The Harvest

by John David Krygelski

  “No, I am merely repeating a process. Reese…you and Claire, Nicholas, Craig, Margo, and all of the others…all of the Chosen…are descendants of that tiny band of survivors after the last great struggle.”

  Reese was stunned. “This is amazing. I thought that simply wiping out the bad guys would be the pragmatic approach. This is way more…uh…pragmatic. But I have a question, my parents…they certainly weren’t….”

  “The wonder of genetics, Reese. Breed two black dogs, and within the litter of black pups might be one that is pure white. All are the offspring of the same parents, yet there is a certain confluence of events that creates something different, sometimes something special. And the seeds for that one white pup were in the pool a thousand generations before, successively hiding and coming forward again and again until that one moment in time. All of the pieces to the puzzle that is Reese Johnson were strewn among many people. You are only aware and thinking about the contribution of your parents. Imagine, from my perspective, the joy of watching those pieces weave their way through the maze of human couplings for hundreds of generations…until finally they were all consolidated within those two people. The pieces, uncombined, did them no good. Yet, when they mated, the person who was literally thousands of years in the making came into being. It was as if Reese Johnson was turned into dust millennia ago and scattered by the winds…and then, in the time since, wind and rain and all of the forces of nature gradually reassembled you until you became the individual who sits before me today. And what I described for you is also true for the others who are chosen.”

  Grinning wryly, Reese said, “You are making it hard to be humble.”

  Laughing softly, Elohim answered, “Humility is not a refusal to recognize one’s own specialness; it is a willingness to also recognize it in others.”

  “How did so many of us marry a person who is also one of the Chosen?”

  “How could it be any other way? After the last cataclysm, when your kind were nearly destroyed, one of the survival skills that was developed was the ability to recognize another of your own ilk…of your own belief structure and moral character. Those, like all of the other traits, were naturally selected by the ordeal. Each of you has known instinctively when you were in the presence of another of your group. This extends to all of your interactions: friends, business acquaintances, politicians seeking your vote. There is a mechanism within you that confirms or denies the standing of all others…before the first word is spoken. You, and those within your group, have this skill because it was necessary for the survival of your ancestors. The others did not need it and, because evolution discards the unneeded, do not have it.

  “Therefore, it is inevitable that most of your group would marry within your group. Sadly, some who possess the skill, choose to ignore it. They convince themselves that the subtle message is wrong. Rather than trusting this instinct, they prefer to look at the external presentation of the others, to listen to their words, to evaluate their visible deeds and actions intellectually, to be swayed by their credentials. These are criteria at which the others excel. They excel because they have created them. And they excel because these are the criteria upon which they evaluate one another.

  “Reese, the point is that your group, when it interacts with the others, is out of its element. You are playing their game, to use a popular phrase, and can never be as good at it as they are. Yet, their game can be attractive to some within your group. It is human to surrender to the glamour, to want to be a part of the popular culture and crowd. A large segment of your cohort gives in to those temptations early in life. As the brain completes its critical formation in your late twenties, the attraction of the others begins to pale, and their externally oriented lifestyle is first perceived as hollow and empty. Most of you return to your true selves.

  “Unfortunately, some of your group have married during that time, and that choice, all too often, was based upon the purely external. Because each of you has a highly developed sense of morality, and because you do place others above yourself, a marriage to one of them tends to be a trap for a member of your group, a trap not easily escaped. This happens mainly because one-half of the union follows the rules, and the other does not. As a result, you either stray from the path, giving in to the pressures from your mates, or hunker down and preserve your ideals and your character, having little to share with your wives or husbands other than social engagements and the marital bed.”

  “I think we’ve all known couples like that.”

  “Most of the couples to whom you are referring do not have a member of the Chosen as one of the mates, because most of the Chosen have married within their own group. The couples you are recalling are those with an individual from the second group who was foolish enough to marry one of the ‘others.’”

  Elohim did not appear to have anything to add. He had, again, given Reese quite a lot to think about. Turning, Reese stared at the bright blue morning sky through the window and said nothing.

  א

  The morning sunlight barely penetrated the window blinds in Margo Jackson’s office. She had turned off the overhead lights and was asleep on the sofa which normally was used for informal meetings. Bill Burke heard her snoring softly as he opened the office door, feeling wretched about interrupting her. Having just come down the hallway and through the outer office that was occupied by Margo’s secretary during regular hours, he was unaccustomed to the dimness and fumbled for the light switch, intending to turn on only one of the three sets. Instead, his hand brushed against them all, flooding the room in brightness.

  She instantly sprang upright, her hand instinctively clutching for the sidearm that fortunately was stowed in her desk drawer at the moment. Eyes wide and sweeping the room, she spotted Burke, still standing in the doorway, grinning sheepishly. “Is that your agency training or boot camp kicking in?” he joked.

