Mercury Falls

by Robert Kroese

  TWELVE

  Preternaturally dexterous fingers spun the tumblers.

  6…6…6.

  Click.

  “I should have known,” Christine said.

  The case opened to reveal what appeared to be an ordinary notebook computer.

  “Ask and it shall be opened,” Mercury said.

  “Isn’t it ‘knock and it shall be opened’?”

  “Whatever. I opened it, didn’t I?”

  “So what does 507 mean?”

  “507?”

  “The date the Apocalypse is supposed to start. Five oh seven. That was the number the lock was set to before.”

  “Ah,” Mercury said. “Synchronicity. Don’t read too much into it. It tends to happen when there is a spike of activity in the SPAM. You’ll likely see more of it as things progress.”

  “Things?”

  “The End Times. Armageddon. The Second Coming. The seams are starting to show.”

  “So this is… really happening?”

  They were sitting at a park bench at a rest area off Highway 4, just west of Sacramento. In light of Mercury’s inexplicable knowledge of the attaché case in her trunk and General Isaakson’s death, Christine was finding herself entertaining some truly absurd notions regarding all that had transpired recently.

  “Like clockwork,” Mercury said. “They’re following the SPAM to the letter. Guess they didn’t need me after all. Although I bet they’re freaking out about Isaakson’s missing briefcase by now.”

  “And you’re really….”

  “An angel, yes. Wanna see another card trick?”

  “No!”

  “Easy. Man, you’re jumpy.”

  “Jumpy? This is the end of the world you’re talking about!”

  “I know,” Mercury said. “Blows, doesn’t it?”

  “Can’t you do something to stop it?”

  “Not likely. Somebody’s obviously got a transplanar energy trace on me. You saw what happened with my card trick. Imagine what would happen if I really started to interfere with things.”

  “So you’re just going to let this happen?”

  “Who do you think I am, Christine? I’m a friggin’ cherub. Do you know where I rank in the angel hierarchy? Cherubim are the bottom of the angel food chain. Hell, if we were any lower, we’d be….”

  “What?”

  “It’s not important. Trust me, there’s nothing I can do. It’s not personal; I like this place. I’d rather not see it end. That’s the main reason I’m not helping out with the….”

  “The main reason? You kinda sorta like Earth, so you’re not going to help out with blowing it all to hell? What other reasons do you have?”

  “Well… I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not really a team player.”

  “Oh for… Remind me to thank you for your lack of participation when the moon falls out of the sky. So what is this damn thing anyway?”

  Mercury tapped the power switch, and the computer began to boot up.

  “This,” he said, with a flourish, “is one of the Four Attaché Cases of the Apocalypse.”

  “One of the four… Isn’t that supposed to be horsemen of the Apocalypse?”

  “You have to understand that these things are allegorical. They didn’t have laptop computers when John had his vision on Patmos.”

  “And the closest thing he could come up with was horsemen? That’s not even close. How about… I don’t know… magic boxes of the Apocalypse?”

  “Oh, yeah, because ‘the four magic boxes of the Apocalypse’ sounds really ominous.”

  “It’s just the first thing I thought of. I’m sure he could have…”

  “Watch out!” Mercury cried. “Here come the four magic boxes of the Apocalypse!”

  A nearby family moved to a more distant picnic bench.

  “Fine,” said Christine. “So this is one of the Four Attaché Cases of the Apocalypse. What do they do?”

  “Depends which one it is. This happens to be the Attaché Case of War. See?”

  He held the case so she could see the black insignia of a sword-bearing horseman. Christine recalled wondering about the symbol when the case was on Isaakson’s table. Mercury set it back down. The screen now showed what looked like a satellite image of the globe.

  “Got it. So what do we have to do, teach this thing tic-tac-toe so that it will understand the futility of war?”

  “Not that simple, I’m afraid. The case isn’t much use to us. But in the right hands…”

  “Like General Isaakson’s.”

