Jacob's Trouble 666

by Terry James

  “INterface Universal must be avenged, Five, Five, Zero. Give the command to incinerate this garbage heap!”

  The hologram focused into a sharp image; instantaneously, his eyes found those of the woman. She seemed to see him also, their spirits meshing in that moment, even though the hologram separated one from another. Karen! No...The face was too thin, the features too sharp, the hair too dry in appearance. Too old. It was not her. She was gone from him forever.

  “Speak the word ‘terminate’—It shall be done,” the voice instructed.

  Their times together flooded his memory with sadly sweet reflections of what they had been to each other. The girl in the hologram, her dark, beautiful eyes haunting, magnetically pulling him. Her eyes. Karen’s eyes. All thoughts converged in a reddish wash of pain; cranial pressure expanded, threatening to explode his head!

  “Terminate!” Jacob’s own voice startled him when he commanded the murder. It sounded as if the word issued from a part of him he did not know. Shutting his eyes, thereby not seeing the fruit of his act of self-preservation, was one way to relieve the inner torment, at least for the moment.

  But the lids refused to close. His eyes stubbornly fixed instead on the image. His concentration on that one face, whose look of resignation more compelled his attention the harder he tried to tear away. Her expression reflected pity for him, that he had chosen his own pathetic continued existence over her life. Reflected forgiveness for what he had done.

  When would the gasoline be released? Then ignited by the flame throwers, making his command to burn her irreversible. Any second, an inferno. The beautiful face would erupt in flames.

  “To mark this personal honor for you, Five, Five, Zero, we have decided to exterminate this pack of scum one by one. For your pleasure and ours.”

  When the voice atop the throne had spoken, the hooded figures encircling Jacob parted to form two lines, one on either side of him, stretching from the pyramid’s base to the walls. A noise behind him prompted him to turn from the throne to face another wall.

  “A very special execution, Five, Five, Zero...”

  The wall lifted from the floor and disappeared into the high ceiling, revealing a woman being held by her arms in the grip of black-uniformed controllers who stood in rigid posture on either side of her. Behind them sat a platform several feet tall, with steps leading to its surface, which had at its center a device resembling an ancient stock, with holes for hands and head.

  “A young female Jew, who has eluded INterface security for the final time. An enemy who is responsible for countless deaths of ‘IN’ brothers and sisters. Now we shall be entertained by her death.”

  The hooded figure atop the pyramid throne became mockingly compassionate.

  "However, our mercy is great. We do not inflict lingering pain, even upon those who would do us harm."

  Like fly-papered to walls, and psychologically and physically tortured and prodded and probed with their own deepest fears. Like setting babies on fire. Jacob's thoughts ran swiftly, calculating the INterface inhumanity he had witnessed, wondering what they intended to do to the helpless young woman who looked so frail beside the big controllers.

  "This Jewess shall die quickly for her sins against INterface Universal." Machinery emerged from the platform and automatically made its attachments to the stock device while the hooded figure continued to speak. "Each of these Jews will be executed individually rather than collectively as is usual extermination procedure. This liquidation will be recorded for future transmission through INterface Response Unity, to serve as example for those who work against the magnificent design for perfecting our world. Approach the Termination area, Five, Five, Zero. Enjoy with us the liquidation of this enemy."

  Some of the robed figures behind him walked forward, nudging him toward the girl and her executioners. Her head was down, her dark hair concealing her facial features. While he approached, she seemed to compose herself, erecting, then shaking her head so that her hair shook free from her face. Karen!

  From behind and from both sides of him, the hooded ones began chanting a low, humming mantra. They moved closer until they formed a tightly-wedged half circle around him. Their chants grew louder.

  Jacob's emotions filled with the haplessness and finality of his predicament. The sickening truth was that Karen would be butchered. He could do nothing to save her. But, that was not the truth either. The sickness in the pit of his stomach and the paralysis was cowardice-generated. She must die because to try to stop them would mean that he, too, would die. "Keep quiet and live," the inner voice kept saying.

  "Because of your sins against the Universal Mind and for your crimes against INterface, go to your death, Jews!"

