Christian Clarity Review

Chapter Eleven

The Institute:

Archived video from the site has been reviewed from as far back as three weeks before the earthquake. All show an increasing trend of withdrawal from conversation.

The work at the station had gone on as usual. The habitat had been slowly coming together under the ice.

The opening of the exploration tunnels for the lower levels had coincided with the shift in behavior. The new tunnels had been melted using a smaller, portable device modeled on the subterrene that melted small-bore exploratory shafts. The ground sonar had indicated a series of caverns. Tunnels were bored to tie in with the natural caverns.

“We found something. Or rather, they did.” Peters says as Henry walks in the communications room.

Video:

The crew of the habitat walk into the caverns. Commander Smith is the first to view them with a small handheld light as the others follow behind.

The scene fades in and out of focus as the computers cut from one to another camera of each crew member. As the interior of the caverns came is lit, Smith reaches out and touches one of the walls.

Smith: These aren’t natural caves.

The wall in front of him is smooth, hard and glassy. Looking at the ceiling, the camera reveals stalactites that begin in some unknown height, appearing at the far edge of the light and reaching to the floor as if hanging in mid-air. Some are more than twenty feet in diameter. The lights playing over the walls show calcite deposits in lava-like build-up covering much of the original walls and floor.

“The air is okay. On the dry side: seventeen percent humidity.” says a voice from behind the camera. A hand reaches out from the side of the camera to the wall and brushing the calcite deposit. It crumbles like chalk, raising a small cloud of white dust.

“I thought we were the first ones down here.”

“This place is old. Ain’t nobody been here in a looong time. Stalactites grow about an inch every hundred years. These things are huge—and dried out. There’s no telling how long these tunnels have been here.” says another voice.

“There must have been water here. And these tunnels were definitely manufactured. I don’t know…..why…or.. ” Smith falls silent as they all became quiet except for the sound of their breath in the enclosed suits.

Lights play over a huge cavern studded with stalactites and almost completely covered with calcite deposits. The lights disappear into the darkness. Shadows and columns of white and grey intertwined at the extreme edge of the lights.

Smith: How big is this thing?
Another voice behind the current camera says, “I’m reading fifteen hundred and forty five meters to an obstruction dead ahead. To the right is three hundred ten meters, to the left is…..four fifty. There looks to be another entrance on the far side.”

“Giminsky, you’re with me. McGregor, Walters–go left. Jimenez, Roberts go right. See what you see and report back as soon as possible. Don’t go off the main …room.” Smith holds up his arm and looks at the oversized chronometer.

“Man, that’s what they always do. They always split up.” says a voice moving off to the left of the camera.

What are you complaining about now, Roberts?

In the movies, man! Just before they get eaten or somethin’–they always split up. Somethin’ slips up behind ‘em and when they look left, they get eaten from the right.

Yeah. They always go deeper into the darkness and then the lights go out. Knock if off. There’s obviously nothing here–nothing could live down here. Just stay sharp. Remember, this is for the record books. You getting this, Virginia?

There is a short break of static. “We got it. Be careful.”

“Thanks, mom.”

The teams explore the cavern. The camera switches back and forth to the current speaker. Each cut can be from the same scene.

The floor of the cavern/tunnel is completely covered in a fine powder of rock and mineral dust. Each step results in a small cloud. Over the next few moments their disturbance causes a fine haze of powdered rock and minerals to obscure the air.

Shadows and curved shapes of the huge pillars are now captured through a sparkling haze of powder. The camera angles show the teams struggling to pick pick their way through the dust as it grows thicker and thicker.

“This dust is getting thick. There’s no way to avoid it. I’m heading back to the entrance before I can’t see at all.”

“Wish there was some air flow in here. At least you could stay ahead of it.”

Smith cuts in. Everybody out. Head toward the entrance. This dust is only going to get worse. Whoever gets out first secure a line from the entrance and come get the rest of us. Hook up a static line to each other now.”

The next several hours of video showed them getting one person after another out. In the end the dust was so thick the lights would penetrate only a few feet in front of them. The images of individual team members had become obscure sources of haze.

Afterwards they sealed off the entrance from compound with mylar sheeting.

“Well, that won’t work. We’ll have to figure out a way to explore it without raising that dust.”

“One or two at most–and on a safety line. Maybe we lay down some rock.”

“I think you’re missing the point.” Smith took off his helmet. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and rubbed his eyes. “That glass melt is exactly the same as the by-product of our own subterrenes. They must be at least thousands of years old just from the calcite deposits.”

Giminski: You think they are old mines?

“Could be. There might have been a time when Antarctica was only partially covered with ice. We can explore in shifts and in teams as long as we keep up our schedule for the site.” Smith wiped his eyes again. “Well. At least we saw it first.”

The next few days of video show them exploring the newly discovered tunnels. A path is blown through the dust to the far walls day by day. After that, the exploration went quickly.

On two occasions the video suddenly winks off. A check by the operator reveals a satellite linkage glitch at the time. “Probably due to strong solar winds. We get a shower of highly charged particles from the sun all the time. Occasionally it overwhelms the equipment for short periods. The self-test code says error 193–an orientation problem of the satellite due to an electric overload. That’s consistent with a strong solar wind.”

———————————-

Underground:

Rotating blades glow white hot as the subterrne slides by the opening and grinds to a halt. The rock melt flows until it freezes in place, sparks, glowing orange, then fading to yellow as the blades retract, the hatch opens inward as a small walkway settles onto the tunnel floor.

A hard beam of light shines out into the darkness as Hayt appears in the opening, walks down the steps and out onto the rock. The translucent glass of the tunnel walls and floor half absords the light in bent, oblong shafts that give a glow to the whole. The other half is absorbed in reflections that only make it a few meters with less and less shine. It all moves in tandem with Hayt’s hand and illuminates an empty tunnel in an instantly retracting path of light.

There is a break of squelch. “So?”

Hayt adjusts his earpiece. “Nothing yet. No lights. No sound. Nothing. The light is a little weird.”

Another light appears as Mike comes out behind Hayt. Together they walk toward the darkness receding in front of them. Around a sloping curve and fifty meters later they find the airlock.

