The REIGN: Out of Tribulation

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking about,” Rodney said, glad for confirmation that Daniel had, in fact, been intrigued by this small detail of the story. On New Year’s Eve, Rodney only took note of that part of the story when he saw Daniel perk up, but Rodney had forgotten about the cowboy robot, until he began to brainstorm with Emma about activities to interest Daniel.

  “Well, I went by Jay’s place this morning to buy some supplies, and I asked where that house was. He remembered pretty clearly and gave me the directions. What do you say we take a trip up there to see if that robot’s still around?”

  “Yes!” Daniel said with a blast, assuring that his feelings on the subject came across loud and clear.

  Emma and Rodney laughed. Emma started clearing dishes off the table and said, “You two go ahead, I’ll clean up.”

  Daniel thanked his mom with a brisk kiss and headed out to the van. Rodney took a bit longer to kiss Emma goodbye and thanked her for doing the cleanup.

  “Thank you, for thinking of this for Daniel,” she said, smiling up into Rodney’s face.

  As he headed outside, Rodney wondered at how easy it was to get along in his new little family, wondering if it was simply the years of suffering and resistance that had mellowed them, or if there really was a sort of fresh and light spirit in the air. He didn’t go very far down that path, but set it aside to consider later. During his hours of carpentry work, Rodney often poked around at abstract questions, either on his own, or with whoever worked alongside. Lately he had been trying all the angles he could think of regarding the biggest idea he had confronted, namely, what it would mean if Jesus were really ruling on a throne in Jerusalem?

  In the van, Rodney decided to try out this subject on Daniel.

  “You think that there’s any chance that the whole thing in Jerusalem, and all the strangers with supernatural powers, has to do with aliens?” Rodney asked, breaking the silence.

  For a few seconds both of them pondered the fact that such a question actually made sense to sane people in this new world. Five years before, Rodney would have been committed to a mental health institution for seriously pursuing the topic. In fact, five months ago no one took such ideas seriously.

  “I’m still not sure,” Daniel said. “I guess I’m having a really hard time believing that Jesus and Heaven actually exist.”

  Rodney hesitated a second, then, assured that Daniel liked a challenging discussion, he said, “You doubt Jesus, but you believe in aliens?”

  Daniel laughed. “Pretty weird, huh?”

  “Yeah, not great choices, from my point of view,” Rodney said sympathetically.

  “I guess, if you look at it one way, more people really believed in Jesus before than believed in aliens.”

  Rodney mulled that thought, it seemed right to him. Whole institutions of immense size grew up around belief in Jesus, but alien fans remained relegated to the lunatic fringe.

  “I wonder if you and I have a hard time accepting that it’s Jesus there in Jerusalem, because we were invested in not believing before,” Rodney said.

  Daniel raised his eyebrows. “It is hard to admit when you’re wrong. I guess that would be a pretty big thing to be wrong about.”

  Rodney sniffed a short ironic laugh.

  “Did you go to church when you were a kid,” Daniel asked.

  “Yep, my mother was really into it, my dad less so,” said Rodney.

  “I actually went when I was little,” Daniel said, “because of a friend who invited me to church. But neither of my parents made a big deal of it either way.”

  Rodney nodded, turning onto a north-bound highway. “Another thing I’m curious about, is whether the missing children are really there in Jerusalem.”

  “That’s pretty creepy,” Daniel said. “No matter who’s doing it, abducting kids is really creepy.”

  Rodney nodded but said nothing, getting lost in thoughts about Jason Cooper and his crusade to go to Jerusalem to search for missing children. He couldn’t blame Jason and others for trying, but he had a bad feeling about how it would turn out.

  After one wrong turn and some back tracking, Rodney found the house they were looking for. They recognized it by the broken porch swing that Jay had described. That a house like this stayed undisturbed, testified to the depopulation of the country. There were now many more houses than people, at least mortal people like Rodney and Daniel.

