Jacob's Trouble 666 is a novel by Terry, which was published a number of years ago. It tells the story of Jacob Zen, a young, lower echelon U.S. government official, who is forced to take on staggering responsibilities, when millions of people vanish, and his world begins coming apart. Terry wanted to share with you this fictionalized account of the Rapture and of the first part of the Tribulation era in serialized form. Although it is fiction, it is a story that could take on startling reality with your very next breath, because Christ's shout: "Come up hither" (Rev 4:1) could happen at any moment!
Chapter 2
It had begun differently. So differently. He closed his eyes, tilting his face toward the ceiling. The sickness in his stomach eased, memories of those earlier times mercifully taking him from his unbearable present."I've known you now for months and yet I don't know you, because all we talk about is me. You're not top-secret like that precious work you guard so jealously, are you?"
"You've known me in the Biblical sense; that's all that matters, really." Jacob teased.
Karen Mossberg punched Jacob with her fist, mock horror on her face. "You are a clod for saying so! And that little arrangement can change at any time!" "You know life wouldn't be worth living without me around to — how shall I say it? — to stimulate your temperament once in a while."
She struggled to a sitting position on the bed, trying to pound him with both hands. Her long, dark hair lashed wildly, whipping his face in their struggle before her resistance melted into submission, both of them feeling passion rise, bringing them together, finally, in a flesh-coupling armistice.
Thirty minutes later, Karen tried and failed to take the cigarette from his mouth while he took his first drag. He held her at arm's length and she gave up. "Go on then! Kill yourself!" She sat in the middle of the bed, her arms folded, staring at him. But not before I learn more about you." She again lunged for the cigarette, but again he was too quick, moving it out of reach. "It all began when I was born..."
"Snakes in the grass aren't born; they're hatched," she interrupted his facetious narrative, snuggling her cheek against his chest. "Rattlesnakes are," he corrected.
"Enough with the pedantic. Get on with the biographical."
"My father died when I was three. Moriah Zen. He was twenty-six."
"You never really got to know him," Karen said in a more serious voice, propping on one elbow to see his face while they talked.
"I remember the beach. When I think of him, I think of a beach... the orange kind, with the sand packed hard. Funny,isn't it? The things you remember from childhood — bits and pieces of things. I can recall the time when I was about five, running down a little hill near our house, and I fell and cut my leg on a broken shoe-polish bottle. Can you imagine? A shoe-polish bottle! I remember that tiny detail, but I can't remember what my dad looked like. Oh, I have a mental image from all the pictures Mother kept. But him? Really know what he was like, who he was... I can't remember. Seems like you'd remember something that important, doesn't it?"
She watched him, seeing the distant look, knowing he didn't want her to answer, letting him have his moment of philosophical self-pity, but feeling deeply for the little boy she saw who would give his soul to know the man who sired him.
"When I was six, mother and I went to live with Uncle Conrad, Conrad Wilson. No kid could hope for a better father."
Karen watched Jacob study his fingernails; talking about that early part of his life, perhaps dredging up memories of his father, obviously made him nervous.
"Uncle Conrad wanted to marry Mother, but she wouldn't go along. A Hebrew sticking point. Oh, she loved him — slept with him to prove it, but she wouldn't marry him because he was Gentile. Isn't that an interestingly twisted bit of morality and theology? He wanted to adopt me — really cared for us both, right up until Mother's accident." "And he was able to get custody?" "My mother's sister, who could barely afford to keep her own five kids fed and clothed, accepted Uncle Conrad's request to keep me with him. He had been my father for more than four years anyway. She wouldn't let him adopt me — wouldn't let him have any legal holds. She didn't want me to have the Gentile name — said Mother wouldn't have wanted that. But he took me on her terms. I didn't understand it all at the time, but I did know I didn't want to stay with Aunt Frenka and Uncle Jorba Swenke in Brooklyn. They were staunchly orthodox, and I mean you toed the mark or felt the wrath. If Uncle Jorba didn't take the skin off your backside with a yard-long stick for breaking one ordinance, then, Teddy — Theodore Hertzl Swenke, my two-hundred-plus pound cousin, with a gestapo mentality, would beat a tattoo on your face when you refused to give up whatever you might have that he felt he needed."