“Still no lights. Nothing but dust and steel.” Mike plays the light over the entire steel door, encrusted with dust. There is rock debris in a pile to the left on the tunnel floor. A panel to the right juts out from the steel as if hastily left in place. A thick coat of caked dust covers everything. The cavity into which the panel rotates into the wall is partially filled with moist dust.

Izzy comes over the radio. “Hit it with the hammer a couple of times. It’s always polite to knock.”

Mike pulls out the small hammer and gives it to Hayt. Hayt hits the steel door once.
An echo travesl through the site and into the walls. It sounds through all the small caverns, all the small crevices and cracks. It goes only outward, traveling at the speech of sound.

Inside the subterrene Mary’s face is a question.

Izzy smiles. “You’re kidding, right? You’re in there and don’t know we’re coming, there isn’t supposed to be anything on the other side of that door but a few feet of empty tunnel. Suddenly the door opens..”

She smiles.

Hayts hit the door again and listens to the slight echo in the tunnel. “Sound doesn’t travel too far in rock unless at high or ultra-low frequencies. They probably won’t hear us anyway.”

Mike looks around at the tunnel. “Weird acoustics.”

———————

The Sleepers:

There was talk.

The talk is unlike anything that has come before its arrival. It has now lasted for millennia on millennia.

When it had first arrived, it was strange and wonderful. He had thought it exillerating and had sought to be a master of it. It had not been easy. It was alien to the Word he knew.

But he had become wise within it.

It changed him—elevated him above the rest.

The others had become jealous in their ignorance of it. They couldn’t even say his new name within it. It was a cloak in which he was hidden and none saw him as he got wiser and wiser within it. He liked being incomprehensible, invisible to them. It was like being the Most High.

He is a better speaker than they. It is a part of the wisdom it had given him. He merely spoke and it brought his desires to him. His power over the others with it in them was what made them jealous.

Now they had brought charges against him of treason. But they were liars. He could prove it with his wisdom.

The Most High would understand.

The Most High spoke, yet not in the speech.

He had smiled to himself. The others could only understand the common sort of tongue.

“How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked?”

The Most High paused. There was no answer.

“Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked. They know not, neither do they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course. I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.”

Something had happened then. He had turned to the speech and used his wisdom within it to find what ‘wicked’ and ‘die’ was. But there was nothing. It did not exist in his speech.

The Most High had spoken gibberish for the first time. He was growing weak.

That meant it was as Lucifer had suspected. The Most High hadn’t really created anything at all. He just knew secrets he wouldn’t share about what already had existed forever.And His front was failing.

But the others had begun to persecute him. Something was wrong.

Butno matter what else happened, he had understood the Most High’s power.It was too late for Him to hide it. It was speech. Now he had one of his own.

In his wisdom the speech had given him the location of the Oracle.

In his dream he relived his horror over and over on realizing he could not say it. He could no longer speak the common tongue! He could not answer the Most High! And he had to have an answer until he could overthrow the whole front the Most High had built and show them all they had been deceived by God

But the Oracle had given him names of creatures not yet that would come and speak the common tongue. He would follow them back to it and have the power of both speaks. All he had to do was hide so that they would find the him.

He dreamed of Gabriel discovering him before he had the list complete. He had escaped with only four names.

There were others who had understood him and agreed: something had to be done. He remembered Lucifer and his confidence in the plan. But where was he now?

He knew they couldn’t touch him. The Most High had made promises and di not yet know they had seen through the front. But remembering is no longer dreaming and he wondered if his long sleep was at an end.

Vibrations rolled past him. Sounds drifted in. Two long echoes. He sensed it. He knew it.

The names are here!

————————————

There is a break of squelch. “Do it again. Then introduce yourself.”

Hayt hits the steel once more and waits as the echo trembles around them and slowly dies out.

“Eight-seven-one-seven-three-zero-six-three.”

Hayt punches the code. The lights on the panel, flicker, and spark as the lock rotates and the door begins to open. Light spills out from the crack into the tunnel. The panel sparks again and the door freezes in place.

Hayt places a hydraulic jack in the door and manually work the jack. The heavy steel door slowly swings open far enough for Hayt to squeeze inside. “I’m in.”

Mike joins him inside. They walk into the fifth level of the site, past a huge “5” painted on the wall next to the door and into a central corridor.

The corridor is dimly lit by a small rope of lights pinioned in rough intervals to the concrete floor.

Mike looks left and right and then at Hayt. Hayt looks at the map strapped to his forearm and turns right, following the corridor. Their steps echo ahead and behind them.

“Hellooo!”

Hayt jumps slightly at Mike’s outburst. Mike shrugs, “Well what do you say? We, as technically trained and competent individuals are the first two members of the first rescue of the first underground habitat in existence. Yet in the same sense, we’re just two down to earth people walking down a corridor. I mean, they’re professionals too.”

“You can be inappropriate sometimes.”

“It’s called being polite.”

“So having gotten to a place of relative solitude and in the midst of the possible beautiful thoughts therein, they will no doubt be delighted to be dragged back in to the common nerf speech of polite society? Hi. The whole country just spent millions of dollars and I just risked my own life to have a pizza with you. Where’s the john?”

“Oddly, that would be the better part of professional courtesy.”

“Maybe in your world. No. I take that back. Not even in your world. You laugh like that and then say something like that?! You know something you’re scared to say and you cover it up with bullshit polite speak. …but I suppose it would be better than an implied “You guys couldn’t keep it together so we had to come save your ass.”

“See there? You wouldn’t like it very much if, through no fault of your own, the shoe were on the other foot.”

Hayt appears at the bendof the tunnel shaking his head, looks down the passageway, continues toward the camera and passes underneath. Mike is close behind.

Jack switches views and watches them from behind as they made their way away from the camera. He taps the keyboard and bringst them up on a different view from overhead.

——————————–

The hospital:

Henry knocks on the door and peers in slowly.

Dmitiri is in bed, bandages over both eyes, sucking on a package of juice with a straw. A nurse is writing on a chart.

Henry: You look the same plus eye patches. Why’d they keep you?

Dmitiri: American decadence has corrupted me. I am weak. Henry! It is good to hear the voice of someone I know. Sit down…anywhere.

