by Paul Anlee
“You are too kind. We all know the work of the Church outlives any one of us.” He was speaking not only to the people in the Cathedral but to the millions more who were watching via television, internet, and inSense presence, around the world.
“Over the past few years, I’ve employed my heart and mind, my full capabilities and resources, in a search to secure a worthy successor, a strong and inspired leader to guide this congregation.
“Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to announce that I’ve finally found the One who will lead us into a New Age, an Age of Godly righteousness throughout this solar system!”
Applause and a fresh chorus of Amens erupted from listeners around the world. He allowed them a moment to settle themselves.
“A few years ago, I was approached by a young man who sought to learn more about our movement. He had not been a member of any of the established churches of the day. Indeed, he spoke out about the vile corruption that plagued many of them.
“Yes, just as our Lord Yeshua condemned the evil money changers on the steps of the Temple, this young man spoke against the Godlessness that infiltrated the so-called holy houses in this country and beyond.
“We talked at great length on that first day we met, and we’ve continued those conversations during the months and years that followed.
“This young man made no claims of special dispensation to me, yet his divinely inspired wisdom and piety could not be denied.
“He saw the evil permeating our societies and our churches, and he felt the need to act against it. We all know of his pronouncements and his prophecies. We watched, astounded, when our Lord acted through him to save the wonderful city of Vancouver, Pacifica, from nuclear destruction at the hands of the greediest and most powerful individuals in the world.”
His listeners at once gleaned the identity of the young man whom the Reverend was about to introduce. An excited buzz rippled through the air.
The Reverend smiled. He could almost read their minds: Could it be true? Alum, the man being called by many to lead the entire world, has favored our Church and is coming to lead us?
“Yes indeed, I have offered my place as Head of this Church to the young man known as Alum. And….” The congregation erupted into applause and waves of Hallelujah.
LaMontagne hushed those nearest, and waited patiently for the applause to die down.
“And, I am absolutely delighted to report, he has accepted. Ladies and gentlemen, children, I present to you your next spiritual leader, Alum!”
Unable to contain themselves any longer, the congregation jumped to their feet, pounding their hands together, whistling, and cheering, while the shy young man walked across the stage to where LaMontagne stood waiting to greet him.
The choir broke into a joyful hymn while the two men hugged in a comfortable and familiar way, like father and son.
LaMontagne moved to one side and lifted his arms to encourage the flock to continue their cheering. Needing little encouragement, they redoubled their efforts until the diamond-encrusted windows shook with the sound.
LaMontagne looked offstage and caught John Trillian’s waiting eye. He gave a purposeful nod, and Trillian pushed a button on his laptop to activate what was surely the hacker’s crowning achievement.
Anyone in the Cathedral, anyone who watched the broadcast later, on whichever medium they used, would be affected by the virus he released with that simple motion.
As the code worked its way into his congregation’s belief systems, the Reverend recalled the day the man had burst into his home office, full of excitement.
* * *
“Reverend, I’ve brought you a gift,” Trillian announced as he threw open the heavy office door without knocking.
Across the room, the Reverend looked up from his work. From a matching desk along the adjacent wall, Alum—the Reverend’s child protégé now a young man—swiveled his chair around and also opened his eyes. The two regarded Trillian expectantly.
Trillian stopped, captivated by the young man’s eyes. As well as he’d come to know Alum over the past sixteen years, the boy’s piercing green eyes still mesmerized him. They seemed to contain a greater depth of knowledge and experience, lived and studied, than a person of that age had any right to possess.
For someone so young and presumably innocent, his eyes were impossibly ancient. At times, they were tinged with a smoldering rage that bordered on murderous intent. At other times, they were filled with a profoundly peaceful confidence and love. Trillian could never get used to them.
“John?” The Reverend nudged him back to the present. “Your gift?”
“Yes, sir. I think you’ll like what I’ve developed. I’ve been thinking about how the Cybrids working on the colonies could be a problem for us. We have no way of making sure they’ll be loyal to the Church once the colony’s complete.”