Karen laughed, enjoying Jacob's lighter frame of mind. "Sounds like one of my cousins — Anna Daygan. She took great delight in pinching you until she got what she wanted... or just for the fun of it. I could never figure how somebody so fat could run that fast."
"You're familiar with the problem then," he chuckled. Then his intonation became more somber. "Anyway, I was relieved when Aunt Frenka let me stay with him."
Karen stood from the bed and stretched her arms toward him. A gesture that made him feel once again like a man rather than the boy he had become during the brief remembrance — a time when Conrad Wilson began molding him into what Jacob hoped to one day become for his foster-father's sake. She bent to kiss him, holding his face tenderly with her slender fingers. The cool feminine touch he must never lose. To do so would be to lose himself. Desire, he thought spent, began its ascent, though it was an unconsciously beckoned desire he tried to discourage. Sensing his renewed awakening, Karen, he was almost glad, subtly moved away. "How about lunch?" she said.
"Sure. What would you like?" - "Pizza?" She suggested from the bathroom. "Fine. Want to go out?" "No. Let's have it here," she half-shouted to be heard, because she knew he had walked into the den. He came back into the bedroom, pausing to light a cigarette before retrieving his wallet from his pants on a nearby chair. Thumbing through the various papers and photographs, he found a half-metal, half-plastic card, returned to the den and sat in front of the small computer unit in the corner of the room. After inserting the card in a slot just above the keyboard, he depressed a key that activated the unit. When he manipulated other keys, the display screen lit up with information he had input. Five seconds later, the input data was electronically swept from the screen and new information appeared,
confirming that his electronic funds were sufficient for transaction and informing him that the telecommunication had been completed between his computer unit and the business with which he wanted to transact. At the same time, the system alerted the business that he wished to interface and that the electronic funds currency units were sufficient for transactions up to 5,079 for Jacob Zen, 771-68-1794-6, Boston, MA TERMINAL 31 BB.
He pushed a button on the right side of the keyboard, and the audio-visual connection was made to Broglio's Pizza Bar, serving pizza which was, the pretty girl reminded him, "Thicker and quicker!"
"They'll be there in ten minutes, sir," the teenager answered when he completed the order; the display screen informed him that the appropriate number of electronic funds currency units bad been moved from his account to the account of Broglio's Pizza Bar.
"They'll be here in ten minutes," he said to Karen, who entered the den, toweling dry her hair. She came to him and bent to kiss him. "Hope you like shrimp," he said.
She took the half-burned cigarette from between his fingers and crushed it out in an empty coffee cup. "I like you, don't I?" "Funny!"
He pulled her into his lap and jostled her in a moment of playfulness that gave way to more serious intentions. She stood and resumed drying her hair with the towel.
"The pizza's coming, remember?"
"Yeah. Wish 1 had told them to bring it later."
"You know that wouldn't work. Everything is on a neatly packaged schedule these days. We must fit
into the mold. Cooperate with the methodologies of this New Age, or be left behind. I believe that's how your Ambassador Wilson put it. Not too long ago, there would've been plenty of time."
"Right now, I'll agree with you, but it's my glands talking, not my good sensibility. In a more rational mood, I'd say things like 'we must put aside our personal and national interests for the good of everyone' or 'only when we pull together can we advance to our ultimate destiny!'"
"I'm glad you're not rational right now, because I really wouldn't want to hear that garbage." "Seriously," Jacob said, watching her brush her wet hair into long, straight strands. "What's to be said that's so great about the good old days? You had to phone the order in, look for money to pay for it -most of the time you had to cash a check or write one — and, of course, you had to drive in ungodly traffic for thirty minutes to pick up the order, or else wait an hour-and-a-half for the pizza, which was always cold by the time it got to you.
