In New York the busy streets came to a standstill as people stopped and got out of their cars to watch the comet.
In Salt Lake City, people left their homes and started to pray on the roads, holding impromptu services in little groups of people dotted around the city, whereas in Las Vegas gamblers flocked into the Casinos, believing they had just seen the best good luck omen they were ever likely to encounter. The Casinos reported their best night in months, and for one man, his Christmas wish did come true. He won $20m on the ‘Big Slot’ at The Moulin Rouge Casino.
From coast to coast, people stared in wonder at the comet above and wondered at the meaning of it. As predicted the media went to town, and by eleven o’clock the regular programmes had been cancelled and were replaced by discussions between leading theologians and academics about the true meaning of the heavenly signs.
By the time Christmas day arrived, the majority of the population of the North American continent were in agreement that they had just witnessed a sign from God indicating that the ‘Second Coming of Jesus Christ’ was imminent and would be in America. A new age was about to dawn.
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The feelings of the scientists at NASA were mixed.
Their ‘little show’ had been a great success. They had conned their public well, and the population of the world would believe completely the lie they had told in the skies above their country. The only consolation that they could take for their hypocrisy was that they had had no choice.
From the East Coast of America to the West, the comet had been visible and clear. The unmanned space shuttle had skimmed across the surface of the atmosphere exactly according to their calculated trajectory, releasing a trail of space debris along its path which burned up slowly in the upper atmosphere from one side of the country to the other. Their choice of metals had been brilliant, each chosen to burn brightly and colourfully, giving off different shades of red, blue, green and yellow.
Then just as the shuttle neared the end of its journey, the scientists flying it remotely from their base in Florida altered the trajectory of the spacecraft and it came down faster, burning up and vaporising completely in the sky above the rocky mountains in Nevada.
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25th Dec
Christmas Day
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The population of the world woke to a very special Christmas Day. The newspapers and television broadcasters proclaimed excitedly the sign that God had put in their skies the evening before. Across the globe the minds and eyes and the attention of billions of believers and non-believers alike turned to America, the land that would be the birth place of the Messiah.
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Tim had done a good job. The President would miss him when he left for England in the New Year. He had almost begun to regret having given him the Ambassador’s job. If Tim hadn’t been so excited about the ‘promotion’ when he had been told the news, the President might have been tempted to change his mind.
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For Tim, the news had come as an answer to his prayers. That year in the Curts household they celebrated the true meaning of Christmas for the first time in their lives. It was the celebration of Jesus Christ’s birthday, the birth day of the Son of God.
On Christmas Morning, as they sat in the candle-lit church for the Christmas Mass, surrounded by children playing with their new toys and proud parents holding hands amongst the church pews, Tim had a strange thought to which he could think of no good answer.
“What will happen in the years to come when they have two or three birthdays to celebrate? Jesus Christ born in Bethlehem, and the same Jesus Christ born in both Oxford, England and then again in Washington, D.C., two thousand years later?”
Book Three
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Chapter Seventy Four
Washington D.C. America
September 18th 03.45 am
2019 AD
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America was on the rise. Slowly but surely the tide had begun to turn for the once mighty nation. It was the comet that had signified the turning of the tide, and in the wake of the sign from God, outside interest had once more turned to the nation. Tourism, investment and trade had returned. Slowly at first, but then in greater amounts as the sluice gates of wealth and power had once more been opened and the wealth of the world had started to flow back into the great, all consuming reservoir that was America.
Of course, apart from the President himself, there were two other people who had positively affected the course of America’s good fortune, and whom the President was mindful of every time the stock market soared to new heights.
Firstly, there was Tim Curts. Since arriving in England in January he had proven the President’s decision to send him to Europe to be without fault. Tim had almost single-handedly remoulded the relationships of America with the United Kingdom, and with the greater body of Europe.
His arrival in England could not have been at a more fortuitous time. Suddenly, from nowhere, disquiet and discord had swept through the European Union, and for the first time in thirty years, great rifts were appearing between the member states. National issues and sources of disagreement which had been lying dormant for decades seemed to be rising to the fore on an almost daily basis. Twice within the past month the European government had been called to emergency sittings, where the politicians and architects of the super-state had fought to curtail the disquiet and appease those who sought now to take advantage of the growing rifts that threatened to rip the union apart at its seams.
With any luck within the coming months the unstable alignment of nations would come crashing down like a pack of cards, and America would rise like a phoenix from the ashes to dominate and create a new world order. Or at least, if it didn’t happen soon, the signs were certainly there that in time, it would. Either in the lifetime of President Charles Jamieson, or his soon to be born son, Robert Anders Jamieson.
