The Prophet: Birth: A Sci-Fi Thriller

by David Beers

  The Prophet

  Birth

  David Beers

  Contents

  Mailing List Invitation

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Mailing List Invitation

  One

  Somewhere Between 2,000 - 2,100 A.D./C.E. (Prior to calendar era shift of Pre-Reformation/Post-Reformation)

  We’re going to discuss things that happened long ago, and in doing so, the details may be blurred or misstated. These things cannot be helped, but if we venture forward with forewarning, then perhaps we won’t commit too many mistakes.

  The room was small, the walls white painted cinder blocks. A square table sat in the middle with four chairs around it. The room held one door—a single entrance and exit.

  It—the room—was actually a building, and no one knew how long it had stood there. It hadn’t been used in some time, and smelled of dust and age. Just outside the door was an icy landscape, with snow as far as the eye could see. The sky above was overcast and the cold so harsh that no amount of clothing could prevent it from seeping into your bones. Four armies waited in the tundra, each willing to kill the others. Large ships known as transports floated a hundred feet in the air; they were armed for battle, their weapons locked in place. Men wore insignias that would have appeared foreign to every nation on Earth fifty years previous.

  Perhaps 5,000 soldiers surrounded the small building, the four armies separated by a half mile in each direction. Their weapons could easily launch that far.

  Death was only moments away, both for those here and the rest of the world. One signal, one false move, and the world would end.

  Four figures walked forth from their armies. Three men and one woman. Their names were known throughout the world, each creating a range of emotions in those that heard them: fear, hate, admiration, love.

  Some were thought as Gods, such as Corinth. Others were merely representatives of Gods, like the Pope.

  The four walked through the snow alone. They brought no assistants nor other trappings of their offices. They were leaving their armies behind, each trusting the word of the other three.

  The war had raged for too long. It would be known from this meeting until the end of time as the Reformation. The world had been at war for 100 years, and the four walking across the ice hoped it would end today.

  They entered the small building—which to everyone’s satisfaction had been equipped with heat. Each took a seat at the table but none said anything for a few moments.

  They only looked at each other.

  All were old, much different than the younger versions that began down the paths which led them here. They hadn’t started the war, but commanded much of it, and now would end it. They looked at the lines and wrinkles in the faces of the men and woman that they had fought for so long, seeing murderers and saints.

  The world was wrecked in ways that couldn’t have been imagined a hundred years previously. North and South America no longer existed, at least not above ground. Radiation fell from the skies above and would forever. The Earth’s population had been decimated, carved down by 80%.

  To continue on ensured mutual destruction for everyone, and that’s why the four were meeting today.

  “It ends today,” the Pope said. “Either that or the four of us die right now, right here.”

  His voice was aged but firm. No Pope before or after would ever send so many people to their death, nor order the murder of even more.

  “The old ways have to die, then,” the woman said, her name Trinant. “All of them.”

  “How do you propose to do that?” someone asked.

  “We do whatever it takes. It’s the old ways that started this, and the reason we have so much blood on our hands.”

  “There’s truth to that,” Corinth said.

  “It is the truth,” Trinant responded.

  The room was quiet for a few seconds, all four understanding what her words actually meant.

  “State explicitly what you want,” the Pope said. “You other three, you’ve already begun destroying the old ways. Corinth and Trinant, you’re both creating societies that didn’t exist. So tell me, what am I to do with my land?”

  “I’m creating a new society because you destroyed the last one,” Corinth said. His voice was low and anger rippled through every word.

  Trinant ignored him. “What we’ve created, these governing bodies that we control—they’re not to end. No more hundreds of governments. No more hundreds of countries. No more culture. No more languages. No more religions. We are the new religions. Within our own domains, we are the only culture to exist, and the language we speak here is the only one allowed anywhere else. Those differences are what started this. It can never happen again. The world won’t survive. From this point on, only our religions exist. Only us.”

  The room fell silent again. The four knew the truth. The squabble that began a hundred year war no longer mattered, but it began because of the diversity she spoke of.

  “If I could, I’d say a single religion would rule everything, but that’s not possible. So, our differences will be only one—the religions we’ve created. Everything else will unify us.”

  “Mine wasn’t created,” the Pope said.

  Everyone ignored him, knowing that the Catholic Church would trumpet its age for the rest of eternity.

  “The peace begins here, and it’s up to us to make sure that it keeps,” the woman said. “We’ll die one day. Sooner rather than later from the looks of us, and this war can’t restart when we finish.”

  “Okay,” Corinth said. “I’ll do it.”

  “Me too.”

  The three people stared at the Pope, who finally nodded. “Yes. The Catholic Church agrees.”