"Now, we pay without the hassle of keeping up with coins or paper, and all we need is our UNIVUSCARD for everything. We know exactly where we stand without having to worry about figuring out balances, mailing bills and all the rest. We have more time to do other things, and we save tremendous amounts of fuel and money by ordering through UNIVUS and having the merchandise delivered from the product Distribution Centers. And, we have the option, if we choose to be archaic, to do things like we did back in those good old days." "But not without Big Brother and everyone else knowing our business and scolding us for our lack of cooperation. What about the privacy we've forfeited? And how long do you think we will have a choice about whether to join in?"
"Forfeited our privacy? How?" he said, incredulously.
"Come on, Jake! We are recorded from birth to death, and I mean every detail. It's all there in the UNIVUS memory banks for anybody who cares to dig deeply enough."
"There are protections. Since the biochip, UNIVUSCARD can't be used without the thumb and fingerprints of the person who owns the card. There are other features."
"There are no overrides? No ways to break the codes and the safeguards?" Karen questioned in a knowing tone.
"We have to trust something, Karen, or else we're all lost anyway. Of course there are the ultimate overrides, as there have always been — even in your good old days. But they are the province of only a very few at the top level of government. The same guidelines of confidentiality apply to UNIVUS as have always applied to, say, matters involving nuclear and space technologies."
"And they've always been compromised, too," she broke in. "What makes you think this type of top secret information will be different?"
"I'm sure there will be adequate redress for people when they're caught in the middle of theft of data or accidents or tampering. Especially as the system grows and improves... becomes more efficient."
"Meanwhile, what about the one who suffers the loss, and has to absorb it? Maybe loses everything? Or the person who is sitting in prison somewhere waiting for the system to eventually discover the error and vindicate him?"
"Karen, there will always be mistakes and injustices under law. Every civilization that's ever existed has had to face that. That doesn't mean we just fold up and stop progressing." "Growing into our Utopia?" "Well, we certainly haven't gotten there through the old ways of doing things. We've never had the technologies to try something better until now. Look at the improvements in the economies of the world. Hunger is not as great in Third World countries; the common electronic currency has stabilized much of the trade problem and has completely done away with the currency fluctuation nightmare. There's a lot better understanding among the peoples of the West. Before long, we will link with the Middle and Far East, and the language barriers will be bridged by the new translation capabilities." "But Jake, this is all at the price of individual liberty. Is the pipe dream of having one world worth that cost?"
"We'll have to sacrifice some individual liberties. And the time is coming when we will have to set the example by putting aside national interests to some extent."
"Dr. Marchek calls it the 'Babel Syndrome.'"
"Babel Syndrome?"
"The story in the Scriptures about people trying to build the tower to heaven. They were all of one mind and one language, and God says in His Word that they could eventually do what they set out to do, and He wasn't ready for that. So He confused their communication by introducing many different languages while they were in the process of building the tower. They no longer understood each other,became terrified, then got mad and began fighting, forgetting all about the project."
"Fascinating story, Karen, but so is Alice in Wonderland. You don't believe that nonsense, do you?"
"Of course not. But I do believe this will lead to more problems than it will solve. I agree with the dear old man on one point. The whole thing can lead to dictatorship, by its very nature. Jonathan Schell was right in The Fate of the Earth, when he wrote that whether a one-world order should come through fear or through love, either path will lead to the same destination. Dr. Marchek thinks, and he's not alone in his opinion, that the destination will be global tyranny."
"More of his Biblical wisdom?" he bantered.
"I don't agree with him because of that, but because of what I see happening. We're relinquishing ourselves more and more to something we don't understand. The majority of people don't want to try to understand. They just don't care. 'Just trust government; it will do what's best for us.'"