His as of yet unborn son was the second person to whom Charles Jamieson attributed the good fortune which now came to America. Since the day of his ‘creation’ in the depths of the bunker in Vale, President Jamieson’s life had turned around. The past year had been a momentous year for the President.
First there was the comet, an event in itself. Then there was the marriage to Danielle and the honeymoon of a lifetime. For two months President Jamieson had enjoyed the wildest and greatest sex of his life...and now it was all free and legal! Getting married to Danielle was the second best thing he had ever done, the first of course being the creation of his son.
Already the bond between father and unborn son was stronger than that most normal parents would ever enjoy with their offspring. Although Charles Jamieson had been unable to tell anyone, for fear that they would believe their President had gone insane, the President was dreaming almost nightly about his son. In his dreams they would plan together how they would mould the future, and how the day would come when Robert Anders would be the first ruler of the entire planet, and how President Jamieson must now prepare the way for this eventuality.
His dreams had become so real, it was as if his unborn son was talking to him, preparing the way for the future. The weirdest thing of all was that several times his unborn son had 'told' him of events that would occur, and the President had awoken to find that they happened as foretold that coming day. Since then whenever his son had spoken to him in their nocturnal meetings, the President had listened. If it were not for the fact that his unborn son’s guidance had proven to be even better than the guidance he used to receive from his old advisor Tim Curts, then perhaps the President would have believed that he was going mad. Instead, the dreams had begun to shape the course of a nation.
President Jamieson was almost beginning to worry how he would cope when his son was actually born and he could no longer talk to him in his drea
ms, to seek his advice as he had now begun to rely upon doing.
Slowly but surely the day of the birth approached until one night, Danielle awoke in the early hours of the morning, the bed sodden with water between her legs, and a pain more intense than anything she had ever experienced in her life before, ripping her apart from the inside. She was in labour.
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Chapter Seventy Five
Washington D.C. America
September 18th 9.30pm
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As soon as the contractions had begun the President pressed the button beside his bed, and the doctors were alerted. Like a swarm of locusts they poured into the President’s bedroom only ten minutes later, and Danielle was swept up and whisked away to the special hospital delivery room that had been constructed in one of the rooms on the same floor of the White House. They had prepared for the birth in meticulous detail, and everything would be done to operate on the child as soon as possible, without anyone outside the White House ever knowing there was a problem.
The ‘problem’, if you could call it that, was an abnormality of the left arm that had been picked up in the early pre-natal scans. As of yet, the scans had not allowed the doctors to get a good view of the arm within the womb, because while floating in the mother's amniotic fluid, the child had folded his other arm over and around it, almost as if he had been deliberately hiding it from view.
The President and his wife had learned early on in the pregnancy that the baby would be deformed in some way, although it was not exactly clear to what degree. In fact, two of the President’s four medical advisors, unaware of the child’s lineage, had suggested that a termination should be considered. In spite of this, President Jamieson had insisted that the pregnancy be allowed to carry on to term.
Although he told no one, he had actually known of the problem in advance of the doctors. His unborn son had warned him during one of their nightly ‘conversations’ that his left arm would be born less than perfect, insisting that it would not be a problem, and pleading that he should be given the chance to be born and to live a normal life. In the face of such special, almost supernatural, advance knowledge, the President had insisted on his son’s right to life.
The birth would be attended by only a very small number of staff, and the doctors would operate as soon as they could see the extent of the problem. That time had come slightly earlier than expected. The child was eager to be born.
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Danielle screamed aloud, and squeezed hard on the President’s hand. The epidural was beginning to wear off, and the pain was getting unbearable. The pain had been going on since the early hours of the morning, the contractions having started at a quarter to four.
Every time a contraction swept through her muscles she bore down hard, and she prayed loudly to a God she had never really known for the pain to end soon. Unfortunately for Danielle, whenever she prayed, she felt the child within her womb squirm and the pain would double. After a while Danielle began to curse God loudly. How could God allow her to suffer so much? Even the doctors eventually noticed that whenever Danielle prayed aloud, the baby would react violently.
“Danielle, please stop praying...just let the baby come by itself...It wants to come out....just give him a chance!”
It was another two hours before the struggle came to an end. Danielle was almost at death’s door, and the doctors were beginning to fear for her life. It had been one of the most difficult deliveries they had ever attended. The mother had lost a lot of blood, and a constant transfusion was needed to replace the blood she was losing from internal haemorrhaging. It was almost as if something was cutting her deeply from the inside. The answer to the mystery became abundantly clear the moment the child was born.
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At first the head appeared, and while the rest of his body remained inside the mother up to the neck, the boy opened his eyes to take his first look at the world. He blinked, struggling to clear the blood and amniotic fluid from his eyes and turned his head from side to side, as if he was looking around the room.