  The four were quiet, relief flooding over them but understanding that much work awaited. Painful, wrenching work—in which more people would die.

  But no more war. Details would need be worked out, but as long as the nuclear weapons quit detonating and the weapons quit launching, that could happen. The things that had separated people, that caused such destruction, they would end. Four religions would encompass the world, and truth would flow only from them. Truth, and peace, as none of the four would aggress on the others.

  The world had been reformed, the four people in this room deciding the fates of billions.

  The Reformation was over. The world could begin anew.

  Two

  Seven Thousand Years after the Reformation - The Prophet

  Rhett Scoble looked at the woman sitting across from him, feeling the same apprehension he always did during these moments. Not quite anxiety … but something close took hold whenever he committed a crime that could have him killed—without trial or tribunal.

  The True Faith Ministry, like the other three Ministries, didn’t look lightly on conversion.

  If caught, Rhett’s death wouldn’t be hidden from view; no, he would be publicly executed as an example to anyone else considering such a heinous notion.

  The woman in front of him wasn’t of the True Faith, but the One Path. All four Ministries were the same to Rhett, he just happened to be born into the T
rue Faith. None of their beliefs mattered to him, and they hadn’t for two decades. Not since he met David. If this woman had ever believed, she didn’t any longer. Anyone that Rhett met had given up on their religion in favor of …

  Of what?

  Because no name actually existed for it.

  There was David, and there was the entity he followed.

  But if Rhett had to pick something, he would say that they had given up their religion in favor of truth.

  That was one of many things that separated David and his followers from the rest of the world. For them, the four Ministries and their gods were life.

  Which meant if this woman was lying, Rhett would most certainly die. The four Ministries rarely worked together, but it wouldn’t be inconceivable when dealing with conversions.

  “Your arm,” Rhett said.

  The woman put her arm on the table. Being from the One Path, she lacked the nanotechnology which Rhett possessed. He felt none of the internal recognition that he did when meeting other True Faith members—his nanotech registering theirs.

  “You’re sure you want this?” he asked, looking into her eyes. “Once it happens, you can’t turn back. I know you’ve been briefed on this, but I want to make sure you’re fully aware. What you’re going to see, it can’t be unseen.”

  Tears filled the woman’s eyes, which helped relieve some of Rhett’s apprehension. Perhaps spies could fake tears, but it still made him feel she was genuine.

  “I’m sure. I’ve been waiting years for this … years.” The last word came out as a whisper.

  The two of them were in the One Path’s geographical territory. Rhett had registered before traveling here, then went through their scans once he arrived. Travel was heavily restricted amongst the four Ministries, with very few people allowed to leave each year. Millennia ago, ‘countries’ had needed each other too much economically, making travel restrictions nearly impossible. The technological advances of the past 7,000 years had made each Ministry self sufficient.

  If people moved about too freely, the theocracies couldn’t continue their reign. Too many ideas would flow.

  Rhett was permitted to travel during certain times of the year, though; that’s when the danger he faced escalated a hundred fold.

  The Ministries didn’t know his real purpose. They only knew what was on his documentation, and that’s why he was allowed.

  If they found out his true purpose? If this woman wasn’t who she claimed to be? Public execution.

  “Okay,” he said to the woman, pulling up her sleeve and revealing pale skin beneath. Rhett never understood why people in other Ministries were pale. They lived atop the earth. Their sky wasn’t polluted, wasn’t sealed off to ensure that the pollution didn’t spread. They could walk out into the sun any time they wanted, yet Rhett always saw the same pale skin.

  She’ll be your sister in a moment, he thought. You should quit judging her.

  And he knew that was true.

  Rhett reached into the bag at his feet and pulled out a red capsule. He rarely reached for anything—no one in the True Faith did. Nanoparticles flowed through his blood, with additional nanoparticles built into everything the True Faith produced back inside its territory. Yet, this capsule lacked them.

  It couldn’t be tracked.

  Which was paramount.

  If the capsule was found, even laying in a gutter somewhere, people would die. People Rhett loved and cared about.

  He laid the capsule on the table, the red blood inside contrasting sharply with the white desk beneath it. He reached into his bag again, pulling out the tool necessary for the procedure. No nanoparticles resided in it either. Nothing in this entire endeavor could be tracked.

  The device resembled a short stick, rounded and silver. Rhett put the capsule in the top, pressed a button and it loaded into the chamber.

  “Close your eyes,” he said.

  “You did this?” the woman asked. “Before?”

  Rhett put his own arm on the table and turned it over so that his palm faced up. With his other hand, he pulled up his sleeve.

  A very, very faint circular scar sat near his elbow. It was nearly indiscernible, unless someone knew what they were looking for. Three dots sat inside it, forming a triangle.

  “Yes.”

