Post by nrt on Apr 10, 2014 6:24:40 GMT -8
Chapter 4 modified to clear up some confusion, identified with help from feed-back - plus a few alterations throughout.
Saviour
NRT
A Beginning
They had to wait, the road was blocked. A tractor pulling a trailer burgeoning with a tower-block sized load of straw bales was stuck, attempting some manoeuvre, they guessed…
Though this was an inconvenience, there were no complaints, there was no rush. A moment of stillness to savour again the after-glow of a really good lunch, the dazzling sky… So they waited, air-con on, radio playing.
He scanned the hedgerow that towered over the car on his side of the narrow lane. There was a field of stubble beyond. Through the gaps in the hawthorn and beach, still in its full, lush, summer livery, there were also glimpses of a gently sloping hillside and, some distance further on, another hedge. Beyond this was a scrubby meadow with a scatter of grassy tussocks, which appeared to surround a dense copse that crowned the skyline. He looked again into the shimmering, sunlit field. Harvest time and he had seen an image of England that few, if any, would have seen from that vantage point on the quite lane...
“Come on we can go!” his partner announced almost sharply; their wait could have been over.
But, as he went to put the car into gear, he cast a glance back, for one last look, flicked his eyes over the scene, intending only to look up again to that dark fringe of trees around the top of the hill.
It is truly shocking how rapidly a brain can, subconsciously, pick out a sound, a shape or a smell, isolate it from the background and generate some sort of alarm. His brain did this now and the alarm physically jolted him. It ordered him stop everything and look, right now, only at that…
Although his subconscious had recognised it in a heartbeat, it took his higher senses a little longer to process what he was actually looking at.
It was a slender, heavily tattooed, forearm, emerging into the sunlight from the deep shade at bottom of the hedge.
“Oh… my…”
“What?”
“There’s something in the hedge….” he said ‘something’ even though he knew exactly what it was, “Wait there a second.”
Stepping from the car, though intending to walk nearer and take a proper look, he did not go any further. Instead he was doubled over by another, more guttural alarm; this had him turning away, grasping at the open door for support and retching; first because of the sight he had seen, but mostly, because of the smell.
One Week Earlier
The car slid to a perfect stop and purred briefly before returning the clearing to a brooding silence. Its headlights picked out three masked and hooded men, supporting a girl, bound, gagged, legs incapable of bearing any weight. Her tear-streaked eyes, blinking against the pain of the brightness, were pleading; "Help me!"
He moved out of the car with a speed and grace that few could match. He just effortlessly covered the rough ground, his purple cloak low over his face and sweeping the grass, yet disturbing nothing.
“She is prepared?” he asked in a voice low and even.
“Almost saviour…
A hand shot out like a striking rattlesnake and grabbed the throat of the man who had spoken. The other two flinched away, allowing the girl to crumple to the floor.
“You have had three days! Almost? Almost ready… it must be done tonight!”
The convulsions of the man made it obvious that no explanation would be forthcoming while he was being strangled so thoroughly. He released his grip with a shove that sent his disciple sprawling back into the bushes around the edge of the clearing.
“Pick that up and put it in my car, now!” he barked to the two disciples still standing, “then tell me exactly which of your tasks you have failed to accomplish, and, more importantly, why?”
The boot lid of the car swung open as the men carried the helpless girl around the side of the vehicle. Inside the boot was entirely lined with flawless cloth-of-gold that shone with an undulating lustre by the glow of the courtesy light. He shooed the two away and then pulled back his hood to look down at the girl shivering there.
“You will make NO noise...
"You will NOT struggle...
"Then; you Will survive.
Do you understand?”
She just lay there quaking, wide eyes staring back at his silhouette, framed in the moonlight, looking for all the world like she would scream herself to death, if she could just get out a first sound. Silently, from within the folds of his cloak, he produced a soft leather flask with a silver stopper. Opening it then reaching down to raise her head, he offered the liquid within to her. His hand was strong but warm, the top of the flask cold against her parched lips. A drop touched her eager tongue and she immediately fell back onto the gold cloth in a dead, contented, sleep.
He slammed the boot of the car and turned to the men, all three of whom were now standing there lamely.
“Now quickly; tell me everything!”
A Middle
Having recovered some sort of equilibrium and persuaded his wife not to try and get out of the car, he reached into his pocket, took out his phone and dialled 999.
Sinking back into the driver’s seat he turned and looked forwards along the lane, listening as his phone connected to the emergency services.
“There’s a body, over there, under the hedge,” he said though even the words almost choked him.
“A what?”
“Emergency – which service do you require?”
“Police please.”
“Certainly connecting you now sir…”
His explanation, of what he had seen, to the command and control centre, served as some clarification for his wife. When he had finished, he put the car in gear and drove a 100yards or so further along the lane, to get away from there but, also, to get to a place where he could pull off onto a verge so as to not block the road.
He stopped the car and burst into tears.
She reached across getting as close as she could, trying to cradle him, though her head was full of questions.
“Oh, Chris. Are you sure, I mean, a body, a girl, out here?”
He edged away, looking for a tissue, trying to swallow the tears and quell the shuddering. She reached down to her handbag and quickly produced what he was looking for.
“Thanks…”
They sat quiet and motionless for a few seconds that seemed to be taking place inside a time capsule. Everything outside the car was alien, too bright and needed to be excluded, while every feature of car’s interior, the textures of the plastics, the stitching of the leather, was dazzlingly clear and in razor-sharp focus.
He let out a sigh, “She had been dumped in some sort of bag, but that had been ripped open… a dog, or fox, I suppose. Anyway, something has made a mess of most of the rest of her.”
Moments later sirens could be heard, faintly at first, approaching at speed.
A police 4x4 roared along the lane and shuddered to a halt blocking the road feet in front of them. To his surprise, three armed policemen sprang out, and, making no attempt to contact him or his wife, took up positions in the road. Further sirens could he heard, approaching, from in front and behind them.
He got out and started to walk towards the police car whereupon a forth, more senior officer, got out of it and moved towards him.
“Mr Thompson?” he asked with what seemed a strangely casual air given what was happening.
“Yes, I’m Chris Thompson, I found the…
“Quite, good, now, if I could just ask you to indicate the location of the offering and then return to your car, just while we take the necessary steps…
“Offering?”
“Yes, oh, sorry, the, err… body, where is it please, here?”
The officer moved closer, scanning along the verge.
“No, no it’s… I’ll show you, it’s just…
“No need for that Mr Thompson," he interjected at speed, then went on more slowly, "...just tell me please or point it out and then return to your vehicle. I am sure this has all been very distressing for you and,” he glanced into the car, “err Mrs Thompson?”
“Yes, yes, OK. Thank you. She’s… it’s… back there, on the left, a hundred yards, about, I didn’t want to block the road, so I…
“Right, very good, thanks, most helpful. You three, 100 yards of the left.”
The armed police took that as an order. Two immediately sprinted off down the lane, the third, jumped back into the driver’s seat of the 4x4.
“Back in your car now, please, Mr Thompson, as soon as we have secured and arranged to get the area sanctified, we will let you know.”
He too then got into the car and was carried the short distance down the lane.
“Did he say ‘sanctified’?” his wife asked.
“I’m afraid so.”
“For fuck’s sake, what the hell is going on with this country?” she snorted.
“Quiet!” he said, “or the saviour will hear you…"
They enjoyed a knowing look that broke down into snorts of laughter. All too quickly this was suppressed by the memory of why they were there, leaving them ashamed.
Some twenty minutes of nail biting and stinted small talk later, a female police constable silently tapped the window on his wife’s side. Mr Thompson got out of the car and walked around to her. She looked a little nervous at his approach, still, they confirmed their address and telephone numbers, just before the senior officer arrived.
“As I suspected, this is a religious matter, Mr Thompson,” he said airily but, somehow unconvincingly, “we must ask you to leave immediately.”
The officer was already turning to go and two police constables, who had moved unnoticed up behind him, were moving him bodily towards his car door.
“But…!”
The officer swung back quickly, reaching out with great speed, then froze with an outstretched hand in mid-air. He relaxed and flexed his fingers then put the hand firmly onto Thompson’s chest, “You don’t want to get involved in this, Christopher, believe me. If we need anything else from you we will be in touch; you can be sure of that.”
The officer stood for a couple of seconds, fixing him with a stare and then nodded to the constables, who, more firmly now, pulled him backwards.
“Here are some prayers; one for forgetfulness and one for general wellbeing,” said the WPC, pressing a golden memory stick into his hand, “you will need to say the first at least 36 times and the second 24 times, at sunset on a Thursday,” she said with total conviction, though Thompson looked at her blankly, so she clarified, brightly, ”…so that the saviour will hear you!”
Later, that same night
Reversing the Daimler back out of the clearing, he allowed himself a slight smirk. The three men were still slumped on their knees, stripped to the waist, their backs bloodied and raw.
“We just lost count, that’s all,” one had blurted almost immediately he turned to face them, “during the prayers for timely forgiveness… We think we did all 150, but we couldn’t be sure, so we did another couple of dozen, just to be on the safe side.”
“Then, when we scrolled down the page, we saw that there was a another whole testament, another set of ‘tears for the offering’s family’ and ‘13 thanks to the great provider’, that needed to have been done before birdsong this morning…” the disciple crumpled, “…there just wasn’t time!”
He punished them, mercilessly, just as they expected he would, then forgave them and left them with a series of self-improvement prayers, plus a whole testament on time management to learn off by heart.
As a saviour, he knew all this already, of course. Their progress towards 'the preparation of the offering' was meticulously monitored and presided over by a net-bot.
Every deviation from scripture was reported to him. This meant that thousands of messages were arriving all the time of course. These too were subjected to further analysis, so that only those of special significance were sent thought to him with an alert.
The system knew where he was; where the faithful were; what they were up to; if they had said their prayers.
This plethora of ICT was enough to make him appear all knowing; to seem to be able to see into the minds of the followers and keep an iron grip on his disciples.
In the normal course of his activities it meant he got to drop in on the nearest transgressor, unannounced and beat them into enlightenment. Just occasionally he could do the same to some unsuspecting fool simply because they had done everything on time and to the letter, well; he moved in a mysterious way.
As he emerged onto the farm track, through the gate in the hedge and turned the limousine to face down the hill, he had now to decide what to do next.
His disciples were expecting a sacrifice, the ultimate punishment for the ultimate sin.
Everything had been moving in this direction for some time, building momentum, raising the tension. Now, down to the short strokes, it was to come to its climax that night.
The Beginning of the End
Chris had the nasty feeling that he had been treated like a dog turd found in a bowl of sausages.
As they approached the junction where the lane met the bypass, they were confronted by two military looking vehicles and a squad of soldiers toting machine guns. Obviously expecting their arrival, one of their six wheelers roared into life, emitting a great belch of dark fumes, before pulling to the side, as they approached.
“Are we in a film?” she asked, “What is all this?”
“I really don’t know,” Chris answered.
The radio, still on, went into the next programme, a phone-in. The topic was, “Why should the death penalty be painless if the killer’s victims suffered?” another in a long line of policy development topics that allowed ‘the public’ to vote on subjects close to their hearts, in this case literally.
He switched it off. “It didn’t used to be like this, did it?” he asked as he rounded a bend and pushed the button under the dashboard that opened the way into their gated community.
“You know it didn’t!” she retorted, “We were a secular democracy; OK with some sort of state church, but nobody paid them too much attention, they spent far too much time bickering among themselves, about women bishops, or gay marriage, to do anything useful… or disruptive… you know what, I can’t remember them doing anything!”
“Just as it should be,” he said, as they pulled to a halt on the drive. He got out and came around to her side of the car. She had already opened the door and was reaching up to him. He picked her up tenderly and planted a kiss on her soft lips. “Can we shut out the world for just a bit longer?” she asked looking with vain hope into his eyes.
Chris pushed the car door closed with his backside and carried Fern into the house, grinding his teeth and thinking.
Fern had been an orthodontist, he an architect. They had been married only a couple of years when she noticed pins and needles in her left foot. A tumour in the centre of her spinal cord was found, then, during a ‘routine’ decompressive laminectomy, that was going to take a biopsy and relieve the pressure, a tiny mistake by the surgeon left her paralyzed from the waist.
At least it wasn’t cancer.
But, it was this, more than anything else that drove them away from ‘society’ – especially common society - where, if being pushed by him in her chair to the shops, the sneers and the disgusted looks became more and more common. Then finally, the under the breath remarks, “Benefits bitch!” or worse, led to them building a house, tailored to their needs, in a small gated community that his company were designing.
Outside, the far right, the radical Christians, the Scottish separatists, all started to vie for a position. Catholicism, Islamism, Sinistrism, countless ‘isms’ all demanded equal rights and representation. While the ‘Hardworking Families’ of Britain got poorer and more marginalised, fed on a diet of expensive, processed food and junk TV.
Yet, almost unnoticed, these same people, also slowly got more and more involved.
Countless radio phone-ins, where poorly educated and bigoted people got to air their views; on Europe, Fat people, Foreign aid, left them increasingly feeling that no one was representing them (probably because their views were ridiculous, counterproductive and contradictory) no one that is until ‘the saviour’ came along.
Morning
He and Fern were swimming in a warm sea out towards a pontoon. Him, swimming easily, gliding through the water toward the setting sun and the low floating platform, her falling behind. He doesn’t notice, pressing on, pressing on and breathing harder, though the pontoon never seems to get any nearer. Suddenly, she calls him; he stops swimming and looks back. She is smiling, but wants him to come back to her. He is torn; go on or go back. Before he can decide he suddenly can no longer tread water, he is sinking, out of control, he has no legs…
Chris, hot and sweating, is jolted awake, his dream still vivid before his eyes.
The relief of the reality of the bed brings a great release of breath and tension. He turns to her side and reaches out an arm for some comfort, but she is not there!
The power of the vision of Fern in his dream, of her swimming, had taken him back to the ‘her’ of 15 years before. They had not shared a bed for almost that long and he still missed her.
He looked at the clock, 3:06, he turned over…
What seemed like moments later, he was jolted awake again; this time it was the front door intercom. The clock read 7:38.
Shuffling along the corridor, he looked in on Fern, still sleeping soundly. The main screen in the living room flashed into life when it saw him, he turned and commanded; “Intercom.”
Up came the image from the camera at the front door. Standing there was a policeman.
Decision Time
Saviour put the Daimler into drive and rumbled down the dirt track that led to the lane, ahead, just clear of the steep hill on the other side of the valley, a rising full moon. He had four hours to complete the process and then get back to the clearing for the ceremony, when the moon would be directly overhead. He realised, at that moment that he had no choice but to give it another try.
The spongy suspension bucked and protested and expensive body work grounded, as, at the end of the track, he forced the old lady up onto the metalled surface of the lane. Just a mile of so further into the countryside, he checked that there were no vehicle lights approaching from in front, or behind him and then he switched off the Daimler’s lights, pulled onto a narrow gravel drive and crunched towards a large, derelict house.
There were few safe places left for the golden saviours to meet indoors. The ONE now sanctified almost every home, factory and public building, along with most of the spaces in between.
The ONE or Omniscient Networked Environment was how the prayers and scriptures were carried to and from the faithful along with all other communication, entertainment and data transfers. A combination of networks and computer clouds spanning everyone and everywhere. To interact with the ONE the faithful each had a PH or Prayer Hub. This ninth generation device, when not active, looked like nothing more than a piece of clear glass, about the size of an oblong bathroom tile, but, when combined with a headset, was all you needed to commune with the almighty.
This ‘house’, set on the crest of a ridge appeared nothing more than a ramshackle crumble of walls and window openings, roofless and abandoned. He drove around and drew up on the side furthest from the road. Here the ground dropped away a little, revealing a lower ground floor, accessible through a small door down a short flight of stairs.
Having switched off the engine he waited a few seconds. The darkness and silence were complete, apart from the ticking of the cooling motor and the blue light of the moon. He moved the switch on the interior lights to off then opened the door. Although the valley on that side of the ridge had no roads or houses, experience told him he had to take every measure to avoid being discovered.
The three steps down to the door were slippery with dew and old leaves. Pushing on the door, left unlocked, just in case anyone should chance by, with some effort he persuaded its warped and splintering carcass to allow him access. Then he went back to the car.
Lifting the boot lid revealed the still sleeping shape of the girl, wrapped in gold, hair of gold, just as the prophecy required. He scooped her up, cloth and all and carried her towards the door.
The girl nestled her head onto the top of his shoulder and into his neck, totally relaxed. Once into the windowless room he walked straight ahead a measured number of paces and then lowered her onto a musty sofa. She clung to him, refusing to be left there, with a cat-like grip. “So you are awake,” he said.
The Presents
“Mista’ T, Tuh, T’Hu, Oh… shit dis ain’t fen’e’ic or nuffin – wot sor’ah name is ih’?”
“Thompson,” Christopher replied, “and you are?”
“Tomsun! Right, well, I goh diss’ fah yoo bro. The chief says it was to fank you fah wot yah did yestadee, wot eva dat woz… ‘ere.”
The policeman thrust a plain brown cardboard box towards him.
“What is it?”
“Ha’ de fuck shud I know bro’, i’ aint fa’ me na’ iz’i’!”
“Right, well I think I would rather you took it back, if that’s alright with you… er… bro’”
Chris made to go back inside. He thought he knew exactly what was in the box, judging by its size and shape; it would be a PH.
“whooah, dere mista – I ain’t going nowhere ‘tiw you take dis. You ge’ me?”
“Right… OK thank you,” taking the box, from the constable, Chris again went to go inside and close the door.
“’Ang on, I aint finnisht yet. Dere waz anuvva fing… Oh yeh. The Chief said you got anuvva presen’ yesterday. Is that right?
Strangely the last few words said were as if spoken by someone else. They had well placed consonants, and proper vowel sounds.
“I’m sorry?” Chris said, “I don’t know what you are talking about…”
“A memory stick, given to you by WPC Wilkes. We know you have it, we saw her give it to you on footage harvested from the head-cams on the officers who were… helping you back to your car.”
“Oh the prayers, I had totally forgotten about that.”
“Right, well, we would like it back please… if that’s alright?”
By now Chris was certain that he was speaking, not to the PC, but to the senior officer he had met yesterday. The voice was not the same, but the tone and air of presumed authority, were unmistakeable.
“I have no idea where it is and anyway, it is of no interest to me or my wife, we have no affiliations or religious beliefs.”
“Yes we know… and yet she gave it to you anyway,” said the policeman, or whoever was driving him, adding, “so, before we can decide what if any action we need to take against the WPC, could you tell me, that memory stick, was it green… or was it gold?
Scripture Lessons
The lower ground floor of the house was no more than a void created to place the house at ground level on the side facing the road. The doorway allowed access to a sort of cellar; joists and floor boards above a dirt floor and unfinished walls. Once the door was closed, he drew a curtain across it and lit a gas lamp whose mantle glowed orange and pink, before bursting into a hissing, brilliant white light.
He hung it on a nail close to the centre of the room. The girl, incongruous, glowing gold in the dazzling light among dusty cobwebs and unwanted clutter, now had a look in her eyes closer to that he has seen earlier. She squatted, dumbfounded on the sofa, clutching the golden cloth tightly around her and began to chant a common prayer;
He raised his hand to stop her, “There is no need for any of that now; no one will hear you here.”
“What? But you are here saviour; I am one with you…”
“Stop, please, we don’t have much time,” he said, lowering his hood and taking a step towards her.
She looked at him in horror, before turning her eyes sharply away, his forehead was totally uncovered while indoors, the most heinous syntax error a man could commit.
Ignoring her, he undid the clasp at the neck of his robes and took them off, still looking at the cowering creature in front of him.
“What is your name?” he asked soothingly.
“What?”
“What is your name? It’s a simple question.”
She stopped quivering as she tried to process this most unexpected question, “You don’t know? But you know everything…”
He sighed, “No one knows everything,” he said, “but some of us know enough. If you can bear it, I will tell you all I know and then, perhaps, you will understand why you are here. But you must believe me and you must trust me, or we will not get done what we must do tonight. Will you at least try?”
“How could I not believe the word of the saviour,” she said, turning to look at him, though choosing to look pointedly at his cock, rather than face the shame of his uncovered forehead.
“So, tell me…”
“My name is Rose, Rose Branch.”
He went to her and sat beside her, “Good, let me start by telling you about the scriptures.”
A Quick Breakfast
He went into the kitchen to make himself coffee and a tea, for Fern. The small screen above the counter saw him and put on the breakfast show. “TV off,” he commanded, “Secure line to Phillip and lights up to half in bedroom two please.”
The screen then put up a list of all the contacts in its database with names like Phillip, Philip, Phil and other, increasingly unlikely options, before the voice asked him which one he meant, by reading out each name in turn. “Stop!” he shouted touching the name of his ex-business partner, first on the list and the only Phillip he ever called.
The screen went into a dimmed cloud scene while the connection was made and then flashed ENGUAGED, a microsecond before the voice said the same and returned the screen to command mode.
He took the tray of drinks and a couple of pots of sweetened breakfast fibre with emulsified protein and calcium, into bedroom two.
Fern was already awake, head covered with a pillow, complaining about being woken so early. He put the tray down on the chest of drawers and went to sit down beside her on the bed.
“Go away and turn the bloody lights off on the way out.”
“Sorry, but this is important.”
“I don’t do important before 10:00 on a Sunday!” she sulked.
He put a hand on her shoulder and said, “The police were here.”
She pushed the pillow off of her head and turned it away from him. “shit.”
He got up and went to the tray, “I’ve got you some tea.”
“What did they want?”
He picked up the cup and brought it back to the bedside, “They wanted to give me a present, he said, kneeling on the bed and helping her to turn over, before helping her to sit up.
“…what? You’ve got me up on at 8:00 on a Sunday because you got a present!”
“Come on grumpy knickers, there is a little bit more to it than that!”
She looked and he gave her a look so that she could immediately see that there was a lot more he had to say, “Drink your tea, I just have to go and find something, I’ll be right back.”
He went off into his room and searched through the clothes he was wearing yesterday. In the pocket of his trousers was the shining, gold memory stick.
Back in her bedroom, Fern glanced fearfully at him when he walked in, “Well?”
“Don’t be too alarmed, but…
He told her about the conversation with the policeman and the gift, which he assumed would be a PH, another attempt by the authorities to get them more fully blessed by the ONE.
Although their community had been laid out with every state of the art communications technology, when it was built; voice control, cloud storage interface, all fuelled ground source heat pumps, it had remained free of upgrades and was therefore totally unblessed by new scripture. Some on the estate had chosen to embrace the saviour, but had been asked by the rest to perform their prayers outside of the gates. The alternative would have been to have the almighty there among them, which most thought would be just too much of an imposition.
He went on to tell her about the memory stick.
“I don’t understand,” she said, “so what if some religious nut wants to get some more likes by getting us to say a few prayers?”
“I don’t think this is about that,” he replied, “he was more concerned to know if the memory stick was green or gold.”
He threw the shining golden stick onto the bed. “So, what you and Phillip were talking about for so long and so secretively yesterday may not just be just rumours after all?”
“I’ve already tried to call him. I didn’t believe him at all; a golden saviour to free the faithful from BE. It just seemed totally preposterous, then standing there on the doorstep a senior policeman speaking through a proxy servant and all but confirming it all.”
“And that’s not the strangest part,” he went on, “I am a sure as I can be that the WPC must be one of them, or why would she risk so much to give me this?”
Fern picked up the memory stick and turned it over in her hands, it looked perfectly normal, until she pulled off the cover to reveal the connector that would couple it to the ONE. Instead a tightly folded piece of paper was revealed, stuffed into the hollowed casing.
Chris picked up his coffee and swung around to sit beside her at the head of the bed, “well don’t just gawp, open it up and let’s have a look.”
The Offering
“So the almighty is just a computer algorithm that has taken over the ONE?” Rose asked blankly, adding. “We pray to an algorithm…”
“Well no, most of the time, you don’t pray to anyone or anything at all.” he said, “but everything gets parsed by a layer of the ONE that was originally developed to look for extremists, years and years ago. Back then it just flagged up certain words or phrases, now it has the ability to detect the difference between enthusiasm and just saying your prayers. It can check this against your bio-signs and where you are; when you last has sex… and work out if you are about to commit a sin.”
