Strange Animals

by Chad Kultgen

  Karen felt a tear roll down her cheek and immediately told herself it was hormones. Then she imagined a different version of her daughter. She imagined her with the same blue eyes from her father, but then she imagined those eyes without the fire she saw in them in the other version of her daughter. She imagined this more likely child as a girl with little special curiosity about life or anything else. She imagined her daughter marrying an average man and having his average children, and never working, and never contributing to anything or thinking critically about the world around her. She imagined her daughter as a normal woman, trapped by her inability to see the dangers of traditional gender roles and relationships. She imagined her daughter as being happy, but that wasn’t enough for Karen.

  Karen knew that parents had some influence over the people their children became, but certainly that influence wasn’t absolute, and statistically her daughter would be far more likely to be uninteresting than she would be likely to do anything of note or even to be likely to have an interesting conversation with her mother about any of this. For Karen, that would be more heartbreaking than anything else. And there was the dilemma for her. Even if she wanted to have the child and keep it without giving it up for adoption, she knew that the great likelihood was that her daughter would be completely and utterly normal.

  She didn’t consider herself to be normal by any means. She thought about how her parents had raised her, and how influential they had been in shaping the person she’d become. They had given her the room she needed to explore things for herself, and they never pressed religion on her or any publicly held views of what a woman should or could be. She knew she’d be the same way with any child she could ever have. But she had no real idea how much her upbringing had contributed to her adult personality, and how much it was the product of innate factors. She couldn’t say how much of her would have been the same, no matter what her parents did. Things like intelligence and curiosity, Karen thought, were random. Despite any kind of parental impositions in a child’s life, certain things were dictated at birth. And if her child had low intelligence, or no interest in intellectual pursuits, there was virtually nothing she could do to reverse that. This was her worst fear where a possible child was concerned, but it was a fear she’d never considered before that moment. It was a fear that betrayed in Karen a secret desire for a better life for her unborn child.

  And beyond that, Karen could feel a bond forming with this child. She felt as though the child was on this journey with her, that some partnership in the overarching plot of this entire ordeal had been formed. That would be a difficult partnership to end. She’d already ended one relationship that meant more to her than anything, and she knew that losing another would be even more difficult.

  She tried to put the question out of her mind and think instead about what the next few weeks would be like. She was quickly approaching the end of her second trimester, and although there had been a very significant uptake in donations as the end date approached, the account still had only twenty-seven million dollars. At this late date it was extremely unlikely that she would hit her goal, and abortion was a likely enough prospect that she had started looking into where she would have it done. She knew she would have to keep the location a secret, in order to avoid not only paparazzi but also the potential for harm to herself or anyone who worked there. When she called around, she found that every clinic was open to having Karen as a patient, and most of them even told her that they supported her and thought what she was doing was admirable.

  She knew she would also have to make some kind of public acknowledgment of the results of her experiment. Every major news organization in the country had offered to cover a press conference live, if she chose to give one, but she wasn’t yet certain that a live press conference was the way to go. She considered simply posting an update on her site and allowing that to be the only message she gave the public on the deadline. But as she thought more and more about the abortion itself, for the first time she realized that the apprehension she felt had little to do with the end of the experiment, or even the fear surrounding the procedure. She felt fear at the possibility that the life she was ending might just be one of the most amazing women she would ever meet.

  chapter

  twenty-eight

  Needing gasoline, James pulled into a gas station in Kingman, Arizona. When he went inside the pay for the gas, he realized that his remaining funds were quickly dwindling. As the man behind the register handed James his change, a dime slipped between his fingers, hit the floor, and rolled to a stop on another patron’s discarded hot dog wrapper. On the wrapper was an advertisement for Terry Fator’s puppetry show in Las Vegas. James quickly fixed on the sight as another potential sign from God. But this one was more intricate than some of the other signs he’d seen, more difficult to discern. But just as he knew that to hear God’s voice he had to listen very carefully, James rationalized that to see some of God’s signs a person might really have to look very closely at the things that were right in front of him.

  The catalyst for the sign was a dime. James knew the number ten to be of great biblical significance. James had done extensive study in the numbers of the Bible, and he knew the following things to be true. He knew there were four biblical numbers that were indicative of perfection or completion: three, seven, ten, and twelve. While all these numbers represented perfection, each was linked to a different type.

