Children of the Program

by Brad Cox

  She longed to tell the world.

  “Grayson, I'm married!”

  “I'm so happy for you! Are you leaving this planet, anytime soon?

  “Yes.”

  “I guess it was in the stars! Soon you will dance before the heavens and enter The Beyond.”

  “Our child will guide the world and dance between dimensions. It will shine down a new day, ushering in enlightenment for future generations to marvel. Pain will be destroyed by the heightening vibrations of our graduating awareness. The galaxy will have its new angel. He will be called, Marte.”

  “Wow. You've really put a lot of thought into this.”

  “I promise to keep in contact with you! I will not vanish without saying goodbye.

  Excited, Juno dropped the call and dialed her Irish heart assassin. Her lover pawed. Starting with a soft kiss to her neckline, he insisted on a celebration lap. Playfully, she pushed him away and awaited an answer.

  “Zane, are you sitting?” asked Juno.

  “I'm as comfortable as I can be, on this rickety old bar stool,” returned Zane.

  “I've consummated. Under a radiant sun, our child was conceived.”

  “Such poetry.” She motioned the bartender for a Jack & Ginger, inching closer to the glass. “I'll just go ahead and drown my tears. The heavens sure love torturing my lush soul. I finally make a real friend, and she's due to evaporate from planet earth in just a matter of months. Who in The Program am I going to talk about my boy troubles with?” asked Zane.

  “I'm not fading, yet! Has your situation improved?”

  “I've dated a cruel summer worth of loser guys, but nothing feels right. The more I think about Ben and our lives together, the more I remember.” Stirring her drink, her speech sputtered into an intelligible whine.

  “You're not giving up on us are you?”

  “I feel obligated, like I owe Ben a warm handshake and a real conversation.”

  “You'll never have sex like this,” Juno giggled, “With Ben.” Her interrupting lover clicked the receiver.

  “Maybe so,” she thought.

  Within hours of Juno's tease, Zane and Ben reconnected and resolved their past. Their conversation oozed with gut-wrenching joy, the ache of lost time and the empathy of past woes. Knowing they may fail to give the world a Crystalline, they sharpened their steely knives, removed the pain, and vowed to take a stab at another future together. Swallowing her transgressions, Ben understood her hunger for anew. On impulse, she invited him to Dublin. She wanted to find a cottage together. He was happy to drift from the harbor, frolic in her fields and make an abrupt shift to familiarity. They laid sturdy roots and began rebuilding their endless romance together.

  +++

  Though sharing lifetimes could become a civil union between two Children of the Program, and may have held a certain timeless wonderment, Grayson knew it would be wise to warn Magnus about the dangers of forcing unrequited love. “Sometimes man misreads the signs of a wanted fate, fooling his lovesick eyes with the perversions of a prejudiced thought. Ben and Zane weren't meant to be witnessed as an example. They are an unresolved anomaly,” Grayson rehearsed, before dialing Magnus and handling Elisa's bidding.

  “Have you shaken the desert's dust off, Magnus?” asked Grayson.

  “I think it's still stuck in my eyes. I really can't see too clearly, these days. I'm dealing with a lot of unresolved conflict and emotions from that day. It's all very heavy, you know? God's special children, right?” asked Magnus, rhetorically.

  “I think we are all tasting the sour sting of that tribulation. Elisa?”

  “What?”

  “Look, it's nothing. I spoke with Elisa. She's concerned about your frequent calls.”

  “What do you know?” asked Magnus. He became increasingly flush.

  “I know she has a boyfriend and is thinking about getting a restraining order!”

  “I'm done with this baiting conversation. Elisa and I saw God. She knows it and I felt it. I'm not going to let her drift into the sunset because we're a few thousand miles away. If I lived closer, we'd be together.”

  “I'm not trying to get a rise out of you, but you've got to leave this alone. I'm documenting everything. The others have shown their concerns. I offered to reach out and talk you off the ledge.”

  “You can't! Are we finished?”

