Blasphemy (31 page)

Hazelius steadied himself on the arms of the chair and looked around. Ford had never seen his eyes such an eerie blue.

Edelstein spoke fiercely. “Is it true? The names?
I must know
.”

Hazelius nodded.

“There’s an explanation, of course.”

Hazelius shook his head.

“Obviously, you told someone,” Edelstein said. “Someone found out.”

“No.”

“The doctor who gave your wife the news. He learned the names.”

“It was a home kit,” Hazelius said hoarsely. “We only found out . . . an hour before she died.”

“She called someone. Her mother, perhaps.”

Again, a vigorous shake of the head. “Impossible. I was with her the whole time. We did the test and talked about the names. That was it. Sixty minutes. We didn’t go anywhere, we didn’t talk to anyone. She was so happy. That’s what burst the aneurysm—the sudden rush of happiness from the news spiked her blood pressure. Cerebral hemorrhage.”

“There’s a fraud in here somewhere,” said Edelstein.

Chen shook her head, setting her long black hair awhirl. “Alan, the data is coming out of that hole in space-time. It’s not coming from anywhere in the system. I traced it once, I traced it again, I force-quit the processors in each detector, I did every test I could think of. It’s
real
.”

Hazelius drew a shuddering breath. “It knew my thoughts. Just like it knew Kate’s. There’s no getting around it, Alan. There’s no way it could have guessed.
Whatever it is, it knows our innermost thoughts
. ”

Nobody moved. Ford tried to wrap his mind around it, find a rational explanation. Edelstein was right: it had to be some kind of deception.

When Hazelius spoke again, his voice was calm, matter-of-fact. “The machine’s running unattended. All of you, back to your stations.”

“We aren’t . . . going to power down?” Julie Thibodeaux asked, her voice quavering.

“Absolutely not.”

Isabella continued to hum on autopilot with the immense flow of power. The screens hissed with snow. The detectors sang their strange song. The electronics crackled—as if the tension of the scientists had infected the computer and taken the machine itself to the edge.

“Alan, get back on the p5s, keep everything steady. Kate, I want you to do some calculations on the geometry of that space-time hole. Where does it go? What does it open into? Melissa, I want you to work with Kate and get on that data cloud. Analyze it at all frequencies—find out what the hell it is.”

“What about the malware?” Dolby asked, as if unable to comprehend what had happened.

“Ken, don’t you get it? There is no malware.”

Dolby looked stupefied. “You think it’s . . . God?”

Hazelius returned the man’s look with an unreadable gaze of his own. “I think Isabella’s in communication with something real. Whether it’s actually God—whatever the hell that word means—we don’t have enough data yet. And that’s why we have to keep going.”

Ford looked around. The shock of what had happened was still sinking in. Wardlaw’s face was dripping sweat. Kate and St. Vincent looked pale as death.

He took Kate’s hand. “Are you all right?”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure.”

Hazelius spoke to Dolby. “How long can we keep it going?”

“It’s dangerous to keep running at full power.”

“I didn’t ask you if it was dangerous. I asked you
how long
.”

“Two, three hours.”

“Wait,” said Innes, “Let’s not be rash. We need to stop and consider what’s happened here. This is . . . unprecedented.”

Hazelius faced Innes. “George, if God spoke to you, would you turn and walk away?”

“Come now, Gregory! You can’t seriously believe we’re speaking to God!”

“I merely asked
if
.”

“I refuse to answer absurd hypotheticals.”

“George,
if
we’ve made contact with some kind of universal intelligence, we can’t turn away. Because the opportunity is here. It’s now. It won’t last.”

“This is crazy,” said Innes weakly.

“No, George, it isn’t crazy. The thing gave us the proof we asked for. Twice. It may be God, it may be something else. I don’t know. What I
do
know is: I’m riding this train to the last station.” He looked around fiercely. “What about it? Are you all with me?”

The singing of Isabella filled the room. The screens flickered. Nobody spoke. But Ford could see the
yes
in all their faces.

IN THE BACK BEDROOM OF HIS Oakwood, Pastor Russell Eddy closed his Bible and placed it on one of the tottering heaps of books stacked on his desk. He shoved the piles of books away from his sleeping Mac, clearing himself a space to work. Then he woke the machine up, the monitor bathing the room in cool blue. It was nine o’clock in the evening.

His head felt clearer than it had ever felt before. God had answered his prayers. God had told him exactly what he must do.

For a few minutes, he stared at the empty screen, collecting his thoughts. Outwardly his body was still. Inwardly his heart pounded with the zeal of the Holy Spirit. There was a reason he had ended up running a shabby mission church at the edge of the world. There was a reason why Lorenzo had died. Russell Eddy had been placed here as God’s sentry. God had selected him to play a crucial role in the coming End of Days.

