Maker Messiah

by Ed Miracle

  He started his car and drove slowly toward Vineyard Road.

  As he passed the tool shed, Bobby emerged into the sun, empty-handed. Bobby’s gaze followed Parker’s dust until it disappeared. Then he returned to the shed.

  Thanks, Dad. Thanks for your support.

  Jesse hopped down and trotted to Everett.

  “What did he want?”

  Everett moved into the shade of the barn, to pull off his sweaty leather jacket.

  “Jesse, if you ever see that guy again, and he looks pleased with himself, you’ll know you’re in trouble.”

  “Because of the plane?”

  Everett shook his head. “He wanted me to say something, and I guess I did.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, but it made his day.” Everett leaned against the barn, to doff his leather pants.

  Jesse hitched his thumbs in his belt. “Good thing he didn’t give you any grief.” He nodded toward the tool shed. “Your daddy had his rifle trained on him the whole time.”

  Everett stopped and peered across the yard. He couldn’t see through the glare from the tin roof, but with sunglasses maybe Parker had. Maybe he was calling for reinforcements right now. The ground beneath Everett’s feet threatened to crack open and swallow him.

  Jesse strode for the house. “C’mon, kid. Lunch is ready.”

  Everett glanced again at the tool shed. Then he collected his leathers and followed Jesse. He called out to Bobby as much as to Jesse, “I’m going to start a flying service.”

  Parker phoned Dispatch as soon as he reached the pavement.

  “Philip Machen’s airplane is at the Cardoza ranch, between Pleasanton and Livermore.” He gave the address. “Get a bird in the air and a tactical squad out here as soon as you can. I’m staging at Rock Springs Road.”

  He stopped on the shoulder of the road and hoped he hadn’t ruined everything by dawdling with the kid. He hadn’t drawn his pistol against a human being in seven years but checked it now. No way was he going to miss the party he had just called. The buzz in his earpiece would be the SAC, Derek Majers.

  “This is not your case, Parker.”

  “I found Philip Machen’s airplane. I called for air support and a tactical team.”

  “Yeah, well, I just canceled them. I’m sending someone over there to babysit the ranch, just in case, but I want you to stop meddling and get back to the office

  “Beg pardon?”

  “We have a dozen little red airplanes scattered around the country, each of them identical, including Hizzoner’s fingerprints and DNA. Yours is lucky thirteen.”

  “You could have told me.”

  “It’s not your case. And the Bureau doesn’t want this leaked.”

  “Philip Machen gave this particular airplane to the Aboud kid, personally, this morning.”

  “He gave away the other ones too. He’d be pretty stupid to fly one now, or even go near one since we know what to look for.”

  “What if he takes off from the ranch this afternoon?”

  “Then we track him on radar. Every damn raid we launch winds up in the news, Parker, and Machen is counting on it. He loves federal agents charging around, assaulting farms and empty hangars. Makes us look dumb. No sir, we are going to corner this guy before we snatch him. He’s not killing people. We can afford to be sure. Did the Arab kid give you anything?”

  As a matter of fact, he had, but sitting as he was at the top of Parker’s shit list, Derek Majers would not be hearing it.

  “Last warning, Parker, stay the hell out of the Machen case, or I will suspend you for insubordination. If Brayley finds out, he’ll screw both of us out of our pensions. You got that? No more freelancing.”

  “Right.” Parker switched off the phone, switched off his boss, who didn’t understand how close he was to this fugitive’s psyche. While others scouted the Berkeley hills for after-the-fact clues, he was perfecting his theory of Philip Machen. If the core of every sociopath was the lie he never stopped telling himself, Parker only needed to uncover that lie.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Oakland, California. Thursday, May 14

  Day Twenty-seven

  Eleven days had passed without a single bank robbery when Parker’s Cambiar vibrated and Harpreet Sugand’s face appeared on its screen. He rushed to the men’s room, dove into a vacant stall, and latched the door.

  “Parker.”