“How long is it since your prayers were liked, Rose,” he asked.
She looked at him and blushed, then blurted “I do try, really, nobody could put so much energy of empathy into scripture as me… really, sometimes six or seven time a day…” tears were welling up in her eyes as she confessed her shame, “that’s why I’m here isn’t it, you want me to BE to make an example…
He put his fingers on her lips, “Shhh,” he said, “I’m sorry, it’s nothing like that, we stopped you getting likes for a much bigger, massively more important, purpose.”
His voice was calming but the words caused her to get even more upset. “You stopped me getting likes! How? Why? How dare you!!!”
He tried to calm her again, “We needed to, we had to; it is the only way.”
She dissolved into tears and convulsive sobs of confused rage. He reached for his PH and checked the time and then, cradled her and started again.
“You were chosen - not because you were bad - or good - but because of your name. We needed your name.”
He explained about the scriptures and the upgrades, about ‘includes’ and syntax and about nested subroutines and then about the bio-power and finally about the BE.
Then she understood. To BE with the almighty was just Benign Euthanasia, triggered by a number of biological and psychological markers that the ONE coupled with a PH picked up from everyone as they prayed, it analysed them and sent an alarm, so they could be terminated by the almighty at its will.
“Your name, your biological markers, your prayer history, almost everything about you, has been patched in scripture, so that we can make you look suicidal,” he said slowly and carefully, “all the prayers that you said with the brothers in the woods, your inability to amass likes, all leading to you offering yourself as a martyr, not as a last desperate attempt to be liked, as the almighty will assume, but to launch the golden saviours out of the shadows.”
“It has taken hundreds of man years of coding, buried subroutines and new includes, hidden within millions of hours of prayer, byte by byte and variables incremented by increment, so as not to attract the attentions of anyone or arouse the suspicions of the almighty.”
“Now we are ready and we have to do it tonight, before the full moon reaches its zenith, when the next major revision will be released across the ONE, wiping out all our work… again.”
He had been pacing the small area of space in front of the tatty sofa as he recounted his testament, stopping only to look at her when he said the word, “again.”
Meeting with Phillip
They drove in near silence the long way to Phillip’s house, rather than chancing going anywhere near the lane, just in case they were spotted by the sanctification measures that would have been left there.
At Phillip’s, he was standing by the door as they drew up. He walked towards them and got into the car.
“Oh, I thought we were coming in,” said Fern surprised.
“No,” said Phillip, “not today, let’s go down to the lake, shall we?”
“OK,” Chris said, detecting a worrying tone in Phillip’s voice.
Phillip waved some sort of good-bye up towards the windows of his house and sat back in the rear seats, “Oh, I appear to have forgotten my phone, do you have yours, Chris?”
“No, I rarely carry it a weekends, how about you Fern?”
“It’s in my handbag, where it always is, but it has no charge because the battery is fucked, as you well know. It only works when it’s plugged in.”
“May I?”
Phillip reached forwards and she passed back a slim black block. Almost before he took it, it emitted a green glowing pulse, as it attempted to connect to the network.
Quickly, Phillip slipped it into a heavy looking dull grey bag that he pulled from his pocket. As he drew the zip closed, Fern could see that this was lined with gold.
Back at Base
The senior officer poured over the video and audio harvested from the head-cam of his proxy. The feed was also being streamed to the ONE, for simultaneous analysis.
“How we allow these people to stay so far off the net beats me,” he muttered concerned at the delay imposed by not being able to take this evidence in real time.
At the end of the stream the ONE feed almost instantaneously sent a short summery of its conclusions;
Suspect was telling the truth – 93.7%
Suspect was avoiding the subject – 0.3%
Suspect has previous – FALSE
Suspect has worrying associations – TRUE:
1. Phillip Warner <suspectID – 00CDF-000556992>
Probability of active conspiracy – <5%
Guilty/Not Guilty – 17%/82% (+/- 5%)
Next action: ___
1 = Expand, 2= Collapse, 3.= Delete
Although, in an ideal world, he would love to have the time and resources to expand the investigation, this was not an ideal world. His finger hovered over the three. Pushing that would remove all of this from the database, but something was still niggling him, even though he did not know what it was and the ONE gave Christopher an exceptionally high innocence rating. In the end, he opted for the middle and his least favourite option. Collapsing the record would leave everything on file, but not place the suspect under any additional observation or monitoring, which always seemed to him, an old school copper, like a copout.
He closed down the open apps and reached into the draw of his desk, removing an ornate pot.
“Mirror” he commanded and the image on the screen was replaced by his own slightly grey and very stodgy face. The pot had a green substance inside, rather like slightly soft lipstick. He carefully lifted the brim of his cap, to reveal, as he suspected, that his head brand had faded. So he delicately transferred a streak of the green with his left index finger.
“Selfie and transfer to home,” he said; his wife would like that he was going out on patrol respectfully dressed.
Then he stripped off his police uniform and hung it all in a cupboard at the back of the office, before taking out a large hooded robe that also hung there. He put this on and fastened the clasp at the neck, then took several leather flasks that were hanging on green cords from hooks mounted on the back of the cupboard door. These were tucked into folds of the robes. Lastly he took a long whip that was standing at the back of the cupboard and secreted this too, inside his robes.
Closing the cupboard and turning, he walked to the desk and picked up his PH, before leaving the office through the back door, down a dark staircase that led him out of the hospital and away on his rounds.
To the Lake
“There that should do it,” said Phillip putting the bag containing Fern’s phone on the seat next to him.
“What’s going on?” Chris asked, not having been able to see most of what happened, as he was driving.
“Phillip has a PPS,” said Fern, “What on earth made you get that upgrade?”
A PPS, or Personal Power Station, was a ‘health’ upgrade. A tiny micromachine, no bigger than a kidney bean, it consumed calories from food eaten in a bio-digester to power a fuel cell which in turn ran a transmitter emitting enough Electro Magnetic Radiation to power modern personal technologies. The result was that people were always online; their devices never ran out of power; unless they themselves did…
“I didn’t,” he said with a steely tone, “I think I was given it, as a present.”
“What have you done with my phone?” Fern enquired, “It may be old and fucked, but it has all my whole life on it.”
“It will be quite alright, don’t fret. It is in a deadzone that’s all. The bag is made of lead impregnated fibres, among other things,” he said, stroking it as if it were a kitten, “no signals can get in, or out.”
“Do they do larger ones,” Fern asked teasingly, “sort of ‘house’ size?”
When they got to the lake it was blisteringly hot. A late summer heat-wave generated shimmering mirages from the walkways around the picnic area. The covering of bark chippings that surrounded benches and tables barely concealed the black cables that emerged under each of them and were fixed up the sides of nearby trees. The area was fully sanctified.
Having set up the wheelchair and placed Fern into it, they walked from the car park around the back of the picnic ground and picked up the path that ran around the lake through the woods.
“Won’t they notice that…” Chris was going to ask if Phillip would by now be raising suspicion, as he was affectively off-line.
Suspicion; it was this, more than anything else, that tormented the heart of the almighty. It knew where everyone was, it knew what the vast majority of them were doing, it had developed PrayerBook, the app that it could use to work out what they were thinking and feeling; yet some ‘stuff’ still happened that it had not predicted and could not control.
Phillip stopped him with a glance and a shake of the head. He motioned and signalled with his eyes, towards a row of shag shacks that were set out among the trees, he then said loudly and confidently, “I think we should go for a swim after we’ve had sex; what do you say?”
Sex was predictable enough to arouse no suspicion. So, if Phillip and Christopher, or Phillip and Fern, or Phillip, Christopher and Fern, were planning going off-line to have sex, that made perfect sense, after all, they had done so before.
More Revelations
“So I have to chant this suicide prayer three times in front of a crowd of the faithful, who have all been told that I am unworthy?”
“Yes, I have the prayer on my PH, it only has 13 lines…
“Unworthy, because of what?” she now looked him full in the face.
“Oh, err, ummm…
“You really aren’t that special at all are you? You are winging this; playing with lives and your software code snippet ‘watch-ya-ma-call-it’s as if they are the same things…. Don’t you look away from me; I asked you a question! What do they think I have done?”
She was now tall and glaring at him eye to eye, standing on the sofa, the gold cloth around her ankles. “They think that you are an illegal immigrant…and benefits claimant… from… Scotland…”
“Oh almighty…” she sank down onto her haunches, “If I don’t die they will fucking kill me!”
He looked at her and suddenly gasped.
“Wot, you ain’t seen a girl naked before?”
“You don’t have any tattoos!”
The Ménage in the Woods
The cabin was like a sauna, not only because it was wooden and very basically furnished inside, but also because it must have been at least 90 degrees in there.
There was no way that the wheel chair would fit through the door, so Fern had to be carried in.
There was, of course, a giant screen, which flashed on as soon as they walked in. “Unidentified” was displayed three times alongside a small image of each of them, clearly captured a split second ago as they came through the door. A glance towards the wall opposite the door, confirmed that there was a small camera there and turning round, Chris picked out two or three more, above the bed, next to the screen… “Smile!” he said.
“Welcome Mr Smial” said the TV set, “are you performer one, two or three?”
“Cancel film shoot,” barked Phillip, “Drinks order; Two Beers and a Glass of Dry White Wine.”
“Due to high demand - Film Shoot Cancel - is not permitted on – Sunday -. Film Shoot suspended and will recommence in – three – minutes,” it then added, “Alcohol is not permitted on – Sunday - , please revise - Drinks Order - or Cancel.”
It then went into a long speech about identifying actors and telling them to let it know which angles they would like it to shoot for each position, what if any pixilation they required of faces or body parts and the signal that they would use for close ups…
Phillip found an old fashioned wired headset that he plugged into an audio port on the screen and the sound stopped.
“Thank you,” said Fern, “I think that I have heard more than enough from the director of this porn movie.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Chris said, “we can just drive around, I have fuel for an hour or so…”
“No. We can’t go, not right now,” Phillip insisted, “That will definitely arouse suspicion.”
“Definitely? How do you know definitely?” Fern asked pointedly, “no one knows the will of the almighty.”
“On my, she’s good isn’t she…” Phillip said with genuine admiration to Chris, “never misses a thing.”
“Well I might not believe any of that crap, but it doesn’t stop me reading about it.”
By now Chris, shrugging his shoulders and leaving them to it, was more concerned about finding the air conditioner, before he passed out. An initial scan of the tiny cabin had not revealed any controls or switches. Finally, he had a brainwave, put on the headset and commanded “Aircon on,” moments later a loud blast of hot air gushed from thin vents around the edges of the floor. This quickly chilled as the condensers kicked in.
Before taking the headset off, another thought occurred to him, “Statement” he commanded. The screen dimmed and then put up an itemised bill of their use of the cabin so far. Ripping the headset off he shouted over the fans, “We can’t afford to stay in here for too much longer; suspicion or not!”
“Sex has always been expensive, right throughout history,” Phillip stated glumly, “why else would so many people want to do it so much?”
The Final Revelation
The saviour froze in total panic. How on earth could he have missed this? Everything else had been done meticulously; tracks had been covered; errant disciples had been brutally punished; scripture had been prayed and re-prayed… but there was one blindingly obvious discrepancy; one Rose was blonde, about 22, 1.8 meters, pure white skin, the other was blonde, about 22, 1.8 meters, but covered with tattoos!
A desperate plan came into his mind; he rushed back to the Daimler, almost breaking a leg slipping as he tried to jump the top two steps. In the glove box and rattling around on the floor was a collection of contraband, including pens, confiscated from those wicked brethren who did not yet ‘speak’ every word unto the almighty.
He came back down with hands stuffed with as many as he could carry, “We have to ink you up a bit,” he blurted, “there are only minutes left.”
Throwing the pens onto the sofa, he ripped off the top of a blue pen and started scrawling swirls and squiggles up her arm, “Don’t just sit there, do the other arm!”
“With what? I can’t, you have one arm, I don’t have another to write with…
“Oh right, of course, I’ll do your back.”
“Ow! That hurts… what is all this?”
The saviour did not stop, but started talking while still scrawling over Rose’s back. He explained that the plan to keep her alive relied on a magicians’ trick that would substitute her with another Rose Branch, who was already dead.