For a half hour he sat very still, thinking intensively about the letter he must write. His mind remained preternaturally clear and sharp as he composed the letter, word by word, in his head.

He was ready. He bowed his head, uttered a short prayer, and placed his fingers on the computer keyboard.

My Friends in Christ,

Many of you watched the show
Roundtable America
earlier tonight, hosted by the Reverend Don T. Spates. You heard him speak of the Isabella project. You heard Rev. Spates mention a secret source, a “devout Christian on-site” from whom he got his information.

I am that secret source. God has asked me to reveal to you what I know. What you do with it is between you and the Lord.

My name is Russell Eddy, pastor of the Gathered in Thy Name Mission on the Navajo Indian Reservation. Ours is a very simple and remote Christian mission located in the desert of Arizona at the foot of Red Mesa, not ten miles from the Isabella project.

My friends, I bring you news—extraordinary, terrifying, yet joyous news.
The event for which Christians have been waiting for two thousand years is happening, right now, even as I write this e-mail
.

The End Days have arrived. The Apocalypse and Rapture are at hand, now, this very night
. You read about it in the
Left Behind
series. Well, now it’s no longer fiction. It’s happening. For real.

I know many of you have heard claims like this before. Many false prophets have made this very claim in the past. You are skeptical, and rightly so. All I ask is that you hear me out. “
He that hath ears to hear, let him hear
.”

Don’t make the mistake of deleting this e-mail. By doing so, you may forfeit your place at the right hand of Jesus Christ on the Day of Judgment. Read what I have to say. Pray. Then decide.

I begin with two announcements. The first is this:
the Antichrist is here amongst us. I have met him
. I have spoken to him. He is real. His long-laid schemes and plans have reached fruition. As God is my witness, right in front of me he took off his mask and revealed himself.

My second announcement is even more important:
The Apocalypse is now. It begins this very night
.

Naturally, you are skeptical. You say, right now? The Apocalypse? With my kids upstairs, sleeping? With my wife in bed? Impossible! But consider what the Apostle Matthew said: “
In such an hour as you think not, the Son of man cometh
.” This is that hour. It is here. Now.

And now I will give you proof of what I say. The key is Revelation 13:1 and nearby passages.

“And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.”

The “sand of the sea” is the Arizona desert. Isabella is exactly seven leagues in diameter. Isabella has ten different detectors, each one recording ten different particles. Some of the detectors are actually called “horns.” If you think I’m making this up, check the Isabella Web site,
www.theisabellaproject.org
. It’s all there.

“The dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.”

And who is the Antichrist running the show?
He is a man named Gregory North Hazelius
. He is the one who proposed the Isabella project, who got the money for it, and who now leads the team.
The New York Times
calls Hazelius the “smartest man on earth.” Hazelius himself has made many boasts. He once said “everyone is beneath me intellectually” and called human beings a “race of morons.” That’s right, my friends. But now his true nature is revealed: Gregory North Hazelius is the Antichrist. You doubt me? I met him. I spoke to him, face-to-face. I listened to his blasphemy, his vomiting of bile about our Savior. I listened to him curse Christians as “insects” and “bacteria.” But don’t believe me: believe the Bible. Here’s more from Revelation 13.

“And they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies . . . . And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.”

As you heard on
Roundtable America
, the Isabella machine is claiming to be God. But they’re not talking to God, my friends. They’re talking to
Satan
.

“Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.”

Satan is backed into a corner. He’s making his last stand — and he’s never been more dangerous.

You may ask: Where’s the proof? Listen, and you shall hear
.

Consider this statement, which I have taken directly from the Isabella project Web site: “Running at full power, Isabella re-creates at CZero the temperature of the universe as it was in the first millionth of a second of the Big Bang, a temperature of over one trillion degrees Fahrenheit.” And now consider Revelation 13:13.

“And he [the beast] doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.”

Once again is the prophecy of the Apostle John fulfilled.

Here’s another statement from the Isabella project Web site: “The supercomputer controlling Isabella is the most powerful calculating machine on the planet. It runs at a top speed of fifteen petaflops (fifteen quadrillion calculations per second). This is finally closing in on the estimated speed of the human brain.” Now compare this to Revelation:

“And he [the Antichrist] had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.”

Are you willing to go to bed tonight, knowing the Antichrist will kill you?

Finally, my friends, I give you the ultimate passage in Revelation, the one that lies at the very heart of the vision of the Apostle John:

“Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.”

This is how the Bible tells us we will recognize the Antichrist—by the number 666. The first language of the Apostle John was Hebrew. He knew that every Hebrew letter has a numeric equivalent. Gematria is the process of looking for hidden numbers in a Hebrew name or text. So let’s see what happens when we apply gematria to Isabella and its location, Arizona. If we turn the Roman letters into their Hebrew equivalents and assign each Hebrew letter its proper number, we get:

Still don’t believe me? Consider this: