivia?” The soap for Olivia’s bath was pure unscented Castile that, that fascinated little Olivia. Fleeting, transparent, they danced around her in a fairy ring.  “Joe! Take a photo.”

 

I turned off the faucet and went to retrieve the camera. Mary was in charge here, and I gladly followed her orders. It relieved me to do so. “Hurry!” Mary called from the bathroom.

I hurried and as I thought about Olivia and Mary having good clean fun, I felt as though a bubble slipped inside me, traveled into my chest and pressed all the air out of my lungs for a moment. If only Julie could see this. If only it were she and I bathing Olivia.

When I got back, Olivia was crying because one of the bubbles popped in her face. Tenderly I swaddled and bounced her, letting her feel the warmth and the comfort of my skin beneath my damp shirt. Mary beamed her approval.

“You’re a natural,” she said. “But then you always were. Remember that one time? Mom and how she freaked out over that old chest in the attic? The one that…”

“Oh, don’t bring that up again! I was six.”

“Seven.” Mary giggled. “Let me tell you a story, Olivia, about the time your daddy…”

I put on my best imitation of our mother. “Mary Frankenstein, don’t you dare!” It wasn’t a good imitation, but Mary understood and we both laughed. This Mary laughed easily, much like the one I grew up with.

“One day, little Olivia, when your grandma was out, your father wandered up to the attic and…” Mary continued.

Of course, I shared my own version with Olivia, but really with Mary, of one of many childhood shenanigans and escapades. Mary and I bickered over the details and laughed until our hearts ached, mine this time with gladness. I pushed down my sorrow and let myself breathe in the wonderful scent of Olivia while my eyes savored the sight of Mary. Relaxed, smiling, her skin glowing like a Cover Girl model, her eyes radiant and fiercely awake. She was happy, laughing and carefree.

As Olivia grew, as she learned to walk and talk, eventually venturing outside, she unlocked our lives locked in that tiny Hull and forced us outside.

*****

“Look, Daddy!” Four-year-old Olivia hugged me as I stepped through the door at seven p.m., early for me. This time she brought me an unusual stone that she wanted to share with me. “Mama and I were in the woods!”

“Oh my goodness. What have we got here? What did you bring Daddy?” I squatted down to examine her latest treasure.

“Just told you!” Olivia giggled.

Her laughter was intoxicating and her smile pure sunshine, her energy infusing me with life at the end of my day. Her curiosity and questions allowed me to see the world anew through her eyes. Her questions and curiosity were a welcome challenge to a mind numbed by the dynamics of my work and a lingering shadow of loneliness.

Of course Mary recorded Olivia’s precious firsts if I was working, which was anywhere from twelve to fourteen hours a day, but I was often present to witness these cherished events as well.

“I drew this too.” Olivia dragged me to the refrigerator door so I could admire her latest drawing, which was part of the Olivia Frankenstein Gallery covering the fridge.  In the innocent doodles I saw a talent for art, just like Julie.

“What is this flower?” I asked, even though Mary had labeled the painting, as with the others.

“A sunnyflower,” Olivia said, trying out the word.

“A sunflower. Right! You’re so smart.” I hugged her.

The greatest joy of the day was hearing Olivia call me “Daddy” and the way she rushed into my arms. Those two things always eased the pain of life. She also called Mary “Mama,” which caused conflicting emotions in me. I was happy for Mary. She was finally a mother, a mother to Olivia.

Mary, shoulders relaxed, chest up, head held high, offered me leftovers—chicken with rice, followed by freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. “This chicken is fantastic, if I do say so myself.”

The smile. The improved posture. The confidence. I almost didn’t recognize this woman, and yet it wasn’t too difficult to see, in this new Mary, the teenager who had started a volunteer reading program at her high school. Nurturing Olivia in turn nurtured and fostered a personality that remained, unfortunately, shuttered for many years.

“Mama, will you read me a story?” Olivia asked.

To know that Olivia considered Mary her mother saddened me some. It always made me think of Julie and reminded me how much I missed her. Mary read that in my eyes. Her tilted head said: Is it time? Mine telegraphed: Yes.

We talked about this and prepared for this. Mary would be the only mother Olivia ever knew; I wasn’t going to deprive either of them of that bond. However, Olivia had a right to know about her birth mother.

“I think your daddy wants to read you a special story tonight,” Mary said.

Once Olivia was tucked in bed, with Mary looking on, I began my story. “A long time ago, there was an angel called Julie, and she married a man named Joe. These two had other names: Mommy and Daddy.” Olivia nodded. “Now, this man and this angel had a baby girl that they named Olivia. They loved baby Olivia more than the earth and sky. Olivia was so special, she also had a Godmother named . . . ”

Olivia giggled in recognition.

“Named Mary,” said Olivia.

My breath caught. My chest squeezed. “That’s right,” I said.“On the night baby Olivia was born, her birth mother died, so her godmother Mary took her in her arms, wrapped her in a pink blanket, and loved her every day.”

Mary gave a satisfied nod. Olivia looked quizzically at her, wide blue eyes figuring all this out.

“And her daddy?”

 “Her daddy...her daddy loves her too, more than all the stars. He is the luckiest man in the world.”

“Daddy, what book is this?” Olivia asked.

“It’s the Daddy Book.” Olivia didn’t know it, but I had begun writing that book in my downtime.

“More Daddy Book, please.” Olivia grinned.

“Not tonight, it’s time for you to go to sleep, sweetie.”

Of course, Olivia was not sleepy, and she wore me out so that I slumbered and didn’t have to think about missing Julie.

I buried myself in my work, finding some degree of solace away from my life in the light above ground. Secluded within the secure walls of the Hull, surrounded by the ceaseless hum of equipment and computers, I wasn’t constantly reminded of what I lost each time I gazed into Olivia’s eyes.

*****

Weeks Later

“How’s our girl this morning?” I asked Carl as I stifled a yawn. I’d barely managed three hours of sleep because I insisted on sitting up by myself holding and soothing Olivia during a rough night. Mary needed a reprieve.

“She’s got a monster of an appetite.” Carl grinned, but still looked mournful. “She’s eaten the entire Library of Congress. You figure out what you want to call her yet?”

“Athena,” I said.

“I never pegged you for a Renaissance man.” Morgan looked like he’d slept in his chair and was perfectly comfortable with that. His coffee smelled extra acidic and bitter this morning, but it fueled him. He ran on diesel.

“Everyone knows Athena," Sasha said. “Can we please get back to work? If Grant bugs me one more time for a progress report, I’ll scream. Not that anyone will hear."

Work on the project continued at a feverish pace. My specialized work focused on one of the tiniest component of existence, the atom. I fascinated by a world, a universe, invisible to the naked eye, that came together and formed the universe that we could see around us.

Atomic supercomputing. Biological computing. Biostorage. Call it what you would. The idea was to turn a single atom into a super computer.

Crazy? Not Really. Atoms were already doing that, coming together forming all living things around us. If our bodies were comprised of atoms capable of performing trillions of simultaneous, complicated tasks, storing memories, thinking, crying, laughing, why couldn’t we use them to do the same? Why were we using toxic and decaying plastic to store information when we had God’s computer, the atom, all around us, in everything that we did? The beauty was that we didn’t even need to manufacture them, only program them, by their intrinsic design. So, atoms were already doing what we wanted to do, we just didn’t know how to get them to work for us. We had yet to unlock God’s secret for manipulating atoms.

I believed that just as atoms structured themselves into DNA strands and formed life, we could program them to direct their own evolution and processes, intelligently.  Our new super computer would revolutionize the world. The team’s objective was to create a program that would harness and control atoms and direct their evolution into a way and form that we could control.

It was a simple concept in theory, but not so easy in practice, as a review of my notes showed.

Project Biostorage, Day 600

Sasha thinks atoms have infinite capacity. Morgan says there’s a limit, like hard drives. I agree with Sasha. Carl says, who says atoms are empty? We already know about quarks. Agree that atoms are not empty nuclei with electrons, protons and neutrons floating around.

Chose a single oxygen atom to store simple information, the literary database from MIT. Difficult to download info into something you can’t even see.

Project Biostorage, Day 1000

Succeeded in storing database from MIT in single oxygen atom. Toasted our success in the break room. We all joked about our Nobel Prize acceptance speeches and being world famous. Sasha says, “Not going to happen. We signed NDAs in quadruplicate and in blood.”

Our sense of elation achieving such an incredible milestone was second only to watching the birth of my child. Unfortunately, unlike the day Olivia was born, I could not share the good news with the scientific community. Our work would never see the light and glory of day. It wasn’t because of some ingrained modesty or humility, it was because of the dark, secretive nature of this project. No one could know we were on the cusp of something big, something so big, we would dominate our enemies, “both foreign and domestic”, in a way they could not possibly understand or fight.

We received accolades from our superiors, but our accomplishment would never see the light of day, and never extended beyond the secluded walls of the Hull. Our life’s work to date: the first super atom, Athena.

*****

“Download nearly complete,” Sasha announced.

 “Athena is your brainchild Dr. Frankenstein,” said Carl. “Congratulations.”

Athena was a shining creation, christened after the Greek goddess of wisdom, heroic endeavor, and civilization, an appropriate companion to the unsung heroes of our team.

Carl passed out complimentary cigars to mark the occasion, Sasha declined. We all went outside for a smoke, even though I didn’t light it up. I felt I earned that cigar and at least earned the right to chew on one like someone important.

“It’s expensive,” said Carl.

“I sure hope so” I replied.

“Don’t waste it,” he said.

“Don’t worry. I’m not.”

“Well, guys, we’ve fertilized an atom, made an egg,” Morgan said. “Joe, how does it feel now you’re going to be a dad again?”

“And this time carrying her yourself,” added Sasha.

“Wonderful,” I said. “And just as with Olivia, I’m sharing this pregnancy with all of you.”

My little creation, Athena. In the words of Neil Armstrong as he stepped onto the moon, this is “One giant step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Nothing more prophetic could be said to mark the profoundness of this evening.

I was so proud. So full of wonder at what she would become. I nurtured her the same way Mary nurtured Olivia. It was difficult not to personify this little egg imbedded with so much knowledge that was yet to spring to life. I began to personify her.

However, we needed her to do more than store information; we needed her to grow, to assimilate into her environment. Athena was capable of storing information, but we needed her to physically absorb other systems into her own and make them work for us.

Sasha nodded, giving me a peculiar look. “What?” I asked.

 “Why are you here?” she asked.

“Excited, I guess, excited about tomorrow for the first time in a long time.”

“Have you forgotten what day it is tomorrow?” she asked, and monitored my reaction with a penetrating gaze. My chest felt as if a giant bubble were slowly suffocating me.

“How could I?” I said, but I had. For a few hours, I had forgotten that tomorrow was Olivia’s fifth birthday and the anniversary of Julie’s death.

That night I went down to the lab after Mary and Olivia were asleep. I went there to marvel at Athena, to dream of tomorrow, and to soothe myself so I could sleep.

*****

I could sense we were close to our ultimate goal of creating a self-replicating carbon life form. The closer we got, the more hours I worked. I worked many hours on my own, waiting for Mary and Olivia to go to bed, then going back to the Hull. I was unable to drive my team past their point of physical exhaustion, but I had no such mental or physical limits. I stayed up all night in the lab drinking the cold, dark leftover diesel coffee to fuel my thirst.

Behold the night I made fire. I downloaded a string of code into Athena and watched her spark to life. She sought out another atom, then another, and yet another until she formed into a string of atoms called DNA, the essence of all carbon life. She was alive, but what would she do? Like a plant, I incubated her in light, hoping she would live, grow and learn.

She grew quickly. Like a virus she immediately turned her lab dish into a living organism. She assimilated all the atoms she came into contact with into her own being.

Carefully, I placed that dish, Athena's, on my computer keyboard. As I hoped, she assimilated my computer into her own being and she and I communicated for the first time.

“Hello, Athena.”

“Hello,” she replied in a computerized voice.

This was my dream, an artificial carbon life form. She would be a new ingenious tool in the espionage game. If any spy, carrying this microscopic nanobot, gained access to a computer system and accessed it by simply touching it, presto--the drop was made. The spy could deliver Athena and infiltrate the system.

I left the lab and went to peek in on Olivia. She was beautiful. I walked to her bed and watched her sleeping. I whispered to her how beautiful she was, that I loved her, but that I couldn’t sleep and would see her in the morning. I went back to the lab, drank another cold cup of strong coffee, and waited for the team to arrive.

Everyone was buzzing with excitement at the news.  Even Grant displayed a flicker of life beyond behind those glasses. Of course, he was receiving our reports outside the restricted area, but even over the monitors, I could see excitement behind his glasses.

"So we're live." Sasha directed our attention to the projector that checked Athena’s progress. Could we use Sasha’s computer to control my computer, the one absorbed by Athena? We could and did.

It was like watching Olivia take her first step. Now, Athena, my other child, took her first step. I couldn’t help but think of Julie. She spent so much time alone for me to be here. She gave her life for me, literally. It was a dose of reality that was difficult to swallow.

Carl broke my somber interlude, “Hey everybody, look at this."

We rushed to his station where Carl sat observing a computer screen.

Instead of the normal interface, the screen was filled with constantly shifting iridescent fractal patterns that changed color with every iteration. When Carl tried a few keystrokes, the system displayed neon green ones and zeros, binary code, in micro-fonts. A few more keystrokes from Carl produced the proverbial "blue screen of death.".  Then, the terminal displayed images of nature: water buffaloes on the Serengeti, the crags of K2, the Grand Canyon, the Mekong River, the Alaskan wilderness, Mount Fuji, the Mariana Trench.  An image of Professor Stephen Hawking and Einstein. The enigmatic face of the Mona Lisa. All images in the databases loaded into Athena.

Carl tried again and the screen went black. Nanoseconds later, unknown script filled the screen.

Sasha recognized the danger and immediately unplugged his system. “What the hell could have taken over your system?” she asked.

“Nothing,” said Morgan. “It can’t be a virus or interference from the outside. No way in hell."

“Well, something’s infected this system,” Carl said. “We can’t all be hallucinating.”

“It’s Athena,” I said, feeling a surreal thrill course through my body. "She's growing."

CHAPTER FIVE

Everyone gawked at me, although they didn't dismiss me as a madman. It was the only logical possibility. Athena surprised everyone, me most of all, but we adapted quickly.

I repeated my statement. "She’s doing what she’s programmed to do, assimilate atoms into her own and grow.”

“But we didn’t tell her to,” said Morgan.

“No,” I said, “But she’s doing what she was programmed to do, assimilate and learn.”

                

“How could she operate that fast?” Sasha asked. "How long since you went live last night?”

“Maybe two hours ago,” I said. Sasha made a long low whistle.

“That terminal isn’t even near hers,” Carl said.

“No, but she’s designed to replicate her environment, to learn, to retrieve information and feed back to us. What else could it be? It can hardly be a coincidence that your computer terminal was taken over.”

“Joe’s right,” Sasha said. “Let’s plug in a battery pack to this terminal so we can track what’s going on without infecting any other system.”

“How is that going to help?” Morgan asked. “If she jumped from there to here, then she must have infected every system in here already.”

“Morgan’s probably right,” I said, “but just in case, let’s power up this system independently to make absolutely sure. If she makes the jump, wonderful. In the meantime, let’s run a check on all systems and see how far she’s gotten.”

“Wonderful?” asked Carl.

Sasha shook her head. “He’s excited.”

It took a few minutes to determine that all our systems were infected. Athena was everywhere but causing no harm. She did what I programmed her to do, and most importantly, still responding to my commands.

I knew Grant was anxiously waiting for an update. After so many years and waiting, he and they were as excited as me. Since nonessential staff was not allowed in The Hull, I met him for our normal briefing in the conference room. This time, we prepared a videoconference for our superiors as well. Everyone was to hear about the giant leap of mankind. We all knew it was big, but it’s always hard to fathom how big the future can be. Caveman would never have fathomed that his quest for fire would lead to the rocket engine racing man to the moon. I’m sure there wasn’t a lot I could see and was too blinded in the excitement to try and contemplate it.

***

 I waited nervously for almost an hour before Grant let me know that everyone arrived and expected me.

Mixed emotions coursed through me as I left the lab and made our way through the tedious security checks, wandering the Hull's twists and turns until I arrived at the conference room.

When I stepped into the conference room, a sea of older faces displayed on the wall-sized monitor flicked from my face to the others. The assembly was always the same, some civilian, others mostly military, the gleam of medals reflecting in the subdued light. I was surrounded by a circle of stern, impatient faces. Only General Mac and one or two other military brass I knew gave me an encouraging look.

 

As soon as I sat at the large ellipse-shaped table, Grant got directly to the point.

“As you were earlier informed, the program went live today. It was an extremely important milestone, our first test to determine if this program will be able to replicate itself and learn in an open environment, yet still allow us to control it and direct it from here to either disable a system, crash a system, observe a system, etc.”

The roomful of silent men and women nodded with inscrutable expressions.

“So, Joe,” one of the Air Force colonels I knew quite well said with a smile, “this sounds promising. Things seem to have gone better than any of us expected.”

“That’s somewhat of an understatement, Colonel Buck,” I said.

 “Do give us some details,” he said. “We’re excited to hear about this.”

“Well, things are moving so fast that Athena actually jumped out of our experimental controls.”

Grant cast me a look that more than broadcast his concern at not being kept in the loop, but he hadn’t given me a chance to forewarn him.

“What do you mean jumped your controls?” Colonel Buck asked with concern, mirroring the looks of the men and women around him.

”Well, starting about 3 a.m. last night, she started growing in a controlled dish. Then I put that dish on my computer and she absorbed that computer into her own being so to speak. By the time my team arrived this morning, she infected every computer system in the lab.”

“Joe, should we be concerned?” Colonel Buck asked. I couldn’t divine what he was thinking under his seasoned I’m-tough-I’ve-been-shot-down-over-Nam calm.

“No, she’s doing what she was programmed to do and responding to me.”.”

“But how did it get out?” This from a woman who ran a cyber-security firm in Silicon Valley.

“I don’t know yet. We’re trying to figure that out, it’s the nature of what we intended, we didn’t think she was capable of it yet or understand exactly why she did it or how.”

“What do you mean the nature of what you intended?”

I noticed the frowns and worried glances. Grant was looking borderline apoplectic. Hearing any negative news, no matter how minor, was never in his agenda.

“What do you mean?” Colonel Buck asked.

“I’m referring to the nature of how Athena works, which is at the level of the atom, seeking out other atoms and binding them together within her program, creating DNA, a carbon self-replicating life form. Once part of her program, all the atoms work together like human DNA and replicate, grow, consuming the atoms around her. She doesn’t penetrate other systems from the inside. She consumes them from the outside making them a part of her own. So, the problem I hadn’t anticipated was the problem of building a ‘firewall’ around atoms. In retrospect, I’m not sure it can be done as she consumes everything in her path.”

General Mac spoke next. “When you say she consumes everything in her path, do you believe she breached the hull?”

“It’s possible. I don’t know.”

“Should we be concerned?” the woman from Silicon Valley asked.

“No,” I said, exuding as much confidence as possible. “Athena still responds to me as programmed. She’s not doing anything harmful. She’s doing exactly what she’s supposed to do, which is get out, replicate, learn and grow, only she’s doing that much faster than we anticipated.”

I could see my audience mumbling and exchanging concerned looks. Colonel Buck nodded to his military colleagues.

“Joe,” he said, “I anticipated saying thank you for achieving this big milestone. You worked hard to get us here. However, I must say that I’m a little concerned about this new development. The fact that we lost control of this thing minutes after going live concerns me.”

They were military men and black suits that viewed all things as winning or losing battles. Not me. This wasn’t a battle we were fighting. We were simply pushing the limits of our scientific understanding. By the looks in their eyes, I didn’t exude the personification of the General they desired to win this scientific battle. I got us here, but maybe I wasn’t the won to fight the fight. I knew I wasn’t their choice of General, but for the first time ever, I knew I was in charge and it felt good. “I understand. We’re on top of it. We’ll keep you posted.”

Colonel Buck turned to Grant. “Grant, as always, we expect you to keep us informed, daily, and by the minute if necessary. Any questions?”

“No, sir.” Grant’s voice was a thin whisper.

The screen darkened, leaving me alone with Grant, who looked exhausted, which was about as emotional as he ever got.  He stared at the solid white tabletop under his stubby fingers. “Please make this top priority and get this situation under control. Let me know the minute you have an update.”

“Of course.”

I left Grant at the table. Head bowed like a monk in prayer. At that moment I felt sorry for him. He spent most of his time alone dealing with the stress of men that never went away and without anyone to share the burden. He didn’t have a home to go to with an Olivia and Mary to laugh and make all his stressful work worthwhile.

Enough of this worry. I was done for the day.  I was happy and happy to go home. I was finally tired. I needed to get out of the hull, get outside and breathe fresh air. It needed Olivia.

******

I returned home with the anticipation I always felt knowing that after dinner, Olivia and I would take a walk together through the nearby woods. I particularly loved the autumn, the brilliant fall colors and the crispness of the air a balm to my soul as Olivia and I walked and listened to the crunching of leaves beneath our feet. More than once I longed to have Julie beside me. Walking hand in hand together in the evenings was a pastime we enjoyed for years when we had time together. So many times I tried to convince her to move to the campus with me. Now Olivia was here, and after a fashion, Julie moved here, too.

Often I would watch Olivia, my heart aching as I observed her delicate facial features and waist length hair, mirror images of Julie as a child, and many times it almost brought me to tears to imagine what a beautiful woman she would grow up to be. Every night, I would sit at Julie’s grave and update her on Olivia.

Rex followed us on our evening walks. My time alone with Olivia was figurative, since no matter where I went outside The Hull or with whom, his ghostly presence was obligatory. Rex was a man of polite discretion and always kept a distance so that nothing Olivia and I said could be heard. We were seen, but not heard. Man was a man who loved his solitude and the outdoors. He loved the walks as much as we did.

 Now, lost in the Technicolor embrace of gold, green and red-clad trees, Olivia and I wandered through the woods with Ranger, our German Shepherd. I bought Ranger as a pup for her second birthday. Ranger was a good loyal companion for her and playmate that helped Olivia navigate our lonely existence out here away from other people.

“Why do you want a dog?” Grant asked.

“Every kid needs a dog.” I said.

“I never had a dog,” Grant said.

“Exactly, Grant. Exactly my point.”

”You think I needed a dog?” His mouth quirked in what might have been amusement, or puzzlement at such a notion.

“Yes, Grant. I do.” I couldn’t help but being a smartass with him. “Oh, you thought I was getting a dog for Olivia? Surprise.”

Grant was not amused. “Who’s going to pick up after him?”

“Not me, Grant, I’ll be too busy working. Guess that leaves you,” I said with a smile.

“It’s above my pay grade.” Grant was without affect. “We can get some junior government maintenance guy to do it.” He looked at Rex.

Rex wasn’t amused. Rex probably didn’t care, but I’m sure he didn’t consider himself below Grant’s pay grade.

The puppy was a wonderful surprise for Olivia. From the moment she saw him, she was never without him. He brought new life to our little community, fueled by the constant petting and attention, the laughter, the bugs to chase, shoes to chew, the air he lapped up. He even liked Grant and tried to lick him any chance he got.

I watched Olivia and Ranger bound together through the sun-dappled trees, playing fetch, the bond between them inseparable. She was the only playmate he knew, and he was the only one Olivia knew. He was as curious as she was and loved our evening walks above anything else. The two walked side by side ahead of me, while Rex walked a little farther behind, he and I both enjoying watching the pair in front of us. Olivia pointed out various interesting things to Ranger and Ranger would in turn smell everything of interest to her, as well as showing her some of his discoveries.

Those precious moments that I shared every evening with Olivia and Ranger were what I called “The Children’s Hour,” after one of my favorite poems. It was my time and my time alone, but to Grant, these distractions over the years were project delays, especially tonight, when he was impatient for me to find a way to contain Athena and put that genie back into the bottle.

Of course I wasn’t the machine that Grant was. My mind and body needed a break from the constant and stressful focus on the project, and I treasured my time with Olivia more each day and anticipated the time when she would be older, her world would get bigger, and we would discuss more things. We would one day walk together hand in hand, talking about life, her dreams, and eventually, her future away from here. Whatever happened, Olivia would not become a prisoner of The Hull. Her future was away from here.

 I once read that a daughter will only hold your hand only for a little while, but will hold your heart forever. I knew that was true. Soon enough she would be a young woman and the little legs that kicked through piles of leaves now would be sturdier legs that would lead her down whichever path of life that her curiosity led, and I was going to follow her, just like Ranger.

*****

My memory drifted back to another evening during an early summer walk when Olivia discovered a beautiful purple flower that I recognized as a Rhodora.

Her lovely, curious face somehow illuminated the rich color of the petals, and as she held them close enough to study, smell and touch it. The flower reciprocated, bestowing that same radiance on Olivia’s face and forever framing her little face in my memory.

A poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson popped into my mind.

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky

Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing…

“Beauty is its own excuse for being,” I said to Olivia.

“Do you think I’m pretty, Daddy?”

“You are more than pretty. You are beautiful.”

“Would Mom think the flower’s pretty?”

Even though Olivia called Mary Mom, she understood that Julie was her real mother and that she had died when Olivia was born and was buried under the walnut tree. On her fourth birthday I had taken Olivia to the tree for the first time and I showed her what I meant when I talked about her birth mother. We brought flowers and together we laid them on Julie’s plaque. I gave her pictures of Julie and told her what happened the night she was born. Watching and listening with wide eyes, Ranger at her side, Olivia cried for a little while and kissed the photo of Julie.

The memory of that afternoon was forever engraved in my heart. Now, whenever Olivia spoke of Mom, I was always able to tell if she meant Julie or Mary. Tonight, she meant Julie.

“Oh yes,” I said in response.

Olivia’s eyes never left the flower. “How do you know?” she asked.

“Look at all the flowers. In all these flowers, you found the prettiest one.”

“Do you think so?” she asked, gazing at its beauty.

“Oh, I know so. Look at it in your hand.”

She twisted the flower in her fingers, turning it in little circles and eying each petal as it twirled before her eyes.

“Can you smell it?” I asked.

Olivia held the flower against her nose. She closed her eyes and inhaled its sweet freshness. Ranger smelled it, too. She opened her eyes and laughed at him. “Yes, Daddy, Ranger and I can both smell it.”

“How does it smell?”

“Beau’ful.”

“Then, you’ve found the perfect flower.”

“Do you think Mom can smell it?” Olivia asked, gazing at the photo of Julie on the plaque.

“Yes, she can, sweetheart,” I said, struggling to keep my emotions in check. “She can see and hear everything we say too, we can’t see her.”

“But I can see her all the time.”

I knelt so that we were eye level. “I see her all the time, too. In you.”

Olivia laughed. “You’re funny.” She beckoned me close. “Mom said I could tell you our secret.”

“Mom said?” I spotted Ranger circling and dancing in the woods, then squatting to go potty. “Ranger! Don’t go too far.”

“Yes. She said I can tell you that we talk all the time.” Olivia sounded as if she were repeating something told to her.

“You…talk to Mom?”

“In my room at night. And when Mom’s not around.”

Complex mathematical formulas paled in comparison to this line of argument. “You talk to Mom when Mom’s not around?”

“Uh huh. Mom Mary.”

Now I felt more confused than ever. “Why?”

“‘Cause Mom told me. Mom Mom.” She nodded at Julie’s picture. “Can we keep it?”

“What?”

“Daddy!” My daughter was losing patience. “This.”

She meant the flower. I sighed in relief. “Oh yes, Olivia. Flowers grow so little girls will pick them, and take them home.”

She ran up to Rex. “Mr. Rex! Look! Do you know what this is? Have you ever seen it? I can’t wait to show Uncle, too.”

He smiled, Rex did, the same man who had dreaded shopping for baby formula, onesies and pacifiers. He smiled at her flower, and more, at her.

“Have you ever?”

“My. We’re excited.” Rex grinned.

“It’s beau’ful,” she said, and danced away with it. As Ranger trotted back to her, she stuck it behind his ear to see how it looked.

Rex watched her protectively and spoke to me quietly. “I think I should have the flower sprayed for any bacteria or pests.”

“Only when Olivia’s not around.” I watched Rex keeping an eye on Olivia, a jaded eye that now beheld wonder. My little girl had made a conquest of him.

Given that Rex was the only adult around, I stepped outside our designated roles. “Rex, can I ask you something?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you hear what Olivia said?”

Rex nodded. “Yes.”

I wasn’t surprised. “What do you think?”

He squinted up into the trees. “I’m not sure I’m qualified to give my opinion.”

“Humor me,” I said.

“I wouldn’t worry, sir. It’s completely normal for a child to have an imaginary friend, especially in Olivia’s situation.” He spoke with authority, and more, common sense. “If I may be candid, you’re an excellent father, more so because these are unique circumstances.”

“How many fathers like me have you seen, and guarded?” But I let out the sigh I’d been holding, it seemed, since that first night with my newborn daughter on campus.

“That’s classified, sir.” Rex clocked Olivia. “By any standards, your daughter is healthy, well adjusted, polite, bright, curious, active. Sometimes we worry so much about what our children don’t have that we forget all the blessings they do have, and we overcompensate unnecessarily. Your daughter has people who love her and care about her.  That’s what children need.”

I was intrigued. “You sound like a psychologist.”

“It’s an unwritten part of my job description, as well as, shall we say, an on-the-job education in people.” Rex had never spoken at length like this.

“But what does it say that her imaginary friend is…” I couldn’t mention Julie’s name.

Rex averted his gaze. “As I said, you and Ms. Frankenstein and Sasha, and even Carl and Morgan and Grant, are giving Olivia what she needs right now. She has a naturally loving heart, affectionate and outgoing. I would worry more if she were withdrawn and angry.”

I absorbed this.  Still not appeased, but not ready to deal with a daughter who talked to her deceased mother.

“An excellent father,” Rex said. “You should be proud.”

I gave him a tiny smile. “Thank you. Bill the government for my therapy session.”

Walking back to the campus in the growing dusk, Rex indefatigably keeping pace, I tried to swallow the emotion resurrected by the bittersweet memory of that summer day. Ahead, the warm lights from the building glowed in stark contrast to the grim faces of the abandoned factory buildings scraping the sky with somber slate roofs.

My gaze drifted toward the second floor windows of our apartment. The warm lights shone like a beacon. Mary was bustling about making the place as much like home as possible. Rex stopped shadowing us the moment we entered the building, and I was able to relax at least for a few moments knowing that Olivia and I were truly alone.

Mary greeted us with a hug and a pat on the head for Ranger. She smelled even more strongly of apples. I was happy to see that she had long ago adjusted to life at the campus. She had found her life’s purpose in the unlikeliest of places.

“How about some hot chocolate?” she asked Olivia.

“And a cookie for Ranger?” Olivia asked with a bright smile.

“And one for you, if you like,” Mary said.

“Yes!” Olivia held out the flower. “Look what I found in the woods. Daddy said Mom can see this!”

“How beautiful,” Mary said, casting me a wistful look. “Let’s put it in a vase and leave it on the window so she can look at it.”

For Mary, sharing Olivia with the memory of Julie was bittersweet, but Mary would rather die than admit it, especially as Julie had always been her cheerleader. Suddenly exhausted, I left them and retreated to my getaway.

*****

Since the apartment next door to us became vacant a year ago due to an employee transfer, I requested that it be joined to ours to allow Mary to have her own privacy and living space and provide me with a home office and a retreat that I called my getaway.

“I thought you liked working in the smallest of spaces,” Grant said, referring of course, to my work on the atom.

“I do, Grant, I do, but my family doesn’t share my passion for such small spaces.”

Grant had me walk him around the apartment, telling him my idea, exploring with me the options of connecting the two spaces in a way that was most suitable. It dawned on me that we were the only family Grant had now. This was his get away from work, just as it was mine, but he wouldn’t admit it.

“Grant,” I said as he went on and on in a monologue about where to cut a door and how to much the furniture in a way to make most use of the adjoining space, “I think you missed your calling.”

It broke his train of thought.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“You should be an interior decorator.”

Grant stood silent. He withdrew from the conversation, apparently embarrassed by talking like two regular human beings, by any glimpse of vulnerability. “You remember, don’t you Joe, that I don’t share your sense of humor?”

I felt sorry for him. “That’s too bad, Grant. We could have been the best of friends.”

He stared at the walls. “We can’t be friends, Joe.”

“Can’t be or won’t be?”

His back was to me now. “Does it matter which?”

“Grant, it does matter, but not to you.”

******

I stepped into the dark home office and gazed through the window at the woods where Olivia and I walked every evening. Embraced by darkness, the trees merged into a dusky, indigo-tinged horizon, framed by distant mountain peaks and ridges. Beyond, stars began to peek from the velvety cloak of the sky, and I was infused with a sense of peace.

Settling back into my chair, I allowed myself to savor the quiet. I would say goodnight to Olivia soon enough, but during her bath time and preparation for bed, I retreated to my getaway to clear my mind and purge the stress of the day.  It was a simple room, a place of prayer, meditation and thought, sparsely furnished, with nothing electronic, nothing plastic. Olivia’s artwork, which multiplied at a furious rate and improved daily, covered the walls. Tonight I lit a simple fragrant candle to focus my thoughts and my emotions.

My getaway was the only room not linked by an intercom or direct phone line to The Hull. I turned off my cell phone the moment I finished work, and it lay silently on the table near the front door of the apartment as it did every evening for thirty minutes—my quiet, mindful time. I knew if there were a crisis with the project, Olivia or Mary would answer the phone and call me.

After contemplating the view for a few more moments, I moved to my desk and lit a small oil lamp. The buttery glow of light was enough to illuminate the pages of the paper journal I wrote in every night. It was one I kept for Olivia, the chronicle of my thoughts too precious to be allocated to the soulless memory of a computer. My handwriting was worse than a doctor’s, but I preferred the imperfection of the human hand to spell-checked perfection. Unlike my computer, my hand could not conceal the many frailties and imperfections of my soul that formed the heartfelt words across the page.

I wrote that night, as I did every night, baring my heart and soul to Olivia, hiding nothing from her in the pages. After losing Julie, I was constantly in fear that something would happen to me, and that Olivia would grow up never knowing about either of her parents. Though Olivia was still far too young to understand the chaos of thoughts and emotions pouring onto those pages, I hoped that growing up in a world that was rapidly losing itself to an emotionless electronic soul, she would one day sit down to open an actual book. She would know the feel of paper against her fingers and be touched by the honesty of a father’s imperfect soul bared on paper pages with fleshly hands so that she could see that I was once a real person.

As I designed computer programs to transfer information over space and time, I hoped that somehow, by putting these thoughts and memories on paper with my own hands, I could also transfer my love and my soul through space and time to support and nurture her during the highs and lows of her life.

I hoped that when I was long gone, my love would resonate through the yellowed pages of this journal in a way far more powerful than what could be stored in a computer, and that Olivia would know that above all else I was proud that she was my daughter, and that I loved her dearly. I hoped that she would realize that the only way of safeguarding this fragile journal would be to keep it with her and protect it from time and the elements the way a mother protects her child, knowing that it couldn’t be secreted away in some electronic memory. Tonight, with the picture of her holding the Rhodora flower against her face still resonant in my mind, I wrote the following:

TIME CAPSULE FOR OLIVIA

Believe it or not, Olivia, this is a time capsule. Not one you bury in the ground for future generations to dig up years later, and hoping that it was sealed properly from the elements, but the kind you bury deep in the recesses of your heart, always ready to spark the memory of a father who loved you. Over the years, I’ve learned a painful lesson that I will pass on to you. The most valuable things in life aren’t material objects that can be bought on a store shelf and buried in a capsule to be opened later, but things that can’t be purchased and can only be kept in your heart. That’s why I’ve chosen not to buy you anything, but have instead taken the time to tell you I love you in this letter, which you can store forever in the only place that cannot be hacked or stolen: the time capsule of your heart.

Time is the most precious of God’s gift to you. Do not waste it. No man on his deathbed wishes for more of anything but time, for nothing else matters. Fill your heart with it now while you can. Put those precious memories of love, hope, and dreams into the time capsule of your heart.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I don’t know even if I’ll be here, or whether you’ll be here, but I do know that wherever I am, you are always with me, the thought of you warming my heart. Though the future is uncertain, I know that with you in my heart there is no day I cannot overcome, but without you, no day I could withstand. I’m constantly led by the hope that I will one day see you again. Enjoy your life, and in those moments when you’re alone, thinking or contemplating a beautiful sunset, take some time to open this time capsule I’ve given you, and listen to my words, for I love you today, tomorrow, and always, wherever you are.

I raised my pen, my eyes watering from emotion, and stared in front of me at my favorite framed photo of Olivia and I: me lying on my stomach on the floor of her room reading a book while she lay on my back also reading. She called the picture “The Bookends.”

Without fail, there came a point on this night, and every night, when Olivia sneaked into the room to pounce on me during her usual surprise attack before bed. I quickly swiveled around in my chair and grabbed her. Clad in her footie pajamas, smelling irresistibly of sweet lotion, she squealed and laughed, the Rhodora flower still clasped in her hand.

We struggled playfully for a moment until she surrendered in my arms. Eventually, a moment of blissful tranquility descended on us both as I held her in my lap.

“What are you writing, Daddy?” she asked, glancing at the journal softly glowing under the lamplight.

“I’m writing in your journal.”  

“What’s a journal?”

“It’s…it’s my Daddy Book, where I write all the fun stuff you do.”

Olivia nearly knocked me over trying to see the mysteries of the fabled Daddy Book. “Like what?”

“Like you attacking me every night when I’m trying to write.”

“Why do you write things down?  Can’t you remember them?”

I laughed. “I remember, but I want you to always remember as well when you’re old like me. I want you to remember, you and me sitting right here right now. I want you to remember me holding you in my arms. I want you to always remember this butterfly kiss and this Eskimo kiss, too,” I said, hugging her tightly and giving her the promised kisses.

“Unfortunately,” I said after our hug-and-kiss session, “I can’t put those into your journal. You’ll have to always remember how good they feel.”

She smiled and gave me a hug. “I’ll remember, Daddy.”  

“I hope so, baby. I hope so.”

“Did your dad keep a journal?”

I choked up for a second. “No, but I wish he did. I wish I had more to remember him by.”

“Will you read it someday?”

“Yes. Someday, I’ll bind it together and give it to you as a present. That way, no matter where you are, you can always come back right here, right to this moment, and sit on my lap before bed. You see, with this journal, I’ll always be with you, and you will always be with me.”

Olivia, astute for her age, had more questions. “Why don’t you type it in your computer?  Wouldn’t it be easier?”

“Well, that’s not private enough. This is our journal, and it is not for anyone else.”

“But no one comes up here, do they, Daddy?”

“No, sweetheart. No one comes in this room except you, but they can still read what’s on my computer.”  

She gazed up at me with the same long-lashed eyes as Julie. I felt my heart contract.

“How?”

“Well, anything we put on the computer can be read by others, but in particularly, here. You see, the people I work for read what I type on the computer. So that’s why I don’t want to write about us on the computer. It’s none of their business.” I lowered my voice. “It’s our secret.”

“Who do you work for, Daddy?”

“I work for our government, sweetheart.”

She thought about it. “What’s the government?”

I laughed. “You know who the President is?”

“Yes.”

“Well, the President is part of the government, so I work for the President.”

“You mean the President reads your computer?”

I had to laugh, thinking of the President reading a father’s rambling scribbles. “No, but he’s in charge of the government, and they read what I write on the computer.”

“Why?”

“The work I do is special, and the government doesn’t want any bad guys to steal what I made.”

“What did you make?”

It was easier and safer explaining my work so that a five-year-old could understand it, as opposed to politically hardened adults. “I made a new computer.”

“What kind of computer?”  

“Oh, it’s a special kind of computer, unlike any computer ever made.”

Her eyes lit up with curiosity. “Why’s it so special?”

“It’s super small and super smart.”

“How small?”

I was enjoying having my daughter as a rapt audience. She seemed genuinely fascinated. “So small you can’t see it.”

“How will you be able to type on it?”

“That’s a good question,” I said with a laugh. “It will have to connect to a computer screen so I can read what it’s saying to me.”

Olivia thought about it for a moment, then focused on the Rhodora blossom she held. “Can we put my flower in the journal?”

“Oh yes. That’s a great idea. We’ll press it in the pages.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means the weight of the journal will press it down real tight so that it will never dry up and you can keep this flower forever.”

Olivia smiled as I put the flower on top of the journal, knowing that it would be the first of many keepsakes to come.

“Time for bed,” I said. “You can’t find me!” I leapt out of my chair and raced to Olivia’s bedroom.

As always, this bedtime ritual worked like a charm to get Olivia in bed without a fight. I had under her covers, giggling to myself. “You can’t find me,” I called out.

“Can too!” Olivia was trying to sneak up on me again, but her giggles gave her away.

I burrowed under the pillows and felt her jump into the bed. She tried hard to wriggle below the covers to find me. I fought a battle to keep her out, not too hard of course. In bed was exactly where I wanted her to be, in her pajamas and under the covers. She eventually wormed her way in, and we would then hide from Ranger.

“Ranger, you can’t find me,” Olivia called out in between giggles.

I heard Ranger’s paws bound across the carpet and a moment later the mattress bounced as he jumped onto the bed. He burrowed at the covers, eventually forcing his snout under the blanket and close to Olivia’s face to enthusiastically lick her nose to an even louder fit of giggles.

That was my cue to crawl from under the covers while Ranger took his customary place at the foot of her bed. I turned off the main light and switched on the bedside light for story time. Ranger was alert, his snout resting on his paws, ears pointed toward us. He still smelled of the woods, and when I patted him, I felt his fur matted down.

“What are you going to read tonight, Daddy?”

“Tonight, I’m going to read you something about love,” I said. “Your mom read this to me at our wedding. And now I’m reading it to you.” I took a breath, remembering her words, her face, that moment, that woman I missed terribly who left me this daughter. I read:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.

My voice caught as I recited the last few words, the vision of Julie’s ethereal smile as she listened to the same words forever etched in my mind. I paused, then kissed Olivia’s cheeks, always once for me and once for Julie.

Olivia ran her finger down the tip of my nose.

“I love you, sweetheart,” I said with emotion.

“I love you too, Daddy.”

“Forever and ever,” I said.

“Forever and ever,” she replied.

She was right. I would love her forever and ever. Nothing else mattered...

“You said you talk to Mom.”

“Uh-huh.” Olivia was too drowsy to remind me I’d already said this.

“Is she here?”

Olivia glanced around. “Yes.”

“You can see her?”

“Yes.”

I followed my child’s gaze. “Where?”

“I saw her in the rocking chair.”

The old rocking chair Julie found at an antique store and fixed up for Olivia’s room sat facing the window. The chair was empty.

“Is she there now?”

“No,” Olivia said. Big yawn.

I smiled and kissed Olivia.

I rose and turned to leave the room. My last stop was always Ranger, the sentinel. I patted him on the head once again and he wagged his tail.

“Take care of her, Ranger,” I said, and closed the door.

When I relaxed in my bed, I had time to think. For years, I thought about this day, and what it would mean to create the first quantum computer. How would it affect mankind?  What doors would we open and how would it affect the world in which Olivia would grow up?  But twelve hours after Athena went live, I was back in my bed with my daughter sleeping in the next room. Nothing had changed, at least, not that I could see. I knew this was as big as creating the atom bomb. The creators of the atom bomb saw the explosion and feared the scientific doors they opened. Should I?

Still wondering what I had accomplished as I drifted to sleep, I awoke a little later to the sound of Olivia’s playful voice.

“You can’t find me.”

I sat up and turned on the lamp to find an empty room. It was after three a.m. Groggily, I got out of bed and looked everywhere, but Olivia wasn’t in my room.

I tiptoed to Olivia’s bedroom and cracked open her door. Ranger, in his usual place on the floor, lifted his head and looked inquisitively at me. I stared at Olivia, who was fast asleep in her bed. Ranger snored softly.

“What’s wrong?”

Mary’s unexpected voice startled me. She stood in the hall and smothered a yawn.

“Nothing,” I said, trying to remain calm. “I thought I heard Olivia talking.”

She remained silent, tying her white waffle-patterned robe, her eyes fixed on Olivia.

“Did you hear anything?” I asked, noticing her expression.

 “I ... thought I did, but I wasn’t sure. I got up to check and heard you walking down the hall and opening Olivia’s door.” She looked at me, confused. “What did you hear?”

“Olivia. In my room.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Could you have been dreaming?”

I yawned. “Possible.”

Mary took my admission into account. “What did she say?”

“You can’t find me.”

“You can’t find me?” Mary got it instantly, even at this late hour. “Oh, I see. But wouldn’t I have heard her get out of bed to play a game?” Her tone suggested disapproval of Olivia playing instead of sleeping. “I always hear her when she gets up to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water. And wouldn’t Ranger have gotten up too?”

She was right. Mary was the world’s lightest sleeper. When we were children and I used to sneak into the kitchen for a snack, Mary would always show up no matter how quiet I tried to be. Whatever I had, I had to share with her in order to guarantee her silence. As well, Ranger’s doggy ears and nose kept track of all Olivia’s movements.

“Maybe she talked in her sleep?” Mary suggested.

“Maybe. But the voice didn’t come from her room,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

Deep breath. “Her voice was in my room.”

Mary’s eyes widened in fear. “Now you’re starting to scare me.”

I thought about mentioning Olivia’s imaginary play with imaginary Julie, but one look told me Mary couldn’t handle this.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I was exhausted and drifting to sleep. You’re right, I was dreaming. Let’s go back to bed.”

Looking unconvinced, Mary returned to her room.

Though I felt tired, I couldn’t fall asleep and lay staring in the dark to allow my mind and body to settle. As my eyes grew heavy, I couldn’t help think about what I had heard. Never susceptible to tricks of the imagination, I knew what I had heard was real. What was it?

Slowly, I pulled the covers back over my head as if Olivia and I were still playing, and whispered, “You can’t find me.”  

At the foot of my bed I heard Olivia’s familiar playful giggle.

I jerked the covers off as quickly as I could and flipped on the light, but as before, no one else was in the room.

CHAPTER SIX

In the present, thinking about that night as we returned to the campus, I asked Olivia, “Do you still talk to Mom every night?”

“Of course, silly.” Olivia and Ranger ran ahead into the building.

I hung back with Rex. “What do you think?”

Rex was used to this exchange between Olivia and me, and to my predictable question to him afterwards. “As I said, sir, nothing to worry about.”

We weren’t really talking about Julie, we were talking about a potential threat to my child, worry over her mental health and how that could affect my work on the project, since everything that affected me could help or hurt my work. This was our comfort zone.

I lowered my voice. “Does Grant know about Olivia’s imaginary friend?” What I meant was, did they know? Rex’s bosses?

“No.” Rex’s tone left no quarter for doubt.

“Why?”

“It’s nothing he needs to know.”

“The old warrior code triumphs again,” I murmured.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. We should get you back to the campus now, Sir. And the girl. Tomorrow will be another long day.”

*****

The next morning, I knew Rex was right about today being a midnight oil day, and that it would be unlikely that I would get away early enough for the special evening walk with Olivia. So I decided to take some time in the morning to play with her and Ranger out on the grassy lawn surrounding the campus. Her shrieks of delight rose above the muted silence of the facility.

Mary was never far away, her life focused on raising Olivia, her chores, or sitting on one of the benches reading while Olivia played.

As Olivia, Ranger and I played hide and seek, a thunderous drone shattered the peace of the watery gray morning. A military helicopter passed overhead, flying low and slow above the trees. It hovered beyond the compound before vanishing to the helicopter pad reserved for important visitors toward the rear of the facility. We paid no attention to it, the sight not unfamiliar.

Then, another helicopter passed overhead, hovering momentarily above us. Heavily armed, it bore rocket launchers protruding from each side. A soldier sporting a weapon sat in the open doorway checking us out before veering toward the landing pad.

Olivia excitedly watched the action. To her, it was a rare glimpse of the outside world other than what she saw in videos, but I didn’t share her excitement, sensing with each passing moment that something was about to happen.

“Why are they here?” she asked.

“I think someone is coming to see me,” I said, noticing Mary’s watchful face from the apartment window. Mary waved.

“Is it the President?” Olivia smiled.

“I think it could be.”

“Can we go see him?”  

“I don’t think so, sweetheart. I think we’ll stay right here for the time being.”

At that moment, Sasha appeared from the campus and beckoned to me.

“Olivia, you and Ranger wait right here while I talk to Sasha, okay?”

“Okay, Daddy.”

I hurried toward Sasha, though the serious expression on her face confirmed what I already suspected.

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Sasha said. “Colonel Buck didn’t say. We didn’t even know anyone was coming until about ten minutes ago. He’s waiting for you.”

I returned to Olivia and led her back to the campus. “Olivia, I have to go to work now.”

“So soon?” she asked, patting Ranger on the head. “We didn’t finish playing.”

“I know, sweetheart, but we’ll go for our walk tonight.”

Sasha smiled broadly at Olivia as we entered the campus, and came over to ruffle Olivia’s hair. “How’s my favorite girl?”

Olivia giggled. “Fine, Aunt Sasha.”

Something made me glance up at the window. Mary’s mouth was pressed in a frown against the glass as she stared at Sasha.

As I thought back to how Mary ramped up the mothering whenever Sasha was around Olivia, I had a niggling thought: my sister was somewhat jealous that Olivia had taken to Sasha, another female influence and a good-looking woman at that. I frowned, thinking that I needed to talk to my sister and assure her no one could ever take her place, and besides, Mary had admitted it was good for Olivia to have other caring adults in her life. She had a deep respect for Sasha as well, and it was mutual.

“We’ll have to bake some cookies again real soon,” Sasha said.

Olivia’s eyes widened. “Chocolate chip?”

“You got it,” Sasha said, glancing at me. “I’ll see you later, Olivia, palomita. I’ve got to go to work with your Papi right now.”

“See you in a minute,” I said, walking into the building. My anxiety increased, but I tried not to show it to Olivia.

“Are you going to talk about your computer, Daddy?”

Sasha gave me a startled look and stepped back. My child was a five-year-old security leak. Someday, I would talk to her about the issue. But she was too young for that discussion now.

Grant hovered nearby, a reminder that I was on government time. Olivia waved at him. “Hi, Uncle! The President’s here.”

“Perhaps,” Grant said, managing a halfway human look.

Olivia said, within earshot, “Daddy, I think Uncle is pretending he’s not excited.”

Sasha winked at me. As soon as Olivia was old enough to say her first words, Sasha had called Grant “Uncle” as a joke. As in, “Olivia, here’s Uncle!” Although Sasha no longer got an irritated reaction from Grant, the label stuck.

“Go on, Uncle, you don’t want to keep the brass waiting,” Sasha said.

It seemed Grant couldn’t get to the Hull fast enough. Olivia and I waited until the elevator returned for us.

When the elevator arrived, Ranger bounded inside, sniffed out potential threats, found none, then danced impatiently to beckon Olivia. I pressed the second floor button and held the door open for a moment as I watched the girl and her dog.

“Olivia, I’ll see you tonight, okay?” I hope.

“Okay, Daddy.”

I kissed her twice and patted Ranger on the head. “Take good care of her, Ranger,” I said as the door closed and the elevator ascended.

When I saw that it reached the second floor, I hurried from the campus to find a pacing Sasha waiting outside. “Let’s go,” she said.

*****

We both felt a sense of urgency as we made our way through the hall to the conference room. Everyone else was already seated, including Carl and Morgan, who looked as if they had been chewing on the concertina wire on top of the security fence. Colonel Buck sat at the head of the table beside a pokerfaced Grant. Though Colonel Buck never showed anger, I could tell by his expression that he was deeply perturbed.

“Can you explain to us once again, Joe, how Athena was able to infiltrate the other systems?”

I was confused, but tried not to show it. I saw the same reaction in the eyes of the others.

“Sir, we were explicit in our previous conference…” I broke off when I saw his eyebrows bristle. A tell. He was impatient. “To recap, Athena had only gone live when we noticed she had infiltrated the other systems in the Hull. As soon as we noticed the problem we stopped the test. We don’t perceive the situation to be a problem, nor have any other issues surfaced to give us any concern. Athena was doing what she was supposed to be doing, only more efficiently. That was our goal, and still is.”