“That is why we have taken so long to get all of this together,” he explained, “don’t stop! Don’t bother about making it neat, no one will see you too clearly.”
He went on, “When you have said your final prayers, we know that the almighty will terminate you by issuing a BE code to your script. So, you must appear to die. Count to five, go as rigid as you can and fall back towards me, I will be behind you. I will wrap you in the cloth and carry you to the alter. Stay as rigid as you can. There will most likely be a huge amount of noise from the faithful gathered there. At the alter there will be a flash and bang from a firework. You will fall a foot or so into a space below and the other Rose will be there in your place…”
“Wait, wait, you are going too fast…” Rose interrupted, “Why won’t I die?”
“Because of the patches… I’ve told you, we have patched the BE subroutine so it will not run with your name, you are immune… immortal to the almighty, we hope. . . .” his voice trailed off as he said these last few words.
He turned her around to face him. “We have tried all this before… once… with my father. He was almost 70, but had a congenital heart condition and needed another operation. The police said that this was a very serious matter and that we needed to search our consciences and prey very hard because resources were scarce… they said that, based on the evidence, perhaps it was time for him to BE with the almighty.”
The saviour was making random scrawls across her chest with a dark blue felt tipped pen, tears streaming down his face. Rose pressed her fingers to his lips, “It didn’t work,” she said.
He took hold of her hand and looked into her eyes, “No, not that time. Come on, we have to go.”
She stumbled up the steps tripping on the cloth of gold, still asking questions, “But how did you do the trick with your dad? I mean did you manage to find another one?”
“My dad was a pillar of the community who was making the ultimate sacrifice… not a benefit scrounging, illegal immigrant from Scotland; no one wanted to tear him apart limb from limb and dance around the pieces of his scattered corpse.”
“Oh, I see,” she said beginning to feel very, very sick…
Lights… Camera… Action!
Inside the, now very much cooler, cabin, the three ‘performers’, identified to the director as ‘Smial’, ‘Teeth’ and ‘Gums’ – were in a long and convoluted rehearsal during which a full shooting plan was being worked up. Chris was calling the scenes and lighting cues, camera angles and position changes, through the headset, also asking for sample shots from other MMF movies that had been filmed in that very cabin, for added inspiration… This allowed enough time for them to talk freely if not very conveniently.
By checking the statement screen periodically, Chis worked out that they had about 15 minutes before the credits in his personal account would run out and they would be asked to leave, or provide an alternate source of funds; a spare kidney, for example…
“So you knew all this about the golden saviour because you are one?” Chris asked as he positioned Fern on her back across the bed, then stood back to take in the scene.
“No, I am just a tiny cog, an app-let.” Phillip answered, “I embed code snippets in my prayers.”
Phillip had been seeing a lady called Marsha for a few years, he explained. His wife, Penny was a total green zealot, rabidly environmental. She has embraced the New Salvation Army as soon as she heard of their drive to power the world with human waste, rid society of crime, inequality and Facebook and make everyone happy.
What they actually did was reduce the energy available to everyone until they could only run what equipment they had left with human waste; expand CCTV and every other form of surveillance, exponentially, so that nearly every sort of physical crime became pointless, or solvable in seconds; and launch Prayerbook.
People’s likes and empathy scores in Prayerbook were then slowly linked to every form of wellbeing; your promotion prospects, your access to healthcare, how much fuel you could put in your car, how long you had to wait before you could get a car…
So, to ‘get on in life’ you had to get on in Prayerbook, saying your prayers with real joy, liking other people’s prayers and showing empathy towards the almighty, for hours, every day…
As a result nobody had any notion of what was really going on and couldn’t tell if they were happy or not.
At home Phillip had to pray and do his bit or he didn’t eat. For happiness, he went to Marsha. Then she started to tell him about scripture and how it could be hacked, so he started to pray with a lot more vigour.
Christopher and Fern listened to all this with a mixture of fear, disbelief and wonder, like 5yearolds seeing The Wizard of Oz for the first time. Some of it they knew, of course, but that is not the same as being able to put all of it into one big picture.
Since her ‘accident’ in the hospital, despite the fact that they no longer worked, they had been well off; insurance, pensions, compensation… all had immunised them against the things that had been going on outside their little world. And nobody ever talked about these sorts of things, for fear that the saviour would hear them.
They fell silent for a moment and the look that passed between them said that their little game had become even more unbearably pointless.
Chris glanced at the screen; the scene playing included two middle-aged grey and stodgy men who were sitting side by side while a lady, whose back was towards the camera, was kneeling in front of them. She was applying her hands and mouth to each of them in turn and turnabout, as was customary. The camera slowly zoomed-in onto her right hand, vigorously caressing the clearly flaccid member it was holding. Something was making him keep looking at this? Then it hit him; that hand along with most of her forearm, was covered in tattoos.
The Ceremony
He let her ride most of the way in the seat next to him, constantly reassuring her that they had learned an enormous amount since their first attempt to hack the almighty. Then, as he came to the way onto the track up to the copse, he stopped and turned off the lights before bumping down into the turning through the hedge, then stopped again.
“You must be in the boot, Rose, I am afraid. They can’t see me paying you any respect, though I think that, by some chance, you seem to be a wholly remarkable young woman.”
“If I do this, I mean if all this works, what then?” she was sitting, slumped, looking down at her tightly intertwined fingers, “If, when the update comes, it’s all going to be wiped out anyway…
She turned and looked at him, “What’s the point?”
“I can’t tell you that - not because I don’t want to - simply because I don’t know. All I know is what I need to know to get this next step completed; I didn’t even know your name…”
“I know that there will be no emergence of the golden saviours tonight, whatever happens, because the faithful will see the ceremony fail, whether it does or not. Only you and I will know the true outcome. The others will tear apart the body of Rose Branch in savage revenge and then seek forgiveness, not for their savagery, but because they will believe that they have failed. I will beat some of them and forgive all of them, so that they will sleep. Then I will take you away from here, and we may get some new answers to your questions, though believe me; I have many more.”
He got out of the car and opened the boot; she opened the passenger door, but did not get out of the car, “I think I am going to be sick,” she said.
“No! Not here, not on the ground, we cannot leave any trace of you here!”
He grabbed a dirty rag that was scrunched up a corner of the boot and stretched it out below her face as it emerged, involuntarily, from the car. But, although her body strained every fibre of its core and contorted her violently, in an attempt to eject the poisonous fear inside her, there were no other contents of her stomach beyond a dribble of bile.
When she signalled that the convulsions had stopped, he had nothing to offer her to clean her mouth other than the sleeve of his robe. She kissed it and said, “Thank you, saviour. I am all right now.”
He took the cloth of gold from around her and laid it out in the boot, as he did this, she got out and attempted to walk down the side of the car.
“No, stop, let me,” he ran to her and swept her off her feet. In the warmth of his arms her head fell back and she saw the stars and planets swirling above her, around the face of the moon, and felt more loved than at any time she could remember.
He laid her tenderly onto the gold cloth, wiping the dirt and straw from her feet, before tucking them in too and, slowly, closing the lid.
He stopped the car a few yards short of the clearing. There were no signs of life. He got out and went around to the boot and opened it, but did not look inside, instead marched with his unusual grace right into the centre of the clearing.
As he did this, two masked and hooded figures emerged from the trees and grabbed the cloth by the edges and pulled it and Rose out, unceremoniously. They then carried her, bouncing and squirming into the centre of the ring, before laying the cloth out in a square with her close to its centre. They then took up positions on each side of the cloth, standing to attention.
Looking around she could see little other than the feet of the attendant she was closest to, and the saviour to her left, though she could just make out the edge of a structure, beyond the saviour, that looked like a high table or something that size, draped with a thick cloth. Then, more figures appeared, all similarly attired, from beyond the edge of the clearing, then more, until it seemed that they would swarm in and crush her.
The saviour threw up his arms and shouted, “Faithful family of the cloth of gold, look upon this, truly, the most unworthy of creatures, but hold back your desire for just retribution towards her, in payment for the obscenity of her presence among us, for she is ready to make amends, or rid us of her presence, by a selfless act of her own doing.”
While saying this, those closest to her swapped places with others, so as everyone could get a look at her laying there, most muttering an oath or obscenity under their breath.
The saviour went on, “As it was foretold to us, so it will be;”
The faithful echoed, en-mass; “So it will be.”
“A golden haired sinner will be found who, by the power of our code and the purity of our syntax, we will make immortal, invulnerable to the tyrannical power of the almighty, and we will clothe them in gold and they will lead us out of slavery and away from the ways of the ONE, as it must be.”
“As it must be.”
“Now, stand back and bare witness as this unworthy sinner, cleansed by the power of our scripture and the truth of our word, calls upon the almighty to end her otherwise pointless existence, by chanting the prayer of the 13 lines. Yet, in so doing, will expose the vulnerability of the almighty and bring peace and everlasting freedom to the worthy few who seek another way, break, return, semicolon.”
“Break, return, semicolon” the faithful echoed, only paraphrasing the most holy last few lines of the most ancient scripture, for none, but the most trusted, could know the full, unedited, syntax.
Totally exhausted, dehydrated, naked and petrified, Rose found herself being pulled to her feet by the attendant figures that had carried her into the clearing. She then felt the warmth of the saviour’s robes at her back and took strength from him that enabled her to stand unaided. He reached around her, holding the PH in front of her face. Its edges and rounded corners glowed with a steely light while in the centre of the main display was a short prayer that appeared to float in space, occupying some ‘other’ dimension, outside of the realm of the thin piece of glass he was holding.
An almost imperceptible move by him towards her, prompted her to start reading so she began, as bravely as she could.
At the end of the second verse, a movement, off to her right, caught her eye, distracting her. One of the faithful was holding up their PH with the camera app running, filming all this.
A whispered command from the saviour to the attendant standing on that side, sent him leaping towards the miscreant to administer a thudding crunch, launching him sprawling backwards, knocked for six by something that the attendant hit him with, very hard, his still filming PH spiralling up into the air. The attendant stood over him, to make sure that he did not get up and then reached out a hand towards the person who had caught the device as it fell.
In less than ten seconds, he returned to his position beside her opposite the other attendant; the saviour then immediately prompter her to go on with the suicide prayer.
By the start of the third time through, try though she may, the words simply would not come out. Her mouth was dry, her throat constricted and she could see nothing more than the barest hint of the words swimming before her eyes.
Sensing her discomfort, with his free hand the saviour reached within his robes and produced a flask. It had a dark stopper, in the half light and her confused state, she could not identify its colour. He flicked off the stopper with his thumb, before bringing the opening up to her mouth. She took a mouthful of the sweet liquor and held it for a second or two in her mouth, willing her larynx not to cough so she spat it out, while her gullet got used to the idea of swallowing. He had kept the flask in front of her face, so she went to take another sip, which the saviour permitted, though there was then a noticeable and growing rumbling of disapproval from the faithful; what had this creature done to deserve so much forgiveness?
Ignoring them until she cleared her throat, indicating that she was able to continue, the saviour only then took away the flask. The lines now back into focus, her words clearer, though not loud, she worked her way through the three, four line verses of the prayer, took a breath, spoke the last line and looked up into the face of the moon, fully expecting to die…
Had it not been for a tap on the back of the leg, from the knee of the saviour, pulsing out the five seconds, she would have totally forgotten her next part in the play. At the fifth beat, she stretched her arms and spread her fingers, stood on tip toe, clenching her jaw staring blankly ahead, before falling back like a felled tree, into the arms of her saviour.
As he had predicted, an enormous commotion broke out. Some fled, some wept, others screamed for her blood. Rose was oblivious to most of this, as she was wrapped tightly in the cloth of gold, which now felt like home, and was carried to the alter. There was much jostling and swearing on the way, as the two attendants, forced a path through the melee, for the saviour. Then, moments after she was placed on the smooth surface, Rose saw through the cloth, the bright flash and felt the boom of the explosion in the pit of her gut, before she dropped like a stone to be smothered by total darkness, laughing, crying, and never more totally alive!