  “Right. Potentially very useful. It’s basically an intelligence device. Watch.”

  Mercury brushed his finger across the screen. The globe spun obediently. He tapped it and it stopped moving. He tapped it twice, in the vicinity of the Middle East. The screen zoomed in on the area west of the Mediterranean. He double-tapped it two more times, until the screen showed the border of Israel and Syria. She noticed that near the border on both sides were clusters of red dots.

  “What are those?” she asked.

  “Violence,” Mercury said. “More precisely, violent intentions. The Attaché Case of War is patched into an extraplanar system that monitors violent thoughts occurring anywhere on earth. Red patches are generally battlefields or gatherings of terrorists. Or soldiers.”

  “So this is how the Israelis knew where to hit. How they were able to move so quickly into Syria.”

  “Correct.”

  “But the Palestinian school.... Isaakson said something about getting bad information. One third of the ‘tips’ were wrong, he said.”

  “Yeah, that’s the rub with the Attaché Cases of the Apocalypse. They’re rigged to give you inaccurate information. Only two thirds of those dots are actually centers of violence. The others could be…”

  “Schools. Libraries. Mosques.”

  “Anything,” Mercury said. “Generally something that looks like it could be a legitimate target.”

  “Why two thirds?”

  “That seems to be the maximum acceptable threshold. If it were less accurate, the political backlash would be too great. But using the case in conjunction with conventional intelligence, the Israelis could be certain of being right often enough to outweigh the costs.”

  The phrase echoed in Christine’s brain. Outweigh the costs…

  “Also, there is some significance to the fraction two thirds.”

  “And that is…?”

  “In the Bible, perfection is represented by the number seven. Imperfection is represented by the number six. The decimal representation of two thirds is point six repeating.”

  “So the number goes on forever…” said Christine.

  “Yeah,” replied Mercury. “Always falling just a little bit short.”

  “So the number of the beast isn’t six six six….”

  “Technically, no. It’s point six repeating.”

  “But… why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why give the Israelis a faulty intelligence tool?”

  “In a word,” said Mercury, “Mayhem.”

  “Mayhem?”

  “I’m only guessing, but I think the idea is to provoke the Israelis into escalating the violence in the Middle East. Give them a weapon that promises to shift the fundamentals of the conflict in their favor, but at the cost of additional, entirely pointless violence.”

  “Violence that will inevitably provoke a response from the other side.”

  “Right,” said Mercury. “Humans are nothing if not predictable.”

  “Why did General Isaakson want you to have the case?”

  “He said that?”

  “His last words were ‘Take it to Mercury.’”

  “Well,” said Mercury. “That could mean anything.”

  “He was holding the case when he said it.”

  “Okay, but maybe he meant another Mercury.”

  “That’s what I thought at first,” said Christine. “I actually thought he meant the pl
anet.”

  “The planet?”

  “You do realize you share your name with a planet?”

  “Don’t remind me. Smallest planet in the solar system,” said Mercury. “After everything I did for the Romans. That’s gratitude for you.”

  “Mercury isn’t the smallest… Wait, you’re saying the planet is named after you?”

  “You know any other Mercurys?”

  “Well, there’s the god….”

  Mercury grinned.

  “You’re not a god,” said Christine.

  “No,” admitted Mercury, “but you’d be amazed at the impression you can make with a few miracles and a funny hat.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Let’s just say that I could tell you some stories about Tarquin the Proud that would make your hair curl.”

  “I have no idea what that means. And you haven’t answered my question. Why did General Isaakson want you to have it? How does he even know you?”

  “I may have… sort of… given it to him.”

  “What? Why? I thought you said you hardly knew anything about him.”

  Mercury shrugged. “I don’t. It was my job. Besides, I thought it might be a good thing, you know, helping the Israelis get rid of the terrorists and suicide bombers. I didn’t know the whole thing with the olive branch was going to happen. I hadn’t really thought it through at that point.”