Jacob reached to her and pulled her onto his lap. She curled her arms around his neck and yielded to his lips when he held her to himself.
"I want to meet this Hugo Marchek. I'm not sure I care for you thinking so highly of him," he said, nibbling the velvet skin of her cheek. "I think the relationship bears watching."
"He's old," she said, laughing, but enjoying his mock jealousy.
"So are half the codgers in Washington, with their nieces at their sides every evening."
'Dr. Marchek is also one of the most moral men to be found anywhere."
"So is Senator Hosfelt, Justice Brendon, Secretary Martin. All of them are extremely moral men who can prove it by convincing you that their concept of morality is the right concept of morality."
"Dr. Marchek's is Judaeo-Christian. He would never approve, for instance, of our sleeping together."
"Who sleeps?" He kissed her. "If that's all that would bother him, he'd have nothing to worry about."
"I think it's cute, his old-fashioned view of marriage and loyalty to one woman." "What about to one man?" Jacob asked, after she returned his kiss.
"He's really against homosexuality, and I'm not so sure I'd like to share you with a man — call me old-fashioned." She laughed, kissing his neck and hugging him playfully.
"I don't think I'd like this guy, Marchek. There's something basically un-American about that kind of narrow-mindedness."
"With everyone thinking and talking about getting rid of nationalism so we can all come together, I should think you'd be pleased with anything that's not American in its philosophy, or theology, or whatever."
"Actually, my dear, I can abide internationalist thinking, or any other kind, so long as it's strongly rooted in American precepts."
"Weren't some of those precepts family, home, and sexual fidelity to one's legal, God-ordained mate?"
"Want to get married?" He was facetiously serious. "What? And give up all my men? Don't talk insanity!"
"Solomon is my hero... my example. Seven-hundred wives..." "And concubines, too, don't forget," Karen added. "I'm content with the New Age renaissance way of things. It makes more sense. Freedom means the right to make your own choices. You can't do that when you're tied to a dogmatic philosophical or theological contract. I just don't know whether I could get to like your Hugo Marchek." "You could find out if you go with me tomorrow night. The PAL staff is having a small party at Dr. Marchek's home at seven. A get-acquainted thing for the newer people."
Jacob nudged her from his lap, stood, and lit a cigarette. "I have to put some finishing touches on the project paper. We have three days left, and Uncle Conrad needs me there tomorrow so we can pull everything together. It goes to the President on Monday."
"Sure... some other time, then," she said. But he saw her disappointment.
"I'll do my best to get away by nine. No. I will be there by nine-thirty." Her smile, this time, was genuine.
Conrad Wilson paced the burgundy-colored carpet of his study, his silver-white mustache twitching typically beneath his thin, peculiarly down-curved nose, the exaggerated exploitation of which had been the delight of political cartoonists for four decades. He dictated to his secretary of fifteen years in a burst of inspiration after sipping from a glass half-filled with scotch and ice.
"America has, more than any other national entity, led the way in international reorganization and cooperation in order to make life better in the free world. The VNIVUS and VNIVER electronic currency systems are based on the former U.S. dollar — later assisted, of course, by the contribution of the Euro. Middle-Eastern peace was established largely because of the United States' support of and continuing guaranteed protection for Israel And we neither discount nor forget the magnificent contributions of Mr. Krimhler in that historic process.
Indeed, in addition to providing most of the funding for the telecommunications and computer technologies that link us, the United States, as always, continues to provide the nuclear umbrella which ensures the future for all of us.
These and many additional factors give this nation, in this panel's view, not only the right but the common-sense duty to assume the dominant position within any universal governing format."
It was classic Wilsonese, wrapping months of intensive work in a cocoon of precise extemporaneous analysis; in this verbal art, he was without peer.
Jacob sipped his own scotch, watching the old man walk back and forth in front of Alexandra Fitzwell, whose face, when her shorthand had captured the words, glowed with admiration.