The nurse smiles at Henry and leaves. “He’s always like this?”

Henry: Always. You’ve got your sense of humor. You can’t be too bad off.

Dmitiri doesn’t answer.

Henry sits, pushing the magazine he has carried with him onto the night stand. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I brought you a magazine. Traditional hospital gift. I guess I really should have let Laura pick it out.”

Dmitri: Laura is good?

Henry: Yeah. Laura is Laura. So how long..

Dmitri: Is anyone with you?

Henry: No, just me. They’re getting together a little something for you at the Institue. Gunther and the guys. Even jack. You know how it is. It’s your turn.

Dmitri: Is anyone in the room?

Henry: Just us.

Dmitri: I have to tell, to ask you something.”

Henry: About what happened?

Dmitri: The laughter–the sounds came over the speaker. The artifact immeditately lit up–I thought it was going to explode.

Henry leans closer to the bed. “You’re saying that guy laughing activated the artifact?”

Dmitri: I saw you there.

Henry: Yeah. I was..

Dmitiri shakes his head. “No. In the light. You were laughing.”

Henry: Uh, no. I was with you in the office.

“I saw you there! Listen to me.” Dmitiri whoarsely whispers. “You were there–and you were laughing. And when you laughed there was another light. It was so wonderful. It was so wonderful I thought I would die.”

Henry: Maybe you mistook …

Dmitri: No. It was you. You must tell me the way to get there.

Henry: Tell you what?

Dmitri: How.

Henry: How to what?”

Dmitri: It was you! Tell me how.

Henry: Calm down. How to do what?

Dmitri: To do it. To laugh like that. To be like that. To say it–to pronounce the artifact. To say me in that language. You know. I saw you there. You must tell me.

Henry sit very still.

“Stop pretending you don’t know. We are friends. It was you. You know! You…” Dmitiri subsides into a coughing fit. An alarm begins in the room.

The nurse rushes in. “What did you do?”

“Nothing.” Henry said, rising rubbing his hands on his pants. “I didn’t do anything. It’s a mistake. He’s…mistaken.” He backs away while the nurse attends Dmitri.

Henry walks to the nurses station. The secretary looks up.
“Could you tell me how Doctor Pavolvich in three nineteen is doing?”

Secretary: “I’m sorry sir, I’m not his physician. But Dr. Hendricks is right there. You can ask him.”

Henry thanks the woman and approachs the man sitting at a small desk behind the counter, making notes on a chart. “Excuse me. I’m a co-worker of Dr. Pavolvich in three nineteen. I was wondering how he was doing?”

The doctor, a tall, balding man, who dwarfs the chair in which he sits impatiently waves his pen without looking up. “He’ll get his sight back over time. There was no permanent damage. But he won’t be ready to go back to work for at least several weeks.”

Henry: Is he in any pain?

The man lookes up with a frown. “No. Not unless he’s good at hiding it. He’s comfortable. Had some headaches but nothing unexpected. He’s fortunate.”

Henry: So he’s not taking anything that would make him…woozy?”

Doctor: No. His eyes are the only reason he’s here. He’s got a heart murmur, that’s why we’ve got him on the monitor. But that’s not related to his accident.

“Thank you.” Henry backs away and walks toward the elevators. Dmitri has calmed down and appears as if nothing has happened. Henry watches, as the elevator doors close, the nurse hang another bag of fluids.

He has to get outside. The elevator moves down one floor and stops.

A nurse and doctor get on, followed by a custodian pushing a cart. The nurse and doctor talk in low tones over a chart. The custodian stares at Henry’s shoes.

The elevator stops again. A woman almost came on, sees it is crowed and motions she will wait for another. All of them cast serruptitious eyes at Henry. He stares at the woman until the doors close to be seen by the others as staring very reasonably and uninterestedly at another human being. The doctor turns to him. “Are you alright?”

It’s not me! I’m fine. Why do you ask?

————-

The Institiute–

Jack sits in his office watching the misson unfold, a scotch on ice in his hand. He looks from the monitor to the ice floating in his glass, then drains the contents. A burning shot of satisfaction and courage spread through him as the whiskey flows down. Everything is proceeding exactly on schedule, just as they had predicted.

It’s really true!

He pours himself another as he watches the search continue level by level. The video switches between the voices in an eerie resemblance to the video he had watched only weeks before. An elation, an expansion of something in the pit of his stomach won’t go away. He can’t drown it with the scotch.

——————————————————-

Job 24:16 In the dark they dig through houses, which they had marked for themselves in the daytime: they know not the light.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Chapter Ten

Jack’s Office

Jack: How is Dmitri?

Henry: They’ll know in a couple of days. He’s in Jefferson Memorial right now. They’ll keep him for observation. He was a little hysterical.

Jack: Strange days.

Henry: Yeah.

Jack: I don’t understand what you’re saying. The DNA molecule was broken up and the parts used as some sort of pictographic alphabet? What does it say?

Henry: That is what it says–what we call Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid. And much more.

Jack: Either I’m trying to infer something because how you are taking this –that isn’t there, or you aren’t telling me everything.

Henry: There’s only one way to assemble the characters, one way because a true representation of DNA can only be constructed one way and still be DNA — to do the function that DNA performs.

Jack: Why break it up into some kind of puzzle? You are saying it’s a whole language?

Henry: It’s not a puzzle. It’s a lexicon.

Jack: That’s a leap. You can map it back and forth from one to the other but that doesn’t tell you what is being said.

Henry: What the difference? They are the same; the shape and the speech. Function follows form and form follows function. Either way in reality certain forms, shapes are tied to certain functions and visa versa. You can’t just throw out what you know of physical reality just because you found a new piece.

Jack looks over the report.

Henry: If the DNA molecule wasn’t constructed the way it is constructed, it would not perform the function it now performs. If it didn’t perform the function it performs, it wouldn’t be shaped as it is. We know dysfunctional DNA by the shape it assumes, what it turns into–which is not the normal shape for normal DNA. Shape is the key. It wouldn’t be the molecule we have named DNA if it doesn’t hold to that shape at all times. It’s the same shape every time, the same function every time. Not to be simplistic, but that’s why it gets it’s own significant name.

