“The pull to join in is getting stronger,” Samuel remarks. “And it’s not only this congregation; it’s spreading into other parts of the world—different in each community, but with just as much allure.”
I feel it, the allure he is speaking of. It’s intoxicating.
Samuel hands me a stick. “Join in. Try it out for yourself. Tell me what it feels like.”
With stick in hand, I slide in next to a middle-aged man at the end of a pew and pick up the beat almost immediately. The beat is simple and easy to follow. When the congregation adds a chant, I listen closely and make vocal sounds with my throat that follow their cadence. Then the chant discontinues while the tapping keeps on. When the chant returns, I find myself able to repeat the words this time while keeping up with the rhythm. As I become more familiar with the ritual, I am able to let myself go. I find that I’m transported as I’ve never been before in a Chosen ceremony. It’s euphoria. A smile spreads across my face. The familiar warmth and acceptance of the ceremony is there, but it’s stronger with this group. I’m soothed and excited in equal measure. It’s fun. My tapping is in absolute synchronicity with the others. We tap as if we are of one mind, one hand, one body, one thought. I completely forget about Samuel and immerse myself in the moment, sure that I could do this until I dropped from exhaustion. But what a great exhaustion it would be!
When Samuel places his hand on my shoulder, I discover it enhances the effect. Now I am with him and we are with them and we are all as one. As the moment draws out, I sense others outside of the congregation, in their own churches—chanting, rapping, banging, and singing.
It’s a gift from Samuel to me, letting me in on what he experiences that is so much more than what the rest of us are able to feel and sense. His hypersensitivity to the Chosen is what sets him apart from us. I feel it from the others like him, those who have a finger deeper into it than the rest of the Chosen.
He is one of a class of people with heightened perceptibility to the Chosen. He is one of the Messiah class. Standing with him at this moment, sharing what he senses, is awe-inspiring. It fills me with our universal power, the power of many who are of the same mind, involved in the same activity, praising the life force we all share, honoring it with our chanting and music and tapping. Knowing we are the future and the future is us now, here, in this little building. We are one as we are many.
We are the Chosen!
Soliloquy’s sacrifice Chapter 9
“What happened?” I ask. I’m no longer in contact with David. Messenger is holding my hand. He has interrupted my reading by breaking my contact with David.
He nods to his left and I see Forbes stirring in his chair, awake and watching.
“Forbes wanted to know what was going on. Said he had dreams he is sure were caused by our friend here—apparently residual effects from his single contact with him.”
“Dreams, Forbes? What kind of dreams?” I ask.
He yawns and says, “Good morning to you too, Soliloquy.”
Sometimes he is inappropriately formal as if every interaction needs a standard greeting to preface it. It’s annoying, but I let it go, not wanting to be rude. “Good morning to you too, Forbes. Sleep well?”
He shakes his head. “Bad stuff. Not sure if any of it’s true or just residual weirdness caused by our man. It was all mixed up. Most of what I dreamt I don’t remember. Just have impressions of what I dreamt, and it was all bad. People dying by the millions, world war, disease and pestilence, terrible things.” He pauses and then says, “So you’ve been reading him? See anything like that?”
“Just a battle of some kind. Not much. I’ve just started.” After I explain what I’ve seen, he remarks, “I was right about him being from our future, wasn’t I?” I admit to him that I am leaning to that conclusion, but am still unsure.
Messenger is shaking his head. “Time travel. What the heck is next? Why is he here?”
“You know the day we found him and I was walking him to the car, I had the paranoid feeling I was being watched. I looked around and couldn’t place where the feeling was coming from, but I never shook it,” Forbes reports.
“You never mentioned it,” I comment.
“I thought it was my imagination caused by being hit with his pain, a side effect. But now, I’m not so sure. What about you, Soliloquy? Nothing at the time?”
“No. I was too preoccupied with the two of you.”
