The Manhattan Prophet

by Jake Packard

  Claire, the tree snake from Singapore, sat seat belted in the lounge of her Lockheed 57 about to take off. Not yet back home from New York and the Boston Nation, she had only one short stop left to lay a wreath at a ceremony in LA. She looked up into the camera mounted on the bulkhead in front of her, and out of the monitor in the Operations Room in New York City. The wide-angle lens made her fishbowl face look worse. Her printer came to life with the copy of the brief.

  Other quadrants flickered to life as the most powerful players took their seats. General Pellet entered exactly at 7 a.m. and took his place next to Jack at his own separate camera. To anyone watching the conference they could have been a world away from each other, as opposed to almost brushing elbows like they did. Before they could begin, the transgender man from Digi-Bell was the first to remark. He saluted hello into his camera, “Good morning again, General.” Pellet saluted back without changing expression and opened the meeting with an official air.

  “Good morning to all the members of the North Atlantic Alliance. Good afternoon to those in the European Union, Abu Dhabi, and the Emirates. For those of you on the Pacific Rim, it is tomorrow. This emergency session of the voting body of the League of Democratic Alliances is called to order. We are gathered to deal with this new and very real threat, now fomenting in New York City, with extreme implications for all of us. We have been following this situation for several months in anticipation of Salem Jones’ release from prison. Few could have predicted the turn of events that brings us to where we find ourselves today. The message of peace and understanding that was the thrust of his worldwide popularity has been replaced with reckless lawlessness and senseless aggression. Yesterday’s unprovoked act of violence, tantamount to cold-blooded murder, is an indication of just the beginning of what will probably be a serious offensive. What we can expect in the days ahead is anybody’s guess. I have my own apprehensions.

  “According to psychological surveys administered robotically from Rikers Island, and considering the success he must feel with the affirmation of his message, especially if measured by the huge amount of the attention he has garnered through the media up to this point, all evidence strongly indicates that Salem Jones is the worst kind of terrorist. He is a megalomaniacal fanatic who believes he has a direct link to God as the source of all his convictions. He is loose. and operating right now unhindered in New York’s Central Containment Zone. The area everyone calls Shantypark. My sources clearly indicate that he is forming alliances with the local gangs in preparation for further armed incursions.”

  The Ivy League Korean from Sony jumped in. “General. Let me be brief. My patience for this matter is growing very thin. The situation is very clear. So may I ask what preparations have you been making for a counterstrike? Preferably a quick preemptive sortie that could sever the head from the body, so to speak, without actually doing too much damage to anything else.”

  The members murmured their agreement from transmission sites all over the world, their anxiety over the issue clear to each other through their high definition images.

  Claire, waiting to be hurled into an arc high in the sky over the North American continent, said something about Salem being less then a mile away from Pellet’s troops and the incredulity of their inability to zero in on him with the latest of their GPS technology. The Sony guy reminded her how the human density in Shantypark threw the heat sensors out of whack. The buzz from all the other leaders all over the world drowned out the tree snake’s reply.

  The mayor spoke with his usual soft strength. “If I may interject a measure of delicacy at this juncture.” A pause gave them time to look into the many windows that faced them and see how uncomfortable everybody else was with what they all expected to hear next. Jack continued, “As all of you know, it has always been my contention that it benefits the greater good if we can be in a position of communication with this person, Salem Jones. His influence on the thoughts and moods of our populations has obviously risen to a point of undeniable significance. These are extremely difficult times, and there are many more ahead. However, there is no direct evidence at this point that Salem or any of his people were involved in yesterday’s attack. We need to reserve the military option until all our attempts to engage this man in fruitful dialogue have been exercised.”

  “Noble indeed as always, Mayor Storm,” said the Euroreich chancellor who wiped his eyeglasses with ill-concealed irritation. “But our position has always been, absolutely no negotiation with terrorists. We all know that no matter how much damage is done by suicidal fanatics, they will have done less if we acted earlier to exterminate them.”

