The Christ Clone Trilogy - Book Three: ACTS OF GOD (Revised & Expanded)

by James Beauseigneur

  “You don’t care about Humankind. If you did, you could never have forgotten about Tom.”

  Christopher’s composure had now become so incongruous with the situation that Decker had to pause. Not only was he undisturbed, he seemed almost amused.

  “Tom wasn’t a part of your plan,” Decker continued haltingly, growing more and more unsure as the look of amusement on Christopher’s face became even more pronounced. “You didn’t need him to carry out your plans. You only needed me.” Decker stopped, the last words falling from his lips merely from the momentum of the words that had gone before.

  Christopher now smiled broadly, and it became painfully obvious that he was smiling to himself and not at Decker. Decker had expected denial or anger; certainly not this.

  Finally the smile became outright laughter.

  “Bravo!” Christopher said at last, almost shouting. “That’s pretty good, Decker! Even if it did take you twenty-three years to realize it!”

  Decker was stunned. Was this an admission . . . or just ridicule?

  “Frankly, Decker, arguing with you is taking more time than you’re worth. To tell the truth — something I do as seldom as possible,” he smiled, raising his hand in mock surrender, “it never even occurred to me to rescue Tom Donafin. Like you said, I was there to get you.” Christopher shrugged. “Why should I have cared what happened to Tom Donafin?

  Decker couldn’t speak.

  “Of course, at the time, I had no idea who he was,” Christopher explained. “Tom Donafin was supposed to have died along with the rest of his family years before in a little late night meeting with a drunk driver. It was a beautiful sight — blood and bodies everywhere,” he reminisced. “The drunk driver wasn’t even scratched. He felt so guilty about it after he sobered up that he hanged himself in his jail cell. He left a wife and two sons penniless. And the best part,” Christopher laughed, “is that when he hanged himself, the guard was watching. He didn’t even try to stop him. It was perfect all around.

  “Well . . . almost perfect,” he chagrined. “We thought the whole Donafin family had died. Apparently Yahweh’s minions managed to hide your friend from us all those years.” Christopher shrugged off any personal responsibility for the oversight, “I had no idea who he was when I came to get you out of Lebanon.”

  Decker stared helplessly at the floor.

  “You know,” Christopher said, pointing his finger in the air and shaking it slowly to emphasize his syllables as a realization dawned on him, “I’ll bet that’s why he let you think he was dead all those years! Donafin or Saul Cohen or somebody must have realized that the best way to hide him from me was to let you think he was dead. If the two of you had stayed in regular contact after I moved in with you, sooner or later I would have realized who he was and arranged another ‘accident.’”

  Then another thought occurred to Christopher. “The day I was shot — earlier, outside your office — was Donafin there with you when you told me you wanted to introduce me to an old friend?”

  Decker slowly nodded, but it was more a question than an answer.

  Christopher smiled. “Yahweh wasn’t taking any chances,” he said. “He must’ve had a whole legion of angels surrounding him. I sensed something, but I didn’t even see Donafin. I just assumed the friend you wanted me to meet was waiting in your office.” Christopher said all this as if it was just a normal, everyday conversation over lunch. Decker was stunned and confused — not at the specifics of what he was saying — but at the fact that he was saying it at all.

  Christopher either interpreted Decker’s expression as a request for additional explanation or just wanted to further his agony by continuing. “You see, Tom Donafin was the last of his line, the last blood relative of Jesus — or Yeshua, or whatever you want to call him. Anyway, according to an ancient law, a blood relative has the right to avenge a murder.[157] I always knew that I’d be killed; that was never in question. It’s in the prophecy.[158] In fact, it fit perfectly into my plan. How else could I have staged such a dramatic resurrection with the whole world watching? But I had someone else in mind to actually pull the trigger.”

  Christopher laughed a contemptible laugh, “Poor Gerard Poupardin. The pathetic fool wanted to shoot me to avenge Albert Faure, a man who had used and betrayed him whenever it suited his purposes.