Saviour
NRT
Chapter 1
A Beginning
They had to wait, the road was blocked. A tractor pulling a trailer burgeoning with a tower-block sized load of straw bales was stuck, attempting some manoeuvre, they guessed…
Though this was an inconvenience, there were no complaints, there was no rush. A moment of stillness to savour again the after-glow of a really good lunch, the dazzling sky… So they waited, air-con on, radio playing.
He scanned the hedgerow that towered over the car on his side of the narrow lane. There was a field of stubble beyond. Through the gaps in the hawthorn and beach, still in its full, lush, summer livery, there were also glimpses of a gently sloping hillside and, some distance further on, another hedge. Beyond this was a scrubby meadow with a scatter of grassy tussocks, which appeared to surround a dense copse that crowned the skyline. He looked again into the shimmering, sunlit field. Harvest time and he had seen an image of England that few, if any, would have seen from that vantage point on the quite lane...
“Come on we can go!” his partner announced almost sharply; their wait could have been over.
But, as he went to put the car into gear, he cast a glance back, for one last look, flicked his eyes over the scene, intending only to look up again to that dark fringe of trees around the top of the hill.
It is truly shocking how rapidly a brain can, subconsciously, pick out a sound, a shape or a smell, isolate it from the background and generate some sort of alarm. His brain did this now and the alarm physically jolted him. It ordered him stop everything and look, right now, only at that…
Although his subconscious had recognised it in a heartbeat, it took his higher senses a little longer to process what he was actually looking at.
It was a slender, heavily tattooed, forearm, emerging into the sunlight from the deep shade at bottom of the hedge.
“Oh… my…”
“What?”
“There’s something in the hedge….” he said ‘something’ even though he knew exactly what it was, “Wait there a second.”
Stepping from the car, though intending to walk nearer and take a proper look, he did not go any further. Instead he was doubled over by another, more guttural alarm; this had him turning away, grasping at the open door for support and retching; first because of the sight he had seen, but mostly, because of the smell.
* * *
One Week Earlier
The car slid to a perfect stop and purred briefly before returning the clearing to a brooding silence. Its headlights picked out three masked and hooded men, supporting a girl, bound, gagged, legs incapable of bearing any weight. Her tear-streaked eyes, blinking against the pain of the brightness, were pleading; "Help me!"
He moved out of the car with a speed and grace that few could match. He just effortlessly covered the rough ground, his purple cloak low over his face and sweeping the grass, yet disturbing nothing.
“She is prepared?” he asked in a voice low and even.
“Almost saviour…
A hand shot out like a striking rattlesnake and grabbed the throat of the man who had spoken. The other two flinched away, allowing the girl to crumple to the floor.
“You have had three days! Almost? Almost ready… it must be done tonight!”
The convulsions of the man made it obvious that no explanation would be forthcoming while he was being strangled so thoroughly. He released his grip with a shove that sent his disciple sprawling back into the bushes around the edge of the clearing.
“Pick that up and put it in my car, now!” he barked to the two disciples still standing, “then tell me exactly which of your tasks you have failed to accomplish, and, more importantly, why?”
The boot lid of the car swung open as the men carried the helpless girl around the side of the vehicle. Inside the boot was entirely lined with flawless cloth-of-gold that shone with an undulating lustre by the glow of the courtesy light. He shooed the two away and then pulled back his hood to look down at the girl shivering there.
“You will make NO noise...
"You will NOT struggle...
"Then; you Will survive.
Do you understand?”
She just lay there quaking, wide eyes staring back at his silhouette, framed in the moonlight, looking for all the world like she would scream herself to death, if she could just get out a first sound. Silently, from within the folds of his cloak, he produced a soft leather flask with a silver stopper. Opening it then reaching down to raise her head, he offered the liquid within to her. His hand was strong but warm, the top of the flask cold against her parched lips. A drop touched her eager tongue and she immediately fell back onto the gold cloth in a dead, contented, sleep.
He slammed the boot of the car and turned to the men, all three of whom were now standing there lamely.
“Now quickly; tell me everything!”
* * *
A Middle
Having recovered some sort of equilibrium and persuaded his wife not to try and get out of the car, he reached into his pocket, took out his phone and dialled 999.
Sinking back into the driver’s seat he turned and looked forwards along the lane, listening as his phone connected to the emergency services.
“There’s a body, over there, under the hedge,” he said though even the words almost choked him.
“A what?”
“Emergency – which service do you require?”
“Police please.”
“Certainly connecting you now sir…”
His explanation, of what he had seen, to the command and control centre, served as some clarification for his wife. When he had finished, he put the car in gear and drove a 100yards or so further along the lane, to get away from there but, also, to get to a place where he could pull off onto a verge so as to not block the road.
He stopped the car and burst into tears.
She reached across getting as close as she could, trying to cradle him, though her head was full of questions.
“Oh, Chris. Are you sure, I mean, a body, a girl, out here?”
He edged away, looking for a tissue, trying to swallow the tears and quell the shuddering. She reached down to her handbag and quickly produced what he was looking for.
“Thanks…”
They sat quiet and motionless for a few seconds that seemed to be taking place inside a time capsule. Everything outside the car was alien, too bright and needed to be excluded, while every feature of car’s interior, the textures of the plastics, the stitching of the leather, was dazzlingly clear and in razor-sharp focus.
He let out a sigh, “She had been dumped in some sort of bag, but that had been ripped open… a dog, or fox, I suppose. Anyway, something has made a mess of most of the rest of her.”
Moments later sirens could be heard, faintly at first, approaching at speed.
A police 4x4 roared along the lane and shuddered to a halt blocking the road feet in front of them. To his surprise, three armed policemen sprang out, and, making no attempt to contact him or his wife, took up positions in the road. Further sirens could he heard, approaching, from in front and behind them.
He got out and started to walk towards the police car whereupon a forth, more senior officer, got out of it and moved towards him.
“Mr Thompson?” he asked with what seemed a strangely casual air given what was happening.
“Yes, I’m Chris Thompson, I found the…
“Quite, good, now, if I could just ask you to indicate the location of the offering and then return to your car, just while we take the necessary steps…
“Offering?”
“Yes, oh, sorry, the, err… body, where is it please, here?”
The officer moved closer, scanning along the verge.
“No, no it’s… I’ll show you, it’s just…
“No need for that Mr Thompson," he interjected at speed, then went on more slowly, "...just tell me please or point it out and then return to your vehicle. I am sure this has all been very distressing for you and,” he glanced into the car, “err Mrs Thompson?”
“Yes, yes, OK. Thank you. She’s… it’s… back there, on the left, a hundred yards, about, I didn’t want to block the road, so I…
“Right, very good, thanks, most helpful. You three, 100 yards of the left.”
The armed police took that as an order. Two immediately sprinted off down the lane, the third, jumped back into the driver’s seat of the 4x4.
“Back in your car now, please, Mr Thompson, as soon as we have secured and arranged to get the area sanctified, we will let you know.”
He too then got into the car and was carried the short distance down the lane.
“Did he say ‘sanctified’?” his wife asked.
“I’m afraid so.”
“For fuck’s sake, what the hell is going on with this country?” she snorted.
“Quiet!” he said, “or the saviour will hear you…"
They enjoyed a knowing look that broke down into snorts of laughter. All too quickly this was suppressed by the memory of why they were there, leaving them ashamed.
Some twenty minutes of nail biting and stinted small talk later, a female police constable silently tapped the window on his wife’s side. Mr Thompson got out of the car and walked around to her. She looked a little nervous at his approach, still, they confirmed their address and telephone numbers, just before the senior officer arrived.
“As I suspected, this is a religious matter, Mr Thompson,” he said airily but, somehow unconvincingly, “we must ask you to leave immediately.”
The officer was already turning to go and two police constables, who had moved unnoticed up behind him, were moving him bodily towards his car door.
“But…!”
The officer swung back quickly, reaching out with great speed, then froze with an outstretched hand in mid-air. He relaxed and flexed his fingers then put the hand firmly onto Thompson’s chest, “You don’t want to get involved in this, Christopher, believe me. If we need anything else from you we will be in touch; you can be sure of that.”
The officer stood for a couple of seconds, fixing him with a stare and then nodded to the constables, who, more firmly now, pulled him backwards.
“Here are some prayers; one for forgetfulness and one for general wellbeing,” said the WPC, pressing a golden memory stick into his hand, “you will need to say the first at least 36 times and the second 24 times, at sunset on a Thursday,” she said with total conviction, though Thompson looked at her blankly, so she clarified, brightly, ”…so that the saviour will hear you!”
* * *
Later, that same night
Reversing the Daimler back out of the clearing, he allowed himself a slight smirk. The three men were still slumped on their knees, stripped to the waist, their backs bloodied and raw.
“We just lost count, that’s all,” one had blurted almost immediately he turned to face them, “during the prayers for timely forgiveness… We think we did all 150, but we couldn’t be sure, so we did another couple of dozen, just to be on the safe side.”
“Then, when we scrolled down the page, we saw that there was a another whole testament, another set of ‘tears for the offering’s family’ and ‘13 thanks to the great provider’, that needed to have been done before birdsong this morning…” the disciple crumpled, “…there just wasn’t time!”
He punished them, mercilessly, just as they expected he would, then forgave them and left them with a series of self-improvement prayers, plus a whole testament on time management to learn off by heart.
As a saviour, he knew all this already, of course. Their progress towards 'the preparation of the offering' was meticulously monitored and presided over by a net-bot.
Every deviation from scripture was reported to him. This meant that thousands of messages were arriving all the time of course. These too were subjected to further analysis, so that only those of special significance were sent thought to him with an alert.
The system knew where he was; where the faithful were; what they were up to; if they had said their prayers.
This plethora of ICT was enough to make him appear all knowing; to seem to be able to see into the minds of the followers and keep an iron grip on his disciples.
In the normal course of his activities it meant he got to drop in on the nearest transgressor, unannounced and beat them into enlightenment. Just occasionally he could do the same to some unsuspecting fool simply because they had done everything on time and to the letter, well; he moved in a mysterious way.
As he emerged onto the farm track, through the gate in the hedge and turned the limousine to face down the hill, he had now to decide what to do next.
His disciples were expecting a sacrifice, the ultimate punishment for the ultimate sin.
Everything had been moving in this direction for some time, building momentum, raising the tension. Now, down to the short strokes, it was to come to its climax that night.
* * *
The Beginning of the End
Chris had the nasty feeling that he had been treated like a dog turd found in a bowl of sausages.
As they approached the junction where the lane met the bypass, they were confronted by two military looking vehicles and a squad of soldiers toting machine guns. Obviously expecting their arrival, one of their six wheelers roared into life, emitting a great belch of dark fumes, before pulling to the side, as they approached.
“Are we in a film?” she asked, “What is all this?”
“I really don’t know,” Chris answered.
The radio, still on, went into the next programme, a phone-in. The topic was, “Why should the death penalty be painless if the killer’s victims suffered?” another in a long line of policy development topics that allowed ‘the public’ to vote on subjects close to their hearts, in this case literally.
He switched it off. “It didn’t used to be like this, did it?” he asked as he rounded a bend and pushed the button under the dashboard that opened the way into their gated community.
“You know it didn’t!” she retorted, “We were a secular democracy; OK with some sort of state church, but nobody paid them too much attention, they spent far too much time bickering among themselves, about women bishops, or gay marriage, to do anything useful… or disruptive… you know what, I can’t remember them doing anything!”
“Just as it should be,” he said, as they pulled to a halt on the drive. He got out and came around to her side of the car. She had already opened the door and was reaching up to him. He picked her up tenderly and planted a kiss on her soft lips. “Can we shut out the world for just a bit longer?” she asked looking with vain hope into his eyes.
Chris pushed the car door closed with his backside and carried Fern into the house, grinding his teeth and thinking.
Fern had been an orthodontist, he an architect. They had been married only a couple of years when she noticed pins and needles in her left foot. A tumour in the centre of her spinal cord was found, then, during a ‘routine’ decompressive laminectomy, that was going to take a biopsy and relieve the pressure, a tiny mistake by the surgeon left her paralyzed from the waist.
At least it wasn’t cancer.
But, it was this, more than anything else that drove them away from ‘society’ – especially common society - where, if being pushed by him in her chair to the shops, the sneers and the disgusted looks became more and more common. Then finally, the under the breath remarks, “Benefits bitch!” or worse, led to them building a house, tailored to their needs, in a small gated community that his company were designing.
