Apostasy Rising

by J A Bouma

  May it be so, he thought to himself, for my poor Alkebulanan brothers and sisters.

  The priest felt guilty for desiring such judgment upon the heads of those who blew themselves up in the name of their god or government. But he also felt fear. He knew he shouldn’t, that he should face such trouble and terror with the kind of steely perseverance Paul spoke of in his letter to Christians undergoing the same threat. Yet even as he remembered last week’s tragedy, the pages of his New Testament began to flutter from his shaking hand. He clenched the holy book tight to stop his tremor, cursing his weakness, wondering what his father would think of him. What he was thinking of him from beyond the grave.

  The final words of his morning reading struck a chord deep within Alexander, cutting to his core.

  “With this in mind,” he read aloud again, “we constantly pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith. We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

  Lord, Jesus Christ Son of God, Alexander mouthed in convicted silence, have mercy on me a sinner. Make me worthy of your calling—whether as priest or martyr. Whichever you choose. Amen.

  He crossed himself and rose from his prayer pillow, head still foggy from his cold and now swimming from Paul’s words about the future that might not be too far off. He exited through the back door and back out into the still-waking world beyond to return to his parish home for the news Zakaria said awaited him from OneWorld News on DiviNet.

  A gentle breeze gusted off his beloved sea and up the bluff to Alexander’s parish life. He stood behind a lush hedgerow budding with pink and white flowers making an attempt to breathe in its salty goodness, a taste of it falling on his lips along with the lilies blooming below the cliff. He spied several boats already harvesting fish from its waters, sleek and shiny large metal pods of ultramodern sophistication and efficiency skimming along the surface. Long gone were the days of nets and traps, replaced by vessels that hoovered up the sea’s living creatures in earnest. Streams of hydro-waste streamed out the back of the vessels, glittering in the brilliant morning sun and offering a hint of the rainbow the good Lord above set in place to promise he’d stay his hand from destroying the earth with such oceanic fury.

  “Tell that to the millions who have perished and been displaced across the century from the rising tides,” Alexander scoffed, folding his arms. He chided himself at his blasphemy, knowing the whole of creation has been groaning in labor pains under the weight of human rebellion, as the apostle Paul taught, patiently awaiting the return of Jesus Christ to put the whole blasted world back together again.

  He just wondered what the heck was taking him so long! And sometimes he wondered whether he would return at all, whether the whole thing would go down in a fiery, furious show of galactic Armageddon. Perhaps an asteroid, or a long-hidden race of aliens.

  Alexander sighed and cursed himself again for his unbelief. He turned toward his parish home when he caught light glinting off something over the sea.

  He stepped toward the hedgerow and squinted in the distance, catching a glance of a Tracker drone buzzing the starboard bow of the fishing boat below.

  The one-world governing body insisted that such devices were ‘For Humanity!’, as the Solterra Republic motto went. But he, and the world, knew better: Anything Solterra did was ‘For the Republic!’

  “What’s the Republic up to this fine day?” he sneered, blowing his nose again.

  He watched the black orb circle back around the boat. Then it zipped up far into the sky and began growing in size, looking as though it was heading toward the shore. His shore. The black dot grew quickly as it approached the bluff. He crouched low, trying to evade its sensors.

  Between the foliage, Alexander saw the matte black orb dart left before quickly ascending the bluff and mounting the air surrounding his cathedral.

  “What in God’s name?” he whispered, his heart thrumming against his ribs and the coppery taste of adrenaline overpowering his tongue.

  He continued crouching, then inched his way over to a fig tree along the path, watching the drone circle the building once, then again before slipping behind its western flank out of view.

  The thrumming intensified, as did his breathing, matching the familiar pulsating whine of Solterra’s drone. They said such units were for maintaining a secure, harmonious, united Republic. But he knew better, fear welling within at the sight.