  “You didn’t know it was one of the Four Attaché Cases of the Apocalypse?”

  “Why would I? I thought they were supposed to be horsemen.”

  “So who told you to do this?”

  “My boss, a seraph named Uzziel. He assured me it was in the SPAM.”

  “And was it?”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure,” said Mercury. “The SPAM is ridiculously long and hard to interpret. Nobody knows who wrote it, and it’s written in High Seraphic, a language hardly anybody speaks any more. I understand it has something like fifty different words for snow.”

  “You’re thinking of the Eskimos.”

  Mercury snorted. “I think I would know if the SPAM was written by Eskimos. The point is that sometimes we just have to take it for granted that the higher-ups know what they’re doing. So I did what I was told. But when I found out about the plans for the Apocalypse, I went AWOL.”

  Christine thought for a moment. “How did you know I had the case?”

  “Lucky guess. I knew you were with Isaakson when he died. And I’m one of the few – angels or humans – who knew he had the case. I figured he must have mentioned me, which is why you showed up at the house.”

  “That girl, Ariel – she seemed to be expecting me.”

  “She was, in a sense,” replied Mercury. “I gave her a list of the P.A.I.s, along with pictures when I had them. I figured it was only a matter of time before one of them showed up. Synchronicity, you know. The illusion of free will is straining under the weight of determinism.”

  “The what is doing what under what?”

  “Certain things have to happen for the Apocalypse to take place. They’re going to happen, no matter what you and I do. We can go with the flow, or we can fight it, but the river is going where it’s going. All we’re doing is splashing around in the stream.”

  “So then… what’s the point, if nothing you do is going to make any difference in the long run?”

  Mercury shrugged. “Splashing is more fun.”

  Christine’s eyes fell to the scattered red dots on the screen. “May I try?”

  “Sure.”

  “How do I get it to…”

  Mercury tapped a globe icon in the corner, and the blue-green image of earth appeared again.

  Christine spun the globe until the west coast of North America was visible. She tapped until the Bay area filled the screen. Dots of red appeared here and there, seeming to spiral out from an epicenter in Oakland. She zoomed to their approximate location. No state boundaries or other markings were present; she had to go purely by the topography and the masses of red dots marking congested areas.

  “Allow me,” said Mercury. He deftly navigated the terrain until Highway 4 was visible – not a red line marking the highway, but what looked like the actual highway. His finger zipped along the highway until he found a pathetic patch of green amid the desert-like landscape. Tap-tap, and a little brown building was visible. Tap-tap, picnic tables. Tap-tap.

  “Holy crap, that’s us,” said Christine.

  “That’s about as close as it’ll go,” Mercury said. He looked up and waved.

  A tiny figure on the screen, barely recognizable as Mercury, waved up at Christine.

  “Now slap me,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said, and slapped him across the face.

  “Ow! What the hell?”

  “You said to slap you.”

  “Yeah, but normal people hesitate a little.”

  “Sorry. I don’t really like you.”

  “Clearly. Okay, now watch the screen, and then slap me.”

  “Okay.”

  She drew her hand back to slap him again, then looked at the screen. Next to the figure of Mercury was a smaller figure cloaked in a bright red aura.

  “See that? Violent intentions. You don’t even need to actually slap me for the…”

  She slapped him again.

  A flash of red lit up the screen.

  “Ow!”

  “Sorry, I wanted to see what would happen.”

  “Glad to be able to satisfy your curiosity,” Mercury said, rubbing his reddened cheek.

  “Also, I wanted to slap you again.”

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  “So in this instance at least, the case was accurate.”

  “Yes,” Mercury said. “It will reflect any violent intentions. It also gives a lot of false positives, however. So it’s pretty accurate if you know what to look for, but if you just scan an area for violent intentions, you’ll get a lot of bogus info.”