  Jack jumped in, “Chancellor, I ask you again to reassess the situation. Yes, there was an unprovoked act of violence committed on this city and the First Army, but there is no proof whatsoever of any involvement by Salem Jones. The last time we were confronted with a violent uprising from Shantypark, we were overly hasty and much too heavy-handed in our response. This century’s wars against insurgents should remind us that military force will not work without the clear support of our policies on the ground at the friction point.”

  Pellet interjected before the contentious faces on the screen could reply. “Mayor, no one here is advocating for any kind of force at this point.”

  “C’mon, General, how else do we sever heads from necks?” Jack stared into the camera lens even though Pellet was sitting an ant’s snowball toss away.

  The Sony Korean had to keep silent here, knowing how the forceful takeover of Japan’s industries by his mother country, after the super quake, fit perfectly into the category of beheading.

  In the uncomfortable pause, Jack continued, “I agree that the policy of no negotiations should be applied for terrorists. However, in this instance I don’t see it. Quite the contrary. There are no hard facts to support that there have been acts of aggression connected to any of the known camps of Salem Jones supporters. Treating this movement as a terrorist force could actually turn an otherwise peaceful movement into a hostile dilemma. I believe we should sit back and watch this play out. No matter why Salem Jones disappeared in the first place, I can understand why he would be reticent to come out now. Let’s try to contact him and see where that dialogue goes.”

  “Rubbish.” The General retorted. “For all we know, the next thing that could happen is that Salem Jones will make some preposterous claim of divinity, or perhaps a direct genetic lineage to Mohammed or Jesus or some other popular religious prophet. This so-called peaceful force could turn into a global cartel armed with the conviction that whatever mayhem they produce is in God’s name. Then what kind of a mess are we going to be in, again? How long this time do we wait to find out we waited too long? The carnage created from the last religious conflict is proof enough that the time to cut off the potential for more is now.”

  * * * * *

  Interview

  “Hello,” she said to the wavy-haired man seated at a small card table at the foot of her bed. She woke up from deeply layered dreams when he arrived, as if he came through with a wisp of wind in a wrinkle in the sky, photon by photon.

  Maria felt so clean. Her hair smelled like shampoo. She wore different clothes, coarser and more common than the wardrobe in her closet, but dirt free and practical. Most definitely, she felt taken care of by loving hands as she slept.

  She also had distorted memories and strange sensations of being in a vulnerable and perilous situation before this man before her saved her life. Should she be embarrassed by her nakedness? Nevertheless, she felt secure right now being alone with him in this simple drab tent. However, she knew an interview should not be conducted from a bed. So, she slid off and sat down across from him at the table on a folding chair that waited for her.

  His soft eyes absorbed her every move.

  As she took her seat, a sensation of acceptance and ease draped around her like a protective cloak. She looked up at him. His body seemed composed of light, or an ethereal non-substance that she could reach
for but not touch. She had to blink more than once, but yes, there he sat, smiling as if time didn’t exist, and neither did pain.

  She swallowed to clear her throat and make sure her voice worked. “Who are you?”

  He leaned in for a closer look at her eyes, enabling her to get a closer look into his. Her eyes looked like suspicious suns rising with caution over open water. His like green forests, vast with non-human intelligence.

  She blinked. She felt back in the Adirondack Mountains. A spine of mountain peaks towered behind him, warm and flush with spring. She blinked again. A gray tent wall fluttered behind him.

  “Is this my interview?” he asked with splendid flecks of autumn changing the colors in his eyes like maples bending in October winds. The sun came up and spread its rays across the snow-tipped mountains, again now far away behind him.

  “No, you are right. I am sorry. What am I saying? I should be thanking you, Salem. I thank you for saving my life.” Her cheeks flushed cherry red.