  Before long, the whine faded beneath the background noise of the Mediterranean’s lapping waves below. Alexander squinted and strained for a sign of the drone’s presence. Finding none, he sighed with a mixture of relief and concern.

  He considered this omen, wondering what it might mean for his parish.

  What it would mean for him.

  Chapter 2

  Alexander stood, brushing dirt and grass off the knees of his linen pants, feeling foolish for crouching behind a tree like a child, even if it was the security apparatus of the Republic. He stole a glance at his parish, searching the sky for the dark menace, then turned toward his home.

  He hustled along the length of the bluff, having no interest in tarrying while a Solterra Tracker drone was circling the skies, blowing his nose along the way. He chanced a brief stop to pick a handful of large pomegranate blossoms that lined the path, trying to breathe in their goodness in order to erase the memory of the uninvited guest. It was no use, his congestion proving mightier than the pollen.

  As he approached his quarters, the door opened with a whoosh, closing and locking behind him. His parish home was more like an apartment, small and sparsely furnished in accordance with his pledge of poverty. Perhaps poverty was a bit overstated, for it was well-appointed and comfortable to his tastes. “Give me a bed, a loaf of bread, a library of books and I’ll be happy as a hyena,” he would say. And perhaps a wine with a backbone. As a side hobby, Alexander had taken up the delicate trade of vinification, producing a praiseworthy vintage of wine using the fruit his pomegranate bushes grew on the parish property. So, yes, a pledge of poverty sans teetotalism.

  “Barnabas,” Alexander called out to his AI home assistant as he reached for a vase, “I’ve got a cold.”

  “And what, pray tell, would you like me to do about that, Father Zarruq?” a voice inquired back.

  The priest rolled his eyes and shouted, “Raise the temperature you blasted contraption!”

  “Don’t get snippy, Father. Would twenty-four degrees celsius suffice?”

  Snippy? “That’ll do.”

  He brought the flowers and vase over to a table that curved down to the floor on two sides in a single sheet of glass, a headache now beginning to needle the bridge of his nose. As he arranged them, he noticed his DiviNet slate resting next to an empty wine glass stained red at the bottom from the night before. When he finished, he picked up the thin sheet of sapphire crystal the size and thickness of a sheet of paper, yet as strong and stiff as steel—courtesy of Solterra Republic, the worldwide governing body of united nations, provinces, and people groups. After the Reckoning, Solterra required that such devices be given to every citizen of the world for the purpose of information free-flow. That’s what they said, anyway. But as with the drones, most people knew better, believing they were much more about informing the Republic about its citizens than the other way around.

  A holographic globe of the prehistoric Pangea supercontinent surrounded by olive branches rotated on the face of the glass device, a blinking newspaper—an anachronism from bygone centuries—begged for his attention, alerting him to breaking news. After preparing himself a cup of green tea, Alexander touched the flashing logo.

  The device instantly came to life, displaying several stories carefully curated by the Republic and AI algorithms based on Alexander’s own interests—though it was unclear which had more prior
ity and authority.

  The first story made Alexander nearly drop his mug.

  “Sasha!” Father Zarruq exclaimed. He set his tea down and grasped the sleek, thin surface with both hands, staring at a smiling, animated picture of his college roommate and friend.

  Sasha Pavlovich and Alexander had been roommates at Oxford. They instantly hit it off, particularly since in the old Ukrainian dialect Sasha translated as Alexander. He hailed from Lutsk in the Ukrainski province of Vostokana, the nation that was now comprised of former Eastern European nations that existed independently before the Reckoning. Sasha had gone to university on a physics scholarship thanks to his government, while Alexander studied theology and religion thanks to his father. The two were close and continued rooming together through their respective graduate work before Sasha went to the University of Kiev for his doctorate in theoretical physics and mathematics. They stayed in touch as best they could, and now Alexander was reading a headline story about a wildly peculiar discovery his friend had apparently made.

