The Prophet of Queens

by Glenn Kleier

  Ivy wasn’t sure what “fealty” meant. She replied, “Yes.”

  “Your brother is being entrusted with an important role in a Great Mission. You must do all you can to assist him, do you understand?”

  “Of course I will.”

  Scotty asked, “What is my role? The crowd outside is getting bigger and crazier by the day.”

  “The Lord asks your patience. I’ll return soon with details when the time is right.”

  She moved as if to go, but Ivy waved her hands at the screen.

  “Wait,” she cried. “The boy we wrote you about this morning? Teddy? Will you help him?”

  Ariel appeared unsettled. “I’m sorry, the Lord must decline all such requests.”

  Ivy felt her jaw drop. “The Lord saved the man at the ballpark, he won’t help a little boy?”

  Ariel lowered her eyes, and Ivy pleaded, “Will you at least tell us what’s wrong with him?”

  “I, I don’t know, I-I…”

  Scotty added, “I have a request, too.”

  The angel directed her troubled beacons back at him.

  “I’ve done all the Lord’s asked of me to the best of my ability. I ask one thing in return.”

  Ariel appeared anxious.

  “Years ago,” Scotty said, “I lost my mother. If I could just see her again. Speak to her one last time. It would mean everything to me.”

  Ivy’s heart leapt. What an incredible wish! She had no memory of Mom. There were tears in Scotty’s eyes—Ivy had never seen her brother cry—and tearing too, she held her breath.

  Ariel blinked and looked around. “I, uh, that’s not possible. I mean, the Lord won’t allow it. Right now, He requires you to prepare for the Great Mission that awaits you, nothing more.”

  And the screen went blank.

  Scotty closed his eyes, a tear escaped, and he whispered, “So much for a merciful God.”

  Ivy sighed. Her brother blamed God for Mom’s death. But Ivy knew there was more to it than that. And whatever it was stuck in his craw all these years, he refused to let it out.

  Chapter 70

  October 21, 2:07 pm, Talawanda

  “Well that went well,” Max snapped, withdrawing his antenna, the vortex still whorling. “We had things under control till the sister entered the picture.”

  Tia was upset, too. “How long till she posts Ariel’s videochats on YouTube, and they go viral? The media will see through our charade like an x-ray!”

  Ariel pointed out, “Ivy gave me her word.”

  Max said, “She’s a teen in an all-girl’s school. You trust her?”

  Ariel felt terrible. Mostly for the Butterfields. She loathed her deceptive role in all this, still not sold on the team’s risk-fraught decision to reverse the election. But with Tia desperate to save her mother, and Butterfield refusing to cooperate unless Ariel met face to face, she’d given in and played the angel once more.

  Stan switched off the klieg lights, and Ariel stared at her reflection in her screen.

  So, who was this Ivy? First blush, she was smart, like her brother. Spunky. And she wore an Ellen Shackleton T-shirt. But Max and Tia were right, the girl’s presence added untold complications to an already delicate and mind-boggling challenge. The team needed no more obstacles. And now that the girl had moved in with Scott, it seemed they were stuck with her.

  There were also the matters of the child with the life-threatening illness, and Scott’s plea to see his departed mother. Ariel certainly sympathized with Scott’s longing for his mother, as did Tia. Put on the spot, Ariel had handled it badly, never a good liar. Yet, while they could do nothing about Scott’s mom…

  She asked the group, “Can’t we do something for little Teddy?”

  “We’ve been over that,” Max said. “A tragic situation, but we’re physicists, not physicians. And even assuming we could cure him, would it be wise?”

  Stan reminded, “Butterflies.”

  Tia said, “Slim risk of that.” She showed her laptop screen to the others. A photo from a newspaper—an obit of a cherub-faced little boy. “I checked on Teddy. He doesn’t die till after the election.”

  Max exhaled. “Saving the boy may not pose a big risk, but turning Butterfield into a miracle worker does. A prophet’s one thing, let him start curing the sick, there won’t be enough cops in New York to keep the crowds away.”

  “But helping the boy will buy us time, and help build Butterfield’s God-cred. Besides, getting Butterfield in good with the cops may come in handy.”