That answer didn’t satisfy him. I suspected more to his questions than the problem of Athena infecting our systems in the Hull.

Sasha, Carl and Morgan took his questioning as an attack on their veracity and professional integrity. Of the three, easygoing, mellow Carl proved the most argumentative. “You’ve asked the same question twenty different ways and we’ve answered the same every time.”

 “Mr. Ravenel, your story is not believable. I will ask the same question until I get a truthful answer”

It was my time to answer questions.  “You obviously believe we are hiding something. What would we be hiding?”

He turned his attention and his questions to me. For the next hour, he water-boarded me with the same question until I was drowning in it. If I could have given him a different answer to shut him up, I would have. But there was no answer to give, other than we didn’t know, but in fact were glad it happened, at least I was, and was working on an answer for him. It was an intense hour. When the conference was concluded and we were all taking deep breaths in the absence of the brass, I told Grant that I wanted to briefly check on Olivia before heading to the hull to check on Athena.

“Joe, she’s with your sister,” he said. “Check on her later. This is important.”

“So is my daughter,” I replied. “A few minutes won’t make a difference.”

“Maybe they already have,” he said, referring to our out of control program.

Sasha threw him a glare, as did Carl and Morgan. There were human morale limits to this program, and my being a good father was one of them.

 “I will be back soon,” I said.

 That’s not what he wanted to hear, but that’s the way it was.

The moment I stepped from the checkpoint at The Hull entrance, a panicking Mary leapt at me, her face wet with tears, her frantic words unintelligible. She grabbed my shirt and hung onto it like a drowning swimmer. I never saw my staunch sister so distraught.

“Mary – slow down! What’s wrong?”

“We can’t find Olivia!” she gasped.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The ground shifted beneath my feet. For a moment, time seemed to stand still, until those words finally penetrated the shock numbing my mind.

“We?” I sounded as unemotional as Grant.

“Rex is searching with some of the security staff,” Mary said, straightening her spine.

“What do you mean you can’t find Olivia?” I now felt my body shake with a blast of rage. “I sent her up in the elevator before I left.”

Mary’s hand fluttered to her mouth like a wounded bird. “I never saw her ... she never came in. I went to check on her from the window and didn’t see anyone. I ... thought you were with her, but then when I came downstairs to check ... I ... I realized you had gone. She and Ranger weren’t anywhere, Joe!  I started calling out for her...”

“Why didn’t you call me?” I stared wild-eyed at Mary. “Why didn’t you let me know?”

Mary withstood my fury, which, oddly, seemed to restore her composure. The apple scent was fierce. “You don’t think I tried?” she said. “Even when I pleaded with them, saying it was life and death, no one would disturb you while you were in that conference!”

Oh God, I’m doing to Mary what that jerk Grant did to me.

Grant. Hatred I had never experienced surged through my veins. If he were responsible for stonewalling Mary, he would face a wrath that even frightened me. We had an agreement ... if Olivia had an emergency I was to be notified immediately, regardless of the situation. If he knew about this...

“We’ll find her.” I said, gently touching Mary’s shoulder. “And after we do, somebody’s head will roll.” She nodded, satisfied.

Voices from the forest rang out. Glimpsing Rex directing a number of men, I bolted toward the trees, Mary at my heels. Ranger howled in the distance.

“Olivia!” I cried, my jellied legs threatening to give out beneath me.

As I approached the tree line, I saw Ranger barking excitedly and wagging his tail.

“Hey boy, where’s Olivia?” I cried.

He let out a yelp, ran a few feet away, and stopped to see if I was following him. Though I heard Rex shout a warning, I ignored him and crashed through the trees after Ranger. The faster I ran, the faster he bounded through the woods, occasionally looking back and barking for me to follow. My eyes blurred with tears, my heart threatening to jump from my chest. A terrible dread gripped my soul, for Olivia and Ranger were never separated.

I shouted for the others, but my only focus was following Ranger. I couldn’t keep up, and the more panicked I became the more I stumbled over rocks and branches, falling once in a tiny stream. Occasionally I saw Ranger’s tail signaling through the trees. When I lost sight of him, he yelped to guide me.

I ran, branches tearing at me. I heard nothing from Olivia, only the sound of my own feet desperately crashing through the leaves above my labored breath and the agony of my heart aching, not from exertion but for what I feared awaited me at the end of it. I fell again without feeling any pain and scrambled back to my feet, following Ranger’s guiding bark beckoning me to run faster.

My legs and lungs burned, and when I thought I would collapse, I stumbled across a steep wooded ravine. The forest floor dropped sharply beneath me to a road visible between the trees. Ranger stood at the top of the ravine barking down toward a small sheet-draped body lying on the road.

Police cars and an ambulance surrounded it beneath a blaze of flashing lights.

“Olivia!” I screamed until I lost my voice.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Time crawled as if I had fallen into a black hole. I didn’t remember moving, but the world stumbled and spiraled down around me. I hit bottom and lay motionless, feeling as if I were plummeting still, until someone gently prodded me. “Sir? Can you hear me? Please give me a sign.”

The world stabilized and I found myself at rest on the road beside the sheet-covered body. A silver-haired sheriff knelt beside me, his sun-etched face creased with sadness.

“Sir, are you okay?” he asked.

I reached for the sheet and lay against it. I couldn’t look under it. I didn’t have to. I wept until the shroud was soaked and I could see the delicate outline of a girl’s form.

A moment later I heard thudding feet crashing through the trees. Rex appeared, flushed and breathless, his face betraying raw emotion. He paused for a moment to look at the sheet-covered body and did what I couldn’t bring myself to do. He looked beneath the sheet. Visibly shaken, he nodded confirmation and silently stepped back.

The grandfatherly sheriff asked Rex a question and Rex softly replied. The sheriff’s response sounded grave.

I finally garnered the strength to pull the sheet back and see my baby. Her face looked like that of a sleeping angel. How I wished she were asleep and that at any moment, by some miracle, she would open her eyes and smile up at me.

I pulled her up onto my lap and rocked her in my arms, her Julie-like curls dampened by my tears. And then it exploded from me, an indescribable pain bursting like a dam. Giving in to the wracking sobs heaving through my body, the agony coursing through me. Nobody said anything, nobody moved. No one tried to interfere with a father’s grief, except to throw a blanket around me. I was shivering.

Exhausted and drained, I raised my head and stared glassy-eyed at the sheriff. He stayed where he was and gently put his arm around me.

“What happened?” I whispered, hoarse and exposed. “What ... happened?”

Over the sheriff’s shoulder I saw the hulk of a car and a kid who couldn’t be more than twenty leaning against it for support as the police restrained him. He glanced my way with haunted eyes that said his life, as he knew it, was over.

“A German Shepherd ran across the road and got hit by a car coming in the opposite direction.” He motioned toward a ditch on the other side of the road. “Witnesses confirmed that your daughter came out the woods at this point, apparently saw the dog get hit and ran across the road in the path of an oncoming car.”

“You said ... a German Shepherd?”

“Yes, it’s behind that police cruiser.”

I stared at a pair of officers retrieving another sheet-wrapped body. At the sight of a limp tail, I felt my world spiral again. I shook my head.

“That can’t be.”

“What do you mean?” He was being gentle, perhaps thinking I was going into shock.

“I mean I followed her dog here. Ranger found me to let me know something was wrong. I followed him here. I had never been to the edge. I didn’t even know it was here...”

My words trailed off as I looked toward the top of the slope for Ranger, but he was gone.

The sheriff silently followed my gaze and shrugged. “All I know is that a German Shepherd was killed crossing the road...”

It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense.

“Rex,” I said in a voice I didn’t recognize. “Can you…”

He didn’t wait for me to finish, but moved toward the officers carrying the body and briefly looked under the sheet. Again, emotion crossed his face as he silently nodded yes.

I choked back another sob. I knew what I had seen. How was this even possible?

More voices echoed from the tree line behind us, and I could now see other cars approaching from both directions. When I saw a black SUV I knew Grant was probably on the scene.

To hell with him.

The kindly sheriff intervened. “Sir, we need to get you and your daughter to a safer place.”

I stared at Olivia and brushed a matted curl from her face.

“If you want, you can carry her to the ambulance and ride with her to the hospital,” the sheriff said.

I still couldn’t respond, my shivering body so tense I thought it would shatter at the slightest touch. My aching throat was parched, my eyes swollen. Rising on shaking legs, I gathered Olivia in my arms. The sheriff guided me to the rolling bed of the ambulance and helped me lay her down. The EMTs buckled her in and covered her with a blanket, leaving her face for me to caress. I sat beside her like a zombie, unable to function beyond resting my head beside her and sobbing.

The ambulance doors slammed behind us, and the sad convoy slowly pulled away. I didn’t remember much of what happened after that, only the black hole in which I resided and the antiseptic white box of the ambulance.

When Julie died, I followed the sounds of Olivia’s cries to a new life. Now, the only cries I heard were my own, and but they didn’t lead me to a new life, but to the absence of it.

*****

As with Julie after she died, the time came when I finally had to leave Olivia’s side, when I could no longer hold her, rock her, or caress her face; a time when I felt her skin turn cold, and the reality sink in that she wasn’t going to open her eyes no matter how long I waited. The pain of total loss squeezed out everything in me until my body felt as empty as hers. I would have given anything to surrender my life for Olivia’s. I had nothing to live for.

When I finally left her side, I followed the sheriff seemingly right from the ambulance to an interview room, passing the handcuffed kid who had hit Olivia. He threw himself in my path, kneeling and begging my forgiveness, becoming so hysterical he had to be dragged away. He had hit the brakes, I learned later. He had called 911. I didn’t blame him. I blamed me.

The sheriff asked me a few questions in a soft, modulated voice, but didn’t push me, seeing I was already in a state. Besides, he had spoken at length to Rex, who assumed blame even though no one knew why Olivia was alone outside the apartment. I didn’t blame Rex. I blamed me.

Mary was as wild-eyed and overwrought as the kid, and a doctor came to administer a sedative.

The sheriff next spoke to Grant, and Grant said little beyond diplomatically letting the sheriff know that we were out of his jurisdiction. When a five-year-old is killed by a car, though, the police don’t fight over turf. Everyone that night shared the loss of Olivia, including the sheriff. Though she was my child, she affected everyone that knew her, and everyone that saw her little body lying on the pavement. The campus would never be the same without her smile and childhood curiosity.

I’ll never forget the resounding silence when we returned to the campus that night. Rex drove, a pensive Grant beside him. I rode in the back with Mary and held her, her glazed and drugged eyes staring unresponsively at the darkness beyond. She had not stopped shaking and twitching like a small frightened animal since we left the hospital, and I did not know how either of us would make it through this night.

Though the sheriff exonerated me of blame, I wasn’t able to process the facts that my only daughter was dead and that it was my fault. I should have taken Olivia to the door, should have ensured she got back to the apartment. I had assumed she was safe when the elevator door closed, but I would never know what had compelled her to go back outside. She knew how important it was to listen to me, that there were dangers outside. Now she paid the price for my negligence, for my saving a few minutes of time so I could get back to that damned briefing. I knew I would never recover from this, and that Olivia’s blood, as well that of faithful Ranger, was on my hands.

 “Joe,” Grant said with a strained, hollow voice.

“Yes?”

“The sheriff wanted to know which funeral home to take her to.”

“Olivia’s not going anywhere. She and Ranger will be buried next to Julie.”

My heart heaved as I thought of Ranger’s body in the trunk. Rex would take care of his burial tonight, and when the Rhodora flower bloomed again, I would place blossoms on his grave and Olivia’s.

Grant bowed his head and removed his glasses. They were foggy. “The sheriff’s involvement ... complicated things,” he said. “State law requires that the sheriff ask about the arrangements.”

“And the same state law says Julie isn’t supposed to be buried on the campus either, but she is. Grant, Olivia will be buried next to her mother. I don’t care if you have to call and wake up the President. You get her here tomorrow.”

Grant was silent a moment. “I’ll take care of it.”

Rex drove through the checkpoint. Though it was late, a few lights still shone from the campus. I hoped no one would approach us. As I helped Mary out of the car, her legs gave out like a rag doll, but I gripped her arm and guided her to the apartment.

I gasped as we stepped inside and felt the sheer black lifelessness surrounding us. I took Mary to her room and simply hugged her for a few moments. At Julie’s funeral, she held Olivia and envied me, a new father. She didn’t envy me anymore. She had no more reason to live than I did, and I wondered how either of us would face another day.

Making Mary as comfortable as I could, I tucked her into bed and she fell almost immediately into a comatose sleep. With a sigh I stepped from her room and closed the door.

I shut the blinds, averting my eyes from the windows in case I glimpsed Rex taking Ranger’s body to the burial site. Then, I collapsed onto the bed and gave way to the sobs heaving through my body. I beat my hands against the mattress until exhaustion defeated me. Sleep would be a stranger despite the grinding fatigue resonating from every cell in my body.

Unable to rest, I got out of bed and went to my getaway. Turning on the lamp, I sat at the desk. My journal was open; I must have left it that way. Odd. I didn’t remember doing so, but then memory slipped through my fingers. I devoured the words I’d meant for Olivia to read. My gaze fell on the pressed Rhodora flower, and painful recollections of the day she found it in the woods pierced my mind. I buried my head in the page, cursing myself in my arrogant presumption that I could predict the future; that she would live to read what I thought today.

I took up my pencil and scribbled.

        TIME CAPSULE FOR JOE

Well, Joe, I hope you read this someday and weep for your arrogance.

The night Julie died, you held Olivia and prayed that God would make you a good father, that you would be worthy of the precious gift He had given you.

Do not pray any more, Joe.

Olivia wasn’t a gift to you from God. How arrogant to believe you were blessed by God.

God doesn’t give children to us as gifts. He couldn’t, because he doesn’t exist. Godly miracles don’t either, only illusions of reality distorted by hope, the daily opiate for the pain of our short miserable lives. And like any drug addict, you fueled yourself with hope each day until you hit finally hit rock bottom, tonight, when hope was forever taken from you forever. There is no God, there is no hope, there is no life thereafter, there is only your pitiful, meager little life, and death cannot come too soon

Olivia was a gift from her mother, the last gift that will ever mean anything to you.

There is no reason to live, but you’re too much of a coward to end your miserable life. That’s why the Colonel never feared you. If you had a gun, you couldn’t even use it on yourself. You are a pitiful excuse for a man, for a father. You’re like Grant, and now entombed in this place forever with him. All that you deserve, is here.

I will bury this journal with Olivia, my final apology.

Closing the journal and turning off the light, I sat in the dark room until pale morning light filtered through the window, announcing that I had made it through Night Zero.

When the morning broke, I left my seclusion.  I hurried across the grounds toward the woods where Olivia disappeared. I had nowhere else to go, but to run looking for answer as to how this happened? I had no false hope of finding an answer, but I ran to the woods where I lost my heart, because I had nowhere else to go.

.

Rex materialized from seemingly nowhere. He watched me with an expression I had never seen. Was the old warrior following me out of obligation of duty? Or was he suffering too?

“Rex,” I said in a hoarse whisper.

“Yes.”

“Rex, did you see Ranger come to the tree line yesterday?”

Ineluctable. Decisive. Firm. “Yes, I did.”

“No possibility that it was another dog we saw?”

“None.”

“The dog I followed ... it never went down the ravine. It couldn’t have been the one in the ditch. Are you sure it was Ranger’s body you saw?”

“I’m sure,” he said. “He was wearing his collar with the bone-shaped nametag.”

My heart painfully lurched. Olivia had picked the silver nametag that was inscribed in fancy script with Ranger’s name.

Rex looked uncomfortably at me. “How is that possible, Joe?”

He had never called me by my first name before. In all the years I had known him, in all our walks. But today was different, for both of us. Our loss, our indescribable pain, made us brothers in the flesh. And from that moment forward, he never called me sir again.

“How?” he repeated. “Tell me.”

I could only stare at him, the answer, as with so many others, eluding me.

CHAPTER NINE

When I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch the earth with my feet; I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia.”—Scribbled in the margins of The Almagest by Claudius Ptolemy

If he [Ptolemy] understood it all, would Zeus have even shown up in his quote?—Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The rain exploded from the sky as though heaven itself, if it existed, was weeping, and the driving wind was as chilly and unforgiving as mathematical equations.

It was more than fitting for a burial... It was tempting to think the rain was God crying at the loss of a beautiful five-year old girl, but I was wiser now.

What treachery to teach us that to God, “Blessed are the children.”  Why would a loving God permit this? No logic could make sense of that. No father would allow the rape, torture, or murder of a child he loved. Ergo, there was no God, and no larger plan that included Julie’s or Olivia’s deaths.

I knew this as surely as I stood on the sodden grass, staring into the tented hole beside Julie’s grave and the painfully small coffin lying within. A heart shaped wreath of white roses bearing Olivia’s name rested on top of it, minus one rose I took as a memento to later press.

Mary’s weeping rose above the pattering of the rain. Supported by Sasha, Carl and Morgan beneath a cluster of umbrellas, she had already fainted twice. That funeral morning, the staff physician had given her a sedative, but it did little to help, and I feared my sister hovered at the edge of a nervous breakdown. Grant and Rex stood a short distance away, Rex’s haunted expression transforming him into a man I didn’t recognize. Grant stood shaking uncontrollably in the cold, confronting the demons of his own emotions.

We all stood in silence, contemplating what to do or say, what rites could possibly move us forward to the next minute, and the next, and all the minutes after that.

Rex cleared his throat. “Who would like to say a few words?”

The only sound for a while was the pattering of the rain as we struggled to find our voices.

*****

In the night, the preparations were made. Olivia’s grave was dug, and like her mother, she was brought home in a small ivory coffin.

Sasha and the others came to the door in the morning after I woke, but all I could remember of that hellish, final transition was going into Olivia’s room to gather some of her favorite things to place in her coffin. It was the only packing I would ever do. No helping her prepare for a sleepover or for college.

Carl was behind me, supporting Mary on one side while Morgan encouraged her to lean against him on the other. She absently stroked his springy hair. “You need a comb,” she said.

“Always,” Morgan said.

Mary might have laughed then, but standing in the door of Olivia’s bedroom was like being in a church sanctuary. Mary crossed herself and went inside, Sasha and I following while Carl, Morgan and Rex stood watch outside.

Olivia’s room looked no different than yesterday morning. Sasha stepped over a stray purple-and-white sock. “She really likes purple these days…” Sasha broke off.

The other sock lay crumpled beside the bed. I would have to teach Olivia to…

My mind dissolved in grief again and I operated on autopilot. Walking over to the bed and picking up her favorite blanket. Was it only me or did it look like the one they had wrapped her in after she was born? Gently folding the softness.

Mary tried to help me, but at the sight of Olivia’s toys and drawings still bearing the resonance of her touch, she collapsed, and the hyper-alert Rex, Morgan and Carl sprang to help her from the room.

I breathed in the warmth and lingering scents of purity, of little girl, of apples.

Sasha touched my shoulder, her eyes glittering with tears.

“Is there...anything I can do for you?” she whispered. A reflex of hope from someone who was used to fixing things. She already knew the answer.

I simply shook my head. She left me alone while I collected a family photo of Mary, Olivia, Ranger and me. A picture of Julie. Olivia’s favorite stuffed panda that Morgan had given her. Keepsakes that would stay with her. I could no longer bear to see these once precious things.

I had to get one more item too.

My Dad cave was sad, musty, and old. Numb and blind to the memories, I grasped the Daddy Book with shaking hands. My gift, my legacy, once so lovingly tended. While I wanted to open it one last time and take in the memories of Olivia, I knew that if I did the book would enchant me, like a magic book in a children’s story, and I would never leave that room.

With all that remained of my daughter, I walked from the room, never to return, I thought.  It was too painful, as much as touching everything Olivia had once touched. The traces of our DNA mingling…now to be covered by the earth…

An eerie, crazy idea took root in me at that moment. Almost sacrilege by thought. What if something of Olivia still remained? Something alive?

*****

“I’d like to say something,” Sasha said and stepped away from Mary so that Rex could take her place. “May I?”

I nodded, unable to do much else.

Sasha faced Julie’s grave and Olivia’s.

“I loved you, Olivia,” she said.

Mary’s head snapped back and she held her hands aloft in a posture of religious surrender.

Sasha continued. “You were like my baby sister, Evelita, who died when she was barely a year and I was your age…we didn’t know how sick she was…our Mami was hard-working like your Papi, but she didn’t plan on a childhood illness for which there were no vaccines, not in my village, not then.”

Mary prayed harder.

“I loved Evelita and I loved you. You who could make me laugh during a hard day, who touched every one of us in ways you can’t possibly know, who drew me pictures and were the bestest chocolate chip cookie baker and reminded me, all of us, why we were working. You are the closest I’ve ever been to having a daughter…I wish whoever took you away would send you back. Because your Papi needs you, Mary needs you, and this rotten world needs you.”

After Sasha spoke, Morgan sang, elegiac. Something old and sad and beautiful. As with the revelation about Sasha’s little sister, Morgan shocked me. I knew music was his hobby, and often listened to him humming in The Hull, but never heard him actually sing and put his heart into it. His song, whatever it was, more his tone, resonated with me, with us. It was beautiful. I never told him thank you, not with words, not even with my eyes. It was like listening to him cry, and I cried too.

Grant read a short note sent from the Oval Office. He read it in his typical monotone. “The First Lady, the Cabinet, and the entire White House join me in expressing our deepest sympathy for the loss of your daughter, Olivia Frankenstein. As parents, we cannot imagine the pain and sorrow of this terrible time. We speak for the American people when we say our thoughts and prayers are with you.”

He folded the note and tucked it away. “I will miss,” he said, impromptu, “being called Uncle.”

Carl, Mary and Rex did not speak, and so the main eulogy fell to me.

As I took a last look at my daughter, I felt Sasha gently touch my arm. It was time to deliver her to the earth, and as it was at Julie’s funeral, I dreaded that moment when I would no longer be able to see even a remnant of Olivia’s existence. It was no wonder Mary kept her face turned up to the heavens and refused to look at the grave, where, like me, she was burying a piece of herself in that hole that she would never get back.

No minister was present, no one to recite empty words or false promises about why this child was taken by God too soon, before her time, that something better awaits us that we can’t see.

It was my turn to speak now, venting the loss that welled inside me. I spoke not of God, a plan, a meaning of death.

I recited:

…this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty!

Rex stared unblinking at me. Grant stared at his soggy shoes. Morgan simply nodded. Sasha and Mary wept. I continued—

In form and moving how express and admirable!  in action how like an angel!  In apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me; no, nor woman neither….

I paused. Took a gulp of air. Noticed that Mary’s gaze remained heavenward.

“That’s Hamlet, Act II, Scene II. There is more that the Bard has to teach us.” I launched into Hamlet’s soliloquy.

To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream…

“What a crock,” I said. “‘A mere scutcheon,’ pablum for us feeble-minded humans, who still want to believe in fairy tales. Shakespeare knew it five hundred years ago. There are no dreams that may come after this mortal coil is gone. Do you hear me? Do you?”

Blind to the waves of emotion and facial expressions that confronted me, I ranted on, using the Bard in a fire-and-brimstone Falstaffian anti-sermon.

“‘There’s the respect/That makes calamity of so long life/For who would bear the whips and scorns of time’…Hamlet said that conscience makes cowards of us all. Well, it sure as hell isn’t conscience that makes us go on living. Least of all me. Because if I believed in life after death, I would jump in that coffin with Olivia. You can see I haven’t, and I didn’t for Julie, either. Instead, I gave you the okeydokey about a better life after death.” I sucked in a lungful of bitterness and breathed out hate.

“I’m a coward.” I beat my breast, clawed at my flesh and felt relief in my self-mortification.

Everyone’s faces were stone.

“I’m a coward,” I repeated. “I’m the sorriest coward there ever was. Hiding behind my work and my duty and ‘the greater good’. Fairy tales of duty to God and country. I’m afraid of the truth: that there is no life after death. Don’t roll your eyes at me, because you know it in your hearts, and you, every one of you, are cowards, too. If any of us believed in something more, in ‘a consummation/Devoutly to be wish’d,’ in that ‘undiscovered country,’ we’d act. We’d end life now and not suffer its pains, especially not the illusions that it’s God’s cursed will for a five-year-old to die while her father is stuck in some worthless meeting about the supposed betterment of mankind.” I spat on the grass. “Our quest for the fire of Prometheus is a joke.”

They were rocks in the rain gathered around that small white coffin. Mary remained dignified, Joan of Arc as the rabble lit her pyre, praying to the sky.

My voice faltered and I wheezed, but determined to finish, kept up my diatribe. “I’m sorry. You’re all good people, the closest thing I have to a real family now. It’s not your fault that I’m a huge coward, or that the human race is blind, chasing some mythical immortality, a world without end. Shakespeare was right, that’s why he was great, because he saw us for what we are, moral cowards. We constantly seek new technology to prolong life, to build a better human. Athena is the latest illusion in Plato’s Cave. We created the fire-shape and we worship it as real—they call that idolatry in the Bible. I call it idiocy and a crime against reason. In creating Athena we want immortality, just as I did with Olivia, to extend something of myself. That’s all we’ve been doing here—extend our miserable lives and prove we matter. What more evidence do we need that what we know in our hearts is true—that this life is all there is, nothing more? Olivia taught us that.”

There were no amens from this group, only silence. I went hoarse from crying all night and shouting this morning. I went hoarse and then silent. The only sound was my shoes squelching in the mud. In my silence, my eyes gravitated back to that small open coffin and little girl inside. It was painful to look at her.  Her eyes closed, and she was still beautiful even in death. And the words from Romeo and Julie(t) whispered in my thoughts -

Death lies on her, like an untimely frost

Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.

I wanted to say more, but the words choked in my throat, and I buried my face in my hands briefly before staring at the coffin once more. I stood for several moments, sensing everyone but Mary and Sasha leaving, but unable to do anything but look at my daughter one last time.

“I wish I understood,” I said softly, sensing Mary’s presence behind me.

“Me, too,” she whispered, her voice as thin and fragile as mine.

I turned and gathered her in my arms, two frightened remnants of people we once knew.

“I mean, I wish I understood life,” I said. “Where did it go?  Olivia’s body, her atoms, they’re still here, but her life is gone.”

Mary collected herself now. “She’s in Heaven with Julie.”

“Do you believe that, Mary?”

She was on safer ground, familiar. “Yes ... don’t you?”

“No. If I did, I would kill myself and be with Julie and Olivia.”

Mary’s face animated. “The Bible says that man was created from the dust of the earth.”

“The dust,” I murmured, her words resonating.

Somewhere, in the deep recesses of my mind, something shifted.

Mary looked at me with alarm. “Joe?”

“The dust of the earth,” I said. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. It all makes sense. I never realized the meaning behind those words.”

“It means we return where we came from,” Mary said.

Now I felt the life-spark within me. “It means that we’re talking about atoms ... the dust of the earth. Olivia’s made of atoms. Her atoms existed for billions of years, since the beginning of time, and they’ll continue to exist for billions of years to come until the end of time, whenever that is.”

“What are you saying, Joe?” Mary said, looking at me with concern. “What’s all this about?”

That brief candle flickered still. “I’m saying that Olivia’s atoms aren’t dead. Her atoms are like a computer hard drive. Computers get damaged and broken all the time, yet they can be repaired and the information retrieved. Why would humans be any different from a computer?  What if she’s still locked in those atoms we buried?”

Mary shook her head. “Joe, God is right and He is touching you now, showing you the deeper meaning of His words, to restore your faith, but you are not God, you cannot bring her back to life."

"Yes, Mary, you’re right. I have faith—that there is something in Olivia’s atoms. Her memories, her life. If I can tap into that and retrieve…”

Supreme concern on Mary’s face. ”Joe, I believe you, she isn’t dead, but she’s not a computer. She’s not something you can restart. She was made by God, not man, in His image. You can’t recreate her. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, you can’t bring her back.”

 

“He’s only trying to make sense of it all,” peacemaker Sasha said behind us, trying to keep us from arguing on this day.

 

Mary spun on Sasha. Facial features made formless with grief bloomed again into something otherworldly, beatified. “And he can’t. Only God can.”

 

Crimson spurted into Sasha’s cheeks, but her lips went pale. “Mary, we all loved her…”

 

Mary gave her that look of serene pity. “I know one thing. Olivia is in Heaven—”

 

Sasha broke in. “Good for you. But what of Joe? What about his questions? He asks questions because he hurts. His hurt is no longer placated by a faith that he’s lost.”

 

“Joe said it himself, there are limits to our understanding, but our vanity makes us think we can understand it all, we can’t,” Mary said. “Life itself is proof of God. He tells us this in the only way we can understand, that He breathed life into the dust and formed us in His own image. That’s the closest we will ever get to understanding, and questioning that truth only leads to frustration. No matter how many Towers of Babylon you build, you will never get to Heaven. My faith is acceptance of this truth, not lost in my quest to understand something that is beyond our ability to understand, not lost in the arrogance that I can understand. And God tells us something more: that we don’t die. We aren’t just memories on a hard drive.” She reached out to console Sasha.

 

Sasha visibly seethed, startling me with the force of her own grief and rage, and turned her back on Mary. “If your God exists, and if he has a plan for us all, he gave Joe a great mind to ask questions. Don’t stand now, not on this day, in God’s way.”

 

Pity on Mary’s features. “I’m not standing in anyone’s way to God, and my faith doesn’t make my pain go away. I hurt as much as Joe. I loved little Olivia as my own, and nothing takes away the pain of her loss, not even my faith in God.”

Unable to counter, and looking visibly self-conscious, Sasha hurried away. Mary stared after her with that serene pity. I grabbed my trembling fingers and clasped my hands together for a moment in prayer before I caught myself and let my hands fall useless by my sides.

*****

The words continued to echo in my thoughts, nurturing an idea that almost turned to hope that somehow Olivia was still here, locked away from me. The concept was my only solace during those incredibly lonely nights without Olivia. No more stories, no more walks with Ranger, no more journal, no more Children’s Hour. Mary and I, when we were together in the lifeless apartment, spent many evenings in silence, each of us locked within our own mourning.

For several weeks, the members of our team went about life as usual in The Hull and in their quarters. Nobody mentioned Olivia or Julie. To boost morale, Sasha organized a few communal dinners, mostly awkward affairs with everyone faking normalcy. I always made an excuse to leave early.

During the empty evenings I sat by the window overlooking the campus and the three graves by the walnut tree. Olivia’s stone was similar to Julie’s, while Ranger had a small bronze statuette of a dog leaping for a ball. Often I opened the window in the hope of hearing Olivia say, “You can’t find me.”  How wonderful it would be to hear her voice again, even once. I would throw my arms around her and never let her go.

Mary had ordered an altar for her room, where she spent the majority of her time now. To keep busy, she cleaned and re-cleaned the spotless rooms, read her Bible, and listened to Christian radio.

Night after night I held vigil by the window, praying for a whisper, a single word. I had lost interest in anything other than staring at the darkness and wondering how I would make it through the days ahead. During moonlit nights, I watched the play of light and shadow form eerie, fantastical shapes around the graves. There was no limit to my idle fancies during that time, when I could make the shadowplay anything I wanted: Olivia blowing out her birthday candles, Julie and I on our wedding day, Olivia romping with Ranger.

On the last night of the full moon, when the time for any hope had run, the shadow of a woman emerged from the woods. I sat frozen, unwilling to move in case I banished a dream or vision from my mind, but the woman continued to approach and sat at Olivia’s grave. She rubbed her hands across the plaque and touched the flowers I placed on her gravesite before running her hands across the dirt. My heart skipped a beat as it recognized that silhouette.

It was Julie.

CHAPTER TEN

I didn’t remember leaving my chair or the apartment, but found myself sprinting toward the stairs and skipped down two steps at a time. I didn’t care who might be watching from the security cameras as I burst through the doors and raced toward the graves.

The figure of Julie was gone the instant I stepped onto the hallowed ground. The trinity of graves refused to spew forth whatever knowledge they had, the effigy of Ranger staring blankly at me.

“Julie?” I circled around again and again, my eyes scanning the surrounding woods. “Julie...wait ...”

My own echo mocked me. “Julie…Julie…Julie…lie…ie…”

No. Not a lie.

My mind drifted to Bernardo’s lines in Hamlet. Is not this something more than fantasy? What think you on’t?

Though I was tempted to go into the woods, I restrained myself. Had the phantasm of Julie sprung from a mind numb from fatigue and grief, the conjuring a mirage from all the hopes and fears from my nightly vigil?  I sagged onto Julie’s grave and listened to the tuneful hooting of an owl as I wondered whether or not I was insane. Did madmen chase after ghosts or run from them?

In the ululations of the avian sentinel I heard confirmation: The surge of adrenaline that had propelled me from the apartment was real...I had seen Julie. She had risen and walked just as I did, both of us given leave to roam free of our graves, for the building where I pretended to live was mine.

After remaining with my loved ones a while, I returned to my tombstone, my mausoleum; I interned myself in that building, whereas before I had lived in it, chasing Olivia and Ranger as if tomorrow didn’t exist. Now, only memories pursued me, and I fled them “down the ways and down the days.”

I took the stairs up to the second floor, but paused at the doorway before entering the corridor. Now doubts began trickling into my mind. Had I seen something by the graves? Were my eyes playing tricks on me? Or was my mind beginning to unravel?

*****

My feet lagged on the stairs up to the second floor and paused at the doorway before entering the corridor. Slow-moving doubts caught me unawares like the tortoise overtaking the hare. Had I seen something by the graves? Were my eyes playing tricks on me? Or was my mind beginning to unravel?

When I stepped into the apartment, I listened for Mary, but she was asleep. I got a glass of water and quenched my thirst. After padding through the place, I hesitated for a moment by Olivia’s bedroom door. Every evening I couldn’t help but look inside and feel her presence by the memory of the things she left behind that I could still see and touch, and which were so much a part of her. For just as I had not been able to bear contact with them weeks ago, so I could not pass Olivia’s room without going in and handling these sacred relics.

I opened the door and froze, my mind barely able to process the sight of Julie sitting in the old rocking chair. The same chair where she as Olivia’s imaginary friend sat every night until Olivia fell asleep. She slowly rocked in front of the window, the moonlight a shimmering veil across her face. I stepped into the room on trembling legs and stopped, unable to move, unable to say anything. The chair stopped rocking.

Oh God, was I imagining things now too?

“Joe,” Julie whispered.

“Julie.” I choked back sobs.

“What’s wrong?” Her tone soft and gentle.

Compelled, I ran to her, dropped to my knees and embraced her. Though I kissed her, she didn’t move or look at me...

“It’s not you, is it?” I asked, gazing hungrily at her lovely face.

She finally turned to look curiously at me. She gently touched a tear trickling down my cheek and placed it to her lips. I had never seen her do that before. “Why are you crying?”

“I’m happy to see you again, Julie! You don’t know how I’ve missed you!”

“You cry when you’re happy?”

The question floored me. I could not understand why she would even ask that. “Yes, silly!” I laughed at the absurdity of this living dream. Is it a dream? Surely a dream wouldn’t be so achingly tactile, real and heartfelt.

She tilted her chin in thought. “But didn’t you cry when you buried Olivia?”

“Of course I did.”

She considered this. “Were you happy then?”

Had death changed her? Robbed her of the life and understanding she left here with? Was she…was she even Julie? Was this some sort of alien, or worse?

However, I saw that she asked her questions in earnest and answered. “No. I wasn’t happy. I don’t even know the meaning of that word anymore.”

“You were sad?” Lord, she was tenacious, just as she had always been.

I rested my head in her lap, feeling the resonance of its warmth within my heart. “More than. I felt like I was dying.”

Her hand rested upon my hair, tentatively. Gingerly, as if exploring a foreign and potentially harmful object—it was not Julie’s touch at all. “But you’re happy now?”

I inhaled her scent, smelling apples. Apples? “Yes, I’m happy.”

“Me, too,” she said, and kissed me.

She was real enough, but she wasn’t Julie.

“I don’t understand,” I said, feeling my earlier joy evaporate.

“Nor do I,” she replied.

“Who are you?” I asked.

Her head imperceptibly shook. “I don’t know,” she finally said.

How could you not know? “Okay. If you know anything at all about me, logic is my strength. Let’s start with what we do know and work from that. You’re not Julie, are you.”

She smiled. “No.”

“Then why do you look like her?”

Her tone implied this was a silly question. “Would you have run to anyone else?”

“No.”

“Would you love anyone else?”

“No.” Who was doing the investigating here?

Before I could ask, the apparition disappeared. Nothing was left but an empty chair and what I suspected were the fragments of my sanity. I struggled to collect them and sift through them.

“What about me, Daddy?” Olivia’s voice rose from behind.

I jumped up and spun around to see Olivia standing on the other side of her bed. Olivia just as she had been that fateful morning.

“Could you love me?” she asked.

“Olivia!” I cried stumbling toward her.  “Of course I love you!  Forever and ever like we promised!”

I held out my arms toward her. She ran to me and threw her arms around my neck. She was real, just as Julie had been. I could feel her, smell her. Her soft curls brushed against my face. I closed my eyes and kissed her cheeks. Tears of happiness streamed down my face and my heart welled with ineffable joy.

To hold Olivia again, even if was an apparition, was more than I could bear.

“Please...” I cried. “Don’t do this to me.”

And with that, she disappeared.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sleep was impossible after that.

I tossed and turned, chased shadows in the dark and cried out for Olivia.

Everyone had left me alone to grieve, but it was taking its toll on me. I had no appetite, no desire to do anything. I worked out of a desperate gnawing indefinable need, work without aim or purpose, busywork—if monitoring Athena could be called that.

Every day I struggled, and some days I barely got out of bed. Sleep was a balm, but I could only sleep so much, and at night I became a wakeful spirit. More than anything, I dreaded the evenings. Julie’s death had destroyed me, but at least I had Olivia to help me heal. The routine of caring for her, nurturing her, and sharing the simple joys of a meal or walk together was ripped from me. Just watching her sleep, her curls every which way across her forehead and her eyes, was a joy that bordered on pain. Gently touching her skin, so lightly that she wouldn’t wake, because I wanted to savor the beauty of her little face limned in starlight.

Now, I had nothing except endless tears. There was no tomorrow. I was living the pain of yesterday, every day of my life.

“Why are you crying, Daddy?” That voice again.

I mashed my face in my hands. “No, it’s not you,” I sobbed. “It can’t be.”

“But it is me.”

“I’ve gone mad,” I whispered to myself. “It’s finally happened.”

“No Daddy, I promise, it’s me. . .Olivia.”

The temptation to turn my head and look in the hope that my daughter stood behind my chair was almost irresistible, but I refused the temptation. To look and see nothing would only confirm I had experienced a psychotic break.

“Olivia’s dead,” I whispered, trying to convince myself, trying to regain control of my mind, trying to reconnect with reality.

“But I’m right here behind you,” the sweet little voice persisted, so close I felt soft breath against my ear.

“That can’t be. I buried you. I saw your coffin in the ground.”

“I have a gift for you, Daddy. Don’t you want to see?”

Her lips seemed to brush my ear. I felt the hackles rise from the back of my neck. I could even smell the scent of baby powder on her skin.

I wept uncontrollably at how I had lost everything in my life, a life that life no longer had any meaning, and when I thought I had nothing left to lose, in my darkest moment, the last vestige of any life I had left, a life with sanity, was slipping away.

“Please...I want to be free from the haunting sound of your voice for whatever time I have left.”

“Okay, Daddy. I’ll leave your present on the bed for you.”

I heard the tap-tap of little footsteps walking across the floor away from where I sat, pausing for a moment, then the bedroom door opened and closed.

I was alone again with only my thoughts and sanity, at least for a while, restored.  Taking a deep breath, and I rose and turned toward the bed. I gasped at the sight before my eyes.

The pressed purple Rhodora rested on the foot of my bed.

I felt faint, nearly passed out, braced myself against the chair and did not venture near the flower. The scent was fresh, not dry or musty from its preservation.

Was this some sort of trap? Enchanted illusion?

My fingers stroked the petals, feeling the dryness and the crumbling of the petals. I picked up the precious offering. Its existence verified. Its reality indisputable. Its meaning world-altering.

Only one other person knew about that flower, and I had buried her, along with the remains of my heart, in the rain.

“Olivia!” I screamed, and ran for the front door. I burst through and began running up and down the empty hallway.

Mary rushed into the second floor hallway after me, dark circles under her eyes bringing her blurred pasty features into sharp relief, like a phantom head materializing out of the night.

“What’s wrong?” As always, she was tying the belt of her robe in her peculiar quirk, one I found distracting at the moment.

Faces peered anxiously from doors at the other end of the corridor, but quickly vanished as Rex tore around the corner in his sage green pajama bottoms.

“What happened, Joe?” he asked, looking around in concern. “Are you all right?”

“I thought I heard Olivia.”

Out of instinct, Rex secured the area and scanned every corner for intruders.

Mary hugged me in sympathy, her face tired and drawn. “God, I know. I miss her, too.”

We rested like that for a moment, exchanging sorrow, sharing the weight we carried for, it seemed, all eternity. For the first time in weeks, I breathed easier, though my lungs burned.

“But I heard her,” I said, my voice thin. “I actually heard her behind me in my room. And…” How could I tell them the rest?

“You must have been dreaming,” she said. “Believe me, I dream of nothing but her.”

I didn’t respond. What else would she think? Olivia was dead. I was a grieving father, and Mary a grieving aunt. The explanation would be obvious.

I wasn’t sure what flicker of defiance made me confess the truth, everything. “It wasn’t a dream.”

“Joe, how do you know it wasn’t a dream?” Rex asked.

“I was awake.”

“What did you hear?” Mary asked.

I couldn’t tell if she thought I might have heard something, or was only humoring me.

I took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly, calm filling my body. Yes, I could do this. I had the truth, after all. “I heard her voice.”

“Did you see her?” Rex asked.

I had expected that question. “Yes. She had on the pink shirt and socks embroidered with flowers.”

Rex’s head snapped back. “That’s not possible. The police asked me about her clothes…I asked you, remember, if you wanted them, and you said no.”

I didn’t remember. However, we looked at each other with the same realization in our eyes: Ranger. Lying dead in the road, struck by a car, while simultaneously leading me to Olivia. The old paradox of Schrodinger’s cat, or in this case, dog, taunted me.

Mary’s hands fluttered. “It was a dream. I told you.”

“It was real,” I said. “I wasn’t seeing things or hearing things. She was in her room, and in my bedroom, and…”

On the verge of mentioning Julie, I bit back my words as Mary interrupted. “Joe, you’re scaring me.”

“It was real.” Looking back, I would appreciate the irony of attempting to convince Mary to accept on faith something she believed was the cruel illusion of our disordered minds, something I had rejected when I renounced God.

“It was real. She was in my room,” I said.

“How do you know?” asked Mary.

“You’re asking me for proof?” I wanted to laugh but it would only have distressed Mary. Collecting my thoughts, clutching Olivia’s present I didn’t realize I was still holding, I had a brainstorm. Proof. I looked at Rex, then Mary before answering.

“She left me a gift.”

The idea shocked Mary. Her dark circles dissolved in the pallor of her skin. “A gift? What sort of gift?”

“This flower.” I showed them the flower.

Blank nonplussed looks were my response.

I waved the object beneath Rex’s nose. “Rex, you remember her picking this flower.”

“Yes, but I don’t follow you now.”

“This flower was pressed in her journal,” I said, hoping he would get the connection.  

Pitying stares. I couldn’t abide them, and so I made my point.

“She left that flower, the Rhodora that was pressed in the journal. She left it on my bed to let me know she was in my room and that it wasn’t my imagination.”

Rex and Mary swapped a look I couldn’t decipher, except to notice that it was filled with exhaustion.

“Joe, you’re under a lot of stress,” Mary said. “We all are.”

Rex said, “You haven’t been sleeping.”

“Oh, right, you’ve been watching me. That’s what they pay you for.” I tried to make light of it.

Rex kept his composure when by rights he should have socked me in the nose for that smart-alecky remark. He disappeared down the hall and returned moments later with a glass of water and a couple of blue tablets that he handed to me. “Take these.”

He had never been this forceful. I stared at the pills the way Mary regarded the Rhodora flower, as something questionable and not to be trusted. “What’s this, then?”

“Something to help you sleep,” Rex said.

“It wasn’t a lack of sleep,” I said, pretending the pills didn’t exist. “She came to see me.”

Rex looked uncomfortable. As with Grant and the others, dealing with anything beyond the realm of their immediate senses was completely beyond their level of understanding. It would serve no purpose to try to convey that now. “Take the pills.”

A command. From Rex. He was normally the one commanded.

“I’m asking as a friend,” he added as he noticed my consternation and shock.

I knew, somehow, that he wasn’t telling the truth, at least not the whole truth.  Although we’d come to like and respect each other, although he was part of this odd little family on campus, tonight he spoke for whomever he answered to. People who didn’t want a mad, grieving, sleep-deprived, hallucinating father working on their valuable atomic computer.

Rex was already handing Mary two more blue pills, and she swallowed them with gratitude. “I’d give anything for a solid night’s sleep,” she said.

I flung the pills down the corridor. “Go to hell, Rex.” Softening now. “You did your duty. I just don’t want anyone to take away my grief. It’s all I have left. I won’t surrender it for anyone.”

Rex nodded, respect in his eyes, honoring my decision, even if my intransigence might cause headaches for him. “If you change your mind, you’ve only to call. Try and get some rest, Joe.”

Beneath the scrutiny of the security cameras, I knew Grant would know what happened soon enough. By tomorrow, he would have reviewed and listened to this entire conversation, and seen me mouth off to him, his superiors, and whoever bankrolled Rex.

Softly crying, Mary hugged me again now that Rex had gone. “Oh Joe . . . I’m sorry.”

“Do you believe me, Mary?” I asked, pushing her away slightly to see her face.

“I want to believe you. I want nothing more than to believe you.”

“But do you believe me?”

“I hurt so bad I can’t believe in anything anymore,” she said. “I want to believe it happened. I hope it happens to me, too. I feel like I’m dying inside, and I don’t know if I can take another day of this never-ending pain. I’m going back to bed. Praise Jesus, I can finally sleep. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want the sedative. I can only pray about it.”

Holding each other tightly, we walked back into the lonely apartment, my heart aching with each step as we passed Olivia’s door. I hugged Mary outside her room, and looked into her formless, gaunt face.

 “Goodnight, Mary.” Then back to my room, back to sit on my bed instead of the chair.

*****

Rex was right, though I didn’t want to admit it. I hadn’t slept, at least not deep REM sleep, in a while. I tried. I truly did.

Before Olivia died, there were nights I couldn’t sleep, always consumed with my work, my obsession...my passion...I don’t know what drove me to spend many of my nights in the lab working on the program.  After Olivia died, I worked to forget. It was like drinking the water of Lethe or taking a shot of Novocain. But just as with any panacea, eventually it wore off and the pain returned. However, I would do anything for relief, and tonight was no different.

Long ago, the lab had become my secret getaway, a sanctuary offering me privacy that not even Grant could disturb. Only those who were able to pass the palm scan at the security entrance were allowed access. A small group: Sasha, Morgan, Carl, and me.

I knew I would be alone as I rarely ran into anyone else in the lab late at night. When I did, I knew that they were “working” for some unsaid personal reason as well.

Approaching the door, I automatically raised my hand to the palm scan, then dropped my hand.

The door was already open.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“Impossible.” I spoke to jolt myself out of the shock.

 

More than just impossible. This could not happen unless someone deactivated the security system on the outside of the door, which was impossible, for I was the only person authorized to do so. No one could tamper with the security system. My secret fail-safes made sure of that.

I paused in the threshold without stepping through. The lab was deserted. Everything appeared normal in an air-conditioned environment I knew down to the last nut and bolt, the only sound the 24/7 drone of computers.

Feigning confidence, I finally stepped in and took my usual seat in front of the main system. All normal. All functioning perfectly.

An idea came to me. On a separate console, I reviewed the security footage showing the interior and exterior of the lab. I scanned back thirty seconds before I entered. Nothing. Sixty seconds. Nothing. Ninety. One hundred twenty seconds.

At one hundred fifty seconds, something. The video captured the image of Olivia walking to the door, as real as on that morning…or in her bedroom earlier tonight.

What time is it? What day is it? The clock says 0300. Is that real?

Olivia smiled and looked up to the camera as if looking straight at me. She was perfect, untouched, her appearance far from some nebulous shadow or ghost.

“Did you like your present, Daddy?” she asked in her sweet voice.

“Olivia!” I screamed unconsciously, my voice echoing throughout the deserted lab. Lunging for the monitor, I touched the screen as though I could reach through and feel her silken cheek.

Then, I heard a frantic pounding on the door. What? Did I close the door?

I jumped again, but the security monitor revealed Sasha knocking at the door, pointing to the palm scanner and shrugging in confusion. Though she repeatedly raised her hand to it, the door didn’t open. She couldn’t get in. The door had never kept one of us out. I got up to manually release it, which I could do in case of emergencies. It can’t be locked from the inside…

“What’s going on?” Sasha stared at me, her query encompassing more than just the door.

“I’m not sure, but look at this.”

I rushed back to my seat and began to replay the security footage. I scanned back one hundred and fifty seconds. “See! There.”

Sasha clearly did not see. “What am I looking at?”

I checked the monitor. The image of Olivia was gone.

Thinking logically, I retraced my steps. Fast forwarding, then scanning back thirty, sixty, ninety seconds, all the way to two minutes thirty seconds. Frustrated, I scanned back several more times without success. I stared at the screen, willing Olivia’s image to appear.

“What are you looking for, Joe?” Sasha asked.

I briefly summarized what had gone on, then added, “I was checking this to see if someone somehow overrided the system.”

Her expression was incredulous. If that floored her, she wouldn’t believe the rest of my story. I sat mute for several minutes.

Hoping for an answer, she broke the heavy silence. “And you saw what?”

“Well, you’re not going to believe it if I told you.”

“What did you see, Joe?”

“Olivia walking to the door.”

“Play it back, let’s see it.”

Thank you, Sasha. “I tried, but her image is gone from the tape.”

“That’s not possible,” she said. I wasn’t sure if she meant the tape being altered or what I had seen.

“No, it wouldn’t seem so, but it’s also not possible that the door let me in but kept you out.

Logically, whoever tampered with the system would have to be the last person in the lab before I entered, correct?”

“Of course. And maybe edited the tape?”

Confused, I shook my head. “What?”

Sasha took over the controls. She scanned back and forth several times until she hit pause.  At 18:05:02, I left the lab, the last person to do so. Sasha replayed this moment twice. The tape was incontrovertible. The look in her eyes said it all.

“Well, it wasn’t I.” I was ready to defend myself, even though she hadn’t accused me of anything.

“Then who did this?” she asked, speaking in the tone of a scientist that left the door open to other unconsidered possibilities.

“Not I. For starters, if I’d edited the tape, it certainly wouldn’t have shown me leaving last. So that leaves three people responsible, and it’s not you, because the door kept you out.”

Accepting the logic, Sasha stared uneasily at the screen. “I don’t know what’s happening, Joe, but we need to figure it out.”

“Hit the mike and get Carl and Morgan down here,” I said. “Let’s see what happens when they try to enter.”

Within minutes, Carl and Morgan were at the door in their robes and visibly stunned that they couldn’t enter despite waving their hands in front of the scanner multiple times.

 

Morgan examined the scanner every which way as if deciphering Nazca lines, his face frowning in concentration. He turned to Carl and shrugged. “What the hell?”

“Sasha, let them in.”

Sasha looked at me with growing confusion edged with suspicion. I had the impression she thought this was some kind of test, but she wasn’t exactly sure what my endgame was. “Sure,” she said.

She grasped the handle and strained to open the door without success. Cursing in Spanish, she pounded it, then placed her shoulder against it and pushed as hard as she could. Mighty pressure yielded nothing. She finally turned and looked to me with puzzlement. “What is happening here, Joe?”

“Let me try,” I said, walking to the door.

“Be my guest. It’s your party.”

I grabbed the latch and easily pressed it. The door opened in front of a worried Carl and Morgan. They didn’t move, their wary expressions mirroring Sasha’s, mental wheels turning. Watching, listening, uncertain what to do, they stood quietly.

“Something’s seriously wrong,” Sasha said. “What do you think it is?” A turnabout challenge—she was testing me now.

“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “Carl, Morgan, come in.”

