Divine Destruction (The Return of Divinity Book 1)

by Suggs, Lester

  Griffin turned and began to walk south. There was a vacuum surrounding his ears, now. A pressure he couldn’t define. The wind blew his hair, the air tasted of salt, and the sun winked off the small waves far off the shore. Everything about this dream seemed normal. Dream? Dream!

  “Whoa,” Griffin said.

  He was startled to hear his voice match his intended tone, volume, and pitch. But he was positive, absolutely position, this is a dream.

  “This is crazy.”

  Griffin looked around nonchalantly. The scene was his plaything. The sky, beach, and ocean seemed out of a travel postcard. Frankly, Griffin couldn’t recall a vacation day as pleasant as what was before him. Then he noticed the figure seated atop a dune to his right. If the man were standing he would be tall. He had long dark hair, a full long beard, dark skin, and matching dark eyes. The stranger was dressed in what resembled reams of white sheets. The man was the only other person on the beach, Griffin checked. Being unable to resist the need to walk towards the figure Griffin did so. There was no caution in his steps, no fear.

  Slowly, and from the elbow, the man raised his right arm; he opened his hand, with his palm facing Griffin. He repeated this motion with his left; palm up. Even though there was nothing intimidating or striking about the encounter, Griffin became afraid. Not of the unknown man, but of the unknown. His chest felt constricted. He followed the path of the robed man's outstretched arm which came to his own feet. There was something there, in the sand. Griffin saw an object partially buried a few feet in front of him. Griffin squatted and dug into the moist sand. The object came free easily enough. It was a brass ring twelve inches in diameter with a thickness of a quarter of an inch. Equally spaced around the ring were eight simply carved wooden characters, each an identical carving resembling an ancient Buddha. Each Buddha was attached to the main brass ring by a small ring.

  The scene, the robed man, and the ring of Buddhas made no sense to Griffin. He looked up from the artifact and saw the man had tears on his cheeks, although his expression was somber. Without warning, the air pressure suddenly increased. Griffin winced against the pressure. It was quickly uncomfortable. Like, diving too deep under water. Then a wall of air crashed upon him. Sound wove with the gale of wind that pushed at his back with such force that he doubled over at the waist. Griffin's left foot planted to catch him from falling forward. The wind only lasted a moment before it was followed by an erie pause in both air movement and sound. Griffin realized the wind was caused by a pressure vacuum nearby. He waited a moment, testing the calm then took advantage of it raising his head to look toward the biblical figure. He was gone. Vanished.

  The Equation

  Space: The embodiment of mathematical expression. Within this everything known and unknown is born, exists, and is extinguished. Space is the least common denominator. All else is contained within and about its pull of darkness. Every great mind looked toward space and imagined endless equations. Some look toward the stars and find peace, or wonder, or more questions than they can answer, or form into words. Multidimensional realities, celestial bodies of solids and gases, the definition of light, black holes, dark matter, quarks, time, the God particle are all residents of this most magnificent domain. Space contains the explanation and the secrets of the core fabric of reality and is the multi-layer symphony of math and matter, pulsing to an incomprehensible rhythm. This is the equation. The equation is God. God is the equation.

  And today, mere moments from now – the master equation of the cosmos will pause and produce a simple zero. This will not be the end of all things. Zero has been reached before. The equation will start up again with the same fierce bombardment of crushing values. The equation is God. God is the equation.

  Within the Virgo cluster, the Messier 87 galaxy wobbles inside her elliptical body with the roar of inevitable extinction. At her heart is a galactic nucleus — a gigantic super massive black hole, with a cosmic jet ejecting particles four to five times the speed of light out to a distance of five thousand light years. Surrounding this destructive engine at the galaxies center are rings of radiation and debris formed by the pulse of the jet’s exhaust. The black hole’s event horizon is the front door to the next dimension, and the jet is the door into this reality. Inside the jet flume the laws of physics and reality itself break down and are bent beyond mathematical boundary. Beyond, only mankind.