  He tapped a spyglass icon, and then double-tapped the screen several times, causing the view to zoom out. He then drew a circle on the screen with his finger and tapped a button bearing a sword icon. An hourglass appeared for a second, and then the screen zoomed in on an area south of Sacramento.

  “Hmmm,” said Mercury. “Maybe something happening in Lodi.” He zoomed in further, until a bright red pinpoint appeared on the screen. He zoomed in on the red point, until a brightly glowing red figure was visible in the center of the screen. The figure appeared to be climbing onto the roof of a small building. A few yards away was another building, over which waved a flag bearing the familiar logo of Charlie’s Grill.

  “Lodi?” Christine asked. “You mean…?”

  “Yeah, like the song.”

  “You said what’s-his-name, Keith, the Antichrist, was in Lodi. Is that him?” She pointed at the red dot.

  “Hard to say,” said Mercury. “I know he shows up at Charlie’s Grill openings sometimes. But as far as I know, these sort of celebrity appearances generally don’t involve the celebrity climbing onto the roof of the building next door.”

  “So who…?”

  On the screen, it appeared that a crowd was assembling in the parking lot. The figure now glowed so brightly that his or her features were obscured.

  “Wow,” said Mercury.

  “What? Who is it?”

  “That, if the case is to be believed,” said Mercury, “is one very angry individual.”

  THIRTEEN

  A common belief on the Mundane Plane is that the lack of free will is what separates angels from human beings. This, of course, is rubbish. Given that the Almighty has preordained all things, free will is necessarily an illusion. As illusions go, however, it’s an extremely convincing one, and we angels are just as subject to it as humans are. The difference is that humans, being mortal, don’t have an eternity to make up for their mistakes, and therefore take the illusion much more seriously.

  One of the consequences of the hold this illusion has on human bei
ngs is the disproportionate amount of their limited time that human beings spend trying to figure out just how much freedom they don’t have and what, if anything, they can do about it.

  Two schools of thought have emerged on the issue.

  The determinist argues that in a universe governed by the principle of cause and effect, every event must have a cause. Further, if every event has a cause, then there is no such thing as ‘freedom’ – every event is determined by the prior succession of events. The actions of human beings are not immune to this rule: Everything a person does must have been determined by prior causes. Free will, then, is an illusion. Everything human beings have ever done – and will ever do – has been determined for eternity.

  The advocate of free will blames the determinist for excusing all sorts of crimes, from child abuse to mass murder. After all, if everything we do is determined for us, then there can be no such thing as guilt or responsibility.

  The determinist responds, “Well, what are you blaming me for? I didn’t make the rules. Don’t shoot the messenger and all that.”

  The free will advocate replies, “Why shouldn’t I shoot the messenger? After all, if I do, it won’t be my fault. It may simply have been determined from the beginning of time that I was going to shoot you.”

  Eventually the determinist concedes that perhaps the best option is for everyone to pretend that we have free will, since we don’t really seem to have any choice in the matter, and he rather likes not being shot at.

  The free will advocate begrudgingly accepts this compromise, but insists that he is being magnanimous and was in no way obligated to do so.[8]

  In the end, there isn’t much practical difference between the two positions, which explains how most people on the Mundane Plane are able to believe, to some degree, in both of them simultaneously.

  One such person was Danny Pilvers, who had been predestined from the beginning of time to be a would-be assassin. Danny Pilvers took very seriously indeed the illusion that he was making choices of his own free will. He had, he believed, made up his own mind to assassinate Karl Grissom, the Antichrist, while simultaneously believing that assassinating Karl Grissom was his inexorable destiny.

  As fate would have it, he managed to be wrong on both counts.

  Christine didn’t know, of course, that Danny Pilvers was a would-be assassin. To Christine, who was just pulling into the parking lot some fifty feet away, he looked very much like an actual assassin. The fact that no one else noticed Danny was a testament to how still he was able to be, as well as how preoccupied the spectators were, because his green camouflage clashed badly with the brick-red tile roof of the Burger Giant.