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 18
All flesh blurred, except that of Karen's lovely, ovaled face. Its olive-smoothness, unalloyed beauty within the holographic horror at the center of the pyramid. He could reach in, take her hand and draw her to himself. They could walk away together into another place, another time. With Karen... at last!
"Eliminator Three stands ready to receive your order. INterface awaits your command to bring retribution upon our enemies!"
Her expression, fearful but not panicked. Calmly prepared for INterface's decision about her fate. For his decision. The marvelous brown eyes he had so often looked into during their most intimate times; trusting, loving him.
"Sector Coordinator Five, Five, Zero, Eliminator Three is standing by for your command," the voice said with more force from beneath the hood.
The hologram began to weaken, obscuring Karen's features, then causing the image to degenerate into an indistinguishable, pink-hued blob within the crystal pyramid. Although he felt chilled, sweat rolled from his hairline, downward over his gaunt face. Was it Karen he had seen moments earlier? Really Karen? Were the monsters forcing him to snuff out the only light there was for him? The hope of seeing Karen again. Or was it some perverse synapse to neuron short-circuiting malfunction of his Trachetrol-damaged brain, cruelly tricking him into believing the face had been Karen's?
Refusing to give the order would not save this stranger, who happened to look like Karen somewhat. To refuse would make no difference to the poor people in that pre-death huddle. To refuse would
"However, our mercy is great. We do not inflict lingering pain, even upon those who would do us harm."
Like fly-papered to walls, and psychologically and physically tortured and prodded and probed with their own deepest fears. Like setting babies on fire. Jacob's thoughts ran swiftly, calculating the INterface inhumanity he had witnessed, wondering what they intended to do to the helpless young woman, who looked so frail beside the big controllers.
"This Jewess shall die quickly for her sins against INterface Universal." Machinery emerged from the platform and automatically made its attachments to the stock device, while the hooded figure continued to speak. "Each of these Jews will be executed individually rather than collectively as is usual extermination procedure. This liquidation will be recorded for future transmission through INterface Response Unity, to serve as example for those who work against the magnificent design for perfecting our world. Approach the Termination area, Five, Five, Zero. Enjoy, with us, the liquidation of this enemy."
Some of the robed figures behind him walked forward, nudging him toward the girl and her executioners. Her head was down, her dark hair concealing her facial features. While he approached, she seemed to compose herself, erecting, then shaking her head so that her hair shook free from her face. Karen!
From behind and from both sides of him, the hooded ones began chanting a low, humming mantra. They moved closer until they formed a tightly-wedged half circle around him. Their chants grew louder.
Jacob's emotions filling with the haplessness and finality of his predicament. The sickening truth that Karen would be butchered. That he could do nothing to save her. But, that was not the truth either. The sickness in the pit of his stomach and the paralysis was cowardice-generated. She must die because to try to stop them would mean that he, too, would die. "Keep quiet and live," the inner-voice kept saying.
"Because of your sins against the Universal Mind and for your crimes against INterface, go to your death, Jews!"
They knew! The monsters knew! That he was not John I. Carver. That she was Karen Mossberg, Jacob Zen's greatest love. In some presciently incredible way, they knew everything, and worked their plan masterfully, bringing it to this moment of supreme cruelty! It was, in its way, more cruel than the death they contrived for the victim fly-papered to the wall, whose own phobia-demons caused the bats to ravage his body. Perfect revenge for Jacob Zen's sins against INterface.
His love knelt before the gleaming stock, forced to her knees by one of the controllers, who stood behind her while the other INterface policeman, standing in front of the stock, gripped her hair and pulled it toward himself forcing her throat against the bottom notch. The top half of the stock clanked against the lower, trapping her head. Another device arose electronically from the platform and swung into position high above her head, automatically attaching itself to the top of two stainless steel poles. The Decap Unit was ready to do its deadly work.
They had manipulated him to this moment, like they shaped all things wicked. Karen's lovely face must tumble into the chrome box to provide them their sadistic pleasure. Droning, mechanized descent of the glinting blade, its edge touching the velvet neck his lips touched during those times of sweetness their love created in the nights of that long ago age. Her beautiful head in the gory ugliness of that metal basket. The blood gushing with each beat of the heart he had felt pulsing while pressed against her, while she warmed him, insulating him against a world that was cold and cruel even then. Darkness descending with that terrible blade. Vomit rising from a point just beneath the Adam's apple. His legs, their strength draining. Consciousness fading... "Jacob Zen!"