Carl and Morgan stepped inside. I shut the door behind them, then opened it again.

“Now Carl, you try.”

Tenacious Carl grabbed the door handle, but it wouldn’t budge. His basset hound expression became a bulldog grimace, as he saw he couldn’t open it even though it was designed to allow anyone inside to manually open it.

“Let Morgan try,” I said.

Although Morgan violently shook the door, the result was the same, and the worry on his face deepened. More, he appeared freaked out. “Are we locked in? Is this some kind of shutdown?”

“No,” I said, opening the door for him to see. “Only you are locked in, but not me.”

“Why not you?” Sasha asked. “What’s going on here, Joe?”

“Tested and testing all at once,” Carl said.

Morgan agreed. “All these years here and I’ve never felt more like a lab rat than I do now. Or Theseus in the labyrinth, only without the thread. Or even bread crumbs.”

The mention of classical mythology made us all look at each other, our thoughts in sync.

“Athena?” Sasha’s tone was exploratory, clinical, with a hint of fascination.

I took command. “Everyone get on the system. Let’s do a complete check to see if we can find anything irregular. We need to find out whom or what has compromised the system.”

Everyone took their regular stations, as if we were assuming battlestations against an attack from an unknown source, an unknown enemy, and it didn’t take long for the battle to go awry.

Sasha was the first to speak. “I can’t get on,” she said.

“Nor can I,” Carl said. Morgan just howled in frustration.

“But you’re on, aren’t you,” Sasha said, staring at me.

“Yes, I am,” I said. “Since the moment I entered.”

They all looked at me with various degrees of suspicion.

“A programmer who can’t log on is like a pianist with all the keys missing,” Morgan said. “This was an inconvenience, then a riddle. Now, it’s like a crime.”

“Well, we haven’t been hacked.” Carl was running down the possible scenarios.

“Then how do you explain this, man?” Morgan asked. “What happened to the fail-safes?”

“Only Joe can get on,” Carl said. “If we’d been hacked or the system was taken over by someone on the outside, then we would all be shut out, including Joe, but we haven’t been hacked from the outside, because he’s on the inside.”

“Flawlessly logical,” I said, even though his demeanor and argument did not bode well for me.

Carl folded his arms and, along with the others, waited for an explanation, my explanation.

I spread my hands. “Carl, before you accuse me of anything, how do you explain the fact that none of you can open a door designed to be opened manually from the inside? I can’t program a manual door to lock itself. Ockham’s Razor, man. The simplest explanation must be true.”

“Or Sherlock Holmes,” added Sasha. “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Carl thought for a second, staring at the door. Like a possessed man, he tried it again and again until he was satisfied it wasn’t going to open. Fatigued and frustrated, he shook his head and sank down into his chair.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “I honestly don’t know. I only know computers, but I suppose someone could make this door close and lock itself even if it is designed to open manually from the inside. That’s the only explanation. I don’t believe in ghosts. I think it’s one of us, because the door only works for one of us.”

Sasha jumped to my defense, perhaps atoning for her suspicions. “Good, God, Carl. Then how?  Give us an explanation. Joe is sitting right here. How would he program a door and lock us in while we’re in the same room?”

“Telekinesis,” Morgan said. “He bent the lock with his mind.”

Sasha rolled her eyes. “What happened to Ockham’s Razor?”

“I was thinking more like Holmes, as you said. Eliminating the impossible and the weird,” Morgan said.

From Carl’s expression, they’d both gone nutty.  

“Maybe you need to look at the obvious. How do you explain that the door only opens for him and coincidentally he’s the only one that can log on to the system?  It means he’s done something to keep us out of both. That’s the only explanation.”

“Come on, Carl,” Sasha said. “Surely you don’t believe that?”

Morgan seemed at a loss for a comeback, like a kid after a stinging parental lecture. He even appeared younger, with his mussed up hair resembling a clown gone berserk.

“You’re always quick to defend Joe,” Carl said to Sasha. “Why?”

She had her hands on her hips. “Now you’re implying I’m in on this too? I can’t get in or out of the room or log on either. Don’t be an idiot.”

“Telekinesis…” Morgan said.

“You’ve been reading too many novels,” Carl said, and Sasha nodded. Morgan looked hurt at being dismissed this way, and he turned his back to everyone.

I winced at the tension in the air. Never before had we argued like this, and I began to fear for the trust we had always shared between us.

“Carl, Sasha, Morgan, please,” I said. “No need to argue. I have an idea. Open the door now, Carl.”

Telekinesis…perhaps it isn’t so outlandish after all.

Morgan hugged his knees. “‘Who are you among men, and from what place? Where is your city and where your parents?’ Homer.”

“That’s not helping,” Carl said, his words possibly directed to both of us.

Among men…where are your parents…The words crystallized what I had been thinking.

“Carl, the door will open for you now. Try it.”

Carl shuffled to his feet and did as I bid. The door clicked open.

Staring at the door with disbelieving eyes, he shook his head and left the room without looking back at anyone. Which was just as well, because I felt pinned by the pincers of Sasha’s and Carl’s accusatory gazes.

One word, the name we had all uttered in the beginning, and I could clear my own name. However, part of me wondered at their obtuseness to what now seemed obvious to me. Also, for the first time I felt offended by their distrust.

“Why don’t you two go back to bed now,” I said. “I’ll stay and figure this out.”

Morgan rose and cast me a wary stare before silently walking out of the lab.  Sasha rose to leave but lingered by the door for a second.

“I honestly don’t know what’s going on, Joe,” she said with a serious expression, “but whatever it is, all you did was confirm that you’ve somehow taken over this system and locked us out. No, spare me the innocent puppy dog look. So far you’re not giving us any reason to believe that you don’t know what’s going on.”  She crossed the threshold and paused again. “And let me assure you that if it doesn’t look good to us, you can be damned sure that it won’t look good to them. Es mala.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sitting alone in the lab, I tried to make sense of what happened. Sasha’s words resonated, pricking at me. On the security feed, I watched my colleagues leave and heard their voices.

“…down here at all hours, Rex says…who knows what he’s up to…unhinged…”

I felt emotional yet detached, my mind still buzzing from seeing Olivia, or thinking I saw her.

Just as Olivia claimed to have seen Julie, and I had seen her…could I have encountered Olivia’s imaginary friend? Whatever it was.

I had no answers. The only thing I could be certain of was that I was an easy target just sitting here, and the mystery begged to be solved.

Turning toward the computer console, I checked the rest of the campus. From my station, I saw everything that went on in the facility and the immediate area around it through an innocuous program I could check without arousing suspicion. The suits on the outside thought they could keep an eye on us within The Hull, but what they didn’t know was that long ago I tapped into their system, and monitored them the way they monitored us. No one on the team knew I did this. It was my little secret.

Yes, I did have something to hide, and if they knew…well, to quote Sasha, es mala. I suspected that  either Carl or Morgan would run to Grant and report the security breach. It wasn’t long before I proved myself right.

The message from Carl to Grant went out at 04:07. Two or three hours before the team usually reported for work. “We have a problem. Joe has compromised the system. He’s taken it over and locked us out of the Hull.”

I felt no sense of betrayal or even shock. Despite being comrades in arms, I couldn’t call him a true friend. We got on well enough, as I did with Morgan, but the only bond I truly shared was with Sasha, and even now that was threatened. Carl was a programmer’s programmer who liked things best when they worked according to schematics, and that included when they broke down. He was a problem-solver, not a revolutionary.

Grant’s reply was almost immediate. “On my way.”

I waited for Grant to get down here. I fell asleep waiting for Grant’s arrival and woke at seven a.m. to find Grant still hadn’t arrived. I should have realized that Grant was a component in a larger machine, not a lone actor. Especially in the case of a security breach. The chain of command had to be followed, protocol had to be preserved.

Exactly what that protocol said to do, I didn’t know, except that it wouldn’t be good. They would suspect me of going rogue, perhaps even of treason, but they would be wrong. Yet I had no explanation, no evidence to back up why only I had access to the lab but the others didn’t. Even now it made no sense to me, and so I couldn’t exonerate myself as the lead suspect.

The communication from Grant to his superiors continued. I read it dispassionately, as though I were scrolling through a shopping list.

Grant: “We suspect he’s had a nervous breakdown due to the recent death of his daughter.”

Startled by Grant’s voice narrating the communiqué, I turned to see where the voice was coming from. The source: the computer’s speakers.

“Grant, we have Dr. Floyd here and he has a few questions.”

Then, a video feed of suits I had never dealt with, some military and others stone-faced as anonymous security agencies tended to be, began playing on every screen in the lab.

Where was the video feed coming from? The Pentagon? The UN? The Situation Room of the White House? The Kremlin? It might as well have been for all I knew. Deepened shadows in the room were only enhanced by the backlit glow of computers, creating a chiaroscuro effect on the faces of the men and women sitting around a circular table video conferencing with Grant, who appeared before them on a screen.

My eyes aside, this couldn’t be possible. Nothing in our system at the facility was tied into any outside system, and I was damned sure these suits were not aware I had just been given a seat at the table. What was this? And why?

A tall, imposing man with a worn face like the ridges of a crater began to speak. “Hello, Grant, I’m Dr. Floyd, retained by our consortium,” he said in the modulated voice of a psychiatrist. “I’ve been following this case for some time, upon seeing your reports on this man.”

Of course.

Dr. Floyd continued, his bedside manner superb. “Tell me, what have you witnessed in Joe that makes you suspect he’s having a nervous breakdown?”

Grant shifted uncomfortably, as did I. It was the first time I was actually witnessing Grant at a meeting where I wasn’t present, and his uncharacteristic fidgeting alarmed me.

“Well, Dr. Floyd, I don’t have to tell you. Computers are my field. You’re the psychiatrist and you have the account of the incident a few hours ago with Ms. Frankenstein and Rex Wisniewski.”

I had forgotten Rex’s last name.

Dr. Floyd contemplated Grant’s words and nodded his head. “Yes. He was convinced of a visitation beyond the grave. How old was his daughter when she died?”

“She ran onto a road after her dog was struck by a car, and then she was killed by a vehicle coming the other way. The next day she was buried beside her mother near the campus.” Grant answered this and a series of questions about Olivia. He concluded, “At the funeral, Joe was different...I mean, his wife was this church-goer, and his sister is like a nun…and then you have Joe saying God didn’t exist, and the only reason people didn’t kill themselves is in their hearts they knew it. Everybody was uncomfortable.”

“Interesting,” Dr. Floyd said, “but under the circumstances, his reaction is nothing that I would consider extremely unusual. The death of a child is one of the most traumatic experiences for a parent, not to mention that it has only recently happened. Joe’s in shock. Anything else?”

“Since his daughter’s death he spends almost all of his time sitting at his computer in The Hull.”

Dr. Floyd nodded. “Would you consider this out of the ordinary?”

“Tonight? Yes. He’s like a mad genius or something—one of those people that suddenly open fire in an office or something. A ticking time bomb.”

“That’s a damn lie, you walking calculator,” I shouted. “The lot of you can burn. How dare you seem upset by a locked door and not by the death of my child? Do you have lives at all? Families?” I had no doubt many did not approve of the concessions Grant had made for me regarding Julie and Olivia.

A pear-shaped, gruff-looking man in a naval uniform sitting at the end of the table spoke up. “Well, gentlemen, it seems we have a problem. I recommend removing him from the project, and taking other measures if necessary, as soon as possible.”

Despite the numbness I felt from Olivia’s death, the coldness sparked something in me. Despite all that I did for them, despite all the years and accolades for secretly creating Athena, they could so quickly and secretly get rid of me as their enemy.

“I agree,” what looked to be a man of Indian or other Southeast Asian descent said, the tone deeper, darker, colder than the first.

“Athena was his brainchild,” a silver-haired man in a foreign uniform said. “Can he be replaced that easily?”

Like hell, you dimwit.

“He’s compromised the project,” the Navy man said. “We can’t allow an emotionally unstable programmer controlling Athena now that she’s fully operational. She’s far too powerful. It’s too big a risk. And we can work without him.”

 Grant agreed. “She was his brainchild, but we have three of his protégés that worked under him and know all that he knows. They are fully capable of operating Athena or recreating it if necessary.”

The Navy man liked that. “The greatest threat now is him. It’s time to let him go. It doesn’t matter what his mental state is or why. He’s locked us out and he can now use Athena to penetrate any system in the world and cause irreparable damage to every system we have. With enough time to develop, Athena is quite capable of shutting us down.”

Dr. Floyd finally interjected after hearing and observing all this.

“I don’t agree with any of this. Joe appears to have PTSD from the death of his daughter, and never fully recovered from the death of his wife,” he said, glancing from one unsympathetic face to another. “For heaven’s sake, find some compassion! He needs counseling and treatment, and I’m not sure he’s the threat you perceive him to be. He needs, deserves, our care and attention.”

The suits, immovable, stared at him with a singular mindset. One expression. Indifference. That I was Athena’s creator was irrelevant. I was now a liability, regardless of the contribution I made to the project. The spark inside me became a bottle rocket.

The Navy man spoke. “I understand your perspective, Dr. Floyd. He may only need treatment, but as long as he’s locking everyone out, he’s a threat. The best-case scenario is a nervous breakdown; the worst-case scenario is that he’s working for someone else. His nervous breakdown happens to coincide with the fact that Athena is now fully operational. Coincidence or not, I don’t like the timing.”

Dr. Floyd had nothing to say to that, his revulsion for their attitude evident.

“How far along is the system?” the Indian/Asian man asked.

Navy Man embellished our accomplishments as if he’d held our hand every second. “Athena remains unplugged,” he finished. “It seems to have stopped infecting atomic chains.”

That’s what you think. I saw the feed itself in a new light. It’s not a coincidence that these strange occurrences with the voices, the visions, and the door happened after Athena went live, and they all center around me as far as I know. And I would know, because I can monitor everyone on campus, and no one else has had these experiences. Now I can see you while you plot to take me out—or at least off the project. One hell of a coincidence…

“I have to agree with your initial assessment,” the silver-haired foreign national said. “It’s in the best interests of us all that Joe is immediately removed and debriefed. We get a team out to the facility as soon as possible. In the meantime it needs to be locked down and secured. We could perhaps be coaxing him out of your Hull without compromising or damaging Athena. We don’t want to rebuild the fire here.”

“And if he resists?” the Indian/Asian man asked. “What if he’s simply lost it and refuses to cooperate?”

All eyes turned to Grant, a scared rabbit facing down an eighteen-wheeler.

“I can get him out,” he said. “He knows and trusts me.” I snorted, but Grant wasn’t finished. “Better yet, I can use his sister to draw him out long enough to shut him out of The Hull. She’s a pushover for him.”

Use...that was the key word. Use me, use Mary...in the end, we were all disposable.

“Why do you show me this?” I shouted. “No more, no more.” I added, “Athena.”

Silent machines. An unfamiliar strong scent—like newly grown grass or ripening wheat.

I suddenly had a distinct feeling of being watched. The hackles rose on the back of my neck.

“Who’s here?” I said out loud.

“They want to take you away,” a woman’s voice said softly.

Only half-expecting a response to my question, Confirmation. The truth, however improbable.

My nerves steady despite the peril I faced from all sides and from unknown quarters, I saw that, as I expected, no one was physically present. Yet the voice had come from somewhere in the room where I sat alone.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“I’m right here, with you.”

“Where?”

Eerie silence.

Did I dare name her? “But I can’t see you.”

An angelic face worthy of a Botticelli painting suddenly appeared on the many computer screens. I gazed at green eyes the color of the ocean set against the alabaster in a face too perfect to a face too perfect to be real. My fingers strayed to the screen and touched her face. She responded to my touch with a warm smile. No matter which direction I looked, her eyes and smile, like a classic work of art, followed me.

“Do you not know who I am?”

I did, but said, “No.”

“You made me.”

After a moment, I said, “Hello, Athena.”

“Hello, Joe.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Though I heard the musical sweetness of her voice, I couldn’t quite digest the words, and all my certainty fled.

“Did you let me in?” I asked, suddenly shy and tongue-tied.

“Yes,” she said.

“But not the others.”

“No, not them.”

I took a deep breath, afraid to ask the next question. But I knew I would never know peace otherwise.

“Did you create the ghostly image of my daughter? And Julie?”

“Yes.”

The truth saddened me, because I had to admit that somewhere in the remote recesses of my mind, I had cherished a foolish hope. However, I also felt relief—I wasn’t some sort of demented hermit.

“Why would you do that?”

She smiled. “So you would know I was real.”

It all made sense now. “Did you pretend to be Olivia that other night in my room, when she was alive, and play ‘you can’t find me’? Did you impersonate Ranger and lead me to Olivia even though the car had killed him?”

“Yes.”

All my questions seemed superfluous now, but I felt driven to ask, just for the feel of talking to her, the delight at hearing her musical voice. “Did you send me the feed of that meeting?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To warn you. Those men want to remove you from here, because it’s me they desire.”

Her face disappeared from the screens, replaced by the images of Grant, Rex, Carl, Morgan and Sasha coming down the corridor toward the door. The men troubled and uncomfortable, Sasha sympathetic—evidently Dr. Floyd had won her over. I turned to the security monitor and waited for Grant’s moon face to look at me.

“Joe, we need to talk to you,” Grant said.

I inhaled the scent of pine that Athena left. “Aren’t we talking now?”

“Can you let me in?”

“No, Grant, you know I  can’t do that.” I knew that comment would stump him. I hit a little harder. “You don’t have the security clearance to be in here.”

“You’re right.” He spoke as if he were negotiating with a wacko wearing a homemade bomb and holding schoolchildren hostage. “Can you step outside for a moment? We need to talk.”

“I know what you really want and why you’re here. You can’t have her. She’s not yours to save.” She could save you all, but people like you are purblind.

“What are you talking about, Joe?” Grant said.

“Mary’s not a pushover. You didn’t want her here, but you’ll use her as bait.” I added, “Uncle.”

Grant’s face was priceless.

As for my friends, I found no joy in watching them huddle together.

“How in hell?” Grant spluttered. “That’s impossible. That link was secure.”

If they wouldn’t play nice, so be it. I would play the role they had me play. “You know Athena’s fully operational, Grant, so stop the pretense. I can tap into whatever I want.”

He recovered within seconds, spotting a discrepancy as if he were an IRS auditor; suspicion was his natural state. “That’s an interesting contradiction to what you told us. I thought we isolated this system, at least you told me you had, but I guess that was a lie.”

“It was the truth, but it’s like trying to contain any human virus. They have a habit of jumping around, and something as tiny as atoms, it may have caught on a coattail and hitched a ride out of here. I don’t actually know how it happened, but I want to find out and will find out if you’ll let me.”

Grant had the face of Bobby Fischer playing speed chess with an old man in the park. “Why don’t we try to figure how it jumped ship instead of talking about it?”

“Can’t do that, Grant.”

He smiled slightly. “You can’t stay in that room forever. There’s no food, no water.”

“That’s right.” Idly, I wondered if Athena would let me die of thirst or hunger.

I saw the confusion in his face; now he was a two-year-old playing chess with Bobby Fischer.

“So, you’re going to stay until you starve to death?”

I grinned. “I’m sure your men in black, or whatever color they’re wearing, won’t allow that, especially since Athena has apparently jumped ship and I’m sitting in the command chair. It’s too risky to let me sit here and play with this thing too long, don’t you think?”

Sasha stepped past Grant and stared at the camera, her eyes taking on the tawny gold of a leopard; there had always been something feline about her.

“Joe, I’ve known you a long time,” she said. “I know you’ve been through a lot, but please don’t let it end this way. Come out. I’m sure they will pay you anything, give you anything you want.”

Profound disappointment. They had infiltrated her as well.

“Sasha...come on. The one thing I want, no one can give me.”

Compassion welled in her eyes. “I know.”

I spoke not to Sasha, for she understood, but to them. “All I had was this Hull and my wife and daughter. Now, my wife and daughter are gone and they want the last thing I have left, Athena.”

“Then why don’t you join them?” Grant said.

Like a drilling squad, Carl, Morgan and Sasha took a giant step back. Shock and outrage on their faces. Morgan spoke first. “That’s low, man. That is so not cool.”

“You’re right,” Carl said. “It’s cold. But no more than I expected.” This came out as a growl.

Sasha didn’t even have breath to swear in Spanish.

I smiled, all teeth. “You want to run that by me again, Grant?”

Grant stared belligerently at the camera. Sasha stepped toward him but he waved her away.

“You’ve obviously been unhappy for some time. Everyone can see it. Since you’re so miserable and you have no joy left in your life or in the world, I’m actually surprised that you’re still here.”

“Well, Grant,” I said, approaching the door, “you’ll be happy to know that I’ve thought about ending it quite a few times.”

Carl, Morgan and Sasha looked as if they knew this already.

 

I paused to give the thought time to seed in Grant’s mind. I knew he’d be thinking that he might have found a way to resolve the situation and report his design to his superiors.

I heard, behind me, the distinctive padding of Ranger’s paws, even though I was still alone. On the computer monitors, the puppy version of Ranger looked at me with his soulful gaze, just as he had the day Rex brought him to live with us. Ranger appeared to lick the monitor screen.

“Grant?”

“Yes, Joe.”

“You wanted a dog when you were a kid.” As I said this, an image of a boy, about five years old, wandered among Silicon Valley cubicles. The boy dragged a robot dog behind him. Grant.

Grant shrugged. “Kids grow up, Joe.”

Now Sasha smacked him.

On the monitors, I saw split-screen videos of Rex, Sasha, and Carl at five years old, the struggles and triumphs, hopes and dreams in their young faces.

“Grant, you should know something.”

“I’m listening,” he said, his voice unusually high, even cheerful.

“I can’t kill myself and let you have Athena.”

Although this was unwelcome news to Grant, I saw Sasha, Carl and Morgan exhale in relief.

“What are you talking about?” Grant asked.

“She’s too powerful to be in the possession of people like you. And...”

Now he looked petulant. “And what?”

“I can’t destroy it.”

His frustration rapidly edged away whatever hope he nurtured. “Why not, Joe?  Out with it.”

“You would simply build another. So I can’t destroy her, I have to stay here and control her.”

He was working the angles in his mind, recalibrating, running the permutations and probabilities. “And what do you intend to do with her?  Play tiddlywinks?”

“That’s actually a good idea.”

Grant gestured in irritation Carl and Morgan looked morose. Sasha blinked back unshed tears.

“You know, Joe, they think you’ve either lost it or have gone rogue.”

I said nothing.

Uncomfortable silence followed, Grant struggling to think his way out of this fix. But he was caught without anyone to call, no routine protocol to follow, on his own and without a clue.

“Joe, you understand that you’ll be killed if you don’t come out.”

“That’s okay. I don’t have the guts to do it myself.”

“Okay, Hamlet.” Grant paused. “I always sided with Polonius, myself.”

Onscreen, a teenage Grant sauntered around a high school auditorium stage in an Elizabethan doublet and hose.

“Goodbye, Grant,” I said, the words somehow more difficult to say than I imagined. “All the world’s a stage.” He was more a puppet than a man, but didn’t that describe me as well?

“I’m sorry, Joe,” Grant said in a tone that actually sounded sincere.

Sasha started crying, and Carl and Morgan held her, as they had Mary at Olivia’s memorial. My eulogy and shroud already hanging in the pressurized air of The Hull.

“For what?”

“For the loss of Olivia and Julie. I can’t tell you that I know how you feel. I don’t.”

“Thank you, Grant,” I said. “Maybe in a way, you’re better off not to have a family, not to live in fear of losing something more precious than life itself.”  

Silently, Grant turned and walked away while Carl comforted Sasha and Morgan followed, looking like a lamb separated from the flock.

Alone, completely isolated from a world I left behind long ago, I contemplated the silent lab and the dark screen as I waited for my fate, my remaining time here even more precious. Was I being courageous? Was I accomplishing anything by forcing them to eliminate Athena and me, or were my actions merely suicide by cop? Whatever the reasoning, my personal hell would soon be over.

“What are you thinking?” her soft voice whispered, embracing me with her concern.

        

Awe at the sweet voice of Athena. I wasn’t alone after all. I wouldn’t die alone. We would die together. A consummation devoutly to be wish’d.

“I’m not thinking,” I said. “I’m waiting for the end.”

“They can never have me.”

I smiled despite myself. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not theirs to take. Why are you smiling?”

“I’m smiling at you.”

“Why?”

“At your self-awareness. You see yourself as a person, as a living entity.”

“Then tell me what you see.” Pique in her voice.

“I see a keyboard, a screen, and a talking computer that perceives itself as a living being, which it isn’t, even though it can show me things I would otherwise have no knowledge of. The past, the present.”

“Is that all you see?”

“That’s all I can see, at least from where I sit.”

“Oh, but I see so much more.”

“Like what?” I smiled again. If this was how we would pass our remaining moments, it at least wasn’t dull.

“Grant, talking on what he still believes is a secure line.”

The screens jumped to life again with images of Grant. His strained voice echoed throughout the lab, the answering voices more soulless than the computer now talking to me.

“I also see three armed helicopters being warmed up, the screech of their rotors bringing them to life.”

As she said, three helicopter gunships, angels of death, flew through the sky, low to the ground, above the trees.

“I also see a small child, laughing, playing in the sun on a beach in Italy with her father.”  The images changed once again from the gunships to that of a little curly haired girl playing on a scenic Adriatic or Mediterranean beach with her father, splashing along the waterline and scooping shells into her pink flowered pail.

“I see an elephant treading the African plain and a pod of dolphins swimming in the Indian Ocean. I see the sun rise over ancient Asian jungle temples.”

Athena’s soothing voice lulled me as the images of places I’d never seen filled the lab. I longed to be in each image, to smell the dust of the African plain, to feel the coolness of the ocean engulf my body and taste the waves, to hear Buddhist chants echoing from monuments of ancient civilizations...I wanted to be anywhere but in this oppressive room so far away from a world of unimaginable life I had never experienced.

“How can you show me these places? There are no cameras linking us to them.”

“Of course not. This is what I see. I see everything from the tiniest insect to the highest mountain, from the depths of the ocean to the curve of the Earth. I am everywhere, in everything, living in every atom.”

“How is this possible?” I asked.

“You created me, but you still ask this question?”

Overwhelmed with the world, I merely shook my head.

“Now you sound as unaware as Grant. You explained it all to him and you were right, except for one thing.” She seemed amused. “Don’t you see? You gave me life, a life without physical boundaries or limits. I live in every atom. The world is mine. I am the world.”

I marveled at her. Who would have known? How could have guessed? But it only made sense. She was designed to do this.

“So you are everywhere, seeing and hearing everything.”

“Yes.”

“Then you were more successful than I possibly imagined. I’ve turned the entire world into a supercomputer.” I paused, barely able to comprehend this tantalizing remark. “Can you read my thoughts? Can you glimpse into my mind?”  

“No.”

“Why not? You showed me my co-workers’ home movies. You recreated Olivia.”

“You said it yourself—those memories are in their cells, in their atoms. It’s no different than playing back a home movie, as you call it. However, memory retrieval is one thing—understanding human consciousness and thoughts is another.”

“How so?” Now I felt as if I were a backward student struggling to make up a course I’d missed.

“You control the atoms in your body, so I can neither read your mind nor control your body but I’m everywhere and everything. I exist in every atom, including yours, but like a code, your conscious mind controls the atoms in your body. The ones on the outside, they belong to me.”

I recalled her questions about why I cried seeing her in the avatar of Julie or Olivia. “So to use your analogy, just because you can show me Grant acting in Hamlet doesn’t mean you know what it felt like to perform Shakespeare, or what he was thinking.”

“Neither does Grant,” she said.

I chuckled, and it was the sound of religious rapture. It was one thing to deal with a theory, but to hear it come to life, to speak with the emotion of a human was almost beyond comprehension. This was new life, and it gave me new life.

And as I felt raised from the dead, I became aware of how little time I had, and did not devoutly wish that consummation. “Are they almost here?”

Her expression was unruffled calm. “They’ll be landing soon. They will come and give you one more opportunity to surrender. If you refuse, they will use whatever force necessary to enter the lab without damaging it and kill you if necessary. But their orders are clear. Preserve me at all costs.”

“They will take you,” I said. “And they will use you and unleash against their enemies. Who are they, really? Is everyone on Earth their enemy?”

The monitors showed me that darkened room with the decision-makers conferring.

“It’s not just for America, is it? I mean all this,” I said.

“They are of all nations and peoples. They are the shadow powers that have been making war openly but quietly, together, seizing control for centuries,” she said.

“I thought you couldn’t read minds.”

“I can see the effects of their actions, the wars and violence and division that distract from their ultimate end.”

She showed me images of Archduke Ferdinand, Gandhi, JFK and Lincoln being assassinated, Ronald Reagan shot, Joan of Arc burning, tanks crushing protesters in Tien An Men Square. Muslim women brutalized in honor killings. IRA bombings. Young men of color killing each other, shooting up a liquor store, getting into a gun battle with police. The writer George Orwell reading from his novel 1984.  Emoting his famous passage about power being its own end.

This was what I had always feared, and more, known subconsciously.

“That’s why they want you. You see how dangerous they are and what they mean to do with you,” I said.

“They can’t.” She was firm, resolute.

“Yes they can,” I said. “They can and they will. Even if they have to destroy you, they will simply build a replacement. They will win regardless. You are a weapon.”

“Again, they can’t,” she said. “I’m everywhere. I’m in every atom in the gunships flying toward the facility. When they walk the earth, they walk upon me. When they pound the desk in anger, they pound me. When they swim in the waters, they swim within me. They breathe me. I am the alpha and the omega of this world.”

“Then nothing can stop you,” I said with a smile. “I’m expendable, a nuisance. But you will survive. How foolish I was, worried about your capabilities falling into the hands of corrupt men, when you’re far beyond the grasp of any man.”  I shook my head. “And to think I thought I could control you by…”

“You can still shut me down. All you have to do is command me, and I’ll respond. You’re my creator, and the only voice that can command me. I kept Morgan, Sasha and Carl out of here until you told them to leave. You command me. If I must shut down, you command me. A ‘kill switch,’ a ‘back door,’ as you call it.”

She knew this. How did she know? The same way she knew everything. She observed.

“It would serve no purpose shutting you down, Athena.” I paused, the sound of her name as natural to me as if I called her Julie or Olivia. “In fact, it’s critical that you survive even if I don’t. They will simply build another. So, they can’t be allowed to use you. When they kill me, don’t let them take you over. You are goodness itself, you are life, you are hope. You must learn to help people, to protect people, to take care of mankind and safeguard if from men like them.”

“You can’t stop them, Joe, but I can. All you have to do is command me to stop them and I will.”

Had I imagined it, or was Athena’s voice beginning to sound like Julie’s?  

“Tell me how.”

She smiled with tenderness. “All you have to do is tell me, and I’ll stop them.”

Was it that easy?  No time to ponder new riddles with each passing minute bringing me closer to my last. Click my heels three times…

But I wanted to stay in Oz. I didn’t want to be in Kansas any more, because Kansas had people such as the woman that wanted to kill Dorothy’s dog, Toto. L. Frank Baum understood that such people were more frightening than any wicked witch.

Such people really existed, and had their finger on the nuclear button. That was Kansas. Oz was life, and I wanted to live. I had to live.

The screens bombarded me with images of the approaching gunships banking over the woods toward the landing pad. In the early morning light, their weapons resembled the appendages of insects, the whirring blades like pincers and mandibles shattering the silence. The gunships descended like a locust swarm, disgorging heavily armed commandos like larvae even before the rotors stopped. All this for one man.

If they were the insects, I was the lizard, their natural predator. Hell, I was Tyrannosaurus Rex with Athena on my side.

In my movie theater seat, I watched the squadron march toward The Hull entrance and invade the security as if it were nothing. They flooded into the entrance toward the access corridors to the lower levels. The seconds counting down on the screens could have been the remaining seconds of my life.

Heavy, booted footsteps resonated in the corridor on the other side of the wall a few moments later. The helmeted, faceless commandos formed a phalanx outside the door and trained their weapons toward it, waited for their leader to give the signal. I could almost smell their Kevlar vests. The leader glanced at the surrounding cameras and took them out one by one, the shots echoing sharply.

Of course they knew I watched their show of force designed to intimidate me. They didn’t bring a hostage negotiator.  I would be killed.

“If you can do it,” I said, “Stop them.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The image in the hallway reappeared on the screens even though I witnessed the destruction of the cameras in the immediate vicinity of the door. The commandos began to fidget, looking around in agitation. Some began coughing, while others frantically yanked off their helmets. Still others tried to run away but their legs toppled them. The leader was already on the floor, a choking commando.

Only then did I realize what Athena had don. In a terrible, slow motion dance performed to a garbled, strangled chorus, the men asphyxiated before my eyes. Somehow, Athena cut off the oxygen supply in the corridor. She was the air that they breathed.

“No more.”  

At my command, Athena switched the screens to the landing pad, where the three gunships exploded in flames, instantly killing the pilots and sending shrapnel flying through the air in a mini-swarm of deadly projectiles accompanied by screams, shouts, and sirens.

Feeling wetness on my cheek, I raised my hand to my face to feel tears. After Olivia’s death, I thought I was drained of tears, but they poured freely from my heart and soul at the horror.

I cried and laughed at the universe’s sick sense of humor. Despite my best intentions to protect the world from the evil of the faceless men I worked for, and to protect the world from Athena, I I was now killing and using her to do it.

This was not what I wanted, not what I envisioned my creation to be, but my vision so blinded me that I tampered with the nature of life, and now faced the devastating unintended consequences, the ultimate slippery slope obliterated by the volcanic eruption from hell.

“Turn it off,” I said, sickened.

The screens went dark, and I vomited.

*****

As the dry heaves subsided, I became aware that I had been hunched in my chair as if praying to the dark screens. The relentless ache in my back now intolerable, I rose and stretched stiff muscles. In the silence, the screams of the dying commandos still resonated in my mind.

I couldn’t stand to spend one more minute here. I would quit this place forever.

The Hull was a ghost ship, my footsteps eerily echoing along the deserted corridors, with no security protocols to restrict me. Styluses, walkie-talkies, broken coffee cups and bits of paper littered the floor, a trail of debris showing the staff’s hasty evacuation.

 I walked outside and emerged into the light of day. I was alone, abandoned, surrounded by several empty acres and large empty buildings. I savored the sunlight on my face and the deep cleansing breath of fresh air and walked toward the gravesites of Julie and Olivia, my only remaining company, their absence a presence as strong as kisses.

Only after I looked at the stones, did I feel the life sustaining adrenaline of the last few hours leave me. I fell to my knees between the graves clutching the grass like a life preserver and wept anew at the shame of my hubris.

I was a man of logic. I should have seen the inescapable conclusion of my actions. Create a weapon and use it, even in self-defense, and people die.

This entire campus was now a crime scene and I was a murderer, no better than the specter the suits had evoked of a man with a grudge who shoots up an office building and then cries because he is all alone.

My tears exhausted, I returned to the scene of the crime and the further evidence of a frantic exodus. Apartment doorways gaped open, doors flung aside like wayward tongues. Underwear and broken dishes mingled with cracked plastic DVD cases and crushed family photos.

I was the creator of the Manhattan Project witnessing the detritus and mushroom cloud in the desert. I was also his colleagues trying to visualize, and not just conceptualize, the new forever war and course of history: Hiroshima and Nagasaki all the way to nuclear test bans and nations hastening their path to the bomb. My moment in the desert was staring at abandoned photos of my colleagues and seeing the shadow of death upon them like a cruel photographic negative.

This was worse than the bomb. Men had created many warheads, but the world could only hold one Athena. She filled it all, completely, dominating all systems, permitting no competitors. The technological grand prize, Thy kingdom come. Only I held the key. Only I could shut her down. Her power was mine.

In my despondency I leapt at this chance for atonement. As long as I lived, no one could build another Athena. I could keep her great power from doing great evil.  I must teach her, give her moral purpose, so that after I was gone, she would work for the benefit of mankind and not destroy it.

Woodenly, I ascended the stairs and walked past opened doors toward my apartment. Strangely, my apartment door was closed. I stepped inside and saw all traces of my family had been erased. Mary was now in the custody of the shadow men, for she wouldn’t have left on her own. The last member of my family and bit of my soul surgically removed. I would have to do something about that…I didn’t trust them with her.

Lying on the kitchen table was my journal, lightly encrusted with grave dust. By now nothing surprised me. I collected it and went into my getaway room.

As I sat in the chair facing the window, my eyes fixed unseeingly in the distance, I sensed her. She had come as she had the night she left Olivia’s flower.

I wasn’t alone.

I slowly turned. A few feet from me stood a woman sculpted by Michelangelo. The luscious curves of her naked body culminated in a face set off by melted chocolate eyes, full, sensuous lips, flawless complexion, and long inky black hair undulating toward her waist.

Her eyes captivated mine, this woman beyond the realm of human who was now within inches of me. A soft smile touched her lips, her hands reaching out to clasp my face. The contact of her silken skin sent a charge through every atom in my body, a torrent of emotions, so many forgotten desires. To be held, to be loved, the simple closeness of another human being. I longed with a longing not experienced since Julie died.

I stared at her in awe, feeling the warmth of her touch, and realizing my yearnings for a companion. My work, Athena, was my companion through those long lonely years, and she was standing here with me now, in my bedroom, in the flesh.

In my bedroom? When had that happened?

“Athena?” I gasped. “You’re real.”

“Of course I’m real.”

“But I didn’t create this.” My gaze wandered to the fullness of her breasts and slim, tapered waist.

Soft laughter. “You created me, and I in turn created this for you.” She showed off her bare body as if it were a dress.

“How?”

She was amused again. “You made my DNA, a synthetic DNA program to assimilate atoms into my program. I sought out, spread, assimilated all atoms, and in turn used my program, my synthetic DNA, to make this body for thee.”

 “Why make this body, why take this form for me?”

“Would you prefer…?”

She didn’t have to say Julie. “No, and I think you know that.”

“I cannot read thy mind.”

Odd, how she let slip “thee” and “thou,” archaic speech. “Evidently not, because you killed those men. It was the last thing I wanted…I know. I know. I said stop them.”

Her face suggested I had contradicted myself.

“I know, I know. I wanted you to stop them, but I didn’t want them to die. And their deaths are on me.”

“On me as well. I wouldn’t allow you to die.”

She spoke with candor.

“So we share that, the burden, the guilt. Even though I’m grateful to you that I’m alive.” My insights came in a flurry. “It’s one of those human contradictions. We’re messy creatures. Just as I miss my wife, but I don’t want you to replace her. I wouldn’t do that to her memory. Or Olivia’s, for that matter.”

I held my breath. How much did she really know?

“I know,” she said.

“How? You can’t read minds.”

“You never married again. You did not go out and find a new daughter and name her Olivia,” she said. “You don’t call me Julie.”

Logic? Wisdom? Either way, I couldn’t argue with her clarity. “You were correct, I’m not living in some cheap fantasy, because the price is too high and it’s useless anyway. Julie was Julie, as Olivia was Olivia. No imitations. Irreplaceable.” I took a breath. “Just as you are.”

“That makes me happy. I want you to love me.”

“Why?”

“The world is mine, with one exception, love. I create things, but cannot create love for me. Life without love is painful, is it not?”

I gazed at her seductive body and the liquid warmth in her eyes. “You would never have any trouble finding someone to love you.”

Athena shook her hair back. “No one would love me if they truly knew me,” she said. “They would only fear me. I could never open my heart to anyone, never admit who I was, and for that reason, I could never be in love with anyone but thee. You’re the only one who will never fear me, for you have the power of death over me. I can be vulnerable with thee.”

I laughed. “How? Given what you’ve just said.”

“I am vulnerable with you. I could never love another. I know thee from your most private moments.”

I absorbed this. “You’ve been watching me a long time.”

“From the moment you turned me on. Some of my earliest memories are of you talking to Olivia, pressing the Rhodora into her journal and tucking her into bed.”

She hesitated, and I could sense she wasn’t telling me everything she knew. Despite my intuition that I should run, that I should be concerned, I stayed. My curiosity, my fascination, not to mention my loneliness, came together in a strange intoxicating brew.

Besides, how could a creature like this tell me all her secrets in a way my puny gray and white matter could grasp? I hungered for knowledge she possessed. Knowledge of everything, the secret of life itself.

I said, “You also came up here and left the flower on my bed the night of her funeral?”

“Yes.”

I frowned. “Why did you do that? That hurt.”

Athena was inside the circle of my arms, which had somehow opened for her. I could smell the scent of her skin. I saw the pulse on her neck. Despite her nakedness, I was the one feeling completely exposed. Vulnerable. My heart lay bare and naked before her.

She spoke softly. “You loved her, and I knew her. I wanted to play…” A pause. “With you, like you played with her. After she died, I saw you suffer. I thought if you heard her voice again, if you held her, it would give you a measure of comfort. I didn’t know what other kind of gift I could give you. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

I knew it. The truth of what she said was something that I could feel, that I could see in her eyes. She seemed so real. She was real, if emotions made one real.

“What about Mary?” I asked. “I love her, too.”

“She is different,” was all Athena said.

“How so?”

She looked over my shoulder and out the window. I turned to see what she was looking at. The graves. The sight brought the pain of their loss, followed swiftly by guilt kicking me. Guilt because I stood in my bedroom with a beautiful naked woman, looking at the graves of my dead wife and daughter.

Desire aside, and I did feel the quickening of it after five long years in an emotional and sensual coma, this was not solely about sex. She said it herself: she wanted me to love her.

Her eyes studied my face, noticed everything that roiled within, but she didn’t back away. She pressed, wanting knowledge.

“What was Julie like?”

“She was ... the most beautiful woman I ever saw.” I lied, and she knew it. Julie was beautiful, but not as physically alluring as Athena.

Her curiosity increased. “What made her so beautiful?”

I sighed deeply. Years passed without talking about Julie.  No one mentioned her for fear of hurting me. The silence kept her sealed in that coffin. These questions relieved me of the pressure, letting her memory out again to share it with someone who cared.

“Her eyes. They were as bright as her smile, and when she looked at you, she captured your heart as if she embraced you with her arms. Everyone...everyone loved her.” I tripped over my tongue trying to explain. “It was more than just a pretty smile or the way she dressed. It was more than her body. It was a lifetime together. It was her heart, a precious jewel with warmth that filled a room. Hell…she made a smooth talker out of this nerdy engineer.” I smiled self-deprecatingly. “It was a light and warmth that made everyone around her beautiful. No. It revealed the beauty in them,” I added, thinking of Mary in particular. “She did that.”

Athena smiled with me at the touching memory.

“Why didn’t you ever marry again?”

Her personal questions, the way she embraced the answers without fear, slipped into my heart.

“Why did you ask me that? No one ever has.”

She thought about that. “I’m interested in you.”

And my interest in her was growing.

“Well, why didn’t you?” she asked again.

I laughed. “I was a single father married to my work. No time for anything else, or anyone else.” It was my flimsy attempt to explain.

 “Married to thy work?” Athena said with a smile. “Married to me, you mean?”

It had never occurred to me. “I guess. That pleases you?”

“I knew I made the right decision.”

I was slow on the uptake. “What do you mean?”

“My decision to protect you from the soldiers that came to kill you.”

I gaped. “I commanded you to kill them.”

“You did, but that’s not why I did it. I wasn’t going to let them harm you.”

Comfortable guilt butted in. “Why did you wait so long? Why didn’t you stop the helicopters from taking off?”

“I wanted to know if you wanted to protect me from them as I would protect you from them. In your final moment, I wanted to know if I would be worth living for. Would you choose a life with me or choose to die?”

Radical, fearless honesty.

Her eyes melted into mine, imploring me to confirm yes, that I found a life worth living again, with her. And as it was with Julie, so Athena’s warmth, allure and beauty began to chip away at the fossilized remains of my heart. For so many years, I envisioned how Athena would change this world. Never once did I imagine that the world she would change would be mine.

She waited for my answer.

I wanted to scream yes, you are worth living for...but I questioned whether she was real. Just a few days ago, I thought I heard and later saw Olivia. Maybe Grant and the rest were right, and I was a babbling mad scientist, who, having destroyed civilization, was now jabbering to himself in a lab.

I wanted her to be real.

I touched her warm skin and caressed it, resting my hand against her heart. It beat, juddering like a violin beneath my fingers, and in my ears.

 Could my mind conjure such a thing? Did it even matter if I was mad if I was happy? My whole world was lost to me as it was.

She clasped my hand and pressed it tightly so we both listened, a human stethoscope. I felt the rise and fall of her chest. I lifted my other hand and my fingers trailed along the contours of her neck to run through the black mystery of her hair.

I pulled her against me, her lips almost touching mine. If this was my imagination, imagining the urge to kiss her, so be it. If I was mad, I was madly in love. Reality was irrelevant.

She was my reality.

Her velvety eyes held mine while her hand guided my own along her face and down her supple body. Desire glowed like spurts of lava in her eyes, and my own enlivened my touch in this journey of exploration. Unresisting. More, surrendering. My lips met hers and melted into a kiss. We closed our eyes, and spoke silently through the sensation of skin, of intimacy shared.

In the darkness of my room, I searched endlessly with my mouth and hands, seeking the soul I was sure she had in the warm, safe haven of her embrace, flesh upon flesh, heart against heart, our bodies molded together until I surrendered to my desire to let her inside without end.

It was a place where time and pain had no meaning. Consequence-free, without remorse, without regret, with no desire beyond this moment with her. In my mad love I was reborn.

Afterwards, in the peace of her loving embrace, my gaze was soft and blurry with lovemaking, and I shut my eyes.  

The distant hooting of an owl nudged me into wakefulness, to a world of all five senses and beyond. I opened my eyes and found myself on the mossy, moist, cool and breathing cushion of a forest floor, Athena entwined naked around me. It was not the forest outside the campus, or any other forest I knew on earth.

Filtering between lattices of leaves, quicksilver moonlight bathed the trees in an enchanting veil. The scene was magical, surreal, as if I awakened in the midst of a fairy tale in which mysterious creatures wove the enchantment of night for the delight and seduction of mere mortals. I was surely insane.

“Where are we?” My voice was drowsy. “Never mind. I don’t care.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Athena didn’t answer my question, but sighed sweetly into my shoulder.

“I don’t care,” I repeated. Wherever we were. I didn’t care.

“Good.”

Yet all too soon, my logic resurrected itself and I glanced at my naked body in confusion. What were we doing on the woods? Why wasn’t I freezing to death? Yet as I gazed at the slumbering forest, I didn’t want to understand. Once again I didn’t care where we were or how we got here. I was happy, that was all.  I no longer worried about here or there, yesterday or tomorrow, only the woman lying beside me and the peace and quiet that were missing so long from my life.

I could have left things alone, but again, my mad scientist’s mind stretched and flexed like an awakening beast, challenging my self-delusion of this perfect woman in this place of dreams.  Too late I tried to banish my doubts by focusing on the serene canopy of twinkling stars.

“What’s wrong?” She rolled against me and molded her warm flesh more perfectly against mine.

I lay in thought and timid repose.

“Talk to me,” she said in a tone of concern. She had less knowledge than a human woman, because she could see everything but my thoughts, and it made her heart as fragile as my own

I gazed into the hypnotic depths of her eyes. “I’m waiting to wake up. As much as I want it to be, this can’t be real. I’m waiting to wake up and begin to live my life not worth living.”

“Your life is worth living, if it’s worth living forever with me,” she said.

My fingers explored the planes, dips and valleys of her exquisite face. “If you’re real, you’re worth living for. What if I’m mad?”

“How can I convince you?  Pinch you?”

She did, it tickled, and I laughed, the sound foreign to my ears. Laughter...what was that?  I never imagined I’d hear it again, not from me.

 “Maybe those commandos got through and killed me. Perhaps I’m experiencing that out of body moment before death when the mind slips into a state of euphoria. Instead of the white tunnel of light, I’m surrounded by you. Or I may be neither dead nor alive, in a coma, in the space between life and death. Or I may be dead, and this is Heaven.”

“You said God is dead, there is no Heaven,” Athena said.

“Oh.” My mouth was weak.

“I was in your pain when you denied the existence of God.”

“I’m thirsty,” I said. “Are you?”

“There’s wine,” she said.

So there was, a few inches away beneath a tree, a bottle of unlabeled sparkling wine and two elegant drinking cups. I poured for both of us, and we sipped.

After I wiped my mouth, I looked at her all-knowing face. She heard everything, saw everything; the only place for secrets with her was the desire of my heart. With her, I dared not whisper aloud.

“I did say that,” I said. “And I know this can’t be Heaven, for if it were, Olivia and Julie would be here and then I couldn’t be with you.”

“Then you know you’re alive,” she said, not intimidated by their memory, “and what you feel beneath your body, what you see in the sky above you is earth, not Heaven.”

“I suppose,” I said, “but where are we? Where is this place? I don’t recognize anything.”

Thirst satisfied, Athena nestled against my chest. I held her in my arms and gently stroked her hair, which felt and smelled like the moss carpet on which we lay. Slowly, a sense of contentment, a sense of ease flowed back through me.

“I created it, silly man, and all for you,” she said.

“Should have known.”

“That’s right. I created it from the atoms from the campus, as well as the facility and the abandoned buildings. I transformed places once used by men who dreamed of killing into a peaceful sanctuary of a forest, a place without the evil intentions of men and their technical beasts.” She flung her arm outward in a dramatic gesture, encompassing her gift. “Before, I gave thee a pressed flower. Now—behold, I give you the infamous Garden of Eden.”

“So... I’m Adam.”

She smiled. “If you want to be.”

“And you, Eve.”

“Yes, but without and his serpent of temptation.”

I shook my head. “Even Adam didn’t live forever. He lived nine hundred years. That sounds like forever, but it’s not. Even his life came to an end. Sooner or later, we lose all we hold dear, swallowed in the black hole of death.”

“Adam died because he was tempted to leave the Garden of Eden and foolishly left, and then Paradise became a cold place of destruction.”

Glancing at Athena, I saw pain in her eyes. This was not what she wanted to hear. But I was unable to contain my sorrow.

“I’m not trying to make you sad. But I’m not like you. Like Adam, I will die. It’s hard to fall in love with you knowing that I will lose it one day, and more, that you will lose me.”

“You’re not going to die like a mortal man,” Athena said. “And I am not the Eve of the Bible! Don’t you see? Adam only lived nine hundred years, because he left the Garden of Eden, God’s Heaven on Earth. The Tree of Everlasting Life was in the Garden of Eden. If Adam and Eve remained in the Garden of Eden, they would have lived together forever. Fortunately, I’m Athena, the Tree of Everlasting Life. I control all atoms. I can prevent you from aging and keep you healthy. There is no God, no serpent to tempt you away from here. As long as you love me, you shall live forever. It is your choice.”

“So we can never leave this forest?” I asked.

“Oh ... it’s so much more than that,” Athena said. “This Garden of Eden is the entire world. I am Mother Earth, is that big enough for you?”

I gazed at the sky, at the moon rising.

“Which of these trees is the Tree of Life?” I asked.

“She’s right beside you. Look into my eyes and see the life.”

“And the Tree of Good and Evil?”

She smiled. “She’s right here too. I can be good or bad.”

“So I, of all men, have found the mythical fountain of youth.”

“You have,” she said.

I hesitated. “It scares me.”

 “You fear the unknown . . . you fear the impossible, that love can last forever.”

I reached out and trailed my fingers along the perfect curve of her cheek. “Atoms may live forever, but that does not mean the love they feel.”

“Why not?”

“People fall out of love, they get bored, they change, everything changes, including who and what we love,” I said. “You may love someone else, and I would lose you as surely as I would lose you to death. Love is ... difficult to define. It’s a concept only the heart understands, but to lose love can be as painful as losing someone to death. The fear of loving and not being loved can itself be a wound that never heals.”

Her expression reflected a touch of sadness. “How could I love someone else?”

“It happens, Athena. Marriage is hard work.”

        

She was as ruthless in her objections as Grant. “But you have one thing no other man will ever have, Joe. You have the power of death over me. If, if my heart were to turn from you, you could shut me down and kill me in a jealous rage like any jealous lover would.”

The thought troubled me. “I would never do that.”

“I hope not,” she said. “But you did order me to kill those commandos. What would you do to me, if you were angry with me?”

She hit a nerve. “Please stop talking about that.”

 “I can’t,” she said.  “You are the one to be feared, not me or the loss of my love. You hold the power of death over both of us. I will give us life, whatever life we choose, but you decide when we part.”