“And to Alum,” LaMontagne prodded.
“Yes, of course. And to Alum, as well.” Trillian was painfully aware of the older man’s devotion to his adopted son.
The hacker was more in awe of Alum’s talents than almost anyone. He’d trained the teenaged Alum in the art and science of information systems.
He knew how quick and clever the boy was and had sensed how deep his penetrating intelligence might someday grow. Now that Alum’s lattice enhancements were nearly fully mature, the extent of his capabilities seemed practically boundless.
Trillian understood and appreciated all of this on an intellectual level but, sometimes, it still hurt.
He wondered again if LaMontagne had intentionally restricted his lattice development. Why would he do that? Why shouldn’t I be allowed to develop my capabilities, unhindered, as Alum? If it weren’t for these limitations, maybe I’d be the one in line to succeed the Reverend in leading the Church.
Unless…maybe the imperfection was in him, not in the lattice. Perhaps he wasn’t worthy. Maybe he still had much to prove to the Reverend and to Yeshua.
The Reverend cleared his throat and Trillian returned to his reason for barging in. “To reduce our risk, I’ve developed a way to assure Cybrid loyalty. I obtained their base O/S code from one of our contacts at the factory in Shanghai. It’s quite brilliant, as one would expect from Dr. Liang.”
“Yes, yes,” prompted an impatient LaMontagne.
It occurred to Trillian that Alum never expressed irritation like that. He left that to his adopted father.
“Okay, almost any code is susceptible to some sort of intrusion. The Cybrid operating system is based on models of human cognition. Dr. Liang calls it the concepta, a complex network of perceptions and labels assembled into an associative framework. It blurs the line between knowledge and belief.”
The Reverend leaned forward with interest. “Go on.”
“It’s difficult, but not impossible, to engineer a virus program to alter the part of the concepta that affects the persona, that’s the Cybrid’s set of personal preferences and tendencies that simulate what is human.
“A virus like that could alter the belief system of the Cybrid including, for example, where it considers its loyalties to lie. I have developed just such a virus.”
The Reverend walked over to Trillian and grasped his shoulders. He looked directly into the hacker’s eyes. “John, you continue to amaze me. This is a wonderful gift. Thank you.”
Trillian beamed.
“Why stop there?” asked the voice from the side of the room. Both men turned toward Alum.
Trillian struggled to suppress his annoyance. “What do you mean?”
“People have concepta and persona spaces as much as Cybrids. Everyone has a lattice implant these days, for entertainment purposes if nothing else.”
“Are you suggesting that we alter the belief system of real people?” Trillian was surprised at the personal affront he felt. The idea should have occurred to him. Distasteful as it may have been, it was an obvious extension.
“Why not?” Alum challenged.
LaMonta
gne turned and rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he swiveled in his chair. “Can it be done, John?”
Trillian considered the differences between a Cybrid’s silicene-based system, and a human’s biological system when overlaid by a lattice.
“Theoretically, yes,” he concluded. “At the hardware level, it would work best if we could coax a lattice extension into the pleasure centers of the brain.”
He quietly set a program running in the background of his lattice that would protect his own belief system, thinking—I’m already loyal enough to the Church and the Reverend, and I will be as loyal to Alum as required. I do not want or need that loyalty to be forcefully imposed.
LaMontagne pondered. Even though his own brain housed sophisticated dendy lattice technology, he didn’t know as much about it as he would’ve liked. A simple O/S tweak should accomplish the kind of extension Trillian needed. He sent a section of code to Trillian.
“If we make these minor changes to the basic lattice code, I think it will achieve what Alum suggests. Go ahead and incorporate this code with yours.
“We shouldn’t need to do more than adjust our audience’s loyalty factor a little. We’ll launch it when we broadcast Alum’s succession to the leadership. Everyone will be watching either live or streamed. What better time to add a little value to the presentation?”