  “You have had a very long night and I know you need to sleep.” His smile like an unshaven Buddha, his words the swift mountain stream. He opened a bottle and poured its contents into a paper cup. “Here, drink some of this, it will help you relax and sleep some more.” She looked at it with hesitation. “It is a good wine, an old recipe, one that will sustain you and carry you forward.” She tasted its sweetness and felt refreshed.

  “I hear that people want to know more about me, that some actually think I’m God.”

  Surprised, she gagged a little on the wine and tried to suppress the cough that followed. “I must be dreaming,” she heard herself say, “for months I have been waiting and preparing for this exact moment and now that its here, I have no composure.” She looked away and through the flap in the tent blowing in the gentle wind she saw the multitude camped all around. She looked back to Salem and the mountains she perceived behind him radiated the glow of starlight generated billions of years ago. “I’m confused, a bit shaken. And, I am more than somewhat humbled.”

  “Please, by all means, relax, and be of peace. I am just a reporter, like you, telling the story of what I see. It seems we need to talk for a moment, so please tell me, how do we begin?”

  “I guess I just have to ask. So please, tell me, who are you? Are you . . . God?”

  “Scientists suppose that if we could travel at the speed of light, we would be energy in its purest most life-giving form. As we slow down to take form, the energy becomes particles, then more and more like matter. Soon we take on actual mass, which eventually, over eons, evolves into individual human identities for our ever-seeking souls. But as we do that, some of us can still go faster than others. So maybe you can just think of me as a question of velocity.

  “In earthen form, these tiny, individual identities impact the entire universe. In that way I am representative of that which put us on earth. It is the potential we all have. We have different tasks no doubt, yours, Herbie’s, and mine. Everything is interconnected.”

  Herbie’s smell, smoldering in her sense memory, burst forth at the mention of his name with a feeling of safety. This individual identity tugged back her heart.

  She asked, “If you were human, by all scientific measure, you should have been dead by disease years ago?”

  “What else can you rightly say about the science of men? One can learn to control the improbabilities that are only remotely possible. The one time in a trillion that the positive attracts the positive, use that to kill a virus.”

  “What about your writings, on paper, millions of people abandoning what is left of their lives to find some meaning or salvation with you?” She asked again, like a child.

  “Codes, symbols, that are waiting within us to recognize, like they always have been, for those spirits who are ready to see.”

  “And the power to heal? The so-called miracles?”

  “If the force we call Satan was not so powerful here on this planet, then this type of strength, you call it healing, would not be needed.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Jones . . .”

  “Please call me what my prison fathers called me. Salem.”

  “Okay, Salem. By Satan, you don’t mean what I think you mean?”

  “Oh, yes, I do.” A bubbling stream came to a valley on the side of an emerald green mountain behind him. It collected itself into a pool of dreams, vibrant yet still, with pink and violet wildflowers ringing one golden lotus growing on its shore.

  Maria felt so serene her eyelids started to droop. “I’m starting to feel so drowsy. I must lay down.” She stood up and found the mattress and laid her head upon the pillow. “But, I am so glad, so very glad, we had this time to talk.”

  “I must thank you, Maria Primera, for the sincere pleasure of my first interview.”

  “But, I wasn’t ready. I had no laptop, no video camera.” She felt so sleepy, but tapping the strength of a grace deep within she managed to utter one last question. “But you never answered me. You never told me. Who are you? Who are you, Salem Jones?”

  A chorus of heavenly sopranos embraced the tent, skipping octaves and fifths. Maria saw the sky behind him turn brilliant blue, and a saintly golden glow emanating rom his body gave sanctuary to everything around. She closed her eyes and as she slipped into the all-forgiving mercies of sleep she heard his soft whisper in her grateful ear.

  “I am who I am.”

  * * * * *

  Midwives

  “Grandma?”

  “Yes, my child?”

  “Is that you?”

  “Yes, my child.”

  “What’s it like being dead?”

  “You are not dead, my darling boy.”