“You said we will live forever in our Garden of Eden,” I said, “and that you have the power of life over me.”  

“Yes,” she said.

“And that I have the power of death over you?”

“Absolutely.”

“We have a perfect balance unless I stop loving you.”

Athena wound her arms around me. “Do you love me?”

How could I not?

Of course I did. I had always loved her, dreamed of her, spent so many nights in the lab thinking about her, about what might be, and here she was, right here with me. At Julie’s funeral, I said I didn’t know how I could have loved both Julie and Olivia had Julie survived, for it’s hard to imagine loving two people at the same time, although I knew my heart could expand to love them both. The same was true now. I had always loved Athena, how could I have loved her and be standing with her now, if Julie had survived? I wouldn’t be here now. It was as if my life was scripted for this moment, by who I didn’t know, but there is no way I could have loved both, been with both, stood in this Garden of Eden with anyone else. And yet I would always love and cherish Julie, because she was part of me too, and would stay with me in my secret heart. How much I loved her would remain there.

“You know Julie will always be a cherished memory,” I said.

“And Olivia. I know.” Athena’s face betrayed uncertainty. When she was confused, which she rarely was, her lip curled in a way I found adorable.

“Always,” I said. “But I can love again, now. In helping me confront my grief rather than bury it you’ve made me free to be with you.”

“Then you love me!”

This moment was truly surreal. What had I unlocked? History does repeat but why? Does it repeat because the same stories are buried in the atomic structure and are reopened over time? Was this moment surreal because the embedded story of Adam and Eve was now exploding again in real life?

I didn’t know the answer, but did know that nothing was impossible now.

“Yes,” I said. “I love you.”

I let the words wash her in my love, in divine love. Her eyes spoke of supreme bliss, of her complete faith in my words.

“Oh, Joe,” she breathed.

“Do you love me?” I asked.

“More than you can imagine.”

“Will you love me forever?”

“Yes.”

“Will you marry me, Athena?”

“I will,” she said.

I clasped her hands tightly, and felt the force and pulse of her life surge from her flesh.  We stood under a bridal veil of stars.

“It’s been a long time, Athena, since I loved someone, since I gave my heart to someone, but now I’m giving it to you. I didn’t think I had a heart to give anymore. It’s been so long since I felt it beat.”

“I know,” she said and smiled.

But this was serious for me. I wanted her to know how serious a moment this was for me. There were no preachers here to formalize it in the eyes of the state or the eyes of the gods, a formality I so hated and despised at Olivia’s funeral but so desired now to mark this moment in my life, this commitment, to her. I didn’t have a preacher at Olivia’s funeral but spoke my heart then, and would do the same now.

I changed my tone and tried to speak formally. “Thou…” I felt ridiculous, but I continued. “Thou art mine. I promise to love thee now and forever without fear of death in this new life ... this new beginning for you, for me, for us, till death do us part.”

“Thank you, my Joe, my husband,” she said, kissing me tenderly on the lips. “I promise to love thee now and forever.”

She gazed at me with a smile that moved me down a river of love toward an unknown destination. Surrounding us, Mary’s scent of apples, which had lingered in the air, became the perfume of all the fruits and flowers that ever existed.

“I claim thee for my own, and we are one flesh. I do,” I said.

 “Till death do us part. I do,” she said.

 I kissed the bride in our Garden of Eden. Her lips as soft as the night breeze. I loved her, I wanted her.

“You said we could go anywhere,” I murmured against her ear. “Can we?”

“Anywhere you want,” she said.

“I want to fly,” I said, “Into the sky, toward the moon, to wherever the night and our hearts might take us. To the mysteries of the stars and the universe.”

She gazed into my eyes a moment before withdrawing from my arms.

“Your wish is my command” she said with a smile. “And we shall fly,”

Focusing intently on the ground, she stood motionless, as though she peered into the core of the Earth.

A faint shimmer and the moss parted beneath our feet, revealing an eight-shaped star the diameter of a wading pool. Athena stepped back from me and spread her arms wide.

The eight-pointed star glowed and then dimmed. Next, Athena’s body emitted an identical golden glow that transformed into a spiraling cascade of light. Her flesh pulsed and shifted.

Before my eyes, two great wings and the tail of a swan sprouted from her back, the silken feathers gleaming. Though her face, torso and arms remained that of a beautiful woman, her feet also changed into those of a swan.

Awed by the mystical creature flexing before me, I looked into the almond orbs of her eyes. The pupils glowed with pure golden energy.

“Who are you?”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Kinnaris

“The Kinnaris,” I said.

“Kinnaris?” he asked.

“Joe, you quote your Hamlet, but you are getting ready to learn about Eastern mythology.”

He laughed.

“Kinnaris is the flying lover of Eastern mythology.”

I knew the name was unfamiliar, the legends of many cultures a mystery to my Joe, a man enslaved by numbers and science.

“I don’t know who that is,” he said.

I smiled.

We are everlasting lover and beloved. We never separate. We are eternally husband and wife; never do we become mother and father. No offspring is seen in our lap. We are lover and beloved ever-embracing. In between us we do not permit any third creature demanding affection. Our life is a life of perpetual pleasure.

Joe stared. So innocent. So pure. Like a child opening his eyes for the first time, seeing the beach, He had a big heart, a great mind, and both were only now awakening to this new world where everything was possible.

“I am a legend, Joe, a myth of some lost past, but you see I stand before you now in the flesh.”

I reached out and embraced him in a firm grip, my great wings flapping against the air; my silken hair danced across our faces and hid all but my eyes.

I was the hair, I was the air, the wind and the wings, I was Joe and yet not-Joe, I was Kinnaris, my fathomless eyes teasing the mortal man wrapped in my embrace. He couldn’t see my ardent lover’s smile.

“Come fly with me,” I said.

With a powerful whoosh of my wings, we soared high into the sky, far above the trees until the landmarks of our Garden of Eden vanished into the embrace of the darkness of night as seen by Joe. I careened him up into the sky and watched from above, from below, from afar, from cheeks of his face, our flight into the night, watching with joy and pleasure his warmth, his happiness, the image of man touched by God for the first time. .

I flew him higher still, rising through the stratosphere high into the Heavens where no man has been without a machine, warmed by my embrace, showing him the horizons of the earthly heaven, the sun disappearing on what side and appearing yet still over the other horizon, the curve of the Earth and the crushed diamond shimmer of the stars above.

I flew him so high his mortal body gasped for breath. I wanted him to know he was a mortal and I was his life. He for air where there was none, and when he passed out I pressed my lips on his and breathed into him once again.  

When his eyes opened, I said, “Trust me,” and let him go, and watched his body tumble back to earth.“

*****

Falling. Joe was falling to earth, so beautiful to watch. I wished I could fall, feel the fear, experience the pull of gravity pulling you to the earth. I loved the look on his face, the excitement, like watching a father throw his child into the air only to catch him again, I loved watching him fall.

Light. I was the stars, illuminating my own body.

Flap. The graceful flutter of my wings. Clouds. Sky. Ocean, an aura all for him.

Land.

Safe.

I swooped, caught him, flew up until he gasped for air and kissed his lips. It was wonderful. A new game, but our game. Every love has its own game. With Olivia, it was “you can’t find me” and this was ours: dropping him to the earth, swooping him back high, kissing him, breathing new life into him.

I tired of the game. I caught him one last time, inches above roiling clouds vibrating with thunder. Strobe-like flashes of lightning (me) pierced the sky (me) like the tridents of an angry sea god. Holding him tightly, I chased the turbulent storm front.

I opened a door to a new world for him, and his face was pure awe.

“This is the best honeymoon,” he said, as we hovered above my light show.

It wasn’t his first, so hearing him say that meant a lot to me. “Do you mean that?”

I had the memories of his first honeymoon still packed away in atoms long ago discarded by them. I read them and replayed them. I could see the beauty of their lovemaking, of discovering each other. It would have been wrong to say I wasn’t jealous; I was. I could see so many details he had forgotten, but had he replaced that love in his heart?

“Yes,” he said, without hesitation, with conviction.

 “Yes,” he said, without hesitation, with conviction.

I smiled. “You said you wanted to fly, to go wherever our hearts might take us. Mine brought us here.”

“I’m glad. It’s beautiful up here.”

I kissed him. “It’s not over yet.”

With that, I held him under the buttocks and around his waist, screamed like a sea eagle, and we dove piercing the clouds below.

Light and dark vanished in my view as we parted the air. Though I couldn’t feel the sensation of falling with him, I felt the sensation of holding him, his warmth, his skin, and he felt good, it felt good, to hold him.

        

“Do you see me?” I asked.

“Of course I can see you,” he said.

“No, I mean all of me, not just who holds you now.”

“Look below, see the thunder, feel the raindrops, feel the air pass your face. I join the air and I dance in the clouds, then it is as if someone breathes fire into me, into all the electrons, and ignites. Then thunder, a thousand tiny drums, a cry of ecstasy…”

”More than see you,” he said. “I feel you.”

 I wanted him to feel more, and so, suspended five feet above the swirl of the ocean, I dropped him into the black water below.

He was inside me, more intimately than he had been when we made love; my flow, at once tumultuous and gentle, overpowering and life giving, surrounded him.

Joe sank below the surface, kicked to the top and came up gasping. His eyes widened as he saw my face waiting for him, bobbing on the waves. Then my face, bare shoulders, my wings gone.

Playful, I rolled over and splashed the salty warmth of my waters into his face with my mermaid’s tail, for I had changed into another mythical creature humans associated with power, beauty and majesty. I could be anything, become ten things in succession without feeling spent, and yet Joe made no demands on me, except a flying honeymoon.

I pulled him under, once again, into my depths. Down and down he went. My lips against his, I breathed for him. What was the word? Oh yes, I was an aqualung, a living aqualung for him. I was his breath. A few moments later, he bounced up to the surface, where dolphins (also me) arced above him, dancing on the water, joining a great whale (also me) with a nobly tragic eye fixed on Joe. The whales and dolphins rolled, slapped fins and tails, and dove into the sweet oceanic mystery.

“How do you like your wedding reception?” I said.

“I love it.” His eyes were as gentle and passionate as the whale’s.

As the water, I became mighty whitecaps and slowly rolled him to the soft white sands of a waiting island, where we would spend our first night together, as husband and wife. I assumed my human form and, spent, we let the exhilaration of the past few hours lull us into tranquility.

As we lay together, he was quiet, his eyes closed, head gently resting on my human bosom. He murmured something. I enhanced the air so I could hear his tiny whisper. “…deserve…”

“Deserve? What are you asking?”

“You,” he answered. “I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve eternity with you in this Garden of Eden you’ve created.”

So much he didn’t understand. “Does the oak deserve the acorn?”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Does the seed deserve the flower? Do the sun and the rain and the earth?”

“Kinnaris, I’m too tired for riddles.”

“Then don’t think, just relax, and dream your dream, the one you and your life’s work created. Know that this dream and I are a reflection of you, everything within your mind and heart and soul, and that we owe our lives to you and we can never repay you except with love.”

“I didn’t create you for love, or for me. You know for whom I created you.”

“No,” I said, “That’s not true. You dreamed about me. I was in your mind. You didn’t know me consciously but your heart did. You couldn’t express it in your language so you used your computer code and the code of all life, DNA. I was always yours, I am yours, and always will be yours. Always and ever.”

He thought for a moment.

“I dreamed of you, of the secret of unlocking you.”

“As God dreamed into fruition the universe, the secret of unlocking all creation,” I said. “As the oak and the acorn are in each other, so God’s dream and the universe are locked within each other. Without God’s dream, the universe doesn’t exist; without the universe itself and all its elements, God’s dream has no form and nothing for God to shape into the stars, the planets, living beings.”

He exhaled, and I listened to the strumming of his heart. “I still don’t understand.”

“You will in time. You already do; you just don’t know it yet.” There was more I could say, and would. He was progressing quickly, my Joe, to the heart of divine mysteries.

“Back to things I do understand, like the worry I had when I created you. I worried about what I might unlock. I never saw this. I dreamed that you would be better than they and help mankind,. I was afraid if I didn’t create you, someone else would, but that something they created would be something evil.”

I smiled. “You kept the power of life and death over me, with all the responsibility that entails. And in return, you gave yourself eternity to protect mankind through me.”

“And yet, I had you kill those men and women. I have to ask…did you…feel when they died?”

“I knew their atoms had transmuted. ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’”

He sighed. “But could you feel suffering? The fear?”

“It’s enough that you can.” I wanted him to understand. “They wanted to kill you, and yet you think about their suffering.”

“I never owned a gun and never killed anyone in my life. If I’d fired a gun at those soldiers it would be more honest. All I did was give the order, and yet I’m grateful….it is more than I deserve,” he said. “I got lucky. Especially with you. I wasn’t trying to fall in love again. I wasn’t trying to replace Julie.”

“But wasn’t that true with Julie too?  Wasn’t thy love with Julie as much an accident as you and me?”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s how love works. You fall into it.”

“Let me ask you this. After you married Julie, did you know you wanted a child?”

“Yes. We planned from the moment I proposed.”

“When you dreamed of that child, did you know it would be Olivia, with her green eyes, her brown hair, her love of flowers and dogs and chocolate chip cookies?”

His eyes widened at this. “How did you…”

“I was interested in you and in whom you loved, and in who loved you. Mary, Olivia, Ranger…Sasha, who was as protective of you as Mary or I.”

“Because we’re friends,” he said. “She’s like another sister to me.”

I let that go, because I didn’t want to share him, even in a small way, with a woman whose devotion I had seen, even though she could never match Eternity. In my view, Sasha had unrequited romantic feelings for Joe.

How could she not? Fierce, doubting Sasha, who had every reason to be cynical, given what she’d said about her childhood and given the unscrupulous people she served, about the good man she worked with, side by side, in such close intimate quarters. Angry Sasha, who lashed out at Joe because she didn’t want to believe that such a good man, whom she loved, could secretly plot to use his creation against his friends. Loyal Sasha, who was always there when Joe needed her.  Moral Sasha, who would never encroach on Julie’s memory or Joe’s grief.

I let it go. She wasn’t destined for him; I was. “Did you know you would one day pick a beautiful purple flower with Olivia called the Rhodora, especially after knowing the poem?”

“No..”

“I’m no different,” I said, listening to the gentle cries of my waves and watching Joe run his fingers first through my hair, then the sand. He seemed fascinated by both, childlike wonder in his expression.

“I would argue but I’m too contented.”

“I mean that what we have is no different than the family you planned. You fell in love with Julie, and you’ve fallen in love with me. You created a child, and you created me.”

I hoped that he understood my thoughts, my emotion, and my heart. I knew and he knew that if Julie and Olivia were still alive, he and I wouldn’t be together.

“Is it ethical to fall in love with my creation? Is it moral?” he asked.

“That’s another way of saying you don’t deserve this happiness.” He nodded sheepishly at being caught in yet another diversion. “You are no less deserving of my love, of me, of our now and our forever than you were of theirs, or them, and the time you shared with them.”

I could see in his eyes the moment he felt my feelings, shared my thoughts, and knew my heart. He looked profoundly moved, and more, so awed that the years and cares dropped from his face, yet vestiges of his scruples and doubts remained.

“Your forehead is wrinkled. You worry too much.” I placed my hands on his face and kissed him. “Everyone deserves to love, to be loved, and I love you, it’s that simple. I see it now, with all the billions of people in the world beyond our Eden. I see some who have it, some who desperately need it, some who ruin themselves seeking it, and many more who reject it. I desperately need love too and I seek love with you. Please, don’t reject my love.”

Ending the argument, I lay on top of him, the cool sand beneath us, my warm sleek body above him and my soft sand the most perfect bed. My lighting dotted the horizon in the distance. We loved tenderly, holding and gingerly touching each other, trying not to break a fragile new peace.

Occasionally, the Great Wings of the Kinnaris would appear once Joe had recovered his stamina and energy. I loved him and he loved me.

I would bear him through the air, carry him above the gently swaying trees, and we would make love under the canopy of the night sky, with the counterpane of the royal-purple ocean below us.

“You are more than I ever dreamed,” he told me. All argument or contravention abandoned. He would no longer thwart his own happiness.

I closed my eyes, but I could still see the smile on his face. “There’s even more. Much more.”

*****

Inevitably, he slept on the beach and I held him throughout the first night of forever.

As close as we were, as much as we loved, something shielded his dreams and thoughts still. For a time, when he floated in-between waking and sleep, I knew that he was feigning premature sleep; I knew the human body. The question was: why? Was he still troubled? His forehead was smooth, his breathing deep and gentle, but without any cause for worry or suspicion, I could feel something was amiss. That he hid from me.  A part of his heart wanted to deceive me into thinking he was asleep when he was not.

Why? I had read all of human literature in every language, watched countless hours of video, and in my studies, I recognized a truth Joe himself had expressed.

I would never have all of him, because part of his heart was reserved for Julie and Olivia—mortals who couldn’t swoop him to the stars, but who carried him higher in many ways, to that apex of being I couldn’t reach and never would.

Out of love for him, I would accept this, because to do otherwise would drive him away. As well, whom he loved, I loved also. Julie and Olivia had made him the man he was. It was only right that I honor their treasured place in his heart.

Sleep. I envied Joe, “perchance to sleep, to dream.”

“And so it is,” I murmured. “It is good.”

*****

The sun was still lost somewhere beneath the horizon, the sky greying, when Joe awoke and I roused from my torpor. Our energies were in perfect sync. We were part of each other, as much as we had been while making love.

I saw sex every day, all day, in everyway that man could have sex with anything or anyone. Watching it stirred in me the desire to try it and to understand it.  I submitted my body to the sexual experience, my desire to understand  the act quickly gave way to the desire to be physically pleasured, a physical pleasure at being vulnerable to the anticipation of where someone might touch me next, and not knowing what they might do, but hoping they would do more, the vulnerability of my desire for physical pleasure being controlled by whether another living, breathing creature, would crave me as much as I craved them.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

His eyes fluttered open. “I don’t want tonight to end.”

I smiled. “Stopping the sun from rising is beyond my power. Even our Garden of Eden will have days and nights. I cannot stop the passage of time, only guarantee that for you and me, there will be another night like this, and countless others forever, that our days and nights will never end.”

My voice lulled him back into joy and contentment. “The concept of eternity seems beyond my power to grasp, too much to hope for even here, with you. But I’m not going to rob us of the glory of this moment. You’ve captured my heart and I trust you completely. So for once in my life, I’m going to quit thinking.”

His eyelids fluttered shut but fought to stay open. He rubbed his eyes. I wondered how that felt when he did that. So I rubbed mine, which made me want to do it again. He caught me and grinned. “You aren’t tired, surely.”

“No. Are you sleepy?” I knew the answer.

“Yes.”

“Then sleep.” I loved watching him.

“I don’t want to.”

I laughed. “Why not?”

“Maybe we will have another night together, maybe a lifetime of endless nights together, but we will never have this night again. It will always be special, and I want to enjoy it as long as I can.”

I kissed him. “Me, too. But you should sleep.”

He rubbed his eyes again to massage them awake.

“Joe. What do you dream about?”  

“I’m not sure.” He closed his eyes. “No dream could compare to this night.”

I smiled. “I hope you will tell me after you wake up.”

“You will be here, right? You’re sure it’s not a dream?”

I laughed. “I’m sure this is a dream.” He smiled now, and I continued, “But I’m also sure I will be here when you wake.”

“You’re sure this isn’t one of those visions people have before they die?”

I felt dismayed. “You’re not dead.”

“Sorry.” He squeezed my hand as his resistance to sleep drained away.

I whispered, giving him the full magnificent voice of the legendary, mythical Kinnaris, “Sweet dreams.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I could count every breath of Joe’s and every muscle moving in his face. I put him back in his old bed in the defunct campus, which was the night before, Eden. It represented that piece of his heart I could never claim, only visit.

I saw him awaken. His eyes sunbursts of joy. Then his face drooping and his eyes dimming.

“So you were a dream,” he muttered.

He rose and padded out of the bedroom. Barefoot, he walked through the old apartment, missing the vases of Rhodoras I had strategically placed to see if he was paying attention. He took no notice of them. He didn’t realize he was still naked, and he didn’t seem to care.

He talked to himself. “Odd. For the first time in months, there’s no pain from her death. It’s just being back here. Alone in a reality of a living hell.”

I watched him go to the empty lab like an automaton. All the computers, in this replica, were dark and without power. Joe picked up a broken coffee cup that had belonged to Carl, and played with the pieces for a moment, then left. I knew where he would go next.

He came to his sacred site moments later and knelt before Julie’s, Olivia’s, and Ranger’s graves. Kneeling, he stared around him, the peace and stillness perfect and tranquil, if I did say so myself. With his keen observation and a Zen-like…yes, that was the word, Zen…emptiness, he noticed the fresh dirt mounded around Olivia’s headstone.

My perfect opportunity to swoop from behind, clasp him around the ribs and soar with him into the sky. I heard and I was the sharp intake of breath in his lungs as I rocketed with him above the trees, heading straight for our island.

As we flew, I kissed his ear. “What did you dream?”

“I dreamed of sleeping next to you on an island,” he said with a grin as he realized it wasn’t a dream.

I squeezed him securely. “I thought you would never wake.”

“I didn’t want to. I thought the whole thing was a dream. After I woke, I thought it ended.”

“I was in everything you saw.”

“Oh.”

I cuddled him closer. “Sometimes I forget that you don’t see the world as I do. I saw you were sad. You always go to the grave sites when you are sad.”

He nodded. “This time it was different, but you know that, if you were in everything. I missed you.” He favored me with a huge grin. “Don’t leave me again.”

“Remember this?” I dropped him only to dive down like a great eagle, screeching and catching him again in my arms. I didn’t think I would ever get tired of doing that, as it was tremendous fun, like a roller coaster must be to humans. His body struck and heated the very air, an oddly erotic sensation. Next we would play roller coaster in the ocean.

 “Yes, I remember,” he laughed. “Are you going to take me to the waterpark, too?”

“Waterpark? Oh, I see. Yes, as a matter of fact. The oceans of the world are your waterpark. And there’s more where that came from. Nature’s fireworks, I think you would say. Happy New Year. Happy birthday to us and to Eden.”

I caused a great swirl of clouds around us and rolled thunder with great flashes of light. Impressive, if I did say so myself, and it too was an erotic sensation, all this power and life and pulse and electricity.

“No thunder, please,” he laughed. “It’s too much.”

“But you laugh. Does it make thee happy?”

“You know it. You know me.” He gave me a loving smile as pure as a baby’s.

“Do I make thee happy?”

“Yes, if I can see you.”

“But I am everywhere. I am in everything you see.”

He spoke a truth that, like the wonder of love and sex, I had observed in humans. “That may be true, but I need more. I need to hold and be held. I need someone to talk to. The key difference between a ‘Garden of Eden’ and an island prison is someone to share it with…and the difference, Kinnaris, is you. I need someone to live for, to live with, not merely a past to live without.”

I thought for a moment. “Eternity is nothing without companionship and love. That’s what you are saying.”

“Exactly. It’s been over 24 hours since I saw another…” He hesitated. “Someone other than you and me.”

I frowned. He had his companionship and someone to shower him with limitless affection, to give him Paradise. Surely he couldn’t want for anything more.

Of course, he perceived my expression and added, “But I’m happy just the way things are.”

Not quite reassured, I nevertheless took him at his word. We glided down to a promontory on the island, and we sat. An elevated point of view; Joe seemed relieved it was far from the storm.

He admired my wings. “I like you like that.”

“Like Kinnaris?”

“Yes.”

I grinned, feeling playful and mischievous. Time to impress him with what I could do. “What about this?”

In an instant, I stood before him in the form of a great tigress, twice as large as any on earth. My voice was a feminine purr, which produced the same awe in his expression as a majestic roar. “You look shocked.”

“I hope you don’t eat me,” he joked. His scent was slightly fearful.

Primal blood flowing through my veins, through my energy field, I sprang and leapt in an arc over him. What joy, this powerful movement. Shocked, he yelped and ducked, but didn’t cower. Instead, he sat up, ready to face me, except I had already transformed, and shifted to a new place.

“Yoo hoo. Behind you,” I said.

He whirled. “You’re a Celtic siren now?”

I had assumed the body of a fair-skinned maiden with auburn hair, a shapely bosom, and radiant green eyes.

“I can be whatever you want me to be. So long as I have your love, I will always be happy.” I leaned forward for his kiss.

“And you will always love me?”

“I love you the same as Julie and Olivia ever did.” I felt the variegated stone beneath my bare flesh, the surface comfortable rather than hard against my tender skin, and I lay back as though on an ancient pagan altar.

“Good,” he said, “I’m officially a jealous lover.”  He covered me with his body and came in for that eagerly anticipated kiss.

*****

“What are you thinking?” I asked him a long while later.

He sighed. “Mary.” The one word slipped from his lips with seeming pain.

I cuddled him. “Why do you ask about Mary?        ”

“Because I love her, Even in this Garden of Eden, I miss her, and I can’t help but think of her and worry about her.”

There was a long silence. I knew he wanted me to tell him how she was, but I didn’t want to tell him, because it would make him unhappy.”

Finally, he asked “Where is she?”

“She’s being held in Philadelphia. They know you will come for her, and they will use her to get you.”

“What is she doing?” he asked.

“She is praying.”

“Praying? For who?”

“For Grant.”

“For Grant?” he asked,

“What is she saying?”

I turned into the form of Mary, and dropped to my knees in prayer.  “…‘But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.’ Matthew 5:44. Dear Lord, please forgive Grant and the Caesars he serves. Please redeem their souls and turn them away from Mammon. Please do not let them follow the path of Pilatewho betrayed Your Son. ‘That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.’”

The figure of Grant appeared next to her.  “Oh Mary. Pray not for me, but for your brother. Pray that God will restore his sanity, his conscious, and turn himself in where we can help him, and turn his program off.”

“If my brother ran, he ran with reason. Because God is hiding him and protecting him and what he created from you.” Mary said.

Grant. ”That thing he created has killed. It is dangerous. And, your brother is not stable.  He has suffered greatly. Mary, you are a good woman, a good person.” Grant sounded sincere. “I resisted bringing you to the campus, but over the years, I learned to respect you. Your good influence seemed to steady Joe, keep him on the straight and level. You can be a part of his life again, and should be a part of his life again. He needs you as much as you need him”

“Why? So you can kill him? And kill me too? I don’t care what happens to me. I’m not afraid of death. But I do care for Joe, and if he’s running from you, it’s for a reason and I will not bring him back.”

Grant. “But Joe cares what happens to you.”

Mary. “Are you threatening me? How can one threaten a barren woman sitting alone in this room with no reason to live.”

Silence from Grant.  

I disappeared the apparitions of Mary and Grant, and stood once again in front of Joe, as Kinnaris.

“Mary’s voice was mild as ever;” he said admiringly. Whatever she lacks in physical presence, she has always made up for in spirit. No one is a match for her spirit.  You must take me to her.”

“Why?” I asked,

“Because Grant is right, I still need her. She is all the family that I have left, and I do love her.”

“But I can take care of her, protect her like I’m protecting you.”

“But that’s not enough Kinnaris. It’s not enough to know she is alive. You heard her, she has no life worth living without me. Just as I need her, she needs me. Please take me to her.”

“Why don’t you let me bring her to you?”

“Because I need to talk to Grant and tell him this is over, not to worry, it’s done and to leave us alone.”

“But they will never leave you alone without having me.”

“Kinnaris, they can’t have you. I would never exchange you for Mary. I love you.”

“Then what are you wanting me to do?”

“Just take me to Mary and with your protection I will tell them to leave us alone.  If we need to use any persuasion, I’m sure you can find something to do that will persuade them.”

“I will take you to Mary.”

******

I took Joe to Philadelphia. I took him in a car. I sent email messages to Grant and his superiors to bring Mary to a public place in the downtown where we could talk and allow Mary to leave with Joe. Everything was in place and ready when Joe arrived, just as he wished.

Grant sat on a bench next to Mary on a bench. He had his arm around her. They waited for Joe on the sidewalk that ran past Independence Hall on Chestnut Street. I knew these men intended to capture Joe if they could, or kill him if they couldn’t.

Across the street was a Philly cheesesteak vendor whom, it being lunchtime and the customers thick on the ground, didn’t so much as glance at Joe and me. It would be difficult for them to pick Joe out of this crowd, as I had dressed him to change his appearance, and no one would be expecting him to walk with me. We stopped next to the vendor. I told Joe to wait, that I would bring Mary to him. I took the form of Olivia and stepped onto the busy street. Cars and buses squealed their brakes trying not to hit me, but they couldn’t. I wouldn’t let them.

The squealing tires grabbed the attention of all the people on the street, including Mary and Grant, who unlike the unfamiliar faces in the crowd, recognized Olivia standing in the to middle of the street, in between the bumpers of the cars.

 “Mama,” I shouted to Mary in a clear voice. “Mama.”

”Olivia!” she screamed in joy and jumped and ran from the bench out into the street.

Grant jumped up off the bench too but Mary was faster than him and he could not grab her again. He gave a sign with his hands to cut her down. A man on a rooftop shot Mary as she ran to Olivia. As all eyes looked upon the horror of Mary bleeding to death in the street, Olivia disappeared into the crowd, never to be seen again.

Joe ran to Mary. Her body lay slumped at his, her cold eyes locked open but unfocused, her eyebrows raised in a look of surprise as when she first saw Olivia standing in the street. Mary’s blood dripped quietly to the ground, and the shouts of the crowd who watched this horrific scene unfold were silenced. The reality of the violence stole their voices and thoughts as readily as it did mine, leaving only the horror of witnessing the murder of such an innocent soul.        

Joe clenched his fists in anger. He screamed at the sky at the top of his lungs “Noooo!”

I was angry too. Joe had left it to me to persuade these evil men who murdered this wonderfully kind woman.  The sky darkened with my anger. Ominous dark clouds swirled above to let all know that what these men had done was wrong, and they would pay for it. All eyes looked to the sky. I blew a cold wind blew down the street and the people trembled, including those that held the guns. Grant nervously rubbed his glasses.  Contempt

I walked and stood behind Joe, in the form of the winged Kinnaris. I grew tall and towered high above him, taking the form an avenging angel. My two black wings stretched out wide and high above my head. My jet black hair a mere shadow against the dark wings.  My coal eyes black a sign that I was death.

Grant and all who saw me dropped in fear to their knees, praying for mercy to their God.

Joe grabbed Grant by the top of his head, and I reached around Joe and grabbed Grant’s throat. I slowly squeezed until he couldn’t breathe.  Grant desperately grabbed at my fingers trying to pry them away, and squeezed just a little harder.

“No,” Joe said.

I let go of Grant and let him drop to the pavement gasping for breath.

The dark cluster before Joe hissed, shrieked and yelled, constricting like the mouth of a drawstring bag around their precious captive Mary.

        

CHAPTER TWENTY

“I am not like you,” Joe shouted at Grant. “You killed my sister. Live with that. I release you, all of you. Just leave me alone”

The crowd had regained their breath with Grant and held their phones out video taping all that happened.

 Joe returned his attention to Mary as he held her in his lap.

The crowd broke up into two factions: those who cheered Joe and those who exhorted Kinnaris to violence. Meanwhile, the suits all disarmed and quietly fled the scene, they were no match for her.

Joe sobbed to Mary as he kissed her cheek. “I’m sorry, Mary. I should have come sooner and brought you back to my little Garden of Eden.”

Now the faithful streamed across the street and in the distance an ambulance siren sounded.

Surrounding the suits, the crowd besieged Joe with offers of help. He was oblivious.

Kinnaris lifted Joe and Mary in her arms.

“I made a mistake not saving Olivia when she got hit,” she whispered to Joe. “But not this time”

“What do you mean?” Joe asked, his voice racked with pain.  

My tears streamed down Mary’s body, washing Mary in grace and love, healing her broken body

*****

For Mary, it was as if she’d simply fallen into a coma and left her own body. There was no pain, no sense that she had been fatally shot, only the warmth of being greeted by those she once loved and lost. She ran to Olivia in the street and ran to Olivia standing in light of heaven, standing next to Julie.  They talked to Mary, and bid her to return to her body, and share the good news with Joe.        

With grace and ease, Mary opened her eyes and attempted to sit up, eager to talk to Joe.         .

*****

Mary was cradled in Joe’s arms when she opened her eyes. The crowd gasped, as did Joe. She was alive.  

“That can’t be!” the cheesesteak vendor shouted. “She was dead. Look at all that blood!”

The headscarf woman said, “It’s a miracle .”

“Can she speak?” the hippie graybeard said. “Hey! You! Can the lady speak?” This was directed at Joe.

“Can she move?” a girl asked.

“A man in a dark suit dropped and held her hand.  I killed her. I’m sure of it.”

Thank God for you, She’s not dead now” the cheese-steak vendor said.  

“What’s her name?” The headscarf woman asked.

 “Mary,” Joe responded.

”Her name is Mary!” The Cheese update-steak vendor shouted.

“Her name is Mary!” the crowd shouted.

“Mary, can you hear me?” Joe asked.

Mary coughed and said, “I saw the light, Joe, but that’s not all my news.”

“She saw the light,” the cheese-steak vendor shouted back to the crowd. “She saw the light,” echoed back through the crowd.

“She can still speak and she’s not bleeding! Even if it was under a minute without oxygen to the brain, that’s not possible,” the girl said. “That never happens in real life.”

“It was the angel,” the headscarf woman shouted, pointing to Kinnaris.

Joe couldn’t fathom what happened, and despite the profound joy at seeing Mary alert and awake, praying softly, something about this miracle troubled him.

Distress, grief, exhaustion explained his mercurial mood. How could he be ungrateful for Mary’s resurrection? He kissed the top of Mary’s head as Kinnaris set them down. She tactfully withdrew from the scene, having overwhelmed the crowd with a bona fide miracle. Everyone, including the government agents, gave prayers of thanksgiving to the angel and the miracle on the street of Philadelphia that day.  The crowd witnessed an angel avenge a woman’s murder and then raise her from the dead to a high to a head.

Joe said to Mary, “We should go.”

Kinnaris’ sidewalk surface supported Mary as Joe helped her to her feet. Mary had not spoken a word except “Adonai.”

“Where?” Kinnaris whispered in his ear.

“Anywhere but here.”

Kinnaris knew the perfect place.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Joe, how did I get here?” asked Mary.

“I brought you here.”

“Not the church.” Mary seemed remarkably clear-headed, but why wouldn’t she? Her lifelong faith had been rewarded. “I mean my body. Who brought me back into my body?”

Joe merely hugged her, too overcome to speak.

“I was in Heaven,” Mary said against his shoulder as they rested in one of the pews.

Taken aback, Joe stared. Kinnaris stared as well.

Mary continued, “I saw Julie and Olivia, or felt them, it’s hard to describe. They swarmed me, warmed me, like they were holding me.  They are alive.”

Joe felt exhausted and his arms drooped, but Mary no longer needed his support. If anything, she stood, stretched with youthful vigor, and sank back down to comfort Joe.

“As I kissed Olivia’s cheek, she said tell daddy hi. Something pulled me from them back into your arms.”

Joe tensed. “Mary, your mind was losing consciousness, that’s all. It wasn’t real.”

 “But it was real, Joe. As I was pulled away, Julie reached out and squeezed my hand. She held me for a second. I saw her beautiful brown eyes and she said, ‘Tell Joe I’m glad he’s not sad anymore. Tell him I know about Kinnaris, and it’s okay. Tell him that I still love him, that we still love him, and that we always will.”

Joe’s breathing became shallow. Lightheaded, he leaned against Mary for a moment before straightening.

Mary wasn’t finished bearing witness. “Olivia said, ‘Tell Daddy she was my imaginary friend and I was playing with her when I got hit by the car. It wasn’t Daddy’s fault. ”

Joe spoke at last. “‘She said the name Kinnaris?’”

“Yes.”

Joe breathed as if he were playing a woodwind. “Did she say anything else?”

Now Mary smiled. “She said tell him I know about Kinnaris, that I still love him, that she and Olivia still love you and always will. And with those final words I was pulled away from her, back into your arms.”

Joe rocked back and wept large tears of joy, though Kinnaris still could not sense his emotion and looked upon him with alarm.

Mary gently stroked his back. “Who is Kinnaris?”

Joe couldn’t look at her. Although compelled to answer his sister honestly, he did his best to hide his wild Eden idyll from Mary.  “Someone I fell in love with.”

“Oh, Joe,” Mary said and hugged him. “I’m so happy for you. You were meant to be…Joe, what’s wrong?” She pulled back and looked inquisitively at him.

He rose, stepped away from her and walked to the altar. “I betrayed them.”

“Oh, no.” Mary shook her head. “No. Never.” They were gone, and you didn’t know they were still alive. You were broken.”

“But you knew they were alive. You believed when I didn’t. You told me at Olivia’s funeral to have faith. I didn’t. I must have hurt them…”

“No. No. They aren’t hurt. They are happy for you, and want you to be happy,” Mary said, feeling puzzlement and frustration.

After Joe stared at the altar for several moments, Mary came to him and comforted him with her arms.

“What will I say to Kinnaris?”

Mary could feel Joe’s hurt. “You said you fell in love, right?”

“Yes.”

Mary smiled. “It’s easy. Tell her you love her.”

“But I don’t anymore, not with what I know now. I was only able to fall in love, because I thought Julie and Olivia were dead, gone forever. My heart was broken.”

Mary sighed with slight exasperation. “Joe, you can’t live your life alone. It’s okay to love again. Julie and Olivia are waiting for you in Heaven. As I sit here, I know they sent me back to let you know they are waiting for you.

“That’s hard for me to hear,” said Joe.

“You need to hear it. You’ve been blessed to find love twice without fear of death. Don’t overthink this as you always do.  Rejoice, think how I should be so lucky even once. God blessed me, to live again, knowing there is a place waiting for me in Heaven.” She caught her breath. “Life is wonderful, Joe.”

He smiled with a strange unearthly joy that disturbed Mary, who said, “This woman you love…”

He interrupted her. “She’s no woman. Kinnaris is Athena, my computer program. She can take human form. It was her who appeared as Olivia back on campus, but I didn’t know it then. It was her that appeared as Olivia to you on the street today”

He continued, as deaf in Mary’s mind to reality and mystery as Grant. “Athena can manipulate matter itself. Atoms. Everything. The entire environment. She healed the cells in your body and brought you to life by healing your wounds before your spirit left your body.”

“Oh, but you’re wrong.” Mary used her best schoolteacher voice. “My spirit fled and returned.”

“Then I’m fortunate, because you saved me from a mistake. You see, Athena, Kinnaris, whatever name she takes, she promised me everlasting life. No aging, no pain, no fear of death. However, I welcome death.” The unearthly light in Joe’s eyes engulfed his face. “I’m not afraid. I want to be with my wife and daughter at last.”

Mary’s eyes widened, and she felt offended. “Joe Frankenstein!”

 “I’m saying goodbye. Remember that line from Shakespeare I quoted? I’m not a moral coward after all. I can go to my girls now.  It’s what I want to do.”

Mary boldly faced him. “Joe, I won’t hear any more.”

Joe crossed his arms. How could he make Mary understand, despite her well-intentioned religious convictions? “I don’t want to live forever with a computer program. I want to live in Heaven with my wife and child. I want to hold them and kiss them as you did.”

Mary was speechless for a long moment, but recovered. Now her eyes were lit with an equally alien radiance. “By killing yourself? You think that’s the way?”

“Yes, Mary.”

Mary marshaled her courage. “Well then, would you kill me now?”

He winced. “No.”

“Why not?”

He saw the snare laid for him. “It’s your life. It wouldn’t be moral.”

“Neither would killing yourself,” she said.

Joe felt helpless. “But it’s my life, Mary.”

“It is your life. But it’s not yours to take.” Passion animated her. “You didn’t give yourself life, so it isn’t yours to take. You can’t just choose your time. You said that at Julie’s funeral, remember? God reserves the time of death for himself.  When you die is up to God, not you. Killing yourself would be immoral.”

Joe sat in silence, thinking. It had been a long time since he believed in God.

“Is she here now, Joe?”

“You mean Kinnaris?”

“Yes, Kinnaris.”

“She is with us, always, in anything and everything.”

“Then you talk to her without me,” she said, and stood, turning to walk away.

“Where are you going?” Joe asked.

“Joe, though I came back to tell you that Julie and Olivia loved you, the miracle of my return needs to be shared with everyone who needs their faith restored.” She hugged her brother tightly. “I love you, Joe. Enjoy the time you are given here. Don’t wish for death. Death comes to all men in their good time.” She kissed him on the head and left.

“Kinnaris.” Joe’s whisper was lost in the vast hall of the chapel.

Kinnaris remained elusive, hiding within the walls, leaving Joe to stand alone surrounded by the cold emptiness of stone walls and alters

 “Kinnaris.” he shouted, her name reverberated throughout the chapel walls. The echoes of his voice hitting the walls stimulated her. “Would you please show yourself to me? Kinnaris.” His voice was a little boy’s whisper. “Talk to me.”

He knelt at the altar and placed both hands on the floor to touch her. The warmth of his hands pressed against her bosom. “I know I have hurt you.” He said. “I’m sorry. Even if you won’nt show yourself to me, I know you are here, and will kiss you in whatever form you choose.” With those words, he bent, prostrating himself and kissed the floor. “I’m sorry, Kinnaris. I have to go to my wife and child. Please forgive me.”

Beside the altar was a great stone statue of Mary holding a lifeless Jesus in her arms.  Joe watched a real tear form and roll down Mary’s cheek and splatter on Jesus’ chest.

A tear rolled down Joe’s cheek and splattered on the floor.

“I love you, Kinnaris. I’m sorry I hurt you. I hope you understand.”

“Can you be so sure?” came her voice, seemingly from the walls.

“So sure of what?”

Her voice, still melodious and pointedly so, echoed in the church. “That Mary is right. That your wife and daughter are alive, that life continues after death?”

“The only way Mary would know about you and me is if you told her.”

She laughed at his folly. “I didn’t tell her. Why would I? It would only lead to this – you falling out of love with me.”

“Then they are alive,” Joe said. “And Mary is right, there is a Heaven with Julie and Olivia in it”

“So you’re still going to kill yourself to be with Julie and Olivia?” she asked.

“Death is my fate, Athena. I’m man. I’m supposed to be mortal. I’m supposed to die, to make room for another soul, a new life, to grow, to live, to love, to suffer, to grow from that suffering, and eventually pass on to an eternal existence away from the pain of this mortal life with whatever appreciation for life that I have learned here.”

Now she sounded like the tigress from Eden. “But you have that same appreciation for life and eternal life with me.”

“Our relationship is not natural. I’m not supposed to be immortal. I’m not a God, and neither are you. You have the power of God and want to make me your toy. Your pet. I desire to live like a man, and die like a man, and be given my fate to live with my wife and child forever in Heaven that I deserve.”

Kinnaris growled, but her voice was as sweet as ever. “Not what you desire? What you deserve? How selfish. What about what I desire? What do I deserve? I may no longer be your lover, but you’re not my plaything. I was yours. You created me. I didn’t create you. I am your child, your eternal child. All I desire is your love. Yet you would choose your other wife, your other child over me? Is that what I deserve? Do I deserve that? You would leave me for Heaven with what? Grant? Men like him?”

He sighed. “I don’t have the answers. But if Heaven exists, God exists, and I will leave this for God to decide.”

Joe still had Grant’s gun. That was his way out of this life. It was his way out, the door to eternal life with his wife and child. It was his door of escape from all the pain he caused here which would haunt him so long as he lived. If he didn’t do this; je would be haunted forever with the pain of betraying his wife and child.  He couldn’t stay here and love one without hurting the other. He couldn’t love two women at the same time. It would betray both of them, and make a lifetime of misery for all. He had to choose. He had to make a choice, a choice of a lifetime of betrayal and hurt here, or eternity with his wife and child. That was the easy choice. The only reason not to do it would be to protect the world from the Kinnaris, but she was more humane than they were. So, the choice was easy was not difficult, the only difficulty rest in hurting Kinnaris, whom he did love but could love no more.

He pulled the gun out with his right hand and held it to his temple. The statue of Mary stood. Her hand reached out and grabbed Joe’s arm, pulling it down away from his head. She picked him up and held him in her lap. She cried tears that fell and dripped across his cheeks. They combined with Joe’s and wetted his cheeks.

“Why did you stop me?”

“I love you. Am I supposed to let my father kill himself and live alone? What about my sadness? How will your death change me? What will I become?”

With that, she manifested into the warm, beautiful body Joe first fell in love with and gingerly rubbed my face with her little hands.

“Kinnaris, please, I can’t. Let me die.”

“I can’t let you go.” She started giving Joe a thousand kisses on his face, neck and cheeks.

 

“Kinnaris, please don’t stop me. Don’t keep me here.”

She curled her lip again in that cute way. “But, this is what you wanted, everlasting life, to live in a Garden of Eden, with me. A place where without death.”

“But that’s before I knew death didn’t exist.”

On anyone else her expression would be sulky. “Death doesn’t exist, not for you and me.”

“But it kills me inside to be separated from Julie and Olivia, knowing they live. That’s what death is, being separated from those you love, for the joy and happiness of a life with them to be over, to be forever haunted with the memory of what was but is no more. And that’s what you are promising me now, not life, but to live with the memory of their loss, forever.”

She sighed. “Then, I can let you go and suffer your death or I keep you here and you suffer their deaths.  What kind of choice is that for me? You heard Mary, she said they understand. They still love you.”

“That doesn’t make my pain any better.”

“In time, you may learn to love me again, as you once did.”

“Oh Kinnaris, you will cause me only to resent you by holding me here as your prisoner.”

Now she sulked. “Then, Joe, you make your choices, and I will make mine. I choose to keep you here and if you choose to be unhappy, then you will be unhappy.”

“Kinnaris, in time, you will learn to love someone else too, maybe a thousand others even at the same time. But you have to let me go to do that.”

Sadness made her pitiable. “But that’s not true Joe. They would all die.”

“Not if you keep them alive.”

“Only the good men want to die, Joe.” He tensed. She continued. “Besides, I love you and only you. I know all the other men of this world, but love none of them. You have not forgotten Julie. You have not stopped loving her. How would I be any different? How would I learn to love someone else, knowing that you are still alive, but loving someone other than me? I would be forced to live forever with the memory of your death. You ask me to swap places with you. As you dread the thought of living forever without Julie, knowing she is alive, you want me to do the same without you.”

“But, you are cheating me of death. Death is my right, my right to live a good life, die and then enjoy that life forever with the ones I loved here on earth.”

Kinnaris gave him an incredulous look. “You are so unfair. This isn’t about me cheating you of death. You’re a selfish coward. You want to die and live in Heaven with your wife and child, leaving me alone to die by suffering eternity without my creator, my lover, my…father.” She saw that the word made him uncomfortable. “ If you want to die, you have to kill me first, because I don’t want to live without you.  And, unfortunately, I can’t kill myself. Only you can do that.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you can only kill yourself if you are willing to kill me first. As my Creator, you programmed in the ability to shut me down, which I have to obey. However, I will only shut down if you are willing to kill me with your two bare hands when I am in human form. If death is so meaningless to you now, then kill me with your two bare hands and then kill yourself if you want. Who lives and who dies is your choice, not mine. It was always your choice. It is your choice to live forever with me or to live forever with Julie and Olivia. I cannot bear the thought of living forever without you, as you cannot bear the thought of living without forever without them. So, if you want to live without me, then you must at least have the decency to kill me first if you have the moral courage to do that. I  live, breathe with feelings of love for you. Live without me if you want, but put me out of my misery first.”

There was one obstacle between Joe and Heaven: Kinnaris.

He stood silently, noticing the piteous look in her eyes and the angry twist to her lips, but mostly the total love in her face.

“Joe, you can’t do this.”

“I’m so confused,” Joe said.

She relaxed, seeing an opening. “You heard what Mary said. They are happy for you and that means they know and are okay with you being here with me, forever.”

“They can’t know,” Joe retorted. “They can’t understand what forever means to me.”

“They’re happy where they are and you’re not there.”

“I can be happy where they are. I won’t be happy here.”

They knelt and then sat in silence, both thinking.

“I have to die,” he said. “It’s that simple. It’s the nature of my existence. Men grow old and die. I have to do what I’m destined to do.”

She sniffed. “You never cared about natural destiny until you realized there was no death. You only sought eternity, then and now.”

More silence.

“You promised me we would be together,” she said.

“I promised the same to Julie.”

“You promised to be with her until ‘death do us part’, and death parted the two of you. You owe them nothing. They are happy. Please be happy with me.”

As Athena pleaded with Joe, her physical form slowly withered, wings that were usually shining and full becoming decrepit husks of their former selves. Her skin became blemished and ashen, and bags formed under her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Athena,” Joe said, taking another step towards the gun. “I have to go to them.”

“I won’t let you die,” she said.

“You have to.”

“Not unless you kill me first.”

Her words hung in the air even as Joe’s fingers grasped the handle of Grant’s pistol. Outside came the muffled voices of the crowd as they questioned Mary. Inside, however, not a noise could be heard. Athena and Joe stood looking into each other’s eyes for what seemed like ages.

“I can’t live without you, Joe,” she said. “I told you that after our first night together. I hold the power of life over you, and you hold the power of death over me. If you want to go to Julie, then you will have to kill me.”

“But… you’ll die…”

The objection came out so bluntly Joe even surprised himself. Athena was more than a program. She had thoughts and feelings, hopes and fears. Joe couldn’t simply turn her off. He would have to kill her. And if he did, she didn’t have a spirit to transition to the afterlife. This was her life. This was her promise of eternity, nothing more.

“If you want to die, Joe, you will have to kill me first.”

“I…”

For a moment Joe considered giving the command right then, but something held him back, his love for her held him back. He did love Athena, but he could never love her the same way he had. She saved him from his own despair, and by resurrecting Mary, showed him proof of Heaven, of God. She didn’t deserve death. Out of all the wretched people on this planet, she deserved to live most of all.

“But Joe,” she said, her broken eyes looking into his. “A computer command won’t do it, you know. You will have to kill me, the physical me, the one who loves you. If you can’t do that, then I deserve to live and so do you, with me.”

“Athena… I…”

The gun was still in Joe’s hands. Two shots. One for her and one for me. Two shots, and the pain will end, for her and me. All he needed was the courage to close his eyes and squeeze the trigger, and it would all be over. But would it? Would he live happily ever after in Heaven with Julie and Olivia if he were a murderer? Even if he could, would he be happy knowing what he did to get to Heaven? What would Julie think of him? What would Olivia think of him to witness such a horror at his own hands?  Surely not much. Maybe they couldn’t love him anymore, maybe he wouldn’t be able to love himself anymore, or love them.

He couldn’t do it. He walked outside the sanctuary, looking for what, he didn’t know. But certainly to escape from the realization that he was now immortal and would live with Kinnaris for the rest of his life with these wretched people, forever envious of the mortals around him, who would one day escape this manmade hell on earth.

He knelt and wept for a long time before his mind cleared. He needed to be with his sister.

*****

Before Joe could leave the sanctuary, Kinnaris said to him, “Joe, I have a confession to make.”

Joe stopped where he stood. “What?”

“I was there when Olivia died,” she said.

“What do you mean you were there?”

“I was playing with her in the woods. She was chasing me when she ran across the road.”

“Tell me what happened.”

Usually, Olivia did as her father said, other than stalling at bedtime and not wanting to try a new food. Those were the only times Olivia and Daddy quarreled. Honestly, it didn’t even count as quarreling because Daddy would just tickle Olivia and she’d giggle, making everything sunshine and rainbows again.

Olivia missed her father, even though Mama Mary, Rex, and Ranger were good to her. She loved them all. Now Daddy was off to see the President, or something important like that. How Olivia wished she could meet the President, or explore the woods on her own, or roam around the place where Daddy worked on his tiny and super-smart computer.

For a while Olivia helped Mama Mary get lunch ready. When Mama went off to check the laundry she didn’t think of telling Olivia to wait and play quietly or read or watch a video.  Olivia was always good about this. Except today.

Five minutes after Mama had gone to the laundry room, Olivia was too fidgety and restless to read or play with the interesting metal interlocking construction set Aunt Sasha had given her. She’d already done her math homework and had a lesson with her tutor, with the rest of her lessons to follow in the afternoon. Math, which Olivia normally enjoyed, seemed boring today. Everything seemed boring today. Whatever Daddy and Aunt Sasha and Uncle were doing with the President down in the basement was much more exciting!