  “What number were you?” she asked. “When did you start?”

  Rhett looked at the scar but said nothing for a few seconds. Years atop years had passed since David had used a similar device on him. At least 20. Rhett didn’t count them anymore, because they didn’t matter. The lineage went back long before he was born, and it would continue long after his death, if that’s what was willed. Rhett had no place in that decision. He was merely a soldier.

  “I was number two.”

  “Wait. What? You … You’ve met him? The Prophet gave you his blood? The Blood of the Touched?” the woman asked, pulling her arm back slightly—though Rhett felt she’d done it involuntarily.

  “Yes. I’ve met him,” Rhett said, not looking up from his own scar.

  “What’s he like?” she asked.

  It was what they always asked, any time they found out how close Rhett was to David. How long he’d known the man that would change the entire world.

  The entire universe.

  “He’s hard,” Rhett said, finally meeting the woman’s eyes. “He’s hard, because he has to be.”

  She nodded as if she understood, though Rhett knew she didn’t. He knew she couldn’t—not really. Even when she became his sister, she would never truly know.

  “Are you ready?”

  The woman nodded.

  “Close your eyes, then,” he said again.

  She did.

  Rhett put the tool to her wrist. “It’ll hurt.”

  He watched her nod and then hit the button on the device’s side.

  The woman’s mouth dropped open as the capsule drove deep into her flesh. Rhett couldn’t see it, but he knew what was happening. The woman’s mouth hung ajar though her eyes remained closed, the capsule opening and releasing the blood it carried. There were no nanoparticles inside it—just as there were none inside David. No, what spread through her now was something much simpler, yet more powerful.

  The Blood of the Touched.

  Rhett laid the woman down on the couch, pulled a blanket up to her chin, and then allowed his nanotech to start communicating. It’d been hours since he’d connected with it, but he didn’t like doing so when with a convert. He needed to fully focus on them to ensure the conversion went well—also, it would have felt blasphemous not giving all his attention to David’s work.

  The woman was unconscious now, and would be for the next 12 hours. The blood he’d injected was moving through her. It was spreading, the DNA replicating itself and then imprinting onto all of her current cells. She would wake up looking, sounding, and acting the exact same.

  The difference would be how she felt.

  Because when she woke, she’d be connected to David, and through that, connected to many, many more people. Including Rhett. This was the way it had always been done, ever since the first Prophet. Untraceable, yet allowing David to communicate as no one else in the world could.

  Rhett didn’t have time to think about all of that, though. He needed to check the security surrounding this little apartment. Rules were different under the One Path—which was partly why illegal immigration was so easily caught. If someone didn’t know the foreign Ministry’s rules that they were trying to enter, they’d be discovered quickly. Rhett knew the rules—not only because of the job he held on paper—but because David made him memorize them years ago. Made him continue memorizing any changes.

  “You’re too important to get nabbed for laziness,” David had told him.

  The nanoparticles in Rhett’s eyes couldn’t connect to anything inside the One Path’s territory, but Rhett had placed four ClearViews around the apartment’s perimeter. They were small globes that floated through the air (and while they
could be any color, the ones he had here were transparent). Rhett always used the same ClearViews when converting, his own nanotech well versed with them.

  Sharp green light sparkled inside the whites of his eyes, the nanoparticles inside replicating what the ClearViews saw. Using all four orbs, the apartment complex was recreated on a much smaller scale. It stood just before Rhett, about three feet high and a foot wide—the image originating from his eyes.

  Forward, Rhett thought, and his nanoparticles obeyed the command. They sped up the past 12 hours, and he watched as people came and went, the sun rising and falling—the entire day all in sharp green pixels.

  “Nothing,” he said, finally feeling relief. He blinked and the projection died.

  He looked over at the woman. She hadn’t moved, and wouldn’t for many more hours. When she woke, Rhett would be gone, and any trace of him—or what happened here—as well. She might, briefly, wonder if anything occurred at all … but it wouldn’t take her long to feel David

  And once she did, all doubt would disappear forever.

  Message Received.

  It wasn’t a voice, but rather a thought. Anyone born under the True Faith could distinguish their own thoughts from those of the nanoparticles. It was harder on the few people that actually did migrate and convert. More often than not, they couldn’t determine the difference between themselves and the nanoparticles, which led to problems. It was one of the reasons the True Faith didn’t want converts. No, the Priesthood wanted people born into the Faith, the nanoparticles occurring naturally with procreation.

  Show me, he told the nanotech.

  Another green holograph shot from Rhett’s eye and hovered in the air, settling about three feet in front of his face. A woman looked back at him, though the recording had been made hours earlier. The nanotech understood when not to interrupt, so it’d held the message until Rhett was ready.