  “It didn’t really matter who killed me.” He shook his head with the angry regret of a chess player who realizes he made the wrong move. “I just wanted it to be a murder. Instead it was an execution!” He shrugged and excused it away. “It’s a minor point in the larger scheme of things, but I spent a lot of time setting that up!” It was clear that Christopher didn’t like Yahweh beating him at his own game.

  “No matter,” he said, putting the defeat behind him. “It was rather sweet irony, though, that Poupardin was so determined to kill me that when Donafin robbed him of the pleasure, he turned the gun on him instead.

  “Oh, and in all modesty,” he added with a grin, “I think timing the beginning of the madness to coincide with my death and then ending it when I killed John and Cohen was a master stroke. Who could have suspected that the spirit beings who appeared at my call at the Temple in Jerusalem were the same ones who had wreaked bloody carnage only moments before?”

  Christopher smiled and waited for Decker to respond, and the longer he waited, the bigger his smile became.

  “Then it’s all true?” Decker managed finally, stunned that he had been right, but even more so that Christopher was admitting it. “All the things that the KDP say about you are true! You really are the Antichrist.”

  “In the flesh,” Christopher said triumphantly, bowing grandly, and mocking Decker.

  “But don’t act so surprised,” he said. “I’ve never made a secret of it. I even told you as much on the plane to Israel after my resurrection and on several occasions since then. I’ve been saying it all along. But it didn’t seem to matter to anyone. Of course, I’ve always couched the truth in stories of how evil Yahweh is.”

  Christopher shook his head in wonder. “It has always amazed me how eager humans are to believe that line. All I have to do is draw their attention to some pretty bauble or trinket that’s just beyond their reach, tell them how unfair it is that they don’t have it, and that if God were really good and loving, he wouldn’t keep them from having it. Money, power, sex: It all works pretty much the same. Of course the most seductive temptation for humans has always been telling them they can be their own god, or at least be equal to God. It worked with Eve in the Garden of Eden.[159] It’s worked throughout the centuries. And now the very same lie has worked with the New Age. For all of Humankind,” he laughed.

  “Are you Lucifer?” Decker asked.

  “Close, but no,” Christopher smiled. “Though I’m sure we all look alike to you.” He paused for a moment to consider how much he was willing to reveal. “In my glory — prior to taking on this filthy carcass — I was known as Abaddon, or in your language, ‘Destroyer,’” he said proudly.[160] “I am the greatest of eight of my rank who followed Lucifer in the rebellion against Yahweh. Unlike my seven brothers, who have directed the great powers of the Earth throughout history,[161] I was singled out and consigned to the Abyss.”[162]

  “So your entire life,” Decker had to force the words from his lips, “your entire life has been an act?”

  “Please, Decker, let’s not trivialize my accomplishments with terms like ‘act.’ I prefer to call it a magnificently orchestrated, brilliantly executed, flawlessly delivered lie.” He paused as he considered his words. “I rather like the sound of that.”

  “And the prophecies about you in the Bible are all true?”

  “Of course!” Christopher pshawed.

  “But then you must know that if you go to Petra you’ll be defeated.”

  “Ahhhh, true,” Christopher agreed, raising his brow with resignation. “But even if I don’t go, it’ll make no difference. The time of my end has been set. It matters not
where I am. For my purposes, going to Petra is simply the most favorable of the available options. It is to Petra that Jesus will come, and I will not cower in fear in some dark corner when that day arrives. I will go there to meet him! I will stand defiant at his return, and I will bring with me those I have stolen from him! I will no more fear him in the end than I have served him in the past! I will never yield! I have set myself against him, and I will defy him until the end. And thereafter, I will curse him boldly from the flames of hell!”[163]

  “But why? If you know you’ll end up in hell, why go through with it?”

  Christopher laughed as he took a drink from Decker’s abandoned beer. “Call it independence. Surely you can understand that. I simply refuse to serve. The poet John Milton understood it. He put it quite succinctly back in 1667 in Paradise Lost: ‘Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n,’ he wrote, paraphrasing the Lord Lucifer.[164] And, of course,” Christopher added, “to take others with me!