  Shaking her head to clear the fog of sleep, she answered, “Neither. It’s from living alone in Washington, D.C.” Rubbing her eyes, she asked, “What’s up? And why the hell are you so peppy?”

  “The answer to your second question is…I don’t know. Ever since Elohim fixed me, I’ve felt like a twenty-year-old.”

  Margo had shifted to the front edge of the cushion, her long legs apart, her knees higher than her waist, her elbows resting on her knees with her face buried in her hands. “Maybe I should arrange to be shot,” she muttered.

  “I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “Bill, you’re my boss and all that, but I sincerely hope that you didn’t wake me up so we could have a chat about how damn wonderful you feel.”

  Chuckling, he answered, “Actually, I was having withdrawals. I missed your sunny disposition.”

  She replied with a casual hand gesture.

  Changing his tone to a more businesslike one, Burke explained, “I think we have a situation brewing. The spam seems to be working fairly well. A lot of the groups who were planning on meeting today have opted for virtual get-togethers in organized chat rooms.”

  “Good.”

  “Yeah…so far, with one glaring exception…New York City.”

  “Great!”

  “As we watched the Internet traffic through the night, the tide was going in the right direction. A lot of the participants were expressing concern about our warnings. There was talk about canceling, using some chat rooms, having only five-to-ten person get-togethers. It was going well. About an hour ago, some guy started shooting e-mails and instant messages all over the place, to all of the people who had expressed an interest in a big meeting. He ranted and raved about how being one of the Chosen required backbone, how Christians didn’t hide from the lions. The clincher, I think, was his last tactic. He, assuming it’s a ‘he,’ started e-mailing them all and telling them that maybe this was a test…a final test by God…to see if they were actually worthy of going to Heaven.”

  “Oh, crap.”

  “I know. It worked. It really lit a fire under the rest. He sent his
messages to all of the boroughs. Now he’s expanding…Connecticut, New Jersey…farther and farther. He’s latched on to the chat rooms and lists of the other groups, the ones who had decided to stay home. They’re madly chartering busses and renting vans this morning so they can join the event. And that’s just what we can pick up from the net. I’m sure a lot more are already in their cars and on their way. He, whoever he is, has managed to turn a mild meet-and-greet into an organized act of defiance, standing up to the evil forces that want to crush them. The florid prose is his, not mine.”

  All indications of fatigue were gone from Margo’s face as Burke’s news triggered her adrenaline response. “Where’s the party?”

  Shaking his head, Bill answered, “Where else? Times Square.”

  “Have the…?”

  “Our New York bureau has been organizing with NYPD since the tide turned. The governor is rounding up the National Guard. The local media have been asked to rotate announcements keeping all traffic away from Times Square.”

  “Right…that’ll work.”

  “The mayor wants to spoil the event before it can start: block the streets, break up gatherings, turn people away before they can form a large enough mass.”

  “A target, you mean.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Do you think that can work?”

  Burke slowly let out a breath before answering, “I don’t know.”

  “It seems to me that the best way to prevent a gathering in Times Square is to let in the cars, not keep them out. How could you meet in the middle of that mess?”

  “That’s true. It’s the mayor’s call, and he’s made it. I’ll pass your thought on, but I think he’s committed right now.”

  “Do we know who this guy is yet?”

  “Nope. He’s smart. His e-mails are coming through a jumble of interconnected sources and public wi-fi providers. Our techs are still trying to chase it through the spaghetti. All we have is his user name…he calls himself ‘thelamb.’”

  “He sounds a little scary. Do you think he’s setting them up?”

  Bill Burke stared down at his knees for a moment, his eyes in motion as if having a REM state while awake. “My gut tells me there’s something wrong with him. I mean, people had decided to take the conservative course – stay home, be safe – and he eggs them on to congregate. Either he’s setting them up, or he’s a fanatic. Either way, yeah, he’s a problem.”

  א

  The phone chirped once, and the man sitting behind the desk, staring out the window, snatched it up. “Yes?”

  “It seems to be working. People are already showing up,” said the voice on the phone, getting directly to the point.

  “Obstacles?”

  “Lots of cops, FBI, Port Authority. I understand some National Guard troops are on their way. But they have set up barricades and closed Times Square to cars.”

  “Excellent. That’ll help. Are the authorities going to stop us?”

  “Don’t know at this point. It depends on the turnout. They’ll be overwhelmed if enough people show up.”

  “How about the hardware?”

  “In place and ready.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  The stranger in the darkened office pressed the button to break the connection. He immediately turned the phone over and popped off the back cover, removing the battery and dropping it into his desk drawer. Getting up, he took the now inert cell phone into the restroom that adjoined his office and turned on the water, holding the open phone under the stream. As he performed these steps, he knew the caller was going through the same steps.