Jack: Everyone knows that.

Henry: You don’t seem to be phased by all of this. The hand, the artifact the earthquake..

Jack: Now hold on a minute. Just look at it from my perspective. I’m in charge of what is essentially a bureaucracy. Every day people come to me using their own version of incredulity to get what they want –their slice of the budget. On a certain level I’m deaf to it. Maybe I should be more wowed by all this. But I’m not. It’s just part of the whole process of growth and exploration. Strange things come up. Remember the supposed face on Mars, the Cydonia debacle? It’s not that I’m not open to new things. It’s just that I don’t want to hear one urgency over another artificially. I get this all the time. But granted. These are ..different.

Henry: If it reproduces itself and does not hold to a specific shape it will not only not perform its normal function, but will die and in turn bring about the death of the larger organism that was dependant on it to perform that function and hold that shape. Language is the same.

Jack: Okay.

Henry: Whoever made this invented an unambiguous alphabet and vocabulary. There are a lot of different ways to put the pieces together, but only one that is factual and true–one that holds to the original image and the original message. Of life. They made that alphabet for a purpose. You can’t lie with it. If you did it wouldn’t work—it wouldn’t fit and wouldn’t be alive.

Jack: I don’t see how you’re getting that out of this. That thing could match lots of shapes we just don’t have representations of for whatever reason. Have you considered it could be a one hundred percent match to another shape or shapes as well? Have you tested the program on other samples?

Henry: That’s the whole point, Jack. Don’t be obtuse. It’s an entire language contained within the shapes of the parts of the DNA molecule, not just one word that is “D” “N” “A”. It has to be a match to more than one shape. An infinite variety of actual flesh is made of the DNA molecule, but only living human flesh is made in that particular shape contained within the rectangle. The only difference between them is how the molecule is arranged—shaped. But those shapes can be words as well. Whatever the shape is, so is the word—the living thing. Don’t you see? We write the same way. We associate shapes and pronounce words based on how the letters are grouped into associated shapes. You wouldn’t have to say very much to perfectly communicate with this language–it’s extremely efficient. Imagine the possibility of never being able to speak an untruth, not from lack of knowledge–or impossible to speak a lie, not from a moral or free will point of view, but purely from the mechanics of the language itself. We’re talking about an extremely advanced civilization both morally and technologically.

Jack: If what you are saying is true. That’s a big if. I don’t see the link between the DNA molecule and language–or a lexicon. Okay, there is a match in rearranging the pieces that seems to construct something, but that could be coincidence. You have to rule that out.

Henry: Why?

Jack: You are not being objective.

Henry: Don’t tell me you don’t see this! I know it’s in the middle of everything else. I know it doesn’t fit the program. But that doesn’t make it go away.

Henry picks up the printout and places it back in the case.”We’ll need to study this more of course. But coupled with the telomeric evidence of perfect health, pure gold and now perfect representation to living DNA…”

Jack: That means you want money.

Henry: How can you not see this?! Yes. I want money. I want a grant just for this. Hands off by the other departments.

Jack: It can’t be more important than other projects just because you want it to be. We don’t know why it was made or what it was doing in Antarctica. Does it have anything to do with what happened to the first crew? All you’ve got now are theories. We’ve got a second crew on the way. Last word was they were three or four days from the site. If you can come up with some real answers I’ll pass them along. We’ll work on it some more until then.”

“We?” Henry says pointedly. “You don’t make that call. I’ll go to Larry Wilkins. He’ll at least tell them so they can know what’s going on. You may be a civilian plus and you may be in charge of the funding. I may have to come up here and keep you informed. But you are not NASA.”

There is a silence.

Henry: We’ve been watching the videos from the past several weeks. The crew seemed to be speaking to themselves more and more and to each other less and less.

Jack: Speaking to themselves?

Henry: They never stop except to speak to each other.

Jack: What are they saying?

Henry: Nothing intelligble. Nothing in any language we know.

Jack: Don’t play coy. You’re trying to draw a line from their strange behavior to this plate.

Henry: I’ve got no reason to think they saw it or even knew of it’s existence.

Jack: But the behavior is strange and we did find the plate near the site.”

Henry: Well there is that.

Jack: Okay.

Henry walks toward the door. “By the way, they found some tunnels. Had you heard about that?”

Jack: The reports said it was old lava flows. Underground isn’t as solid as you think it is.

Henry: Okay.

Jack: I just want you to know you can always come to me with whatever you are thinking. I may not agree, but I’ll listen. Understand?”

Henry just stares at him.

Jack: Oh! If it is language, how would you pronounce it?

Henry lets the door close and walks slowly toward the elevator.

—————————————–

Underground:

The crew are gathered around a central console in the aft compartment looking over a holographic schematic of the site.

Hayt: The crew quarters are here on the top level, along the south perimeter. The control room, offices, medical facilities and the mess complete the level to the north and east. You’ll notice the site looks like a horseshoe with the west end cut off. Levels two through seven are for experiments, storage and more offices as the site grows. They have yet to be complete. The red is what is already complete, up and running. Yellow is the future plans. This area here, the whole of the west, has been reserved for docking bays for subterrenes and in the far future a possible subway system to the site.

Hayt points to the bottom level on the west side. “At present these two levels, are the docking bays we have. Their subterrene is here on six..or at least that’s what we think. You’ll notice five is in yellow so far. We’ll be docking on five in about two hours.”

Why the long separation?” Mary points to the long shaft that connects the top two complete levels with the lowest level.

Hayt indicates the bottom level. “The bottom level is the power plant, a larger reactor than what we’ve got. It’s not the most ideal solution, but it works for now. The lift is electric and hydraulic.”

“Are we going to hit their trail? The tunnel they made going in?” Mike is watching the sonar.

“No. They went in from the south. Their’s is a smaller model subterrene that was flown in and assembled at McMurdo. The site is built, in fact was chosen for the solid rock of the whole area. There aren’t any shafts or caverns except for theirs. We’re coming in from the west.” Izzy indicates their route. “Once the tunnels are complete..”

Mary: Why not just use their tunnel?