  “It’s really quite simple. Man was made to rule and reign with God, to love and be loved. When I take those who God intended for himself, I anger him, I enrage him, and — most important — I hurt him!

  “Do you have any idea,” Christopher explained in great earnest, truly wanting Decker to understand, “what it’s like to tweak the nose of God?” Christopher threw up his hand in exhilaration at the thought. “The rush of sheer, raw power that swells through you when you watch his face and know that you—” Christopher looked back at Decker and struck the air with his clenched fist to emphasize each point “—by your will! by your power! have intentionally made God, the one who created the Universe . . . weep!”

  Decker was lost . . . defeated. Scott Rosen and the KDP had been right about Christopher, about everything. And whether Christopher chose to call his life an act or a lie, Decker realized that his own life had been a sham. On that backdrop nothing really mattered anymore. Still, there was one thing more Decker wanted to know.

  “Christopher,” he said. Unexpectedly, the feel of Christopher’s name on his lips, the sound of it in his ears, shook Decker with the memory of all the years he had spoken it and been deceived. He pressed on. “Just one more question.”

  Where before Christopher had no time for Decker, his expression now indicated a willingness, an eagerness to answer. He was truly enjoying this.

  “Why me?” Decker asked. “Why did you pick me?”

  Christopher looked at Decker, momentarily surprised. Then suddenly his cheeks expanded as he pressed his lips together, trying to control his response. At last giving up and yielding to the impulse, Christopher exploded into riotous, prolonged laughter.

  Decker couldn’t understand.

  “Can you really be so stupid?” he roared with derision. “Are you really such a fool?!” he asked, astonished. “Can you really believe that you were so important to my plans that there has to be a reason that I picked you?

  He waited and then explained. “I could just as easily have chosen any of at least a thousand other people.”

  Christopher paused to shake his head and wipe a tear of laughter from his eye before he continued.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, trying to sound serious but enjoying this far too much to conceal it. “I’ll tell you why I chose you.”

  Christopher stopped to savor the irony. It was a joke whose punch line had waited forty eight years for just the right moment to be told.

  “You,” Christopher said, and then paused, struggling with all his supernatural strength to deadpan the delivery of his response, but enjoying the sound of each syllable as it rolled off his tongue, knowing the effect it would have on Decker, “you just happened . . .” Christopher laughed despite himself, “to be in the right place . . . at the right time!”

  Christopher now laughed so uncontrollably, he had to take hold of the back of a chair to steady himself.

  Decker’s body went limp. Had he the presence of mind to notice it, he would have found it quite inexplicable that his heart continued to beat under the weight of his chest as he came to understand that the sum total value of his life had amounted to nothing more than a joke for Christopher’s amusement.

  Until this moment he at least had his anger. Now even that was gone. It wasn’t satisfied; it was simply finished. Now there was nothing. Nothing had meaning. He had built his life around Christopher. Not only was that gone — snatched out from under him — it had all been a farce. Not only had he been betrayed, he had been a fool! He was a joke!

  Decker’s arms felt heavy and his shoulders slumped, giving the impression that he had simply curled up to die but that someone had propped him up with a stick. He stood there for a long moment, unable to move while Christopher looked on in delight.

  Finally, Christopher went over to the bar and poured himself another drink. “You’ve been quite a project, actually.

  “You should thank me,” he mocked. “I’ve brought you along; given you opportunities to advance your career.” Pointing with his finger while holding the drink, he elaborated. “It was I who got you on the Shroud Team in the first place, forty eight years ago — of course you contributed your willingness to deceive Professor Goodman,” he shrugged. “But it was my planning,” he added, unwilling to share credit.

  “Getting you taken hostage,” he nodded in proud acknowledgement, “that was my work. First, it got you out of the way for a few years until I was ready for you. I couldn’t risk having you publish a story that might expose my origins, and I couldn’t be sure that dear Uncle Harry would be able to keep you quiet. I needed you locked away for a few years.”