* * *
Backstage, Trillian pressed a button unleashing the virus into the broadcast, and then sat back to enjoy the rest of the show.
Reverend LaMontagne released Alum from his affectionate embrace and walked him to his new home at the podium.
The elder leader of what was now Alum’s Church, both in fact as well as name, took a seat in the simple chair waiting for him a couple meters behind and off to Alum’s right. The Reverend was in the wings, but clearly visible to the congregation so they could witness his love and support for his spiritual son.
“Thank you, Reverend LaMontagne, for the trust you have placed in me today. And thank you, everyone, for your kind and loving acceptance. I call upon the guidance of our Lord Yeshua to help me lead this Church through the troubled times ahead. I pledge to work diligently and faithfully for you, toward the greater glory of God and of His Son, Yeshua.
“For we do have troubled times ahead, friends. Our sinful world is heading rapidly toward its Final Days. God Almighty, with Yeshua on His right, wielding the sword of justice and vengeance, is about to descend from Heaven and put this planet out of its misery. The sea of sinful unbelievers and heathens who rejected God’s pleas to join Him in Heaven will soon be brought to an end.”
The crowd joyfully yelled, “Hallelujah” and “Praise be Yeshua.” Normally, Reverend LaMontagne avoided End of Days sermons except for the most special occasions. The changing of the guard certainly qualified as a most special occasion, and the flock in the Glory Hall was eager to celebrate.
“I do not mean this in any figurative sense,” Alum continued. “No. I’m talking about the literal End of Earth. The clock has been set, the date and time selected. The cause of the Earth’s demise has been put in motion and it is growing in power daily.”
The crowd hushed as the weight of his words sunk in. This was not the End of Times/Glory Days sermon they were accustomed to hearing. This seemed more serious, and more troubling, than usual.
“Only a small portion of the sinful people of Earth will be spared the destruction our Lord will bring upon the globe. Only you, the true followers of Yeshua’s message of hope for humanity, will survive. For a refuge has been prepared for those of True Faith. Your salvation is at hand.
“I therefore call upon you to prepare yourselves. If you are a sinner, come to us on your knees and beg forgiveness of your Lord. Join us and salvation can be yours. For God has appointed me the Sword of Yeshua to bring His justice to the people.
“If you are already a member of this Church, listen carefully. Sometime in the next few months, we will reveal the time and place to assemble to receive God’s final Grace. At the appointed time, God will sweep up the Faithful and wash away the sinners.
“Turn your hearts and minds toward our Lord. Pray for forgiveness. Pray that He accept you into His loving arms.”
Alum stepped back from the podium and the shocked crowd erupted into applause and joyful weeping. The long-foretold and anxiously awaited Day was finally, finally, at hand. The world would see the error of its ways, and the Faithful would be saved. Their love of Alum and freshly sworn devotion to him was only exceeded by their love of God and His son, Yeshua.
Trillian raised his hand and faked a cough so he could hide his grin. It was gratifying to see the sheep accept the destruction of everything they knew. The virus was working perfectly.
26
Reverend Alan LaMontagne, former Spiritual Leader of Yeshua’s True Guard Church of the Prophet Alum, was dying.
He lay in his private hospital bed, breathing oxygen-enriched air through a tube. An intravenous drip fed hydrating saline water, glucose, and antibiotics into his veins. Daily sponge baths and a catheter permitted him the luxury of never having to leave his bed. Just as well; he no longer had the strength for the fifteen-step walk to the bathroom.
In his eighty-eighth year of life, LaMontagne’s heart was finally giving out. This came as no big surprise to him or anyone else. Surrounded by the people who were most like him in the entire world, he couldn’t help envy their youth and vigor.
John Trillian was the oldest of his guests; then came Greg and Kathy, and finally the young man whom he’d named Alum, his blossoming protégé.