  A cataclysmic variable star plods along in a decaying orbit near the center of Messier 87. Consisting of a primary white dwarf, “Alpha,” and a secondary donor star “Beta,”. Both have orbited the black hole for billions of years. Beta gives its hydrogen fuel to Alpha. In doing so Beta appears leased to Alpha. When Beta’s orbit to Alpha comes very close the white Alpha flares brilliant in the night sky churning the extra hydrogen. This celestial ballet of orbits within orbits continues with measured and determined precision as it has always, until…now.

  The universe gongs silently, a minor background single vibration, and a finger of God pushes slightly in the constant inky black of night. Beta, flying clockwise outside the orbit of Alpha around Messier 87’s center, stops forward progress and is pulled towards the white dwarf. Alpha — hurtling along in its own clockwise orbit — she stutters. Beta eased into a reverse orbit while pulling the dwarf out of its orbit, giving way to the gravity of the crushing black hole. The two begin a new binary orbit upon each other. Their orbit around Messier 87, collapsed.

  Beta is now being pulled toward Alpha. Hydrogen pours from Beta to Alpha as the two become closer. Alpha flared white against the darkness and vibrated wildly. The hydrogen gas burning against Alpha’s core. Both suns fall toward the black hole faster and faster as hot gas begins to fling off of Alpha from the gravitational whip the two create. Suddenly, their flat orbit was thrown rotating end over end. Then the orbits flop over completely. Their two gas swirls begin to join. Beta flared but nothing like Alpha. Her mass consumed all she could from Beta. What she couldn't hold onto shot out into a small galactic swirl.

  Beta, unable to resist the larger Alpha, was sucked into Alpha's core in a brilliant white explosion. The combined mass crossed the black hole's threshold. The boundary of the black hole rippled and swelled momentarily. Then the black hole’s tail exploded white plasma. It’s length increased eight fold. The enormous blowtorch raged, vibrating against the cosmos. Gabriel was ejected from the blast, a painful scream still upon his lips. Pure angelic energy dispersed through space. His energy spread out across a vast distance while the black hole's tail roared with deliciousness on its celestial feast. With a rush, Gabriel's energy began to coalesce. At first his shape was undefined but the confusion only lasted until the program was recalled. Soon, Gabriel's form was that of an archangel, but not of bone or flesh. When any living entity, including Archangels, crossed from one universal dimension to another, the transfer — or transplacement — was always flesh to energy. Humans call this ‘death’. Flesh to energy. Earth to Heaven.

  Gabriel, the slayer of worlds, most lethal of weapons, the Herald of God, straightened and held himself motionless relative to the massive exhaust. The wash of radiation, energy, and light were beyond measure; however, Gabriel was unaffected. Transplaced from Heaven, and in his current form, all other matter and energy passed through Gabriel. The density of angelic energy compressed and re-compressed as Gabriel took on more and more of his familiar Archangel mold. His mind knew no other form. More energy compressed and became brighter and nearly distinguishable against the tremendous river of fire of the black hole's exhaust. Without will or emotion, Gabriel's mind began to awaken from the transplacement event. Not empty, just blank, emotionless, uncaring. Once the energy density of Gabriel's new form reached its maximum, the stream of codes given him by the Dominion angels began to decipher from within. Gabriel was basically, rebooting. Sewn into the fabric of Gabriel's energy, stream upon stream of data begin to dance. His form remained motionless. The cosmic destruction continued on without Gabriel's attention. Silent. Emotionless.
Devoid. Uncaring. Unaware. The first data blocks completed and began to unfold into awareness. The “who” of Gabriel was answered. The “why” of this reality was answered. The reason behind “who” and “why” are presented. The “where” is answered. Gabriel boomed into motion and assumed the form of a ball of white light. His launch created a vertical puddle in Messier 87's tail. Gabriel's mind was consumed with the deciphering, unraveling, and encoding of information.

  The name “Griffin DeLuca" appeared in Gabriel's consciousness and his speed accelerated past that of light. Concentrating upon the name, Gabriel sensed the formation of images. Murky shapes and varied hues of darkness swam inside his mind's eye coalescing slowly. Gabriel's speed was now beyond three times the speed of light. As the vision took shape, Gabriel's need to arrive emerged. Understanding directly equated heightened speed. The image formed the likeness of a human male. Four times the speed of light, the image sharpened, clarified, and became known. With a voice deeper than the oceans, Gabriel whispered, "Griffin DeLuca.”