Gregg shifts in his seat and sits up, twirling his watch absently. “The sub’s themselves. From what Bill has said, these machines don’t run well in open tunnels over distance.”

Hayt smiles. “You’re operating, as they say, tomorrows technology today that’s already headed to mothballs. But until then, we’ve got to get on site and tunnel back out.”

Gregg: Seems a shame. It’s a beautiful beast. It’s art.

“I suppose so.” Izzy switches off the schematic.

Albright smiles. “We’re comrades in exploration and rescue. We’re making history.”

“In the midst of the solving of the grand existential, bringing light, English, Colombian coffee and the stench of human excrement to the ancient darkness.” Gregg adds casually.

“At two thousand degrees Fahrenheit in the belly of a beautiful, already obsolete beast.” Mary says softly.

Izzy sees the common spark in them that has been missing. “We are the sons and spiritual technology of God masquerading to ourselves and the rest as the emotional fulfillment and merchandise of creatures we know nothing of, making what is not yet seen, the foundations of the invisible, intelligent unknown.”

“Here. Here.” It is Hayt, who has stopped his own calculations. “Renissance Man. Is there another you in there?”

Izzy opens a drawer and pulls out a small box as the others exchange looks. “Where do any words come from? Who cares as long as the right ones get said?” He opens the box and hands Mary a patch. He takes another and reaches over to Albright; walks over to Gregg and Hayt, hands them their own.

The image sewn on the black background with yellow thread is rays of light with a human hand reaching out from the center of the light. A motto is sewn across the bottom in red. “The motto is Latin. “Ad sum!” It means…”

“I am here.” Mike rises from his seat and walks over to get his own.

Izzy hands Mike a patch. “There is no official patch for us as a unit as the project doesn’t officially exist. But for us, among ourselves, the very few who came and are here now… It goes on the right arm. Like so.” Izzy attaches his own to the Velcro. “Ad sum.”

“Ad sum.” They all said quietly, attaching their own.

Albright smirks. “I always thought I’d hate this boy scout bullshit if it ever came. But it’s actually not bad. I feel as if I have …buddies.”

Hayt grins. “Good words all.”

The floor shifts under them as the subterrene surges forward quickly only to suddenly come to almost a complete stop before moving on. Izzy and Hayt helped Mary, Albright and Gregg off the floor.

“What did we hit? An air pocket?” Gregg wipes up the remnants of his coffee.

Izzy: Mike?

Mike: We hit the first of what looks like a maze of caverns.”

Hayt: That can’t be right. This area is all solid, virgin rock. That’s why we…

He stops, as the sonar sweep reveals a maze of caverns. Punching the keypad he calls up the measurements. “At least that’s what we thought.” He turns quickly and ducks under the doorway to the control room. Izzy follows behind.

Jimmy blinks slowly.

Mary sees him swallow carefully and lick his lips. Reaching into the compartment above him, she takes out a packet of water, opens one end and inserts a straw.

He smiles weakly and accepts the straw awkwardly with his mouth.

“Careful, there, you’ve had quite a little swim.” Mary wipes his mouth.

He speaks very quietly.

Mary leans closer.

“What’s you’re name?” He says again.

“Mary Jo. But everyone calls me Mary.”

He nods slowly and carefully looks around to see who can hear him. “What’s mine?”

She can see he is serious. Pulling a small flashlight out of her pocket, she holds the light in one his eyes and quickly moves the light away. The pupil has not reacted at all. One pupil is larger than the other. She holds the light into the smaller pupil and moves it away quickly. It grew a bit and then receded. She smiles, glad Izzy had told her. “James. But everyone calls you Jimmy.”

He nods and closes his eyes. “Jimmy. Jimmy.”

Mary pats him on the shoulder and goes to see what is happening.

Hayt is punching up his own sonar. He plots a course between the tunnels.

Baxter is beside him. “How bad is it?”

“We’re okay. It’s just better to not ram the rock on the other side next time we go through one of those. I’m slowing us down.” He taps the keyboard.

Izzy can feel the inertia carry him forward slightly as they slow. “What does this do to the time table?”

We’re only a couple of miles away from the site anyway. But instead of forming another docking bay, we may be crawling up one that’s already there—I think. Look at this!”

The sonar data refreshed on the screen to reveal a vast network of tunnels and huge caverns.

“Have they done this since they’ve been here?”

“They couldn’t have. The size of the tunnels is larger than ours. They’re subterrene is smaller.”

“Natural caverns?”

Hayt shook his head. “I thought maybe.. But look at the readings. They’re symmetrical. And honeycombed with microtunnels all around them. Those were made.”

————————————————–

Ezekiel 8:8 Then said he unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall: and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Chapter Nine

The Institute:

The double helix slowly rotates on the screen, slowly flashing in various lengths up and down the whole. Some sections glow at the same time; other alone. The image of the artifact glows in small sections from within and on the exterior that correspond to the areas on the molecule in a running sequence.

Henry stares.

Dmitri: “I changed the parameters to look for part instead of whole symbol.”

Henry stares and a smile slowly grows on his face.

Dmitri: What?

Henry: I had a dream the other night. I discovered the cure for cancer. I got in my car to go and tell ..somebody, I don’t remember who. You know how dreams are. But as I drove it became obvious that my car wouldn’t let me out and wouldn’t let me stop. So I was trapped in my car. All this weird stuff happened. I passed a gang in an old chevy and they took offense because I wouldn’t stop. I guess I had a look on my face. See? I wanted to stop and tell them, but the car wouldn’t let me. It didn’t do anything to hurt me. It just wouldn’t stop. They followed me around, threatening to hurt me if I didn’t stop. But they finally gave up. I drove on. The streets were wet but it wasn’t raining.

Dmitri: What happens?

Henry: First time in my life I ever woke up praying for a wreak.

Dmitri: Hmm.

———————————

Underground—

The subterrene leaves a small tunnel it its wake. It pushes silently forward, going deeper and deeper at a slight angle into the heart of darkness.

Sitting in front of the panel inside, Mike is content. He checks the CO2 levels again: normal; the same with the oxygen and nitrogen. He does another diagnostic on the system that vents toxic gases created by any malfunction in the reactor.

All is as it should be.

