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 1
"These things never work out, Jabbo.""Sure they do."
"Never have for me."
"How many times have I fixed you up? Look, when Jabolonski does something for a friend, it's usually a masterpiece."
Jacob smiled, knowing his stocky friend's self-assuredness, his most pronounced and, at times, his most annoying trait. Rasnick Jabolonski really believed what he was saying.
"She's no Cinderella, but, if nothing else, you'll enjoy talking with her. You two are a lot alike, you know... have a lot in common."
"You mean we're both human?" Jacob cocked an eyebrow to show his skepticism.
"I know. I know! That's the same line everybody uses to pre-sell a blind date. But in this case, it's a fact. She's involved in some government stuff. You know, the kind of stuff you like."
Jacob mentally pictured the female his friend's wife picked for him a homely, bespectacled Ichabod Crane of womanhood, sitting snootily and shapeless in gray, drooping wool. The depression deepened when he remembered the pile of work he left at his Boston office, the most important work of his young career. He would spend the whole evening smiling and nodding in agreement with Beth, Jabolonski's former college roommate, and would never hear her words.
"She's great, Jake. C'mon! Relax!"
"How long have you known her?"
"Well..."
"Well? What's so hard about that question, Jabbo?"
"Okay, so I haven't met her. But I trust Beth."
"Sure you do. You're not the one being fixed up."
Soft yellows, greens and reds blanketed the gently undulant horizon, which was less brilliant than the foliage that whisked by just outside the Volvo. Jacob sat on the passenger side, staring past his own sharp features reflecting in the raised window. Something about the neglected work weighed on his thoughts. It wasn't the time line set by the National Security Council chairman. That could be met with little effort. Too, the thrust of the work he was doing in the project seemed right for tackling the problems facing the United States, Europe and Japan. He sensed instead, an undercurrent that tugged his intuition toward some deeper source of worry.
"Hey! Where are you?"
"What?... Sorry." His thoughts dissipated with Jabolonski's interruption.
"I said, she works with some group in D.C. that has something to do with national security."
"Who?"
"Come on, Zen! What's the matter with you? Karen Mossberg, that's who!"
"I'm sorry, Jabbo. I was thinking about the work I have piling up."
"Forget it for tonight, okay? Everybody's got to unwind sometime."
"National Security, huh? Just about everything in Washington these days has something to do with national security. Which agency?"
"I don't know. Ask her yourself. It'll give you something to talk about," Jabolonski said while he steered the Volvo onto State 114, northwestward to Middleton.
She was not at first glance a girl of arresting good looks. Not like those he knew who made and lost careers intertwining themselves within Washington, D.C.'s society and officialdom. But she instantly made him forget the work on his desk, and drew him from his self-imposed introversion. She was, he considered while lighting a cigarette, quite simply the most appealing woman he had ever met.
"You don't need that," Karen Mossberg admonished softly, her pretty face portraying genuine concern. The silence that followed and her unyielding gaze made him uncomfortable.
"I've been meaning to quit."
"Yes. I know all the clichιs, Mr. Zen. 'I've been meaning to quit.'
'They're killing me.' 'It's just that I have to do something with my hands.'"
"Yeah. Something like that, I guess," he said, grinning. "Rasnick tells me you work in government."
"Change the subject. She'll get off my case," she said, reaching to take the cigarette from his mouth. Then her tone was gentle. "Please don't. They are killing you, you know. You're much too nice to kill yourself with these, Jacob. And if you need to do something with your hands, here, hold mine." She took his right hand and held it between her hands.
"My work involves government, but I don't work for any agency," she said, continuing to hold his hand. "We're interested in policing the National Security Agency, in particular... At least for the moment, that's our primary area of concern."
"We?"
"P. A.L. Preservers of American Liberty."
"Clever," Jacob said, Karen Mossberg thought, just a bit smugly.
"You've heard of us." The defensive irritation in her voice and narrowed brows above her intense brown eyes told him to soft-pedal.
