“How can I help you? And did you just say ‘she’?” Natalie quickly reacted.
“Yeah. It’s a female voice,” Cipher confirmed.
“Typical,” Natalie said, annoyed. “Of course they’d make a woman out to be the bad one.”
“She told us you’d know how to destroy God. She said if we explained all of this to you, you’d understand and have the key,” Father Hurley related to Natalie.
Natalie’s eyes suddenly came to life as she processed this information and made a connection in her mind. “It can’t be,” she whispered. She thrust her back into her chair, as though she’d been pushed, and continued working through the problem in her mind until she finally said, “I do understand it...and I know how to kill God.”
3
Han stood alone in the darkness next to a massive, ancient redwood tree and smoked yet another cigarette. His irritability had reached such a level that inhaling the stimulants of a cigarette was the only way to keep from bashing his head against a rock until he was unconscious—not dead, though, as that would’ve been counterproductive.
His thoughts were scattered. He thought of Cipher and Father Hurley; they were his only friends, and he feared losing them more than anything and yet he didn’t seem to be able to keep himself from clawing at them. He was drowning in guilt, practically choking on it.
It wasn’t just the way he was treating his friends that was making him feel guilty. As he looked skyward into the clear, starry night, he thought of Katie. It was his fault that his sister was dead. I was stupid and gullible and I should’ve known better. He’d seen a kind, elderly face in the water and believed he would be safe. Belief? Aye, there’s the rub.
Belief was what Han hated. Belief was absurd. Belief meant that a person didn’t know that something was true but because they wanted it to be true, they abandoned all logic. Belief was why billions of lemmings were going to happily walk into the white light and be consumed by that fucker, God. Belief was Han’s worst enemy.
Han couldn’t shake the image of Katie’s eyes—they were completely black. What torment and anguish had that fucker put her through that could have destroyed the kindest and most selfless being I have ever known? What could have turned someone so good into something so twisted that it would help to destroy a person that she once loved? Whatever it was, it was beyond Han’s or any other person’s ability to conceptualize. God is pure evil.
“Katie...” Han whispered to himself as he dared for a moment to let himself imagine the pain she must have been going through ever since she sacrificed herself to save him. “I love you so much, and I am so, so sorry. No matter what happens, no matter what you do to me, I will always love you more than anyone I have ever known.”
Tears began to well in his eyes as his stomach began to knot with the pain. He was about to let some of the pain out. He could feel that his shoulders were about to start heaving as the crying took hold; it would be good to vent out there, alone, where no one could see his weakness.
His knees became weak and began to buckle; he started to double over, and he reached his right hand out to brace himself against the ancient, soft bark of the redwood.
The instant his flesh touched the tree, Katie’s face appeared to him, filled with a venomous hatred, and she opened her mouth preternaturally wide so she could take a bite out of his flesh.
Han screamed out and jumped back, stumbling on one of the uncovered roots of the tree and falling against the soft, rich earth. “What the fuck?”
“Holy shit,” Cipher said, surprising Han. He had come out to retrieve him.
“Please tell me you saw that,” Han said as he quickly wiped away the tears, hoping Cipher hadn’t seen the emotional display that preceded the appearance of Katie.
“Yeah,” Cipher nodded. “I saw it.”
“They’re not supposed to know where we are.”
“Do you have anything electronic on you?” Cipher asked.
“Just my watch. It’s just a piece-of-shit digital Wal-Mart special. It’s not wireless. There’s nothing they can trace,” Han replied.
Cipher approached cautiously, keeping his eye on the tree rather than Han. “That’s a big fucking tree,” he said.
“Yeah. So?” Han replied, still sitting on the ground.
“I’m going to try something. Be ready.”
“Oh no. Ready for what? What are you going to do? Why do you always just do things without thinking them over first?”
Cipher ignored Han’s protest and reached out with his right hand. Just as Han had done, he placed his flesh against the soft bark of the ancient monolith.
Charlie Marlow burst forward from the tree, pulling his gun from his back pocket instantly and training it on Cipher. Cipher ducked, tumbling to the ground, and Charlie vanished as Cipher’s hand left the trunk.
Both Han and Cipher were now sitting on the forest floor, looking up at the massive tree, gasping for air as their hearts pounded.
“Okay. So...the tree is some sort of gateway?” Han suggested.
“I don’t know. It’s something though,” Cipher replied. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t look like it can hurt us unless we physically touch it.” He stood to his feet. “We’ll figure out the tree later. Right now, we’ve got more important business.”
“Like what?” Han asked.
“Satan was right. Natalie knows how to kill God.”
4
“Repeat it,” Caiaphas said through gritted teeth.
Mag’s face was directly facing the floor; she was still conscious but too exhausted and traumatized to do as she was ordered. Her auburn hair hung over her eyes, and tears fell and splashed onto the marble tiles of the luxurious bathroom. She was suspended by the taut ropes tied to both of her wrists, connected to hooks on either side of the bathroom’s walls so that she was, poetically, in the same position her husband had been 2000 years earlier.
“Repeat it!” Caiaphas screamed as he lashed her once again on her bloody and shredded back with his Singapore cane.