  Ariel and Stan thought that made sense, and Tia added, “I could hack Teddy’s medical files and see if his doctors ever came up with a diagnosis.”

  “All right,” Max relented, “give it a shot if you want. Meanwhile, the rest of us stay focused on Thornton, the clock’s ticking.”

  Issue settled, they headed for the house, and Ariel went to her room and closed the door. During the last run while she was hedging with the Butterfields, Stan had been busy extracting her rabbit’s-foot memory stick from the wormhole. He’d copied its files to her laptop, following procedure, and returned the stick to the plant. Now Ariel took a moment to check the files against the live Times archives and her journal, using an app designed to flag disparities. She was relieved to find no changes of significance, and moved on to the more-pressing Thornton project.

  The City of God newspaper was a trove of information on the reverend. All the same, despite searching every issue in the weeks leading up to the election four years ago, Ariel could turn up nothing helpful to their cause. She turned next to Church bulletins and newsletters, only to run across a notice that froze her:

  Joan Neuhoffer Elected Secretary of Outreach Program

  It was the first news of Mom since Ariel left home seven years ago. Ariel had tried many times to contact her. Emails, texts, phone calls, letters. All went begging. And now once more, Ariel felt intense emotions of affection and betrayal clash inside her…

  She was thirteen when Phil laid hands on her again. Nearly a year after the first incident. Given the time that had passed, Ariel came to think Mom had intervened to prevent a recurrence. Still, she’d often felt her stepfather’s eyes, which kept her in an anxious state and on her best behavior when around him.

  He also continued to intrude on her privacy, forcing Ariel to find workarounds. She’d learned to dress in her closet in the dark, mastering the art of the quick-change. And she shifted her showers to after school, fortunate that Phil worked late most nights and weekends. Her strategy was successful for the most part. Until one day, she made a mistake.

  Phil’s position as director of the Research Institute required long hours away from home. At the same time, Mom’s roll at the church grew. Bible study, choir, social services, charity causes. To avoid being home alone should Phil pop in, Ariel took to spending her in-between hours at the library. She soon consumed every science publication available, (all church-approved fare, of course), and thirsting for more, did something very out of character.

  One afternoon when she was in the stacks reading a biology text, she came across a chapter arguing the case for Creationism over evolutionary theory. Penciled in the margin was a note: Bullshit! Open your mind! And scribbled next to the note was a URL.

  Ariel resisted for days before entering the link in her tablet browser. And suddenly, like magic, she found herself transported past the City’s Internet filters. And from that point on, a forbidden new world lay open to her.

  She’d long heard terrifying tales of the worldwide web, sermonized into her since childhood. A spider’s web of perversion and perdition. Yet, she was also aware of its promise. And having finally overcome her fear and guilt, she discovered to what an enormous degree the Internet surpassed her expectations. The horizons seemed limitless, filled with exciting, challenging—and heretical—ideas.

  The dark side was unavoidable, of course, intrusive as it was. The appalling porn she stumbled into. Flagrant, shocking. She’d taken sex ed in school, s
he understood a wife’s duty in the interest of propagating a good Christian family. And to see intimacy exploited and cheapened so, she fled at every instance. Not until Max, did she at last come to see sex as more than chore and submission, rather, a profound means to fulfill a relationship.

  Or in the alternative, destroy it.

  Ariel had reveled in her new, forbidden intellectual freedom. She’d entered the last year of middle school her most content since coming to the City. Each day online brought new revelations, helping her escape her shallow, theocentric orbit, charging her with such radical notions she felt she’d burst.

  She began to look differently at the world. Before the web, she’d come in contact with only a handful of other beliefs and races, the City almost entirely White, Right, and Evangelical. But the more she saw Outside, the more she questioned the tenets Reverend Thornton boomed from the pulpit each week. She came to realize, the message of her Church was but one of countless, often hotly opposing interpretations of the Christian bible. And there were thousands more non-Christian religions that populated the planet.