Outside, the far right, the radical Christians, the Scottish separatists, all started to vie for a position. Catholicism, Islamism, Sinistrism, countless ‘isms’ all demanded equal rights and representation. While the ‘Hardworking Families’ of Britain got poorer and more marginalised, fed on a diet of expensive, processed food and junk TV.
Yet, almost unnoticed, these same people, also slowly got more and more involved.
Countless radio phone-ins, where poorly educated and bigoted people got to air their views; on Europe, Fat people, Foreign aid, left them increasingly feeling that no one was representing them (probably because their views were ridiculous, counterproductive and contradictory) no one that is until ‘the saviour’ came along.
* * *
Chapter 2
Morning
He and Fern were swimming in a warm sea out towards a pontoon. Him, swimming easily, gliding through the water toward the setting sun and the low floating platform, her falling behind. He doesn’t notice, pressing on, pressing on and breathing harder, though the pontoon never seems to get any nearer. Suddenly, she calls him; he stops swimming and looks back. She is smiling, but wants him to come back to her. He is torn; go on or go back. Before he can decide he suddenly can no longer tread water, he is sinking, out of control, he has no legs…
Chris, hot and sweating, is jolted awake, his dream still vivid before his eyes.
The relief of the reality of the bed brings a great release of breath and tension. He turns to her side and reaches out an arm for some comfort, but she is not there!
The power of the vision of Fern in his dream, of her swimming, had taken him back to the ‘her’ of 15 years before. They had not shared a bed for almost that long and he still missed her.
He looked at the clock, 3:06, he turned over…
What seemed like moments later, he was jolted awake again; this time it was the front door intercom. The clock read 7:38.
Shuffling along the corridor, he looked in on Fern, still sleeping soundly. The main screen in the living room flashed into life when it saw him, he turned and commanded; “Intercom.”
Up came the image from the camera at the front door. Standing there was a policeman.
* * *
Decision Time
Saviour put the Daimler into drive and rumbled down the dirt track that led to the lane, ahead, just clear of the steep hill on the other side of the valley, a rising full moon. He had four hours to complete the process and then get back to the clearing for the ceremony, when the moon would be directly overhead. He realised, at that moment that he had no choice but to give it another try.
The spongy suspension bucked and protested and expensive body work grounded, as, at the end of the track, he forced the old lady up onto the metalled surface of the lane. Just a mile of so further into the countryside, he checked that there were no vehicle lights approaching from in front, or behind him and then he switched off the Daimler’s lights, pulled onto a narrow gravel drive and crunched towards a large, derelict house.
There were few safe places left for the golden saviours to meet indoors. The ONE now sanctified almost every home, factory and public building, along with most of the spaces in between.
The ONE or Omniscient Networked Environment was how the prayers and scriptures were carried to and from the faithful along with all other communication, entertainment and data transfers. A combination of networks and computer clouds spanning everyone and everywhere. To interact with the ONE the faithful each had a PH or Prayer Hub. This ninth generation device, when not active, looked like nothing more than a piece of clear glass, about the size of an oblong bathroom tile, but, when combined with a headset, was all you needed to commune with the almighty.
This ‘house’, set on the crest of a ridge appeared nothing more than a ramshackle crumble of walls and window openings, roofless and abandoned. He drove around and drew up on the side furthest from the road. Here the ground dropped away a little, revealing a lower ground floor, accessible through a small door down a short flight of stairs.
Having switched off the engine he waited a few seconds. The darkness and silence were complete, apart from the ticking of the cooling motor and the blue light of the moon. He moved the switch on the interior lights to off then opened the door. Although the valley on that side of the ridge had no roads or houses, experience told him he had to take every measure to avoid being discovered.
The three steps down to the door were slippery with dew and old leaves. Pushing on the door, left unlocked, just in case anyone should chance by, with some effort he persuaded its warped and splintering carcass to allow him access. Then he went back to the car.
Lifting the boot lid revealed the still sleeping shape of the girl, wrapped in gold, hair of gold, just as the prophecy required. He scooped her up, cloth and all and carried her towards the door.
The girl nestled her head onto the top of his shoulder and into his neck, totally relaxed. Once into the windowless room he walked straight ahead a measured number of paces and then lowered her onto a musty sofa. She clung to him, refusing to be left there, with a cat-like grip. “So you are awake,” he said.
* * *
The Presents
“Mista’ T, Tuh, T’Hu, Oh… shit dis ain’t fen’e’ic or nuffin – wot sor’ah name is ih’?”
“Thompson,” Christopher replied, “and you are?”
“Tomsun! Right, well, I goh diss’ fah yoo bro. The chief says it was to fank you fah wot yah did yestadee, wot eva dat woz… ‘ere.”
The policeman thrust a plain brown cardboard box towards him.
“What is it?”
“Ha’ de fuck shud I know bro’, i’ aint fa’ me na’ iz’i’!”
“Right, well I think I would rather you took it back, if that’s alright with you… er… bro’”
Chris made to go back inside. He thought he knew exactly what was in the box, judging by its size and shape; it would be a PH.
“whooah, dere mista – I ain’t going nowhere ‘tiw you take dis. You ge’ me?”
“Right… OK thank you,” taking the box, from the constable, Chris again went to go inside and close the door.
“’Ang on, I aint finnisht yet. Dere waz anuvva fing… Oh yeh. The Chief said you got anuvva presen’ yesterday. Is that right?
Strangely the last few words said were as if spoken by someone else. They had well placed consonants, and proper vowel sounds.
“I’m sorry?” Chris said, “I don’t know what you are talking about…”
“A memory stick, given to you by WPC Wilkes. We know you have it, we saw her give it to you on footage harvested from the head-cams on the officers who were… helping you back to your car.”
“Oh the prayers, I had totally forgotten about that.”
“Right, well, we would like it back please… if that’s alright?”
By now Chris was certain that he was speaking, not to the PC, but to the senior officer he had met yesterday. The voice was not the same, but the tone and air of presumed authority, were unmistakeable.
“I have no idea where it is and anyway, it is of no interest to me or my wife, we have no affiliations or religious beliefs.”
“Yes we know… and yet she gave it to you anyway,” said the policeman, or whoever was driving him, adding, “so, before we can decide what if any action we need to take against the WPC, could you tell me, that memory stick, was it green… or was it gold?
* * *
Scripture Lessons
The lower ground floor of the house was no more than a void created to place the house at ground level on the side facing the road. The doorway allowed access to a sort of cellar; joists and floor boards above a dirt floor and unfinished walls. Once the door was closed, he drew a curtain across it and lit a gas lamp whose mantle glowed orange and pink, before bursting into a hissing, brilliant white light.
He hung it on a nail close to the centre of the room. The girl, incongruous, glowing gold in the dazzling light among dusty cobwebs and unwanted clutter, now had a look in her eyes closer to that he has seen earlier. She squatted, dumbfounded on the sofa, clutching the golden cloth tightly around her and began to chant a common prayer;
“Oh Saviour, who has come amongst us,
Listen to my name,
Make me worthy of your updates
Bless me with your likes…”
Listen to my name,
Make me worthy of your updates
Bless me with your likes…”
He raised his hand to stop her, “There is no need for any of that now; no one will hear you here.”
“What? But you are here saviour; I am one with you…”
“Stop, please, we don’t have much time,” he said, lowering his hood and taking a step towards her.
She looked at him in horror, before turning her eyes sharply away, his forehead was totally uncovered while indoors, the most heinous syntax error a man could commit.
Ignoring her, he undid the clasp at the neck of his robes and took them off, still looking at the cowering creature in front of him.
“What is your name?” he asked soothingly.
“What?”
“What is your name? It’s a simple question.”
She stopped quivering as she tried to process this most unexpected question, “You don’t know? But you know everything…”
He sighed, “No one knows everything,” he said, “but some of us know enough. If you can bear it, I will tell you all I know and then, perhaps, you will understand why you are here. But you must believe me and you must trust me, or we will not get done what we must do tonight. Will you at least try?”
“How could I not believe the word of the saviour,” she said, turning to look at him, though choosing to look pointedly at his cock, rather than face the shame of his uncovered forehead.
“So, tell me…”
“My name is Rose, Rose Branch.”
He went to her and sat beside her, “Good, let me start by telling you about the scriptures.”
* * *
A Quick Breakfast
He went into the kitchen to make himself coffee and a tea, for Fern. The small screen above the counter saw him and put on the breakfast show. “TV off,” he commanded, “Secure line to Phillip and lights up to half in bedroom two please.”
The screen then put up a list of all the contacts in its database with names like Phillip, Philip, Phil and other, increasingly unlikely options, before the voice asked him which one he meant, by reading out each name in turn. “Stop!” he shouted touching the name of his ex-business partner, first on the list and the only Phillip he ever called.
The screen went into a dimmed cloud scene while the connection was made and then flashed ENGUAGED, a microsecond before the voice said the same and returned the screen to command mode.
He took the tray of drinks and a couple of pots of sweetened breakfast fibre with emulsified protein and calcium, into bedroom two.
Fern was already awake, head covered with a pillow, complaining about being woken so early. He put the tray down on the chest of drawers and went to sit down beside her on the bed.
“Go away and turn the bloody lights off on the way out.”
“Sorry, but this is important.”
“I don’t do important before 10:00 on a Sunday!” she sulked.
He put a hand on her shoulder and said, “The police were here.”
She pushed the pillow off of her head and turned it away from him. “shit.”
He got up and went to the tray, “I’ve got you some tea.”
“What did they want?”
He picked up the cup and brought it back to the bedside, “They wanted to give me a present, he said, kneeling on the bed and helping her to turn over, before helping her to sit up.
“…what? You’ve got me up on at 8:00 on a Sunday because you got a present!”
“Come on grumpy knickers, there is a little bit more to it than that!”
She looked and he gave her a look so that she could immediately see that there was a lot more he had to say, “Drink your tea, I just have to go and find something, I’ll be right back.”
He went off into his room and searched through the clothes he was wearing yesterday. In the pocket of his trousers was the shining, gold memory stick.
Back in her bedroom, Fern glanced fearfully at him when he walked in, “Well?”
“Don’t be too alarmed, but…
He told her about the conversation with the policeman and the gift, which he assumed would be a PH, another attempt by the authorities to get them more fully blessed by the ONE.
Although their community had been laid out with every state of the art communications technology, when it was built; voice control, cloud storage interface, all fuelled ground source heat pumps, it had remained free of upgrades and was therefore totally unblessed by new scripture. Some on the estate had chosen to embrace the saviour, but had been asked by the rest to perform their prayers outside of the gates. The alternative would have been to have the almighty there among them, which most thought would be just too much of an imposition.
He went on to tell her about the memory stick.
“I don’t understand,” she said, “so what if some religious nut wants to get some more likes by getting us to say a few prayers?”
“I don’t think this is about that,” he replied, “he was more concerned to know if the memory stick was green or gold.”
He threw the shining golden stick onto the bed. “So, what you and Phillip were talking about for so long and so secretively yesterday may not just be just rumours after all?”
“I’ve already tried to call him. I didn’t believe him at all; a golden saviour to free the faithful from BE. It just seemed totally preposterous, then standing there on the doorstep a senior policeman speaking through a proxy servant and all but confirming it all.”
“And that’s not the strangest part,” he went on, “I am a sure as I can be that the WPC must be one of them, or why would she risk so much to give me this?”
Fern picked up the memory stick and turned it over in her hands, it looked perfectly normal, until she pulled off the cover to reveal the connector that would couple it to the ONE. Instead a tightly folded piece of paper was revealed, stuffed into the hollowed casing.
Chris picked up his coffee and swung around to sit beside her at the head of the bed, “well don’t just gawp, open it up and let’s have a look.”
* * *
The Offering
“So the almighty is just a computer algorithm that has taken over the ONE?” Rose asked blankly, adding. “We pray to an algorithm…”
“Well no, most of the time, you don’t pray to anyone or anything at all.” he said, “but everything gets parsed by a layer of the ONE that was originally developed to look for extremists, years and years ago. Back then it just flagged up certain words or phrases, now it has the ability to detect the difference between enthusiasm and just saying your prayers. It can check this against your bio-signs and where you are; when you last has sex… and work out if you are about to commit a sin.”