  They parked under a huge elm tree, eyeing the house and feeling the emptiness of the yard and buildings. Once again, Rodney touched his pistol for a second, considering whether he should carry it into the unfamiliar place, but he rebuked himself for not adjusting to the new times and followed Daniel, who had not hesitated.

  When Rodney caught up with Daniel, the boy was just starting to slow down, as he stepped up creaky wooden stairs to the porch. Arrow focused on the robot, Daniel had forgotten about the feeling of entering a strange, empty house. Rodney took the lead, overtaking Daniel’s newly cautious pace, but he too stepped quietly and looked all around, before opening the screen door and knocking on the solid, old front door.

  Rodney could see why this house might have remained generally untouched. He had driven past it once, missing the driveway, half overgrown with sumac trees and thistles. Even the county road leading up to that driveway had been difficult to find, around a lonely stand of poplars at the edge of a farmer’s field. The location didn’t invite passersby and the house itself didn’t promise great treasure.

  No one answered the knock, so Rodney knocked again and tried the doorknob at the same time. When the door yielded, he pushed it opened and called out. “Anybody home?”

  Stepping into the silent darkness of the lonely house, Rodney stopped suddenly at the sound of movement coming from his left. Daniel bumped into him and held his breath. Rodney tried to keep fear out of his voice when he called a second time. “Anybody here?”

  Again, no answer. Rodney now turned toward that disturbing sound, which seemed to come from the kitchen. He was just wondering if his pistol would have been a good idea, when they heard another sound, something knocked over and then the chittering of an animal. Rodney laughed and stepped more boldly into the hallway leading to the kitchen. As he did, the raccoon that had been exploring the house jumped down from a kitchen counter and stood on his hind legs, as if greeting the visitors.

  Daniel poked his head into the hall just in time to see the greeting from the masked invader. He laughed aloud as the raccoon waved a paw in his direction and then headed for the pantry, from which he apparently escaped outside. By the time Rodney and Daniel had followed him onto the linoleum tile, the raccoon was nowhere in sight.

  Recalling Sara’s description of the room upstairs, and uncomfortable foraging in such a pristinely untouched house, Rodney turned immediately toward the staircase at the back of the living room. The layout spoke of a farmer building his own house in stages, as so many did a century and a half before. As they passed through the living room, Rodney could see that a few pieces of furniture had been removed—probably by Jay and Sara.

  As they climbed the old oak stairs, the house groaned a faint complaint about the weight of two people ascending at once. On the landing at the top of the stairs, they had only to look at the choice of doors for a moment, before noticing through the opening of one of them, the freckled face of a ventriloquist dummy wearing a cowboy hat and vest. Rodney pushed the door open and Daniel followed close behind.

  Entering a room to so many pairs of eyes disturbed both of them. Daniel had to restrain an instinct to turn and run. Rodney looked around the room and pointed, when he spotted the robot. Daniel smiled. The six-foot tall android was a bit older than Daniel had hoped, but the look of him hinted at some sophistication, especially compared to his plastic and wooden companions in the room.

  Rodney spoke, breaking the spell of the eerie, silent eyes, “They must have sold a few acres to pay for that one,” he said gesturing to the robot. Before the war, a good android, even
for entertainment purposes, would have cost as much as a luxury car. This model, however, wasn’t new and, perhaps, wasn’t purchased new.

  Approaching the robot curiously, Daniel looked him over before touching him. He started searching for controls, a power switch, or something. He finally found something in the middle of the robot’s chest and he pushed.

  A light behind the android’s eyes lit up and, in a muffled voice, he said, “Hey, that tickles.”

  This time Rodney startled and Daniel just laughed. He had seen a few expensive toys like this and he knew it would say something when powered up. Rodney laughed at himself for jumping at the voice. The only robots he had ever spent time with, in the military, looked much less human and spoke in much less friendly tones.

  It took two or three minutes for Daniel to figure out how to get the android to accompany them down the stairs. The former occupants of the house apparently did nothing to initialize or train their mechanical friend, perhaps intimidated by the technology, or maybe they had done all that and years of disuse had reset him to his factory startup mode. In any case, Daniel succeeded in getting him on his feet, persuading him to walk out of the room and to slowly step down the stairs. Rodney insisted on Daniel walking behind the robot, in case the big cyborg lost his balance.