Mag screamed out in agony before crying out her message. “My Lord…” she began, sobbing with every word, “I-I am sorry to have failed you. Cipher’s woman escaped. Cipher had multiple assailants working with him, all heavily armed. I-I will not fail you again. We are hunting them down, and...”
“Yes? Continue.”
“They will be dead within forty-eight hours.”
Caiaphas was silent for a moment. He was satisfied that she’d memorized the correct message, but he was unhappy about having to send it. It required the sacrifice of one of his favorite gifts from God, and he knew it might be many decades before he’d have Mag back in the prime of her young, succulent life. Finally, he spoke. “Good, my dear. Now you do believe, don’t you? You do believe in God?”
“Yes,” she replied, still sobbing.
“And you realize that God and I are giving you a tremendous gift, don’t you? God will be pleased by your service. He won’t consume you as He does other souls. You’ll be reincarnated and will return to me in another life. You do believe this, don’t you?”
“I do, Master,” she began, her voice quivering with desperation, “but I don’t see why you have to kill me for this message. Please, Master! It is a…it’s a fucking status update! Don’t kill me for something so meaningless!” Mag protested, pouring all her remaining energy into her plea; it was her only chance, even if she knew deep inside that there was no chance at all.
“Tsk-tsk,” Caiaphas replied. His face carried a genuinely sad expression—it turned out he could feel after all—but the sadness was not for Mag. Rather, he was sad for himself. He would miss that young, perfect body next to his whenever he wished. It was a sacrifice indeed. “Service to God is the only meaning there is in the universe. Everything else is meaningless.”
“Please! Please don’t,” Mag quietly cried, shutting her eyes tightly.
“Darling, it sounds as if you’re questioning your mission. You know what will happen if you ques
tion it, don’t you? You’ll be rejected by God and spend eternity trapped as a phantom, caught between two worlds. You don’t want that, do you?”
“No…no,” she replied softly.
“Good girl. You know, you’re really a very lucky soul. God was very angry with you when you married his offspring. Thank God Paul was working for us. When he murdered you and rewrote history, it corrected a very serious wrong. You were trying to direct souls away from Him, Mag. That was very naughty.”
“I’m so sorry for that. I don’t even remember that. It was...another life,” Mag replied, tears still forming in her eyes and dripping down her face, onto her naked torso, and splashing on the ground.
“God knows this. I think, although He would never say it, He has forgiven you,” Caiaphas said, imitating kindness as he coldly manipulated Mag.
She looked up suddenly, surprised to hear talk of forgiveness toward her.
Caiaphas smiled when he witnessed her pathetic gullibility. “Yes, it’s true. It’s supposed to be a punishment, being sent down to serve God’s agents on Earth, but when you compare it to the alternatives, it is actually the highest place in the universe you could ever expect to reach. After all, the other souls are consumed, they become twisted and warped until there is nothing recognizable remaining. However, you my dear, are immortal. You will live forever, as an assistant to great men like me, living in opulence and comfort. I think He has given you this gift of eternity because He cares for you. He just shows it in a…different way.”
Mag remained silent, accepting that there was nothing she could do to save her life.
“Good. Good. Your strength pleases me as well as Him. You believe in Him? You believe in your mission?” Caiaphas asked one last time as he lightly stroked her cheek and beamed kindness from his blue eyes to those of Mary Magdalene.
“Yes,” she replied.
Faster than any human could move, Caiaphas took the seven-inch blade that he’d been concealing in the tip of his Singapore cane and plunged it into the flesh under her chin and up into her brain. Her body shook for nearly a minute in the bloody aftermath, but she was dead the instant the blade punctured her brain.
“Message sent.”
5
“Grab some potatoes. They’re good,” Cipher said to Han as they entered the dining room of Father Hurley’s cabin.
Natalie was sitting at the head of the table, scribbling on several sheets of paper with a pencil, while Father Hurley sat next to her, setting up a laptop.
Han paused for a moment and watched the action, considered apologizing, then decided to forgo it and sit quietly in front of an inviting pile of rehydrated potatoes.
Cipher entered the kitchen and dished some food out for himself before returning and taking a seat on the opposite end of the table from Natalie. There was suddenly positive energy emanating from the group.
“Are you ready?” Cipher asked Natalie, who hadn’t looked up from the paper on which she was writing feverishly for several minutes.
“Ready as I can be,” she said. “Okay…I don’t know how to explain this exactly. I’ll try to make it as simple as I can, but you have to understand that we’re dealing with Einsteinian physics.”
“Einsteinian?” Han responded, his mouth still half full of reconstituted potatoes. “I’ve never heard that word before.”
“That’s exactly my point. Even though everyone knows who Einstein is, the word Einsteinian never caught on because, quite frankly, almost no one understands most of what Einstein did,” Natalie explained.
“Whoa. Really?” asked Han. “What about all those scientists in the universities who are working on relativity and all that shit?”