  They knew! The monsters knew! That he was not John I. Carver. That she was Karen Mossberg, Jacob Zen's greatest love. In some presciently incredible way, they knew everything, and worked their plan masterfully, bringing it to this moment of supreme cruelty! It was, in its way, crueler than the death they contrived for the victim fly-papered to the wall, whose own phobia-demons caused the bats to ravage his body. Perfect revenge for Jacob Zen's sins against INterface.

  His love knelt before the gleaming stock, forced to her knees by one of the controllers, who stood behind her while the other INterface policeman, standing in front of the stock, gripped her hair and pulled it toward himself, forcing her throat against the bottom notch. The top half of the stock clanked against the lower, trapping her head. Another device arose electronically from the platform and swung into position high above her head, automatically attaching itself to the top of two stainless steel poles. The Decap Unit was ready to do its deadly work.

  They had manipulated him to this moment, like they shaped all things wicked. Karen's lovely face must tumble into the chrome box to provide them their sadistic pleasure. Droning, mechanized descent of the glinting blade, its edge touching the velvet neck his lips touched during those times of sweetness their love created in the nights of that long ago age. Her beautiful head in the gory ugliness of that metal basket. The blood gushing with each beat of the heart he had felt pulsing while pressed against her while she warmed him, insulating him against a world that was cold and cruel even then. Darkness descending with that terrible blade. Vomit rising from a point just beneath the Adam's apple. His legs, their strength draining. Consciousness fading... "Jacob Zen!"

  The voice, miles from him, behind him, bringing light again, retrieving conscious thought. "Jacob Zen!"

  His arms in the grip of strong hands, bracing him while strength came again into his legs.

  "Lift your eyes, Jacob Zen! Behold the goodness and mercy that is INterface Universal!"

  His brain processed a kaleidoscope of reds, yellows and blues in designs that swirled out of control behind eyes that would not focus. He, out of reflexive obedience, lifted his head to look at the execution platform. An apparition, formless, blurry, moved within the kaleidoscopic vortex, taking on shape and substance. Three figures standing between him and the platform of death. The two controllers, hulking and dark, one on either side of a small human form. Jacob blinked to clear his vision, tried to restore reason. Was this death? Had he died? "Jacob, it's me. It's Karen." Straightening, squinting, the forms became clear.

  "Karen?"

  "Yes, my love. It's really me."

  "Karen!"

  Tears came while he sobbed the name, drenching the flame of hatred for INterface, flooding his emotions with love for the one who meant everything to him; beautiful Karen, her arms outstretched to him... Alive!

  Their embrace, experiencing again her soft warmth, her fragrance, brought convulsions of joy. She returned his love, yet maintained control of her own feelings while they stood locked in reunion. When he looked, finally, into her eyes, seeing they were filled not with tears but with patient tolerance, his sense of propriety took control. He suddenly felt sheepish standing in the middle of the circle of their robed companions.

  "You see, Jacob. You must not be
independent of TRINITY, who loves us so much," Karen said, smiling, gently urging him to turn toward the pyramid of crystal. "I was wrong. Wrong about everything. Dr. Marchek was wrong. You have been wrong, my darling Jacob." Her worshipful gaze was upon the hooded one sitting at the top of the dazzling throne.

  "Approach, Jacob Zen." The words issued from the blackness within the hood. The tone was benign, unlike when it ordered the feigned execution.

  They moved together to the base of the throne, Karen's touch assuring there was nothing to fear.

  "You have been the prodigal, Jacob Zen. But you are home, now. Welcome, Son, to the kingdom you shall share with our brothers and sisters of INterface."

  Jacob was in shock from the past minutes of deception and revelation, and from holding Karen again after reconciling himself to her death — all of which served to short-circuit his hatred for INterface. The shock, however, began to wear off.