“How long is it since your prayers were liked, Rose,” he asked.
She looked at him and blushed, then blurted “I do try, really, nobody could put so much energy of empathy into scripture as me… really, sometimes six or seven time a day…” tears were welling up in her eyes as she confessed her shame, “that’s why I’m here isn’t it, you want me to BE to make an example…
He put his fingers on her lips, “Shhh,” he said, “I’m sorry, it’s nothing like that, we stopped you getting likes for a much bigger, massively more important, purpose.”
His voice was calming but the words caused her to get even more upset. “You stopped me getting likes! How? Why? How dare you!!!”
He tried to calm her again, “We needed to, we had to; it is the only way.”
She dissolved into tears and convulsive sobs of confused rage. He reached for his PH and checked the time and then, cradled her and started again.
“You were chosen - not because you were bad - or good - but because of your name. We needed your name.”
He explained about the scriptures and the upgrades, about ‘includes’ and syntax and about nested subroutines and then about the bio-power and finally about the BE.
Then she understood. To BE with the almighty was just Benign Euthanasia, triggered by a number of biological and psychological markers that the ONE coupled with a PH picked up from everyone as they prayed, it analysed them and sent an alarm, so they could be terminated by the almighty at its will.
“Your name, your biological markers, your prayer history, almost everything about you, has been patched in scripture, so that we can make you look suicidal,” he said slowly and carefully, “all the prayers that you said with the brothers in the woods, your inability to amass likes, all leading to you offering yourself as a martyr, not as a last desperate attempt to be liked, as the almighty will assume, but to launch the golden saviours out of the shadows.”
“It has taken hundreds of man years of coding, buried subroutines and new includes, hidden within millions of hours of prayer, byte by byte and variables incremented by increment, so as not to attract the attentions of anyone or arouse the suspicions of the almighty.”
“Now we are ready and we have to do it tonight, before the full moon reaches its zenith, when the next major revision will be released across the ONE, wiping out all our work… again.”
He had been pacing the small area of space in front of the tatty sofa as he recounted his testament, stopping only to look at her when he said the word, “again.”
* * *
Meeting with Phillip
They drove in near silence the long way to Phillip’s house, rather than chancing going anywhere near the lane, just in case they were spotted by the sanctification measures that would have been left there.
At Phillip’s, he was standing by the door as they drew up. He walked towards them and got into the car.
“Oh, I thought we were coming in,” said Fern surprised.
“No,” said Phillip, “not today, let’s go down to the lake, shall we?”
“OK,” Chris said, detecting a worrying tone in Phillip’s voice.
Phillip waved some sort of good-bye up towards the windows of his house and sat back in the rear seats, “Oh, I appear to have forgotten my phone, do you have yours, Chris?”
“No, I rarely carry it a weekends, how about you Fern?”
“It’s in my handbag, where it always is, but it has no charge because the battery is fucked, as you well know. It only works when it’s plugged in.”
“May I?”
Phillip reached forwards and she passed back a slim black block. Almost before he took it, it emitted a green glowing pulse, as it attempted to connect to the network.
Quickly, Phillip slipped it into a heavy looking dull grey bag that he pulled from his pocket. As he drew the zip closed, Fern could see that this was lined with gold.
Chapter 3
Back at Base
The senior officer poured over the video and audio harvested from the head-cam of his proxy. The feed was also being streamed to the ONE, for simultaneous analysis.
“How we allow these people to stay so far off the net beats me,” he muttered concerned at the delay imposed by not being able to take this evidence in real time.
At the end of the stream the ONE feed almost instantaneously sent a short summery of its conclusions;
Suspect was telling the truth – 93.7%
Suspect was avoiding the subject – 0.3%
Suspect has previous – FALSE
Suspect has worrying associations – TRUE:
1. Phillip Warner <suspectID – 00CDF-000556992>
Probability of active conspiracy – <5%
Guilty/Not Guilty – 17%/82% (+/- 5%)
Next action: ___
1 = Expand, 2= Collapse, 3.= Delete
Although, in an ideal world, he would love to have the time and resources to expand the investigation, this was not an ideal world. His finger hovered over the three. Pushing that would remove all of this from the database, but something was still niggling him, even though he did not know what it was and the ONE gave Christopher an exceptionally high innocence rating. In the end, he opted for the middle and his least favourite option. Collapsing the record would leave everything on file, but not place the suspect under any additional observation or monitoring, which always seemed to him, an old school copper, like a copout.
He closed down the open apps and reached into the draw of his desk, removing an ornate pot.
“Mirror” he commanded and the image on the screen was replaced by his own slightly grey and very stodgy face. The pot had a green substance inside, rather like slightly soft lipstick. He carefully lifted the brim of his cap, to reveal, as he suspected, that his head brand had faded. So he delicately transferred a streak of the green with his left index finger.
“Selfie and transfer to home,” he said; his wife would like that he was going out on patrol respectfully dressed.
Then he stripped off his police uniform and hung it all in a cupboard at the back of the office, before taking out a large hooded robe that also hung there. He put this on and fastened the clasp at the neck, then took several leather flasks that were hanging on green cords from hooks mounted on the back of the cupboard door. These were tucked into folds of the robes. Lastly he took a long whip that was standing at the back of the cupboard and secreted this too, inside his robes.
Closing the cupboard and turning, he walked to the desk and picked up his PH, before leaving the office through the back door, down a dark staircase that led him out of the hospital and away on his rounds.
* * *
To the Lake
“There that should do it,” said Phillip putting the bag containing Fern’s phone on the seat next to him.
“What’s going on?” Chris asked, not having been able to see most of what happened, as he was driving.
“Phillip has a PPS,” said Fern, “What on earth made you get that upgrade?”
A PPS, or Personal Power Station, was a ‘health’ upgrade. A tiny micromachine, no bigger than a kidney bean, it consumed calories from food eaten in a bio-digester to power a fuel cell which in turn ran a transmitter emitting enough Electro Magnetic Radiation to power modern personal technologies. The result was that people were always online; their devices never ran out of power; unless they themselves did…
“I didn’t,” he said with a steely tone, “I think I was given it, as a present.”
“What have you done with my phone?” Fern enquired, “It may be old and fucked, but it has all my whole life on it.”
“It will be quite alright, don’t fret. It is in a deadzone that’s all. The bag is made of lead impregnated fibres, among other things,” he said, stroking it as if it were a kitten, “no signals can get in, or out.”
“Do they do larger ones,” Fern asked teasingly, “sort of ‘house’ size?”
When they got to the lake it was blisteringly hot. A late summer heat-wave generated shimmering mirages from the walkways around the picnic area. The covering of bark chippings that surrounded benches and tables barely concealed the black cables that emerged under each of them and were fixed up the sides of nearby trees. The area was fully sanctified.
Having set up the wheelchair and placed Fern into it, they walked from the car park around the back of the picnic ground and picked up the path that ran around the lake through the woods.
“Won’t they notice that…” Chris was going to ask if Phillip would by now be raising suspicion, as he was affectively off-line.
Suspicion; it was this, more than anything else, that tormented the heart of the almighty. It knew where everyone was, it knew what the vast majority of them were doing, it had developed PrayerBook, the app that it could use to work out what they were thinking and feeling; yet some ‘stuff’ still happened that it had not predicted and could not control.
Phillip stopped him with a glance and a shake of the head. He motioned and signalled with his eyes, towards a row of shag shacks that were set out among the trees, he then said loudly and confidently, “I think we should go for a swim after we’ve had sex; what do you say?”
Sex was predictable enough to arouse no suspicion. So, if Phillip and Christopher, or Phillip and Fern, or Phillip, Christopher and Fern, were planning going off-line to have sex, that made perfect sense, after all, they had done so before.
* * *
More Revelations
“So I have to chant this suicide prayer three times in front of a crowd of the faithful, who have all been told that I am unworthy?”
“Yes, I have the prayer on my PH, it only has 13 lines…
“Unworthy, because of what?” she now looked him full in the face.
“Oh, err, ummm…
“You really aren’t that special at all are you? You are winging this; playing with lives and your software code snippet ‘watch-ya-ma-call-it’s as if they are the same things…. Don’t you look away from me; I asked you a question! What do they think I have done?”
She was now tall and glaring at him eye to eye, standing on the sofa, the gold cloth around her ankles. “They think that you are an illegal immigrant…and benefits claimant… from… Scotland…”
“Oh almighty…” she sank down onto her haunches, “If I don’t die they will fucking kill me!”
He looked at her and suddenly gasped.
“Wot, you ain’t seen a girl naked before?”
“You don’t have any tattoos!”
* * *
The Ménage in the Woods
The cabin was like a sauna, not only because it was wooden and very basically furnished inside, but also because it must have been at least 90 degrees in there.
There was no way that the wheel chair would fit through the door, so Fern had to be carried in.
There was, of course, a giant screen, which flashed on as soon as they walked in. “Unidentified” was displayed three times alongside a small image of each of them, clearly captured a split second ago as they came through the door. A glance towards the wall opposite the door, confirmed that there was a small camera there and turning round, Chris picked out two or three more, above the bed, next to the screen… “Smile!” he said.
“Welcome Mr Smial” said the TV set, “are you performer one, two or three?”
“Cancel film shoot,” barked Phillip, “Drinks order; Two Beers and a Glass of Dry White Wine.”
“Due to high demand - Film Shoot Cancel - is not permitted on – Sunday -. Film Shoot suspended and will recommence in – three – minutes,” it then added, “Alcohol is not permitted on – Sunday - , please revise - Drinks Order - or Cancel.”
It then went into a long speech about identifying actors and telling them to let it know which angles they would like it to shoot for each position, what if any pixilation they required of faces or body parts and the signal that they would use for close ups…
Phillip found an old fashioned wired headset that he plugged into an audio port on the screen and the sound stopped.
“Thank you,” said Fern, “I think that I have heard more than enough from the director of this porn movie.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Chris said, “we can just drive around, I have fuel for an hour or so…”
“No. We can’t go, not right now,” Phillip insisted, “That will definitely arouse suspicion.”
“Definitely? How do you know definitely?” Fern asked pointedly, “no one knows the will of the almighty.”
“On my, she’s good isn’t she…” Phillip said with genuine admiration to Chris, “never misses a thing.”
“Well I might not believe any of that crap, but it doesn’t stop me reading about it.”
By now Chris, shrugging his shoulders and leaving them to it, was more concerned about finding the air conditioner, before he passed out. An initial scan of the tiny cabin had not revealed any controls or switches. Finally, he had a brainwave, put on the headset and commanded “Aircon on,” moments later a loud blast of hot air gushed from thin vents around the edges of the floor. This quickly chilled as the condensers kicked in.
Before taking the headset off, another thought occurred to him, “Statement” he commanded. The screen dimmed and then put up an itemised bill of their use of the cabin so far. Ripping the headset off he shouted over the fans, “We can’t afford to stay in here for too much longer; suspicion or not!”
“Sex has always been expensive, right throughout history,” Phillip stated glumly, “why else would so many people want to do it so much?”
* * *
The Final Revelation
The saviour froze in total panic. How on earth could he have missed this? Everything else had been done meticulously; tracks had been covered; errant disciples had been brutally punished; scripture had been prayed and re-prayed… but there was one blindingly obvious discrepancy; one Rose was blonde, about 22, 1.8 meters, pure white skin, the other was blonde, about 22, 1.8 meters, but covered with tattoos!
A desperate plan came into his mind; he rushed back to the Daimler, almost breaking a leg slipping as he tried to jump the top two steps. In the glove box and rattling around on the floor was a collection of contraband, including pens, confiscated from those wicked brethren who did not yet ‘speak’ every word unto the almighty.
He came back down with hands stuffed with as many as he could carry, “We have to ink you up a bit,” he blurted, “there are only minutes left.”
Throwing the pens onto the sofa, he ripped off the top of a blue pen and started scrawling swirls and squiggles up her arm, “Don’t just sit there, do the other arm!”
“With what? I can’t, you have one arm, I don’t have another to write with…
“Oh right, of course, I’ll do your back.”
“Ow! That hurts… what is all this?”