Messenger postulates, “So you think maybe he wasn’t alone, that he was there on purpose waiting for some poor mark like us to discover him and take him in?”
“Or whoever was watching made sure he did get discovered, and once discovered, he was taken care of. I don’t know. I’m guessing at this moment,” Forbes says.
“Or the feeling could have been your imagination,” I suggest.
Forbes shrugs. “You going to continue with the read?”
“I have the time at the moment,” I say and glance down at my hand Messenger is holding. Without a word, he places it back onto David and I’m transported once more.
Soliloquy’s Sacrifice Chapter 10
Third Reading
It’s the second day of my “new and improved” captivity. I’ve been brought to the same small room where I was fed yesterday. Now the remains of the meal I’ve finished only moments ago sit before me at the same table. I face the same dark glass window. The light on the other side of the window allows me to see that the room is empty.
Jane walks into the room on the other side of the glass, flicks the mic switch and says, “Good morning, David. I trust you are feeling better than yesterday.”
“I am, Jane.”
She holds a folder up for me to see. “Your medical report. You are worse than I thought.”
My morning was spent with Biomed suits prodding and poking me. Doctors or nurses, I assumed.
“Three fractured ribs. Bruises everywhere, internal and external. A fractured right arm. A broken left-hand finger. A burned left arm. Electrical burn marks on your scrotum, rectum, neck, face, arms, chest and back.” She looks at me straight-faced. “You are a mess, David. And that is without X-ray or MRI analysis.”
I shrug. None of it’s news to me.
“God only knows what you’re like in here.” She taps her forehead with her index finger.
“I’ll survive,” I say in earnest.
“Let’s take your mind off of that. Do you have any questions for me?”
“None,” I respond. I do, but experience taught me to not ask. I wonder about the gunfire and bombs. I wonder about the sudden change of venue for me, as well as the new gentle treatment. “I’ve learned that questions usually result in broken bones.”
She lets my answer go. “Let’s begin where we left off yesterday. Tell me about your time with the Messiah, when you first met.”
“Into the way-back machine again.”
“Yes, take me back.”
I lean back in my chair and take a few moments to contemplate my response. Giving her the history of my relationship with Samuel and his family would cause no harm. Most of it’s public knowledge. So I start with a question that is a test of her knowledge of the Calling. I say, “What does a brick want to be?”
“Pardon me?” she responds, nonplussed.
Apparently, her knowledge is limited. Anyone who researched the Calling would instantly be familiar with the question. “It’s the opening to the story of the foundation of the Calling.”
“Give me something I can take home, David. Not fluff or nonsense.”
It’s obvious she’s a neophyte to all of this, which makes me wonder who would place someone like her in control of my interrogation. The people who formerly were my inquisitors knew the Calling inside and out. Their questions all boiled down to “Where is the Messiah?” I wonder if her lack of knowledge is supposed to disarm me and make me inadvertently spill the secret. Are they really that naïve?
“I hear you, Jane, but this is what shaped us into who we are. Ev
erything starts with the mason, Jane. Did you not know that?”
She just stares at me, malevolently maybe, but she is hard to read.
“Samuel and I were high school kids who were hired by a mason who had a troubled son, Manuel. Jr., who was our age. We were supposed to help his son focus on learning the trade. We were seventeen-year-olds. We just graduated from high school and this was to be our summer job before college. We were full of young muscle and young energy and young impressionable minds. The mason thought training his son with kids his own age would make him more open to learning.”
“Did it?”
“Unfortunately, not much. We benefitted, but his poor son was a hopeless case. No matter how patient and kind the mason was, his son’s attention was always someplace else. He wasn’t born for it. Don’t get me wrong—he wasn’t a complete waste. When it came to the heavy stuff, he ran rings around Samuel and me. That was his gift: physical endurance.