  Arrival

  Griffin was blasted backwards off his feet. The trumpet blast shook Griffin's vision. Sand blasted his body. His clothes pulled at their seams. Griffin could feel the blood vessels in his nose and eyes pop against the wall of sound. His body was tossed bonelessly against the beach with a thud. The wind was whooshed out of his lungs and lost in the blast of noise. In his dream blackness took him.

  Griffin sat up so fast his face nearly crashed into his knees. He released a moan as he fell over onto his side. His arms flopping lifelessly in front of him. He was exhausted. His body spasmed. He opened his eyes and looked around his familiar bedroom. Early sunshine washed the room evenly. Griffin was comforted with its yellow glow. But there was a difference here. His normally straight and clean bedroom was a tossed salad of personal belongings. Griffin craned his neck to take in his surroundings. The cell phone was not on the bedside table, clothes were everywhere, ejected from the now opened closet door. His watch lay by the closed bedroom door. The door was cracked from bottom to top right down the middle.

  An hour later, Griffin noted with displeasure that he was running twelve minutes behind the established normal schedule. Further displeasure crossed his mind when he realized he had no other route into Pittsburgh except the west parkway. Griffin punched his radio up and down, scanning for news channels that may have information on a local quake event that happened last night. And, adding to his annoyance, he noticed, he was paying little attention to the traffic in the Ft. Pitt Tunnel. There were no news of the quake.

  "There had to be an earthquake." Griffin rarely spoke to himself in the car, rarely spoke to himself at all, but this had been a serious event. His home damaged.

  Griffin switched off the radio, thought of a play list on his iPhone, and then dismissed that too. Relaxing his shoulders, he yielded to the emerging beautiful day, and exhaled a long slow breath.

  "Stop fighting the universe,” Griffin said as he repositioned his weight in the car. Conceding to the relative quiet of the hum of the road and wind Griffin thought of last night's dream. It was odd that he could so easily recall the dream. The older he got the faster dreams vanished. He often joked, to himself, that when he reached fifty years old he would have forgotten going to bed by morning. Last night's dream, though, was amazing. The sand, vacuum of sound, the robed figure, the ring of statued Buddhas, what the hell did it mean?

  Griffin wasn't a person who gave in easily to superstition. Having been raised Catholic by his mother, "hocus pocus" wasn't in Griffin's vocabulary. He couldn't claim this last thought with certainty. Mother had only kept him under the Catholic umbrella of learning until fourth grade. After their return to Pittsburgh, mother had switched their faiths to Episcopal. Diet Catholic. Soon after, mother had guilt-forced him to volunteer as an acolyte, assisting the priest with Sunday services. After many years he had become the head acolyte and was slowly exposed to the 'under meaning', of the church. A business disguised as a religion. During an earlier separation of his parents, Griffin’s grandmother had dragged him to the local Baptist church. And just like that, Griffin was Baptist. A couple of years of hell and brimstone followed. Looking back, Griffin considered this a darker time. During his adult years he became agnostic, and eventually atheist. Sifting through his religious past had no foundation with this dream. Griffin couldn’t correlate his past to the dream.

  After parking his car, and grabbing his coat, gloves, and keys, Griffin exited the parking structure and made his way down to the automated pay machines. As he was thumbing with his debit card to insert into the machine, a fellow commuter walked over to the machine on Griffin's right and began the same pay process.

  “I’m going to miss summer,” the stranger said.

  Griffin glanced over. Many people this far north truly dreaded Fall, only because Fall was the harbinger of Winter.

  “Winter wasn't so bad last year,” Griffin said. “And that quake last night, wow!"

  Griffin made a hand gesture to match his raised eyebrows.

  The stranger was reaching out to select a button but stopped at Griffin's remark.

  "Quake?" he said in a soft bark. "What quake?"

  The man’s face turned into a sour concern as if someone had just informed him his dog was on fire.

