by Bright,R. F.
The lights went down and the room exploded in adulation. Arch Bishop Virginia McWilliams Hendrix emerged from the darkened wings in a warm-pink spotlight with a backlit halo and took the pulpit. The applause faded, right on cue. Her vestments engulfed her head to toe in one shimmering mountain of sky-blue silk brocade, heavily embroidered with gold thread in overlapping triangles within triangles. She floated majestically beneath it, buoyant yet humble, acknowledging the audience with a six-gun hand gesture and motherly wink. She basked in their adoration, waiting for a nod from the broadcast director.
The director sat in a chaotic control room that smelled of burnt wires, punching buttons and speaking calmly into a microphone. “Ten seconds.”
The Arch Bishop’s outfit lifted her above the worldly and vain. Her massive headpiece, a perfect cube scaled to the exact dimensions of heaven found in Revelation 21:16, was an engineering masterpiece. Exacting, sacred geometry subdued what would have otherwise appeared absurdly oversized and top-heavy. A golden number seven dominated its huge front. Her shoulders were draped in a chainmail yoke of pure platinum, three triangles arranged into one larger triangle — the Polygon Shield. A similar shield adorned the front of the pulpit.
The director started to count down from five as a commercial imploring the faithful to pray seven times per day came to an end. “Drop copter-cam one,” he said. “Music up.” A pipe organ’s deepest voice swelled with an uplifting canticle. “Cue Chorus.” A thousand children’s voices rose in one celestial invocation — a rainbow of pure innocence.
The Bishop’s eyes were closed, but tormented. She swayed and grasped the edge of the pulpit, struggling to anchor herself in a gross and worldly reality she only visited on Sunday. She was but a divine messenger. Their conduit to the truth.
The music grew darker and the choir began to wail. Her eyes crept open.
“My children! The wrath of God is upon us.”
The congregation answered: “For we have gravely offended thee.”
"We are consumed by thine anger,” she called out.
“And by thy fury are we troubled,” they answered.
She panned the room with an accusing finger. “Upon the blasphemers he shall rain down calamity and war, pestilence and famine, and cast them into a lake of fire.” The finger pointed straight into the camera as the congregation concluded.
“This shall be the portion of their cup.”
A wave of contrition swept the nation. “Amen,” she said, bowing her head.
Thomka hated being here, but Murthy enjoyed the pageantry. He’d introduced the Bishop to the guy who’d designed her costume and felt somewhat paternal about it.
“And how do we know this to be true?” She spoke each word with absolute certitude. “Because it happened.”
Heads bobbed in agreement; how could they not?
“Nothing happens that is not of God’s own perfect design. Read it!” She held a Bible up to the camera, trembling under its weighty consequence. “Amos 3:9: ‘He has made all things known unto man.’” She waved the Bible furiously, shouting, “He wants us to purge ourselves of those ways that obscured the obvious. Ways that spread doubt. Ways that questioned faith itself. Blasphemous ways that blinded us to the obvious!”
All those gathered here pretended to agree.
“But fear not, my children. The rightness of our way is obvious! For it is by His grace that we, The Church, govern the greatest country the world has ever known —steering the corporate state away from the lake of fire. Lo, toward his unlimited abundance.”
Her zeal overwhelmed her as she sprang from the pulpit, shouting, “We know it because it happened!” She struggled to bring her enthusiasm under control, raising an apologetic hand to the audience as though she’d gone too far.
“A few short years ago, when the congress of cowards drowned in its own shame, we, The Church, your church, we shouldered the heavy burden of state. Because God told us to. And look what happened.
“We are free of all government intrusions. Free to fend for ourselves — at last. To provide for ourselves. The needs of the spirit. The needs of the heart. The needs of the stomach. All one glorious market. Yes! And all it took was for us to get out of . . . your way.”
She gave the nation a moment to express its gratitude.
“Forgive me,” she said in a softer voice. “But! I just can’t help rejoicing in the ceaseless bounty we have received, just for unleashing freedom.” She twisted one hand into an angry fist and raised it to heaven. “They said He was the God of Love, but their idea of love was — human love. Carnal and impure. An orgy of self-pity. A congregation of conceits. Not God’s incomprehensible love. God’s divinely selfish love.”