“One time we calculated he climbed up and down the equivalent of the Empire State Building in one day carrying 40 pounds of brick. Samuel and I ran out of steam hours before the job of moving the contents of a bunch of pallets of brick was complete. We carried 9 bricks at a time, in yellow metal brick carriers, down 3-½ stories to where the job site was and then back up to get more. He was practically dancing up and down those stairs, while Samuel and I slogged down the steps, and then dragged up the stairs, then down, and then up. We were exhausted by the end of the day while Manuel, Jr. acted like it was simply a good workout.”
“You and Samuel. Samuel’s status as the Messiah didn’t get in the way?”
“Not to me. We were buddies back then—teens, still growing, still learning, still forming. There was no official Church of the Chosen. It was still in its infancy. Things were loose and informal. Samuel and I were close like family.”
“So what does a brick want to be?” she says with sarcastic mirth in her voice.
“Mockery is unflattering to you. But I’ll forgive you. ‘What does a brick want to be?’ This is a quote from the great American Architect, Louis Kahn. He was a hero to the mason.”
“So the mason taught you what a brick wants to be?”
“He did. He taught us patience and to understand the nature of things. Masonry might seem mundane to most people, but when attacked correctly, it’s an extension of how we conduct ourselves through life. Every job requires planning before the work begins. Then the preliminary groundwork: excavation, staking, building forms, and checking measurements again and again; that was one thing he never let us forget–always check your work as you go along. Assess where you are and where you are going. See if you’ve erred and if so, don’t be afraid to rip out the mistake and redo what you have done. Step back every now and then and reassess. Make sure the project is coming along correctly as planned.
“Masonry is slow methodical work. Each brick has to be placed correctly. It must be level and spaced the same as the previous brick. Everything must line up in all three dimensions every time. Each brick you lay is as important as the last brick you just laid. If you do it right, it can be quite fatiguing. For some people, it’s monotonous, doing the same action over and over—and I’ll admit that there is that aspect of the job, but overall, it can be complex.
“Our first job was a series of stepped concentric retaining walls whose centers all sprung from the same place. Manuel, Sr. staked the center and then, using a string, scribed an arc onto the hillside. The arc was to become the footing for the first wall. We trenched for the footing, built a curved wood form that would hold the concrete and rebar and then checked to ensure it was level. Next came the rebar that had to be bent to fit inside the curved forms. These were wired into place and then we mixed and poured the concrete from a small mixer we carried down the 3-½ stories to the job site.
“Once the base was set, we laid course after course of concrete block that was to be the strength of the wall. The block was solid grouted and held rebar placed vertical and horizontal. Then the brick was mortared in place in front of the block. Doing a straight wall is relatively easy to check as you go along because you simply run a string from end to end for each course. With a curved wall, there is no string. You use a long level and check yourself all along the way. We tore out a lot of mistakes with that wall as we went along; rebuilding and getting things right. Not much different than life, according to Manuel, Sr. ‘Never be afraid to correct something you’ve done incorrectly,’ he would say again and again. ‘Don’t rush it. Take your time. Do it right.’ Those were his daily words to us.
“When we asked him about the job being profitable, he told us there were things on earth that were more important than money. He called our summer with him the ‘Manuel, Sr. University of Life.’ He told us we were in ‘Building Foundations 101,’ that what we learned here would be the basis for everything we did in life after this. And it was, at least for Samuel and me.”
“So what does a brick want to be?” Jane asks again, minus the mockery.
“That is the essence of the Calling. What do those who are chosen want to be? Just like the wall is the sum of the bricks, the Church is the sum of us.”
“Your Messiah is your Architect.”
“No. Never. That is the misconception, isn’t it? That we are led by a single man when it is quite the opposite. We are a group mind that the Messiah merely works with.”
“So, as a group, you want to eliminate those who are not chosen.”
“No. We want to save those who are chosen. The ones who have been called but not chosen, they pass on to extinction while the Chosen continue on. It’s simple evolution.”
“A forced extinction by the Chosen, the unleashing of deadly diseases the Chosen have been inoculated against—mass murder of innocent people. For what end? So you can have the planet all to yourselves?”