The child caught sight of the President standing beside the bed and fixed his eyes on him. The President saw the child staring directly into his eyes and he felt a coldness run through him and instinctively looked away, turning his attention back to his wife.
The midwife attending the birth with the doctor exclaimed aloud.
“Look…he’s got two different coloured eyes! One green and one brown!”
The sight of the child examining the world around him through two different coloured eyes while still trapped within the mother was most peculiar. The medical staff had never seen anything like it.
Suddenly the skin of Danielle’s vagina ripped and the umbilical cord was torn away from within side of her, the child squirting out almost violently into the hands of the doctor and catching them all by surprise.
Danielle went into shock, the blood spurting from her wound, her blood pressure dropping suddenly and her heart beating wildly. The second attending doctor hit a button on the wall, and another team of medical staff rushed into the operating theatre to take over and to attend to Danielle. While the primary doctor carried the child to another medical table for examination, Danielle was pushed out of the room and into an adjoining theatre where the medics proceeded to try and save her life.
President Jamieson was in shock too. As he watched his wife being wheeled out from one theatre to the other, and his son being whisked away onto another table on the other side of the room, he stood helplessly not knowing to whom he should give his attention.
Just then the midwife cried aloud in alarm, and in that instant the choice was made. He walked slowly over to the doctor, who was busy swabbing down the new-born infant. The midwife was standing by uselessly, seemingly unable to move, staring down at the infant, a look of horror on her face.
Nervously, President Jamieson peered over the shoulder of the doctor. The child was squirming on the padded bench, his deformed arm trapped underneath his chest.
“Show me...” The President said, pointing to the arm.
The doctor lifted the baby up by his legs and the infant swung helplessly underneath. The baby’s right arm was perfectly formed. A beautiful arm, a tiny hand, and five perfect little fingers.
As the President looked at the other arm he fought with the sudden desire to vomit, an overwhelming feeling of nausea sweeping over him.
From a perfect shoulder the baby’s arm hung down, dangling almost lifelessly. The shoulder and upper arm were fine and smooth with the skin of any newborn baby, but below the elbow the arm became rough and course and thick dark hair covered his skin. Where the hand should be there was what the President could only compare to the cloven hoof of a wild beast.
“Cut it off...immediately…and burn it!!!!!!!” the President cried out aloud. “And don’t show ‘it’ to me again until its arm is bandaged and it looks human!”
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As the President left the room, the sweat pouring from his forehead and his body shaking with fright, he heard the slap of the doctors hand against the baby’s back and its first cry. He stopped in the doorway and turned to look back.
His baby was crying…his baby was crying.
The cry penetrated his skull and found its target deep within his soul, awaking his paternal instinct and drawing him back.
The baby cried again
As the President stood in the doorway of the theatre a battle raged within him, a battle between a destiny that was to be his and the child’s, and between the natural disgust he felt for the child that Danielle had just presented to him.
The baby's cry was powerful. More powerful than you would expect from a child only a few moments old. It drew the President back to the side of the table where the infant now lay, and as he came closer he slowly stopped shaking. The child’s eyes were open and looking directly at him, almost hypnotic and commanding in the intensity of their gaze.
This time the President was not able to look away. For a moment i
t was almost as if the baby spoke to him, speaking to the President’s subconscious mind and communicating with him on a level not felt at the conscious level. The President nodded silently as if acknowledging some unspoken command.
From that moment on, Charles Jamieson, President of America and adopted father of Robert Anders Jamieson, never questioned his son again.
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Chapter Seventy Six
Tuesday May 20th, 2020 A.D.
London, England
One Year later.
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"So, after all we did, after everything we went through, we failed!". The beer and brandies were beginning to take their effect, and the conversation was beginning to take on the same pattern it did whenever the Professor and Don drank together nowadays.
"Don, you've got to put it all behind you! It happened, it's gone, it's past. "
The Professor was quite philosophical about it all now. It had taken him a long time to get over the death of Jason, even longer than Louisa or even Lydia, but eventually he had come to terms with it.
It had been hard for him to rationalise the reasoning behind it all. They had all believed they were really on to something, that the Haissem team were going to successfully clone Jesus Christ. From the outset even the codename for the project had reflected that belief: Haissem-Messiah in reverse. It was strange. There were so many things about the project which had led them to believe what they were doing was special.
First of all there was the supernatural miracle in his own life. The Professor had been miraculously cured. He still believed that too, although sometimes he now wondered if it had all just been some sort of natural incredible spontaneous remission. After all, what did 'supernatural' mean anyway? It just meant something SUPER natural, something above and beyond normal natural. It didn't mean it wasn't natural, just that it was beyond normal nature, normal everyday nature.
BOX SET of THREE TOP 10 MEDICAL THRILLERS Page 131