"What do you think, Jake?" Conrad Wilson questioned the younger man in the smooth baritone made famous through hundreds of speeches and interviews.
"Wish I'd said it."
Wilson laughed heartily while walking to the small bar in one corner of the study. He poured a drink, then held the decanter in an offering gesture toward Jacob.
"No, thanks. I have a ways to drive tonight."
"Oh, yes! Your young lady. You are quite taken with her, I can tell." "Oh?"
"This is the longest I've known you to lavish such attention on any one girl," Wilson said, smiling. "And, through our conversations of late, I've come to detect your concern for her. Care to talk it over?" His tone became fatherly. "That will be all this evening, Alexandra."
The woman stopped at the door before exiting the study. "You take your medication," she ordered sternly. "Promise..."
"Yes! Yes!" Wilson retorted gruffly. "Now leave us in peace!"
He turned his attention back to Jacob when the woman closed the door behind her. "She's a jewel, but a bit on the pushy side."
"You would've never gotten along without her all these years, Uncle Conrad. Do what she says. Take your medicine, okay?"
The retired diplomat waved off his foster son's exhortation, wanting to get off the despised subject of his failing health. "Getting back to your young lady, ... Miss Mossberg. Is the problem between you two something I can help with? Now, I'll admit straight off: my motive in offering to mediate the crisis is largely selfish. I would like to be a grandfather one day," he said semi-seriously, patting Jacob's shoulder he passed by on his way to a large wingback chair directly across from the younger man.
"There's no crisis, really. But there is something. Something I can't put my finger on. You know... the feeling of impending something or the other."
"Yes. I always get that feeling when I'm about to meet with the Russians. I've always called it 'mild intimidation,'" Wilson said with a chuckle. "It's the same with women. They'll get the best of you now and again if you're not on your toes."
He sat forward, smoothed the crease of his trousers, then leaned back, crossing one lanky leg over the knee of the other. "When you were twelve, Jake, you assured me that girls existed only to make you and Joey Framington, and all other boys, miserable. Then, at about 18, they were for talking with on the phone from dawn to dusk and for being out with from dusk to dawn. Now they're back to making life miserable. Women, bless their beautiful, black hearts, can be like getting caught in a revolving door when you get involved too much." "She doesn't make life miserable. Karen's... she's given me new perspectives and insights. Not because of any philosophy or theology she espouses. As a matter of fact we disagree considerably in most of those areas. It's something that kind of sticks like flypaper to your thoughts. You can't shake it loose." "That, my boy, is one of the best descriptions of what we used to call 'love' that I've ever heard. Now it's 'mutual self-realization' or 'higher mind unity' or whatever else this generation is calling it," the old man said with amusement; but then he became reflective.
"Whatever you call it, your mother and I had it," he said, his eyes becoming moist. "Don't be afraid of it, Son. It might only come once."
"It's more than that though. Her work bothers me. I'm afraid she's tied to something that's somehow going to get her into trouble. She could disagree with me forever on almost anything and I'd never let it affect the way I feel about her. But this cynicism she has... it almost seems like an obsession with her. I just don't want her involved in something that might hurt her. I think that's at the bottom of my apprehension."
"What's she cynical about?"
"Particularly, about UNFVTJS - about the control she feels the National Security Agency has over people ~ about what the man she works for calls the 'Babel Syndrome.' He says that mankind is going the way of the people described in the Bible who tried to build a tower to heaven. They were a kind of one-world order, I take it. God supposedly took away their common language and scattered them."
"Yes. I'm vaguely familiar with all that malarkey," Wilson said. "Sound's like your young lady is mixed up with one of those Bible-thumping fundamentalist types."
"He's not a minister. He's an eschatologist, she says. Someone who researches Biblical prophecies and how they relate to present time." "And Karen? How does she feel about it?"