  Vostokanan Physicist Discovers Time Travel the headline blazed across the top. Alexander’s mouth literally dropped open as he read the lede:

  Though the stuff of science fiction stretching back a century before the Reckoning, a physicist at the University of Kiev in the Ukrainski province of Vostokana has discovered what he and his researchers are calling time travel.

  Through a series of experiments utilizing state-of-the-art electronic wave emitters and particle colliders, the team of mostly Vostokanan scientists, aided by three other physicists from the nation of California, have seemingly cracked the space-time continuum.

  “Well, I’ll be, Sasha...” Alexander marveled as he continued reading, surprised to see a quote from his college roommate himself.

  “This is a marvelous achievement of the highest caliber of Ukrainski scientists.”

  Ever a nationalist, Alexander thought, noting Sasha’s lack of acknowledgment of the other nations’ contributors. He continued reading:

  The team of researchers reiterated, that their findings were only preliminary and at the beginning stages of what they hope can be utilized for mainstream purposes, which at this time is undetermined. Until that day, while the science of real time travel is no longer fiction, the practical application of it still is.

  A smile spread across Alexander’s face as he recalled his Ukrainski friend chewing his ear off late at night with his wild theories about time and the relativity of our movement around the sun. The fourth dimension, he called it, theorizing that every three-dimensional object in space encompassed length, width, depth, and a fourth dimension he called phase. Sasha theorized that every object from beginning of time to the end of time also took up some sort of stage or point of advancement in time—as much as it did length, width, and depth in a given space. The physics of it all went completely over his head. At some point during Sasha’s ramblings, Alexander usually threw one of his socks at him to get him to stop his nonsense. But Sasha vowed he would one day discover the fourth dimension and how it worked, and thus time travel.

  “And you have, my old friend. You have...” Alexander shook his head and stared back at yet another blinking newspaper begging for his attention. He tapped it, transforming it into a live-feed video window.

  “—from the major world religions are gathering for a momentous unveiling that has been shrouded in secrecy until just moments ago.”

  He grabbed the device in one hand while holding his mug of tea in the other, taking sips between breaths.

  A blond woman continued her correspondence live from the inside of a large chamber somewhere in the world. “OneWorld News has it from inside sources that the dominant religious faiths are signing an accord of religious disaffiliation in order to affiliate as something called Panligo World Assembly.”

  Alexander’s mug smashed to the ground in an ear-splitting crash, sending steaming tea down his cream-colored cotton trousers and across his tiled floor.

  “Agh,” he cried out, nearly sending his slate to the same fate as his precious mug. “It can’t be,” Alexander whispered as he stared at yet another of his former classmates making headlines.

  Apollos Nicolai strode behind a small contingent of Christian leaders who were joined by Mohammedans, Buddhists, Hinduans, Israelites, even Alkebulanists, the religious designation of ancient tribal religions of the former African continent of witches, healers, spiritualists, and sorcerers. After the Reckoning, religions as well as nations were realigned by the world body. They were tolerated by Solterra only insofar as they provided peace and stability. Particularly in an effort to unify the disparate tribes scattered over the massive land and quell centuries of rebellion and war, the Republic granted former African animistic spiritualities religious representation under the umbrella name Alkebulanists. Such a designation angered the Mohammedans who had spent centuries spreading the teachings and ways of Mohammad across the great continent, though the move created a two-decade-long peace the world had not seen in generations.

  The Church had experienced the same realignment, while growing weaker and more imperiled. Ever since the Reckoning and the establishment of Solterra—the republic of assembled nation-states cobbled together and brokered in the aftermath from the disasters of climate change that had ravaged the world and fallout from decades of civil wars and conflict—life as a follower of Jesus Christ had become tenuous. It’s why the religion had become designated as Ichthus at the turn of the century, a throwback to the ancient symbol of the earliest Christians when it was struggling under the weight of Empire Rome.