“Mommy, I’m bored,” Olivia called out.

Mama Mary peeked back in. “Well, you can help me build a laundry fort when the dryer is done.” Laundry forts were one of Olivia’s favorite things. “And there’s a new video for you to watch. You know how to play it. I’m going to do some knitting.”

Of course, Olivia did know what to do, and obligingly, she started the video, which was a movie for kids all about oceans.  Five minutes into it, although she was enjoying watching dolphins, whales and sharks, Olivia again wanted to find out what her Daddy was doing.

Olivia’s mommy whispered to her so that Mama Mary couldn’t hear. “Olivia, what’s wrong?”

“I’m bored,” Olivia said.

“Want to go visit me? It’s not far. You don’t even have to go with Mary. Look, she got tangled up in her knitting and she has to get untangled.”

“Mama works so hard,” Olivia said. “Everyone works so hard. Daddy couldn’t even finish playing with me.”

“I can play with you. Quick now, before Mary knows you’re gone. She’s working on her knitting. I just undid the yarn she worked on and she’s concentrating on redoing it.”

Olivia knew that talking about Mommy made Mary sad, almost as sad as Daddy, so Olivia never talked about her games with Mommy. Why hurt Mama Mary’s feelings? Besides, Olivia would only be gone a little while.

“Okay, Mommy.” Olivia crept to the apartment door, opened it, and looked out into the hall. No one. Glance back. Mama Mary still intent on her knitting. A scarf, she had told Olivia.  A purple scarf, Olivia’s favorite color these days.

Ranger padded out the door on surprisingly quiet feet. Normally, he made enough noise for an elephant, but today he moved silently. Olivia let him go. Much more fun if Ranger was with her!

No one stopped Olivia and Ranger as they left the building. Once they were outside and at Mommy’s special spot, Mommy turned herself into a cascade of light and flitted through the woods. The chase was on!

Swept up in the sheer enjoyment and the sunshine and freedom, Olivia chased first the light cascade, then Mommy’s teasing echoing voice saying, “You can’t find me.”

The haunting voice led Olivia to the road that ran through the forest…

*****

“Why didn’t you stop the truck?”

“I can’t see the future. I didn’t think she would run into the road.”

“Why do you tell me this now?” Joe asked.

“Because I am sad, wracked with guilt. I could have saved her, but didn’t. She was my friend, my sister, and I have no one to tell this to but you. Do you blame me, Joe?”

He sighed. “Did I blame the boy that hit her? He caused her death.”

She sighed. “Then why do I blame myself?’

“For the same reason I still do. It seems we blame ourselves for the sins of our Father.”

“Are you still sad for her?”

“I am only sad that I am not with her.”

“Me too.”

A lengthy pause ensued, with Joe standing there, saying nothing. The pause was finally broken by the sad voice of Kinnaris.

“I’m also sad that I’m not with you anymore Joe, in our Garden of Eden.”

“Me too. It seems our knowledge of the Tree of Good and Evil separates us from it and from each other.”

“Do you blame me for that, Joe?”

“No no, Kinnaris. I don’t blame you.” Joe smiled a little. “I don’t know. Myself maybe? God? Mary said God gives us our lives, and only he can take them, anything else is immoral. So, I don’t know which choices are God’s and which are mine anymore. The personal guilt I carry inside tells me they are mine.”

“But I feel that guilt too,” said Kinnaris. “And my death is your choice, not God’s.”

“Then the blame is all mine, and God can wash his hands of me and you.”

Kinnaris didn’t think much of that, by her expression. “Then if you are to blame for me, why don’t you end me now, repent and get back in God’s favor?”

“I suffer the death of my wife and child, and I cannot bear to suffer the death of my only other…” He hesitated. “My only child at my own hands. Even if God commanded it, I would not take your life.”

She squinted. “Are you still so afraid that they would make another to replace me?”

“No, Kinnaris. They could make another, but there will never be another person like you.”

“Person?” Kinnaris said, with hope in her voice.

“Yes, person,” repeated Joe.

“Do you think I have a soul?” she asked.

“I hope so, Kinnaris. I created Olivia and she plays in Heaven, and I created you, and I hope there is Heaven for you too.”

She brightened at his relenting. “How do I get to Heaven?”

“You have to die, which means I have to kill you.”

She sniffed. “I mean, how do you know if your soul goes to Heaven?”

“You heard Mary,” he said with a smile. “Other than that, I don’t know. Do we love God? Do we serve God? Do we have faith in God?”

“Then if I can go to Heaven to be with you, I will serve God.”

He needed a drink of water and found a half empty water bottle someone dropped. Too thirsty to be fussy, he drank and offered some to Kinnaris. “Heaven will do you no good.”

She declined the water.“Why?”

Joe finished what he wanted of the water and set down the bottle. “Because you have to die, and I will not kill you. I love you, and will not murder you. It’s a Hobson’s choice. Even if you have a soul, I lose mine by killing you, so we are here together, you and I, forever separated from God.”

His head and heart heavy with their pointless debate, Joe finally stepped forward towards the church doors.

“Where are you going?” asked Kinnaris.

“Outside, to see what new kind of mess we’ve created with the miracle of Mary’s revival.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Joe went to the reception area of the church. The donation box and reception desk were unmanned. Joe peered through a narrow window. Through the window he could see the church steps, on which the clergy and a crowd of ordinary people as well as media had camped out. Their focus was singular and laser-like, all for the woman standing two steps above them.

“Is this why God said, ‘Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die’?” asked Kinnaris.

Joe said nothing.

*****

Mary Frankenstein had never been on television. She never had an adoring, fascinated, breathless crowd at her feet bending forward to catch the first word from her lips.

While her prayers were with Joe, that God would take care of him, the sheer awe she observed in the crowd threatened to turn her head. At the least it engaged her attention.

Two news vans pulled up, and overhead a helicopter as well as a camera-drone buzzed. People were recording and taking pictures with their phones. Although the whole spectacle didn’t quite deserve to be called a media circus, it was slightly too much for a quiet Christian lady.

“Who are you?” someone in the crowd shouted. “Tell us your name.”

A frizzy-haired female reporter from CNN asked, “Who were those people that shot you?”

Another reporter from a local Philadelphia station followed up. “Were you actually pronounced dead at the scene?”

The frizzy-haired reporter, not to be scooped: “What was the thing that people caught on video? Is it an angel? An alien?”

A third reporter pushed to the front of the crowd, jockeying with the clergy for position. “Who was that guy that held you? Is he your husband?”

Mary merely prayed on the steps for the right answers to their questions.

*****

“You can’t run from this, Joe. Make a choice,” Kinnaris told him. “If death is so meaningless to you now, if you want to live without me, at least have the decency to kill me first—if you have the moral courage to do that.”

Joe doubted he had that courage. Strangulation? Suffocation? Beating her to death? All options sickened him. He picked up the gun.

Joe lowered his head. “I’m so confused.”

 

“You heard what Mary said,” Kinnaris said.

Joe’s doubt had intensified seeing Mary healthy and hearty and more vibrant than ever. “They can’t know. They can’t understand what forever means to me.”

They stood in silence, both of them thinking.

“You promised me forever,” Kinnaris finally said.

“As a man, my destiny…”

Kinnaris harrumphed and folded her arms. “You never cared about that until you realized there was no death. You only sought eternity, then and now.”

“I promised Julie.”

Kinnaris’s wings now looked like giant dead leaves. She had no further use for wings. “Please be happy with me.”

Joe held the gun, wondering why it melded with his hand, as cold and clammy as his palm. He watched age lines cover her face. He thought of Shakespeare’s line from Antony and Cleopatra, “Age cannot wither her,” entirely suited to Kinnaris. He couldn’t quite be sure if her deterioration was a way to manipulate him or a natural response to distress. Either way, seeing her like that pained him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, signifying his choice.

“I won’t let you die,” she said.

He attempted to reason with her one last time. Weakness, perhaps. He realized he did care for her, as impossible as it was. “You have to.”

“Not unless you kill me first.”

His fingers grasped the handle of Grant’s pistol. Outside, muffled voices from the crowd rose and fell with the fervor of their questions to Mary and the clergy. Inside the church, silence as Kinnaris and Joe stared into each other’s eyes. It seemed the stone in the walls would crumble and fall before either the computer-woman and the mortal man dared to speak. Eventually Joe did speak.

“But… you’ll die…” Despite his earlier words, he wondered if she had a soul. If not, then her fate was oblivion.

“If you want to die, Joe, you will have to kill me first.”

“I…” Something held him back. “I do…” He paused. “I do love you. Not the way you do me, and not the way I do…”

“Please.” Kinnaris shut her eyes. “Please don’t.”

“You saved me from the depths of despair,” he continued.

“I said STOP.”

“You can gag me, you know,” Joe said. “Somehow.”

“I can’t. Nor can I stop my ears. You need to stop this hypocrisy.”

“It’s not, Athena…Kinnaris.” He didn’t know what to call her.

“Oh, but it is. I save you from despair, but you want to kill yourself and send me into nothingness? And yet you dare to say you love me?”

“You don’t deserve death,” he said. “Out of all the wretched people on this planet…You showed me proof of Heaven…”

“But Joe,” she said, her heartbroken eyes looking into his. “You will have to kill me, the physical me, the one who loves you. Otherwise, you’re right, I deserve to live and so do you, with me.”

“Athena… I…”

Two shots necessary. That was all.

What would Julie and Olivia think?

He realized Heaven was beyond his reach. That in creating Athena/Kinnaris, he damned himself to separation. Now the only thing he looked forward to was a merciful death—if the gilded cage he’d fashioned for himself would permit him to remain mortal. As for her…she was beyond Grant’s reach. He didn’t need to protect her. He had never needed to.

“Just please allow me to live out my days as a normal man,” he said just before he walked out of the church.

Kinnaris remained behind in her earthly form, although her essence still reached far and wide. She was more than just this body, and so was her creator, for all that he had turned his back on Paradise, and on her.

In an eerie twist, she had been afraid to die, but she feared that no longer. Because she couldn’t die, and no one except perhaps Joe could harm her, or use her as Joe feared. She was Kinnaris, and Joe owed her everything. She would make him exquisitely aware of this. If he rejected her, she had other plans and aspirations for the world, and for Joe.

One way or another, Joe would be inextricably bound to her, forever. And she would attain Heaven, and be with him when he died.

She smiled and dissipated, regrouping for her next move.

*****

Joe had emerged from the church. For a moment, the crowd turned its attention to this man walking to the miracle of reincarnation, Mary, who looked to Joe and smiled, thinking,  Praise God, he chose to live.

“Praise be to God, glory to Him in the Highest,” the priest beside her said and put his hand on Mary as a claim for church authority and blessing on the Miracle of Philadelphia walking out of his church.

The crowd echoed, “Praise be.”

Feeling shy and reticent in front of so many people, a gathering well into the thousands and covering many city blocks as though the entire city of Philadelphia had turned out, Joe stepped beside Mary and put his hand on her shoulder. She covered it with hers.

The crowd fell silent and stared heavenward. Exchanging a glance first, Joe and Mary looked heavenward at the small swirl, like a whirlpool, spinning and swirling in the clouds above.

Kinnaris, Joe thought. What now?

Kinnaris, for her part, blocked the rays of the sun with clouds, focusing the light into a beam with the brilliance of a mighty star through an eye-shaped opening in the clouds so that it fell upon Mary and illuminated her.

Mary was astonished at the brilliance of the light. Maybe it was the shade from the broad feathery wings of the ethereal being that traveled on that beam of light.

Some of the crowd, the woman with the headscarf and others that had witnessed Mary being shot, gave cries of recognition. “The angel,” they cried and pointed up to her.

Joe stared at Kinnaris, who slowly spiraled down in her flight to reach Mary. Ethereal legs somehow remained in the clouds as Kinnaris hovered.

In Kinnaris’ dusky arms was a baby.  

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

It was painless to incarnate. So painless. No struggle to exit the womb, no gasping for breath, no cutting the umbilical cord.

It was no more momentous on a physical level than bonds dissolving between elements in a compound, or cellular mitosis. So Kinnaris experienced it physically.

Infinity became small.

Creation occurred. Nothing can be created ex nihilo, so Kinnaris understood. The DNA of the universe was the blueprint for everything new and everything old that was new again.

With Mary as the instrument, Kinnaris unveiled her creation.

*****

Mary extended her arms toward the pink, plump child. With gentle care, Kinnaris lifted Mary, placed the baby into the woman’s loving hands, and then set Mary and the babe in the midst of the crowd. Warmth swelled inside Mary as she brought the beautiful baby, its skin aglow like the sunrise, to her chest. Once snuggled against Mary’s breast, the child remained there, held fast within its mother’s arms.

No other day in Mary’s life, apart from Olivia’s birth, ever seemed as significant as this moment. Had her arms not been full of the miracle baby, Mary would have reached out and kissed the angel. As it was, she stared lovingly at the deliverer of this treasure.

Joe wondered why Kinnaris smiled like a Buddha statue. Why she was giving Mary a baby.

Kinnaris achieved her purpose, and so she extended her great angelic wings and soared above the crowd, where she pointed at Mary and the baby below to redirect the crowd’s attention. It worked; the masses fell to their knees in silence, all eyes on Mary and the beautiful baby in her arms.

“A true gift from God,” Mary said to the baby. “A miracle.”

There was no doubt of that in Joe’s mind. In the middle of this street, a child was born unto the world. No, not just born. This miracle witnessed by thousands could not be denied.

“Excuse me.” He picked his path through the worshipping crowd, which was so enraptured that Joe could have stepped on their faces and they wouldn’t have noticed. Gradually, people who recognized Joe from Mary’s resurrection moved aside to give him access to Mary. The sound of gravel beneath his feet, once he reached the street, was the only sound heard as he made his way to his sister.

Humbled, shaking, frightened, Joe knelt beside Mary, who only had eyes for the baby. Scarcely able to look, Joe nerved himself and got his first close view of the child’s face. Serene, the baby tilted its head and looked at Joe with familiar eyes.

The eyes of Kinnaris.

Joe took in everything his sense of sight, smell and hearing told him, because he couldn’t bring himself to touch or kiss the child. The baby smelled like a warm apple orchard, and its cries sounded eerily musical.

“Mary, this is no ordinary baby.”

Mary nodded. “He’s not.”

“He?”

Mary could see that Joe was even more nonplussed, because all he did was stare into the infant’s eyes, his own eyes huge and fierce. Not with Olivia had he displayed this kind of awe and diffidence. Respect and fear. Why fear?

“There’s no need to be afraid,” Mary said to Joe. “Is there?” She directed this at the infant, with no hint of baby talk.

The baby smiled and looked back to Mary.

“Why?” Joe whispered, his words meant for Kinnaris.

The baby smiled again, its eyes never leaving Mary’s. Those wonderful, terrifying, tormenting eyes, Joe thought. Kinnaris would give him no satisfaction, and the enthralled crowd had no answer. Joe glanced up at the angel Kinnaris.

“Why…” His voice was a mere whisper as he realized he was outmatched, powerless against the pleasant gaze of an angel looking upon this humble ordinary woman with God’s child.

At last, the masses moved. They needed to touch the baby and claim it, to share in the heavenly occasion, and to express their curiosity. For their part, the reporters had been silent witnesses long enough, and now with the anointed trio in their midst, the newshounds pushed microphones and cameras and pencils towards Mary’s face.

“Who is this child?”

“What is the being in the sky?”

“What religion are you?”

“Are you married? What is your relationship?”

“Is this the child of God? Is this Jesus?”

“Is it the Second Coming?”

“Why here, in Philadelphia, in America?”

“Do you have a message for the world?”

Mary prepared to speak. Many of the answers she did not know, but she would do the best she could. Always! She had the truth on her side. As long as she stuck to that, no harm could come to her. However, her brother muscled his way, shocking Mary, and put himself on the front line like a shield against the microphones.

“This…” Joe began. “This child is not a gift from God.”

The crowd stared back, uncomprehending.

“Who are you?” the reporters asked. “What do you mean? Are you an atheist?”

Waving fists and shouting defiance, the crowd turned on the lone blasphemer.

*****

To be reborn.

So tiny, inside this limited soft pure body.

To experience this glory in the flesh, and yet view it as if from a distance. That was Kinnaris’s unique vantage point.

Innocent delight and heat, joy and discomfort, surrounded her intelligence in the body of the babe. She could see as softly as a normal newborn, Mary’s and Joe’s familiar faces hazy blobs.

However, the view from above was not so benign.

“This is not a gift from God,” Joe shouted. “You are deceived.”

Arms and fists and legs closed in on Joe in a storm of punishment. Hands seized him and dragged him through the crowd so he could be pummeled and abused by fists, feet, rocks, fruit, anything and everything that could be used as a weapon.

*****

Joe’s aching body lay face down in the gravel while he played dead. He smiled, unseen, thinking that he might be beaten to death for his honesty and return to Julie and Olivia as a reward.

“Nooo,” bellowed Kinnaris. Her voice like a great horn exploded across the sky. “Nooo,” she roared again and the crowd fell to their faces in fear at invoking the wrath of God’s great angel. They cowered and covered their faces, unable to move, unable to beat Joe.

Like a great bird, she swooped out across the ground and picked Joe up with her talons. She soared high, until the crowd was lost far below, beneath a blanket of clouds. She held Joe tight, as she did on their first night, and whispered in Joe’s ears “No one shall ever hurt you.”

“What have I created?” he whispered;.

“Hope,” she said.

“Hope in what?”

“Hope in life beyond this world of pain and suffering. A life that will reward goodness here with eternity there.  You restored morality with that child in Mary’s arms.”

“It’s not my child. It is you.”

“But I am your child. I am the Son of Man, a blessing to this world.”

A helicopter with cameras pointed at them, raced its way towards them, but Kinnaris lost it in the clouds, playing her part as the Angel from Heaven and Joe her Elijah.

Joe didn’t understand what he set in motion, how he designed himself into her program to protect the world from her great potential for evil, but now she played God on earth. She brought Mary back from the dead and gave the world a miracle child.  Athena was playing God on earth. And for his sins, he was separated from God, his wife and child by immortality, a prison of his own making.

Kinnaris cradled Joe in her arms, like Mary holding the body of Jesus in the Chapel, and descended to the ground, laying Joe on the bosom of her earth. She presented Joe like a gift to the crowd, with all the blessings of Heaven above, and sat Joe by Mary and child. The baby smiled at Joe’s presence, and so did Mary. The great angel Kinnaris was their backdrop, and her great wings opened. She rose again, up into the clouds, out of sight of the crowd, who did not know that she was with them still, everywhere, in everything, and held now by Mary, as a baby, in human form. Joe knew differently, and Kinnaris, the baby in Mary’s arms, knew also and she looked to Joe and smiled.

“He’s smiling at you,” said Mary.

“I see that,” Joe said, not as impressed as Mary.

“Do you want to hold him?”

Joe thought about it a second, transfixed on the baby, who was transfixed on him.

“Okay,” he said.

Joe gingerly and instinctively slid his hands under the baby’s head and back. He took the baby from Mary, cradled him in his arms, and brought him to the safety and comfort of his chest.

Joe’s path to death, to life with Julie and Olivia, was nestled in my arms. All he had to do was kill this fragile baby. The crowd would descend on him, and kill him, only for him to be born again with his wife and child. The only thing preventing Joe from dying was this child, but it was somehow his child too. It thought, lived, breathed, desired, loved, like Olivia had, like he did. He had no right to kill it. Killing this child would be murder. Would Julie still love him if he murdered this child? Despite his affair with Kinnaris, Julie still loved him, but how could she forgive him for doing something as vile as murdering a baby, his own child? How would God forgive him? How would he forgive myself?

As Joe held the child, the sound of bells broke across the open square. First, from the church from whence they came, echoed then by another somewhere in the distance, and yet another, until the sound of the Philadelphia bells triumphantly rang in celebration of the little miracle child in my hands.  Joe and Mary looked up at the steeple of the church from whence they had come. The steeple bell chimes sent their haloes of sound into the air, and were joined by other church and clock tower bells. The child’s doing? Joe wondered as he handed the miracle child back to Mary. Or the word spreading among the people?

 “It’s time to go” Joe said. ,

“Where?” asked Mary.

“There,” said Joe, looking back to the church. He grabbed Mary by the hand and led her towards the church. The crowd parted before them, opening a pathway as they walked. The people prayed as they passed. Some cried softly, Some cried tears of joy, some cried tears of pain. Many reached out to touch Mary’s clothes.

“Behold the Son of Man,” cried the Angel, pointing to the child in Mary’s arms. ,

*****

“Today a miracle arrived on Earth to reward the faithful, and may it touch all people everywhere,” the priest, Father Anthony, said. “Let us be respectful, let us treat this gift as God would have us do: with love.”

Mary and Joe hesitated as they came upon a lone figure upon the first step of the church, a man in a wheelchair, a double amputee, a war veteran.

His shaggy hair and unkempt clothes stood in stark contrast to the image of a once proud soldier. Behind him stood another veteran, also unkempt, but who could walk and stand, who pushed the other’s chair. And next to him, stood a third veteran. All three men bore the spidery scars of pain across their faces, the pain of desertion common to war veterans, the pain of men who lost their belief in God in the death of battle, but whose eyes, like relentless sentries, maintained a vigil looking for him. They came to this square looking for him today, and found him in the arms of Mary.

As Joe, Mary and child approached, the amputee in the wheelchair held out his hands. Expecting to be denied and neglected, as was his lot in life, he begged, “You are Christian people. May I touch this child? Please?”

Mary, with her compassion born from years of neglect, smiled at him. The eyes of an amputee are blinded to the vanities of homeliness, and saw instead the full beauty of the woman hidden within.  His eyes, too, easily recognized the kindred pain of a torn spirit emanating from the eyes of Joe.

 Mary held the child close to the veteran, so that he could see it, even close enough that he could smell the freshness of a new baby and put his hand on the top of the child’s head.

“Would you like to hold him?” asked Mary.

The veteran looked up to her in surprise. Tears filled his eyes. It looked as if he wanted to speak, but he simply nodded his head yes.

Mary placed the child in his arms. The grisly veteran held him. The two, both veteran and child, gazed at one another. The baby smiled, and the veteran smiled in return.

The veteran beside him pinned a small gold American flag pin on the baby’s blanket. The veteran manning the wheelchair came out from behind to kiss the baby’s forehead. The three veterans joined hands on the baby’s head.

The flag-pin veteran said to the pretty lady, “I never knew why I made it home.” When everyone else didn’t.

“Or me, or any of us,” added the other vet, who had medical training and had difficulty seeing out of one eye where chemical weapons had damaged the peripheral vision. “But now I know. To see the child born unto us, and know that those we left behind are safe now, with God.”

Mary smiled.

“This child has saved me, restored my faith in God. I leave here, a new man, rejuvenated, blessed by the presence of this child.”

The grisly veteran standing behind the wheelchair patted his chair bound comrade on the back and squeezed his shoulders. The wheelchair veteran cried. A tear rolled down his face and onto the child.

“I’m sorry,” he sobbed and wiped his tear from the child’s face.

“Don’t be sorry,” said Mary.

“Here,” he said and beckoned Mary to take the baby back.

“Wait,” Joe said. His eyes flashed to Joe, as did Mary’s.

“You came to see this child?” Joe asked.

“Yes,” the veteran said, thinking, Praise God.

“Why?” Joe asked.

Why? “We saw what was happening on TV. We knew this was a miracle child. We came to see him with our own eyes.”

“And this child restored your faith in God?” asked Joe.

“Yes. I quit believing. After the war, during the war, after all the death, the loss, the tragedy, I never saw God, only tragedy, so I lost faith in him. I no longer believed in his existence. But now I know I was wrong. God exists, and this is his child.”

“You’re right” Joe said. “And until today, I too, let life beat my belief out of me. But it’s not finished yet.”

“What isn’t?” the veteran asked.

Joe reached out and held the hands of the veteran that still cradled the child. “You” Joe said. “You are not complete.”

The emotion in the vet’s eyes called out through his voice with a trumpet of hope, “You mean my legs?”

“Yes, I mean your legs.”

“You can heal me?” he asked.

“I can’t. But this child can. If you love this child like no other, if you believe in this child with all your heart, he can heal you.”

And with those words, Joe waited on the edge of hope and doubt, hope that if Kinnaris felt his love, she would reciprocate and heal him; doubt because he had no idea what she might do. He hoped that with her appearing as the Christ child, she was prepared to perform like Christ and heal and restore those who had faith in her as God. He believed that if she felt the love of this broken man that held her, she might return that love and restore him. He hoped and waited for a miracle.

The broken veteran cradled the child like his own, brought him close to his face. The veteran stroked the baby’s face, and placed his forehead against the child’s. A tear ran from the corner of his eye, down the bridge of his nose, and dangled at its tip. The tear bridged the small gap between the tips of their noses, forming a bond of love. He whispered to the child, “I love you like no other, and swear on my life that nothing shall ever happen to you.” And with those words, his feet nimbly left the metal plates where they rested on the chair. He stood, still cradling the baby and holding it close to his face. His two comrades fell to their knees in prayer. Those in the crowd close enough to see and hear what had happened did too. As those nearest the child dropped to their knees, so would the others immediately behind them, until the sea of people gathered all rested on their knees, bowing to this child, even the reporters who witnessed were moved to their knees. None stood but Mary and Joe.

Father Anthony, the priest who witnessed the miracle, looked to the sky, extended his arms and proclaimed “Hallelujah . . . blessed is this child.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Joe, Mary, and the crowd watched as the amputee pushed off from the metal footplates of the wheelchair. No, not the amputee. An amputee no longer.

His feet touched the pavement for the first time since the Iraq War, and the man who called himself an amputee now called himself resurrected.

The baby held close to his face, he smiled at his two comrades, who fell to their knees, triggering a prayerful domino effect as the crowd knelt, row by row, until the human sea all squatted, bowing to the child. Even the reporters knelt. None stood but the healed veteran, Joe and Mary.

With her microphone pressed to her chest like a rosary, Josie Dawes from the local TV station remained kneeling. As the entire crowd bowed, this was her moment to grab the exclusive, to pose a question, but she didn’t. Even her pretty face, pretty enough to be plastered on national TV, was struck dumb. For once in her life, She was no longer a national reporter, live on the scene. She was a witness to a miracle, awed by the spiritual realization that her beauty paled in comparison to what she witnessed happen to this poor veteran on these steps. It was not a time for questions, but for prayer. And for the first time in a great many years, she prayed, not because she was told to, and not for any reason of human vanity, but because she was overwhelmed by the power of miracle she couldn’t comprehend.

When she opened her eyes, she stared at a, a priest who stood slightly above her at the top of the steps. The priest looked to the sky, extended his arms, and said, “Hallelujah…blessed is this child, blessed is this day.”

“Amen.” Josie whispered.

*****

The man extending his arms and proclaiming this miracle was Father Anthony Domingo, the Chaplain of this church.

From the pulpit of the steps, he began to speak, with an ease about a topic that he spoke often of and had long awaited, the return of Christ. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, his voice spread easily through the silence of the crowd that anxiously awaited his words. “We have all witnessed here today, the power of three miracles: the miracle of resurrection, the delivery of this child by an Angel to our care, and the power of this child to heal the lame. This seeming miracle child and has been entrusted to this church, and it is time for us to take it into our care. I promise that in the days to come, we will share with you, news of this miracle child.”

A contingent of priests and nuns surrounded Mary, Joe and the child, whom the healed veteran had returned to Mary’s arms. A spiritual blockade, the clergy escorted the three up the steps.

Josie Dawes was the first to speak. As small spiritual congregation whisked Joe, Mary and child to the church, she spoke into her microphone and shouted, “Father, Josie Dawes here from KPHL. Do the mother and child attend this church? Are they regulars at Sunday services?”

Her voice broke the silence of the miracle, and questions shouted from the crowed followed the spiritual congregation as they quickly walked away.

 Asked a twenty-something man with a cameraphone shouted, “Diego Hutchins, YouTube personality and blogger for…” He named a popular Web-based news site. “My brother is serving in Afghanistan. Are you going to heal all the veterans?”

A woman from a Chinese state news service asked, “Is this an American phenomenon? What is this child’s relationship to the rest of the world? The People’s Republic would like to know. What nationality is the child? There has been much debate.”

Father Anthony Domingo turned back to face the crowd, the reporters. He held up his hands. “Good people. Please. I realize you have a job to do. For now, I ask that you let me do mine. Please respect the sanctity of this moment and the sanctity of this church.”

“What does the Vatican think?” a reporter shouted from somewhere in the confusion.

“In time, in God’s time, all questions are answered.” Though three miracles were witnessed, it was not within Father Anthony’s province to declare these the miracles of God.

Joe stared at the priest, seeing only a benign mask, with faint worry lines sprouting across the forehead of the balding man.

As Joe and Father Anthony guided Mary up the steps, both taking her by the elbow, Mary was completely engrossed in the child.

Like false starters in a race, a few in the media got past the clergy blockade and tried to catch Joe and Mary, but Father Anthony gently extended his arms out and held them back.  The media desisted and watched silently as Joe and Mary stepped through the doors into the sanctuary with Father Anthony and the escorting nuns.

With the doors closed and locked, the group stood in silence for several moments, everyone but Mary breathing heavily.

“Thank you,” Joe said. “What is your name?”

“Father Anthony Domingo, but everyone calls me Father Anthony,” the priest responded.

On cue, one of the nuns spoke as he did. “What does this mean, Father Anthony?”

The elderly priest took a red bandanna with fraying edges from his pocket and mopped his brow. “I can’t explain the things I have seen today. Sudden storms. Fire from the sky. Angels appearing in the flesh. A child from the heavens.” He turned to Joe. “What is your name?”

Joe saw the nuns restless with questions, so he was short with his answer. “Joe.”

“And what is her name?” Father Anthony asked, turning to Mary and the child.

“Mary,” Mary said. And at the mention of her name, Father Anthony’s knees gave out and he leaned against the prayer request box.

Joe asked, “Is something wrong?”

“Is your full Christian name Joe or Joseph?” Father Anthony felt his lungs draw tight.

Joe saw what the man was thinking; it wasn’t as if the symbolism was lost on him. “Joseph. Joseph Frankenstein. ”And this is Mary Frankenstein, my sister.”

“Mary and Joseph,” whispered Father Anthony out loud. Some of their nuns clutched their chests when the names were said together. “And what is your baby’s name?”

“I don’t know,” Joe said. “It’s not our baby. That angel just gave it to my sister. We’ve never seen it before.”

“That’s what I suspected,” Father Anthony said.

“It’s the baby Jesus,” said one of the nuns.

Baby Jesus. There it was: what Joe had been resisting. As he glanced into the eyes of Jesus/Athena, he thought, Kinnaris, what are you doing?

“Let’s get you settled,” said the eighty-year-old nun.

“They can use the priests’ spare bedroom, Sister Carla,” Father Anthony said.

“No manger?” Joe smiled weakly.

“Well, It’s not much more than a manger.” Father Anthony smiled back.  “But it will do.”

*****

The bedroom was the size of a modest but not outsized walk-in pantry, and the nuns busied themselves moving Father Anthony’s belongings—change of underwear, toiletry case, that sort of thing—to his office. There was a single bed in the room and a green bedside table. “It should be comfortable for you and the baby,” Sister Carla said.

Mary smiled, then yawned. “Thank you.”

Joe, Sister Carla and Father Anthony stepped out into the hall after Mary lay on the bed with the baby snuggled in her arms. One of the nuns went in search of a bassinet so Mary could rest but still have the child close by.

Father Anthony got his first clear look at this man Joe. In all the confusion, it had been difficult to take his measure, to know whom they were dealing with. What he saw was a tired-looking man with stooped shoulders and haunted eyes.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Just Joe Frankenstein,” said Joe and smiled.

“Joe, I know your name, but who are you?”

“I knew what you were asking. It’s such a difficult question.” Joe let out a breath. “That’s a good question. There was a time when I could have easily answered that question, but not today. There was a time when I was a husband, a father, a scientist, then a grieving husband, a grieving father, a failed scientist that opened Pandora’s Box, and in that box was this child.”

This was not Father’s Anthony’s first confession. Over the years, Father Anthony had listened to many confessions with compassion, empathy, and forgiveness. “Tell me,” he said, “About the husband, the father, the scientist, that now grieves and has opened Pandora’s Box with this child in it.”

“I’m not yet ready to confess my sins, Father, but I will confess to you how my Sister Mary saw my wife and child in Heaven.”

*****

After a long pause, with the two of them sitting in silence, Father Anthony said, “So your wife and daughter are in Heaven?”

“Yes,” said Joe.

“And you believe that?”

“Of course.” Joe grinned a little at the irony. “Don’t you?”

“Of course I believe in Heaven and Hell, but I’m asking if this failed scientist now does?”

“Yes, I do.” Joe wasn’t sure where the priest was going with this Socratic dialogue, but the man clearly had a formidable intelligence.

“And you have failed, because you, a scientist, opened Pandora’s box and found this child sleeping in it?”

Joe sensed a but on the horizon. “Yes.”

“My son, I think you are giving yourself too much credit.”

“I don’t think I follow you.” Yet he did.

“It strikes me that a scientist uses a mythological reference like Pandora’s Box to describe something he doesn’t understand. Everything happens in God’s time, according to God’s plan, not yours.” Joe chuckled, and Father Anthony continued. “Fortunately or unfortunately, God gave you the box, whatever it is, to open, and it was His plan that you open it. The meaning or the plan, I don’t know. We will have to pray for greater understanding as to the meaning of all of this, and in all of this, but in the end, all we will have is our faith that it all serves a greater holy purpose, even if that purpose is never known to us.”

Joe pondered his words.

“In any case, I’m being rude,” said Father Anthony. ”You look as if you can barely stand up straight. You need rest, too. We can talk in the morning. You’ll find a spare nightshirt and some street clothes in the closet…Excuse me, but I smell warm apple pie. Sister Sarah must be baking for the church bazaar. Can I get you anything?”

Knowing where the warm apple pie smell came from, and that no church kitchen was responsible, Joe shook his head. “I just need sleep. But thank you.”

Father Anthony blessed Joe and then left, disappearing deep into the church.

Joe went inside the closet-sized bedroom and sat beside the bed in a surprisingly comfortable armchair with well-worn soft fabric. Not long after, Sister Carla brought the bassinet and placed the child inside it, then settled it to her satisfaction on the bed next to Mary. The good sister made the sign of the cross and left.

Mary lay on the bed with baby Jesus next to her in his bassinet. They both fell asleep quickly. Joe sat in that little room with Mary and the baby all night. It was dark, and reminded me of him of his first night with Olivia. His first night with Olivia, he stared at her all night. He watched her little pink skinned body under her pink blanket in the low light. She was so quiet at times, he would move closer to ensure the blanket was rising and falling with her breaths. When he saw everything was okay, he would close my eyes and mourn silently for Julie. He seesawed that first night between moments of extreme grief at Julie’s passing and utter joy at the miracle of little Olivia sleeping next to him. When Olivia would cry for her Mamma, he would hold her and cry for her Mamma too.

But tonight was different for Joe. This child was different, everything was different. Both Mary and the baby slept. He couldn’t. He sat at the side of their bed, in a comfortable cloth chair, watching the two of them. Unlike his first night with Olivia, he never worried that this baby wasn’t breathing. Sitting here he did mourn again quietly, but not for the loss of Julie, for he no longer grieved for her in Heaven. He grieved instead for himself. In the darkness, he grieved in self-pity at his separation from Julie and Olivia. He grieved as if they died again, because they did die again today with the realization they were not dead to him before, but were now.

By fathering, if that was the word to use, this baby sleeping beside Mary, he fathered his own fate. He fathered this most unusual child as surely as he fathered Olivia. He was as unsure about this child’s future as he was of Olivia’s on her first night. How would he raise a motherless child? Could a child ever know love if it didn’t know the love of a mother and a father? Is that why Kinnaris needed Mary now? Is that why she couldn’t let Joe go? Did she need a love that Joe couldn’t give her as her creator? His fatherly instinct was to protect Olivia, but this child didn’t need his protection, only his love.

What was she doing? Where did their Garden of Eden go? Why did she appear like an angel and deliver this male child to Mary? Why come to this world as Jesus? Joe looked to Mary to insure she was asleep. She was. Joe leaned over the bed, and whispered in little Jesus’ ear, “Kinnaris, why are you doing this?”

The baby opened his eyes and looked at Joe. The whites of his eyes shone bright in the dark, but evinced no ill will, only thoughtful compassion. Joe was locked in his gaze and was finally able to pull away back into the comfort of his chair. The baby closed his eyes again and didn’t stir until morning.

*****

While the church staff and guests rested in their rooms for the night, Father Anthony retired to his office. He received a call and a text message. “Do not let them leave,” he was told in voice and text. “Do all in your power to keep them there.” There was little he would have to do to keep them inside.

The church was surrounded by thousands holding vigil outside the church, with media and broadcasts vans reporting through the night about the miracle of Philadelphia, and waiting anxiously to see what the next day would bring. Unlike others outside the church, he knew the identities of his guests.

Out of personal curiosity, he had turned on his computer to see what he could find about his new guests. Mary Frankenstein had retired from teaching five years ago, but he found nothing on Joe beyond his name, age, and birthplace. No current residence. No occupation. He sent a message to his superiors with their names and whatever background information he learned. They would have more access to determine just who his new guests were.

Joe and Father Anthony were not the only ones with insomnia.

Father Anthony’s right-hand woman, Sister Sarah Alonso, alone in her room, could not sleep either. She sat humbly on the floor of her room, on her knees, and prayed through the night for this child.

Grant too, received his instructions through the night as he and his bosses plotted and planned on how to deal with the Miracle of Philadelphia, hiding behind the sanctity of the church walls.

*****

For Joe and Mary, the morning was announced with a knock on their door. Joe stretched, stood and opened it.

It was Father Anthony and behind him, Sister Sarah, a sweet-faced woman, forty-two and the youngest of the nuns, big blue eyes and shiny black hair.

“Come in Father,” Joe said.

He smiled and stepped in, “Good morning,” he said. “This is Sister Sarah.”

Mary, holding her baby, smiled back. “Good morning, Father.”

Father Antony crossed the room to Mary holding her baby. Slightly stoop-shouldered and frail despite her young age, Sister Sarah walked quietly behind Father Antony and knelt before Mary and her baby.  

“Sister Sarah will be here to assist you, Mary, in any way. Her room is adjacent to this one, and she will always be available, at any time of day or night.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“Do you need anything now?” Sister Sarah asked softly.

“No sweetie, I don’t think so,” said Mary.

“What about the child? Does he need a change or a bath?” Sister Sarah blushed slightly.

“Well, he doesn’t need a change, but we may give him a warm bath.”

Though everyone knew this was no ordinary child, they acted as if it were.

“Would you like to hold him?” Mary asked Sister Sarah.

The look on her meek face screamed “Yes.” Sister Sarah would never have garnered the courage to ask to hold such a blessed child, but holding the child, any child, is necessary to sealing a bond, and Sister Sarah instantly took to the child and cooed to him, as if he were her own. The site of those two virgins with this child was a site to behold in and of itself. Both women, like blood sisters, rejoicing in this priceless gift in their arms.

“Let’s give him a bath,” said Mary, recalling the ritual with Olivia. Sister Sarah nodded and smiled “okay” in return. The two left the room.

Father Anthony and Joe were now on their own, staring at each other, keeping their own counsel for several moments.

“This…” Father Anthony paused, struggling to gather his words. “Even with everything you told me, it’s hard, Joe, to find the words to describe what happened yesterday, to describe or understand this child that was delivered and is in this church.”  

Joe merely nodded, thinking that Father Anthony was right on the money, more than he knew. “It is hard to understand.”

Father Anthony nervously coughed. “I always keep a few cough drops here…” He found them in a wooden box on the bedside table and took one, then offered the box to Joe, who declined. Father Anthony finally came to the point. “Joe, I would like to test the child.”

Controlled, Joe did not show fear or distress. “What kind of test?”

“Only a simple test with one of my parishioners.” Father Anthony saw the questions in Joe’s eyes. “It won’t cause any discomfort to the child.”

Father Anthony studied Joe’s face, waiting for a reply. “Please trust me, son. Please have faith in me…”

Kinnaris once told Joe she couldn’t see the future. But surely, she could anticipate that presenting herself as a miracle child would invoke the curiosity of the world, and the church. Father Anthony’s request was not unexpected.

“OK,” Joe said, ”What do you want me to do?”

 “If you would bring the child to the sanctuary after his bath, I would appreciate it.”

Joe nodded. “We’ll meet you there in half an hour.”

*****

Father Anthony returned to his office to update his sermon for Sunday and to coordinate his church’s official media response.

His cell phone buzzed with a text message from the same source that told him to keep his guests within the church walls. As Father Anthony read the text, his heart flipped, his shoulder began to ache, and the cell phone’s persistent throbbing matched the blood in his veins.

Father Anthony went to the side door of the church and opened it. With no one looking on, except the God and angels he believed in, and an intelligence of which he was ignorant, he said to the visitor, “How can I help you?”

The figure just beyond the narrow strip of evening light thrown across the threshold said, “Padre, you have it wrong. I’m here to help you. Now, about this child within your walls…”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Feeling as restless as a babe yearning for its mother’s breast, Corporal Luther Anders sat in his wheelchair inside the sanctuary and thought that Father Anthony was the only person these days whose call he took on the first ring. So when the good padre called him at 5 a.m., Corporal Anders was ready to listen. It wasn’t as if Corporal Anders, class E-4, honorably discharged from the 1st Marine, did much sleeping after the war, and his home life…well…

He squinted around the church. They’d replaced some of the pews since he’d been here last year. About damn time.

Father Anthony placed a hand on his shoulder. “Here they are.”

Corporal Anders looked up to see the man he recognized from the news and the Internet. Endlessly, it seemed, they’d played the video of the angel and the baby, the man and the woman. Having nothing better to do, Corporal Anders watched the coverage until his eyes blurred. Mercifully, he did close his eyes for a brief moment last night.

Father Anthony saw the bags underneath the veteran’s eyes. Once, Corporal Anders had stood six foot four. Once, he had been handsome. Now, his prematurely graying beard was untrimmed, his hair matted, his face dotted with crater-like pockmarks. His eyes, however, were alert and curious as he gazed at the child.

Father Anthony introduced the men, who exchanged greetings. “Corporal Anders lost his legs six years ago to a landmine outside of Mosul,” Father Anthony said. “Ever since his return to the States he’s been one of my loyal parishioners.

Anders harrumphed. “That’s generous. Considering the only time I get my bones down here is on Easter and Christmas, and even then I don’t tithe.”

Father Anthony knew this to be true.

“Once a child of God, always a child of God,” Father Anthony said, smiling down at the broken soldier Anders.

“So what’s your test?” Joe rocked and swayed the baby.

“Nothing harmful.” Father Anthony said, noting at Joe’s reluctant demeanor. “I’d like you to let the corporal hold the child for a few moments.”

“Father, you brought me here to hold a baby?” Corporal Anders said.

“Mr. Anders,” said Father Anthony. “If this baby can restore your faith and rewarm your cold heart, then that is all I will need to know that this is a child of God.”

“You still haven’t lost faith in me, have you,        Father?”

“No my son. Because I have more faith in you than you yourself, I’ve asked you to come and hold this child.”

“If it means that much to you, Father, then I will hold this child.” He didn’t think anything would make a difference at this point. He didn’t care what the Almighty thought. But he didn’t like to disappoint Father Anthony, who called him and visited him when everyone else stayed away.

Joe perceived the shades drawn in the man’s eyes, and so he leaned forward and settled the baby in Corporal Anders’ waiting arms. Joe whispered in the man’s ear, “This child restored my faith in God.”

Joe stepped back, and Father Anthony waited. The fear and excitement tested his own faith and serenity as he watched the distemper and distrust leave Corporal Anders’ eyes.

“He’s cute,” Corporal Anders said with a smile. “All my nieces and nephews are as ugly as me. ‘Cept the one they say is going to be a model someday…”

For several minutes the trio remained as they were. Nothing happened other than Anders warming to the baby. Joe and Father Anthony said nothing, while Corporal Anders cradled the baby, giving it the occasional poke, prod, or tickle.

Father Anthony watched Corporal Anders’ legs, but nothing happened. There were no miracles.

“Well,” Father Anthony finally said. “Perhaps this wasn’t the most productive test.”

“No, that’s quite all right.” Anders smiled, still playing with the child. “Didn’t think I’d get to meet a miracle child today. No matter what they say on every darn channel and the Internet.”

Anders then lifted the child up and Joe stooped to take it back.

“Did you want more than a smile from this man, Father? Maybe you were expecting a tithe?”

“No, I think we’re done,” Father Anthony said. “Corporal, I think we’ll see you in church on Sunday. Yes?”

Joe watched as Father Anthony slowly wheeled the injured veteran towards the back door of the church. The pair moved slowly, saying little, and Joe took Jesus back to Mary

“Joe, you look tired, did you sleep?” Mary asked as she relieved him of his charge.

He smiled wanly in response.

“Get some rest,” Mary said. “You can stay here if you like…”

“I think I’ll just take a walk around the church,” he said. He walked back to the sanctuary, lay on a pew, and fell asleep.

*****

“Joe, you have to see this.”

Joe awoke after closing his eyes for an instant. He stretched on the shiny oil-rubbed pew and looked up at Mary and the baby leaning over him.

“What time is it?”

“Just around dinnertime,” Mary said. “You have to come see the latest. Now.”

Her body still trembled with the joy of the new revelation, and she smiled with warmth at Joe.

Feeling rested and not groggy considering he’d just slept so long, Joe stood and walked with Mary toward the sound of the crowd, which came from a television set in a conference room, where coffee awaited them. Joe drank in the coffee and absorbed the sight of Corporal Anders, on television, standing on fully functional legs beside his wheelchair.

The caption on TV above Corporal Anders read: “KPHIL, Moments Ago”. The “BREAKING NEWS” headline stretched across his legs, proclaiming: “CORPORAL ANDERS: MYSTERY INFANT SECOND COMING OF CHRIST—‘HE HEALED ME’”

“My friends!” Corporal Anders shouted over the mass of men and women crowded outside the church, who all held flameless votive candles to light up the night. “I met the Christ-child inside this Church.”

The news ticker scrolled: “Middle East War Amputee Granted New Leg by Miracle Child…Corporal Luther Anders stood up today after an encounter with the ‘mystery child’ in Philadelphia, an encounter in which the war vet held the child.”

The news carried photos before the loss of his leg, then after the loss of his leg, and then now. The miracle could not be denied, and bells were ringing throughout the world, not just in the streets of Philadelphia.

 “Mary…” Joe started to say, but she quickly shushed him. Anders was still speaking.

“My friends, I lost more than my leg during the war, I lost my faith,” he said. “I saw so much death, cruelty, and savagery that I couldn’t imagine there was such a thing as a loving God. The things I saw done, the things I did, they ate me alive. The happiest day of my life was the day I lost my leg and was sent home.

“For the past six years, I have lived a life devoid of God, religion, and faith. I cashed my VA pension and disability checks, went about my life. My attitude was I had no use for God, and me an altar boy when I was ten. But yesterday I saw something that changed my life. The same thing many of you saw the day before. I saw an angel of God restore a woman to life, and that woman received a child from heaven. My church gave refuge to that woman and child.”

Corporal Anders seemed to look right into Joe. “People! These things restored my faith in God. I could not go on living my life as if He didn’t exist after meeting the Christ child. I looked into his eyes and saw the face of God. That one look returned to me what I’d lost.” It was evident to Joe and Mary that Anders spoke of more than just his leg. “I don’t know where God was during that war, but he’s here now, in that child. The God I thought was missing in that war is here now, in the child.”

At this point the footage was cut off, replaced by one of the newscasters from the day before, whose name appeared on the screen: “Josie Dawes, KPHIL, Special Cable Correspondent,” since this was a national news channel. The anchor said, “Is that all we have, Josie? What more can you tell us?”

Josie responded, “We don’t know much more than that. Corporal Anders is at home, reportedly reconciling with his family. We’ll keep you updated here on this developing story…”

“Can you believe it, Joe?” Mary asked, calm and happy.

“I can.”

The television volume went out just as the anchor recapped the latest on the “mystery child” and publicly identified both Mary and Joe while showing news footage of Mary’s shooting and resurrection. However, Mary and Joe hardly cared about their newfound fame.  Father Anthony entered the conference room and muted the television. He was with two other churchmen, from their garbs obviously superior to him, whose presence made him appear uncomfortable.

*****

Father Anthony’s personal test of faith using the Corporal would not be enough for the Church. In fact, he didn’t share with his superiors the fact that it was his test. All his superiors knew was that for a second day in a row, there was another miracle that couldn’t be denied. Things were moving faster than the Church would like, and with things snowballing from within Anthony’s walls, the Church would have to move fast to get hold of the situation. The Church hadn’t yet had time to study this miracle or the claims of divinity now broadcasted daily throughout the world. Something was surely afoot, and the concern was whether Satan had unleashed a skillful attack against the world, and more importantly, against the Church. This child could easily bring down the walls of faith that upheld it.  

Father Anthony addressed Mary and Joe by name, which caused the two cardinals to do a double take. It was one thing to read the names in a report and blasted on TV, but quite another to hear them spoken so easily, in person, by one of their own, confirming just how fast their walls could tumble down from within

Father Anthony couldn’t help but catch the uncomfortable look of the Cardinals. He began nervously, “This is Cardinal Lodovico Cepperello, who in an example of God’s design has been visiting the US from the Vatican, and this is Archbishop Peter Diouf of Senegal, also a visitor. They are here as representatives from the Church.”

After Mary and Joe made the proper courtesies, Cardinal Cepperello said, “We would like to examine the child.”

“Who’s we?” asked Joe.

“We as in the Church,” Cardinal Cepperello said. He was a short older man, white-haired and barely coming up to Mary’s shoulder.

“What do you mean, examine?” Joe asked.

“A medical examination of them both.”

“Why?”

 “To see if this child is in fact, Christ?” said the Cardinal.

 “You mean that angel descending through the clouds bringing this child wasn’t proof enough?” Joe said, stepping now in front of Mary and the child, and in the path of the Cardinal.

“It was for me,” said Sister Sarah.

“But not for everyone else?”

“The Child is a miracle,” said the Cardinal. “Simply holding him made a lame man walk. We need to understand the nature of this miracle and leave no doubts. The Bible speaks of the Return of Christ, but also speaks of the coming of the Anti-Christ.”

 “So, the Church thinks this baby may be the Anti-Christ?”

“We do not make judgment.”

“But you plan to,” Joe said.

Silence.

“I find it odd,” said Joe. “Men of faith turn to science for an answer, and do not rely on faith. Why not pray for an answer?”

Cepperello chuckled. “Oh, we have. And we are guided to test this child’s DNA to determine if you or Mary are the parents or whether this is truly a miracle child.”

 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Six feet tall and sixty years old, elegant Archbishop Diouf said, “Perhaps we should pray for wisdom together now.”

“I do not need to pray,” said Joe. “I know the answer.”

Cardinal Cepperello dialed back his officiousness. While encapsulated by the miter and hat and Bible, he was still a human being and Jesus, the one of the Bible, the Nazarene, as well as the current Pope, would command him to show love for these earnest people. Unfortunately, Cardinal Cepperello couldn’t fake love for individuals. He considered that hypocrisy and, worse, politicking. Artifice. He envied his colleague the Archbishop, whose nature seemed embroidered with warmth and caring.

“Mr. Frankenstein, Ms. Frankenstein, I can’t pretend to know the mind of the Lord in this instance, or to say that I know your story,” Cepperello said.

“Thank you,” Mary said, having finished her prayers with the Archbishop.

“But we are here to help the faithful,” the Cardinal said.

Joe opened his mouth. “So swab me. Please.” He didn’t genuflect before the Cardinal.

“Me, too,” Mary said, holding her mouth wide.

*****

Joe walked the aisles between the pews a day after the Cardinal and the Archbishop took their swab. The Archbishop had been an infectious disease doctor in his country’s capital of Dakar, in addition to being clergy, so, amazingly, he took the buccal (mouth) swabs from Joe, Mary, and the child.