The saviour did not stop, but started talking while still scrawling over Rose’s back. He explained that the plan to keep her alive relied on a magicians’ trick that would substitute her with another Rose Branch, who was already dead.
“That is why we have taken so long to get all of this together,” he explained, “don’t stop! Don’t bother about making it neat, no one will see you too clearly.”
He went on, “When you have said your final prayers, we know that the almighty will terminate you by issuing a BE code to your script. So, you must appear to die. Count to five, go as rigid as you can and fall back towards me, I will be behind you. I will wrap you in the cloth and carry you to the alter. Stay as rigid as you can. There will most likely be a huge amount of noise from the faithful gathered there. At the alter there will be a flash and bang from a firework. You will fall a foot or so into a space below and the other Rose will be there in your place…”
“Wait, wait, you are going too fast…” Rose interrupted, “Why won’t I die?”
“Because of the patches… I’ve told you, we have patched the BE subroutine so it will not run with your name, you are immune… immortal to the almighty, we hope. . . .” his voice trailed off as he said these last few words.
He turned her around to face him. “We have tried all this before… once… with my father. He was almost 70, but had a congenital heart condition and needed another operation. The police said that this was a very serious matter and that we needed to search our consciences and prey very hard because resources were scarce… they said that, based on the evidence, perhaps it was time for him to BE with the almighty.”
The saviour was making random scrawls across her chest with a dark blue felt tipped pen, tears streaming down his face. Rose pressed her fingers to his lips, “It didn’t work,” she said.
He took hold of her hand and looked into her eyes, “No, not that time. Come on, we have to go.”
She stumbled up the steps tripping on the cloth of gold, still asking questions, “But how did you do the trick with your dad? I mean did you manage to find another one?”
“My dad was a pillar of the community who was making the ultimate sacrifice… not a benefit scrounging, illegal immigrant from Scotland; no one wanted to tear him apart limb from limb and dance around the pieces of his scattered corpse.”
“Oh, I see,” she said beginning to feel very, very sick…
* * *
Lights… Camera… Action!
Inside the, now very much cooler, cabin, the three ‘performers’, identified to the director as ‘Smial’, ‘Teeth’ and ‘Gums’ – were in a long and convoluted rehearsal during which a full shooting plan was being worked up. Chris was calling the scenes and lighting cues, camera angles and position changes, through the headset, also asking for sample shots from other MMF movies that had been filmed in that very cabin, for added inspiration… This allowed enough time for them to talk freely if not very conveniently.
By checking the statement screen periodically, Chis worked out that they had about 15 minutes before the credits in his personal account would run out and they would be asked to leave, or provide an alternate source of funds; a spare kidney, for example…
“So you knew all this about the golden saviour because you are one?” Chris asked as he positioned Fern on her back across the bed, then stood back to take in the scene.
“No, I am just a tiny cog, an app-let.” Phillip answered, “I embed code snippets in my prayers.”
Phillip had been seeing a lady called Marsha for a few years, he explained. His wife, Penny was a total green zealot, rabidly environmental. She has embraced the New Salvation Army as soon as she heard of their drive to power the world with human waste, rid society of crime, inequality and Facebook and make everyone happy.
What they actually did was reduce the energy available to everyone until they could only run what equipment they had left with human waste; expand CCTV and every other form of surveillance, exponentially, so that nearly every sort of physical crime became pointless, or solvable in seconds; and launch Prayerbook.
People’s likes and empathy scores in Prayerbook were then slowly linked to every form of wellbeing; your promotion prospects, your access to healthcare, how much fuel you could put in your car, how long you had to wait before you could get a car…
So, to ‘get on in life’ you had to get on in Prayerbook, saying your prayers with real joy, liking other people’s prayers and showing empathy towards the almighty, for hours, every day…
As a result nobody had any notion of what was really going on and couldn’t tell if they were happy or not.
At home Phillip had to pray and do his bit or he didn’t eat. For happiness, he went to Marsha. Then she started to tell him about scripture and how it could be hacked, so he started to pray with a lot more vigour.
Christopher and Fern listened to all this with a mixture of fear, disbelief and wonder, like 5yearolds seeing The Wizard of Oz for the first time. Some of it they knew, of course, but that is not the same as being able to put all of it into one big picture.
Since her ‘accident’ in the hospital, despite the fact that they no longer worked, they had been well off; insurance, pensions, compensation… all had immunised them against the things that had been going on outside their little world. And nobody ever talked about these sorts of things, for fear that the saviour would hear them.
They fell silent for a moment and the look that passed between them said that their little game had become even more unbearably pointless.
Chris glanced at the screen; the scene playing included two middle-aged grey and stodgy men who were sitting side by side while a lady, whose back was towards the camera, was kneeling in front of them. She was applying her hands and mouth to each of them in turn and turnabout, as was customary. The camera slowly zoomed-in onto her right hand, vigorously caressing the clearly flaccid member it was holding. Something was making him keep looking at this? Then it hit him; that hand along with most of her forearm, was covered in tattoos.
Chapter 4
The Ceremony
He let her ride most of the way in the seat next to him, constantly reassuring her that they had learned an enormous amount since their first attempt to hack the almighty. Then, as he came to the way onto the track up to the copse, he stopped and turned off the lights before bumping down into the turning through the hedge, then stopped again.
“You must be in the boot, Rose, I am afraid. They can’t see me paying you any respect, though I think that, by some chance, you seem to be a wholly remarkable young woman.”
“If I do this, I mean if all this works, what then?” she was sitting, slumped, looking down at her tightly intertwined fingers, “If, when the update comes, it’s all going to be wiped out anyway…
She turned and looked at him, “What’s the point?”
“I can’t tell you that - not because I don’t want to - simply because I don’t know. All I know is what I need to know to get this next step completed; I didn’t even know your name…”
“I know that there will be no emergence of the golden saviours tonight, whatever happens, because the faithful will see the ceremony fail, whether it does or not. Only you and I will know the true outcome. The others will tear apart the body of Rose Branch in savage revenge and then seek forgiveness, not for their savagery, but because they will believe that they have failed. I will beat some of them and forgive all of them, so that they will sleep. Then I will take you away from here, and we may get some new answers to your questions, though believe me; I have many more.”
He got out of the car and opened the boot; she opened the passenger door, but did not get out of the car, “I think I am going to be sick,” she said.
“No! Not here, not on the ground, we cannot leave any trace of you here!”
He grabbed a dirty rag that was scrunched up a corner of the boot and stretched it out below her face as it emerged, involuntarily, from the car. But, although her body strained every fibre of its core and contorted her violently, in an attempt to eject the poisonous fear inside her, there were no other contents of her stomach beyond a dribble of bile.
When she signalled that the convulsions had stopped, he had nothing to offer her to clean her mouth other than the sleeve of his robe. She kissed it and said, “Thank you, saviour. I am all right now.”
He took the cloth of gold from around her and laid it out in the boot, as he did this, she got out and attempted to walk down the side of the car.
“No, stop, let me,” he ran to her and swept her off her feet. In the warmth of his arms her head fell back and she saw the stars and planets swirling above her, around the face of the moon, and felt more loved than at any time she could remember.
He laid her tenderly onto the gold cloth, wiping the dirt and straw from her feet, before tucking them in too and, slowly, closing the lid.
* * *
He stopped the car a few yards short of the clearing. There were no signs of life. He got out and went around to the boot and opened it, but did not look inside, instead marched with his unusual grace right into the centre of the clearing.
As he did this, two masked and hooded figures emerged from the trees and grabbed the cloth by the edges and pulled it and Rose out, unceremoniously. They then carried her, bouncing and squirming into the centre of the ring, before laying the cloth out in a square with her close to its centre. They then took up positions on each side of the cloth, standing to attention.
Looking around she could see little other than the feet of the attendant she was closest to, and the saviour to her left, though she could just make out the edge of a structure, beyond the saviour, that looked like a high table or something that size, draped with a thick cloth. Then, more figures appeared, all similarly attired, from beyond the edge of the clearing, then more, until it seemed that they would swarm in and crush her.
The saviour threw up his arms and shouted, “Faithful family of the cloth of gold, look upon this, truly, the most unworthy of creatures, but hold back your desire for just retribution towards her, in payment for the obscenity of her presence among us, for she is ready to make amends, or rid us of her presence, by a selfless act of her own doing.”
While saying this, those closest to her swapped places with others, so as everyone could get a look at her laying there, most muttering an oath or obscenity under their breath.
The saviour went on, “As it was foretold to us, so it will be;”
The faithful echoed, en-mass; “So it will be.”
“A golden haired sinner will be found who, by the power of our code and the purity of our syntax, we will make immortal, invulnerable to the tyrannical power of the almighty, and we will clothe them in gold and they will lead us out of slavery and away from the ways of the ONE, as it must be.”
“As it must be.”
“Now, stand back and bare witness as this unworthy sinner, cleansed by the power of our scripture and the truth of our word, calls upon the almighty to end her otherwise pointless existence, by chanting the prayer of the 13 lines. Yet, in so doing, will expose the vulnerability of the almighty and bring peace and everlasting freedom to the worthy few who seek another way, break, return, semicolon.”
“Break, return, semicolon” the faithful echoed, only paraphrasing the most holy last few lines of the most ancient scripture, for none, but the most trusted, could know the full, unedited, syntax.
* * *
Totally exhausted, dehydrated, naked and petrified, Rose found herself being pulled to her feet by the attendant figures that had carried her into the clearing. She then felt the warmth of the saviour’s robes at her back and took strength from him that enabled her to stand unaided. He reached around her, holding the PH in front of her face. Its edges and rounded corners glowed with a steely light while in the centre of the main display was a short prayer that appeared to float in space, occupying some ‘other’ dimension, outside of the realm of the thin piece of glass he was holding.
An almost imperceptible move by him towards her, prompted her to start reading so she began, as bravely as she could.
At the end of the second verse, a movement, off to her right, caught her eye, distracting her. One of the faithful was holding up their PH with the camera app running, filming all this.
A whispered command from the saviour to the attendant standing on that side, sent him leaping towards the miscreant to administer a thudding crunch, launching him sprawling backwards, knocked for six by something that the attendant hit him with, very hard, his still filming PH spiralling up into the air. The attendant stood over him, to make sure that he did not get up and then reached out a hand towards the person who had caught the device as it fell.
In less than ten seconds, he returned to his position beside her opposite the other attendant; the saviour then immediately prompter her to go on with the suicide prayer.
* * *
By the start of the third time through, try though she may, the words simply would not come out. Her mouth was dry, her throat constricted and she could see nothing more than the barest hint of the words swimming before her eyes.
Sensing her discomfort, with his free hand the saviour reached within his robes and produced a flask. It had a dark stopper, in the half light and her confused state, she could not identify its colour. He flicked off the stopper with his thumb, before bringing the opening up to her mouth. She took a mouthful of the sweet liquor and held it for a second or two in her mouth, willing her larynx not to cough so she spat it out, while her gullet got used to the idea of swallowing. He had kept the flask in front of her face, so she went to take another sip, which the saviour permitted, though there was then a noticeable and growing rumbling of disapproval from the faithful; what had this creature done to deserve so much forgiveness?
Ignoring them until she cleared her throat, indicating that she was able to continue, the saviour only then took away the flask. The lines now back into focus, her words clearer, though not loud, she worked her way through the three, four line verses of the prayer, took a breath, spoke the last line and looked up into the face of the moon, fully expecting to die…
Had it not been for a tap on the back of the leg, from the knee of the saviour, pulsing out the five seconds, she would have totally forgotten her next part in the play. At the fifth beat, she stretched her arms and spread her fingers, stood on tip toe, clenching her jaw staring blankly ahead, before falling back like a felled tree, into the arms of her saviour.
As he had predicted, an enormous commotion broke out. Some fled, some wept, others screamed for her blood. Rose was oblivious to most of this, as she was wrapped tightly in the cloth of gold, which now felt like home, and was carried to the alter. There was much jostling and swearing on the way, as the two attendants, forced a path through the melee, for the saviour. Then, moments after she was placed on the smooth surface, Rose saw through the cloth, the bright flash and felt the boom of the explosion in the pit of her gut, before she dropped like a stone to be smothered by total darkness, laughing, crying, and never more totally alive!
...........