  “Leslie, we must talk.”

  “Shoot. I mean, go ahead.” He descended to the throne.

  “I finished his diary.” The connection clinked and rustled as if Harry were making tea. “Do you know the greatest spiritual hazard we novitiates faced, entering divinity school?”

  Parker straightened, almost said runaway hormones, but remembered a fancy word. “Theodicy?”

  “Hey, very good. Theodicy fails sometimes, yes. It’s when you examine your own faith, Leslie, and compare it to the teachings, to their history and origins. There’s always the chance you will encounter a doubt you cannot reconcile—and conclude that something about your faith is mistaken. In my class, two fell apostate. One tried to hang himself. Your fugitive reminds me of the other one, my roommate before he withdrew.”

  “Does that mean Machen is not lying?”

  “Well, they are mistaken, of course, these secular humanists, but their idol is integrity. If they cannot reconcile some teaching with what they determine to be true, they throw out the teaching, sometimes the whole book. The way they see it, they are refusing to lie to themselves. My roommate came to feel he was worshiping the words and not the reality, so he quit seminary. Nobody could talk him out of it. Since fourth grade, he wants to be a priest, yet he refuses to continue, even to save his soul, because professing a doubtful truth would make him a dishonest priest. We can say he is mistaken or delusional, but that is the sort of fellow you are facing. Philip Machen knows exactly what he’s doing and precisely why. He has taken his vows, and he pursues his mission.”

  “For revenge.”

  Harry snorted. “I thought you read it, Leslie. It’s atonement, to redeem his guilt for not dying with his family. A guilt so vast, he needs to prove his Makers, and the mind that created them, merit the attention of the ages. When Makers achieve what his father’s books and lectures could not, the son will be redeemed.”

  Parker squirmed. So Machen’s lie is, only he knows how to right a cosmic wrong?

  “You can thank me with a case of Hoegaarden. Also, I want to meet him.”

  “Wait.” Parker’s voice echoed.

  “Are you in the toilet, Leslie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where you’ve gone to hide your baboon-face?”

  “I thought you’d say he’s a fraud, or evil, or something.”

  “Because he deceives us,” Harry said.

  “Sure.”

  “You do not forgive him?”

  “That’s your job, Harry. He needs to answer for what he’s done. That’s my job.”

  “Don’t tell my bishop, but if some of this guy’s writings were in God-speak instead of humanist-speak, he might have earned a few points as a spiritual thinker. You and I know it’s ego, that he is spreading his machines for selfish reasons, but in the end, it’s the result that is counting. Even for saints.”

  “Jesus. I mean . . . Harry, we need to talk. I’ll bring the Hoegaarden.”

  Next day, Derek was giving him the eye while the world continued to fall apart. Parker’s sister in Des Moines, a single mother of two, had lost her eight-year job at a maternity shop when it closed. Protest demonstrations were expanding in number and vehemence. Every nation except the U.S. had outlawed both Powerpods and Makers. And still having a job to complain about consoled him not at all.

  No ordinary Maker could copy thirteen red airplanes. Somewhere there had to be a Super Maker with cones big enough to disgorge forty-foot wings. So behind Derek’s back, Parker was canvassing warehouse operators and airport managers, asking about vacant or disus
ed buildings within or near every airport in California. Plus, he was reading Leonard Machen’s old books to gauge Philip’s dedication to his father’s ideology.

  After lunch, Derek assigned Parker an urgent chore. Everyone expected Ms. Lavery’s attorney to petition a federal court to release her, which wouldn’t do at all. Transferring her to a less-liberal jurisdiction would force Terry Quinn to file his writs there, thus slowing the process. So the Bureau was flying her to Maryland, to a fancy lock-up disguised as a boarding school, thirty miles from Washington, D.C. Then if, as rumor had it, a grand jury would charge her with sedition, no court would grant bail—not with the entire country demanding her head and every pompous twit in a tizzy to do something.