  “She's over it. It's not a matter of geography, it is reality. Don't you think she'd make an effort, if distance was the only true obstacle?” Grayson grew agitated, as hot coffee dripped from his squeezed cardboard cup. “You weren’t sent here to be together. You're here to conceive and satisfy a calling. That's all she's trying to do. Please, Magnus, let it go.”

  “Fuck You!”

  Magnus hung-up the phone in a fury. He threw it against his bedroom wall and began stomping it with the heel of his old cowboy boot. He knew Grayson was right, but could no longer bear the song of truth entering his thick skull. He allowed their memories to reel like tape, until his sanity was a shadowy backdrop, and he was the sole playwright of his destiny. He was prepared to do anything for Elisa's adoration.

  “The sharper your love, the deeper I'll cut,” he laughed, carving her name into his forearm.

  chapter 23

  this is a warning

  Dez’s trembling hand muscles tightened. Closing his narrow eyes, he brought the tight trigger to an inevitable rest. The flash of a fired gun silhouetted his demonic body. A subconscious moment of clarity guided the barrel off of his defeated target. An anticlimactic dust cloud raised from the solid sands. “This is a warning,” he rattled. A cold southwestern wind blew across the desert as a dove flew from the fire pit and circled the camp. “Simon is worth more to us alive,” he regretfully muttered, encouraging the wild eyes of the night to stand back. Thirsty for blood, Max shook his head and paced.

  “You can't kill me,” insisted Simon. “Had my brains been splattered about these New Mexican sands, and the vultures stomached my thoughts, I'd never truly die and you know it. These crazed revolutionaries of yours, masquerading as a purpose driven cult, have a right to know the nature of your game. You're a sham!”

  “Tape and tie the wizard.” Dez stormed away, more enraged than when he'd left the diner.

  Simon's evening ended with the resounding thud of Max's fist. Unaware, he was beaten and tied to the propane gas tank attached to the back of Dez's trailer. They were willing to risk that possibility of gray wolves or rattlesnakes finishing the job, though Dez knew Simon’s knowledge of The Program and access to the chosen ones was invaluable.

  The cult was taxed by the raw excitement of nearly killing a man. One by one, they slunk to their tents and settled in for the night. They thirsted for a new hell-sent mission and adrenaline high! Resting uncomfortably in his dirty sleeping bag, their fuhrer plotted, trembled and detoxed his pores of bourbon woes. He felt shrouded by humiliation and emasculated in the presence of his cult family.

  “What if they question my sincerity or motives? I must make them see,” he garbled.

  Crystal was wise to keep a safe distance. Perching on a rock, she reflected. She'd bore witness to her mother's agonizing screams, and could still hear her abusive father's drunken slurs. Unfastening a tiny locket from her neck, she struggled to open her only connection to her stolen innocence. Tucked safely inside her tiny silver heart shaped picture locket was a wrinkled black and white photograph of a mother she'd never met. Gazing at the picture, a tear crept from her tired eyes. Though she beckoned for the only man she trusted to guide her, the moon never answered. The sound of silence was her only refuge from the pain.

  The dawn of a new day came quickly. She awoke on the desert floor. The hot desert sun made sleeping an inconvenience. Clanking a rusty spoon against an old coffee tin, Max played rooster. The rabid group was hungry for a breakfast of retribution, blood and eggs. Their animation distracted Dez from noticing Crystal's absence in the night. Their loyalty toward him never waned. They trusted his judgment t
o spare Simon and foamed for a new emotional fix.

  “I had asked all of you to keep detailed notes, and to research these alien kids on our computer. Some people tout them as divine, some refer to them as miracle babies and others simply profess they’re possessed by god or some supernatural force,” said Dez, rattling on like a broke record.

  “They are aliens. Here's to the enemy's enemies,” interjected Max, raising his ration of juice.

  “It doesn't matter what they're called. They are all born of a common thread. They are conceived with American lies and alien deception! I do not profess these articles in vein. How can a forest grow with the synthetic seeds of deceit? We must replant, by unearthing the disease,” Dez added.