  The word had become a derogatory curse across the world the past few decades as Christian brothers and sisters were forced to resurrect the symbol through the superheated fires of persecution through much of sub-Saharan Alkebulana; across all of Asiatica; in parts of Americana, Noramericana, Louisiana, Cascadia, and California; and even in Mexicana—just as the earliest Christians themselves had created the symbolic word in the first place during imperial persecution throughout the Roman Empire.

  The early Church had identified friend from foe using two simple arcing lines that intersected at one end, mirroring one another to form a fish. In later centuries, ichthus, the Greek word for the aquatic being, became known as the “Jesus fish.” Since the Reckoning, it had been adopted as a banner of pride to separate the remnant of Christianity from the rest of the world religions by adopting the culture’s curse and reidentifying with its central figure and beliefs formed as an acrostic with its letters: Jesus (I) the anointed Christ (Ch), Son (U) of God (Th), our Savior (S).

  Ichthus.

  Now it seemed some in the Church were seeking to abandon this name entirely.

  After cooling his tea-singed leg, Alexander focused back at the news event breaking on his slate.

  “Yes, that’s right. I said Panligo, which takes the root of the word for religion, meaning ‘to bind,’ and combines it with pan, meaning ‘all.’ The organizers of the new alternative spiritual movement Panligo World Assembly say their aim is to bind all religions into one religious assembly in order to foster greater cooperation, collaboration, and understanding—believing there is more that unites the great faith traditions than divides them.”

  “A noble goal, indeed, Connie,” said a purple-haired, well-makeuped news personality wearing a purple sequins jacket who went by the stage name Max Bacchus, a throwback to the Roman god of entertainment. Which was appropriate since the man was essentially the face of Solterra propaganda. With beaming wide eyes a sharp shade of green and a mouth wide with bright white teeth, the man continued, “Now what’s that on the banner behind the dais? It looks like a bird for crying out loud!”

  “You’re right, Max, it is. Well, sort of,” replied the equally well-makeuped perky, blond-haired correspondent. “It is known as a phoenix, an ancient bird that rises from the ashes in five-hundred-year cycles. The organizers of this new religious order claim their mutual unity and harmonization is seeking to usher in the
next cycle in the rebirth of religious order.”

  “Fascinating,” Bacchus said to a hologram of the correspondent standing to his left before pivoting to the camera and the image fading to nothing. “Connie Curry is standing by as this exciting story develops. We will bring you all the details of the announcement, as well as analysis, right after this short break. For Humanity!” The screen transitioned into a commercial featuring laundry detergent.

  Alexander lost interest, consumed by this development and confused by his former classmate Apollos’s involvement.

  What the heck are you playing at? he wondered. A knock at the door interrupted Alexander’s disbelief. “Yes? Come in.”

  The door whooshed open on command, and Zakaria rushed in.

  “Father…err, sorry!” He was panting, clearly having rushed from the cathedral next door.

  Alexander held up a hand and twisted his face in confusion. “Zakaria, slow down. What’s going on? You look like you’ve run a bloody marathon!”

  “Someone’s here, sir.” He glanced behind him before leaning forward and whispering, “A…courier, Father.”

  Alexander glanced over Zakaria’s shoulder to catch a glimpse of the unexpected visitor. “A courier?”

  He swallowed and nodded. “Says he’s from the Ministerium.”

  Alexander stepped back, face falling at the mention of the Ichthus order. Normally, the order of priests, bishops, and cardinals throughout the worldwide Church sent digitally encrypted messages when it had business at hand. Couriers were rare, especially if they bore a parchment letter, for Solterra had severely restricted the production of paper since the Reckoning.

  “Did he say anything?” Alexander asked in a hushed rush. “Anything at all about his business?”

  “No. In fact, I didn’t even see nobody come in. Slipped in and stood in the shadows behind the altar when I was finishing up mopping the floor. Nearly died of a heart attack, I did, when he announced himself and asked for you.”