The voice, miles from him, behind him, bringing light again, retrieving conscious thought. "Jacob Zen!"
His arms in the grip of strong hands, bracing him while strength came again into his legs.
"Lift your eyes, Jacob Zen! Behold the goodness and mercy that is INterface Universal!"
His brain processed a kaleidoscope of reds, yellows and blues in designs that swirled out of control behind eyes that would not focus. He, out of reflexive obedience, lifted his head to look at the execution platform. An apparition, formless, blurry, moved within the kaleidoscopic vortex, taking on shape and substance. Three figures standing between him and the platform of death. The two controllers, hulking and dark, one on either side of a small human form. Jacob blinked to clear his vision, tried to restore reason. Was this death? Had he died? "Jacob, it's me. It's Karen." Straightening, squinting, the forms became clear.
"Karen?"
"Yes, my love. It's really me." "Karen!"
Tears came while he sobbed the name, drenching the flame of hatred for INterface, flooding his emotions with love for the one who meant everything to him; beautiful Karen, her arms outstretched to him... Alive!
Their embrace, experiencing again her soft warmth, her fragrance, brought convulsions of joy. She returned his love, yet maintained control of her own feelings while they stood locked in reunion. When he looked, finally, into her eyes, seeing they were filled not with tears but with patient tolerance, his sense of propriety took control. He suddenly felt sheepish standing in the middle of the circle of their robed companions.
"You see, Jacob. You must not be independent of TRINITY, who loves us so much," Karen said, smiling, gently urging him to turn toward the pyramid of crystal. "I was wrong. Wrong about everything. Dr. Marchek was wrong. You have been wrong, my darling Jacob." Her worshipful gaze was upon the hooded one sitting at the top of the dazzling throne. "Approach, Jacob Zen."
The words issued from the blackness within the hood. The tone was benign, unlike when it ordered the feigned execution.
They moved together to the base of the throne, Karen's touch assuring there was nothing to fear.
"You have been the prodigal, Jacob Zen. But you are home, now. Welcome, Son, to the kingdom you shall share with our brothers and sisters of INterface."
Jacob was in shock from the past minutes of deception and revelation, and from holding Karen again after reconciling himself to her death — all of which served to short-circuit his hatred for INterface. The shock, however, began to wear off.
Questions blazed to life again in his reeling brain. Chief among them: Why was he chosen? He had killed INterface agents and dealt the Naxos-centered state misery, proving his incorrigible animosity toward them. Why had they set him up for blame in the killing of Herrlich Krimhler? The drugging in Fredria VanHorne's Naxos bedroom and implantation of the Allegiant. Why did they hold him up before the world as assassin of the beloved leader? Make him the most hated, hunted man in history, then deceive him by forcing him to supposedly order the beheading of the person dearest to him, only to hold him to their breast as the prodigal returned? And, the most mind-scalding question of all, why would Karen, whose thought processes, actions and reactions he knew nearly as well as he knew his own, why would she take part in such a sham, knowing the danger he was in, knowing the agonies he had endured in the past few emotion-rending minutes?
Standing at the base of the pyramid-throne, he alone looked upward to the figure. The face, though still not distinguishable because of the stark shadows created by the hood, had sharp, dramatic features which caught small fragments of light that dimly outlined the brow, nose and chin. The black area, where the mouth should be, appeared not to move. The robed, hooded figures and Karen stood with heads bowed, while the voice spoke in a tone displaying displeasure.
"Thou hast sinned against INterface, Jacob Zen. Against your brothers and sisters, who want only to be free to create the world of goodness and plenty they deserve. That world can be constructed only by the Six Ways to Peace given by Herrlich Krimhler. For your disruptive treacheries against that great design, you deserve everlasting punishment." The voice softened again. "However, because the chief building block that will bring heaven to earth is love, you are forgiven your trespasses and accepted into this Circle of Order, never to break its continuity, while we reach for perfection through the Six Ways to Peace."
"Six Ways to Law," the robed figures around Jacob chanted softly when the voice from atop the pyramid paused.
"TRINITY speaks! It shall be done!" the voice said from the throne.
"Six Ways to Order," the encircling voices chanted in unison.
"Six! Six! Six!" the voice said from the throne's apex.