"I only meant it's a clever name." "Actually, we've spent so much time researching the NSA, I guess we haven't earned a reputation yet. But I assure you we will be heard from shortly."
Her tone was soft again and he sensed she had to struggle with herself to keep it at that level. But the passion and the quick intellect were still there in the eyes ~ those lovely, dark eyes that sparked reflected light when she made her points.
"What about you? What exactly is your contribution to our benevolent keepers?"
"Nothing quite so stimulating as fighting to preserve our civil liberties, I'm afraid. It has its rewards on occasion, though. For lack of a better title, I guess you could say I'm an assistant consultant to the administration in international economic affairs." "To the President?"
He was inwardly pleased that she brought up the question, and that she seemed duly impressed.
"Indirectly. My boss does the vis-a-vis stuff with top White House people. I'm relegated to rear echelon duty."
The expanded explanation was ego-deflating, but he saw her appreciation for his truthfulness. She reached to touch his arm.
"Being a junior G-man at your age isn't all that bad. You've got a lot of time."
"You people talking business?" Jabolonski entered the patio area of his home carrying meat prepared for the grill. The evening ended too soon for Jacob. Friendship had grown into pronounced interest by eleven o'clock, when it was time to return to Boston and the horror of his desk. A quality, an indefinable something drew him to Karen, traits that separated her from the others. Although he was uncertain of her appraisal of him, he considered while he and Jabolonski rode toward the halo of illumination framing Boston against the blackness of the hour the look she gave before they parted, with a wave and her agreement to get together in Washington, told him the relationship held promise.
A shrill scream pierced his skull and reverberated over his brain, causing his eyes to pop open in a transfixed stare. His mind, as always, obeyed its masters instantaneously. He hurried to his position, as commanded.
Bright amber computer data flashed on the rectangular INterface screen when the old woman stepped beneath the Decodscanner.
"Look up!" commanded the stern woman across the counter, her black eyes leering from sockets surrounded by dark, sunken flesh.
The woman obeyed nervously, turning her puffy, age-creased face upward.
The screen displayed:
INterface Response Unity
U.S. SECTOR 781
PROCEED INPUTThe checker herded a few canned grocery items onto the conveyor, then pressed a button located at waist level behind the counter.
Fumbling through her worn, cracked vinyl purse, the older woman retrieved a tissue and applied it to her cold-infected nose.
"Look, lady! There are other citizens besides you in the P.C.," the checker said icily. "Move along!"
Her eyes betraying fear, she gathered the sack into her arms, coughed into the tissue, and exited the Product Center under the suspicious glare of a black-uniformed controller.
An old man shuffled tentatively into the checkout lane, avoiding the gaze of the checker. His broad head was bowed as if he sought to hide beneath the upturned collar of the ragged gray coat he wore. "You got an IN, mister?" Her question cut the air in a tone of disgust.
"Yes... Yes... See here." The man let his eyes meet hers fleetingly while he pulled back the sleeve on his right arm and moved his hand to a position beneath the countertop Decodscanner, activating an ultraviolet light which made visible a bar code tattooed on the back of his hand. At the same time, the number appeared on the INRU screen:
5DD197920- J
Looking at the screen, the checker pushed a button, and data was added to the display.
5D019792O-J IN5DR - O - CREDIT LINE - D
"You don't have any drawing rights, Jew! Take these and put them back where they belong!"
The little man shrunk deeper into the oversized coat, although he made a meek protest. "Please... but madam... I..."
"Just get these things back on the shelves, Jew!" She shoved the items roughly at him, cursing beneath her breath. Her outburst drew the attention of others in the Product Center and caused the controller to stiffen to alertness from his position near the exit.
While all eyes were on the frightened man, he moved from the counter and nervously replaced the foodstuffs on their various shelves. His face taking on the bloodless look of a man terminally ill, his only wish was to be gone from the Product Center.
"Are you Jew?" The controller collared him, snarling the question through clenched teeth.
"Answer me, old man!"