  Parker’s task this afternoon was to drive to the San Leandro Best Western Hotel where Ms. Lavery was held and tell her the long knives were taking over.

  Instead of barging in like the others, he gave notice, a simple call to the desk phone in her room. While other agents drew nothing from her, Parker had collected two verbal portraits, one of herself and one of Philip Machen, before he was taken off the case.

  He knocked.

  The door opened to a scene out of an old movie: auburn hair brushed to a sheen, silky blue pajamas with padded shoulders, and red, open-toed sandals. She was everything the custody room was not. It seemed the hairdresser he arranged last week had improved more than her appearance. She greeted him with a slinky pose and the first genuine smile of her captivity.

  Behind her, the television was saying, “A friend would never pull a rug from under our feet and claim that our crash to the floor was not his fault.” She switched it off.

  When her gaze alighted on the white carnation in his hand, he entered and laid it on the table between them. He shut the door, waited for her to sit, then took the other chair.

  Whether Derek realized it or not, serving notice on Ms. Lavery this afternoon was giving him an unauthorized chance to question her one last time. She no longer held the key to Philip Machen, if she had ever had it, but his latest ideas might provoke a telling response.

  “He wants to be a secular messiah.”

  She took up the flower. “What?”

  “Beginning with the ontological inversion,” he said. “My friend the priest says that’s the proposition that humans have created their gods for human purposes, not vice versa. If God did not exist, we would have to invent Him, and so we did. Philip’s father was spreading this parable before he was killed.”

  “A priest said this?”

  “Quoting Philip’s father.”

  She shook her head. “Philip didn’t talk about his father. He never mentioned religion. I doubt he cares very much, one way or another.”

  “Leonard Machen is Philip’s religion. Not hero worship, idea worship. Leonard was making waves, calling for a secular millennium, promoting rational secular morality. He wanted people to admit the ontological inversion, then move beyond it. He claimed morality is human and natural, not divine or supernatural. His views got him fired from four different school districts, and the family had to move each time. Philip called it the Family Curse, one that eventually gave the arsonist an excuse to kill his family. I think Philip wants to atone for those murders by completing his father’s agenda.”

  “By giving away Makers?” She sniffed the flower.

  “By standing civilization on its head. By shaking every authority to its foundations. Divine authority, especially. If heaven fails, Makers will provide. No need to pray, just add water. Do-it-yourself salvation.”

  He waited for her to look up.

  “He’s avenging his family’s murder by continuing his father’s crusade. If we construct our gods to suit our needs, and those needs change, then we must update the old gods to suit our new conditions. Two thousand years ago, when things changed abruptly, monotheism wiped out polytheism. Philip thinks when Makers change everything again, humanism will prevail over theism. His father’s legacy will be confirmed.”

  “Preposterous.”

  “You said Philip is not a philanthropist, that he’s not giving away Makers to help the poor. He claims no ambition and seeks no power, but that’s an artifice, isn’t it? He lied to you about Powerpods. He betrayed you to advance his agenda. What makes you think you are the biggest patsy in his campaign? Or that Powerpods are his boldest deception?”

  She shook her head.

  “He’s maneuvering us toward stage two. This time, he’s playing the whole world, advancing his father’s agenda to deconstruct theism. If human needs created God, then relieving most of those needs should free us to un-create Him. By deliberately throwing the world into chaos, by challenging our deepest fears and assumptions, and by offering a powerful, secular remedy, Philip Machen entices us to kill our gods.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “Did you read his diary?” He took out a notebook and flipped to a marked page.

  “Here’s what he said about the arsonist who killed his family. ‘If you kill the killer, you only remove one man. His victory stands. To nullify that victory, you must invalidate the killer’s sanction. You must dethrone his myth. Then, when his gods are gone, there can be no divine mandate, no supernatural blessings, for murder. A nonexistent divinity cannot command or forgive the evil done in its name, and the killer’s moral sanction disappears. This will be my perfect revenge.’”