  When they got to the living room, Daniel removed the cowboy hat that had hung around the robot’s neck, leaving it on the old sofa.

  Rodney smiled. “Hey, what’s a cowboy without a hat?”

  To Rodney’s surprise, once again, the robot responded. “Like a cow without a moo,” he said, in a comical intonation that ended with a very life-like moo.

  They all three laughed. Rodney was not certain he was going to like this clownish computer on legs, but Daniel was clearly enjoying every minute.

  When they got to the car, Daniel said, “Maybe we should let him drive.”

  “What’s wrong with my driving?” Rodney said, in mock protest.

  “Do you drive, robot?” Daniel asked, curious if he had an answer.

  “I only drive cattle,” said the programmed response.

  Again all three bipeds laughed. Daniel persuaded their new companion to sit in the back and then had to decide whether he should sit up front with Rodney. After a bit of indecision, he chose the front, realizing he would have plenty of time to explore his new toy when they reached home.

  After a bit of joking and trying to get humorous responses from the robot, the android began to run low on power and finally shut himself down. In the relaxed silence that followed, Rodney and Daniel entertained their own thoughts for a minute. Then Daniel said, “Thanks a lot for thinking of this. I didn’t think I should ask about it when I heard that story from Sara.”

  Rodney looked at him. Then he said firmly, “It won’t hurt to ask from now on.”

  They exchanged a look that planted a flag between them, marking a new level of trust for the fatherless boy.

  Back home, Rodney and Daniel had to struggle to get the robot out of the van, the complex tech toy weighing well over a hundred pounds. During the awkward process, Daniel remembered that they could have recharged the robot’s battery from the car’s, but they had already begun pulling him out. Emma repressed laughter at the sight of her two men hauling a body out of the back of the van.

  After plunking the inanimate droid on Daniel’s bedroom floor, Rodney left the room with Emma. She had news.

  A family just west of them had been robbed the previous night, someone breaking in, tying up the couple and forcing them to reveal where they had hidden their gold coins. Rodney looked at Emma, taking in the news and wondering what kind of robbers these were, whether it was the one-time desperate act of drifters, or whether they should take precautions. Rodney looked at the doors and decided to go into town to buy some locks. He would also ask whether any progress had been made in opening the bank.

  “Better be careful with what you say about banks,” Emma said him, only half-serious.

  “Umhmm …” Rodney responded, noncommittal.

  As he got in the van, Daniel came running out of the house, with the robot’s head under his arm and gold coins jangling in his pocket. Emma and Rodney had decided to let Daniel keep his gold, as a learning opportunity, feeling that there was little risk to doing so.

  Daniel panted. “Can I come into town with you? I wanta see if Randi can help me with upgrading this guy’s brain.”

  Finding it hard to say ‘no’ to a guy holding somebody’s decapitated head under his arm, Rodney agreed. Socks stood in the drive watching them pull away. They had never taken Socks in the van and Rodney liked the idea of the coyote staying with Emma when she was alone, so they just waved goodbye to the pale eyes and lowered nose of Daniel’s best friend.

  In town, Rodney dropped Daniel at Randi’s store, once he could see that she was in, and then drove to Hyo and Young’s store. When he entered, Young appeared from the back room within a few seconds. Rodney forgot why he was there at first, distracted by the thought of whether Young had just popped in from Jerusalem.

  “Locks,” Young said, reminding Rodney of what he had forgotten.

  “Ah, yes, that is why I’m here. How did you know?” But even as he asked this, he knew the answer, and didn’t really want to hear it. “Never mind. So do you have any good dead bolts?”

  Young shook his head. “No, but I’m sure Jay has some, we gave him a case of new deadbolts.”

  Rodney nodded, turned to go and then stopped to ask the question that now provoked him. “You don’t sell locks? Is that intentional?”