All the lights were green. Every alarm is quiet.

Beyond the assurances of the technology of being safe he watches Mary, Gregg, and Baxter go about their own duties, absorbed in the details of precision and diligence.

Conversation is minimal. They collide casually and without incident into each other through speech, finding peace and a certain safety in silence: one ear always out for the unusual sound.

His prayers are not prompted out of habit or because of an awareness of any present need or urgency. God speaks as God often does. Mike finds fear and joy in the speech spoken through him; in the thoughts he has as prayer. God prays through him for peace and prosperity and for the birthing and building up of new creations in Jesus Christ. He prays through him for prosperity and an end to lies and for works of righteousness forever. He prays for the benefit of collectives: countries, groups, political parties, single people. He prays for individuals: Jennifer to get the job she wants; for the mission to end succesfuly; for the war to end.

He prays to understand prayer as understanding God. He prays for an end to what is called piety as merely doing something against the standards of the emotional world and to receive a deeper truth of simple existence in God as fundamental reality.

With the words come an assurance that God has of course, heard His own word and that these things, in the very middle of evil and death are coming true in him; around him. He watches them come true sitting in one place with all the lights green.

He remembers suddenly, “I slept, but my heart was awake.” and “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea exists no more.” and had no real answer of why the two now and no explaination for why each should seem to be its own unit as well as part of a larger whole.

It comes again, welling up in him, beyond his ability to surpress it. The old Mike is the heart that tries to know itself apart from God and then bring that knowledge to God.

God disregarded his the old Mike and spoke his prayers.

He understands that he is the purpose of God’s gesture and the recipent of His attention and His word, but not as one is looked down on or across at or seen from behind, but a boundaryless sameness the old Mike tries not to recognize forms the event that is beyond an episode.

The closest he will ever get to describing it to others is to say that God is the breath and word that are his thoughts. He is witness and part of what is witnessed in the same instant. He has not gotten anywhere with his reaching out by the old Mike, but God has come the whole Distance, done it all and together they are, oddly: sobriety.

Something flows through him not his own and yet his own. There is a flash of anger at some foreigner inside him that resented this clarity, as if it proved Mike should be free of himself.

But which one?–the one that insisted on evaluating and pronouncing value on every small detail–and even now wanted the ‘episode’ to be over so that it could then decide whether to pronounce it good and enjoyable or bad and something to be avoided in the future instances–the he that is a prisoner to past moments of emotional trade as words were exchanged, feelings shopped and traded–the same he that had no say and no control over God–and resented it, pronouncing it ‘evil’ to desire to be one with God? The same he that God had overcome with His word to be one with Mike. Or the new Mike?

Every time he happens, every instant of his immortality he is attacked again by his flesh over the rightfully use of the word ‘I’; over fundamental identity. Each time, every time he will know, God will know for him and with him that he is no longer his flesh but a new creation still marveling at his being one with God.

It is a wonderful, fearful thing it to have God live in him! He knows once again what it is to rejoice with trembling. His own flesh despises him for it.

As the weakness of his own flesh and death strike him, he is no longer one with his flesh but God-in-him and he rejoices. He knows the days of words in his flesh are numbered and coming to a close.

It is not slogging through a jungle of thoughts and a breaking out into a clearing of understanding. It is certainty of oneness that cannot be articulated by any other means than of joyful laughter far beyond any relief of circumstance. That he is free of his old self even for one instant makes him happy. That he knows and recognizes he is being participated with by God, sharing his reality with Him and that he always will even if he is blinded to the awareness of it for an instant, or for hours, or even for years at a time gives him the lucidity of joy.

The laughter, the joy is the evidence of what cannot be seen or handled.

His safety in the world of flesh in past times was to suppress the laughter by applying pressure elsewhere. Having as an instinct the certainty that it is rude, even risky to laugh in public, Mike has become a master of pinching himself, tightening his fists or sereptitiously biting his lip.

Now gumming his lips together stubbornly to get past it, he tries to stare straight ahead and beyond and ignore the faces that began to watch. He wants to point to the lights and say “See? All green. Nothing to see here.”

But he laughs anyway and with his eyes open.

The pencil in his hand snaps.

The anesthetic of the norm vanishes as the tears and laughter pour out of him.

Gregg’s hands hesitate over the keyboard; Mary’s face appears to the side of a report.

Turning their heads to one side they hear his laughter up close and something else in it of absolute necessity to life from a distance.
Glad to hear it again, Mary and Izzy are unsure why they had been tense and relaxed.

Hayt, tries a merry guess in hopeful comraderie and to laugh his way toward understanding what had sparked the sound. There is desire of flesh in his effort but no God. He sounds hollow; in the technical miss of attempt, evil. He stops trying by degrees, frowns and flips the switch on the com link to send it home.

The “ “ flows out through the antenna array, traveling through the earth and coming from all around and underneath the lab in Virgina, bursting out through the speakers.

————————-

The Institute:

Peters hears the laughter in the middle of everything else and hits the intercom: “Yeah, it’s really rough down there. They’re having a party.” and keys the mike. “That’s really appropriate on a rescue mission.”

Henry sits in his chair holding the artifact. He breathes on it again to outline the edge of the curves.

Dmitri bangs out a new program to relate distances, timing and placement of the setions of artifact to the components of the DNA molecule.

The laughter erupts into the room. The artifact explodes with light.

Henry jumps and drops the artifact on the floor, and shields his eyes.

Dmitri is transfixed and stares.

—————————

Underground:

Gregg is furious. Without permisson–and in front of the others! With no time to prepare, he tastes Mike’s experience and life, participating in a oneness for which he has no desire. Grinding teeth in silence and clinching his own fists, the laughter is crowding him into a bunch of people with only one privacy to go around.

But Mike’s awareness is too honest, his laughter too candid to be taken back.

No one says anything or looks at each other.

He laughes, unable to stop; even forgetting to put his hand over his mouth.

Then, he hears: They know. They hear.

He doesn’t want it to make a difference. But the sudden thought already has.

The thought of rudeness and being in the open creeps into the laughter. He falters, finally subsiding into a full stop and a kind of stunned saddness.
In the vacuum at the end of laughter and out of his own privacy, he looks around.