  “He wrote that when?”

  “A year after the fire.”

  She tipped the flower to her lips. “If my family was incinerated in front of me, I might think that way for a while. Just the sort of thing an angry young man would say, even if he were not a genius. Your secular messiah is nothing but a victim’s rant, Parker. Philip never said anything like that to me, or to anyone else. It’s rubbish.”

  “He used that phrase twice, and he never took back his vow of revenge.”

  “Listen to yourself,” she said. “It’s been what? A decade and a half? You can’t seriously believe a teenager’s anguish amounts to anything after so many years.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you or I believe, Ms. Lavery. As soon as those words hit the Washington leak factory, his enemies will spread them from blog to blog, and pulpit to pulpit. I imagine their effect will be quite spectacular.”

  She nuzzled the tender white florets. “Well, don’t expect me to feel sorry for him.”

  Parker dropped his gaze.

  “I worry that someone might aim a similar cannon at you, Ms. Lavery. During your testimony before Congress.”

  She stiffened.

  He laid an envelope between them. “Congressional subpoena. You are served.”

  She pursed her exquisite red lips. “Bail?”

  He shook his head.

  She faced the pastel green walls of her confinement, shut her eyes, and inhaled comfort from the flower.

  “Goodbye, Parker.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Victorville, California. Sunday, May 17

  Day Thirty

  She gave up the diary, or they took it from her.

  Philip needed Karen to understand and to forgive him, but it seemed she hadn’t even read it. He pedaled his stationary bicycle faster, straining toward a cobweb guarding the hangar wall. If she’d understood, if she’d read any of it, she would’ve protected that memory chip or burned it. He spun free of his toe clips, furious that his most personal outreach had not moved her.

  Now the red news talk shows couldn’t stop flogging their atheist messiah mantras, to whip up more outrage. His youthful speculations about religion should interest no one. He’d forgotten he wrote them.

  From a folding table they used as a desk, Tanner redirected the internet conversation they were having with Art Buddha, Short Fat Guy. Unlike his jolly website avatar, Art’s human face appeared pinched and pasty on the screen between Philip’s handlebars. The blogger’s dark, avian eyes glanced off-screen intermittently as if he were about to say, “Nevermore.”

  “I wanted her to know who I am,”
Philip said.

  Art adjusted his rectangular eyeglasses and brushed a dark lock off his forehead. “Well,” he said, “a drug-addicted child-pornographer would have gone down better than an atheist messiah. The Tories couldn’t have picked a more offensive slander. We just lost most the country south of Nashville. Even the Lutherans up north don’t abide no uppity infidels.”

  Tanner stepped onto a treadmill and took up a stride. “So tell us the bad news.”

  Art clicked an icon. “Here’s the latest—”

  The YouTube clip began with an old Leonard Machen speech, probably recorded on a cell phone fifteen years ago. Seeing his father alive and standing at a hotel lectern sent pangs of longing through Philip, but the video played without sound. Leonard’s lips moved in silence until a single line rang clear: “Religion is poison.”

  That outtake, just three words, looped four times—religion is poison—then it froze on one grainy frame. Between the curtains near the lectern stood a callow, pimply-faced youth, barely a teen, yet recognizable. A circle highlighted the boy’s face, brightening his blond hair and pale skin, while a name in gold letters hovered conveniently: Philip Machen. The clip had been viewed 236,844 times in three days and ended with a neon rendering of its title “Like Father, Like Son.”

  Philip swayed. He’d heard that speech a dozen times. The full quotation was “Religion is poison if it makes you hate.” If it makes you hate, any idea is poison. Even believers believed that, most of them.

  Art grimaced. “The really bad news is Noemi Ryles is working on a time factor for her social tipping point theorem. So far she hasn’t proved any limits exist, but she thinks social memes may expire deterministically. The slower they approach their tipping points without achieving them, the more likely they will fail. Bottom line—we might have fifty days to lock in the Freemaker paradigm before it starts to die.”