  א

  Stanley Witherspoon was excited. Since he never before had been to Manhattan, everything looked strange and larger than life to him. Punching Times Square into the GPS navigator on his car, he had departed his home in New Haven hours ago. The directions got him within blocks of the target “star” on the screen before a police officer had turned him back, telling him that, for safety reasons, the city was not going to allow the assembly. He had already been warned about this and was undeterred. Finding a spot to park took another hour. He jotted down a map from the GPS and locked up, heading off on foot, feeling the excitement build within him.

  Witherspoon, fifty-nine years old and a widower, had been alone yesterday, watching the televised statement. When Elohim described the mark, Stanley was flabbergasted to find it on his palm. His first impulse, as it had always been with any new or interesting event, was to share it with Kathy, his wife of thirty-two years. For the ten-thousandth time he had to remind himself that he had lost her six years ago. But this time, because of what the mark signified, he was not as depressed as at other times in the past; it meant that he would be with Kathy once again and in only five days.

  There were many others on foot, all walking briskly in the same direction as he, obviously for the same purpose. Stanley spotted the mark on the hand of some of them and exchanged smiles and knowing looks. As he walked, he wondered about the coincidence of the mark on the palm of the right hand and the tradition of the waved greeting which exposed this palm to the other person. He also wondered about the others, those without the mark, and why they were joining the impromptu gathering. He knew his motives. Except for the constant presence of Kathy, Stanley had lived a rather solitary life. Both of them always seemed to have a sixth sense about other people, and nearly everybody came up short. Occasionally, people would get through the initial barrier, but those who did had some aspect to their lifestyle or mannerisms that made either him or Kathy uncomfortable. As a result, they had developed no real friendships in their three decades together. So long as he had Kathy, Stanley never felt a need for friends. Since her death, loneliness had been the dominant emotion in his life, triggering a constant battle against depression and despair. From the smallest habit to the largest event, the absence of Kathy turned activities that had once brought him joy and happiness into empty time-wasters. Stanley no longer cared to see a movie, eat at a restaurant, or go on a trip without her. Her company, her presence had always been the critical ingredient that made everything fun and fulfilling.

  That was why he decided to come here today. It was the first thing in six years that had appealed to him, perhaps because he somehow felt that she would be here, or perhaps because it seemed like a prelude to joining her. There was also something else: a primal, almost subconscious urge to congregate with the others, the Chosen, as Elohim called them. Otherwise, there could be no explanation for Stanley defying the authorities, which was most uncharacteristic. He did not see it as defiance. After all, he thought, he was not committing a crime, was not hurting another. They were simply concerned about his safety, and he did not share their concern.

  As he passed more side streets, nearing his destination, more men, women, and children flowed into the river of people all heading for the same goal. There was no running or pushing. The fellow Chosen, as well as the others, walked briskly and steadily forward, yet paused to allow another to cross or hesitate, sharing a friendly smile, offering a hand if someone was having a difficulty.

  According to Witherspoon’s hand-drawn map, he was nearly two blocks from Times Square when he saw the barricades and the line of police in dark blue uniforms ahead. The street was entirely blocked, and the officers were in riot gear, wearing Lexan face masks and rigid body armor and holding Lexan shields in front of their bodies. Stanley could not help but notice the incredible incongruity, considering the nature of the approaching crowd. Regardless of the details of the situation, for some reason he felt serene. The front edge of the group reached the police line. They did not surge against it in any attempted show of force, merely stopping a foot or two back from the barricades, as would a crowd awaiting the removal of the velvet rope, allowing them to enter a theater for opening night.

  Stanley was quite near the front. Since he had come alone, he felt unencumbered to thread his way through the bodies to the line of police where he found several of his group chatting calm
ly with the officers. Directly across from him was a middle-aged man who was wearing the NYPD uniform and working very hard to maintain a stern expression.

  Looking at this officer, Stanley said, “That gear must be hot.”

  The cop blinked a few times before focusing on Witherspoon. Obviously, he had been trained not to engage in personal chatter with members of a mob that they were supposed to control. The sheer normalcy of Stanley Witherspoon was written all over his face.

  “Yes, it is. Even when it’s a chilly morning like this.”

  Checking the cop’s name tag, Stanley said, “Cavalino. Is that Italian?”

  The silliness of the question struck them both, and they laughed. “Yeah. I’m Italian,” he finally answered.

  “I’m Stanley Witherspoon. Uh, that’s English.”

  Stanley wanted to shake Cavalino’s hand, so he extended his, taking a half step forward. The movement caused the cop to tense, as did the officers on either side of Cavalino. Alarmed, Witherspoon quickly stepped back. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to…,” he said, dropping his hand back to his side. He noticed Cavalino’s eyes glance briefly at the mark on Stanley’s palm.