"Six Ways to Peace! Six! Six! Six!" the group surrounding Jacob chanted rhythmically.
"Go now, and sin no more. Greet your family. INterface Body awaits, with great love and goodness and peace!" Feeling the crush of those closing around him, Jacob turned, catching glimpses of faces within the hoods. Hands touching, pulling him. Bodies pushing against Karen and him, forcing them together. The aggressors' incantational fervor growing, quickening in cadence, then, suddenly stopping. "Welcome home, Jacob."
The voice, impossible to forget! From a life-long father-son relationship of love. The one who spoke removed the crimson hood. "Uncle Conrad!"
His own joyous hug met with a comforting embrace by Wilson, who held him then at arm's-length, gripping his foster son's shoulders.
"We were so wrong, Jacob... so mistaken. Fighting those who love us is the greatest wrong we can do. America's goodness, her humanity, is not sacrificed. She is enhanced and magnified, my boy. Her beauty and grace, her essence, is here within INterface Body. The unproductive and nonproductive, the callous disregard for humanism, for civil and human rights, the evils, have been purged by TRINITY, with the loving guidance of Master Manya. Pure love, free of contamination."
All others in the circle removed their hoods and Jacob glanced around the innermost ring surrounding him, Karen and Conrad Wilson. v Their features came into focus slowly through vision blurred with tears. Melisa Jensen and Fredria VanHorne, both looking at him with weak, uninter-pretable smiles on their colorless lips. Kerry Vinchey, too, with the same dispassionate expression that would not translate into meaning. Silent, grinning mouths beneath stuporous, mannequinish stares.
"Your friends have been with you through your rebellion, while you found your way home," the voice from the shining throne said. "INterface Body shall never forsake our own."
Pink diffused into lavender and lavender into purples of darkening hues, which mingled with and became lost within the deepening blue of the Jerusalem twilight. Never had the western sky appeared so beautiful. A horizon worthy of the one who walked at his side, her soft hair lifting gently and brushing against his shoulder when the uncharacteristically fresh, cooling wind caught it and moved its loveliness. Her delicate scent filled his nostrils, almost succeeding for the moment in wiping from his thoughts the altered realities of their changed world.
Karen's physical presence was enough for now, the fire of her will seemingly quenched, leaving the impression of caricature. But she was here. Whether real or imitation, this Karen was here, and he would, for the moment, savor her on whatever terms, in whatever condition the masters allowed.
They walked along the roofs ornate edge, his arm around her, her pretty face reflecting the colors of the day's final rays.
"What happened after we talked on the phone that night I was in Brussels?"
"We mustn't dwell on things that are in times before INterface. We gain nothing by looking into the flawed past, only by looking toward a perfect future," she said without hesitation, as if her response required no time for thinking. "I am well, aren't I? I haven't been harmed in any way. Why concern yourself with what was? We must go forward... into perfection. It is what was meant for us from the beginning."
"Perfection? You really believe that this will lead to perfection?"
"Yes I do, and you will too, after tonight, when you've heard Master Manya explain things. Only He can explain perfection. Master Manya is the singular, unchangeable example of love, my darling Jacob."
"So I've heard. But what about the people they're killing? What about the babies I've seen slaughtered by this... TRINITY, who is leading us into perfection?"
"Harmful organisms within Universal Body must be excised, Jacob, so we, as one, can evolve to the highest ascended order."
"And what is the selection process? Why are some of us privileged to evolve, while others are butchered or forced into slavery? Just like every totalitarian state that has ever existed? What about this genocide, Karen? The Jews. And where do we fit in? They know you and I are Jews."
She stopped walking, and pulled away from him, a stern expression on her face. "You must never speak of the Jews, or of the past. Only of perfection, of the future perfecting of man by man."
"Why didn't they kill me? I fought them. I'm still fighting them in my thoughts."
"TRINITY will explain all tonight," she said, calming. "Patience, my darling, is a virtue second only to divine love for our Master Manya. He will explain why your rebellion has been allowed for the good oflNterface Body. All things work together for the good to those who love TRINITY."
A stranger walked at his side. Totally different from the Karen who had cared for him like no other. Not the same girl who was terrified that night they did with her whatever was done — changed her, like they changed, for the worse, everything they touched. They took her from him as surely as if they had taken her life. Killed Karen, like they were murdering so many others every second that ticked.