  Three was divine perfection. It appears 467 times in the Bible. It is the first of the four spiritually perfect numbers. The three righteous patriarchs before the flood were Abel, Enoch, and Noah, and after the flood the righteous fathers were Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—both groups of three. There were twenty-seven books in the New Testament, which is mathematically represented by the equation 3 x 3 x 3. This is completeness to the third power. Jesus prayed three times in the garden of Gethsemane before his first arrest. He was crucified at the third hour of the day at 9:00 A.M., which was three squared, and died at the ninth hour, or 3:00 P.M. Three hours of darkness covered the land while Jesus suffered on the cross. Three men were crucified on that day. Christ was dead for three full days and three full nights before resurrection. Only three people saw Jesus’s transfiguration on Mount Hermon: John, Peter, and James. Only three people were allowed to ask God anything: Solomon, Ahaz, and Jesus. God gave Israel three gifts: his law, the land, and their calling. The Bible mentions only three angels by name: Michael, Gabriel, and Lucifer. Another angel is charged to cry three woes to those on Earth, to warn them of more trials to come. And the most important reference to three was, of course, the Holy Trinity.

  Seven was spiritual perfection. It appears 735 times in the Bible and was the foundation of God’s word. There were seven days of the week, all created by God, who claimed the seventh as the holy Sabbath. The Bible was originally divided into seven major divisions: the Law, the Prophets, the Writings, the Gospels, the General Epistles, the Epistles of Paul, and the Book of Revelation. The total number of originally inspired books was forty-nine, represented mathematically by the equation 7 x 7. In the book of Hebrews, Paul uses seven titles to refer to Jesus: Heir of all things, Captain of our salvation, Apostle, Author of salvation, Forerunner, High Priest, and the Author and finisher of our faith. In Matthew 13, Jesus gives seven parables. In the Book of Revelations there are seven churches, seven angels, seven seals, seven trumpet blasts, seven thunders, and seven plagues. And, of course, Jesus performed seven miracles on God’s holy Sabbath day.

  Twelve was governmental perfection, symbolizing God’s power and authority. It appears in the Bible 187 times. Jacob had twelve sons, each of whom represented a tribe, and from each tribe twelve thousand were to receive salvation during the end times. God demanded that twelve unleavened cakes be placed in the temple every week. New Jerusalem contains twelve gates. The walls of New Jerusalem are 144 cubits high, mathematically represented by the equation 12 x 12. Solomon appointed twelve officers over Israel. The first scriptural recording o
f Jesus’s words occurred when he was twelve years old. And, of course, Christ chose twelve disciples with whom to surround himself.

  Ten was the number of perfection of God’s divine order. It appears 242 times in the Bible. It was the number of physical creation represented in the design of the human body by God himself, who gave us ten fingers and ten toes. In Genesis 1 the word God is used ten times. A tithe was dictated to be one tenth of a man’s earnings, and it was said to be returned tenfold by God’s grace. A Passover lamb was selected on the tenth day of the first month. Ten generations of man lived on Earth before the great flood. And, of course, God gave us the Ten Commandments, by which all things are to be governed. There was no need for an eleventh, nor would nine have sufficed. Ten was the number of laws man required to honor God’s divine power in the way he saw fit. It was, to James, a perfect number.

  All of this ran through his mind as he saw the dime lying on a piece of paper advertising Las Vegas. It was clear to him that whatever he was to do next would take place in Las Vegas, and a part of him knew that this is where God would help him gain enough money to complete his journey.

  He picked up the dime and put it in his shirt pocket, knowing that it would be an instrumental tool in whatever was to happen next. He asked the man behind the counter how far away Las Vegas was, and the man told him it was only about an hour and forty minutes away. After a moment, James realized that that meant a hundred minutes, represented by the mathematical equation 10 x 10. It was perfection squared. He got in his car and headed to Las Vegas.

  On the road, however, he started to worry that he was headed into the heart of sin. He knew Las Vegas was called Sin City, and he knew that it could tempt him in ways he had never thought imaginable. He took the dime out of his shirt pocket and held it tight in one of his hands. He was protected by God, and no matter how difficult his trip to Las Vegas would be, no matter how much Satan might try to pull him from his path, James knew that God would shield him.

  As he got closer to the city, the traffic grew worse and worse. There were so many cars, and so many flashing lights, and the buildings were so big. He could almost feel the sin radiating from the city, pulling people in, destroying their lives and souls. He vowed that he would remain steadfast and uphold all his Christian principles for as long as God needed him to be in the city. He knew that if he could get through this, he could get through anything. He would be stronger for having lived through this, and as he parked his car in the parking lot of the Venetian, he thanked God for the opportunity to prove how devoted he was.