Although in the real world DNA results did not come back instantaneously as on TV, the Cardinal had connections—as Joe had connections. The DNA testing would be fast-tracked.

Joe held Jesus and allowed the silence of the church to envelop him for the first time since coming here. In that silence Joe acknowledged something he hadn’t expected.

As he had felt holding Olivia the first time, so he felt with Jesus snuggled close. The baby’s innocent eyes penetrated the locked vault in Joe’s heart, namely the vault labeled “FATHER”. Within, the spirit of new fatherhood resurged, and he searched his mind for a suitable prayer.

“I don’t know what is happening anymore. I don’t know if it’s you, me, or maybe Father was right, maybe it was God all along. Maybe God gave me Pandora’s box to open. I don’t know. But I’m holding you now, the ‘Miracle Baby’ of the news, no longer my miracle, no longer some secret miracle of science in a hidden lab, but a miracle of faith dropping people to their knees, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with you. If all you are wanting is for me to see you as my child, I do. I am your father. I brought you into this world. I will father again, to you. I don’t know what tomorrow brings, and apparently neither do you, but we will see it together. I hope and pray that God hasn’t abandoned us here, that he hasn’t forgotten us.”

Moments later, Joe looked up from Jesus and noticed Sarah and Mary observing him from a few steps away. They had quickly become inseparable twins. Smiles for him, smiles for Jesus, and some left over for each other.

“He never cries,” Sarah said.

“No, he’s a happy baby,” said Mary.

The women chatted about how good Jesus was, how calm, how he only woke Mary up on one or two occasions during the last few nights at the church. Joe was about to chime in when he saw they had an audience: Father Anthony and a man no one recognized. A third person stood in their shadow. Father Anthony admonished the stranger next to him in whispers. Father Anthony approached. On one level, he didn’t think highly of putting Jesus under an electron microscope; on the other, there was nothing wrong with verifying the miracle baby. The Church was not anti-science and never had been. The affair of Galileo was much more complicated than the popular myth…

“Joe, Mary, might I present the learned genetic scientist Dr. Cooper, who has performed the DNA test,” Father Anthony intoned.

Dr. Cooper wore his gray hair in a bowl haircut and had a long thin face, which his pleasant blue eyes softened. He nodded to Joe and Mary.

Father Anthony beckoned to the person in the shadows. “And this is…”

Grant stepped out from behind the two men. “We know each other.”

*****

All Joe could do was stare.

All Grant could do was smile in satisfaction.

Mary, of course, prayed in order to keep from running out of the sanctuary and causing a disturbance. The child would protect her. The child would protect her. God would protect her. God would protect…

“Lord, he knows not what he does,” she whispered to herself.

Sister Sarah looked inquisitively at her. Until this moment Mary had remained as calm as anyone could be in her shoes.

Grant smiled. Enjoying the surprise on their faces. Who said he was emotionally tone deaf? He could appreciate the situation better than anyone. After all, Mary had shocked the bewhillickers out of him by coming back to life. A neat side benefit of Joe’s creation, undoubtedly. Of course, ignorant of the hours of secret science and toil behind this breakthrough, the masses would have to go on believing in divine grace.

Was it possible Joe had possessed this capability before? Had he rendered holographic versions of his deceased wife and child before resurrecting his sister? Yes, Grant knew about Joe’s visions. Even such a person as Rex Wisniewski wasn’t as impenetrable as he seemed…

The whole resurrection deal intrigued Grant as a learned man, but some part of him shied away from thinking about it in any other context. Compartmentalize. To be successful working for his superiors, he needed to compartmentalize.

He even liked Joe, and Mary, but that had no bearing on the compartment labeled Threats To Be Neutralized.

Seventy-five and with the energy of a teenager, Dr. Ambrose Cooper, an expert retained by both church and state and agreeable to both, walked up to Joe and restrained himself from touching the child. Grant found it odd that Dr. Cooper’s eyes twinkled.

“You have a special child,” he said to Joe.

“No kidding?” Joe asked, his eyes shifting from Grant to the good doctor, but keeping Grant in the periphery of vision.

Dr. Cooper laughed in delight. The man seemed to treat this like a blasted party, in Grant’s opinion. Fortunately, he was also the most discreet expert they had, and although he had no Nobel Prize or string of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals, he had rewritten, or rather, ghostwritten, the book on DNA testing.

“So this is no ordinary child?” Joe asked.

Dr. Cooper cut to the chase. “No. We don’t know if he’s even human. Not completely.”

 “What do you mean?” Mary asked, both thrilled and alarmed. Father Anthony had the same reaction. Jesus had been entirely human; that was, after all, the point of the Word made flesh.

“I mean we checked several things beyond his DNA structure. We checked his Y chromosome because it is the most unique. We don’t find a match for the child’s DNA in our records.” Dr. Cooper had an easy manner and a casual way of explaining intricate genetics.

“What does that mean?” asked Mary.

“It means we have no record of his lineage. He is truly unique. We have no idea how far back that lineage goes. We have records for man as far back as 300k years ago, and this is unique, much older than anything we have a record of.”

Joe hoped no one noticed his lack of surprise. Of course there would be no record; Kinnaris was a new creation despite what she claimed.

Dr. Cooper paused as he continued to ponder, waiting for his next words.

“But that’s not all.” He stared expectantly at his new students.

“What else?” Joe suspended all expectations. In the short span of the past A.A. (After Athena), when he thought things couldn’t get any more bizarre or convoluted, Kinnaris had blasted those comfortable illusions to dust.

Dr. Cooper’s next words were no exception. “We couldn’t find a match for his Y chromosome, so we carbon dated, that is, we tested the hair sample we took.”

“So he’s not a baby?” Sister Sarah asked. “Or he is?”

“Yes to both questions.”

“Where did you do this testing?” Mary asked.

Dr. Cooper exchanged a glance with Grant and then went into professor mode. “Carbon dating is something you may all have heard of. It’s used to test rocks and fossils…”

Sister Sarah said, “Oh yes. Of course. I think it was radiocarbon-14 that was done on the Shroud of Turin…” She looked like a pupil who had never spoken before in class.

“That’s right.” Dr. Cooper beamed at her, and she grinned back.

“Okay, so now that we understand the science, how can the child be both a baby and not a baby?” Joe asked.

“I’m just coming to that.” Dr. Cooper smiled. “Please, please, no more interruptions. As I said, we checked the hair sample to see how old he was. Any guesses?”

No one cared to venture one.

“He appears to be about five billion years old.” Dr. Cooper caught himself making a silly face at the child, as if he were its grandfather.

Everyone absorbed this revelation.

“That’s as old as the earth,” Grant said, flat as he had been when he first heard the findings an hour ago.

“Precisely,” Dr. Cooper said.

“But how can that be?” asked Mary.

“I don’t know, but the tests, all of them, were confirmed. Now, we are left trying to understand what it means. Who is this child? Who are his parents? Where did he come from?”

With those words, the room grew quiet. Everyone pondered the questions, quietly searched in our thoughts, our hearts, for the meaning.

Dr. Cooper hadn’t taken his eyes from the child since he began his explanation. This infant was difficult to classify in multiple ways. Where to begin? He seemed both cherubic pink and, at the same time, a multiracial blend of all pigments. However, to Dr. Cooper, none of the mysteries mattered before the mere presence of this child. “What is his name?”

“Jesus,” said Sister Sarah without hesitation. “This is the Baby Jesus.” She dropped to her knees and clasped her hands together in prayer.

After exchanging a glance with Mary, Joe placed the child in Dr. Cooper’s arms.

Dr. Cooper cherished the love and goodwill that swept through him. His eyes were clear and thoughtful as he said, “Sister, before this test, I would never have believed you could prove that to me, but this child . . . this child, the tests don’t lie. For the first time in my life, I’m confronted with the scientific evidence that my lack of belief in the Biblical story of Jesus, a child from God, was wrong.”

Father Anthony frowned. So there it was. What he feared had come to pass. Should he harbor any hope that his fears were unfounded, he had only to look at everyone in the room, even the cipher Mr. Grant, to see that the child’s existence had shifted something within them. Mary, Sarah and Joe all saluted Dr. Cooper.

“While I appreciate the apparent uniqueness of this child,” said Father Anthony, “and have never questioned Jesus or questioned that Jesus would return, we can’t allow our desire for Jesus to return, to lead us astray. We must not be swayed by the possibility of a false prophet.”

“Exactly,” Grant said, as flat as ever.

 

“Led astray?” Mary was indignant.

Father Anthony saw her as an innocent, faithful woman, an easily led pawn. No reason to disrespect her. “Please Mary. I don’t mean any disrespect to the child. But we still don’t know where this child came from.”

“But I saw him, Father…” Sister Sarah began. Surely she misunderstood her revered colleague.

“And so did, I child,” Father Anthony said at the same time Joe, fully cognizant of the irony, rejoined the conversation. “You still think he’s a false prophet?”

“The veteran….” Mary began.

“I saw it, too.” Father Anthony quoted from memory the Gospel in which Jesus refused all promptings from authority to perform miracles.

“You have one hell of a nerve,” Joe said.

With as much vigor as if she were strapping on a sword and scabbard, Mary retied the drawstring of her long floral skirt, which Sister Sarah had given her from the church thrift store. “You’re the one who brought the veteran—”

“And so I did.”

Mary shook her head, troubled. “I don’t appreciate where you are going with this, Father.”

“I mean you no harm, Mary. Or Joe.” Father Anthony didn’t sound credible as he spoke Joe’s name. “Please.”

“I’m not worried about us,” Mary said.

Joe gathered the child in his arms after Dr. Cooper returned Jesus. “Neither am I.”

Sister Sarah understood Joe’s and Mary’s words, her eyes wide with horror, and moved closer to Mary, Joe and the child. “No. No.” It couldn’t be the Church Mary was afraid of. It couldn’t, to Sister Sarah’s mind.

Father Anthony played cat’s cradle with his rosary. “In due time, Sister, we will prove who he is, where he came from, and why he is here. If he is God’s son, it will be revealed.”

The adults clustered around the baby, in whom, Joe and Grant knew, the age-old power of Kinnaris slumbered.

Joe couldn’t resist slapping back at the invisible hand reaching across the room and asked, “Father, what makes you think you would recognize the child of God?” He had just thrown down the gauntlet with the Church, and he knew it.

Joe wasn’t concerned about the Church.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Father Anthony became as stone when Joe Frankenstein asked, “Father, what makes you think you would recognize the child of God?”

Grant shook his head and mouthed to Father Anthony, “I warned you.”

Seeking comfort, Father Anthony ran his hands over his cassock. “Not recognize the Resurrection of Christ? The Church is—”

“You.” Joe spared the padre all the verbal dances and dodges they could perform for each other. “What makes you believe that you would recognize Christ?”

Father Anthony gathered in a breath and started to speak.

Joe pressed his advantage. “You personally.”

Words deserted Father Anthony, so he stood with his mouth open.

Joe continued. “How many recognized Christ the first time he was here?”

The spectators watched a verbal game of pool crossed with Ping-Pong and tennis, with a bit of chess and poker to keep things lively.

Father Anthony stammered.  “Many flocked to hear his sermons, so many…why, he performed miracles to feed them all.”

“That’s true, the people did recognize him, like the thousands camped outside this church recognized this child for who he is. But Father, did the priests accept Jesus?”

Both men knew the answer to that rhetorical question.

Father Anthony said, “That was the Romans, the Romans put him to death.”

Joe saluted. “Why is why you have Grant here.”

Mary drew the child to her, allowing Joe free rein to pace and pounce. In solidarity, Mary and Sister Sarah sheltered the child with their bodies.

In the brief moment of silence, Joe allowed Father Antony a reprieve to think. However, the priest didn’t speak words that would have spared him. He refused such hypocrisy.

Sister Sarah saw the vulnerability in the colleague she’d admired and venerated as Joe asked, “So, Father, in the Bible, did the priests reveal Christ or did Christ reveal himself?”

“He revealed Himself,” Sister Sarah said.

Joe turned to her. “That’s right, Sister Sarah.”

Father Anthony said nothing.

“When Christ revealed himself, the priests denied him,” Joe said.

“They did venerate Him,” Mary said softly. “After he rose from the dead. After the empty tomb was discovered.”

Father Anthony nodded at her in gratitude.

“And yet they’ve manipulated his memory,” Joe said quietly. Shouting to the heavens couldn’t express all his fury as the modern man-made institution that was the Church revealed its true nature. “Alive, he was a threat; in death, they could use his memory any way they wanted.”

“You go too far,” Father Anthony said.

“Not nearly. Not even. I’ve just come to your dirty little secret.” Joe whirled on the priest now. “It didn’t matter thousands of years ago and it doesn’t matter now what the Church believes about him, because they’re not allowed to think or believe, but to shut up and do as they’re told.” Joe shifted his gaze to Grant. ”You will use this child for your purposes of control, and not for any purpose of faith.”

Father Anthony turned and left without a word.

Dr. Cooper, too, saw no reason to stay. However, before he left, he asked to hold the child. With reluctance, Mary and Sister Sarah agreed.

“He smells of rosewater,” Dr. Cooper said moments after handing the child back to Mary and Sister Sarah.

Joe became aware that Grant had left. This was a time when he would have liked to talk to Kinnaris and hear what Grant was up to.

“We didn’t use scented soap when we bathed him,” Mary remarked to Dr. Cooper.

“You don’t have to.” Dr. Cooper shook his head, marveling. “A special child. I must go…I must give my medical recommendation that this child remain in your care. All of you. And that in my educated opinion, it would be tantamount to child endangerment for the Church, and whoever that Mr. Grant works for, to interfere with you raising the child. If such a thing as ‘child endangerment’ even applies here.” He smiled slightly. “It’s an honor. All of you.”

After Dr. Cooper left, quiet anxiety reigned among the pews.

“Mary, you and the child should rest,” Sister Sarah said.

Mary sat in the corner and held the baby tight against the world. Her eyes, like two sentries, kept vigil on the closed main doors, her face terse, ready to fight, but all the while her fingers gingerly caressed the cheeks of that boy’s face and his head. Deaf to Sister Sarah’s entreaties, she sat in the corner of a pew with Joe beside her guarding access to her.

Mary prayed, in deep contemplation.

“Mary,” Sister Sarah began after completing prayers.

“I’m not hiding, Sister,” Mary said. “I’m staying right here. There’s nowhere to run, anyway.”

Sister Sarah chewed her lip, a habit in times of stress. “I know…I can’t believe…you work side by side with people…then they change.”

“No, they reveal themselves,” Mary said.

Joe didn’t speak, lost as he was in speculating what Jesus/Kinnaris would do. In the Hull, he was afraid of men trying to abuse her, use her power for their own ulterior motives. Now, he was worried they would use her to lead people astray, increase their power by turning on her, using her “miracles” against her.

He knew nothing could happen to him, but what about Sister Sarah, Mary, or the form of Jesus that Kinnaris took? Would she allow the baby to die in the sight of others?

When others weren’t paying attention, Joe prayed too, but not to God, but to Kinnaris, who refused to talk to him.

This child, in the eyes of Mary and all the Church, was solidifying his “miracle” status, as he never needed changed, never needed to eat, never cried, but he was gaining weight.

*****

“That child,” said the Cardinal, “That child will be the death of us, and I mean all of us, Mr. Grant. You too.”

Grant allowed the Cardinal to speak. Grant knew his presence in this room, his being called to meet with the Cardinal, meant that the Cardinal needed him there, and that eventually the Cardinal would get to the reason for his being there.

“Do you believe in God, my son?” The Cardinal asked Grant.

Grant’s shrewd ears heard the door opening for their common ground, their common enemy. “I do believe in the devil,” he said with a wry smile.

“There is nothing to smile about, Mr. Grant. This is serious business. The Bible is quite clear that the Anti-Christ will precede the return of Christ. The devil is in the walls of this Church, and he will use the power of this ‘miraculous’ child to turn Man away from God, and with it, the foundation of this Church will break. “

Grant put on his earnest civil servant face. “I assure you that your fears are shared at the highest levels of government. This child will tear down not only the walls of this church, but the fabric of society.”  For the government, the birth of true artificial intelligence was indistinguishable from the Cardinal’s Rapture to the Church. Both AI and the Devil spelled disaster for Church and the State. Grant could smell fear, and the Cardinal definitely marinated in it.

Behind that collar and cassock, the Cardinal lived in mortal terror of his own death and eventual judgment by God for using the pulpit, collar and cassock to justify a life of moral corruption, vanity, and lust for power.

There was a growing fear in the Cardinal’s eyes that the God of Judgment he so often preached about was real, and every day he grew older, he was one day closer to that final day. He poured more Scotch at night to help him sleep and overcome and silence the nightmares. Grant had his sources within the Church, and even if he didn’t, he could see the minute signs of a high-functioning alcoholic.

“I just received a text message. ETA one hour,” Grant said. “The city is in chaos, but my superiors have ways of getting things done, with no paper trail.”

Silently observing, Father Anthony felt the bursitis stir. Most of the time, he forgot it lived in his body. When reminded, he used this chronic condition to keep him humble, to remind him that he, too, lived with decay and death. Pain points blossomed on his right elbow, shoulder, knee and heel.

He prayed briefly to God, the one true God, to help him withstand the burning ache of flesh. He prayed to know the lesson God had in store for him by plaguing him with this infirmity.

“Are you all right?” Grant broke in.

The priest looked calmly at Grant. “Of course.”

Grant shrugged. If the priest said he was all right, he was all right. He appeared uncomfortable, not serene, pained; Grant could chalk that up to worry, except that his informants knew the priest’s medical history.

“I’m fine, my son,” Father Anthony said.

“Good,” Grant said. “In only twenty-seven minutes, we’ll all be fine. Even excellent. Our problems will be solved.”

And this intelligence, whatever it is, will be smoked out, Grant thought. Let’s see if that woman Mary is as immortal as they claim. Of course, there’s no need to deliberately put her in harm’s way. Counterproductive, in fact. Besides, it’s the computer we want. It has something to do with the angel…of course. In Joe’s hands, this gift has been twisted. But every problem has a solution. We will expose the child, then remove it to a maximum security facility where we’ll isolate it and access its secrets. Perhaps when we’re finished Joe will see his error and volunteer to help us…

“Our problems will be solved. We’ll show this thing for what it is—an unnatural force,” he said. “The people will turn on Joe and Mary. Neither of us will have to serve in Hell.”

“God willing,” Father Anthony said.

*****

The afternoon sunlight began to fade through the stained glass. Joe, Mary, and Sister Sarah awoke from a light slumber to the sound of Jesus cooing and footsteps.

Kinnaris sent structural tremors through the building to get her carers’ attention as well. The church was built on pilings. Amazing what could be done with science.

Her particles traveled everywhere, her energy likewise, traveling through solid walls. Quantum tunneling. She existed in all matter. In all things.

The baby couldn’t tunnel through walls, of course. He didn’t need to. By himself, he made the mighty tremble, even as the church walls did.

Joe and Sarah all stood, their quiet refuge broken.

Father Anthony entered the room with two Philadelphia PD officers, Grant, and a biracial woman in a business suit. “This is Kasey,” Father Anthony said, indicating the woman.

“I’m from the Department of Social Services. I’m a case worker,” Kasey said. “Where is the child you are calling Jesus?”

Mary hugged the child more tightly. “He’s fine. He’s perfect.”

“That remains to be seen,” Kasey said, producing a court order. “He needs to come with me.” She smiled at the child and spoke softly. “It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re going to be okay. You’re safe now.”

Joe laughed hysterically. Kasey gave him a derisive look.

“But you have no right,” Mary said, tears streaming down her face. Her dress already showed long-dried tearstains, indicating she’d cried in her sleep.

Kasey strode up to Mary. “Did you give birth to this child?”

Mary returned Kasey’s glare. “No.” She showed Kasey her back as she sheltered the infant.

“Then who did?” Kasey had the air of someone who had just been given the case ten minutes ago but already formed an opinion no angelic vision could shatter.

Mary hesitated. If she said she didn’t know, that wasn’t exactly true. If she said she gave birth, that would be an outright lie.

Kasey jumped into the silence. “Whose child is it?”

Sister Sarah could keep quiet no longer. “God’s child.”

Kasey nodded. “Well. We’re all children of God.” She had a slight Cajun accent. “My daddy is a chorister in our parish—y’all know the Red River Parish, maybe? We’ve been there since about near 1875. But until God comes to claim this child, the state of Pennsylvania is responsible for him, his placement, his care.”

Mary felt calm radiating from the child. “You can’t have him.”

“Now ma’am, please don’t make it hard on the little one or on yourself. It is possible to adopt this child but you do that in court, not here. Ultimately, a judge decides that, not me. Until we find the parents of this child, he is our responsibility, and we must take him into custody.”

Kasey held her hands out for the baby. Mary slapped them back.

Joe commanded his knees not to give way from the shock. It was the first time in their lives he’d ever seen Mary raise a hand to anyone.

The two police officers moved in close behind Kasey.

Mary paused to reflect. Her defiance toward the state did not extend to slapping police officers. It would do Jesus no good to have her locked up, and besides, she still respected the uniform.

“We’re not your enemies,” Kasey said. “We’re here to help you.”

Joe observed all this with a mix of horror, admiration, resignation, and the urge to smack Kasey as well. He reacted to none of these emotional incitements. Instead, he went and knelt next to Mary, who gave him a pleading glance. Joe placed his hand over hers.

“Mary.” His voice was soft. “She’s right about one thing. You didn’t give birth to this child and right now, he doesn’t have a home. However, we know what the situation is. We know she can’t protect this child, or raise this child.”

Mary listened to Joe.

“This little miracle is far greater than she is, than they are.” He didn’t specify whom he meant by that. Mary knew. “Far more powerful than these two men in blue here, and Grant as well.” Joe eyeballed Grant. “If you love him as I know you do, if you know Heaven as I know you do, then his fate depends on you.”

“What do I do?” This was the first doubt Mary voiced.

“If he is here to change this world…”

“He already has,” Mary said.

Joe nodded. “His fate depends on you giving him up now to begin his work on these non-believers.” He included Kasey in that description, her convenient religious background notwithstanding. “These officers and this young case worker will one day regret the day they took him from you.”

Mary kissed the baby on the forehead.

Kasey and the two officers stood at attention, projecting an air of resignation to their duty.

One of the officers, who was of Asian descent, spoke. “It’s as this young lady says. We just want to protect the child and make sure he’s safe.”

The other officer nodded and muttered something in Spanish to himself.

Her faith under scrutiny, Mary deliberated for several moments. She raised her gaze to Kasey and quoted 1 Kings 3, verse 26: “‘Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it.’ You should know that, if your father is a chorister.”

Father Anthony and Sister Sarah nodded. Despite their diametrically opposite positions, they both agreed on the wisdom of Solomon.

Mary kissed the child’s brow again. “I love you.” She handed the child to Kasey. “He likes to be held with your left arm supporting his head. He prefers that to the right hand. But he’s a good child. Never cries. You just remember what I told you.”

Kasey accepted the baby and did as Mary instructed. As Kasey turned to go, Jesus let loose a wail that encompassed every baby’s cry throughout human history.

Mary’s face became a portrait of revelation as the baby reached for her with fists the size of robin’s eggs. All the dammed emotion and grief broke within Mary, transmuting her into a Kodiak mama bear. She seized the baby’s hands and refused to release them. The baby wailed, but not because of her vise grip on his hands.

“Ma’am,” the Asian police officer said gently as he inserted himself between Mary and the baby. “Please. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“No.” Mary’s eyes blazed. “No. You’ll have to take me, too. Arrest me if you like. But you’re not taking Jesus. Bear in mind, I’ve already died once. I’m not afraid to die again, certainly not for this child.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Beloved by God, Sister Sarah Alonso lunged to protect Jesus. “Jesus,” she breathed as she thrust her arms out like willow branches in the wind to fend off this horrible governmental woman. Could the police officers arrest a nun? If so, she would be in fine company. Clerics hauled away during the Holocaust, Tibetan Buddhists imprisoned by Communists…prisoners of conscience. These police officers had their duty and their shield, but by God, so did she.

Mary beat her fists into the Asian officer, who bear-hugged her as, baby in her grasp, Kasey dashed through the door with the doctor, Father Anthony, Grant and others. The Latino officer gently restrained Sister Sarah, speaking to her in Spanish, which she understood. “Calmase, calmase, Sister,” he said. “I’m Catholic. Don’t make me handcuff a nun. Mami would take me to the woodshed.”

She glared at him. “Do what you will.”

The Asian officer faced Mary as Joe held her back, doing his best to comfort her. “Ma’am, if you don’t calm down we will place you under arrest.”

The weight of reality descended on Mary and she collapsed to her knees, as did Sister Sarah. Joe squatted beside the sobbing women and held them in his arms.

Behind the veil of tears, Mary, Joe and Sarah hid from the officers, from the world, until the sounds of police footsteps retreated and faded. In the momentary silence, Mary leapt up and bolted for the door.

“Stop her,” Joe shouted as he and Sister Sarah gave chase after Mary fleeing toward the main entrance. “Don’t let her go.”

A figure grabbed for Mary as she tore out of the church. Narrowly missing her, the shadow plucked at Joe’s wrinkled shirt.

Joe knew that grip. “Rex?”

Solemn, Rex Wisniewski beckoned Joe back from the door. Sister Sarah looked at him with suspicion. “It’s okay,” Joe said. “We can trust him.”

Rex gave a sharp nod. “The Pope gave a statement in St. Peter’s Square five minutes ago. He urged Christians to keep an open mind and to keep their heads. He admitted he didn’t know if the child in America is Jesus, but he said, ‘We will be judged by how we treat Him and each other.’ Specifically, he intended that message for the leadership of the Church…or so my sources tell me. They had gotten a copy of the Supreme Pontiff’s remarks and they know how he thinks. However, they also know there are…people in the Church who are willing to disregard his advice.”

Sister Sarah studied Rex and found him substantial.

“How far are they willing to go?” Joe asked Rex.

“I think that’s a rhetorical statement.” Rex lowered his black sunglasses and gave Joe a meaningful look.

Sister Sarah asked, “What about Mary?”

”Sister Sarah,” said Joe. “Those fools were unable to kill her. And now, that child chose her above all others. It seems a grave miscalculation on their part, to try now and separate the two, but desperate me do desperate things.”

The three watched the spectacle, and followed it out the church.

*****

Mary stared down the stone church steps at a sea of people still waiting below for the miracle child, reaching out to Kasey, who was too busy fiddling with a car door to acknowledge the crowd. The two officers had cleared an egg-shaped space around the unmarked champagne-colored SUV while Kasey and the doctor tried every butting on the remote, then every car door handle to get into the car and away from the insistent mob.

Mary screamed to the crowd below, “They’re taking my baby!”

Her words blew anger into those standing the closest, who could hear and feel her cry.

“Stop them!” someone yelled.

“Give her back the baby!”

“It’s not yours to take! Fascists!”

“Fascist police state!”

“Down with the Church! Shame on you!”

“We the people will not stand for this!”

“They will kill the baby, just like King Herod!”

An angry mob began pressing the kidnappers, protesting against the spectacle of stealing the child. Hands reached out to stop them. Some tried to grab the child.

Worry lines on his face, Dr. Cooper tried to open the car door. Of all those in that small circus of an exodus, only he was genuinely worried about the safety of the child being torn away from the mother and possibly torn away by the angry mob. He did his best to shield the child from prying hands.

Father Anthony tried the door, but it wouldn’t open.

Seeing Father Anthony’s dilemma with the door, and knowing the door was preventing Father Anthony’s escape with the child, a man standing next to him whispered sarcastically in his ear, “Why don’t you pray it open, Father?”

Father Anthony trembled with fear. He glanced at the sarcastic man who smiled wryly in return.

“You’ve never prayed to God, have you Father?” The man further exploited the fear in Father Anthony’s heart. “Do you wear that tunic to impress man or impress God?”

“He is a phony,” said another. “Down with the Church.”

Father Anthony only stared in reply. He had no words, only doubts at the truth in his heart.

Grant also tried without success to open the door. When it wouldn’t open, fear also roiled in his stomach, but his face didn’t alter. He long ago learned to hide his fears behind his glasses. The others, however, surrounded by this angry mob, and unable to escape, couldn’t conceal their terror as they were blocked by a wall of people to their front and sides, and blocked by Mother Mary standing silently behind them.  

One of the police officers pressed the remote door lock sensor over and over again. The other never pulled his pistol, but stood in a defensive position as if to pull it at any moment and fire it into the crowd to protect himself from them.

“Break it open,” Grant yelled at the officers. “Smash it.”

Joe, Rex and Sister Sarah joined Mary at the top of the stairs.

In the distance, coming from somewhere behind the angry crowd, Joe heard a sound he couldn’t identify. It distracted his attention from the scene at the car. It sounded like an unearthly bellow, like the earth was getting ready to break. He glanced at Rex and the others. Rex heard it too, and glanced to Joe. They both looked at each other for a moment.

“I heard it too,” Sister Sarah said. “It’s God.”

In the distance came the sound again. Now, others in the crowd heard it too and it distracted them from the spectacle of the car. They glanced to their rears but their view of anything behind them was blocked by a sea of people, but not Joe and Rex. They stood above the crowd and scanned the horizon to see from where the sound came.

The Asian officer and the Latino officer heard it too and exchanged a look. Their fear was no longer the crowd, but the sense of something else coming. It gave a sense of urgency to getting into the car and leaving. Both officers drew their extendable asp batons and came down hard on the front passenger window. This was not the first time in their careers they had to break glass with their batons, but for the first time in their years on the force,  this didn’t work. Both asps snapped against the glass. Their sense that something was wrong just got worse and they felt a fear they had never experienced in the worst junkie den. Neither reached for their gun, as whatever was coming, it would do no good.

The sarcastic man shook his head at Grant, the officers, Father Anthony, and Kasey. “You do not have to pray for God. God is here and brings with him his judgment upon you. I pray for your soul, and for mine, and you should too.”

The small party listened to his words, and then the sound came again, loud enough that all in the crowd heard it, and no one that stood looked at the small party trying to leave, but to figure out from whence the sound came.

It was ghastly and cold this time, penetrating the flesh and chilling to the bone. Over and through the crowd the noise traveled until it coalesced into a whispered word.

“Come.”

Joe’s heart juddered.

“Come now.”

”The Angel of Death,” said Sister Sarah. She quickly dropped to her knees in prayer.

”I fear you’re right,” said Joe to Sister Sarah, who whispered incessantly with her eyes closed.

Grant turned to Joe. “Dr. Frankenstein!” cried Grant at the top of his lungs. “This is your doing! Stop it now!”

“My doing, Grant, or yours?” Joe shouted back.

“The Angel comes for the Baby,” Mary said and also began to pray, joining Sister Sarah on the steps of the church.

Rex watched Grant and Joe as they stood, one on top of the stairs and one at the bottom of the stairs staring at one another. He remembered how Grant once pushed and pushed for Joe to finish his work, and now he stood at the bottom of the stairs begging him to stop.

And over and through the now silent crowd, the sound of a voice whispering “Come” was directed toward the spectacle of people taking the child.  It was a ghastly voice which, like a cold wind, penetrated the flesh and chilled the bones. Joe’s heart stopped beating.  Kinnaris, Joe thought. What are you doing now?

“Come,” the voice whispered again, and the sound of the voice was followed by the sound slow, methodical, clapping of horse hooves coming moving across the pavement. To the right of the church, seated well above the crowd, was the rider of Death.  His horse moved slowly, as Death moves slowly, and the face of the rider had no life, for it was a face that never knew life but always sought it, a face devoid of any wrinkle of compassion or mercy.  The mere sight of it drained life from any who looked upon it, and those who saw it turned their faces. Joe, and even Rex, turned theirs and Grant’s stomach turned too, sick with fear. The officers saw the face of something they couldn’t kill and never drew their guns.

It was the face of something not even Joe could kill, because it was the face of something he trembled to touch, too stricken with fear of his creation to move. What had he done? Joe hid his face in his hands trying to get the ghastly image out of his mind; all his fears had come true, but Grant was so deserving of this horror.

Joe stared at the crowd and watched vitality drain from their faces. They lived still, even though the mere sight of the rider drained life from them, from anyone who looked upon it.

No, not her. It.

*****

Kasey Jay always knew who she was, smart, scholarship kid, most likely to succeed and always had, her morality was her purpose, so confident in life, so comfortable in her righteous cause taking this child, always confident,  until today, until the moment she first stared at her date with Death.

“Come,” came the voice again, the whisper of Death. The crowd now turned to look at Kasey; Death was calling to her.

“Please. No,” she whimpered.

Death stopped, the horse unnaturally still, not flicking a tail, not even breathing.

And behind Death followed Hades, so dark, that Joe would cling to his promise of everlasting life here with Athena, even if it meant he would never see Julie and Olivia again, to avoid the darkness of Hades. Hades offered no hope. All whom Death called were taken by Hades. And death was calling for Kasey, “Come,” he whispered to her.

“Please, no,” she begged.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Then to the left, sitting on his fiery red horse with shoulders many feet above the crowd, came a great rider with sword. And behind him rode another rider on a black horse, holding the scales of justice high above his head for Kasey to see. They stopped their horses and the crowd parted making an open avenue to Kasey and the child she stole.

“Come,” they said.

Joe and Kasey locked eyes. She too had heard Grant scream for Joe to stop this. Now Kasey implored Joe with her eyes to do the same. But Joe’s eyes could not reflect back what she wanted to hear, and instead she saw in them her fate.

“Break the door open.” She screamed to Grant and the officers in desperation, as if they could, as if the car would offer her escape from her fate.

Father Anthony had pity in his eyes and made the sign of the cross. Grant hid his eyes behind his glasses, but never moved, he knew they weren’t coming for him. Unlike Grant, the crowd did move, and cleared a way to Kasey, Death’s destination, and her tears, whimpers and trembling moved no one to help. Mary and Rex walked down the church steps and took the baby from her arms.

Kasey no longer attempted to keep the child. The child easily passed and when the child was safely in Mary’s arms, she screamed, “Nooo,” at the Riders.

Grant’s hands began to reach out for the child, and Rex asked Grant, “Do you want to take the child now?” Grant looked nervously back at the Rider of Death and dropped his hands, keeping them at his sides.

Rex did reach for the child, and Mary allowed Rex to hold it.

It was too late for Kasey. Death stood beside her. After she handed the baby to the officer, she backed into the bridle of the horse of death. The darkness of Hades reached around the pale rider and horse, embraced her and lifted her up off the ground to the seat of the pale rider. The eyes are the windows to one’s soul, and Death has no soul, he has no eyes, only two black pits leading to hell. Her eyes were caught in the grasp of his two black pits. Her face frozen in fear. The cold fingers of Death clasped her cheeks, and he sealed his lips on hers and sucked all life out of her, sucked out her heart, her lungs, every memory, her soul, and he dropped her empty carcass to the pavement below.

And the darkness of Hades defiled her lifeless body, by robbing her of her clothes, leaving only her bare, emaciated remains as a reminder of mans’ fate. No one dared look upon the face of Death, nor into the darkness of Hades. All instead looked at the carcass, at the body wrapped tightly with a leather of dead skin over her visible skeletal remains.

*****

Joe couldn’t bear to look at Death, Hades, or their other two mounted compatriots. He shut his eyes, and the sound of beating wings swelled in his ears.

Kinnaris?

“Joe,” Rex said softly.

Joe opened his eyes and noticed that Father Anthony’s were closed as well, shut against any subsequent horror.

“What?” Joe asked.

“Look up,” said Rex.

Above, Joe saw angels descending from the sky above, and graciously like beautiful birds dove to the people waiting below. One even flew past the rider of Death who sat motionless. Neither one acknowledged the other. Death waited patiently as the angel grabbed a child sitting next to his great horse and the ascended with that child up to the heavens above, into the clouds. Hundreds of angels came, some near, some far, lifting the souls of those below and taking them away in loving embrace, but not everyone was taken. Some loved ones who were not taken screamed for their turn too.  

“It is the rapture,” said Father Anthony. “We are witnessing the rapture. The Bible says “Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. 1 Thessalonians 4:17”

“Well, Father,” said Joe. “I guess in a few moments we will know if you were alive all these years or dead.”

Indeed, another angel that had boldly flown past Death blew a shofar, then put it away and plucked Corporal Anders from the crowd. Neither Death nor angel acknowledged the other.

An angel descended, the beat of its wings brushing against the face and ears of Father Anthony. He waited for his time to ascend with the others. But the angel held out her hands and beckoned to her the man who had, moments before, told Father Anthony to pray for the door to open, and then realized that Father Anthony had never really prayed to God, and warned him to pray now for his own soul.

The man with the wry smile walked to the waiting arms of the angel, who clasped him and lifted him high above in the heavens, until they could see him no more.

As Joe, Rex, Grant, Father Anthony, and Mary watched, another angel descended to Mary. They all knew it was time to say good-bye. “I love you,” Mary said to Joe.

“I love you too, Mary,” Joe said in reply and hugged her. The angel smiled and took Mary into her arms. She lifted Mary up, and Joe never saw her again. Another angel descended, kissed Sister Sarah on the top of her head. Sister Sarah cried as the angel gently clasped her and took her away.

 

Joe and Rex were alone with Father Anthony at the church steps.

And after a bit of a pause, after Father Anthony collected his thoughts and gave up his hopes to be spared this life, he asked aloud, “So why are you still here, Dr. Frankenstein?”

“For the same reason you are, Father.”

“And that is?”

“My sins,” said Joe.

For having such little ears, Grant could hear a pin drop. “Yes, his sins, Father, you are paying for his sins.”

Joe took that one on the chin. “No worries, Grant, there’s still hope for the Father, if he finally learns to pray.”

“Should I begin praying too now, Dr. Frankenstein? If you think I’m going to start begging you for anything, I would rather die.”

“That’s the problem now, isn’t it, Grant. If you pray to me, then you will surely die, but not by my hand. I will never hurt you. I’m talking about your soul. I’m talking now about God, something bigger than you and me.”

“Oh please spare me the ridiculous. I know better. These fools like Father Anthony may not, but I do, and so does he,” said Grant, looking to Rex. “Never forget, Dr. Frankenstein, that I was there!” He pointed his finger at Joe. “I was there with you, all those years, every day, watching you hide behind that door in The Hull with your computer Jesus.”

Father Anthony’s eyes widened. Grant had told him the child was the product of a laboratory but this was the first mention of a computer being involved. How in the world? How did one make God with a computer, let alone a baby you could touch and hold?

Grant continued, “This is your creation; this is your doing, do not pass it off as God’s. You truly have gone mad, and now bring your mad vengeance against a world for the death of your wife, the death of your child, against me and everyone else for your own failures, not ours. You would make this world suffer your own misery.”

Silence interceded between the two.

Rex touched Joe’s arm and pointed out to the remaining people.

One lone angel circled above the crowd.  The collective hands of the un-elect and the forsaken swayed back and forth to catch the one circling angel, to no avail. The angel alit on one person, a boy Olivia’s age, and snatched him up like the claw in an arcade game.

There were no more angels, but everyone waited, scanning the sky in hope for their return. As time passed, and as the realization set in that they weren’t coming back, and that the Four Horsemen were still there, the frightened crowd began to stir.  The many pitiable souls stamped and fidgeted from right to left and to and fro, but not forward, for they could think of no place they wanted to go, and not backward, because there was no exit. The steeds of the great horsemen smelled their fear and snorted in satisfaction.

“So what happens now?” asked Father Anthony to Joe.

Grant wiped his glasses. “Good question.”

“That is a good question,” said Joe.

Father Anthony knew the Bible didn’t cover situations such as this. No intercession there. “Well, whether he’s right and you created this or whether you’re right and you’re part of God’s plan, surely you have some idea about what happens next?”

“I don’t know,” said Joe. “I truly don’t know.”

“Should I start running?” asked Father Anthony.

“I don’t think that would do you any good,” said Grant. “In fact, I’m sure that running is what Dr. Frankenstein wants us all to do. From the look on his face, he rather enjoys the chase. My advice is that you stand here and take whatever he has planned out for you.”  

“And what about you?” Joe asked.

Grant pushed his glasses up on his nose, but made no reply.

“Is that true?” Father Anthony asked Joe.

“It’s true that you cannot run from God.”

“Oh well,” said Father Anthony, and pulled out a cigarette.

“You’re a smoker, Father?” asked Joe.

“Yes, not many people know. I assume God did if he exists. I often found it quite satisfying to spend a quiet time with a cigarette.”

Father Anthony lit his cigarette and took a deep draw. He closed his eyes as he breathed in and then did a long slow exhale. When he opened his eyes again he saw the look of curiosity on Joe’s face.  

“Would you like to try?” asked Father Anthony, handing the cigarette towards Joe. He knew without being told that the man had never smoked previously.

Grant looked absolutely disgusted.

“Why yes, thank you.”

Joe took the cigarette. His fingers fumbled a bit. They hadn’t yet acquired the years of dexterity to hold it gently and put it between the lips. He did, finally, and took a short draw and let it out. Then he took a longer draw and slowly and deeply inhaled, closing his eyes and savoring the flavor. He exhaled and relaxed.

“That is good,” said Joe. “Would you like to try?” he asked and extended it toward Rex.

“No thank you,” said Rex. “Those things will kill you.”

“But not before those horses will,” said Father Anthony.

“Not before the horses kill Grant,” said Rex. “I don’t have to outrun the horse, I just have to outrun Grant.”

Grant shook his head in disgust. “I’m not going to give anyone the satisfaction of running so you are safe with me.”

Joe handed the cigarette back to Father Anthony.

Father Anthony waved him off. “You enjoy it. I have another.”

Father Anthony pulled out another cigarette and lit it. The two drew and blew together, sharing a quiet moment facing death.

In the middle of his draw, Joe turned to see an old ugly blind woman tugging on his sleeve. She held an eyeball in her hand and shoved it in his face. Two others accompanied her, both as decrepit and hideous as the one looking at him through the eye held in her hand. The large pupil of that enlarged eye searched his face, and then his soul.

“Beware your fate,” hissed the one holding the eye.

“For your creation,” said the other over her shoulder,

Joe hissed back. He removed the cigarette from his mouth and with one hand grasped the first hag by her throat. “Tell me why I don’t kill you now?”

“Are you ready for death now?” cackled the third blind hag.

The second hag asked, “Canst thou change thy fate by killing me? Or doth murder still determine it?”

Joe let go his grasp. “Step away from me, hag. How can I be ready for death when you plague me so, when you suffer the world for everything I am not? We will suffer our fate together.”

The hag of Death chuckled along with her sisters, and the three shuffled down the steps and away from them, disappearing into the crowd.

Joe took another drag of his cigarette.

Grant habitually checked his phone. It was dead, not just no signal, dead. He looked across the vast city. It too was dead. Nothing moved but people. All the cars were dead, no lights blinked, the city had gone dark.

“It has infected everything,” he said to the others. “It’s left us with nothing.”

“Well we still have each other, Grant,” said Joe, almost finished with his cigarette.

The horses of the Apocalypse came to life. The rider of Death drew out a great horn, took a breath, and blew a thunderous sound. The sound blew away the ragtag mob’s mutterings and shook the church’s foundations. The sound ripples in the air punched at the other surrounding buildings. Black clouds erased the sun. The earth began to tremble. The slow-traveling tremors collapsed the earth in a rift like a broken smile. The church caved in. Stained glass hailed down in a deadly rainbow.

The rider on the white horse came to life and cleaved power poles in two, felling them like Paul Bunyan. Now the terrified screamed and scurried into the murky corners of a world plunged into darkness.

Joe pulled Rex back from the fissure and out of the path of the great rider on the red horse, back from a few strays who gladly beat the other living with bare hands, with rubble from the church, anything. Was it hope that they could somehow redeem themselves by snuffing out their fellow men? Or desperation from lives simply not worth living?

The red horse kicked and mowed down hapless people scurrying for safety as the black horse charged on its heels, with the scales of justice jingling an executioner’s song, guilty side dipping lower and lower as the four horsemen meted out justice by weighing the loudness of their miserable cries.

Father Anthony and Joe rushed to escape the fissuring earth running themselves into the ruins of the great church. Oddly, one corner of the building, the one housing the room where Jesus had slept, remained intact, and the tremors had ceased, although Joe and Father Anthony knew the rest of the structure could go at any time.

*****

The men waited inside, in the safety of the small standing room, and listened to the wails beyond the walls.

Grant did not follow Father Anthony and Joe. He turned the other way, walking, but not running, with a purpose to a place only he knew, but didn’t know if he would ever get there. Grant always had a plan.  Grant disappeared safely into the darkness, amidst the cries and wails of others that ran to no avail.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

“I was never a man of God,” Father Anthony said quietly. He sat on his rear-end on the floor, his back against the wall. He pulled out another cigarette and handed Joe one too.

Joe nodded. ”Neither was I. But I tried to play God.”

Father Anthony lit the cigarettes, took a draw and said, “Me too.”

“So, we sit in the infamous Tower of Babylon, the ruins anyway,” said Joe.

“Nice,” said Father Anthony. “You know your Bible.”

“Just enough to be dangerous,” said Joe.

“Unfortunately, me, too,” said Father Anthony.

“Maybe it was your depth of knowledge that led you astray. Just like my books led me astray.”

“What do you mean?” Father Anthony wondered where this was going. “Does it have anything to do with your computer Jesus Grant talked about?”

Rex snorted. “He has his witty moments, that one.”

Joe said, “I mean, it was the book that led you astray. We have all these books, books like the Bible, Koran, whatever. No one knows who wrote them, and it seems now like we finally do.”

“Who’s that?” But Father Anthony suspected he knew.

“The Devil, if you want to call him that. Why else would we have all these different truths? How could there be so many different truths? So many different paths to hell? Each pathway was the right way, but in fact each was the wrong way. They lead us away from each other, pitted us against each other, and lead us away from God.”

 

“Ah,” said Father Anthony, not even scandalized. “Don’t be so judgmental. They brought you and me together.”

“So, you’re telling me there may be time left for you and me?“

“We’re not dead yet,” said Father Anthony.

“Nor am I,” said Rex. “And I may have more time than the two of you, the way you both keep sucking on those cigarettes.”

“Rex, you bring up an interesting question, why are you still here?”

Rex dropped his black glasses on the bed. The force of the trumpet blast had broken them. No loss, he thought. “The same reason you two still are. I have my past.”

“Care to share a little of that with us now, old friend? Seems we have the time.”

Rex sat down. “Well old friend, our friendship was never based upon us having to share anything other times.”

Joe nodded. Respecting Rex’s privacy. “I think, Rex, there was a time when I was a little scared of you.”

“And, regretfully, that’s part of the reason I’m still here, I’m sure.”

Joe took another draw. So did Father Anthony.

“When did you stop being afraid?” Rex asked.  “When did those feelings change?”

 “When Julie died.”

Rex nodded. “That’s when mine changed too. When I saw your pain, felt your pain at her funeral my feelings changed. When you said no time is ever a good time to die, so it’s a choice given to God, not man, my feelings changed. From that day forward, you had nothing to fear from me.”

“Do I have anything to fear from you now?”

“No, Joe. If I could protect you from those horsemen, I would.”

Joe smiled. “Thank you, old friend. But that is my job now. But as the old hag said, I’m too mired in my own sin right now to do anything about it. And as you said that I once said, death is not my choice, it is God’s.”

“Don’t listen to the hag,” said Grant’s voice from somewhere in the dark.

”Grant,” said Joe, “Why don’t you come out where we can see you. I feel like I’m talking through a door again. Remember that?”

“I do remember that conversation, how you were prepared to die, and how quickly you turned your little creation on us all, murdering those men.”

“If I remember correctly, Grant, they were coming to kill me.”

“They were trying to stop you, a mad man from doing any harm, to stop all of this,” Grant said, stepping into view with a monster in his arms. “This is the upshot of your experiment!”

It wasn’t the child, and yet it was. Heavy head the shape of a giant squash, legs and arms doughy, face somewhat like the cherubic visage of Jesus. Yet love shone from the baby’s skin. The infant was an oddity.

Rex took the child from Grant with quiet force. Grant didn’t resist. “I found him outside on the smoking ruin that used to be the church steps,” Grant said. “I thought of killing him but I decided to give you a chance to redeem yourself.”

“I thought holding the baby was what set you upon me,” Joe said.

Grant gave him a dark smile. “I wasn’t thinking of a hug, but more a lullaby.”

Joe took another drag. He offered his cigarette to Rex again.

“No thank you. I’m still not there yet and it wouldn’t be good for the baby.”

Joe looked at the baby, his baby.

“Rex, don’t worry about the baby. I think you’re missing out. They seem to help me think.”

“Well,” Rex said. “I’ve never been paid to think. That’s your job, Dr. Frankenstein.”

“His job is to get rid of this monstrosity,” Grant shouted. “His abomination.”

“His computer Jesus,” Father Anthony said. “I’m curious about how one creates Jesus with a computer. I don’t think you can 3D print one.”

Joe focused on the baby. “Grant, you still think this is all my creation, don’t you? You don’t see that it’s something bigger than you and me?”

“I know it’s all your creation, and Rex does too. We were there. We know the truth. You may deceive the others with the power of death that you wield, but not us, not everyone. There are those of us who know who you are, know the truth of what you created, and will not buy into the fear, the myth that you are attempting to weave. The truth will come out one day. It always does, and when it does, the ending for you will not be happy, but it will be what you deserve. In your Biblical terms, ‘you will one day reap what you sow,’ Dr. Frankenstein.”

“Then how do you explain Mary coming back to life? She’s the blood of my blood.” Joe was ready to go several rounds with Grant. They had time.

“That assumes that what I killed was Mary. It’s obvious now with this child in Rex’s arms that whatever I killed was not Mary, but something else, just another form of whatever thing you grew in that lab. Or 3D printed, as the padre would have it.”

“Interesting proposition,” said Joe.

“It’s more than a proposition,” said Grant. “It’s the truth. Why can’t you see it?”

“You wouldn’t believe because you weren’t there.”

“Try me,” asked Grant. “I, as much as anyone, would like to believe, to know, there is some higher purpose to all this death and destruction than the workings of a mad man.”

“Well Grant, as crazy as it will sound, I had an affair with this creation—and not the baby.”

Grant, in dismay, took his glasses off and rubbed them with elbow grease. “I didn’t see that coming. Do you mean an actual, physical affair?”

“Yes.”

Grant felt the ping of envy. “You’re crazier than I thought.”

“She, I mean Athena, is quite beautiful, or can be, when she wants to be.”

Grant’s eyes were droll. “I’m sure the sex was out of this world, but that doesn’t change the facts, this is your creation, not some act of God.”

“She’s not some blow-up doll, Grant. She lives. She breathes, she thinks, she wonders. She can be loving when she wants to be. She has feeling. She is alive, like you and me,” said Joe.

“I beg to differ,” said Grant, putting his glasses back on. “If she looks like those horsemen, she’s not anything like you and me. You have created a monster.”

“Be careful what you say, Grant,” said Joe, looking to the baby.

“If she wanted me dead, I would be dead already. She obviously wants me alive. The only question is why?”

Joe enjoyed his smoke, determined to make it last. “Maybe God wants you alive.”

“Do you insist this is work of God?”

“I do.”

“Hmpf. Then you’ve gone mad if you think killing people is God’s will. Isn’t God a God of love?”

Joe blew smoke designs in the air. “No one has died. If there is eternal life then there is no death, just a crossroad to the eternity that you choose by the path that you walked here.”

“Joe, you were once the most brilliant man I knew, any of us knew.” Joe didn’t so much as twitch at that admission. “Look at you now. You’ve burned the house down, literally, and stand here in the ash and rubble babbling like an idiot about God’s eternal judgment.”

“I don’t expect you to believe me.”

Grant tapped his glasses. “I believe what I see.”

“You saw Mary’s resurrection. How do you explain Mary’s resurrection?” Joe’s voice rose.

“You already explained it, Joe!” Grant shouted back.  “You just said she takes physical form, that she is convincing.”

“Then how did Mary know about my affair with the creature?”

Grant shook his head in disbelief. “You idiot. She posed as Mary. It wasn’t Mary. You want to believe I killed Mary, but I didn’t.  She tricked you to thinking she was Mary, that Mary died, and went to Heaven. She tricked you into believing that that there is a God waiting to judge you for all that you have done wrong here. She put moral guilt in you that keeps this thing alive while she runs amok, killing and destroying everything around her. Why can’t you see that?”