  Ariel felt confused and ungrounded. She’d no one to share her thoughts with. Her teachers and Church deacons would have been outraged, and surely tell her parents. She’d no friends, no confidante, no one she could trust with seditious secrets. And lacking the courage and confidence to venture into chat rooms or online discussions, she’d kept everything to herself, downloading articles into a locked file on her tablet to peruse on the sly.

  Not sly enough, to her regret.

  One Sunday evening, Ariel vividly recalled, Mom and Phil were watching TV in the living room while she sat apart in a chair—a token show of sociability. They thought she was reading a school assignment, but it was an article in The Smithsonian on climate change.

  It never occurred to her she’d get caught. Phil was by no stretch an attentive parent. Aside from ogling her on occasion, he was indifferent. No interest in her schooling, he’d never even attended a PTA meeting. And that night Ariel was so absorbed, she’d failed to notice him behind her until catching a whiff of nasty cigar.

  A chill swept over her, and too late, she tried to switch off her device. He snatched it away, eyes smoldering as he took in the article, and she sat terrified.

  “Where did you get this?” he demanded.

  She flapped her lips wordlessly, and he wheeled on Mom as if she were responsible. “Look at this claptrap, Joan,” he bellowed, fanning the tablet in the air, turning back to Ariel in a rage. “Where did you get this? Answer me.”

  She’d prepared an emergency answer. “F-f-from a flashcard someone left in the cafeteria.”

  “Who?”

  She shook her head.

  “Give it to me.”

  “I-I-I threw it away.”

  Roaring, he seized her out of her chair, took her place, spun her onto his lap and delivered The Humiliation. Longer, fiercer than before. Ariel wailed helplessly in pain and shame, and through her tears and embarrassment, she watched Mom leave the room.

  Chapter 71

  Wednesday, October 22, 6:33 am, Queens

  Kassandra Kraft slipped out her apartment door and downstairs to the foyer, only to pull up. The throng outside was larger than ever, the two cops on the stoop, woefully outmanned.

  Her dark mood worsened. Whatever that dork in 2A did at Yankee Stadium to get hauled off to jail, the public should have moved on to a new du jour by now. Kassandra didn’t need this disruption, things were not going well at work, she had to get in early.

  She pushed out the door, sending a wave of excitement through the crowd before it lapsed into disappointment.

  “How much longer?” Kassandra snapped at the cops.

  “They got the right to free assembly,” one said.

  “Assemble for what?”

  He gestured to a second-floor window. “The Prophet. His prediction on the news about the tornado. He nailed it.”

  Kassandra hadn’t seen the news in days, working every waking moment. She hit the steps swearing, and the crowd surged to meet her. Many were on crutches, in wheelchairs, all ages and ethnicities, pressing, babbling, thrusting notes at her, begging her to intercede to “the Prophet.” An alarming uptick in emotion from what she’d encountered previously. She was terrified.

  At the fringe were media crews wedging in to get to her, shoving mikes and cameras in her face, shouting questions. She cried to the cops for help, but they held fast to their posts. Shielding her face with crossed arms and her purse, she lowered her head and pushed on until the resistance faded, and breaking free, she fled for the subway.

  Kassandra was still swearing when she exited the elevator on the 25th floor of Endicott, Percy & Moore. She made her way to her little workstation, one of forty such cubicles packed into the wing like a honeycomb, and as she shed her purse and jacket to her desk, a folded piece of paper fell to the floor.

  A note—foisted on her earlier by one of those freaks outside her building, no doubt. She retrieved it. Handwritten in pencil.

  Mr. Butterfeild,

  Our daugther has spina bifida and is cripled. We have no money. We are good prayerful God fearing Christians. Please, please help us. God bless you.

  Signed illegibly by someone with a Flatbush address and phone number. Kassandra wadded the note, tossed it in the trash, and fired up her computer. On the other side of the half-wall in front of her, a chair squeaked, and the smiling face of fellow intern, Bobby Driscoll, popped up.

  The schmuck. Kassandra hadn’t let on she knew he’d sabotaged her. Her eyes went back to her screen.

  “Lookin’ a bit tousled today, Kassie,” he chirped.