"She loves the old man. Thinks there's no finer person in existence. She doesn't go along with the prophecies, the Second Coming, and that sort of thing. But she's convinced that all these tremendous strides we've made will lead to totalitarianism on a global scale. His name's Marchek... Dr. Hugo Marchek. She's part of his organization, because she feels it's the only vehicle available to carry the message of alarm to the public."
"Fanatics have been screaming, 'The end is coming,' since the beginning of time, but where is it?" Wilson stood to pace in front of Jacob, waving the empty glass while he talked.
"I'm sick of all these self-serving, self-righteous morons who think they're the only ones with the answers! To sit still is to regress. We would be consumed by the evolutionary process. Our technology and our will to go on are all we have to hang our hopes on. We must unite, or else blow ourselves to pieces, or breed and degenerate and pollute ourselves into oblivion."
Wilson calmed and refilled his glass from the decanter. "We've done pretty well pulling ourselves out to this point." He took a drink, grinned, and spoke more softly. "The old boy still has some of the demagogue in him, I suppose."
Jacob returned the smile — understanding ~ remembering the time three years earlier when a United States senator had used the term in lambasting Wilson. Conrad Wilson was, at the time, defending an administration position calling for a national-identification-computer-system-interact card to replace the Social Security card for each U.S. citizen. UNIVUS had been adopted and the cards issued, but not before one of the most intense battles ever waged in the chambers of Congress had taken place. Wilson was a powerful influence in the winning effort, and those on the winning side had never ceased praising their champion. The losers had never stopped proclaiming at every opportunity that Wilson was the man who had, more than any other, put every citizen at the mercy of the dehumanizing computer network.
"Anywhere there's civilization, the people are, by necessity, under governing authority. Now, for the first time, we have the technology and the good sense to use it for making government optimally benefit the individual. But these idiots would have us crawl back into our eaves of ignorance!"
Wilson calmed again and became reflective, rolling the glass between his hands. "There's something afoot that's evil, okay. It's in that dangerous kind of thinking that promotes fanaticism — anarchy under the guise of religious freedom. There's the real enemy to worry about."
"Maybe I should have you talk to Karen," Jacob said, half-seriously. "Here I am involved in some of the very things she's so concerned about, and I can't discuss them with her — to help her understand that these things are for the best."
"She'll know in time, Son," the old diplomat said comfortingly. "Everyone will reap the benefits of the new ways of doing things, and still be able to keep most of the values that matter to us. That's why we've worked so hard, you and I and the others on the project."
"Project Eagle has to succeed. Then all the Orwellian fears can be put to rest for good," Wilson said, then finished the scotch.
Karen checked her watch against the antique grandfather clock that stood on an equally ancient, multi-hued oriental rug in the rectangular foyer. Hugo Marchek appeared in the arched, oak-framed doorway that provided entrance to his den. "Come, come, my dear Karen. There are others besides Mr. Jacob Zen in this world." The small, balding man of 78 years peered over the wire-rimmed glasses riding low on the bridge of his thin nose. "Come. We've much to discuss tonight. Mr. Zen will be here in time," he said, his Polish-accented English rendered with good-natured inflection.
She checked her watch a last time before following him into the room which was alive with diverse conversations carried on by men and women in their late twenties to middle forties.
"Your attention, please!" Marchek clapped his hands several times and the room quieted.
"Thank you," he said, adjusting the glasses with his right hand while straining to see the words on the single sheet of paper he held in his left.
"I have before me a memorandum, of a highly confidential nature, which a friend managed to bring out of a certain file. It is disturbing, I am afraid, because it confirms our fears that the new controlling machinery is in place, and that we are very near the time it will be put into use in this nation.