He slammed the smaller man hard against a nearby wall, then pushed his elbow into the captive's throat. Unable to answer and growing dizzy because of pressure exerted on his windpipe, the man ceased to struggle against his powerful captor, who jerked and ripped at the overcoat, sending buttons flying when the coat tore open.
The controller pulled the coat apart, exposing a white thread-stitched Star of David on the gray, tattered shirt.
"Why are you hiding this?" the angry policeman demanded, jabbing his finger into the center of the symbol. "You know it's forbidden to conceal being Jew!"
A crowd had gathered, the people's faces reflecting collective hatred.
"Please, sir! I didn't mean to conceal it. It will not happen again, sir."
His plea, in a heavy Slavic accent, brought mumbled cursing from the mob. The controller smiled stiffly while pushing the terrified man through the doorway and onto the concrete walk area in front of the Product Center.
"It won't happen again, because there is no more 'again' for you, my kike friend," growled the bigger man.
"Please, sir..." The prisoner's voice cracked with emotion.
"This is IN Controller Unit six, eight, two, two, two," the policeman said, talking into a hand-held communicator and holding his captive with his other hand. "Dispatch a Decap Unit to seven, seven, zero, one-hundred forty-fifth, J... uh..." He jerked the man violently toward himself, ripped open the prisoner's shirt, and read the number tattooed above the man's left breast.
"Make that five, zero, zero, one, nine, seven, nine, two, zero, Jew." The female operator at the other end of the transmission replied, "Affirmative, Controller six, eight, two, two, two. Dispatching Decap Unit now." The crowd grew larger and was demonstratively pleased with the proceedings. Several among them shouted obscenities at the prisoner, who tried to hide behind the controller like a teased or frightened child might hide behind his parent.
In less than five minutes, a white van rounded a corner in the distance, then stopped seconds later in the middle of the badly deteriorating street near the mob. Two men in uniform similar to that worn by the controller exited the vehicle and walked to its rear.
One of them opened a panel on the right rear portion of the van and pushed a series of buttons, causing the back doors to swing open. He pressed another, activating machinery that swung out through the rear of the van and unfolded a section at a time, forming, finally, a large metal platform.
Two thick telescoping poles erected from the floor of the platform and extended upward six feet before stopping. A rectangular box-like device emerged from the center of the platform, rising three feet before halting between the two vertical poles. Within seconds, a large contrivance appeared from within the van's body and whirred to a stop between the poles at their highest points. The rectangular device opened and appendages extended from either side to make attachment to the vertical beams. A glistening chrome-like blade of knife-sharp metal descended slowly from the device's lower position. Another projection ascended from the box on the floor of the platform, three feet wide, three inches thick and notched at its center, a half-circle bite having been taken from it by its machine-creator.
With the process completed, everyone present studied its grim appearance, then looked to the controller, to the little man who was his prisoner, and to the van operator who now helped drag the prisoner up two grated metal steps and onto the platform.
The man made no protest when they pushed him to his knees and forced his neck downward into the concave notch.
Another device descended. It, too, was notched opposite in configuration to the lower notch so that when fitting over the back of the prisoner's neck, it locked to form a perfect circle, with the bottom notch trapping the man's head.
The two Decap Unit specialists stepped off the platform, one of them returning to the panel housing the various buttons that controlled the van's ominous machinery. The man remained motionless and silent in his pathetic kneeling position on the platform, supporting his weight on the palms of his hands. When the operator pushed a black button, the shimmering metal blade descended slowly with a mechanized droning sound until it reached the back of the condemned's neck. It slowed almost imperceptibly while pinching through the first layers of flesh, then into the muscles. It continued to slice through vertebra, spinal cord, arteries and trachea, completing its journey with a clank against the bottom of the lower notch.
Blood spurted from the severed carotids, the head plopped heavily into a metal container, the body stiffened, then lay jerking in spasmodic death throes on the platform. The executioners hurriedly removed the corpse to the cheers of those gathered at the scene and heaved the body into the van through a side disposal chute. Another mechanized unit whirred from within the van and made several sweeps across the platform, shooting high-pressure streams of precisely directed water that forced the dead man's blood to run onto the street and onto a nearby sewer drain.