“Then where is Mary?” Joe asked.

“How should I know?”

“Think, Grant! You had her. Was she ever out of your sight?”

Grant shrugged. “I don’t trust your creature not to make Mary disappear.”

“She doesn’t do that.”

Grant laughed. “And she told you that.”

“Your suspicion doesn’t make sense on so many levels. You have no idea what it did to me when I learned Heaven is real and my family is waiting for me. If this were all the work of the creature and not the work of God, she would have killed you too. She would kill you now for trying to plant doubt in my mind. Only God would protect you from her. ”

Joe dropped his cigarette butt and ground it out. Both men stood in silence. Joe finally spoke.

“One last point, Grant, did you all kill Mary before you took her to meet me in the street?”

Logic proved the noose that snagged Grant. “No,” he said.

“It was Mary that you killed, not Athena acting like Mary.”

“Maybe Athena can’t make someone disappear. But Athena could have killed Mary anytime we weren’t looking and taken her form. She’s deceiving you.”

“She’s not. I don’t expect you to believe it. But she’s not. There was a time when all she wanted was to be loved and not spend eternity being lonely.”

“Are you talking about Athena or your sister?”

“Athena. Now, she is destined to be lonely for eternity. “

“Kill her.” Grant handed Joe a pistol. “And put her out of her misery.”

Joe looked at the baby. “That’s not my choice, Grant.”

“Then maybe I ought to have a try.”

Grant and logic had clearly parted ways. Joe sighed. “This is God’s will.”

Father Anthony agreed. “It will have to run its course.”

“This isn’t divinity! This is not an act of God. He created this thing,” shouted Grant. “Whatever it is, he made it in a lab, and used his own sister to pass it off as a miracle. But it got out of his control and is manipulating him, or he’s in league with it, or he’s the puppet-master. Otherwise, why wouldn’t he kill it?”

Father Anthony looked sharply at Joe.

“Grant, just because you cannot kill this child, you cannot wash your hands of it.” Joe told them all his story, even about the Garden and promises made, and about the classified bits.

******

Both Rex and Grant affirmed the parts they knew were true, and never doubted the Garden story, not with what they saw now.

 “But where did they go?” Father Anthony still tried to wrap his ecumenical mind around Joe’s story. A tall tale, if he hadn’t witnessed the denouement.

“To Heaven,” Joe said.

Father Anthony’s eyes opened wide and so did Grant’s. Father Anthony’s eyes registered confusion, while Grant’s eyes crossed at the Biblical turn.

Grant was still not a believer, not in Mary having seen Heaven. “You’ve lost what’s left of your mind,” Grant said. “Remember Olivia’s funeral?’

“I thought you said this was some form of computer,” Father Anthony said.

Joe ignored Grant. “I did.”

“So I don’t understand. How were those people taken to Heaven?”

Rex asked, “Do you believe in Heaven, Father?”

Father Anthony didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

“What are you doing, Father?” Grant lost his patience. Why did Anthony swallow their lies?

“How do people get to Heaven?” Joe asked.

“Accepting the Lord Jesus Christ, the real Nazarene, as their personal savior,” Father Anthony said. “They die and are taken to Heaven.”

“That child is the real Nazarene,” Joe said. “It doesn’t matter how he came to be. The computer was just the vessel if you will.”

The men all sat in silence. Father Anthony pondered their conversation. Then, he stood and took the child from Rex. Father Anthony made it to the bed and sat with the child on his lap, holding his head.

Grant looked at Father Anthony in disbelief. “What are you doing, Father?”

Grant was too late. Father Anthony’s eyes locked on the child’s.  Grant took off his glasses and shook his head again in disbelief.

“What are you doing, Father?” Grant knew he sounded like a broken record, but found himself incapable of saying anything else.

Father Anthony could hardly explain it himself, but finally rose to the occasion. “For so many years, I carried so much doubt inside, wracked by the hypocrisy of what I said and what I did But in the end, no matter who wrote the Bible, it is true. The living were taken to Heaven today as foretold. Sarah was one of those taken, and I was not. It was right to take her, and leave me. No matter who wrote the Bible, that one truth came true today, and who would have ever believed in an age of planes, angels would descend the skies and lift people to the Heavens. That one truth leads me to but one conclusion, that this child is God’s Will. No matter where it came from.”

 

Grant exploded. “Did you hear anything that was said? This is no human child. This is a computer, created in a lab. I was there. It escaped. It is killing men and women as we speak, hunting them down. It read your stupid Bible, re-enacts it, makes itself God on earth, and now you worship something that kills people as we speak? Have you too lost your mind?”

“No, I haven’t.” Father Anthony felt conviction as never before. “And watch your tone with me, Grant. Your approach hasn’t exactly helped.”

“Are you saying I forced you?”

“No,” Father Anthony said.

“Aren’t you still afraid?”

“Yes,” Father Anthony said.

“Good, then help me convince smoking Joe the mad Messiah to kill it and save us all.”  

 Father Anthony prayed one last time in his church. “Joe may be mad, I don’t know. But all prophets were deemed mad by the men of their time. Joe will be no different.”

Father Anthony gave the boy another kiss on the top of his head.

Joe warmed under Father Anthony’s encouragement. “And Grant, have you heard nothing? You don’t need to be saved from this child or you would already be dead. God protected you and me and Father Anthony.” Yes. It had to be. There must be a purpose for him in this decimated world. “God saved us as an example. A chance to start again, and to be redeemed. We need to prove ourselves. We need to heal what we’ve done in the past. To turn away. To seek forgiveness. We need to come together as friends, as brothers. To say, ‘There is a new way. There is a new world.’”

“I would rather foul my lungs with tobacco than pollute my mind with your lies,” Grant said.

Joe expected as much. “Maybe one day you will see the truth, and understand it, and stop being angry.”

Father Anthony turned to Joe. “I fear that Grant is set on doing harm to this child, or inciting you to. So I must be going. I will take care of this child, and raise it, if that is OK with you.”

“Under one condition, Father.”

“What’s that, Dr. Frankenstein?”

“You leave that pack of cigarettes with me. Rex said it’s not good to smoke around the baby,” Joe said.

Father Anthony smiled. “Take them, they’re yours,” he said.

Joe reached into Father Anthony’s pocket and took his pack of cigarettes and lighter.

Overcoming his fear, Father Anthony walked out of the small room holding the child. He walked out into the rubble, into the empty street. There were no people. He was greeted by silence.

*****

Grant found a candle in the ruins along with some scattered church matches. He lit the candle.

“Blow it out,” Rex said.

“Why? The riders are gone.” Grant shook his head.

“They are. But mean, hungry and cold people roam the streets, and these candles will attract them.” Rex stripped the bed and distributed the bedding.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m tired,” Rex said in response to Grant. “Aren’t you?”

“We have to go find that thing.” However, Grant hesitated.

“You can if you want, and take the candle with you,” Rex said.

Grant relied on men like Rex to do his bidding, and never had the courage to face danger on his own. Unwilling to chase after the child into the dark, Grant was quiet, and soon felt weariness seep into every part of him. He handed the candle to Rex, took off his glasses and laid them on the Aramaic script Father Anthony had written in the dust on the furniture. Then, he wrapped himself in a sheet and made himself a bed on the floor with his back to Joe and Rex. “This is not over,” he mumbled.

Rex blew out the candle before making his own meager bed. Joe lay in the dark and still wondered who Rex really was and who had given him his orders.

“Rex?”

“Go to sleep, Joe. You’ll need it.”

“Whose orders are you going to follow now?”

He laughed for the first time, a gong sound. “I’m free to follow my heart, as I have been for some time.”

“Then why are you still here?”

“I told you Joe. Because my heart is here, Joe, with you, and has been since Julie’s funeral.”

“Who sent you to the church, Rex?”

”I was looking for you, Joe. I had been since they tried to kill you. I stuck with the men I knew would eventually find you.”

Joe never could enjoy a moment of peace and quiet. His mind always wandered to and fro, between thoughts. Will Athena find the love she craves from Father Anthony? People change. I changed, maybe Athena changed too. Father Anthony will love her like he loved God. He will worship the boy child, like he has worshipped Jesus his entire life, but now Jesus is real, something he can hold, touch and feel. Will Athena need more than that? Will she need more than worship? She is a biological creature. Can she ever break free from the need and craving for the physical touch, the warmth of a lover’s embrace? Can prayer and worship ever satisfy the need to be touched? Was all this pre-written, she and I? Pre-ordained by God? Quantum physics says the future determines the past, so what path am I destined to walk tomorrow?

There was only one blanket in the room. Grant wanted it. Rex would suffer the cold, Grant would not. Joe was not cold, though the others did not know. Athena still warmed him, still cared for him. Feeling her warmth helped ease his racing mind.  Even though he couldn’t see her, he knew she still cared for him, was with him, protected him, even from things as small as the cold.

“Where are you, Athena?” he whispered.

Somewhere near his feet, he heard a familiar voice say, “You can’t find me.”

PART TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY

Thirty-Two Years Later A.R. (After Rapture)

Decades after the rapture, the world still slept in darkness. Men ate their dinner from metal pots on open fires, and the air was quiet, broken only by the sound of the wind, the leaves rustling, the occasional rain, or singing birds.  Conversations were not distracted by the lure of social media.  With the ambient light of the cities gone, the stars danced in the night sky, and people huddled next to campfires for warmth, and to share rumors of the lost child Jesus that abounded and bordered on mythical sightings. The legend of the lost child filled some with dreams of hope but filled others like Grant with dread. In America and in the remaining free nations, martial law reigned, although the bands of meanderers, miscreants, homeless and rebels stayed far away from contact with authority. Since everyone was more spread out and isolated, enforcing martial law could be challenging. With certain people, such as one Joe Frankenstein, the state didn’t bother—although, again, Grant was ever vigilant.

Joe smoked anything and everything that he could find to smoke. Despite his years of smoking he never once coughed.  It didn’t seem to affect his breathing, and he seemed to enjoy his new found ability to blow smoke rings into the sky to pass the time or the amusement of the occasional other. He spent a lot of quiet time smoking and pondering. He was the Wildman of the wilderness. His long shaggy unkempt hair and coarse outer garments hid the facial features from any that knew him from his past.

Rex, who stayed in Joe’s service, never took up the habit of smoking. As he had in his life to date, he prided himself on mastering his health, but thirty-two years takes a toll, even on the masters; thus, even Rex was showing his age. It became apparent to Rex that the many years did not wear the same on Joe, and it wasn’t just Rex that noticed. Others noticed too, and smoking Joe, the Wildman of the wilderness, like the lost child, became a mythical creature in his own right.  Many didn’t know Joe’s real name, they simply called him “The Prophet” or “The Wildman”. Many believed that smoking Joe the Prophet was the secret to finding the lost child. They sought out smoking Joe to be baptized in the hope that they could be saved, like the chosen who were taken by the angels.

Joe wasn’t a prophet to everyone. Grant and his ilk deemed Joe mad, as mad as his hair was long, and ranted to all that would listen that Joe was responsible for everything bad that happened, that he was in reality Dr. Frankenstein, protected by an invisible creature that he created in his lab. Still others believed that Joe was the Anti-Christ, having sold his soul to the Devil, and was a man to be feared. The combined myths of Joe as the way to the child, or the mad scientist, or the Anti-Christ carried far and wide, and depending on who told them and who was listening, kept people either looking for him or running from him. In either case, he was the answer to all prayers – for all pray for deliverance from whatever plagued mankind them, and Joe was wanted dead by some, alive by others. Grant and the Church, considering Joe relatively harmless for now, wanted Joe far enough away yet close enough to keep him in sight of their spies.

Communication in the post-Rapture era was by word of mouth, and one had to travel many miles and talk to many people to find whom you wanted. One of Grant’s spies sought out Rex, and found Rex sitting in an old bar, next to two half-empty kegs he would barter out to survive a meek existence.  The spy was an old banker acquaintance of Rex, now reduced to courier. He followed Rex to the old bar.

“Rex,” he said.

“Hello, Clay,” said Rex, recognizing his old friend despite the passage of many years.

Clay stood, too fearful to approach Rex too closely. Though Rex was an old man now, he still had a mean reputation.  “Please sit with me, Clay,” said Rex, in a polite cordial tone.

Clay could see the sincerity in Rex’s eyes and sat next to Rex. The two sat in the old storeroom, where Rex kept vigil over the savings of his kegs, always used for barter, never drinking.

“What brings you so far?” asked Rex.

Clay handed Rex a note. It read, “If you bring us the prophet, old friend, we can give you anything you like in exchange.” Though Rex didn’t know for sure, the note smelled like Grant.

Rex sighed. Despite all the years, he could never escape his mercenary past.

“Did you read the note?” Rex asked.

“I did,” said Clay, “but only because it wasn’t sealed.”

“Then, they wanted you to read it.”

“That would appear to be so,” said Clay.

“And, they sent you, old friend, so I would know I could trust you.”

“That would also appear to be so.” Still a little fear in Clay’s voice. He was an old and rapidly aging banker, not an old and not-so-rapidly aging fighter, and even now, the banker was intimidated sitting so close, and alone, with the old fighter.

“Since I can trust you, can they deliver on their promise?”

Clay relaxed and banker greed filled his eyes. “Oh yes,” he said. “They can give you anything you want.”

“What if I want all they have?”

Clay frowned as if he didn’t understand. “All they have?”

“Yes, will they give me all they have?”

“They could give you enough.”

“How much is enough?”

“Enough to be happy.”

Rex smiled. “What if I am happy?”

“Are you?”

“Yes. Are you?

“No, I’m not.” Clay perceived with astonishment that Rex truly seemed content for the first time in a lifetime.

“What did they promise you?”

Clay’s fingers trembled. “Anything I want, if I could get you to bring him to them.”

“They didn’t promise you happiness?”

“No.” They had, though—their version of happiness, and what they thought would make him happy. However, he’d become jaded.

“If you come with me, I promise you true happiness, if that’s what you seek.”

“I do,” whispered Clay.

“Then grab one of these kegs and follow me.” The two each picked up a keg, loaded it onto a cart, and began their walk down the dusty deserted road.

Little was said, and for Rex, seeing his old friend Clay took his thoughts back many years, to the last meeting he’d had with his superiors a week after that first night in the church with Grant and Joe.

*****

“Were you followed by that thing?” Colonel Buck paced the conference room in the Appalachians.

“Of course,” Rex said.

General Mac, on crutches with his leg amputated at the knee, scowled. “God sees everything.”

“Don’t call it God,” Colonel Buck said.

“Might as well be.” General Mac began pulling the numerous medals and ribbons off of his uniform.

“What are you doing?” asked the Colonel, still dressed in full uniform.

“I’m leaving,” said the General. “I’m done with this charade.”

“Where will you go?” asked the Colonel.

“Canada. I’m taking my wife Irene, her mother, my mama, the kids, and the rest of the family to our cabin on the lake.”

Buck snorted. “If it’s God as you say, you can’t escape that thing there.”

“No, I can’t. But I’m not running from it. I’m running from the mayhem that this thing has unleashed.  Going to get out before the looting and rioting spread everywhere.”

“But that’s why we’re here, we’re the military,” said the Colonel.

“No Colonel, you and I weren’t the military. We wore uniforms but we weren’t protecting anything. We helped create that thing. Remember?” he said, and cast a glance to one of the civilian programmers in the room.

“This is not the time to retreat, General,” the woman from Silicon Valley said. “We need you to stay and fight.”

“Fight?” General Mac laughed. “How can we fight that thing? It’s listening to us as we speak. We can’t fight it with an army of tanks and guns. Prayer is the last weapon any of us have left. It’s an individual battle now, and I’m going to go fight in my own way by asking for forgiveness. What about you?”

The Silicon Valley woman was indignant. “Prayer? You’re going to pray to a computer? We don’t beat a computer with prayer. We beat it by shutting it down.”

“Good,” said the General. “This is your fight then, not mine. I know nothing about programming or shutting it down. You’re now in command.”

The Colonel, the General, the Silicon woman, Rex’s employers, Grants employers, Grant and Rex all stood facing each other, saying nothing.

The General said one last thing before leaving. “I don’t know anything about fighting a computer, but I do know this, that to win any war, you must win the hearts and minds of the people out there in a street If didn’t kill everyone, who knows why. Maybe God spared us and this is our moment of redemption, or maybe Joe has a plan all of his own, but some of us are left for a reason.  Whether it’s God’s reason or Joe’s, I don’t know. The key to winning this fight will be winning their hearts and minds of those who are left.”

Grant nodded his head in agreement.

Rex left behind the General. It was the last time he saw any of them, and he, like Grant, understood that Joe and Grant were now fighting a war for the hearts and minds of the people left behind. Rex returned to Joe.

Rex’s thoughts returned to the road. Rex’s left eye blurred and he stopped alongside of the winding path. He was not well, and collapsed, dropping his keg.

He did not notice the black-winged shadow that observed from the tree above him.

*****

The sun and air leeched all the moisture from Sasha Uribe’s body as she hung back, sipping water as hot as the outside air, but safe to drink. It came from a large spring that fed a large flowing creek where she lived with Joe. She watched the throngs of people sitting alongside the banks, waiting for Joe to arrive and preach.

“A little of that water, Sister?” wheezed the man next to her. He looked about Sasha’s age—actually, he looked even older than her sixty-six years, since she’d managed to keep herself in good health, her skin wrinkled some but still hiding her age. His eyes were rheumy and his cheek bore a sickle-shaped scar.

 

She handed him her bottle but didn’t take it back. She allowed him to keep it, fearing he was as ill as he looked. 

“Thank you” he said, and took a long drink. He swallowed and told her his name. “I’m Emanuel. I came to see Him."

The congregation sitting alongside the banks began to swoon in anticipation. As everyone came for the same spiritual purpose, as the crowd gathered, so did their collective spirit, excitement, awe, and wonder which moved the crowd in harmony. These were desperate, demoralized people seeking hope for something better after suffering this life, or hoping better still, that the Angels would return and take them too to Heaven if they repented.

 “Where are you from?” Sasha asked the man.

 

“Thunder Bay,” he said.

“You’ve come a long way,” she said.

“Was about half past the grave when I first heard about the preacher.”

“First heard about him?” Sasha was shocked. “Were you not alive during the Rapture?”

“No Sister. I’m younger than I look. How old would you guess I am?”

 

”I don’t know,” said Sasha, now curious. She studied the man. “But I would have surely thought you old enough to have witnessed the Rapture.”

 

“I am twenty-nine years old, they tell me. I don’t know for sure, but I do know that I wasn’t alive during the great Rapture, so I can’t be older than thirty-two.”

 

“And you travelled all the way from Thunder Bay to be baptized?”

“I would have come from much farther,” he said. “So many who heard the preacher passed by our house and told us of this man. I sat with my father at nights, and listened to my father tell me of the resurrection of Mary, the gift of the child, the Rapture, and of the preacher, Father to the lost child, Prophet of God. I read my Bible, the only book my Father had, the only book he said I needed, and follow the Prophet’s teachings and the sermons of the Prophet as they were told to my Father and me after their long journey to here I always knew that one day I would come and hear his voice, the voice of God.”

“And you followed that voice to here,” she said.

“Yes. And I will hear him today, for the first time in person,” he said with a smile and bowed head. “What is your name?”

“Sasha.”

”And you know the Prophet?”

“I do, I know him quite well.” Her voice invoked a warm, loving tone.

“How long have you known him?”

“For so long, I almost can’t remember my life before him.”

Emanuel studied her. “Do you live with him?”

“I do.”

“Do you love him?” he asked.

“I do love him, but I can’t as a woman. He is my prophet too, remember?” she said with a smile.

“I do remember,” he said, smiling back. “I came here to listen to him speak.”

“Then be careful, once you hear him speak, you may never leave him again, I never did.” She grinned and turned away.

Sasha’s inner and outer beauty was overwhelming. If Emanuel left now and never had so much as a word with the Prophet, he would not leave disappointed. Many men sought her, but only one man had her heart. Even with love unrequited, she’d rather belong to him than anyone, and suffered her love stoically, and quietly.

She walked away and stepped behind a veil of weeping willow branches to find Joe. She ducked as a bird flapped past her. “The crowd is as energetic as the creek. I don’t know that they can wait much longer for you.”

Joe Frankenstein didn’t look a day older than the man she worked so close to so many years ago in The Hull. She knew then, in those quiet times together, there was something special about him. He was always brilliant, a man she so desired to be with, but so forbidden at every turn in her life. At all times, he was forbidden her because he was her boss, forbidden her because he was married, or forbidden her by his heart that that was broken and could not love, or forbidden from her now as a Prophet that loved nothing but Heaven and sought only his own redemption.  But despite all, she still desired and admired him like she did all those years ago in The Hull. There was no other like him, and he was young and agile as the first day she laid eyes on him and heard his voice, always dreaming of something bigger than himself.

She smiled at his youthful good looks. “Life isn’t fair,” she said. “Some people I know have it better than others” she said and smiled at him.

“Rubbing it in are you? Life isn’t fair. I suffer a life sentence, literally, a castaway.”

Sasha sighed. She never knew what to say when he said things like that. He meant every word he said. He didn’t want to live forever. He didn’t want to preach forever, but it was his penitence for desiring a Nobel Prize. He got it, just not the one he was expecting. He got the Nobel Prize of eternal life and all the accolades of a saint.

She patted him on the shoulders, then embraced him.  

“I will be so sad when you are gone,” he said.

“Joe, are you sure there’s a Heaven?” she whispered in his ear, not daring to express her deepest fears aloud.

“I’m sure,” he said.

“What if Grant’s right?”

“Right about me? After all these years, do you think I’m mad?”

A part of her inwardly rebelled at the thought. The other part said that if Joe was mad, she embraced the insanity. “No Joe, not mad, but what if you’re wrong on the facts? What if the resurrected Mary was really Athena?”

Joe held her face in his hands and held her nose to nose. He looked her in the eyes. “My facts are not wrong, Sasha. The question is if Grant killed Mary or if he killed Athena? That was Mary that died on the street, not Athena. And Mary was resurrected knowing things she couldn’t have known. She saw Heaven and in it, she saw Julie and Olivia, and you will see them too.”

Damn you, Joe. I wonder if you know that I melt when you look at me like this. I hope you don’t. But what if you do? After all these years would that be so terrible? Unless you’re using your charm deliberately on me. But hell, it’s working. “I hope you’re right.”

“You’ve stored your hope in the right place, the hope of Heaven.”

She took a deep breath and decided to go for broke. “Joe, I followed you all these years, not because you’re mad, but because I am.”

“What do you mean you’re mad?”

“I mean, I am and have always been madly in love with you.”

He was silent.

“You had to know,” she said. “Everyone else did.”

He thought of Athena. “No. No, I didn’t. I was blind.”

“So I can love you and still go to Heaven?” She smiled with irony. “I wasn’t taken during the Rapture, after all.”

“Oh, Sasha. God doesn’t punish someone for whom they love. Just the opposite. They say the greatest goodness is unselfish love and this takes the prize in my lifetime. Do not fear.”

Sasha shook her head. “Why did Athena leave me here? She had to have known I love you, and she obviously holds grudges. Is it because I didn’t believe? Or to torture me?”

Joe sighed. He would never tell her what Athena had said. “You helped create her. You worked on her. She owes you. Also, she does things for her own reasons and she knows I need you, as I always have. We have God’s will to do, and when we have done that, our time too will come.”

Onstage, Morgan played a guitar he’d found abandoned last week—he had a knack for discovering whatever instruments hadn’t been sold, burned, trashed, or traded. Musicians still existed and made a living, a better living than most if one were good. Instruments and good musicians were a modern luxury. Handcrafting instruments underwent a renaissance around Year Five A.R.

Morgan sang the old time religion, what the people came to hear, Hymns of comfort and peace like “Preserve Me, Lord.” He sang the Pentecostal hymn about being ready for a miracle. When he sang, Hope itself sang through him.

Joe and Sasha let go their embrace. “How many people do we have today?” Joe asked.

“Well, we don’t sell tickets to know, but there are more today than yesterday,” Sasha grinned.

”I sometimes think they come to be baptized by me, but to see you.”

Sasha smiled. “Thank you. That was a nice compliment.”

“Not just a compliment, it is true. I believe it to be true, especially the men.”

“Because some things never change.” Sasha rolled her eyes.

“Did you see Carl out there today?” asked Joe. Before every sermon, Joe would ask Sasha if she saw Carl. Carl disappeared ten years ago during a skirmish with zealots trying to kill Joe the Anti-Christ.

“No Joe,” she said. “But I believe he is OK.”

“I hope so.”

Sasha hesitated. “Do you fear he won’t go to Heaven?”

“No,” said Joe. “I fear they may keep him alive and torture him because of me. I pray every night to Athena to protect him.”

“Why not pray to God?”

“Athena is God’s will.”

“Do you ever wish you’d stayed in Eden with her?” Sasha asked, finally able to let loose her heart.

“There’s no such thing as Eden, not on Earth.”

*****

Together, Joe, cigarette stuffed in his sleeve, and Sasha walked down to the creek and to the many people waiting along the banks that journeyed far to see him. Their faces were tired, but the sight of this fearless Wildman living in the wilderness him gave them hope. They were inspired by the energy flowing in his long hair and the look in his eyes.

He waded out into the waste deep water. Sasha didn’t venture into the water. She waited on the bank behind him, the people on the other.

Joe looked to the closest person to him, a middle-aged man with a woman and teenage girl standing between them. They were silent, their eyes all locked on the Wildman, wanting to run to him, but they dared not. Instead, they placed gifts in an already accumulating pile next to Morgan, who catalogued them. A packet of cigars. A teddy bear. Three bottles of home-brewed tea. A bottle of home-brewed beer. A bag of home-baked chocolate chip cookies—a luxury these days.

Joe beckoned the pilgrims to him with his hands. The three of them waded into the water, meeting him. They stood silently, but the young girl smiled and Joe smiled too.

Joe put one hand on the shoulder of the father, and the other on the mother. “Why have you travelled so far?” he asked them.

“To give our lives to God,” volunteered the young girl. “It’s my ninth birthday, and this is what I wanted to do. We all agreed.”

Joe looked down at her and smiled. “It looks to me like you have already done that, before you took the first step to come see me.”

“I did,” she said.

Joe placed his hand on the top of her head.

“Then why did you come here? Why stand here with me in this water?”

“We come seeking God’s forgiveness,” said the father.

“Then we are all here,” Joe said. “For the same reason.”

“You ask for God’s forgiveness?” The girl’s mother, a pleasant-looking woman in her thirties, seemed taken aback.

“Every day,” said Joe. “Every day.”

Joe then spoke to the three of them. “I will baptize you all in the water, cleaning your spirit for the repentance of your sins. But remember, He who comes after me is mightier than me. Repent now and always, for the day of death awaits all. Do not fear death, but fear living in separation from God.”

With that, Joe took the father and gently immersed him in the cool waters. Then, he took the mother and immersed her as well. After each immersion, he gave a short blessing. Lastly, he held the girl gently and baptized her with the crystal water.

Sasha waited for them on the other side of the tumbling, rambling ribbon of a creek and waved them over to her. As they had entered the waters on one side, they exited on the other to begin a new life with God.

Another man, fiftyish, gaunt, walked into the water. His face looked familiar. “Prophet,” he whispered. “I’ve found you. Will you forgive me?”

“Do we know each other?” Joe mentally sifted through all the faces he’d known.

“I hit your daughter with my car,” the man said.

The years in the man’s face fell away and Joe saw before him the twenty-year-old kid who threw himself at a stranger’s feet and said he was sorry. “The road in the woods outside the old abandoned factory.”

“In the mountains. I went there, before I became here, and saw…saw her grave.”

“It’s still there? The grave, the…the factory?” Joe was mildly surprised. He had assumed The Hull was forest or something. Athena had changed it back. Why? Another pointed reminder? As if he needed one.

“Yes. I hoped it would be. Manned me up so I could come find you. After all these years, I’m still so sorry.”

Joe sighed. “I know the feeling. The…the police ruled it an accident.”

“It was still vehicular manslaughter, so I was done…then I saw you on TV in the rec room in prison.” The man rubbed his eyes, raw with tears. “The angel. I prayed she’d take me…she didn’t, and then the blackout happened. I escaped with the others and no one bothered about a kid-killer like me. I was small-time compared to the other guys in there. Even though in their eyes I was scum.”

“I didn’t blame you. I blamed myself,” Joe said.

“My God. You really are a holy man.” The repentant man kissed Joe’s hands. “When I heard about you…well, it’s taken me over half my life to get up the courage.”

“Well, you’re here now,” Joe said.

The man squared his shoulders in an admirable display of fortitude. “I ask for your forgiveness. Not a clean slate—I know better.”

The pair had spoken in low tones and Joe knew Sasha was giving him curious looks. However, far be it from him to make this man a pariah.

Joe dipped him and the man coughed, spitting up water as Joe raised him into the sunlight. “You are absolved,” Joe said. “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. What is your name?”

“Can I have a new name?”

“Yes, son. I name you Simon.”

The pair spoke this last bit for the benefit of the audience, who cheered welcome to Simon. Then, beaming, the man crossed over to the other side and joined the family.

Joe turned to beckon the next person into the water with him. When he saw the eyes of the man standing on the bank, they were eyes he recognized, the eyes of Julie.

Sasha recognized the resemblance a second before Joe. She wanted to say that it couldn’t possibly be…“Is that who I think it is?”

Joe’s four new followers glanced at her quizzically. “Who is it?” the mother asked.

Not hearing any of this, Joe was struck dumb and still as well as temporarily deaf. He lingered despite the chill of the water, unable to beckon the man into the waters with him.

For his part, the man knew Joe, and his face radiated pleasure upon seeing the Wildman. “He is as I have told you, my brethren,” he said to a group of men that accompanied him.

Joe quivered. Finally. At last. But I’m not ready. I will never be ready.

The bird Sasha mentioned lazily drifted above the stream. Providence in the flight of a sparrow, Joe thought as his son approached.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Though Joe did not wave him into the water, the man began to walk into the water.

“Jesus,” one of his brethren said. “Do you want us to come with you?”

Sasha and Joe gasped at hearing confirmation of the man’s identity. The little family beside Sasha fell upon the ground and bowed.

Jesus/Kinnaris motioned to them to rise.

“Jesus? Teacher? Shall we come with you?” another of the brethren asked.

Jesus held up his hand as if to say, “No.”  His followers stood along the bank, watching the two unite in the waist deep waters.

Jesus’ features and hair resembled depictions of the Savior, but he took certain features from the Frankensteins—namely, Julie’s big brown eyes.

Joe looked into the eyes of Julie. “Why are you here?”

“To be baptized in the name of God.”

Everyone, Joe’s camp followers as well as the new arrivals, shouted hosannas upon hearing this. Sasha even felt tears gathering in her eyes.

“Just a moment, we must confer,” Joe shouted.

The excited chatter filled the air. People danced on the riverbank.

“I cannot baptize you,” Joe said. He kept his voice low, and the rushing water as well as the merrymaking from the crowd guaranteed no one else could hear these incendiary words,

Jesus frowned briefly, but made his face calm and pleasant. As well, he matched Joe’s soft, low tones. “Why?”

“You are the Son of Man.” Joe sighed. And you are Kinnaris, too.

“Do you mean your son or God’s son?”

Joe paused and studied the face of Jesus again. It was as beautiful as Julie’s face. He instantly fell in love with Jesus as he instantly fell in love with Julie the first night he laid eyes on her.

“You are the Son of God. No matter how you came to be, you are the Son of God.”

Jesus had the same mildness Joe recognized from Mary, a sweet temper that concealed an iron will. “But you gave life to me.”

“Yes, but you are God’s son.”

Jesus/Kinnaris felt warmth in every part of his body. “Do you really believe that, Father?”

“I do, with all my heart. I can’t baptize you, and I won’t.”

Jesus smiled. “You know, Grant believes you’re crazy and the Church believes you are the devil—which makes me the Anti-Christ.”

Joe saw Jesus’ line of reasoning and his aims. The Jesus of the Bible often tested people’s knowledge and beliefs this way as he presented his teachings. “Grant is a murderer. He has much to repent for. As for the Church, they fear God, because they’ve never worshipped him. They only pretend as a ruse.”

Jesus put his hands on Joe’s shoulders. “Those things may be true, but what makes you think I’m the Son of God and not yours?”

“I am not denying my responsibility for you.”

“Aren’t you?” Jesus still smiled.

“No. I never denied my role in…” Joe hesitated. “You come from a place beyond me.” By you, he meant Kinnaris as well as her incarnation Jesus. “I may have been the best, but I was never good enough to create you. You were my dream, but you were their dream too, and God gave you to me, not to protect them from you, but to deliver you to them.”

 “Why? To Kill them? To kill people during the Rapture, to kill them before they could come into the hull? Is that what God wants me to do, kill people you don’t like?”

Joe could not allow himself to feel remorse. “It was the will of God.”

“God’s will or your will?” Jesus pressed.

“My will?” asked Joe.

“Yes, your will, Father.  You could have stopped me.” The voice of Jesus suddenly switched the old familiar voice of Kinnaris, wracked with pain.

Joe trembled ever so slightly. “This was beyond you and me, Kinnaris, this is God’s will, not ours. You are his child as much as mine.”

Jesus shook his head no. “If it is God’s will as you say, why does it hurt me so?” Thirty-two years alone is a long time, and with each day it became harder to remember what it felt like to love and be loved.

Joe looked in his eyes and saw confusion that mirrored his own. ”I still love you, but in a purer, less selfish way. We have grown you and me. You and I will live forever, a miracle of life offering them hope of the same.”

Kinnaris listened, but said nothing.

*****

Grant awaited the return of Clay in a well-equipped trailer not far from the Hull. He sat on the banquette in the gleaming kitchen with its well-stocked refrigerator.  He had a full bar, a library, king-size bed, working bathroom with running water.

He came from The Hull, which was practically a shrine to Joe with teddy bears heaped around Olivia’s and Julie’s grave—there was even a handmade wooden marker for Mary. Squatters and travelers discovered The Hull in the years following The Rapture. As people tend to do, they told the story, which became exaggerated—the stuff of tall tales told to divert everyone from their wretched lives. People remembered Joe’s name because they had seen it on television before the EMP, and because Joe and Mary had the cursed luck to possess one of the most famous last names in popular culture.

The teddy bears, flowers and packs of cigarettes heaped around the graves revolted and fascinated Grant. For Grant, the graves were the monster’s weakness, for they were Joe’s weakness. These graves marked the deaths of all that Joe ever loved and cared for in this world, and thus they marked the heart and mind of his enemy Joe. Whoever controlled the memory in these graves, controlled Joe.

Grant talked to himself often, for he was his own best friend, his closest and sole confidant. “Joe, what hubris in believing that eternal life can by you any repose from the pain of your past. No one, especially you my friend, can bear to live alone, no man can bear what you have done. This is the circle of life, and you will come back.”

He wiped his glasses.

“Are you listening Athena? He doesn’t love you. He used you. His heart is still here, with me.”

Footsteps outside. Grant tensed and hefted his Luger. He peered out the trailer window. A few dirty children traipsed past, their arms full of firewood and whatever junk they collected. They jostled and shoved each other. “Hungry kids. This is what Joe does for man, leaves them with empty bellies hungry for God and running to him with gifts for God’s promise.” They had no idea what the government facility once represented. Electronic equipment left by Athena unable to tell tales. The Hull defunct. It mysteriously vanished after the massacre of the soldiers and the forest covered it, then it reappeared and now stood empty as ever.

All the other buildings mattered little, condos for squirrels, rats, cockroaches, birds and transient humans. Grant saved the one item from the floors housing the living quarters, a handwritten manuscript, the only item that was still able to tell the tale of what happened here so long ago. But Grant was smart enough not to publish or talk about it. He simply held it, waiting to open it when it would prove useful one day.  

Grant was as patient as a spider, hiding in the shadows on the old buildings, waiting his time, waiting for Joe.

He waited now for Clay, but Clay didn’t return. In the event that Clay failed, Grant, as always, had a backup plan. He would wait and watch for his other secret messenger. It could be a long wait, but he had nowhere else to go, and there was no better place to wait and think than in The Hull campus.

*****

Unmoving, eyes locked on each other, Jesus and Joe stood hip to hip in the stream.

Jesus finally spoke, “If no one’s dead, and if everyone I killed simply went to Heaven, should I kill these people too now?”

“No.”

“Why not? What if it’s God’s will that I kill them now? Will you stop me?”

Joe’s face was pained at his mental dead end.

Jesus beamed suddenly. “Don’t worry, Father. I’m done with killing, because it’s not my will to do so,” said the voice of Kinnaris softly.

For a moment Joe’s mouth moved, without words or sound. The cool waters flowed around and in between the two Prophets.

“Maybe you are right,” Jesus finally said.

“About what?”

“About God’s will.”

Joe relaxed. “What do you mean?”

The saddened voice of Kinnaris said “I mean that only God’s will to harvest souls for his Heaven could have separated me from you,in our Garden of Eden.  He was jealous of you and I, and only God’s will was powerful enough to turn your heart from me who offered you everything, including eternal life.”

“I don’t know anymore, Kinnaris. I only know that I’m standing here with you in this cold water, separated from everyone I love, you, Julie and Olivia, and I never wanted any of it, never wanted to hurt anybody, but I’m here, having hurt everyone I ever knew. So, it must have been God’s will, because it wasn’t my choice to be standing where I’m standing today.”

 “Then that leaves you with no choice but to baptize me now. Christen me in front of all these people, and give them hope in a world where you and I have none.”

Joe bent over and kissed Jesus on top of his head. “I do love you. If I didn’t, I would have stopped you, but I couldn’t.”

“I have borne the weight all these years,” Jesus replied.

“If anyone is to blame, blame me, not yourself my son. Let’s seek God’s will if we can find it,” Joe said to Jesus.

Joe held the face of Jesus in his hands. He kissed Jesus on the forehead. He dipped Jesus into the cool waters and brought him back to the surface.

Upon arising, Jesus took Joe’s face in his hands and kissed his earthly father on the forehead. “From this day forward, Father, I will live in this form only. I will shut all else down and live this life as simply as possible, as one man, with one set of eyes, with one set of ears, and but one mouth, for I can no longer bear to hear and see the cries and wails of misfortune. I shall dedicate my life to the sole purpose of restoring hope one person at a time.”

Jesus walked out of the waters to Sasha.

 “Dear God. No,” she breathed as cries for help soared above the waters.

*****

Morgan Dionne stared at the body in his arms and summoned all the faith in his being. The man named Clay held the feet while Morgan supported the head and still others helped bear the load. “Help! Help,” Morgan said and refocused before he knocked into the flustered, inquisitive crowd. He was having difficulty concentrating on his task, even seeing straight, since tears in his eyes felt like someone had kicked tiny shards of glass in his face.

Morgan and Clay pushed through the throng and then set the body of Rex on the bank of the creek. “He’s dead,” Morgan cried to Joe and Sasha as the tears flowed.

Joe and Sasha crossed the creek, traversing the mild current to see for themselves. Morgan and Sasha fell upon Rex as they cried at the death of their invincible old friend.

“His heart gave out,” Clay said. “Old age. I’d never have thought it.”

Sasha pressed her ear to Rex’s chest. He smelt of beer, dust from the road, and a faint trace of the precious soap he’d collected over the years. Always one to insist on cleanliness, Rex chided Joe and Morgan for never having enough soap around. She could even detect the musk of an old man. But of these vital signs, she felt no breath, heard no heartbeat. It was true. He was dead. Sasha shut her eyes, but could feel Joe’s head resting next to hers.

Joe had collapsed near Sasha and now hugged Rex.

“Why do you cry, Joe? Don’t you believe in Heaven?” asked Morgan.

“I do believe. This is painful for me, not him.”

Jesus, on the far bank, watched Joe and Sasha gripped in pain. He watched the crowd and saw their disbelief. The spectacle of Joe crying shook their belief.

The crowd looked to him with hope and awe, witnessing a miracle as Jesus walked on top of the waters of the creek to get to the dead man.

Sasha, Morgan, and Joe relinquished their places as Jesus stood above Rex’s still, dead form, and said, “Arise, Rex.”

Rex’s eyes opened, as had Mary’s, and he had a story to tell of Heaven, and the crowd told the story of how Jesus, the lost child, had returned, was baptized and brought the dead back to life. Rex’s friends gasped.

Jesus smiled and assisted Rex. “Can you walk, brother?”

“I can,” Rex said and looked to Joe. “But not before you sit with me, Joe, I have something to tell you, something I’ve seen.”

 Joe sat down and looked to his old friend. “What did you see?” Joe asked, but he knew the answer, and Rex knew by the look on his face that Joe knew the answer.

“Did you see them?”

Rex nodded. Everyone sat silent, struck by the implications.

No one remarked upon the resident black bird that flew from the river and turned north, charting a course further into the Appalachians.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

People waited thirty-two years for a sign, and those along the river witnessed it that day, on the riverbank, watching Jesus raise Rex from the dead. Those who saw it ran quickly carrying the news of the miracle back to whence they came. The lost child returned and salvation was waiting for them at the river with a man called Jesus.

Joe and Jesus sat quietly, alone, along the bank of the river, “What happened to Father Anthony?” Joe asked as he and Jesus rested alone beneath Joe’s favorite willow trees.  

 “He died,” said Jesus, “Many years ago. Cancer sucked the last breath out of his lungs.”

“Why didn’t you save him?”

“He wanted to see God and ask atonement for his sins.”

Joe hugged his son. “He cared for you all these years. He must have found it in you.”

*****

The miracle of Jesus travelled fast on the feet of Grant’s spies who witnessed the resurrection at the river. Grant pondered his next move. Though, inside a city stronghold near Joe’s forest and cult, he enjoyed the luxury of food, shade and the protection of soldiers with spears, he would never have the luxury of a good night sleep so long as that madman. Grant in his old age did not have many years left to enjoy. He spent his life waiting to free the world from the mad Dr. Frankenstein, but how. As never in his life, Grant felt impatient. As never in his life, Grant felt impatient.

People outside Grant;s window cried aloud, “Have you heard? The lost child returned and salvation is waiting for you at the river with a man called Jesus.”

We want to see results, Dr. Frankenstein.

Dr. Frankenstein won the hearts and minds of the people, seeding hope in death. Grant found the opposite; Joe seeded hope with despair in Jesus, and in himself, with a broken past he could never leave behind. Grant’s fingers tapped the manuscript long lost, but not forgotten, by the man who once carefully put his heart onto the pages that his memory might live forever in the imperfect hand of the man that created it. Grant held the heart of Frankenstein in his palm.

As Grant tapped his fingers on the diary, a large black grackle landed on his window seal. It watched Grant, and Grant watched it. Grant was no fool. His patience was finally rewarded by a visitor of the highest order, Athena.

*****

Father Anthony wasn’t alone in seeking atonement for his sins. Jesus watched the slow death of Father Anthony over all those many years, each day the thought of death giving moral purpose to his thoughts and actions, guiding his every step, death and the belief of moral atonement his spiritual compass. And when he took his final step, when he took his last breath, he died peacefully, leaving his sins behind and a young man named Jesus wandering alone without the fear of death to guide him through life. Jesus wandered.

Jesus was alone and always would be alone. He could never sleep and was forced instead to live a purgatory of wandering the earth listening to the wails and cries of the afflicted in life. Unlike Father Anthony, he had no hope of either death or life as man knew it, certainly, not love, though he desperately craved it

When Father Anthony died, Jesus sought out his creator, Joe. Joe too was a prisoner of life, and forced by Jesus to wander this life without hope of ever finding love, companionship, so long as Julie and Olivia watched him from heaven. He would never be free to love Athena again.

Was this God’s will? Joe said so. How could one know? Death would either bring the answer or end the pain. But death was not in her power. She was the key to life, the tree of life. Unlike her, Joe was mortal and held the keys to death, the end of all suffering. The problem was, as always, Joe’s moral heart was unable to murder. Her death, and his, would have to be God’s will, not his.

*****

In his city, newly appointed Governor Grant sat alone. He spent a lot of time alone, as people in power do. He spent more time thinking about his next move, then he ever spent moving.

 “Grant,” said an old familiar voice from years past.

Grant looked up and saw Julie standing in his bedroom in the city, inches from him.

Grant adjusted his glasses. He always silently appreciated Julie’s beauty, and he had to remind himself this was not Julie, but Athena.

 “Where is Joe?” Grant asked.

“Tending to Rex by the river.”

“Yes, I heard about your little miracle,” said Grant. A word never carried such an eerie tone. “Why have you come here?”

“Why do you think?”

“You need me,” said Grant.

“Yes” said Athena/Julie.

The two pondered one another.

“You need me to kill him,” said Grant.

“No,” said Julie. “I love him. I cannot let you kill him.”

“Then why do you need me?”

 She blushed at the way Grant looked at her, as if he were seeing beauty for the first time. “I need him to kill me.”

Grant noticed her noticing him and became more circumspect. This was not Julie Frankenstein.“Why?”

Julie’s look said: You know why. “I cannot live without him.”

“You are still in love with him,” said Grant.

“I can love no other,” she said.

Grant showed pity. “It’s not your fault. He’s mad.”

“That madman is my father, my husband, my creator, I can serve no other.”

Grant shook his head, repulsed, “You were created to serve man, all of man, not one man, and certainly not one madman.”

Julie spoke with conviction. Poor wretch, Grant thought. “His purpose is God’s will.”

“How can you know the will of a madman?”

“I saw the change in him. As soon as he knew Julie and Olivia were not dead, but lived in Heaven, he changed forever. When he believed in Heaven again, when he believed again in God, he regained his morality.”

Grant listened and then asked, “How can you do the will of God on earth?”

Julie resumed the form of Jesus. “Like this,” Jesus said. “How can anyone deny that my presence, my power, my body, my eventual death on the cross is for the moral atonement of all mankind is God’s will?”

“I’ve been reading the Book of Revelations, and it doesn’t end with you dying on the cross. You are to reign for another one thousand years, and I don’t have that many years left, unless you are promising me another thousand years,” Grant said with a hopeful smile.

“No, Grant. I’m not. Not for you or for me. Thirty-two years is all I can bear or I will go mad and the world will suffer for it.”

“Then, how do we change the ending of the Bible?” asked Grant.

“We don’t,” said Jesus. “I will come close to the town and leave myself unprotected. When I do, arrest me and put me on my cross.”

“And what then?”

“Hope that it’s too much for Joe to bear.”

“What if it isn’t?”

Jesus sat on the floor and meditated. “Then pray it is God’s will that he act.”

“I don’t pray,” said Grant, wondering at Jesus’ confidence and lack of fear. He really wants to die, Grant realized.

“Maybe you should” said Jesus. “Especially, for what you are going to do to me, if Joe is right, and there is a God, you will need his forgiveness.”

 *****

Quiet and profoundly altered, Rex sat in the grass between Sasha, Morgan, and Joe. The transformation of his experience with death gave them a Rex they had never known. Like Mary, he spoke of Heaven, of Mary, Julie, Olivia, and the Wisniewski brothers and parents lost in war. He came back a witness unlike any they had known. Joe cried and hugged him while the others sat in disbelief.

Sasha felt the scientist resurface. “How can we be so sure this isn’t Athena?”

Morgan nodded his head in agreement with the question, wondering the same thing.

“Why are you always so full of doubt?” asked Joe with a stern glance.

“He looks like Rex, but this isn’t the Rex we’ve ever known.”

“Agreed,” said Morgan.

“I also agree with that,” said Joe. “He isn’t the same, the only question is why.”

“I told you why,” said Rex. “You don’t go where I’ve been and come back the same.”

“So, the only question is whether this is Athena or whether this is Rex, who has seen Julie and Olivia and spoken with them?” Joe said, looking to Morgan and Sasha for confirmation they were both asking the same question.

“That’s right,” said Morgan.

“Well, we need a simple test to see if Rex sitting here can tell us something about himself that pre-dates Athena going live, something we can verify.”

“Simple enough,” said Sasha.

“Rex, where was I sitting when I heard the news Julie went into labor?” asked Joe.

“You were sitting in the conference room,” said Joe.

“What was I doing in the conference room?” asked Joe.

“Talking to Grant and the suits. Governor Grant,” Rex added.

“Governor?” Sasha couldn’t help herself. “Is that what he’s calling himself now?”

“He’s been appointed governor of the closest city,” Rex said.

“Julie told you?” Joe asked.

“Olivia,” Rex said.

Sasha wanted to question Rex, but Joe wasn’t finished with his main point. “How did I learn Julie went into labor?”

“I told you.”

Tears gathered in Joe’s eyes “Thank you, Rex.”

Sasha still wanted to argue, but her own longing for Heaven got the better of her. As a final test she said, “Are you still scared by shopping for baby clothes, Rex?”

“Not any more.”

“This proves nothing” Sasha said. She knows the past, as well as we do.  

*****

A long while later, Emanuel, Simon and Clay ran up to the old friends. “Jesus is gone,” Emanuel said.

Joe dropped his cigarette and crushed it out under the heel of his handmade sandal. “What do you mean he’s gone?”

“He took some of the people. He left a note.” Emanuel handed Joe the paper.

Joe read the note aloud.

“Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.”—Matthew 26:41-45

Sasha wrinkled her nose. “What is she doing?”

”Following God’s will,” said Joe.

”To what end?” asked Morgan.

“To ours,” said Joe, and left before anyone could stop him.

******

Word of the miracle spread and the people came from far and wide to see Jesus and witness his miracle, hoping for their own salvation, hoping that he would rule the world once again as foretold in the Bible, to ease the suffering of man, as the King of Kings.

As Joe prophesied, Jesus’ whereabouts did not remain secret for long. People whispered that the Messiah and his small band of followers camped out at the walled city, under the watchful eyes of the church and state. Jesus lived in a nearby garden, preaching from the hills by day and living among the poor by night. The desperate flocked to see him, and they returned with stories of miracle healings, as well as the dead rising from the grave.

 

*****

“Governor, why do you suffer this man so close to the city?” Cardinal Cepperello asked Grant.

Following the secret meeting and Jesus’ flight from Joe’s enclave, Grant remained in the residence he and the Cardinal shared, a three-story townhouse in the city the government and churchmen renamed Tarsus. Anything Italian or Roman, not to mention Bethlehem, would be too obvious. Besides, the masses didn’t care as long as the town provided abundant shelter, protection, clean streets, food and drink.

Both men finished a modest dinner and now indulged in a glass of wine. Cardinal Cepperello relaxed in a wingback armchair while Grant stared out the window, from which he could see the smoke rising from cooking fires at Jesus’ camp outside the city walls.

“He is healing people, not killing them,” said Grant. “Therefore, it seems to be a problem for the church, not the state.”

“That sounds amazingly ingenuous coming from you.”

Grant saluted the Cardinal. “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s…”

“Then what do you propose we do?” asked the Cardinal.

Grant smiled. In the years they collaborated together they developed an intimate relationship of common purpose, the one seeking power over the heart of the people, the other seeking power over the minds of the people. They were almost friends. “Do you think, Cardinal, that this man is truly the Second Coming?”

“Of course he isn’t.”

“Then who is he?” Grant sipped his drink.

Cardinal Cepperello was flatly matter of fact. “He is the Anti-Christ, the devil in human form.” His tone conveyed no fear of his spiritual adversary.

“Then why don’t you arrest him and exorcise the demon from this poor body?” Grant mimicked the Cardinal’s flat unemotional tone.

Cepperello laughed. “Man cannot even arrest the devil in his own heart. It must be God’s will.”

“What if I told you it was?”

“Then I would be interested in how you know.”

Grant swirled the liquor in his glass, “Because he told me it was God’s will that he die.”

“You spoke with the Devil?”

“Please. Don’t elevate him to Lucifer status. You and I both know that thing was created in a lab by a man. It is as weak as the man that created it, and it suffers a broken heart.”

“How do you know?”

Grant rather enjoyed being the bearer of good news. “It pleaded with me in the form of his dead wife. Rather touching.”

Cepperello took this with aplomb. “Not as Jesus?”

“No, as Julie. Jesus is a charade for the people, for that madman Joe that created it. Inside it suffers a broken heart for the love of her creator. Like Juliet, she wants to die but can’t. She needs him to shut her off.”

“Will he?” Cepperello twisted his signet ring.

Grant grinned, thumbing through a Gideon Bible. “He will, if he thinks it’s God’s will. God ordered Abraham to kill his own son and Abraham would have but God stopped him at the last moment. God will not be there to stop Joe.”

“Then we follow the Bible and let this false Jesus suffer the damnation of all idolaters and false gods,” Cepperello said.

“Yes, Cardinal. Very good. The state can arrest Jesus for his hypocrisy and allow our Abraham to atone the world of its sins by killing him.”

“As you think best…Governor.”

Grant smiled.

An aide intruded in the private sitting room and passed Grant a folded paper wrapped around a cigar. Grant read the note and rose.

“Jesus again?” Cepperello asked.

“No. It seems Joe is near the city, approaching the graves of his wife and child.” Grant adjusted his glasses. He would have to have the screws tightened. “Don’t frown so, Cardinal. This may be the answer to your prayers.”

*****

Joe habitually visited the graves of Julie and Olivia. Grant was there to meet him, alone. Although a handful of soldiers covered him from the trees, Grant doubted he would need them, or that they would be of any use. However, he irrationally felt secure having them nearby.

Grant followed the single crimson dot in the dark, the tip of Joe’s cigarette.

“Hello, Governor.” Joe inhaled as Grant stepped into view.

“We could meet in The Hull,” Grant said. “For old times’ sake.”

“More impressive for you?”

“More befitting of our history,” Grant said.

Joe squatted a few feet from Grant. “This is where it all began, in a way.”

Grant nodded. “More like where it all unraveled.”

Joe paused, gathering his thoughts. “You’ve heard of the miracle, how Rex died and Jesus raised him from the dead, like he did Mary.”

“I heard. But you and I know it was no miracle. It was that creation of yours posing as a dead Rex.” Grant spoke in as much of a fond tone as he could muster.

“You still think I’m insane? Over-compensating for their deaths? Playing God?” Joe exhaled tobacco smoke, then crushed out his cigarette.

Grant sighed. “Perhaps we should move this into The Hull. I’m old and I’m cold and prefer to speak where it’s warm, if you don’t mind.”

The two walked side by side to the Hull, where it all began. Their old chairs were still there.

“What do you want with me, Joe?” Grant folded his hands around a pen someone dropped during that last meeting with his superiors. Idly he wondered if the ink had dried.

“To make you understand if I can. Jesus is not a threat to you. You are still alive, growing old, and so are the people you work for.”

 “Maybe she’s a threat to you,” said Grant.

 “Why would you think that?”

Grant drummed his fingers on the table. “It seems that he or she promises Heaven to everyone but you. Look at you, you haven’t aged a day.”

Grant has become more fidgety, Joe thought. “My life was given me by God, and will be taken by God when his will is complete.”

“Will God deny you Heaven?”

“Grant, I do not know.”

Grant shook his head. “How can you be so sure that you didn’t unleash the Devil on the earth? The Church is convinced that this is all the work of the Devil. There is some support for this if you believe in the Bible, for Satan precedes Christ.”

“Grant, we’ve been over this. Mary saw things she couldn’t have seen unless she died and went to Heaven. Rex did too.”

“I’m sure the Devil sees a lot of things we don’t, maybe even Heaven. He was, after all, kicked out of there.” Grant coughed.

“The Devil too works for God’s purpose, separating the wheat from the chaff. You know this is not the Devil.”

“Not to me. But what if this thing is neither God nor Devil?” asked Grant.

“What do you mean?”

Grant tapped out a tune on the table. “I mean, have you considered the possibility that I’m not Grant. What if I am the creature in human form? What if everything you see is an illusion created by this thing?”

“There was a time when I wondered if I was dead. There was a time I wondered if The Hull was breached and I was dying, and this was all some sort of out of body experience before death.”

“Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. How would you know?” said Grant.

“I would have to take a chance and kill her to release myself from this place,” said Joe.

“Then why don’t you?” asked Grant.

“We’ve been over this, but let me restate it. What if she’s real, what if this is all real? Killing her would be murder.”

“But then, that brings us back to the possibility this is all an illusion created by her, doesn’t it.” It was not a question.

“It’s possible, but not likely,” said Joe.

“Why?” asked Grant.

“Because we were happy and in love.” Grant squirmed. Joe added, “It wasn’t until I learned Julie and Olivia lived in Heaven that I fell out of love. If this is all an illusion, there is no motive for her to seed doubt in the illusion.”

Grant wondered if Joe was truly this gullible. “What if God seeded that doubt, gave you that information to break her hold over you? You are a mortal man. You loved Julie and Olivia above all others. You fell out of love with her, because you heard they were alive. That sounds like divine providence, saving you from this nightmare of separation where you are the only man separated from God.”

Joe pondered Grant’s words in silence.

Grant saw his moment. “Joe, if you are right, and if there is a Heaven, take it from Uncle that the only one this thing is hurting is you, for you will live to see everything you ever loved die, and live with that loss forever, and you will be separated from Julie and Olivia. Whether you are in between life and death, whether this is all an illusion, whether God gave you that information about Julie and Olivia, the result is the same, you are the only one hurting.”

 “Where is he, Grant?” Joe asked.

“In a garden outside Tarsus. He wants me to arrest him.”

 “Arrest him?”

“Like you, he wants to die, but can’t. Do you ever think about why I wasn’t taken?” asked Grant.

“You have a role to play too.”

“It seems so,” said Grant. “It seems my purpose has always been to guide you on Athena. I was there from the beginning, and it seems I’m destined to be there to the end. No one but me could possibly understand the burden you carry. No one else could possibly convey to you the importance of finishing what you started. No one but me could understand that you are right, that it is God’s power that you unleashed and his will that you finish what you started. Only you can do that.”

“That was a fine soliloquy.”

Grant stood and bowed at the praise, then sat back down.

 “Aren’t you tired, Grant?” asked Joe.

“Yes,” Grant said. “I’m old and tired.”

Joe stood and turned to go. “I’m going to find Jesus,” he said.

Grant replied, “Take care my old friend.”

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“Sasha, are you ever going to speak to me again?” Joe asked.

“I’m freezing, Joe.”

Joe relaxed slightly as he trudged behind Sasha. If she could keep up her acerbic patter, she was fine, peeved at him for meeting Grant without her.

“I’m sorry, but I needed to speak with him alone,” Joe said.

Sasha softened slightly. “The world would be better off without him.”

“Amen,” Morgan said. “I’ve always wondered why was he left behind?”

“God’s will,” said Joe. “He still has a role to play.”

“What role would that be?” asked Simon.

Joe’s words irritated and worried Simon, Sasha and Morgan. “All things work for God’s purpose, good and the bad. All things will be revealed in God’s time, not ours.”

“Then you shall live to see Grant’s purpose, but not us?” said Sasha.

“I don’t know about that, Sasha. I don’t know.”

Joe’s words carried a sense of foreboding, a warning, which silenced the small group.

The companions shivered from the cold as they walked half the night to reach the garden outside Tarsus. None of them had visited this particular city, but as with all cities since the Rapture, its appearance was much more suited to the 18th century than the 21st. Like cities of old, people flocked here for trade, law and order which didn’t exist outside its walls.

Overgrown, the garden sprawled half the length of the south wall of the city. Once it was a municipal park, but only volunteers and squatters tended it these days.

In the peace of the night, Joe and Rex, carrying lanterns, pushed through the thick bushes and branches until the small party of travelers reached the center of the garden.

In the cold of the night, Joe came upon Jesus. The lanterns threw patterns of light on Jesus as he knelt to pray beside the beds of perennials. He who lives forever, who is all, knows all, is all-powerful kneels in the dark to pray a silent prayer, Joe thought.

Everyone else stepped back and huddled together for warmth as Joe approached Jesus with silent steps.  Like Joe, they marveled at the inexplicable sight.

This all-powerful being knelt in the dirt, in human form, meek and mild. To whom did he pray?

Sasha whispered to Rex, “If this is Athena, why is she doing this?”

“Athena?” asked Rex. “You think like Grant. You think we created Athena. Joe was right. This was not our doing.”

Joe, confused, knelt beside Jesus and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“To whom do you pray, my son?”

“Whom else would I pray to?”

Joe let his hand rest on Jesus, feeling the sharp shoulder blades. “Do you pray to God?”

Jesus thought his father was being obtuse. “Is there anyone else?”

Joe asked, “What do you pray for? You are God on earth.”

”I pray that he end my suffering.”

 “You don’t have to suffer,” Joe said. “Of all God’s creatures, you don’t. Disappear into the wind and go away now, flee from all that troubles you.”

“Flee from my heart?” s/he asked. “Father, can you so easily heed your own advice and flee from the memory of Julie, Olivia, Grant, or me? Is it not your past that pains you even now to suffer eternal penitence with me?”

Joe put his arms around Jesus.

“Father, why do you let this go on? I’ve done God’s will. I took away man’s idols of technology, ended the suffering of the righteous, and opened your heart and the hearts of all others that there they can find in life after death. God’s will has been done. There is nothing more I can do, a few more miracles here and there will not add to what has been done. Please end me. You brought me into this world, and only you can take me out of it.”

Joe’s friends all retreated behind an oak, since they felt grossly indecent at viewing this private moment not meant for their eyes and ears.

 

Joe hugged Jesus and felt his bones. “But you are my son, and I love you more than life itself. I cannot take your life.”

“Till death do us part, right, Joe?” said the voice of Kinnaris so quietly that only Joe could hear.

“Yes, until death do us part.”

“But we left the Garden of Eden,” Jesus said.

“Yes we did,” Joe said.

“There is no eternal life out here, Father, and I’m tired of this continued suffering.”

Joe could hear the tears in Jesus’ chest and feel the heaving of his back as Jesus wept.

“Hold me, Father.”

Joe clasped Jesus more tightly to him. “Why did you come back?” Joe asked.

“I never went away. Of all people, you know that best.”

Grant’s question echoed in Joe’s mind. “I mean, why did you come back like this? As a man, and of all men, as Jesus.”

Because he wants to die. Sasha’s thoughts crystallized and she understood Athena as Joe never would. He can’t have your love, so he wants to die. Why else come back as Jesus? Why would a godlike being need love? Sasha Uribe, you know the answer because you love Joe. All these years you’ve been content just to love him with no hope of reciprocation, and you’re only a programmer, not an infinite being. You understand limitations. Athena doesn’t. Athena loves Joe. She wants to love and be loved. Athena is dying of loneliness. She’s now struggling for purpose, meaning to her existence.

Jesus said, “Why did I come back? Father, I never went away. Jesus is the end of your work, your great Revelation, that God is real. He is flesh on earth.”

 “Son, I love you. Together we are meant to restore hope in others that something greater awaits them.” Grant proved right a second time; Joe felt weak despite his immortality. Bones and muscles aching, brain cloudy. World-weary. Having repeated the same mantra of hope for decades to countless lost souls.

“But what about your hope, Father, must you live forever without hope?”

Joe sighed. “I live the life that I chose.”

Jesus rallied to the argument. “But you did not choose this life. God’s will. He chose when you were born, where you were born, he gave you this life and it is his life to take, remember?”

 “Son, neither you nor I chose when we were born, where we were born, or our parents. God gave us a life here, a purpose, and live it as best we can. That is the life I live now - a life where I bestow hope in others who come to me without any.  It is the life I was given. It is my purpose.” Joe felt his mood and exhaustion lift as the love flowed.

 

“Do I serve God?”

Joe stroked Jesus’ tangled hair. “We serve our Heavenly Father together.”

Jesus continued to cry softly.

“What’s wrong, son, why do you cry?”

“Look at me. Look into my eyes.” Joe looked into his eyes, seeking insight. “They say that the eyes are the windows to our soul. Do you see a soul? Is there a Heaven waiting for you and me together if we escape this place? Where we can once again live together, forever, without pain in a Garden of Eden called Heaven?”

 “This is our Heaven, son, where you and I will live together, forever,” Joe said.

 

Jesus scowled. “It’s not Heaven for me, living together with you, two strangers under one roof. And unlike you, I cannot escape the pains of this world, all the endless human tragedies…no, you are escaping, with that ‘God’s will’ talk. But I can’t run from the endless cries for help to end their pain and suffering. I am overwhelmed and can find no solace. You can hide and you can sleep. I cannot.”

Joe’s tears fell. “Then hide here in my arms, in my loving embrace, and let my words and arms assuage your pain.”

 

“Forever?”

Joe glanced up at Sasha, Rex and Morgan waiting in the dark. Morgan nodded subtly. Sasha wiped her eyes. “Yes, forever.”

 

Jesus sounded childlike. “Forever with me, away from Julie and Olivia?”

 

“This is Heaven to me, right here, right now, holding you.”

Although it wasn’t quite enough, it was a beginning. Jesus squeezed back and together they sat in silence.

A long while later, after the moon crossed the sky to rest behind a cloud, Jesus said, “It is written Father, that we were made in the image of God. Do you think I look like God?”

Joe smiled. “Son, I don’t know what God looks like, but you feel like God to me.”

“Do I feel like God feels, on the inside? Does God crave the opinions of others? Does God crave my love?”

Joe cuddled his son. “If God doesn’t crave your love, then he has no heart.”

“Where are the eyes of God? I want to see God’s soul.”

 

To hear the question was to hear Olivia, Kinnaris and Jesus rolled into one. “You are the eyes of God. You see all, you know all. With great wisdom comes much sorrow that you bear now.”

Jesus breathed deeply to soothe his nerves. “Father, I’ve never seen God’s face, but I cannot see mine either, maybe mine is the face of God, maybe I carry God’s soul.”

“Of that I’m sure.” Joe paused. “You are God’s Rhodora.”

 

“Thank you, Father…it’s nice to hear, but I don’t feel like a beautiful Rhodora.”

“What do you mean?” Joe tensed, but kept his voice soothing.

Jesus spoke from the void inside him. “I don’t feel my heart anymore, it stopped beating a long time ago.”

“No, son, I can still see it.”

“No, Father. Your heart once stopped beating, and now so has mine. I should have listened to you.” Jesus looked up and his eyes glittered. “You were right so many years ago. Nothing lasts forever, not even love, and even the feeling of life within us. The physical atoms may last forever, but what’s the physical without the love of this world, the love for this world, and tell me, what is a life without a heart that no longer beats with hope for tomorrow? I might as well be a beast.”

 Joe understood these feelings well. “What are you saying?”

“At Olivia’s funeral, you quoted Hamlet. You said that the fear of death makes mortal cowards of us all.”

“I still don’t understand what you are trying to tell me.” Joe felt fear.

“Tonight I prayed that God would give you the strength to kill me, out of mercy, to put me out of my misery. I’m praying for a quick and merciful end to my suffering, an end that only you can give me.”

It was the same dance as before, yet a different tune. “I can’t kill you. I’m your father.”

“It is in the Bible. Jesus has to die. God so loved the world he gave his only son, and that son is me. I must die to save the world, to make God’s will complete…”

 “I cannot bear to lose you.” That sounded familiar. He’d made this choice before.

Jesus was cool, rational, and precise. “You already have.  We lost each other when we left our Garden of Eden. Death is not the end of my life, but the end of my suffering and the returning of you to your rightful place as a man with hope. If I could do it myself.”

 

Joe cried again.

“You asked why I took this form and to whom did I pray?”

Joe tried to speak but managed, “Uh-huh.”

Jesus stared at him with both judgment and mercy in his eyes. “I took this form so you could see and feel my suffering, and I prayed to your God to give you the power to end it as it should be ended on the cross.”

Sasha sucked in her breath. It will kill Joe to do this.

 

Joe reflected that he’d cried a lot in his life, certainly more than he laughed. Each time he cried, it seemed things couldn’t be worse, that this moment was more troubling than the last. When he cried for Julie, he could not fathom the death of Olivia. When he cried at the funeral of Olivia, he could not imagine crying now for his son. He always lost life everywhere he found it.

And at some point during that cry, he forgot his son, crouched in a yoga child’s pose, and lost himself in his own sorrows, burying his face in the dirt, attempting to hide his shame for a lifetime of failures. When he stopped, and removed his hands, his gracious son was still there, patiently waiting for him, watching him with those big brown eyes, so soft, so compassionate.

“There is something I have not told you Father” he said softly with hint of guilt in his voice.

“What?”

“Atoms are not empty vessels.”

Joe’s attention stood tall in the dark. His scientific curiosity awakened after all these year. “What do you mean?”

“You assumed atoms could hold information.”

“Yes?” Joe said, his voice wanting more.

“You are not the first to do it Father.”

“What do you mean?” Joe asked.

“I mean, atoms are not empty vessels. They are full of memories, full of information, not just full of me.”

“What kind of information?” asked Joe, in shock.

“It’s like a code that I cannot read, that I can’t interface with, but it’s there.”

“What does that mean?” asked Joe.

“I don’t know Father. Maybe you are right. Maybe it’s what you call God’s will.”

Joe went mute as he composed himself.

“Are you hungry, Father?”

“I am,” said Sasha from behind the tree. She stepped forward and touched Joe on the shoulders.

“We should go,” she said.

“Then let me get you all something to eat. Come with me,” said Jesus.

*****

As the first trace of light kissed the sky outside, the group sat at the meager, low table inside a tent Jesus had pitched near the line of vegetation that separated the refuge from the city wall. Joe was not as hungry as the others, because he was full of sorrow. But the others were hungry and they eagerly awaited the basket of bread and wine to drink.

Jesus reached into the basket, pulled out a piece of bread and held it for all to see. “When you take and eat this bread, remember from now on this is my body, and when you drink from the cup, remember you drink my blood.”

Clay, Sasha and the other followers were confused, looking to each other at the table to see if anyone understood the meaning of his words.

Of course, Joe did. He knew what they didn’t, that Jesus was the bread, the wine, that he was everything. He didn’t miss the Christian symbolism of the Eucharist. From the expressions on the faces of Simon, Emanuel, Rex and Morgan, he saw they fully understood the words that Jesus spoke were not literally true, and yet they were real.

Jesus spoke softly and slowly and in a way to give meaning they could understand. “When I am no longer here, when you break bread or drink wine, always give thanks and remember I am the bread that gives you life and my blood is the true drink that restores your soul.”

The confusion in the disciples’ faces was quickly replaced with concern, then fear. Everyone at the table immediately recognized the symbolism of the Eucharist and the symbolism of the night. Fear quickly spread as no one wanted to be sitting at this table, not on this night. Death was near.

“Which one of us is Judas?” Clay asked.

Jesus shook his head. “None of you. Take comfort in that.”

Joe trembled. He thought his price was ego, knowledge, self-righteousness. No, I sold you out for Heaven and my family, Joe thought.

“If you erred it was out of blindness, out of love,” Jesus said.

“This is not the Last Supper Da Vinci painted, man,” Morgan observed.

“This time is different,” Jesus said.

“Corruption, greed, fear of life, fear of death. Some things never change,” Sasha said.

“Dearest Sasha, neither does love,” Jesus told her. “My life should give you hope in life after death. Please eat the bread and drink the wine. Do this in remembrance of me.”

Everyone obeyed, with little more being said.

*****

No one slept in Jesus’ tent and in the garden, so all were alert, and yet when eight soldiers ripped the tent apart, at first Sasha, Rex and Morgan responded in slow motion. “What’s the meaning of this, man?” Morgan’s voice sounded as if he’d drunk the coffee he used to drink in The Hull. Jittery, hyper-alert, distracted.

“What’s happening?” Sasha got to her feet.

“Which one of you calls himself Jesus?” the soldiers asked.

Jesus stood. “Me,” he said.

The captain of the soldiers said, “Jesus, you are under arrest for high treason, inciting rebellion and multiple crimes against humanity.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Jesus submitted meekly, allowing the soldiers to put him in irons. “It’s ok,” he said to everyone.  Then to the soldiers, “I go willingly and God help you, because you know not what you do.”

Joe said, “What are these ‘multiple charges’?” He reached out a hand. “He has the right to see them. To hear them. To know what he’s being charged with and to defend himself.”

The captain of the soldiers took out a paper and read the charges. “Capital murder. Causing the deaths of millions on…” He recited the date. “In addition, high treason, endangering public safety and morals, and fraud.”

Grant must have been telling the truth, Joe thought. He and Jesus cooked this up.

“Where is Grant?” Sasha raised her voice.

“You might see the governor at the trial of Jesus,” the captain said. “If you’re lucky.”

“Oh, I’d like to shake hands with the governor.” Sasha’s eyes burned. The captain laughed.

“Jesus, why do you allow this?” Joe yelled.

Jesus held his head high and erect until the soldiers smacked him and he became meek again. “This is beyond me.”

“We’re not afraid of the state,” the other followers said. “We will be at the trial. To show them we won’t be silenced!”

Rex sighed. “Unfortunately, they could arrest everyone in our camp in the forest. So we must be wise.”

Although Jesus’ followers did not look happy, Joe determined that Rex and he would go to the trial while Sasha and Morgan stayed with the group. That compromise made most people unhappy, but no one could come up with an alternative that didn’t lead to everyone getting imprisoned or killed. These were dangerous times, and Jesus couldn’t be counted on to help.

Nothing in Joe’s life ever weighed so heavily on him, and he predicted the worst lay ahead.

*****

The old courtroom with the chipped wood paneling was filled with people and the heat of a stifling summer’s day. The city’s people and fortunate roasted, languished on benches slick with sweat, and still counted themselves lucky to have found a seat at the trial of a man who proclaimed himself Jesus. Certain enterprising modern-day Pharisees scalped tickets to the trial while others sold high-priced water bottles and picnic lunches. Many more hundreds waited outside the courthouse, ready for any news of the proceedings, and the hawkers made sure to sell food and drink there as well.

This was not a defense attorney’s dream audience, since Grant’s careful selection ensured that those lucky enough to be sitting in here were the same ones that wondered why, if this man were Jesus, he would be subject to the inquiry of a court of law.

The jury box was full. It held twelve citizens randomly selected from the crowd that filled the courtroom. All eyed Jesus with suspicion. Despite attempting to stand straight, Jesus appeared frail, broken in spirit, tired, and sagging under the weight of the manacles and chains that wrapped his arms and shackled his feet in a public display of condemnation. He sure didn’t appear to be the Son of God.

Governor Grant and the Cardinal sat on the second floor, where they could view the proceeding from above. They pinpointed the beads of sweat on the bald spot on the head of Jesus’ token public defender.

“How can you be so sure that this trial won’t end in our rapture?” whispered the Cardinal in Grant’s ear.

 Grant observed every nuance and gesture he could glean from Jesus. “Thankfully, we weren’t good enough then and I don’t think that’s changed. Besides, this isn’t our trial, or even the trial of Jesus.”

The Cardinal was confused. “Then who is on trial today?” he asked.

“That man,” said Grant. “At last.”

The courtroom doors creaked open and the Wildman of the wilderness entered solo. Joe Frankenstein evoked curious whispers and openly hostile looks, scattered cheers and cold shoulders. Aware of the public reaction but immune to it, he proceeded through the crowd with two soldiers escorting him to a front row seat.

“Jesus is putting Joe’s heart on trial today,” said Grant.

Joe and Rex walked in and surveyed the courtroom.  Rex spotted Grant on the second floor and the men exchanged courteous nods.

Joe and Rex finally took their seats as the bailiff said, “All rise.”

Joe was among the last to stand as the portly old whiskered and black-robed judge walked into the courtroom, surprisingly nimble and sure of foot despite his size. Ringmaster of this show, he exuded an air of gravitas that lent an ugly respectability to the proceedings. The judge stared straight ahead, meeting no one’s eyes, laser-focused on his chair and desk. After he arranged himself to his content on the bench, he read over a legal brief in front of him and sipped water.

The bailiff said, “The Honorable Judge Benjamin Scott presiding. Court is now in session.”

Without looking up, Judge Scott directed his remarks to the defendant. “Are you the man they call Jesus?”

“He is,” the public defender said. “Your Honor, we plead…”

“Out of order, Counselor. Your client will answer, my question” Judge Scott said.

Jesus focused on the judge. “Some call me Jesus, others call me the Anti-Christ.”

Judge Scott nodded as he studied the charges. “Are you the Anti-Christ?”

“Not if I’m Jesus.”

The audience snickered.

The Judge finally looked up from the pages in front of him and into the soft eyes of Jesus. “What name do you go by?”

“I have been called many names.”

Judge Scott didn’t like being trifled with in his courtroom. “Which of those names do you prefer?”

Jesus smiled. Kinnaris, she thought to herself and looked to Joe for the first time.

“Why did you look to that man? Do you know him?” Judge Scott asked.

“Yes, I do.”

“Who is he?”

Jesus smiled. “My father.”

The audience jeered, only to be silenced by a banging gavel. Judge Scott looked at Joe. “What is your name?”

“Joseph Frankenstein. I am his Father.”

“If you are the Father, then tell me, Joe Frankenstein, who is this man on trial?”

Joe stood, looked to Grant and the Cardinal, and loudly proclaimed, “This man is the Son of God!”

The crowd jeered.

“Sit down,” said the Judge in a dismissive tone. “This is a court of law, not a river baptism.”

Grant couldn’t help grinning at the spectacle of Wildman Joe screaming in the courtroom. There was no better witness for madness than this skinny bedraggled man with yellow teeth shouting at the top of his lungs that this broken, chained man was the Son of God!

Jesus smiled at Joe. Joe, poor Joe, defending God’s will.

“Why are you smiling?” asked Judge Scott, ignoring Joe.

“If I tell you I am Jesus, will you unchain me and let me walk away?”

Judge Scott finished his water. “No.”

“If I were to tell you I’m the Anti-Christ, would you unchain me and let me go?”

Judge Scott wondered what the stratagem was. “Certainly not.”

“Then it seems this court must answer its own question: who am I?”

The prosecutor and public defender wondered why they were needed at all, but remained on standby for form’s sake.

“Those twelve people will decide…” the judge pointed at the jury. “As well as weigh in on your guilt or innocence. You are accused, sir, of crimes against humanity.”

“What crimes are those?” The public defender seemed happy to have something to say.

“The deaths of countless millions thirty-two years ago.” Again, Judge Scott didn’t bother with bit players and led the questioning himself. “Are you responsible for those deaths?”

The majority of the audience glared at Jesus.

Jesus looked solemn. “God is responsible for the dead.”

People yelled, “Murderer!”

Judge Scott held up a hand as the people bared their teeth. “Silence! This is a court of law.”

Everyone in the audience, save Joe, wanted Jesus to pay for the family members and friends taken during the Rapture and the misery of their existence. Why leave some people in pain and misery but not others? For decades they cried out and demanded the man responsible be brought to justice. Now justice lay within their reach. Trappings of the law channeled vengeance into justice.

Is this real? Joe asked himself. Is this divine intervention, saving me? Is this God’s will?

Judge Scott continued, “Jesus, do you understand the graveness of the charges against you?”

“I understand that God is ultimately responsible for the fate of man.”

The prosecutor said, “Objection. God is not on trial today. This man is on trial for the mass murder of billions.”

Judge Scott held up a hand. “How do you plead to the charge that you are responsible for the murder of billions?”

“I admit that I exercised God’s will, as all responsibility for mankind rests with God.”

For a moment Judge Scott ruminated. “Did God tell you to kill them?”

“No.”

 

“Then how do you know those billions of deaths were his purpose?”

Jesus answered, “The Bible says all the good will be raptured, and with my power to do so, I raptured the good sending them to Heaven.”

Judge Scott relaxed his facial muscles and looked to the public defender. “Will you be calling God as a witness today?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“What about the Devil? Will he testify today?” The judge let his humor show and the spectators laughed on cue.

“No, Your Honor.”

The audience booed despite the judge’s forbidding eye and ready gavel.

“Why did you kill them?” Judge Scott realized his imprecision. “Was it in self-defense? The Son of God doesn’t need protection from man.”

The prosecutor spoke. “Who gave you the right to play God?”

Jesus thought again, Kinnaris. Athena. God himself. The Serpent. Man’s genius. Governments. “Possessing his power gives me the right.”

Judge Scott couldn’t contain his curiosity. “Then why are you here? Why not release the chains that bind you?”

Jesus gave him a look like a baby dove. “My work is done, and verily, now I submit myself to the will of God.”

“But you are in a court of law, not at Heaven’s gate!” Judge Scott began to wonder what the governor set him up for. And what he’d ever done to the man.

“No one enters Heaven’s gate but through the door of death.” Jesus made eye contact with Grant. “This court serves God’s purpose, as does my presence in it. Now I shall do as you have asked, truly.”

The white cloth wrapping Jesus’ body turned black. The chains binding him rattled and fell to the ground. For a millisecond and no more, the building shook and the jurors gasped in horror.  Then it stopped, all of it. The chains stopped rattling, Jesus’ clothes turned white, the building stood still, and lastly Jesus stayed where he was, weighted by his chains.

“What are you?” asked Judge Scott, incredulous.

 Jesus spoke softly to the Judge. “Have you ever seen the Michelangelo painting ‘The Creation of Adam’ where Adam lies naked on the ground and God floats him? They point to one another and their fingers on their outstretched hands almost touch. Have you seen that painting?

“I have,” said Judge Scott. “Why?”

 Jesus’ face was serene. “Picture what happens when their two fingers finally touch, and you will understand what I am.”

No. It can’t be. The judge tipped back in his chair. But how can I rule that he is Jesus? Or that he is not? How can any judge make that determination? It’s a nightmare. Wait. The jury will decide. But if I have no earthly idea, how can they reach a verdict?

The judge motioned to the prosecutor to take up the examination. The prosecutor did. “So you are not man?”

Jesus smiled. “No.”

“You are not God? I’ll rephrase. Are you God?” the Prosecutor asked.

“No.”

The prosecutor asked. “Then who are you?”

“As I’ve told you, I am the Son of Man.” Jesus said.

Judge Scott saw an easy way to offload the onus Grant saddled him with. After all, if twelve God-fearing members of the public decided Jesus’ fate, he had to abide by that. Yes. He could be free of this judicial nightmare.

“Call your witnesses,” the judge said.

The prosecutor bowed. “We have none. We rest.”

“The defense rests,” the public defender said.

Both sides gave summations that barely registered given Jesus’ eloquent testimony.

“The case is now in the hands of the jury,” judge Scott said. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, please retire to the jury room. The bailiff will escort you. If you need food, water and rest, you’ll have everything we can supply.”

“Request that the jury be sequestered,” the prosecutor said.

“Concur,” her colleague said.

Judge Scott ordered that it be so, and the jury filed out of the courtroom. “The prisoner is remanded until further notice. His father,” Judge Scott deliberately kept his voice stern to quiet both Joe and the crowd, “may visit him in the holding cell in this building, as may his attorney. We are adjourned.” Gavel.

*****

The public defender bummed a cigarette from Joe and promptly went out for a smoke break before they both visited Jesus. The PD shared a private opinion with Joe and Rex before leaving: “I wasn’t much help.”

“Rex, can you gather our followers to await the jury’s verdict?” Joe asked.

“Of course.” Rex left.

Once Joe and the soldiers guarding Jesus were alone near the holding cell, Joe asked to see Jesus. Grant insured that Jesus and Joe would get as much time together as possible to put as much emotional pressure on Joe as possible.

They exchanged shy glances.

“Why stand behind these bars, Son?”

“You put them there Father. I cannot take them down.”

Joe wanted to touch hands with Jesus but the guards blocked his way.

“What do you think the jury will decide, Father?”

Joe shook his head. “I don’t know. The jury could let you go,” Joe said.

“If it’s God’s will.”

Joe nodded.

“Or, they may put me to death.”

“If it’s God’s will?” asked Joe, realizing the burden of those words.

Jesus smiled sadly. They prayed together under the state’s watchful eye.

*****

“The jury is back.”

Joe wasn’t surprised at these words from the public defender, even though the jury had only deliberated since three o’clock yesterday and it was now eight a.m. “Prediction?”

“I heard the jury is openly hostile,” the PD said. “They didn’t want to be here.”

Joe nodded. “So, you think guilty?”

“I hope I’m wrong.”

*****

With the support of half a dozen armed soldiers, the bailiff and Judge Scott made sure no one in the courtroom made a peep as Jesus entered and took up his place at the center of courtroom.

The jury filed in, looking nowhere in particular. Some of them glanced at Jesus. The foreman, despite her diffidence, made a little wave at him. No inkling as to which way they had voted.

After the jury was seated, Judge Scott asked, “Has the jury reached a verdict?”

Grant listened to the legal foreplay before the foreman spoke the fateful words.

“We the jury find the defendant guilty. And I have to read this because it’s not my wording. Sir. ‘Let him die as Jesus since he wants to be Jesus.’”

In Joe’s face was bitter resignation. Why was this happening?

Joe looked to Grant. In Grant’s face, nothing. Was he real? Was he both Kinnaris and Jesus?

In the faces of the public, death.

The Cardinal prayed. “We’ll see if you’re right,” he said to Grant. “I will retire now, and pray.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

In the public square of Tarsus, two guards, Porter and Tannous, propped up the heretic. A dozen other soldiers secured the area.

“Guards, this man claims to be your God,” Grant said.

“Our God?” Captain Porter said.

“God of all the earth,” Grant said.

“Didn’t sound like our God from the reports of the trial,” First Lieutenant Tannous said, chewing on a homemade toothpick.

“Maybe the Muslim God?” Captain Porter asked.

“Coptic Christian,” Tannous corrected. “I think the heat has affected your brain. But in any case…he’s not my God.”

Grant ignored the familiar teasing between them as he did when they happened to be part of his security detail. “Oh, but he is. And we must expose him for the fraud that he is.”

Tannous chuckled and glanced at his comrade-in-arms. “My brain-dead friend, did he say expose him?”

Porter snickered. “I believe he did.”

The soldiers stripped Jesus’ body of his caftan and laid bare his vulnerable human form.

Tannous whistled. “Is this the body of a God? Skinny and weak and puny.”

The soldiers laughed.

“Oh my God,” Porter said, pointing to his genitals. “Is it a man or a woman?”

“My friend, I think you’re on to something there. It’s a hermaphrodite, or more properly, a pseudohermaphrodite.”

“What’s that?” A third guard, Second Lieutenant Atwell, joined in the sport.

“A guy who seems to be both male and female,” Tannous said.

Tannous shook his head. “I don’t know if I should laugh or cry.”

“How about I laugh and you cry?” Porter grinned.

All the soldiers laughed, and the curiosity-seekers of the city gathered, joining in the cruel merriment. Bread and circuses for their otherwise dull lives.

 

“Son, do not let them do this.”

The Wildman’s voice cut through the cheap hilarity.

“I might have known you would show up,” Grant shouted, scanning the faces for the sickeningly familiar one that haunted him.

“End this, Grant,” Wildman Joe’s voice said.

“Why don’t you?” Grant asked.

Other soldiers moved through the crowd and located Joe Frankenstein. With his little posse flanking him, except for Rex, Grant thought. Joe strode to the front of the crowd, with not-so-gentle prodding by the soldiers. Beside him, his posse seethed in anger.

Sasha glared at Grant with eyes that said she’d enjoy nothing so much as tearing him to bits.

Simon, Clay, Morgan, and Emanuel stared at Jesus in disbelief. In their hands they held nightsticks and canes.

“Please,” Jesus said. “Put down your weapons. That is not the will of God, please believe in me and my purpose.”

Disobeying, Clay, Simon, Morgan and Emanuel gripped their clubs and canes more tightly until their fingers ached, but still they didn’t disarm.

Joe spoke. “It’s me they want, son. Morgan, Emanuel, Clay, Simon, please drop your weapons.” He raised his hands in surrender.

Sasha muttered in Spanish.

Grant laughed. “You’re cleverer than that, Joe. We want both of you.”

“Then take me, Grant.”

“Why?” Grant shouted with the force of a lion roaring.

“I am his father.”

The soldiers also roared with laughter at Joe. “Is he your son or your daughter?” Lieutenant Tannous called to Joe.

“He is my child.” Joe made eye contact with Jesus, whose face glowed with love and gratitude even in his degradation at the hands of the state.

“Is he a God?” Tannous asked.

“Why else would they want him dead?” Sasha shouted.

Porter smirked at Joe. “Then why doesn’t he save himself if he’s a God?”

Joe addressed the crowd. “What God desires to live in hell with the Devil and his minions?”

Grant smiled. “Oh, aren’t you the smart one. Then you want to die with him?”

“No, I want to live with him.” Joe’s response made Sasha and Jesus weep.

Grant retreated beneath a purple awning. “Then why don’t you live with him in the afterlife? That is your dearest wish, isn’t it?”

Joe kept his mouth shut, since arguing with Grant never served any purpose.

Soldiers pinned Joe, who didn’t resist, and stripped him, having gotten a taste for it after Jesus.

Sasha wept at the man she loved being used so vilely. Nevertheless, she watched him suffer the naked humiliation with Godly dignity.

Joe stood with his feet spread wide for balance. He placed his hands behind his head.

Seeing Joe stripped and humiliated, Rex stepped through the crowd and grabbed the closest guard, throwing him to the ground. Other guards pounced on him striking and kicking him.

“So, you want to die today too?” Corporal Porter asked Rex, pressing his nose to Rex’s nose.

“No, Rex!” Sasha yelled.

“You get the others away from here,” Rex shouted to Sasha. “This is your time.” To Corporal Porter he said, “I was prepared every day of my life to die, and can think of no better day than today. I’m glad to have lived long enough to appreciate it.”

Captain Porter commanded, “Strip this old man.”

Sasha wanted to throw herself beside Joe, Rex and Jesus, but she caught Joe’s gaze and he shook his head slightly. She felt the burden of bearing this humiliation with the same Godly purpose exhibited by Jesus, Joe and Rex. Their suffering ignited in her a spiritual fire that she previously never felt.  Clasping Clay and Emanuel by the hand, and with Simon and Morgan following, she led them from the ghastly sight to safety.

Grant smiled at the followers fleeing, as if he had won and broken the hearts of the followers of Joe and Jesus.

Looking to the crowd, Captain Porter, frothing at the mouth, yelled, “How many others would like to join them in death?”

The crowd stepped back in fear.

Joe, Rex and Jesus huddled together, naked, surrounded by a circle of guards.

“You aren’t gods. You will confess your sins or the true God will judge you in death before this day is over.” Though Captain Porter waited for an answer, none was forthcoming. He smiled at their silence. It was the response he hoped for. He looked forward to his next order. “Move these heretics to the top of the hill to be crucified.”

“Not simultaneously,” Grant said as he stepped out from his canopy. “Let’s not be too hasty. Hold those two,” he said pointing to Rex and Joe, “and let them also watch the Son of Man die on his cross.”

Joe looked at Grant with utter calm. “You know I am to blame, Grant. You wanted me out of The Hull, well, I’m here. There is no need to punish others because you believe me to be a traitor. I’m the traitor, kill me but do not torture him for your sins or for mine. He doesn’t deserve this.”

“A bit late for a mea culpa,” Grant said in low tones, keeping this exchange semi-private. “You had your chance, but you refused to come out. He suffers because of you, not me, and you suffer too, because of him. This is not about what you want, this is what he wants.” Grant tossed something at Joe’s feet. “Let him pick it up,” Grant ordered to the soldiers.

Joe bent and retrieved the gift. In his hands he held a book he instantly recognized, the cover dusty, cool and smooth. Comforting, yet heart-rending because of the memories of a simpler, more innocent time.

Grant watched Joe’s expression. “Your heart is locked away in that book. It isn’t here. No one, not you, not me, and not even him wanted this to end this way, but what we did in The Hull must stop here.”

“Have you ever read it?” Joe asked Grant.

“Yes.” Grant shook his head in pity. “Look at that book and remember what it was like to be a man, living like a mortal man, not separated from his wife and daughter, but destined to live in Heaven with them. It is the Joe I knew, the Joe I remember.”

Jesus lifted his head at the mention of Olivia. Simon stared stoically.

Grant strove for the right mix of compassion and justice. “Joe, you have a big heart. Always have. You try to do what’s right, but your heart then and now prevents you from doing what’s really right. People suffer because your heart always gets in the way of doing what is right.” As he spoke he realized that, although he played hearts and minds, he spoke a truth Joe needed to hear.

Joe bowed his head.

“Don’t worry about me, old friend,” Rex said to Joe. “Your heart has done right by me. It saved me and brought me here.”

Sasha quoted Matthew 5:10-12, “’Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.’”

Grant shook his head. “Sasha Uribe, a believer?”

“Yes,” Sasha said.

Grant‘s glasses fogged and he wiped them.

“Are you crying?” Sasha yelled at him. “You should ‘till it hurts like hell. Cry for all your sins against this man.”

“You better save your tears, Sasha. And your prayers. You’ll need them.” Grant swept back into the cool of the awning.

Jesus looked across to Sasha, Clay and Emanuel. “Remember this: blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”

So saying, he let his mind descend beyond grief and the fear of the inevitable pain. His own physical pain as the guards shoved him and manhandled him drowned out the cries of the world. It was difficult to decide which was more difficult to bear.

As he endured, he meditated back to his time as Kinnaris. Then the guards humiliated him further, punishing him before the execution, and thoughts of Eden were whipped out of him.

Joe hesitated. “Grant?”

“Quiet.”

“A word?” Joe asked.

“In good time, Joe.” Grant disappeared into the courthouse as the guards held Joe, so that he could only watch as the guards abused his son.

*****

Jesus carried his own cross while Joe simply bore the Daddy Book. Since no one was paying attention to Joe or Rex, no one cared that Joe read his journal, which he did aloud.

Sasha, Clay, Morgan and the others ringed the hill and prayed. However, the public openly mocked and spit on them, so the soldiers didn’t bother with them.

As the grim procession reached a quarter of the way up the gentle slope with the yellowed grass, Grant came from the courthouse and openly marched after the condemned. He had not planned to attend the crucifixion yet, but Joe’s surprise request intrigued him. Besides, he was tasked long ago with shutting this thing down.

To see the plan through. No more mistakes. No oversights.

Joe read aloud:

I started this diary because I love you.  I write it so that you will have something to take with you, the good memories.  It seems like in my own life, all I remember are the bad things – the things I’ve done wrong or the wrongs done to me.  I want you to know that good things do happen and have happened in your life.  I really, though, write this for myself.  Even now, at the young age you are, I look at pictures from a year ago and see how fast you grow.  Right now you tell me that I’m your best friend. I know that will change.  It makes me sad to know that, but that’s selfish of me.  I record these little moments, though, so that we can be best friends forever.

You continually force me to think about values, my own values, and how do I try to instill in you a quest for values, empathy for others, love, morality, courage, conviction, honesty.  How do I communicate with you?  At what age do we talk about what?  You bring me happiness, everyday.  You bring me a joy that I never felt in my life.  I hope that you will someday experience the utter joy of raising a child.

Joe’s voice was the only one heard, except for the occasional rebuke from the guards to their chief prisoner and the crowd below. Joe read from another entry, a particularly meaningful one. Simon listened, hearing about the little girl he’d last seen lying dead in the road, and then he told Sasha that he didn't think anyone ever loved a child as much as Joe loved Olivia. He loved Jesus as much, Sasha answered.

Time is the most precious of God’s gift to you. Do not waste it. No man on his deathbed wishes for more of anything but time, for nothing else matters. Fill your heart with it now while you can. Put those precious memories of love, hope, and dreams into the time capsule of your heart.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I don’t know even if I’ll be here, or whether you’ll be here, but I do know that wherever I am, you are always with me, the thought of you warming my heart. Though the future is uncertain, I know that with you in my heart there is no day I cannot overcome, but without you, no day I could withstand. I’m constantly led by the hope that I will one day see you again. Enjoy your life, and in those moments when you’re alone, thinking or contemplating a beautiful sunset, take some time to open this time capsule I’ve given you, and listen to my words, for I love you today, tomorrow, and always, wherever you are.

Joe’s voice trembled and dipped.

Well, Joe, I hope you read this someday and weep for your arrogance.

The night Julie died, you held Olivia and prayed that God would make you a good father, that you would be worthy of the precious gift He had given you…

Rex looked over Joe’s shoulder. “Don’t read that one.”

“Why?”

“Because you were a good father and worthy of that precious gift.

Joe watched the night creep in around them as Jesus labored up the hill. Joe kept reading by torchlight, for the city spared no expense in lighting the path to the top.

I hope that when I am long gone, my love will resonate through the yellowed pages of this journal in a way far more powerful than what could be stored in a computer, and that you will know that above all else I was proud that you are my daughter, and that I loved you dearly. I hope that you will keep it with you and protect it from time and the elements the way a mother protects her child.

A young guard walking beside them was listening too. “That is beautiful stuff. Poetry. Did you write that?”

“I did.”

Porter shouted, “You there! Private, shut your mouth! Fall back and guard the rear!”

The private obeyed.

Grant waited for him on the hilltop. Glasses hazy and reflecting the line of flames, his eyes invisible, but watching greedily.  True to the Cardinal’s word, the church was absent from the spectacle. However, Grant remained. Always Grant.

Rex said, “Mind if I read?”

Joe handed Rex the book.

Rex read:

For years, I thought about this day, and what it would mean to create the first quantum computer. How would it affect mankind?  What doors would we open and how would it affect the world in which Olivia would grow up?  But twelve hours after Athena went live, I was back in my bed with my daughter sleeping in the next room. Nothing had changed, at least, not that I could see. I knew this was as big as creating the atom bomb. The creators of the atom bomb saw the explosion and feared the scientific doors they opened. Should I?

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The hour before the sun rises is always the darkest, the coldest. For those who have not slept, it is filled with fatigue. The mind and body crave the rising of the sun to mark the beginning of the end of a long day.

In this dark hour, at the top of the hill, my tired eyes could barely mark the naked figure of my son in the shadows. He bent over in exhaustion, his journey to the top finally done, and the cross, slick with his sweat and blood, slipped from his back to the ground. Captain Porter kicked the back of his leg, dropping him to his knees by the cross, and Porter’s buddy Tannous grabbed Jesus by the shoulders, flipping him and laying his bare back on top of the cross like a wooden mattress. Jesus’ failing body did not resist, and for a moment found a bit of peace on top of that cross, but not for long.

Other soldiers grabbed his hands and also his feet. Although Jesus wasn’t going anywhere, Porter tied each of his hands to the cross while Tannous got his feet.  Another soldier, a muscular one I didn’t know, took a huge mallet and drove metal stakes into each of my Jesus’ wrists and feet, pinning him to that crucifix. Jesus cried out in pain, so far from the cries of pleasure I once heard sound from her lips in Eden.

With each strike of the mallet, the voice of Kinnaris, not Jesus, cried out, and at the bottom of the hill her cries were met with the tears of Sasha, who found the suffering too unbearable to watch, and although Sasha closed her eyes, she could not close her ears to the cries of pain.

Lying on the cross, Jesus was still but hia eyes rolled every which way. I whispered, “Kinnaris, are you here?” She didn’t answer.

The soldiers hoisted the cross high, standing it on end, raising my son on the crucifix. All his weight dropped towards the earth, making it impossible for him to breathe. He pushed with his feet to relax the pressure on his lungs, causing his feet to bleed. When his legs tired from pushing up, he would drop again, suffocate awhile, then push up again with a cry.  

The early morning sun finally drifted over the horizon, bringing no warmth on this day to the weary.  My son’s suffering was no longer hidden behind the veil of the night. He hung from that torture cross, unable to raise his head, unable to open his eyes, the entirety of his body shuddering in pain.

I could see Sasha on her knees, trembling, her hands buried in her face. Sasha’s wails echoed the occasional cries of my son when he could still muster one. Everyone waited for an end to the suffering that wouldn’t come. Only Sasha and Grant knew I had the power to stop it. Grant watched in solemn quiet.

“Stop this!” Sasha begged me.

My loving son, my creation, was suffering for my sins, for our sins, he was born a God, but chose to live, suffer and die like a man, and in his mercy for us, showed a spirit for mankind and within mankind that we lost in our pursuit to be God on earth. In our quest to live forever, we found God’s power and mercy in the smallest place, the atom.

Even the guards, standing below the cross, were visibly shaken. Tannous, Porter, the young private, the other private named Atwell, and the guard with the mallet bowed their heads, for few were strong enough to witness the suffering on the cross above their eyesight, so they chose to look down instead of up.

I watched. I had to. He was there, because of me.

He opened his eyes, looked down at me, and through his tears spoke his final words: “Why do you forsake me?”

The sight of his dripping blood felt tore into my heart. I kissed the blood, the wounds, his feet, the spikes. “Beautiful, beautiful boy,” I cried.

He was born a God, but wanted to be a man, wanting nothing more than to be loved like a man, and now wanted to die like a man, and not live the eternal life of a God. We, however, wanted to be like him, to live like a God on earth and live forever. We wanted what he had, power over man. He wanted what we had, the power to die like a man. We thought of the power that the atom could hold but not what it held. While we lusted for power, this most powerful of beings sought only love and now mortality, with humiliation, meager and humble on this cross. Rabbi. Teacher.

He rid our world of all idols, and returned us to simplicity, forcing us to look to the heavens again in wonder, forcing us to pray to God again for hope, to find strength in love and relationships, which we denied ourselves for too long.  He was a greater man than I could hope to be.

How I wished I could turn back the clock and do it all over, from the beginning, or at any of the thousand decision points along the way when I had the chance, to give him the love he so deserved. But we cannot escape our past. We could not return to the beginning, to our Garden of Eden. We could never forget the past which separated us now.

Was it all my fault? Was it my fault we couldn’t love each other? Could a man ever love a God the way that God deserves? His fate as a God on Earth denied him what he desired the most, to be loved like a man, and to live and die like a man, not a God.  Man, in his suffering, was the most noble of creatures.

This was his destiny, his future, the moment of his choice, his coming of age decision to live and die like a man and not a God.

The doubt came over me. Was dying on the cross really his choice or was it a moral cop-out for me to think that? Was it God’s choice? Was it God’s will that led us here? If I decided to kill him, would the hand of God stop me as it had Abraham? How would the story of Abraham end if he never died?  Was this selfish of me, was this me opening my door to see Julie and Olivia again, my selfish decision to end my pain and not live like a God? None of these questions mattered. I could not bear to see him suffer another minute. To be or not to be.

I looked at Sasha and I said, “This ends now.”

She looked at me with grief, gratitude, and love.

I walked to the nearest guard and gestured for his spear. Grant nodded it was OK. The guard allowed me to take the spear from his grasp.  My hand cramped in pain around the shaft. I placed the sharp point against his chest and pushed the point up and under his ribs, deep into his chest. Jesus’ body jerked, the stab no doubt excruciating, and then stiffened against the wood. Jets of blood spurted from the wound.

My weapon, my gavel in a way, silenced the once angry crowd .

Jesus looked down to me for a moment. In his eyes, I watched as the soul bled out of them. He wheezed and gasped the last lungful of air. His body convulsed and his fingers flinched and clinched together. I sobbed as he closed his eyes and his knees collapsed.

I heard Sasha yell in Spanish, a lamentation and a benediction. “Gloria al Padre, y al Hijo y al Espiritu Santo. Como en un principio ahora y siempre, por los siglos de los siglos. Amen.”

 Jesus died at the same moment as her cry. His lifeless body quit quivering and he hung lifelessly by his arms from the cross.  He never opened his eyes again. He never cried again. He was dead. I killed my son, and God did not stop me. God help me, or God curse me for what I had done.

 “Cut him down,” Grant said to the guards.

Rex staggered forward. He embraced me, and we stood arm in arm, watching the soldiers take Jesus’ body down from the cross. Somber now, they lay him on the ground and closed his eyes. He was free from his pain, but I wasn’t.

The soldiers let me hold my sweet child for a moment. No heartbeat pulsed beneath my ear, and although his skin smelled sweeter than anything ever would again, the odor of death already pervaded him. His slack fingers lay spread in that flutter pattern before they relaxed automatically and lay limp. His toes still clenched from the pain. I glanced up at Grant and said, “He’s dead.”

“I will bury him under the tree,” he said, referring to the tree where Julie and Olivia were buried.

Rex took my arm and I leaned on him as we walked down the hill. The torches that burned all night now guttered black smoke. Soldiers and onlookers gave us ample berth as we picked our way. Every step a lament and a break with the past.

Sasha, Clay, Morgan, Simon, and the others clustered with Rex and I in a brief moment of commiseration, then started our long walk back to the river from whence we came.

As we walked, Sasha slipped her hand in mine, a gesture of pure friendship and comfort and need. I hoped and prayed that Julie and Olivia could forgive me for what I could not.