"Details are quite sketchy. The information from this single document, of course, does not tell all. It is self-evident, however, that it was authorized in high places, and that makes it doubly significant. It reads:
'A universal standard of law and order being our ultimate objective, the United States must begin now to put aside provincial interests of all kinds and move into the New Age — socially, culturally, politically, and religiously. We have the technology for bringing us into that brilliant future, and we must provide leadership in marching to that future- Only those who can accept the required changes, only those who can adapt to the mix of policies capable of nurturing the New Age technologies, will achieve a place in the world that is to come. We will do whatever is necessary to claim our portion when the time is right. We must not fail We shall not fail.. '"
Marchek's voice trailed off wearily while he removed the glasses, shut his eyes and rubbed the reddened indentations they left on his nose. "The document is directed to a number of this country's most influential people in business, government, and the media. It is signed by the President of the United States."
"Interface Response Unity
is the New Earth. You are either IN or you are Mankind cannot serve two masters! Mankind must serve mankind, because mankind is one with God! Mankind is God.We are one through Interface INterface is Salvation! TRINITY Loves You."
Jacob Zen struggled to his feet upon hearing the mechanized proclamation that snatched hind from his semiconsciousness. His head spun, his vision blurred and went dark before clearing enough to see the screen and the image of the face.
"TRINITY forever!
Six Ways to Law!
Six Ways to Order!
Six Ways to Peace!
Six! Six! Six!"The INRU Scanner Eye was alive, panning the room in search of anything not within INterface tolerance. He sat in the console chair holding the back of his head rigidly against the slotted headrest.
"Now is the time for joining spirits. For becoming one with TRINITY. Time for committing the ultimate trust, one to another, to INterface in love"
He performed his required functions when the computer devices had completed theirs, obediently reading aloud the message on the screen: "I, six, six, six, I N three, one, eight, eight, eight, two, seven, one, am one with INterface, as are all within Sector five, five, zero. We have and shall have no other allegiance."
With his thumbprint and index fingerprint confirmed, the Identifier deactivated the INRU. Jacob groped under the console chair with his right hand for the hidden writing pad and book, and, finding them, he thumbed through the old volume and copied the passages quickly.
"How art thou fallen from heaven, 0 Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, who didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north,I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to Hell, to the sides of the pit" Isaiah 14:12-15
"And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden;But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die; For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil." Genesis 3:2-5
Now was the worst time — the time after being in the half-dream, half-memory state when Karen again traversed his thoughts, dynamic with life and precious. Always the emptiness raked at his guts, a hollowness that slowly filled with the urge to end it all.
But he must survive TRINITY'S soul-exposing machinery, whose power he witnessed now, the INRU monitor again alive and displaying INterface society at its totalitarian worst. The faces looked the same. Emaciated faces of the dying, like those on the archival films of the Holocaust many decades earlier. But these — in ghastly color. He fought the urge to retch, seeing tiny, naked children, their ribs straining to punch through pasty-white skin, eyes bulging hugely from their sockets. Past hunger. Awaiting the final convulsive throes of what would for them be blessed relief.
"Jewry has brought its plight upon itself. They are plunderers and usurpers! (Mow they are reaping the bitter harvest of their own making. They have created their own hell, these Jews who defy INterface."
The screen continued to display barely alive people who stared unblinkingly into the panning cameras. "Even these subhumans, who have perpetrated conflicts around the world, even these have a place in the Six Ways Plan.
"TRINITY speaks from Jerusalem at the appointed hour of six!"
The Six Ways Plan — the ever-evolving social, political, and religious blueprint of INterface's reach for perfection. There would be more didactic barrages about the Universal Mind, the need of Oneness with the great Cosmic Organism of which every individual
spirit was a cellular part. More assurances that the indwelling Spirit, the God within each person, would guide the Whole to the ultimate Evolutional Apex of Ascension.
Evidence that perfection was not yet attained burned now into his realization, while the scenes of the "Apostate Amputation," as TRINITY termed it, continued with a baby being torn from its mother's arms by a black-uniformed controller. The infant's head then bashed into a bloody, shapeless mass against a concrete wall moments before the mother was herself decapitated. But TRINITY would make it all understandable; TRINITY would explain the reasons for the "Amputations" — why babies and mothers must be butchered for the good of all.