"We're together again, Sweetie. Isn't that all that matters? We are together. One with TRINITY, through INterface Body. There is no higher purpose or condition in our present evolutionary state than to be joined one to another."
She parroted, with identical inflection to the hooded one atop the pyramid, automatically saying words that preempted her own conceptual will.
"Master Manya will give all answers it is good for us to know. He only wants the best for us. He will tell us why you are forgiven your transgressions against the great Universal Mind-Father." "You mean God?"
"The only God, who was and is. Who has overcome the counterfeit who thought he could usurp the Great Cosmogonal Throne. He is the Most High. The Great Universal Mind-Father of evolved humanity. But it is not yet time for talk of these things. All will be revealed during the Convocation, when Master Manya speaks."
To try reason with her, or to question further, would be futile. Her dark, beautiful eyes glistened, staring unblinkingly at the robed, hooded forms silhouetted blackly against the glow toward which he and Karen walked. Remain silent. Become a part of it all. The best course, for now. The hooded disciples closed around them and together they moved into the massive elevator before the door whirred shut, sealing them in an unsettling silence.
Less than five minutes later, the robed apostles, including Jacob and Karen, stood motionless and quiet. Conrad Wilson, dressed in a gray business suit, sat with nine similarly attired men and two women at a semi-circular table that faced the crystal pyramid. From his position, Jacob saw that the group, diametrically unlike the one of which he was a part, was animated, excited apparently over what was about to happen. They chatted freely, gesturing and smiling under the unaffected watch of the robed holy man sitting at the sparkling pyramid's tip.
Beyond the pyramid which everyone in the room faced, with Jacob's group standing 14 feet behind the seated men and women, the rounded walls slid apart in ten places, revealing ten gigantic viewing screens. They were dark for only a moment before simultaneously snapping to life, displaying video from the capitols of the newly created EARTHSPHERE-10. Jacob's mind reeled. His thoughts filled with remembered Scripture. The voice echoing in his head was that of Hugo Marchek.
"And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, who have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast."
Two figures within his group silently, but firmly, urged Jacob to put on one of the burgundy-colored robes. Holding the garment open for him, one of them then tied the yellow rope around his waist while the other pulled the hood over Jacob's head.
He was one of them now, feeling less conspicuous, but at the same time more uneasy. Why had they not indoctrinated him, or brain-washed him? Why had they not done to him whatever they had done to Karen and the others? Why had they not filled him with the controlling, senses-dulling serums of INterface? Still, he managed to maintain self-control without their help. Despite the fact that heavy dosages of Trachetrol II, taken over many months, had minimal effect, his body had built resistances. Outwardly at least, he was able to remain calm; thanks, no doubt, to the drug's residual influence.
Boiling slowly beneath that tranquility, however, was suspicion that his state of being, different from that of the others who surrounded him, was that way for reasons only the masters knew. Worry bubbled in his thoughts, and broke into his consciousness, while the video from the ten cities moved upon the screens, forewarning that he stood alone. The single outsider in what was otherwise orchestrated cohesion. Yet in his separateness, he felt a distinct part of all that was and was to soon be.
A sense that it had all happened before slashed across his perception of everything going on around him, in that instant bringing into confluence all his fears, the paranoiac certainties he had lived with since shortly after meeting Hugo Marchek. That he, Jacob Zen, was hopelessly intertwined with events sweeping humankind into the eternal abyss.
The vortex sucked at him now. The screens' chaos increasing the churning velocity of his mind-whirlpool. The only sounds in the vast chamber, muted conversations among the 12 seated in front of the pyramid, and a faint though distinct throb, as if the event which everyone seemed to anticipate with reverential expectation was organic in nature. Its heart beating slowly, awaiting its moment of entrance with the calm foreknowledge that its destiny was preordained to be the centerpiece of all that would happen next.
The hooded mass moved forward, forcing him to jostle against Karen, who willingly pressed toward the gleaming throne, her eyes, like the eyes of all others in the room, fixed upon the holy man. Jacob managed a quick scan of the room, seeing above and behind the advancing disciples, several cameras, their large lenses aimed at the crystal pyramid and Master Manya. Other large panels separated, unveiling cameras above each large screen around the circular room, all pointing to the chamber's center.