  James walked from the parking lot into the hotel’s casino floor and immediately felt he was in a place designed by the Devil. The noises and lights were so overwhelming that he was slightly disoriented. The smell of smoke was everywhere, and he knew it had to be a conscious effort by Satan to make himself feel more at home. He surveyed the area looking for an indication of what God might intend for him to do, and he saw an LED display next to a table of people. The LED board was simply a series of numbers. The top number was a flashing seven, and the two immediately under it were also sevens. Seven, seven, seven was the holiest number. James immediately went to the table and asked the person running the game what it was. She explained the basic premise and rules of roulette to him, and he took the dime out of his pocket. He placed it on the black ten before the same woman explained to him that there was a ten-dollar minimum on any bet at the table. James took this as a further sign that he was doing what God wanted him to.

  He had a little more than fifty dollars. He put ten of it on the black ten and watched as the woman working at the table spun a tiny white ball around the rim of the roulette wheel. He watched as the ball’s momentum slowed, and it finally fell into the spinning wheel where it was kicked around until coming to rest on black twenty. He watched as the woman swept everyone’s chips and his ten-dollar bill away from the table, before allowing any more bets to be placed. He quickly tried to interpret what it could have meant. Twenty was twice the number he bet on, and twice the value of his bet. Ten times two was twenty, times two again was forty. This was roughly everything he had left. God sometimes demanded a great show of faith when he was testing his followers, and James knew of no greater show of faith than to trust God with everything in a place of sin. So James took the remaining forty dollars out of his pocket and placed it on the number ten. Once again he watched the woman spin the ball around the edge of the wheel, and once again he watched the ball fall and bounce. And this time the number it came to land on was the number ten. It wasn’t surprising to James, and he openly thanked God at the roulette table for his victory. The woman running the table gave James several chips that totaled one thousand, four hundred dollars in value. He thought about cashing them in, but he started doing some math in his head.

  Fourteen hundred divided in half was seven hundred, which was represented by the mathematical equation 7 x 10 x 10, or perfection times perfection times perfection, or perfection to the perfect power of three. This was clearly a sign to continue and place a bet on the number three. But then, just as James was about to put everything he had just won on the number three, he heard someone behind him yelling out the name Timothy, and he knew this to be a more certain sign from God. It couldn’t be anything other than a reference to Timothy 6:10: For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. He realized that God’s symbols in the numbers were a warning to stop, to leave this place with the gift God gave him before temptation swallowed his spirit whole.

  James took his winnings to the cashier and left the casino with fourteen hundred dollars, which he knew would easily get him to Los Angeles and help him subsist while he awaited God’s further instruction. He pulled out of the casino garage and made his way toward the freeway, where he saw a giant entrance sign reading, “Los Angeles – 270 miles.” He looked at his GPS and saw that the final stretch of highway that would lead him into Los Angeles, where he would complete God’s mandate, was the 10.

  chapter

  twenty-nine

  Karen was tired. Not only was the fetus growing inside her getting big enough to keep her almost constantly exhausted and in physical discomfort, but she hadn’t slept the night before. Her final deadline had arrived, and she was sitting in a car outside the same CNN building where she did her interview with Anderson Cooper. Having weighed all her options, she had concluded that announcing the results of her experiment on television would achieve the best effect and reach the most people. The night before, she had added a link to her site leading people to a live webcast of the press conference she was about to give.

  Everyone already knew that her financial goal had not been met. The running tally on her website was at thirty-eight million dollars when the deadline arrived. There was no mystery about what had to happen next, but Karen would seize the moment to explain the outcome of her project and the decision she’d made about how she would handle the rest of the experiment.

  She had driven to the studio with Tanya and her father. Her mother had decided to stay at home, explaining that she’d seen enough angry protestors at the doctor’s office and she had no desire to go through the same thing again. As Karen drove slowly by the studio, she realized that her mother had made the right choice. Since she posted the announcement about her press conference on her website, huge groups of people, both protestors and supporters, had been sleeping outside the building in tents on the sidewalk. This time, however, there were many more police officers present than she’d seen at any point in the past. She wondered what each of them might think about her and about what she was doing. She wondered whether, in the event that she would require their real protection, they would be capable of providing it. It occurred to her that some of them might have no problem seeing her dead. She hoped that their sense of duty would spur them to protect her should it be necessary.

  Her father said, “Jesus Christ, you really sti
rred up a hornet’s nest.”

  Karen said, “Yeah. That was kind of the point.”

  Her father said, “Well, I know I haven’t said this yet, but I want you to know I’m proud of you, and so is your mother. What you’re doing and what you’re about to do is on the fringe, for sure, but you really got the whole country’s attention with your idea. That’s pretty rare. So for what it’s worth, we love you and we’re proud. I just, you know, wanted you to know that.”

  She kissed her father on the cheek and said, “Thanks, Dad. That means a lot to me. Seriously.”

  Robert said, “Well, you mean a lot to us. Now, how in the hell am I supposed to get in the building with those shitbags blocking the entrance?”