  “I’m thinking about my parents again. And Grandpa Bullmoose. And you. I wonder.”

  “Yes, I’m sure, but don’t you think everybody does?

  “Everybody wonders?”

  “Yes, my little silly, everybody wonders at some time about what it’s like being dead.”

  # # #

  After the incident, Grandma often thought about what it’s like being dead. Bullmoose was inconsolable and, like he often did, he shut out the rest of the world. Eventually he just took off, the world traveler, to work out the grief alone. But Herbie was just a newborn, and Grandma had to stay to raise him. Life for her became very complicated. But it wasn’t always so.

  Life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the early 1970s was idyllic for a woman like her. Here in a small city surrounded by the bastions of academic liberalism, she and a small army of people like her settled down to change the world. Optimism as a color in youth is very becoming, and in senescence it’s outstanding. To Grandma, it always came naturally.

  Soon after Watkins Glen, she settled back to gestate and give birth to Herbie’s dad, in her little two-bedroom house in a backyard on Perry Street near Central Square in Cambridge, with her prep school roommate, Lorraine, a committed counter-culturist. Grandma’s mother repudiated her situation, Grandma a nineteen-year-old college dropout, pregnant and unmarried. She made a lot of noise about it, but really would never have been happy about a marriage between her daughter and Bullmoose. She just didn’t like the idea that her baby girl was going to have a baby of her own out of wedlock. Good Golly, Miss Molly. And what’s this about no doctor and no hospital and no painkillers? What are you crazy?

  Grandma had the baby her way, up in her attic bedroom with lots of candles and incense burning, and a bevy of freewheeling midwives, led by Lorraine, boogieing naked and howling at the liberated moon. Herbie’s dad, Henry Lipton, came into the world surrounded by a coven of hippie-era feminists. Thirty years later, faces paralyzed by Botox, they popped Vicodin in upholstered Ladies rooms in suburban country clubs all over America. They sipped martinis and laughed out of the sides of their faces with other fifty-something cosmetic queens, whose silicone implants gave them backaches late into the night. Nothing stays the same.

  Slim, dirty blond hair, sparkling blue eyes, lithe and tight, Lorraine had luscio
us boobs. Her smooth, pale skin seemed to always have a seductive glossy sheen in summer. She loved Southern Comfort and Camel cigarettes with no filters. And she had this thing for guys on acid. Especially musicians. A 1970s kind of love ’em and leave ’em, as if the pill was invented for her personal sexual revolution.

  Herbie used to think his grandparents’ entire generation only thought about two things, sex and drugs. They probably did back then, but, like everything, they changed. They now started to care mostly about mutual funds, long-term care for their husbands, and cosmetic surgery. They forgot how to protest against American presidents who sent armies into needless wars, and acted like classless buffoons. And now, that whole generation is all dead.

  He wished he could talk to Grandma now, when he really need her.

  But too late, Herbie’s eyes opened. The dream dissolved. He found himself in a tent again, with no time to wonder about the afterlife, because here on earth he had so many other pressing questions to ask.

  * * * * *

  Last Call

  The monitor from Abu Dhabi blinks out on the expatriate Saudi prince, who still cannot go home due to the heavy debt built up in half-life, both radiational and political. Yet he still had plenty enough money to slug Glenfiddich, and frolic with blond Norwegian models ready to spread their outlandishly long legs in exchange for weekends in gilded palaces. To insure his survival, the same prince covertly funded what is left of the moderate Muslim media. The media in turn stayed alive amongst the extremists, by constantly inciting public reaction against this very prince, with stories of his degenerate hedonistic existence. Everything is interconnected.

  Working all night, glad to now be going home, Milos, the mayor’s main techie, wondered how his own Latvian ancestors could kill so many Jews and then quickly convert from Nazism to Communism to democracy and then back again. He shus the light switch in the control room and slowly stepped out through the heavy atmosphere in the Operations Room of so many now blank video screens.