Master Manya stood when the disciples halted and arranged themselves behind the 12 people seated at the semi-circular table. He lifted and stretched his arms outward in the direction of the disciples, who, after kneeling, bowed their heads and brought their hands together into a prayerful posture beneath their chins. The men and women at the table went to their knees before the holy man, who stood rigidly, high above the gathering.
The thumping sound became louder and faster; the screens, Jacob noticed, were filled with video of the religious man atop the pyramid, portraying his eerie image from constantly changing camera angles. Abruptly, the heartbeat stopped.
Official INterface music ruptured the silence. Its militaristic strains prompting all in the chamber to assume a position on one knee and draw clenched right fist to chest.
"To Caesar that which is Caesar's, and to God that which is God's. TRINITY speaks!"
The computer voice reverberated throughout the room, while everyone maintained the head-bowed position of allegiance.
"Interface Response Unity is the New Earth. You are either IN or you are lost. INterface is salvation. TRINITY loves you."
Each subject, Jacob, too, lifted his face to see on the screens the single image, its angular designs joined with its interwoven, ovaled lines to form the stylized countenance of INterface Man, symbolic of TRINITY.
"TRINITY forever! Six Ways to Law!
Six Ways to Order!
Six Ways to Peace!Six! Six! Six!"
The martial music ceased and the heartbeat resumed at pace and volume equal to before. All in the chamber got to their feet except the 12, who reseated themselves around the curved table. Jacob's companions stared upward at the hooded Manya, whose arms-interlocked pose they emulated. On their faces were expressions beyond adoration, tears streaming over their pallid cheeks. They, too, were meant for such heights. The disciples genuinely believed. Karen's brown eyes, never more effulgent, never more lovely than now, while she worshiped the enigmatic representation of all that was holy to her — to him, all that was blasphemous.
The tip of the pyramid upon which Master Manya stood began to turn slowly, causing the holy man to rotate. His straight-ahead gaze meeting each of the ten screens in its turn. Again the ten cities were being scanned by the cameras at those locations, capturing the throngs of enraptured INterface subjects, who were themselves, at the same time, given view of the goings-on in the temple chamber and all other cities being shown. Master Manya's words were received by all INterface Response Units and translated instantaneously into the many languages.
"Brothers... Sisters... of INterface Body." Manya spoke softly, while his robed body continued to rotate slowly upon the tip of the pyramid. "You are one with each other, although separated through limitations imposed by physical laws. One in the Body of INterface Universal."
The throbbing sound grew in volume and quickened, Master Manya's drawn, white face in closeup on the screens of INterface, the small, deeply creased mouth issuing the words ecclesiastically.
"Certain ones who were among us, but who are no longer among us, have reached evolutionary planes of ascension where they are now most intimately One with the Universal Father. Others, never truly part of us, are gone. Taken in the great cosmic excision so the Body Universal can function free of the malignancy of the before time, allowing us to progress more rapidly toward humanity's ultimate place with the Ascended Ones."
Manya's voice became harder, his expression within the hood's stark shadows changing to match the intonation.
"Before we can begin that ascension in earnest, global understanding, world unity, earthly peace, must be achieved."
His voice filled with controlled rage; his corpse-pale hands clenched into fists with which he pounded his points in short, hammering motions. "Ancient, deceiving forces and their agents have worked ceaselessly to prevent the unity we must have.
These agents are Jews! They spew forth hatred, in order to destroy love. LOVE! The only thing which can bring universal peace, and mankind's millennium of perfection."
Manya appeared to sink deeper into the crimson hood, and seemed to withdraw momentarily to remarshal his energies before continuing.
"A great man gave his life in reaching out to these Jews. Single-handedly, he brought Arab and Jew together in rapprochement unequaled in history through the inspired Six Ways Plan, under which INterface shall march to the ultimate evolutionary plane!
"But the Zionist devils would not accept the pact of love agreed to by those among them who saw the wisdom in adopting peace, rather than continuing the conflict which will bring about their end as a race. Claiming to be the chosen people of God, they murdered the one man who would have made their continued existence acceptable. It was a Jew who assassinated Herrlich Krimhler!"
The INterface prelate paused, as if reflecting on his words, or on the depth of loss felt for Krimhler. Jacob's mind lurched back to the night spent with Fredria VanHorne. His memory, for some reason he tried to shake but could not, dwelling on the most intense moments when their flesh moved together toward passion's emptying rush to ennui. Thoughts, then, of the watch taken from him during his drug-induced sleep, and his next seeing it when it was presented as evidence that he was Krimhler's assassin.