  "You didn't feel the quake last night?" Griffin asked.

  The stranger deepened his furrowed brow and shook his head ever so slightly. Griffin returned the furrowed expression and decided to ignore the guy.

  Out in the street Griffin turned left and headed down Penn Avenue even more befuddled about what had happened last night. He forced thoughts of work and today's crowded schedule into his mind. These weren’t pleasant thoughts. Griffin wasn’t fond of his job. Worries about an early meeting — who was that with? — afternoon status reports, touch points with subordinates, lunch meeting, and more ran through his head like a kaleidoscope of ugly. Griffin never took medication for his A.D.D. Since his young teens, he felt this disorder gave him advantages in most situations and never wanted to feel out of control, never for a moment. But mornings like these, Griffin's A.D.D. only created anxiety on top of more anxiety. “Fuck,” Griffin murmured.

  Whispers

  Walking up to Liberty Avenue, Griffin noticed a confused elderly black woman looking in both directions. The woman’s expression held genuine fear of the length of Liberty Avenue. She was dressed in a long warm overcoat, fantastically colored and ornate, but faded from time. She carried a purse large enough to hide a goat. The head scarf tied tight around her silver hair gave the impression of squeezing out her face like toothpaste. Each time she attempted to step out, to cross the street, she would recoil and step back. The woman’s lips trembled. Her eyes darted in despair. Motorists took advantage of her disorientation and made the most of left and right turns around her corner. She wilted like a flower in the dark.

  Griffin arrived at her side, the cross walk’s orange flashing palms had become solid. The woman continued to look left and right as if her personal driver was going to appear from nowhere and save her.

  Griffin asked, "Ma'am, can I help you?"

  She turned her attention away from the traffic and looked up at Griffin.

  "Yes, please,” she said. "These drivers, all the cars, I'm afraid to step off the sidewalk.”

  "You can come with me. I'll get you across,” Griffin said.

  The signals changed and Griffin stepped out onto the street with the older woman on his arm. Her grip was steadfast and she was truly frightened to cross the main intersection at Liberty Avenue and 9th. At a moderate pace they crossed the street together and Griffin delivered her to the opposite corner.

  Far off in space, the automaton Gabriel focused attention on Griffin. The Harold and Warrior of God narrowed its thoughts and it’s speed slowed instantly to sub-light.

  "Within thee I shall be delivered and the word brought forth,” Gabriel spoke inside of Griffin's mind.

  Gabriel had made th
e first connections inside of Griffin's mind, taking over a few neural connections for the briefest of moments. This was the way Archangels had prepared vessels while making the journey to any planet. Softening the blow before physical contact.

  “Huh, what was that?” Griffin said in the direction of the elderly woman.

  "Thank you,” she said as she turned toward Griffin and looked him the in eyes. "I was afraid there were no Angels left in the world.”

  Her words puzzled Griffin. The paralyzed him. The woman turned and walked away into the crowds of commuters as Griffin made a stumbling effort to walk. Replaying the old woman's words in his mind, Griffin's thoughts became more clouded. Had there been two voices? Sound muffled. Griffin's head felt light, his entire body felt light, as if a strong wind would send him careening off the building walls like a discarded bit of trash. The overwhelming sensation of lifting off overtook all other senses. Griffin leaned against a facade of brick and pressed his face against the cool scratchy surface. He reached down and gripped the wall between bricks in an effort to glue him down.

  Faintly Griffin could hear the sound of someone talking. It was like a voice coming down a long hall, or out of a cave, deep and distant.

  He caught, "the word brought forth.” The next moment the sensation and voice were gone.

  Griffin took in a long breath and opened his eyes. Letting go of the wall and standing up, Griffin took inventory of his personal effects, and questioned his mind. A few of Pittsburgh's working class had stopped to witness whatever freak show was about to take place, but Griffin just walked away with a stoic face as if he ate crazy for breakfast every day.

  He arrived at work as he did thousands of days before, familiar and disinterested. The throngs of coworkers mashed into elevators silently. Griffin noted and graded the looks and availability of the women in the elevator with him. He allowed his mind a brief recess.