  “What are you suggesting?” risked Max, speaking for the bewildered group.

  “I want you to hunt these bastard children and stop them. Our awakening is imminent.”

  “Exterminate them?”

  “Our reach is far greater than just the group we've assembled here. We've networked and grown exponentially. We need to reach out to our affiliates from across the globe and make them feel our urgency. Our next mission is a young Italian woman named Juno. She is a birther. She will use her body like a temptress and bring a counterfeit into this distracted world. I know her whereabouts and have a recent photograph,” said Dez. Pulling a folded piece of paper from his military ensemble, he passed her image around the camp.

  “Do you want us to kill her?” asked Max, holding her picture high.

  “We can send a strong eviction notice to the likes of Simon. Others know her, I assure you.”

  Dismayed, Simon mumbled behind the thick sticky barrier standing between him and reasoning. Taken aback by Dez's sentiments, he couldn't believe the spider web of lies his airplane had been caught in. Struggling, he tipped over and watched an army of shadowy demons crawl from the tiny cracks in the desert floor. Their energy inhabited the cult's veins and pumped arrogance into their swollen minds. Heat exhaustion and malnourishment lead careless whispers to fall from their lazy tongues. Simon recognized sanity was quickly distancing from New Mexico, and his escape was paramount. Wiggling his bound wrists, he pleaded for The Council to descend from heaven and peck through the thick silver strip. They never came. Paranoid by limitation, he feared the tears mounting behind his saturated mouth bondage would soon drown him.

  Huddling in cliques, the group discussed possible scenarios, police involvement and evacuation procedures. They were slowly becoming one body, operating with a lion's head. Michelle reached out to the European Cadence of the Sun sect, to see who might be able to rattle a few cages and roar for their cause. Wanting to minimize their liability, she hoped to organize a flash mob and start a rebellion without ever leaving the camp grounds. She knew if they could lasso the right media coverage, they could brand their cause and have a network news reality series.

  “This could be a crucial turning point for our cause,” said Michelle, leaning in to kiss Max.

  Dez used their networking powwow as an opportunity to visit Simon. He ripped the tape from his parched mouth, set him upright and poured whiskey onto his dry tongue. “You're not worth much to me, dead, is that it?”

  “You can't stop The Program! It has existed since the dawn of mankind. It'll always exist,” said Simon.

  “And so will I, if I never provide the world with a child. In case you've forgotten, none of this is being recorded in the Book of Records! The Council gave us a hall pass to freedom, and you threw it away. For what? If I can find these kids, and stop the participants of The Program from bringing new life into this world, I will become unstoppable. Indefinitely. Let that sink in. It's a new world under my order. A planet we could have ruled together.”

  “You've lost it!”

  “Who knows, maybe someday I can free my friends and family from the torments of the underworld. We can resurrect the bartering system, end world hunger and stop war. It's been a long time coming. I can be the second coming. The messiah. God's chosen one.”

  “To what gain? For what God?” asked Simon.

  “Who made who? God is what people believe it is. If they believe in me, they'll follow,” he paused. “We have tremendous power and we've been tortured. I'm avenging the ones who weren't as lucky as you and I. And you? What are you doing with your life, magic boy?”

  “I'd like to think The Beyond has a little more to offer than a cyclical earthly existence.”

  “You'd like to think, but you won't think in that space. Don't you get it? You'll cease to exist. You'll never see the ones you loved again! You'll never taste wine from the grail, nor lie with a woman; though, in your case, that might not be too uncommon. You'll never feel the warmth of the summer sun, nor bathe in the salty ocean. You'll just evaporate into the unknown. A phantom.”

  Simon struggled to fight his reasoning.

  “Simon, this isn't a magic trick. You make yourself disappear for the amusement of others, but what happens when the joke is on you? What if something or someone makes you disappear — forever,” he added.

  “I, hadn't...”