The Jewish race, blamed for the earth-shocking crime of which the INterface masters falsely accused him, after setting him up for the deception. Mental images of the German's head exploding while he, Jacob Zen, watched thousands of miles from the death scene. A quick flash of Christ on a blood-drenched cross, transforming into a golden crucifix attached to the chain draped between Fredria VanHorne's breasts, while he drank from the glass she handed him in the bed that night in subterranean Naxos. Christ and Herrlich Krimhler, merging into a single image within his mind. No! Not imagined! The transformation was taking place before his eyes! Now!
The crystal pyramid-throne had parted during the seconds it took his brain to work through its delusions. A figure in a robe of dazzling white stood before a golden cross within the opening, arms outstretched as if affixed to the cross in crucifixion fashion. The face, its dark eyes penetrating even the hardened crust created by months of systemic-callousing INterface existence. The face of Herrlich Krimhler!
Each of the screens displayed the face in close-up, death-white, yet alive, glowing in the light emanating from within the crystal.
"Behold the One who takes away the sins of the world with his death, burial and resurrection!" Master Manya shouted, extending his arms toward the ceiling. "Behold your salvation!"
Krimhler, like a man once crippled, now trying his legs for the first time since becoming so, took one careful step, then another. He walked from the opened pyramid, stopping and lifting his arms outward toward the robed gathering, his hands in a beckoning posture. Suddenly Jacob was being moved by those around him, toward the base of the pyramid throne, and he saw, through dizzy, reeling senses, the 12 seated people rise and turn to face him, while the mob pressed him forward. The curved table parted, allowing the robed people to move Jacob between the table halves. A whirling, spinning, falling sensation, then regaining balance with the aid of the many hands upon him. Suddenly, then, he was alone, all who had borne him along having retreated to their former places.
Alone at the base of the crystal pyramid. Naked before the world, beneath the gaze of Master Manya. In the living presence of the man the world believed he had murdered!
Jacob glanced quickly, nervously, at the screens, all showing his shocked, frightened face in close-up. His legs deserted him and he fell to his knees, his stomach turning with nausea, his mind spasming while he struggled to stand.
"Symbolic of the salvation offered to all who will accept," Master Manya said, "...consider this Jew, the very Jew who took the life of the one who brings peace to the world. This Jew, Jacob Zen, stands condemned before INterface. Behold, the supreme act of mercy... of love!"
Jacob, on one knee, felt a strong hand take his right hand and felt himself being pulled to a standing position. His thoughts cleared to some extent, while the grip of the person who helped him stand, now steadied him. His eyes met those of Herrlich Krimhler; the screens of INterface displayed Krimhler embracing him.
"I forgive you, for you knew not what you did. Your sins are washed clean in the blood of your God and Savior," Herrlich Krimhler said softly, looking into Jacob's eyes with what seemed genuine compassion, causing a strange sensation of lightness to pass through his body.
"But I... I didn't do it," Jacob stammered in a whisper. Krimhler had already turned from him without acknowledging that he heard, and began ascending the steps of the pyramid.
"There is but one God. The Universal Father of all humanity. Behold him in reincarnate form. Behold him as the resurrected Son, in whom He is well pleased! The Universal Mind-Father... Pure, undefiled, changeless love, whom death could not bind... The Prince of Peace!"
Manya's words echoed in Jacob's ears. All screens displayed Herrlich Krimhler's slow ascension to the pyramid's apex, where the holy man stood, still with his arms raised. Everyone within the chamber stood in the posture of praise, looks of adoring acceptance on their faces, their cheeks streaming tears of hypnotic ecstasy. They followed the lead of Master Manya, who dropped to his knees when the resurrected leader reached the top of the pyramid-throne.
The ten screens showed Krimhler and Master Manya surrounded, through split-imaging, by the millions of worshipers gathered before INterface cameras at the ten cities, all on their knees like the people in the Jerusalem temple. Although the scenes surrounding the two central figures continued to change through dissolves and quick-cuts and zooms, two things remained constant, the reverential chanting and the tear-glazed expressions on the faces. True worship of the one they accepted as their returned messiah.
Gone were the drawn, listless looks of defeat, of hopelessness. Herrlich Krimhler, the Messiah!