  Young smiled. “Yes, Rodney, that is intentional. We are building a world where locks will no longer be needed,” he said. “But Jay can sell you locks; he is from the old world.”

  Rodney pursed his lips and then decided to go ahead and say what he was thinking, “But people are still robbing houses, so that new world isn’t here yet.”

  Young looked more serious. “That is true; it is here fully for some of us, and here only in part for others.”

  That cryptic answer bugged Rodney. “What about police? Is that getting rebuilt too?”

  “Not in the way that you think of police,” said Young. “But the man who robbed the Thompson’s house last night has already been confronted for his crime.”

  “They caught him?” Rodney sounded surprised. “Who caught him?”

  “Some of my brothers are charged with handling such violations of the rules of the Kingdom. They have confronted the robber.”

  “Was it someone from around here?” Rodney asked.

  Young nodded. “Yes, it was someone trying to raise money for a flight to Jerusalem, to find his missing children.”

  Rodney stared at the tall Korean, whose smile seemed a bit subdued just then. And again, he yielded to an urge to ask something. “Do you know what happened to the children?”

  Young nodded. He hesitated a second, as if waiting for something, and then proceeded. “The children were considered innocent, and thus were taken up to be with our Lord, as were all those who loved him. The children are part of the new Kingdom.”

  Rodney felt a slight vertigo as this sunk in. “All of the children?” he asked.

  “Yes, those who were below a certain age.”

  “What about children who had...who were...already dead?”

  “They had already joined our Lord in Heaven.”

  “Where are they now?”

  Young looked at Rodney with deep compassion. “Your son and daughter are on the Earth, serving our Lord and his Kingdom, in the way he has assigned to them. They are very happy and you need never worry about them.”

  Rodney shook physically for a few seconds. That Young’s explanation fit well with Anna’s helped him absorb it. The news about the disappeared children, however, worried him. How would he feel if he had discovered that some ruler, divine or otherwise, had taken his children away? It was different for his children, whom he had already lost.

  As with many of his encounters with
these recycled saints, Rodney felt drained from what he learned and couldn’t pursue any more questions, sensing that he had taken in all that he could handle. Back in the van, Rodney had to orient himself, grateful that he remembered to go and pick up Daniel at the computer shop, but feeling less motivated to reinforce his door locks.

  Daniel stood waiting on the porch at Randi’s shop, the head of his robot still under his arm. Rodney stopped next to the curb and Daniel hopped in, full of enthusiasm.

  “Can we make one more stop? Randi sold me an upgrade chip, but she says I really need to get new software to make the robot smarter. She said there’s a guy at the north edge of town that knows lots about robots.” All of this came out in a single breath.

  Rodney, still numb after his conversation with Young, simply yielded to Daniel’s robust momentum. When they reached the address Randi had given him, Daniel pointed to the building, an old grain exchange that had been converted to an apartment and a storefront. The storefront didn’t look very inviting for business, but a ring at the doorbell brought a timely response.

  Dale Shelton answered the door, a thirty-seven-year-old man with long dark hair and two weeks growth of beard. His disheveled appearance, and brusque manner, stopped Daniel in his tracks, but Rodney picked up the initiative.

  “Uh, Randi, down at the computer shop, said you might be able to help us.”

  Dale noticed the robot head under Daniel’s arm and his demeanor softened. He smiled and said, “That looks like an S6000 android head. I haven’t seen one of those for years.”

  For Rodney, the hammer and nails man, Dale met his stereotype for tech guys. He was, however, glad Daniel had found someone who could help him. They followed Dale into his dimly lit shop, its front window covered with brown paper and only one lamp lit inside. Several computers lined counters and shelves around the room, LED lights blinking, displays showing a Web page or a black command prompt window, with white text scrolling down it.

  In unfamiliar territory, Rodney nodded for Daniel to take the lead. Daniel mustered his courage. “Um, I was wondering if you would know where I could get new software to get this guy to be more responsive to human conversation, to use his processors better.”