She donned a particularly stern face when quoting scripture: “‘Do not worship any other God, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God’ — Exodus 34:14.” Her expression turned to rapture. “They put human emotions, human dimensions, human expectations into their perversion of God’s charitable heart. This so infuriated Him that He did as He promised. He did for them what He did for Sodom and Gomorrah. A purifying rain of destruction. A rain of love and salvation. A fire that staunched all doubt, rekindled our faith and opened the unending road to growth and prosperity.”
A standing ovation erupted and she stormed across the stage. “Endless wars killed most of our men — many of our women. The oceans turned black and died and millions starved. States collapsed. The barbarous hordes, oh! The barbarous marauding hordes carried the apocalypse to our very doors. No family was spared the ravages. But! Now they are gone. We the people stood up and purged our land of the evildoers. No police force in history has done what the people have done on their own. No earthly judicial system could give us that. That opportunity was God-given.
“Is this terrible work the work of a loving God? Yes! In fact, yes! Yes, it is,” she cried out most adamantly. “For God loves mankind — not man. Let me repeat — NOT MAN! And for the sake of mankind, he will correct the errors of men. He will show us the pit, the inferno!” She fought off a woozy spell with a babbled prayer, “Kau ahsha gunenen Gehenna,” then quickly recovered her English.
“Where did they, the cowards, the faithless, the tricksters go wrong? They failed to understand the simple God-given truth of the Trinity of Trinities. They forfeited the protection of our Polygon Shield.”
A gasp floated up from the audience as she raised her arms above her head, spread her index fingers and thumbs, then put them together to form a triangle.
The audience followed suit.
She aimed the triangle at the polygon shield on the pulpit’s front. “What is the Trinity of Trinities? It is the perfect partnership of equals. The Holy Triangle: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Perfect, equal and immutable. Self-sustaining. It nurtures all. Infinite Love!”
The audience answered, “Infinite Love.”
“The Triangle of Life: Man, Woman, Child. What could be more obvious? More divine? Infinite Bounty.”
“Infinite Bounty!”
She shook her head in good-natured disbelief. “God is soooo obvious. I’m telling you, it’s right in front of you if you will only look. God is obvious, my children. He’s right there.” She pointed to the triangle on the lower right side. “But the Earthly Triangle: Church, Commerce and Government, not born pure but of man, demands constant vigilance if we are to receive its promised bounty. Infinite Growth.”
“Infinite Growth!”
“Infinite Growth! Infinite, I promise you! For the integrity of the Polygon Shield and our existence are one and the same. The Earthly Triangle is where God gives us a gift like no other. The gift of — free will!” She steadied herself on the pulpit gasping for air.
A standing ovation renewed her strength.
Representative Thomka was put off by her crafty performance, and whispered angrily, “Well? Did you find him?”
Representative Murthy gave Thomka a dirty look, joined the cheering crowd with a spiteful smirk, and said,
“Find who?”
Thomka bristled. “Tuke! God damn it. Levi Tuke.”
Max raced up the cobblestone hill to his house, then up an even steeper flight of crumbling concrete steps set deep into the nearly vertical hillside he and Fred called a front yard. He hit the concrete pad atop the steps and was off like a shot up six wooden steps and across the wooden porch. It was a long way up to their three-story brick house with a wraparound porch and a view of the Little Conemaugh wending through the hills. He and Fred had fixed up the first floor of the big house, which was more than enough for them. They sealed off the second and third floors, plus the huge attic, each winter.
He swung open the heavy, golden oak and beveled glass front door and jumped inside. Just as quickly, he stepped back out and swung the door away to look at the wall behind it.
There, a small Tiffany-style stained glass window shared the wall with a poster-sized and very official looking neon-yellow foreclosure notice — signed by the town’s sheriff. It had hung there for forty-seven years. These fine houses had been built for the well-off managers and small businessmen of the area, and each and every one had been up for sale by the banks who’d foreclosed on them. Each and every one was now occupied by the few squatters hardy enough to remain in Lily, which included the old sheriff. The notices were considered good luck, having given homes like these to people who could never have afforded them otherwise.