Was his mind telling him, truthfully, that he had, like Karen and his foster father said, been wrong? Or was his brain succumbing to the infectious surreality of INterface-orchestrated emotionalism? Even as the thoughts bounced about within his skull, another confronted them and drove them from his mind. Words from the Bible he could never have consciously recalled.
"And then shall that wicked one be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming, Even him whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie..."
And it was at least partly lie. That much was certain. He had not self-concocted, in his drug-riddled brain, the fact of whether Krimhler had actually been shot through the head, or whether it was a hoax, he didn't know. That he, Jacob Zen, had not done the shooting, he was sure. Of the stolen watch, used to frame him, to implicate the Jewish Race... Lies! The looks on the faces, whatever the truth or the lies, they believed. Totally! Absolutely! He, alone, seemed at odds with Krimhler, making Jacob Zen, in the view of INterface Body, at odds with God. Worse, they had manipulated him into helping them with their deluding scheme. He, in the eyes of the world, had murdered the now resurrected Krimhler, and had become the object of and example for the savior's forgiveness, which demonstrated divine love. The charge was lie, the forgiveness unnecessary; therefore, the savior and his love for all, including the penitent Jews, false.
If not a savior, what then? A politician given power by other politicians, who had dementedly, though honestly, concluded that the only way to lasting peace was through purging that which lay at the core of the corruption, and concluded, wrongly, that was the Jew? Was it merely National Socialism reborn on a global scale, finally reaching the level of acceptance to which Hitler aspired? Or Hugo Marchek's Antichrist regime?
The faces, thousands collectively in close-ups, surrounding the Savior and Master Manya. Faces individually, enraptured, adoring the man who was once dead but now stood before them... Alive! The Supreme Master of INterface. Their Messiah!
"And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie..."
Rage suddenly expanded within him, separating fear from courage, caution from boldness, and the schism brought back strength suppressed since he removed the belt of explosives. INterface must be exposed while the eyes and ears of its subjects were seeing and listening — while the live coronation of the resurrected messiah presented perhaps the only opportunity to reach them, to warn them!
He would turn INterface deception to his own advantage. Blurt the truth over the INterface Response Unity conduit, which was totally open at this moment, to establish their lies. Now, while all was quiet, the microphones and cameras ready to capture Herrlich Krimhler's message from the tip of the crystal pyramid.
They could not stop his rush up the steps nor keep him from stabbing truth into the heart of INterfacel Not before he had disrupted the unholy coronation. They could not stop him in time to keep him from using their forum against them, like they had used him as a bludgeon against his own race!
There was too much distance between the controller security people and himself; between himself and the robed mob and the 12 people sitting at the curved table. The technicians at the control boards would not be able to react quickly enough to stop his exclamation of truth! Shouting to the bedazzled victims that what stood before them was not their savior, but a monster who spewed lies more toxic than venom from the deadliest snake, because the poison went exponentially further than destroying the flesh. They murdered hope for eternal freedom from servitude ~ slaughtered, through slow, agonizing strangulation, the very soul.
His rekindled strength would propel him up the crystal steps to Krimhler and the kneeling Master Manya, where he would accomplish through words what he would have accomplished on a more limited scale through use of the explosives, had he been confronted in Facility 500. He would strike, through the power of the masters' own machinery, a blow against the spell cast by the INterface Fuehrer.
His vision darkened, his pulse pounding heatedly in his neck and temples. He sprinted in a burst of energy to the pyramid's first step and sprang quickly upward. He would not be stopped... Would not!
From high above him, Herrlich Krimhler turned to look downward, their eyes meeting in a collision of wills in which the mortal must yield. His legs refused his conscious urgings to continue the rush toward the crystal throne's tip, like in all the nightmares when he was pursued by one dream-monster or the other. His legs, leaden, each step taken in an intangible quagmire! Now he pursued the monster, and the nightmare turned real while the monster's sinister glare from the pyramid's apex made more coagulant, the invisible quicksand through which he struggled until his legs could no longer move!
The black, bottomless eyes held his in their grip while he tried to scream the words which would not come, as if they, too, were held captive in that unspeakable ambience.
"Do not believe his lies!" he tried to scream but could not. "He is not your savior! INterface is not Utopia! It is Hell on Earth!... It is all lies!... AH lies!"