An audience confronts him. The faces are a kind of shout, a demand that he explain himself.

The vacuum generates a pause of its own.

The hum of the ship and rock surrounding them filtered through into the silence.

He is confused and sits unsure what to do next.

Everyone continues to stare.

“Excuse me. I didn’t mean to…disturb..” he says, blinking wet eyes, making a discrete effort at clearing his throat and having to do it again. Taking his glasses off, he wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, suddenly knowing above all else he needs to blow his nose.

There is inappropriateness; a kind of ignorance so complete they are ashamed to know how experienced they are as he apologizes. He is an evangelism of joy in motion as he is apologizing for it.

Too late, now.

He has to get out of sight, out of the thought that everything is abrupt and witnessed. He turns to the panel and begins the diagnostics again.

“The quiet ones.” Gregg said. “It’s always the quiet ones. I got my eye on you.”

Izzy smiles at Gregg.

The stir of activity slowly resumes.

Gregg munches a potato chip. “We’ll have to start calling him Mike-a-delic.” He adds with a snort of his own laughter. “He’s a trip.”

Mary wonders if anyone knows what begins that makes laughter end. Izzy writes his name down, suddenly curious to see what it looks like on paper.
“Everyone should be able to hear it once.” Mary said to Jimmy as she wipes his forehead and checks the I.V. “Whatever it is.”

Albrite is asleep.

Coming up through a layer of dreams and impressions, past a layer of curious sensations toward something that had called Jimmy hears the hum of the ship. The light hurts his eyes as he blinks slowly. “What happened? I heard something.”

———————————

The Institute–

Dmitiri is sitting, staring at Henry, unblinking with tears in his eyes.

“Dmitri?”

“Did you see?” Dmitiri asks hoarsely.

“Yeah”

“Did you see it?!”

“Yeah. It just ..lit up. I never saw anything like it.”

“It was horrible! I almost died!”

“What are you talking about?”

“It exploded! I thought I would die at the light. Nothing like you’ve ever seen–or could see. It…” Dmitri touched his face with one hand. “I can’t see. Is it still happening?”

“Still happening? No, it..”

Dmitiri is confused. “I can’t see.” he says again. “I’m blind.”

——————————————————————

Psalm 37:12,13 The wicked plotteth against the righteous, and gnasheth his teeth against him. The Lord laugheth at him; for he seeth that his day is coming.

Job 12:16-25 With him is strength and effectual knowledge; the deceived and the deceiver are his. He leadeth counsellors away spoiled, and judges maketh he fools; He weakeneth the government of kings, and bindeth their loins with a fetter; He leadeth priests away spoiled, and overthroweth the mighty; He depriveth of speech the trusty, and taketh away the judgment of the elders; He poureth contempt upon nobles, and slackeneth the girdle of the mighty; He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out into light the shadow of death; He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them; he spreadeth out the nations, and bringeth them in; He taketh away the understanding of the chiefs of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a pathless waste. They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like a drunkard.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

A woman has grown up in a very ‘tolerant’ society. She has not only approved of that tolerance but participated in it. She nows feels guilty. She blames the other people and the society for the environment in which those things were presented to her as the whole of speech and sight at every turn.

The report implies multiple husbands: divorce and re-marriage of someone who was actively seeking solace for her soul.

Enter anti-Christ’s oppsing lie to her former deceptions. After being told all her life that she has ‘free’ will and that the tolerance of anything is a good thing as long as it brings you pleasure and that the ‘proper’ way to ‘use’ her ‘free’ will was for a little bit of tradition and a little bit of new age whateverism, and having these ‘values’ dictated by law in Belgium, suddenly she welcomes an authoritarian speech/rule of life; some stability from the emotional free for all; a supposed ‘better’ way to use her free will: blow herself up while trying to get back at those who lead the ‘tolerance’ lie that resulted in her guilt.

She said her daughter’s interest in Islam started in 2000, and she became a devout Muslim after marrying a Moroccan.

“She became more Muslim than Muslim,” said Mrs Degauque.

“When she first converted, she wore a simple veil. That was not so far from normal, even if it is strange for a Belgian. But with her last husband she wore a chador [Islamic dress covering women from head to toe].”

Her daughter - believed to be the first female European bomber in Iraq - later travelled through Syria to Iraq, where she died in a failed attack against US troops on 9 November, the paper said.

Her family has no idea what Islam is to think she became some strange thing within it that is not representative of it.

A sorcerer of Islam meets her, marries her, sleeps with her; suddenly she is blowing herself up. She went from “womens rights!” to “Allah Akbar” at the snap of a finger of a system famous for its subjegation and manipulation of women.

The bad news for the faux ‘rights’ groups is that they actually are deceived that the mere hint of pleasure via those ‘rights’ is enough to buy off any potential problem and keep the people quiet. What God has shown the world through this one woman is that the soul is more important than the heart even though she was deceived by a liar by her heart and is now awake in Sheol and on her way to the lake of fire.

Pagans amongst themselves are still pagans even when they are deceived they have found a window to “morality”, can ‘choose it’ and thus obtain freedom from the evil they have come to loath as a wickedness they could not escape, even as anti-Christ fought tooth and nail through them as speech and action for exactly whatever ‘freedom’ of will they thought was real.

Those who hate any supposed impediment to their ‘free’ will, will be turned into the most radical of coverts on a dime to authoritarian rules that villify and denigrate their former ‘freedoms’ and those who uphold them merely as an attempt to escape the guilt brought about by those very ‘freedoms’ they were deceived and manipulated by anti-Christ to crave in the beginning. Anti-Chist will use them in one of his lies and hand them over to another of his lies for the destruction of both body and soul, while those still drunk on their supposed ‘freedoms’ of will look on aghast and confused and not even slow down in their own agenda.

From the article as well:

He said the fact that a Belgian woman had carried out a suicide mission in Iraq was a surprise, but it would have happened “sooner or later”.

“But it could have been a French man or British woman,” he said. “They are obviously recruiting. We know we have made arrests and stopped some networks, but who can tell for the future?”