  Questions blazed to life again in his reeling brain. Chief among them: Why was he chosen? He had killed INterface agents and dealt the Naxos-centered state misery, proving his incorrigible animosity toward them. Why had they set him up for blame in the killing of Herrlich Krimhler? The drugging in Fredria VanHorne's Naxos bedroom and implantation of the Allegiant. Why did they hold him up before the world as assassin of the beloved leader? Make him the most hated, hunted man in history, then deceive him by forcing him to supposedly order the beheading of the person dearest to him, only to hold him to their breast as the prodigal returned? And, the most mind-scalding question of all, why would Karen, whose thought processes, actions and reactions he knew nearly as well as he knew his own, why would she take part in such a sham, knowing the danger he was in, knowing the agonies he had endured in the past few emotion-rending minutes?

  Standing at the base of the pyramid throne, he alone looked upward to the figure. The face, though still not distinguishable because of the stark shadows created by the hood, had sharp, dramatic features which caught small fragments of light that dimly outlined the brow, nose and chin. The black area, where the mouth should be, appeared not to move. The robed, hooded figures and Karen stood with heads bowed, while the voice spoke in a tone displaying displeasure.

  "Thou hast sinned against INterface, Jacob Zen. Against your brothers and sisters, who want only to be free to create the world of goodness and plenty they deserve. That world can be constructed only by the Six Ways to Peace given by Herrlich Krimhler. For your disruptive treacheries against that great design, you deserve everlasting punishment." The voice softened again. "However, because the chief building block that will bring heaven to earth is love, you are forgiven your trespasses and accepted into this Circle of Order, never to break its continuity, while we reach for perfection through the Six Ways to Peace."

  "Six Ways to Law," the robed figures around Jacob chanted softly when the voice from atop the pyramid paused.

  "TRINITY speaks! It shall be done!" the voice said from the throne.

  "Six Ways to Order," the encircling voices chanted in unison.

  "Six! Six! Six!" the voice said from the throne's apex.

  "Six Ways to Peace! Six! Six! Six!" the group surrounding Jacob chanted rhythmically.

  "Go now, and sin no more. Greet your family. INterface Body awaits, with great love and goodness and peace!" Feeling the crush of those closing around him, Jacob turned, catching glimpses of faces within the hoods. Hands touching, pulling him. Bodies pushing against Karen and him, forcing them together. The aggressors' incantational fervor growing, quickening in cadence, then, suddenly stopping. "Welcome home, Jacob."

  The voice, impossible to forget! From a life-long father-son relationship of love. The one who spoke removed the crimson hood. "Uncle Conrad!"

  His own joyous hug met with a comforting embrace by Wilson, who held him then at arm's-length, gripping his foster son's shoulders.

  "We were so wrong, Jacob... so mistaken. Fighting those who love us is the greatest wrong we can do. America's goodness, her humanity, is not sacrificed. She is enhanced and magnified, my boy. Her beauty and grace, her essence, is here within INterface Body. The unproductive and nonproductive, the callous disregard for humanism, for civil and human rights, the evils, have been purged by TRINITY, with the loving guidance of Master Manya. Pure love, free of contamination."

  All others in the circle removed their hoods and Jacob glanced around the innermost ring surrounding him, Karen and Conrad Wilson.

  Their features came into focus slowly through vision blurred with tears. Melissa Jensen and Fredria VanHorne, both looking at him with weak, uninterpretable smiles on their colorless lips. Kerry Vinchey, too, with the same dispassionate expression that would not translate into meaning. Silent, grinning mouths beneath stuporous, mannequin stares.

  "Your friends have been with you through your rebellion, while you found your way home," the voice from the shining throne said. "INterface Body shall never forsake our own."

  Pink diffused into lavender and lavender into purples of darkening hues, which mingled with and became lost within the deepening blue of the Jerusalem twilight. Never had the western sky appeared so beautiful. A horizon worthy of the one who walked at his side, her soft hair lifting gently and brushing against his shoulder when the uncharacteristically fresh, cooling wind caught it and moved its loveliness. Her delicate scent filled his nostrils, almost succeeding for the moment in wiping from his thoughts the altered realities of their changed world.

  Karen's physical presence was enough for now, the fire of her will seemingly quenched, leaving the impression of caricature. But she was here. Whether real or imitation, this Karen was here, and he would, for the moment, savor her on whatever terms, in whatever condition the masters allowed.