Max threw the foreclosure notice a big kiss and jumped back inside, where four mostly German Shepherd dogs eagerly waited. Max ignored them so flagrantly that they shied away as he launched into a spastic fashion show before the floor-length mirror in the formal entry. He danced through a series of exaggerated modeling moves ending in a lame clown-face while whooping and hollering, “Ya like it? Haaa haaaa. Like it! Yeah! Yeah!” He doned his huge fur hat and twisted left and right, trying to determine his good side. The hat still worked! “What’d ya think? Waddaya think? Ha, Haaa.”
The dogs, tails slapping the hardwood floor, didn’t know what to think.
Representative Thomka’s shiny leather heel tapped the sacred Council Chamber’s polished terrazzo floor. Murthy squirmed in his seat and nudged him. “Who?”
Thomka swallowed his impatience. “That guy — Tuke.”
“He’s a damn Quaker,” whispered Murthy.
“My eggheads tell me to worry.”
“Advice you’re all too eager to take.”
On stage, Arch Bishop Hendrix stood radiantly in her warm-pink spotlight as the organ music rose for her finale. “The corporate state, in concert with The Church, is returning prosperity to all who have earned God’s blessing. All who tithe at the altar of faith.”
More applause.
Thomka shifted uneasily in his seat. “It’s growing. Some kind of game. A damn game these Quaker geeks have been developing for decades. Getting bigger and bigger. And it’s political.”
Murthy hadn’t heard a word he’d said. He was looking at a girl near the side of the stage.
Thomka whispered pointedly, “This Tuke thing is serious.”
“You only think it’s serious. There’s no conspiracy, no one to oppose us. It’s just a game.”
“It’s not a game. It’s hundreds of unaccountable coincidences. All pulling in different directions — independently. You don’t have all the information I do.”
Murthy mumbled in a bored voice, “If they can’t get together, they’re not a threat. If they can’t communicate, they can’t get together.”
“They are communicating. Their game platform has evolved into a communications network. The biggest network on the planet, and they’re weaponizing it.”
Murthy glowered in frustration.
“And these social games, what ever the hell they are, have captured everyone living outside the walled cities.”
“How? They’re primitives living off the residue of the past.”
Thomka grinned darkly. “Like I said, you don’t know everything. I’m telling you, it’s growing . . .”
Murthy cut him short. “I put a guy on it weeks ago.”
“Who?”
“An old gun dealer turned private security.”
“I hate clichés.”
“He’s a pro. From New Jersey. Not prone to optimism.”
Thomka shrugged his shoulders. “And?”
“And nothing. He left a message on my cell. He’s onto something somewhere in Pennsylvania. In the mountains. The Alleghenies.”
Thomka stared at the side of Murthy’s head as though it was a tumerous growth.
Murthy, oblivious to all but a potential conquest, nodded in the direction of the curtains. The pretty young aide with the water pitcher peeked out and rotated her thumb and little finger by her ear. Call me.
Murthy turned to Thomka with a self-satisfied smirk. “The lovely miss wants to graduate from girl who keeps the water glasses full, to girl waiting in a limo.”
“I admire her ambition,” mocked Thomka. “You got this Tuke thing under control? Or don’t you?”
Murthy squared his shoulders, thrust out his chest, and crossed his heart. “Hope to die.”
Thomka shook his head doubtfully, and answered, “Live in hope . . . die in despair.”
4
Fred reached The Church still reveling in Max’s joy, which made him feel young. He was only fifty-six and remembered a time when entering a church with a gun slung over your shoulder would have been unthinkable. How silly that seemed now. He went around to the side door, down three worn, flagstone steps, and let himself into the basement.