Natalie paused for a moment and sighed, realizing it was going to be even harder than she had thought. “Nearly no one living has a complete working knowledge of Einstein’s work. It’s beyond normal human comprehension. We like to believe there are thousands of scientists out there who get it, but they just don’t. Most can only hope to understand a small piece of it and move on from there. Einsteinian physics is nothing like Newtonian physics. Newton’s theories were simple. That’s why we teach them to children in school. They make sense, and they can be taught to high school science teachers. Einstein’s theories are…mystical.”
“Do you understand the theories?” Cipher asked.
“Yes,” Natalie replied, almost mesmerized by her own answer. “I didn’t know I was right until now. In fact, my thesis supervisor was a real asshole about it and wanted me to throw out a year’s worth of work, but I was right,” she finished triumphantly.
“How do Einstein’s theories relate to God?” Father Hurley asked inquisitively.
“Well,” Natalie began, “Einstein proved that the universe isn’t constant, the way Newton thought it was. Newton believed the shortest distance between two points is always a straight line. He also thought time was constant and that if you set your watch at a certain time on one side of the universe, it would be the same time on the opposite side of the universe. He was wrong. The theory of relativity shows that the universe is more like a fabric that can be stretched and warped.”
Natalie looked up into three faces that were staring blankly back at her. Father Hurley and Cipher sat with their mouths slightly agape, while Han slowly chewed his mashed potatoes.
She sighed again. “Okay. Take gravity, for instance. Newton didn’t really know what it was. We talk about the law of gravity, but it’s not really a law at all. He understood it in only its most simple terms.” She took the cloth placemat from in front of her and held it up as a demonstration, holding it taut between her hands. “Imagine this mat is space,” she said. “If we put something with a lot of weight on the mat, what will happen?”
“It’ll sag in the middle?” Cipher suggested.
Natalie smiled. “That’s right. Father Hurley, will you please put the saltshaker on the mat?”
“Of course,” Father Hurley replied, then placed the saltshaker on the mat, causing the mat to sag.
“Objects with a lot of mass actually stretch and bend space and time, just as this saltshaker bends the fabric of the mat. This explains gravity,” Natalie said.
“How?” Han asked.
“Father Hurley, will you place a pea from your plate on the mat?”
Father Hurley did as he was instructed once again, and the pea immediately rolled from the edge of the mat toward the saltshaker.
Natalie smiled again. “The pea goes right to the saltshaker, the same way meteors are attracted to the Earth. Earth’s mass bends the fabric of space and time, just as the saltshaker bends the placemat, and an object with a small mass gets sucked in by the bend. That’s why we have gravity.” Natalie paused for a moment, smiling and proud of herself for improvising an understandable explanation. The three men, however, still appeared confused.
“So mass bends space, and that’s gravity?” Han replied. “That’s fascinating, but how in the hell is that gonna help us kill God?”
Natalie sighed again. “I’m getting to that part. Okay, so you understand now that space and time are like fabric, right? Well, a large enough mass will not only bend space and time, but it can also actually puncture a hole through it.”
“If that’s true then how come Father Hurley hasn’t punctured a hole through space and time with his ass yet? Haha!” Han asked gleefully, laughing at the old priest’s expense and holding his hand up to Cipher for a high-five.
An almost imperceptible smile crossed Cipher’s lips but he shook his head and left Han hanging. “Cut it out.”
Han looked across at Father Hurley, who was grimacing as he glared at Han. This made Han smile. “You gotta admit, Father, that was a good one.”
“Please continue, Natalie,” Father Hurley said.
“It’s possible that you can puncture a hole in the fabric of space and time,” Natalie continued. “Thus, we get black holes. When a sun dies, its matter becomes so massive that time and space can’t contain it, and eve
rything in the vicinity is sucked in.”
“It’s like the air escaping a punctured balloon,” Cipher commented.
“That’s right,” Natalie replied, smiling. “You’re starting to get it.”
“I’m not, I must confess,” Father Hurley interjected. “I understand what you’ve said so far, which is actually quite fascinating, but I am still not sure I understand how this applies to God. Are you saying we should cut a hole through the fabric of space and time and that this will somehow kill God?”
“Actually, that’s pretty close,” Natalie said, becoming more encouraged. “The theory I’ve been working on has to do with the nature of what we would call reality. While there are many theories about what happens when something is sucked into a black hole, no one has ever been able to prove anything. Some people think everything is just destroyed. Other’s think it creates a portal to another time or another place.”
“And what do you think?” Cipher asked.
“I call it my crumpled paper theory of the universe.” Natalie picked up a sheet of paper this time and grabbed a pencil. She poked her pencil through the paper. “Think of it like this. If there’s so much mass that it actually bends the fabric of space and time to the point that it punctures it,” Natalie said, folding the paper and puncturing the other side as well, “then the puncture must lead to another point in the universe.” She removed the pencil from the paper and unfolded it, displaying the two separate holes. “In a Newtonian universe, the two points represented by these holes might be millions of light years apart, but in an Einsteinian universe, they could end up being right next to each other,” she said, folding the paper again so that the holes lined up, “and the distance could be traversable,” she finished, prying her pinky finger through the holes and wiggling it.
“So you think the other side of a black hole is somewhere else in the universe?” Cipher asked.
The God Killers Page 13