The irony of being among the five smartest people in the world and not being able to pee on his own made LaMontagne chuckle. The laugh turned into a weak cough. He took a slow, measured breath to calm the spasms in his chest. Can’t even muster enough energy for a good hack—he thought.
He’d called them all here to say goodbye and to have them participate in one final experiment.
He’d confessed how he’d been sharing his thoughts and beliefs with Alum since the young man’s early childhood. Not shared in conventional ways through hours of conversation, but by direct lattice-to-lattice communication. If any pair of individuals could be said to be “of one mind,” it was LaMontagne and Alum.
Now in the Reverend’s final hours, the two hoped to use that link to prove the human spirit lives on after the death of its earthly prison. Whatever LaMontagne was about to experience as he died, Alum would share.
LaMontagne had chosen Alum in the hopes of someday, somehow, “immortalizing” himself. All these many years later, he now understood that they shared only thoughts; their souls were separate. When he died, his soul would not magically cross over into Alum’s body. That would be too reminiscent of Satan’s possession of bodies and blasphemous to Yeshua.
Nonetheless, the Reverend hoped Alum might catch a glimpse of Heaven as his adopted father’s soul entered to meet his Lord and Maker.
Greg and Kathy dismissed the Reverend’s ideas as spiritual mumbo-jumbo. Darian Leigh’s arguments over twenty years ago still held sway with them.
There was no room for a “soul particle” in the new Modified Standard Theory of particle physics. There was nothing that could comprise a soul and still interact with the real universe. Even the metaphysical supra-natural theory that arose from the Reality Assertion Field had not convinced them that the Word, as the Reverend called it, was real.
LaMontagne tried all sorts of arguments to change their minds. He even attempted clever analogies using their own RAF research terminology to reach them. “Think of God’s Word—His thoughts, will and intent—as a specific RAF. In the RAFs you’ve experimented with, the configuration of the field affects reality by selecting or favoring particular virtual particle interactions. Through His divine RAF, God creates or engineers a desired outcome, a whole new universe with specific rules. So now, you tell me, why couldn’t God just be He Who Had the First RAF?”
“Well, for starters, how could God exist before
the universe of real matter?” Kathy countered.
“Because God is not of the physical,” the Reverend stated with complete confidence.
“Anything that doesn’t interact with our universe is outside it and ‘not of the physical.’ Are you saying God is from a different universe?”
“Perhaps. Why not?” LaMontagne said.
“That just pushes back the argument,” Kathy replied. “Did a different ‘God’ in a different universe make the universe that contains our God? That leads to another infinite regression that still doesn’t imply there’s a God outside all possible universes.”
“But God is eternal. He has no need to belong to any one universe.”
“How could an intelligent, willful entity arise in a universe where literally nothing exists? I just don’t get it.”
“I thought the RAF proves how something can arise from nothing,” quipped the Reverend.
“Sure,” Kathy conceded. “Simple particles can arise and evolve over long periods of…let’s call it time, even though we know that’s not precisely correct. Our models show no requirement for intelligence or intention to impose natural laws on those particles. They arise by evolution.”
They’d argued with the Reverend dozens of times, neither side ever able to fully convince the other. In the end Greg and Kathy, being good scientists, had to admit to skeptical agnosticism. As unlikely as it seemed, there was a minuscule chance some intelligence with RAF generating ability might have preceded the existence of the present universe. Maybe of all possible universes.
But when it came to the human soul, Greg and Kathy wouldn’t give an inch.
“We know we can make intelligent, fully self-conscious robots. The space around Vesta, Ceres, and Pallas is proof of that. Many of us regularly talk with our Cybrid twins and, believe me, they pass the Turing Test quite nicely. I bet if you spoke to my DAR, you’d think it were me. Why do you think we need a soul when we understand the basis of intelligence and consciousness so well?” Kathy challenged.
“How do we know they are conscious? Clearly, they are self-aware, as they are capable of fitting concepts of themselves into the conceptual framework of their environment. But is that the same as consciousness?” the Reverend countered.