There in the Sunday school, bingo hall and emergency services center, sat Pastor Scott Stephens at a dented metal desk. He looked up from a computer screen through foggy horn-rimmed glasses that enlarged his eyes and caused him to squint in a not very flattering way, but he always wore an irrepressible smile, like a schoolgirl’s charm bracelet. A wispy shock of gray hair stood out electrically all over his head, around and through his ears and down into a shaggy beard. He wrinkled his nose and yelled, “Fred! I got it. I got it. I got it! A whole two-kilo barrel of black powder. One of the guys from the Chinese factory gets it smuggled in.” He made a droopy-eyed face to show that he was trying to be funny, and said in his best imitation Chinese, “Tawoo Keeewoozzz.”
Fred, who kept the village well fed in winter on deer and small game, was happy to hear about the gunpowder, but that could wait. “We found a dead body up by the cliffs,” he said without a hint of drama.
“Where?” asked Pastor Scott, turning down his TV monitor and the ranting Arch Bishop Hendrix.
“Where the rocks go straight up. Below the Twin Spires.”
“I know right where you mean,” said the Pastor. “Do you know who it is?”
“No. He’s not from around here. Dressed to the nines. He’s connected. An upright citizen. Froze solid. From Pittsburgh, maybe even New York, by the looks of him.”
Fred could see that Pastor Scott was intrigued, but fearful. In these times, a frivolous involvement in the death of a person from the protected class was not without consequence.
Pastor Scott snapped his fingers. “Let’s call the cops,” he said, then dove into a pile of papers on his desk and quickly produced a plastic-laminated list of important phone numbers. “Just got this a month or so ago. Has all the new changes. Latest consolidations. Don’t know how they do it, but they do.”
Fred waited with an uneasy smile. He loved Pastor Scott, but it took a moment to acclimate to his overflowing conviviality.
“We have to call the National Police Force now. Short and sweet. The ninth consolidation. Got it right here. No more local cops at all. One force. New numbers. In fact,” he said, pointing an instructive finger at Fred, “that’s the whole point. There’s only one number now. Much cheaper. More efficient.” He snatched up the phone like a mighty sword.
A door slammed back near the furnace, announcing the entrance of Gina, Mrs. Pastor Scott, carrying today’s collection: nine jars of vario
us jams and preserves and a freshly deceased wild turkey. She was much thinner than her husband, and refused to trim her jumble of gray dreads, claiming they kept her head quite warm. “What’s going on?” she asked, tuning in to the commotion.
“Ah, well . . . ah. Fred and Max found a frozen body up at the Twin Spires,” Pastor Scott mumbled, praying to every saint in heaven she was not going to poke her nose into this.
Fred slid his hat off, nodded his hello, braced himself for the impending squabble and tried not to smile, but his smiling eyes gave him away — Gina always smelled of the Lilac Vegetal she brewed in her kitchen.
Pastor Scott raised an old military satellite phone—there were millions of them left over from the war— and dialed. He did not want to get this wrong, which would invite his wife to take over. Pastor Scott was sort of in charge in Lily, but Gina was far better suited to running things. He’d been given The Church franchise during the Conversion and Privatization Phase. No one else wanted it. Only a few of Lily’s residents attended The Church, and only to watch TV, but Pastor Scott was pragmatic enough to see the perks of owning the franchise, since the price was right. No one had agreed to give him authority, but no one had disagreed upon the many occasions he had taken charge.
His eyes rolled around their huge cavities as he spoke. “Hello? Hello. This is the Pastor of The Church in Lily, Pennsylvania. We’ve just found a dead body.”
He waited for a response, staring vacantly, then put his hand over the mouthpiece. “On hold. See, just one number. Efficient. Very efficient.”
Fred watched as Pastor Scott muttered, “A huh, a hum,” before ripping his hand from the mouthpiece. “What?” He waved to Fred for help. “What’s my longitude and latitude?”
Gina looked to Fred with a limp-lip, and folded her arms across her ample chest.
“OK. I’ll call back when I have that.” Pastor Scott hung up.
“Get outta there!” Gina shooed him from his seat. “That’s how they handle every call. They ask stupid questions so you’ll hang up. You just got played.” She plopped down at the computer and began poking at the keyboard.