  Christopher took a drink and grinned. “I didn’t come to Lebanon to rescue you. It was more like getting you out of cold storage.

  “It also provided a means of getting you and Jon Hansen together. Of course, there were other ways I could have arranged for that. You could have met him while working on a news story. But this way, because of the circumstances, with him rescuing you when you were near death, there were strong emotional ties.

  “Actually, the toughest part was getting you to accept the job with Hansen. I almost gave up on you there. But you came through, thanks to the schemes of Robert Milner and Alice Bernley. After that, it was pretty easy. I just had to play the perfect kid and, from time to time, make up some ridiculous story about dreams I had.”

  “Why are you telling me these things?” Decker asked.

  “To make you hate me more, of course,” Christopher answered.

  It was working.

  “I confess there were times when you made it almost too easy,” Christopher ridiculed. “When you suggested requiring everyone who took the communion to also take the mark, I nearly lost it trying not to laugh. Not only did you swallow my lies hook, line and sinker, you even cut your own bait!”

  “So then what you told me about Elizabeth, Hope and Louisa being reincarnated . . .?” Decker asked like a fighter dropping his fists in exhaustion and leaving himself open to be hit.

  Christopher laughed and shook his head.

  “And the story about the Theatans?” Decker asked.

  “It never ceases to amaze me what people will believe,” he said smugly. “I didn’t make it up entirely, though,” he admitted. “I adapted the name from the teachings of one of the New Age groups. Of course, they got it from me originally.”

  “And the confessions and calls for God’s wrath by the fundamentalists?”

  “Contrived, for the most part. Of course, there are useful idiots on the lunatic fringe who actually do say such things. Some of them work for me; others might as well.”

  Decker closed his eyes for a moment to try to endure it all. “So what now?” he asked finally, helplessly, barely managing a whisper.

  “Now I make a brilliant speech, an inspiring plea, whipping the people of the world to a fever pitch against Yahweh. I’ll issue a bold challenge, appealing to their sense of pride, their incredible propensity to overestimate their own worth — and despite both — their inc
onceivable willingness to sell themselves and their birthright for a little temporary gratification.[165] I’m certain I can depend upon their willingness to believe flattery, no matter how preposterous and insincere. It’s always worked in the past.

  “Then I’ll gather all of the peoples of the world, Humankind,” he added with a snicker, “at Meggido and I’ll lead them into ‘glorious battle’ at Petra.”

  “I meant,” Decker stammered, “what about me? What do you plan to do with me?”

  “I know what you meant!” Christopher answered scornfully. “That’s up to you.”

  “You’re not going to kill me?”

  “There’s no profit in that,” he said shaking his head slightly. “Except for a few special exceptions like John and Cohen or Albert Faure, I never kill anyone myself. It’s much more enjoyable when someone else does it. It just heaps one more burning coal of guilt on their heads.

  “So, there you have it,” Christopher concluded. “You can take the mark tomorrow and live until you die — which should be about three months. Oh, but of course, we wouldn’t want you to get kidnapped again or lose your way to the clinic, so I’ll have UN Security assign some bodyguards to make sure you actually get there.

  “Or if you prefer, I’m sure they can squeeze you in at the guillotines and you can have your head removed before the night is out.

  “Take a few minutes to think it over,” he said, as he turned to go back toward his desk. Then stopping and returning to where Decker stood, he added in an engaging tone that seemed totally out of place, “Actually, Decker, the next few months should be quite interesting for you. You’ve always enjoyed new experiences. Think of it! You have the opportunity to know the feeling I’ve experienced since before your world began: to know that with every passing second, you’re moving a little closer to eternity in hell. First you’ll feel the horror and dread, and then the denial and the anxiety and the nightmares — if you can sleep at all. Pretty soon,” he said, now sounding philosophical, “you’ll come to realize that there’s really only one possible response.” He paused to give Decker a chance to realize it for himself. “Hate!” he said finally, standing face to face with Decker.