“The Chosen unleashed nothing. The planet is overpopulated. Mankind has surpassed the planet’s ability to support it. It is a natural collapse of the ecosystem. The wars and starvation are a natural occurrence. When the dust clears, only the ones fit for survival shall remain.”
“You think it will be the Chosen.”
“There is a reason for everything. We have the resources and the technology and the ability to unite. The rest of you squabble among yourselves. Your disunity and mistrust of each other doom you.”
“Then why are the Chosen being defeated?”
“I’m sorry for you, truly I am. The Chosen hold no malice towards the unchosen. No one knows why some are selected over others. We can only guess it is natural selection. But defeated? You telling me that means that you truly do not comprehend what we are. If we were being decimated, which we are not, every one of us would know it without being told. We are of a mass mind, are you not aware of that? It is what being chosen is all about. We feel each other. We know instinctually who is chosen and who isn’t. If you were to share this space with me, breathe the same air as me, I could tell if you were one of us or not, without you ever opening your mouth. Did you not know that?”
She is silent for about thirty seconds, watching me, perhaps mulling over her response. I hear a muffled voice over the speaker and she turns her head, places her hand over the mic and answers the person. Then without even acknowledging my presence, she stands and exits her room.
Soliloquy’s Sacrifice Chapter 11
Third Reading Continued
When I reach deeper into David’s mind, into his past to the time he spoke of with the mason, I find myself as a young seventeen-year-old young man.
I’m kneeling in front of a partially built low brick wall with a brick in my hand. The brick is mortared on its bottom and one of its sides. I press the brick in place at the end of a row of newly set bricks. Using both hands, I wiggle the brick around, pushing it into the ooze of the mortar. I bend down and eyeball its placement, then I take a large metal level and place one end on top of a brick at the end of the row and the other on top of the brick next to the one I just pla
ced. I tap and wiggle the brick to align it with the underside of the level. I take a smaller level and place it against the face of the brick and the bricks below it. I check to see that the brick’s face touches the second level.
“Beautiful.” I hear Manuel, Sr.’s voice from behind me. “Step back for a minute, boys. Let’s take a moment to once again assess what we started. Samuel, what do you see?”
It’s another moment for us in the backyard classroom Manuel, Sr. has turned this job into. “I see we are placing our first retaining wall into the hillside. The shape of the wall is an arc with a focus at that piece of rebar at the top of the hill.”
“Manuel Jr., why do we make a wall with an arc shape?”
Manuel, Jr. is fidgeting with the wheeled mortar joint raker he holds in his hand. “Because the hill is round. Round wall for round hill.”
“Yes, Manuel, round wall for round hill, very well spoken. We are embracing the hillside, rather than going against its grain. We are working with the lay of the land rather than imposing an unnatural geometry upon it.”
“A thing of beauty,” I add.
“It will be,” our mentor says. “With patience and care, each of you will be able to come back here years from now and say proudly, ‘I have built this wall.’ It will stand as a testament to your ability.”
Samuel quotes Manuel, Sr., who quoted the great American architect, Louis Kahn: “You say to the brick, ‘what do you want, brick?’ And the brick says to you, ‘I like an arch.’ And you say to the brick, ‘Look, I want one too, but arches are expensive and I can use a concrete lintel.’ And then you say, ‘What do you think of that, brick? Brick says, ‘I like an arch’.”
Manuel, Sr. laughs. “Well, I guess you could say we are making an arch laid on its side. Maybe the quote is appropriate. Indeed it would seem, at first glance, that a straight wall would be easier and cheaper to build. But in this case, we must consider the excavation. Straight walls would necessitate greater digging and the walls would be shaped high in the middle and low on the ends, not very attractive. By conforming to the hillside we eliminate all that. What we are building reflects an attitude of working with nature, not against it. What does the brick want to be in this garden?”
Aliens, Tequila & Us: The complete series Page 15