  “Are you're prepared to spend the next 1,000 or more lifetimes failing to measure up?”

  “I'd like to find love and validate my existence, if that's what you're asking.”

  “Don't we all, Simon? Don't we all. Where is the value or beauty in never bearing witness to your sacrifice, nor watching your tiny gift grow up? This child, who is able to bring so-called miracles into our reality, abandoned by his father.”

  Dez slowly re-taped Simon's mouth, patted him on the cheek and pulled the revolver from his waist band. “I hate to be an Indian giver, especially when it comes to life, but,” he said, slowly loading bullets into his gun.

  “You can't kill me, Dez!”

  “Actually, I can. I thought I needed you, but you did my bidding before you ever left Israel.”

  “How?”

  “Grayson and the group already know you're here. Had you kept your mouth shut, I'd still be able to use you. In the event you cease to surface or reappear, Mr. Wizard, they'll come looking for you! Everyone likes a game of hide and seek, right?”

  “I can help you. I don't want to die like this.”

  “It's nothing personal. Keeping you here is a liability to my plan and ego.”

  “Don't do this!”

  “Don't worry, we'll meet again. Just consider this a down payment on our future together!”

  Dez slowly backed-up, lowered his gun and fired six shots into Simon's head and heart.

  “I thought you needed him!” screamed Crystal, running toward the scene.

  “I gave it some thought...”

  “And?”

  “I didn't!”

  In that moment, the cult members were no longer revolutionaries, but accomplices. To cover his sins, Dez dug a shallow grave for Simon's bleach bathed body. His followers scrubbed the iron-stained trailer of splattered blood and unceremoniously lowered him into the plot. He was headstoned with an old rusty upright sundial that they'd found lying in the heaps of grass surrounding his lot. Simon was permanently a symbol of their time and calling. As a final gesture of cruelty, Max and Michelle spit upon the dirt. Packing the dirt, they drove their point home with the heels of their boots.

  +++

  Brainwashed and immersed in denial, they began training for a cause only tested by ego. In the afternoons that followed, they practiced martial arts with their sensei and prepared for an alien uprising or the FBI. As a mark of their dedication, members were tattooed with a fiery Japanese Taiyo sun. It was strategically placed behind the left ear, and meant to symbolize the forgotten light of their dying world. The mark was shrouded by an eclipsed sun. It was a rite of passage. A follower's dedication was tested with initiation practices. Robbery, prostitution, drug dealing and recruitment were all pre-qualified down payments. New members had to provide adequate identification and human collateral. From there, official members were interviewed and verified by Max and Dez. The
growing army couldn't risk an intelligence breach, nor their fearless leader being carted off to jail and standing trial.

  Simon's death did not sit well with Crystal. In the days following his murder, she questioned her loyalty, beliefs and their escapism. With his recent flex of power and the group's willingness to follow, she was left gripping the reigns of an unchained bull. His horns seemed poetically pointed at her distancing heart. Leaving the Cadence of the Sun meant accepting there would be retribution. Being Dez's girlfriend meant knowing the devil, and fearing his depths. Escorting her fallen prince to the end of the long driveway, far from the cackles of the tribe, she risked stoking the flames of his insanity. For once, she wanted his undivided attention and to feel the stillness of their autonomy. She wanted things to be the way she had remembered. Her voice was muted by his aura. The bugs chirped out their longings for life, as her heart nervously throbbed, mustering the guts to speak.

  “Baby, what's your plan? Where are we going with all of this?” Crystal squeezed his coarse hands, accentuating her genuine plight for a sincere response. They walked slowly, and stared toward the stars above. The glow of the moon humbled him. He sensed her qualms and adorned a devil's modesty.

  “I know this is new to you and I know you have your doubts, but when this is all said and done, you'll have brought hope to mankind. They walk around like zombies, sacrificing their precious time for blood money. They don't know what it is to live, any longer. I can't be the father you never had, but I can try be an example,” offered Dez.