On your interface Response Unit, you have witnessed which of the following?"
Press the response key for the answer you think is correct.
A. Injustice to a citizen of Interface.
B. A misunderstanding, leading to the unfortunate death of a citizen.
C. Proper punishment for a questionable entity who broke a law to the detriment of Interface Unity.
D. Punitive action for an offense against interface which should have called for a milder disciplinary response."The questions and the choices posed by the computer voice popped on the screen one line at a time in bright yellow characters against a royal blue background. Jacob Zen's attention darted swiftly from the legal pad on his lap to the screen, then to the key recessed in the right arm of his chair. He jabbed the key and the INRU screen displayed the "C" answer, which flashed on and off several times before the screen snapped to solid blue in preparation for the next question.
"Do you feel Jews deserve equal treatment to that given other citizens of interface, in any or all of its aspects?"
A. Yes
B. No
Jacob Zen pressed a button on the panel, generating the letter "B" and the word "No." "If you responded B, which of the following most accurately reflects your meaning?"
A. The governing of all Jewish entities should be conducted as it currently is under Interface Commission Policy 666 -- I.OOO.
B. Jews should have increased rights.
C. Jew entities should have decreased rights.He responded to the hollow, synthesized voice after a quick glance at the graphic; the "C" answer pulsed brightly on, then off, then on again. "Ethnic Inculcation Session 6662E19 is ended. Responses will be programmed into INterface Response Unity and consensus views incorporated into INRLJ Law to the degree those views are deemed beneficial by TRINITY and the Commission of Ten."
Before rising from the chair, Jacob Zen placed the old book on the floor, taking care to hide it from the Scanner Eye. He knelt before the big screen, bowed his head, and drew his right arm to his body, pressing his clenched fist against his chest while militaristic music assaulted his senses, setting in motion brain undulations that moved his thoughts feverishly in whip-like fashion along the full length of his cognitive spectrum. Each run through that dark cerebral inner space would, it seemed, take him over the end, or through the barrier, or into hell's vortex.
But there was no hell, he managed to remember, forcing his oscillating mind to stabilize somewhere near the center of his brain only heaven, only love. Master Manya and TRINITY said so.
INterface Response Unity was salvation! INterface was the nucleus, the matrix of Universal Truth.
"To Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God that which is God's!
TRINITY speaks!"
announced the computerized voice, which was at first three separate voices slightly out of synchronization with each other, but which then blended, finally becoming one cavernous voice that was TRINITY'S. "INterface Response Unity is the New Earth.
You are either IN or you are lost. Mankind cannot serve two masters. INterface is salvation. TRINITY loves you."
Jacob Zen lifted his face to see the INterface Response Unit screen fill with a triple image, three distinct faces revolving around and moving through each other, merging, then locking into a single image.
"TRINITY forever!"
said the computer voice of INterface.
"Six Ways to Law! Six Ways to Order! Six Ways to Peace! Six! Six! Six!"
The words echoed in his head, although the screen was now black, the speakers silent. Struggling to his feet, he felt two decades older than his 42 years. His throbbing knee joints and tension-knotted back muscles wreaking barely endurable pain on his stiff, convoluting mind. Looking into the mirror did nothing to roll back those unlived years, seeing the yellowish flesh and the creases branching in multiple valleys from the corners of his eyes and mouth. Hair once dark and thick was now graying and sparsely covering his scalp.
From the only window in the tiny room that had become the one world left to him, Jacob watched the haze-shrouded, deteriorating concrete below, where a squad of controllers stormed into a tenement building. Then he heard the moaning children the haunting cries of the children.
He dropped heavily into the chair and tried to force the skull-crunching atrocities from his mind, his thoughts returning to the image on the INRU screen ~ to the black, soul-piercing eyes, the stark face-image which commanded instant obeisance whenever and wherever it appeared. He retrieved the legal pad and the book from their hiding place and, after reading a bold underlined passage in the volume, copied the words:
"And he hath power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed,.." Revelation 13:15
Soon would be the time of INterface. Time, under pretext of becoming one with TRINITY, to help them account for their victims.