  They walked along the roofs ornate edge, his arm around her, her pretty face reflecting the colors of the day's final rays.

  "What happened after we talked on the phone that night I was in Brussels?"

  "We mustn't dwell on things that are in times before INterface. We gain nothing by looking into the flawed past, only by looking toward a perfect future," she said without hesitation, as if her response required no time for thinking. "I am well, aren't I? I haven't been harmed in any way. Why concern yourself with what was? We must go forward... into perfection. It is what was meant for us from the beginning."

  "Perfection? You really believe that this will lead to perfection?"

  "Yes I do, and you will too, after tonight, when you've heard Master Manya explain things. Only he can explain perfection. Master Manya is the singular, unchangeable example of love, my darling Jacob."

  "So I've heard. But what about the people they're killing? What about the babies I've seen slaughtered by this... TRINITY, who is leading us into perfection?"

  "Harmful organisms within Universal Body must be excised, Jacob, so we, as one, can evolve to the highest ascended order."

  "And what is the selection process? Why are some of us privileged to evolve while others are butchered or forced into slavery? Just like every totalitarian state that has ever existed? What about this genocide, Karen? The Jews. And where do we fit in? They know you and I are Jews."

  She stopped walking, and pulled away from him, a stern expression on her face. "You must never speak of the Jews, or of the past. Only of perfection, of the future perfecting of man by man."

  "Why didn't they kill me? I fought them. I'm still fighting them in my thoughts."

  "TRINITY will explain all tonight," she said, calming. "Patience, my darling, is a virtue second only to divine love for our Master Manya. He will explain why your rebellion has been allowed for the good of INterface Body. All things work together for the good to those who love TRINITY."

  A stranger walked at his side. Totally different from the Karen who had cared for him like no other. Not the same girl who was terrified that night they did with her whatever was done — changed her, like they changed, for the worse, everything they touched. They took her from him as surely as if they had taken h
er life. Killed Karen, like they were murdering so many others every second that ticked.

  "We're together again, Sweetie. Isn't that all that matters? We are together. One with TRINITY, through INterface Body. There is no higher purpose or condition in our present evolutionary state than to be joined one to another."

  She parroted, with identical inflection to the hooded one atop the pyramid, automatically saying words that preempted her own conceptual will.

  "Master Manya will give all answers it is good for us to know. He only wants the best for us. He will tell us why you are forgiven your transgressions against the great Universal Mind-Father."

  "You mean God?"

  "The only God, who was and is. Who has overcome the counterfeit who thought he could usurp the Great Cosmogonal Throne. He is the Most High. The Great Universal Mind-Father of evolved humanity. But it is not yet time for talk of these things. All will be revealed during the Convocation, when Master Manya speaks."

  To try reason with her or to question further would be futile. Her dark, beautiful eyes glistened, staring unblinkingly at the robed, hooded forms silhouetted blackly against the glow toward which he and Karen walked. Remain silent. Become a part of it all. The best course, for now. The hooded disciples closed around them and together they moved into the massive elevator before the door whirred shut, sealing them in an unsettling silence.

  Less than five minutes later, the robed apostles, including Jacob and Karen, stood motionless and quiet. Conrad Wilson, dressed in a gray business suit, sat with nine similarly attired men and two women at a semi-circular table that faced the crystal pyramid. From his position, Jacob saw that the group, diametrically unlike the one of which he was a part, was animated, excited apparently over what was about to happen. They chatted freely, gesturing and smiling under the unaffected watch of the robed holy man sitting at the sparkling pyramid's tip.

  Beyond the pyramid which everyone in the room faced, with Jacob's group standing 14 feet behind the seated men and women, the rounded walls slid apart in ten places, revealing ten gigantic viewing screens. They were dark for only a moment before simultaneously snapping to life, displaying video from the capitols of the newly created EARTHSPHERE-10. Jacob's mind reeled. His thoughts filled with remembered Scripture. The voice echoing in his head was that of Hugo Marchek.