  “A minor commotion outside my building this morning,” she said, dismissing him with a roll of her fingers.

  He persisted. “You hear about Brian? Shonda canned him last night. Just you and me now. Maybe she’ll make an exception this year and hire us both.”

  “Wouldn’t that be something.”

  Even before Bobby’s double-dealing, Kassandra knew it would be tough dispatching him. He had a leg up on her from the get-go. One of EP&M’s principles was a Dartmouth alum from the same fraternity—how Bobby got his internship, surely. Nor was she going to sleep her way in. According to the vox pop, all that would net her at this jaded place was a spent condom.

  She’d only one path. Beat the bastard straight up. Nepotism aside, EP&M was about results. Devise a better strategy than Bobby for winning the swing-states, and Kassandra could overcome the politics. Not that an intern’s concept stood a chance of being implemented, all she needed was to demonstrate superior potential. But with the election just two weeks off, the hill was getting steeper by the hour.

  Tomorrow, a galaxy of directors from the Shackleton camp and the Democratic National Committee were convening here for a confab. They were expecting a solution, having paid EP&M heavy retainers. Yet, all the firm had for them to date was a dry heave. The stress was unbearable, desperation palpable. Kassandra had always thrived on pressure, yet Thornton and his Crusaders left her stumped. She had no head for religion, an atheist by way of Unitarianism.

  She continued to fret, unable to work, and as lunchtime arrived, Bobby interrupted her again, calling from behind his divider, “Hey Kassie, check it out. Isn’t this your apartment building on the news?”

  Panic shot through her, and she jumped up. Had those damned fanatics set fire to it? She gaped over the partition to see the news playing on Bobby’s computer. A TV station was broadcasting live from the street in front of her apartment. Thousands more people than this morning. The image cut to the building’s stoop and a close-up of the cop Kassandra had spoken to earlier. He was flanked by a dozen more cops now, beset by a swarm of mikes and cameras.

  “…An angel,” he was saying, tearfully. “A lady angel, according to the Prophet’s sister.”

  A reporter asked, “Your nephew’s gravely ill, and the Prophet asked the angel to cure him?”

  The cop wiped his eyes
. “Yes. The angel told the Prophet that Teddy has a rare condition.” He read from a scrap of paper, “‘Childhood Pulmonary Hypertension.’ There’s a treatment. We’re very hopeful. Very grateful to the Prophet and his angel. And God.”

  The camera jostled as people began chanting, “Miracle! Miracle! Miracle!” and the picture shifted entirely to the reporter.

  “You heard it,” he said. “For the Prophet’s growing legions of disciples, another miracle.”

  And suddenly, like a miracle, Kassandra had an answer to her problem.

  “By the way,” Bobby said, “did you see the memo? No one’s leaving today, Shonda’s called an all-nighter.” He laughed. “At least you won’t have to fight that crowd tonight.”

  Kassandra hadn’t checked her email, but no matter. Grabbing her jacket and purse, she turned to say, “Tell Shonda I’ll have to pass. I have other plans.”

  And leaving him with his mouth ajar, she left.

  Chapter 72

  October 22, 1:14 pm, Talawanda

  “Oh my God, I’ve got it,” Ariel cried softly, lying on her bed staring at her laptop. Unless she missed her guess, she’d just found the answer she and the team had been searching for. A means to forge a bond of trust between Butterfield and Thornton.

  She was still in angel mode after an uneventful morning session with the Butterfields. Ivy had been in attendance again, Scott still pushing to “end this thing.” Ariel had placated him with a diagnosis for little Teddy, and assuming she now had a solution to the Thornton impasse, she was indeed hopeful to end this thing. For which she had Tia to thank.

  Ariel’s answer had been inspired by the tactic Tia used to identify Teddy’s illness. Tia had simply fast-forwarded in time through the child’s medical files to come across a postmortem, which Ariel passed on to the Butterfields this morning in the form of a diagnosis. It must have been accurate. By lunchtime, the team was excited to see Teddy’s obit vanish from the Times archives, indicating the boy’s life had indeed been saved. And no threat to the election timeline, given his death would have occurred afterward, regardless.