Time again to prove one's self loyal to the Father, Son and unholy Spirit.
Existence at the merciless hands of INterface was possible only because, to fulfill his pledge that the masters would know retribution as vengeful as that with which they crushed anyone who resisted their incalculable evil he must remain alive.
But how could he judge evil, considering his own record? How could he escape the fact of his own sin? The man's face when he plunged the 8-inch blade beneath the sternum, thrusting it upward through the heart. The issue of liquid warmth, the blood he could not wipe from his hands even now, while sitting before the INterface Response Unit awaiting TRINITY'S seeing, knowing intrusion into his misery.
Jacob Zen closed his eyes and tried to drive the stifling demons from his mind. His thinking must be clear for INterface, it must! But could it ever be erased, those bugging, dying eyes? the man's gasping, clutching effort to keep his life?
What of Jacob Zen's soul? Would the nightmarish image follow him forever during his eternal run through perdition?
"TRINITY Loves You!"
The electronic voice jerked his attention abruptly to itself and to the INRU screen.
"Six Ways to Law!
Six Ways to Order!
Six Ways to Peace!"The screen was alive again, the triple image of the face swirling, crisscrossing, then locking into a single frame.
"Six! Six! Six!"
Subtle movement and noises told him the INterface Eye was active, making its central terminal-controlled adjustments in preparation for INterface.
He must perform the hated ritual for a time longer. Until he was ready to deal with TRINITY and with INterface his own way.
"Now is the time for joining spirits
For becoming one --
Time far committing the ultimate
trust, one to another --
To INterface in love."Jacob Zen sat back in the console chair, his posture erect, motionless. The Eye atop the INRU whirred and clicked when he pressed the button recessed in the chair's right arm panel. A thin stream of light beamed from the camera, forming a circle on the skin of his forehead. At the same time, a tubular device swung from beneath the right arm of the chair and moved electronically to a stop above his right hand. Data appeared on the INRU screen, glowing yellow characters against the blue background.
JOHN I GARVER
66E-IN-3- 1888271,br> SECTOR COORDINATOR 55O"Read the following pledge, one. eight, eight, eight, two, seven, one."
He read aloud a copy, which appeared on the screen when the computer voice completed its directive.
"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."
"Prepare for Print Ident. Seize Print Plate."
ordered the voice of INterface Response Unit.
He complied, placing his right thumb and index finger on the glass plate of the armrest's console panel. The screen display changed to:
AFFIRM -- JOHN I GARVER
SECTOR 55O
COORDINATOR BBB-IN-3- 1 88827 1"INterface accepts. IN are you."
The screen went black, the Scanner deactivated, and the apparatus above his right hand droningly returned to its position beneath the chair.
Relaxing, Jacob stared for a moment at the darkened, silent screen, thinking of the absurdity resorted to by history's most advanced technological state. The ludicrous play on words employed to inform the lucky citizen that he was a legal entity within the computer network society. "In are you through the INRU."
He wanted to laugh at their silly official slogan, but there was nothing funny about INterface totalitarianism. The numerical dehumanization imposed by mankind's latest and greatest attempt at Utopia had exacted its toll. If not for his all-consuming purpose, this personality crushing end-product of the quantum evolutionary leap would long ago have driven him to self-destruction. No doubt he would die at the hands of this perfect society; the probability of being discovered increased hourly. But he would do his utmost to have his satisfaction before it happened. Perspiration beaded on his forehead and streamed down his thin face. A cold, unhealthy sweat, bubbled up from his core being, the manifestation of the torturous remembrances always with him. Karen, sweet, lovely Karen, their one victim for whom they would pay as great a price as he could extract.
Now he felt the monster closing in on him, its insidious, constricting, grasp squeezing life from him. Yet there remained the cerebral path to take him, if but for a sanity-preserving moment, away from the present.