One tumor in the mind of anti-Christ that has swallowed up Europe has ceded control to another; to an enemy that will kill them and anti-Christ has said through them that it is inevitable –that they have no defense against a hard core lie of ‘morality’ from within a lie of ‘tolerance’ of anything.

From a USA Today article:

The ability of radical Islamic groups to recruit is “indicative of the failure of social integration policies,” Ranstorp said. “It’s a huge problem in Europe. A small group can unleash large social forces that may be difficult to contain.”

Europe doesn’t get it. Those to whom they have extended their corrupt hearts loath their corruption and falsely perceive themselves to be moral and godly in comparison. They will only take the money and the services until they can kill those with the corrupt heart. From a Muslim’s perspective: The West kills its own children through abortion, has rampant and encouraged adultery where every idealized man is supposedly neighing for his neighbors wife like lusty stallions, forces as best it can public accetpance of homosexuality (Muslims are well known sodomites but like to think of their version of it as ‘pure’) , portrays women in the most lude and corrupt way possible while forcing acceptance of both that ludeness, abortion and the functional worship of the hearts of women as best it can and wants to ‘teach’ the whole world those values as ‘wisdom’. How ludicrous for Europe to think the Muslims want to ‘assimilate’. Neither can see beyond their own particular pride, lens and agenda of anti-Christ.

—————————

If you are not non-metaphorically born again as real, literal new creation in Jesus Christ, you will go to the lake of fire. New creation in Jesus Christ is the only morality.

Psalm 59:14-17 And in the evening they shall return, they shall howl like a dog, and go round about the city. They shall wander about for meat, and stay all night if they be not satisfied. But as for me, I will sing of thy strength; yea, I will sing aloud of thy loving-kindness in the morning; for thou hast been to me a high fortress, and a refuge in the day of my trouble. Unto thee, my strength, will I sing psalms; for God is my high fortress, the God of my mercy.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

It is an old story: God blesses those whom God has chosen to know Him. Those whom God has not chosen to know Him are deceived by anti-Christ that the benefits demonstrated in, on and around the unconditionally elect are simply the result of a wise ‘use’ of human ‘free’ will. The non-elect are always being spoken through by anti-Christ to say to real, literal new creations in Jesus Christ as non-creation: “Anything you can do I can do. I have the same mind. I have the same heart.”

The result is a denial of God in His face as those who deny God enjoy His largesse to them for the sake of the elect. The very bald faced lie to God and to real, literal new creations in Jesus Christ is spoken very simply by anti-Christ through the non-elect and the not-yet born again elect soul.

It goes like this: “I know there is really no such thing as new creation in Jesus Christ. I know that God did not create anything and there is no such thing as new creation or a ‘Word of God’ that creates by Speech. I know that there is only one speech in total reality and I am a master of it.

BUT.

You are deceived those things exist.

SO.

I see what that deception does to you. It makes you peaceable and non-violent and prosperous. So I’ll just mimick what you do in order to reap the temporal benefits of your deception. But don’t think for a minute I actually am as deceived as you are.

If you have a wife and kids, I want a wife and kids. If your family is happy, I want my family to be not only happy but the same kind of happy as your family. Whatever you do to make that happen, I’ll just mimic. If you have a republic, I want a Republic. If you have nukes, I want nukes. Whatever you get from “your God”, just be sure and get me one too. Neighbor.

Don’t get me wrong. You are a nice guy. I love you. But you are ignorant and don’t know how to use your blessings properly to secure more “blessings” for yourself. You are too modest. I really know you did it all yourself. You never fooled me–I knew all along it was really just you. Besides, if you don’t give me one each of everything you have, I’ll say you violated your own Christian doctrine and damned yourself. You might not believe me. But your kids will.”

———————————

So the world can only generalize every blessing of God as if God did nothing and try to force all those blessings on others as the de facto definition of civilization minus God; which means that those used of anti-Christ and forcing that generalization will inevitably bring about death and call it wisdom because of its mere association in their own minds with ‘God’ and ‘good’– in a caricature of Christianity they are truly deceived has deceived God in real, literal new creations in Jesus Christ.

The Islamic world wants to mimic western prosperity minus any real Christianity. Even the West wants to mimic the old West minus any real Christianity. The whole world is spoken through by anti-Christ to say “Just strip out the God part, that Jesus Christ part and get to the good emotional gooy center.”

Now the Islamic women want their idealization of what Western women have–minus how they got it.

So it goes.

Heb 13:9,10 Be not carried away with various and strange doctrines; for it is good that the heart be confirmed with grace, not meats; those who have walked in which have not been profited by them . We have an altar of which they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle;

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

According to anti-Christ, as long as a people at least appear to go in one side of the black box of the “democratic process” , it doesn’t matter what they come out as,
as long as the emotional etiquette is observed.

The “trend” of adding security prisoners to the lists of Palestinian factions has been growing in the past few days. In the internal Fatah
elections, currently taking place, a number of security prisoners, headed by Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti , were listed as candidates. Barghouti himself won a whopping 96 percent of the votes.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has decided to place its leader Ahmed Sadat at the top of its candidates list despite the fact that he is currently jailed in a Palestinian Authority prison in Jericho, along with those who masterminded and carried out the assassination of Israeli Minister Rehavam Ze’evi (Ghandi).

The ‘Palestinians’ apparently want their leaders bona fide murderers as electable the way the mafia wants its blood before anyone gets ‘made’.

So these persons will now supposedly be ‘diplomats’ of foriegn non-countries who will demand their ‘rights’ under ‘international law’ and will be the very persons representing anti-Christ at the table with Bush, Sharon and Peres under his own lie of ‘land for peace’.

God bless Israel. They can be so blind. Get Gaza back. Wake up. Anti-Christ has an alternate literal for everything: Israel, Jerusalem, faith, salvation, new birth, the temple mount, land, peace, truth, defense, God, Christ, Jesus…

Psalm 18:25-28 With the gracious thou dost shew thyself gracious; with the upright man thou dost shew thyself upright; With the pure thou dost shew thyself pure; and with the perverse thou dost shew thyself contrary. For it is thou that savest the afflicted people; but the haughty eyes wilt thou bring down. For it is thou that makest my lamp to shine: Jehovah my God enlighteneth my darkness.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen