The Armageddon Conspiracy (63 page)

‘
I get it,’ Lucy said.
‘You’re saying that Satan created the Higgs field and Higgs bosons.
Without these, there would be no mass in the universe.’

‘
Exactly.
Far from
being called the God particle, the Higgs boson should be renamed
the Satan particle.
The whole material world – hell itself – owes
its existence to this particle.
Without it, there would be no
gravity, no relativity theory, no wave-particle duality, no
Heisenberg uncertainty principle, no Bell’s inequality theorem, no
quantum indeterminacy.

‘
When Satan created
mass he also created time.
Time, in the universe of light, has no
meaning.
Pure light doesn’t decay.
It’s eternal.
Remove the Satan
particle and nothing would age.
There would be no death, no
disease, no illness, no misery, no suffering, no pain.’

‘
But wouldn’t we lose
everything that makes us human?’

‘
No, in the universe of
the True God where the Satan particle holds no sway, all of our
joys are magnified a trillion-fold.
It’s a timeless, deathless
paradise.
The souls that inhabit that realm aren’t subject to
gravity.
They can fly, soaring as high as they like, plunging as
far as they wish.
The restraints imposed by the material universe
are removed.

‘
For humanity, it’s
impossible to imagine a massless universe.
The whole of science is
based on the existence of mass.
Without it, everything changes.
The
laws of science are transformed.’

‘
Why doesn’t the True
God destroy the material universe?’

‘
He can’t.’

‘
What do you
mean?’

‘
God is perfect light.
He can’t interact with the material universe.
To do so would make
him imperfect and that’s impossible.’

‘
But other things can
interact with the material world.’

‘
That’s the paradox.
When God creates anything, it must, logically, contain
imperfection.
If it didn’t, it would be perfect too, and therefore
indistinguishable from God.
That’s impossible – there can only be
one God.
So, all of God’s creations are imperfect and it’s because
of this that they’re susceptible to the pull of the material
universe, that they can interact with the Higgs field.
God is pure
light, but all of his creations contain varying degrees of
darkness.

‘
Satan used his dark
arts to make his world seductive to all those with a trace of
darkness in their souls.
Only two people were immune.
God himself,
and Lucifer, the Angel of Light.’

‘
But why did God create
Satan?’

‘
Light needs darkness
in order to exist.
If there were nothing but light, we’d all be
blind.
The contrast allows us to see.
Satan was the Angel of
Darkness, the counterbalance to Lucifer.’

‘
Lucifer and Satan were
the two great enemies, light and dark, the right hand of God versus
the left, the righteous against the sinister.
In the world of the
True God, Lucifer shines more brightly than any other created
being, while Satan is all-consuming darkness.
In Satan’s material
world, the situation is reversed.
Now Satan is the brightest light
and Lucifer infinitely dark.
For that reason, Satan is able to call
Lucifer the Prince of Darkness.’

Lucy pointed at the top panels in the
mural.
One feature stood out as though it was painted on using a
special, glowing pigment.
The feature seemed to metamorphose into a
physical object protruding from the mural.

‘
Satan created the
Spear of Destiny, didn’t he?’
she said.
‘That’s the key to all of
this.’

Sinclair smiled.
‘Satan could do
something with ordinary light that was impossible for God – he
could corrupt it, make it heavy, perishable.
He could cause it to
fold in on itself, to decay.
He believed that if he tried hard
enough he could actually make it solid.
He spent eons
experimenting, trying to create mass.
Endless attempts failed.
Finally, he cracked the puzzle and created the first material
object – a weapon.
This was the Spear of Destiny itself, and its
purpose was the impossible: to allow Satan to kill God.

‘
If Satan had
succeeded, it would have been the first murder in the history of
the universe, and the greatest crime of all.
The universe would
have instantly ceased to exist, or been plunged into a freezing
darkness, lasting forever, with Satan commencing a reign of
infinite terror.

‘
But when Satan hurled
the spear while God was addressing the Host of angels, it passed
straight through God.
Satan hadn’t understood that God can’t
interact with material things.
The spear flew on and struck Lucifer
in the shoulder, wounding him.

‘
War erupted in heaven
between the bright angels loyal to God and Lucifer, and the dark
angels who followed Satan.
Lucifer’s forces, drawing on God’s
power, triumphed, and Satan and his rebel angels were cast down
into the abyss, and Satan’s spear fell with him.

‘
In the abyss, Satan
worked long and hard to create the material universe that he alone
would control.
God had no power over it.
The universe was now
divided in two, good and evil, light and dark, spirit and matter.
God could not harm Satan, and nor could Satan harm God.
The
Manichean dualist universe was born.
The mystery of why the True
God seemed to tolerate the existence of evil was no mystery at all.
As a being of the purest, transcendent light, a type of light no
one on earth can conceive, God simply can’t have any relationship
with matter, so can’t destroy it.

‘
God did not create
evil, Satan did.
God
could
not
create evil.
Evil is a
property of darkness, not of light.
Every soul was created by God
and contains divine light, but all souls also have darkness within
them and can exist in the material world.
The dilemma facing every
soul is to resist the seduction of the material world and embrace
the light of God.

‘
Satan made earth the
centre of his material universe.
Earth is the domain of the dark
lord, hell itself.
Satan placed the Spear of Destiny in the centre
of the Garden of Eden, knowing it would become the cause of war and
violence.

‘
So it proved.
Abel
found the Spear and tried to kill Cain with it, but Cain wrestled
it from him and killed him instead.
Cain, the son of Lucifer and
Eve, was Satan’s enemy on earth.
Satan could have killed Cain at
any time, but now he saw the perfect way of spreading discord and
conflict forever.
Humanity would never be free of strife and
suffering.
Satan’s bloodline, those descended from Adam and Eve,
would wage an eternal war against Lucifer’s bloodline, those
descended from Lucifer and Eve.
With the same mother, the two
bloodlines would have much in common, which is why it’s so
difficult to tell them apart.

‘
Cain and all his
descendants were branded by Satan with the Mark of Cain, but it was
a sign that appeared only once a year, on the anniversary of Abel’s
death at Cain’s hands.
Also, it appeared only on the forehead of
the Cainite holding the weapon Cain used to kill Abel – the Spear
of Destiny.

‘
There’s one final
thing I haven’t told you about the Spear of Destiny, the most
significant fact of all.
It can’t kill the True God, but it
can
kill anyone else in
the universe – any human, any angel.’

‘
Can it kill its
Creator?’
Lucy asked, and started to shiver.
It was terrifyingly
obvious now what Sinclair was asking her to do.

The slightest of smiles appeared at the
corners of Sinclair’s mouth.

‘
You’re asking me to
kill God, aren’t you?’
Lucy hardly believed the words emerging from
her mouth.
‘That’s what this is all about.
That’s what the mural is
depicting.
That’s what your mission is.
That’s why the world may be
about to end.
It all depends on me.
The Spear of Destiny is
the
only
weapon
that can do it.’

‘
It’s not God you must
kill,’ Sinclair rasped.
‘It’s Satan.
We’re asking you to kill the
greatest monster who ever lived.’

‘
I’m not a Gnostic.
I
was raised as a Catholic.’

‘
Everyone who isn’t a
Gnostic is a Devil worshipper.
It’s as simple as that.
You know as
well as anyone what a vale of suffering this world is.
You can end
this hell on earth, you can heal the divided universe.
At a stroke,
you can bring an end to evil, suffering, and pain.
Every soul
trapped in this world will be liberated.
We’ll all return to the
true light, we’ll all be reunited under the rule of the one True
God.
This is the most momentous task in history, Lucy, the most
sacred task ever given to any human being.
Whether you like it or
not, you are the Chosen One.’

‘
But you’re talking
about killing the Creator.
It’s impossible.’

‘
Have you understood
nothing?
It’s impossible to kill
God
, but not
Satan
.
He himself is a created being
and everything that was created can be destroyed.’

‘
But how to do it?
I
mean the actual process.’

‘
It’s right in front of
you.
The mural shows all the ingredients, everything that must be
in place before the deed can be accomplished.’

Lucy gazed at it again.
‘Anything
designed to strike down God, must, in the end, strike down its
maker.’

‘
Precisely,’ Sinclair
said.
‘It’s justice, the completion of the circle, the only way
this could ever end.
Satan must die by his own weapon.
The first
weapon must be the last.
The eternal conflict will end when Rex
Mundi’s own evil is turned against him.’
He grabbed Lucy by the
shoulders.
‘How could you be forgiven if you didn’t do it?
You’d be
the biggest criminal in history, the
eternal
criminal, reviled until the
end of time.’

Lucy stood there, practically
paralysed.

‘
I understand what
you’re saying,’ she said hesitantly, ‘yet, at the same time, I
don’t.
You don’t know what you’re asking me to do.’

‘
I’m asking you to end
the horror.
I’m asking you to fulfil the prophecy.
You came into
this world for precisely this reason, this one moment in time, this
single action.
It’s your purpose, your fate.
You can’t
refuse.’

‘
But by killing
Jehovah, I kill his Creation too.
The world ends.
Everyone dies.
Six billion people.
I can’t do it, I just can’t.’

‘
Only Satan dies, and
his material world.
Darkness will be the only thing left to
commemorate their ill-fated existence.
As for the rest of us, sure,
our physical bodies will perish, but our eternal souls will
instantly return to paradise.
It will be over in a single flash.
No
one will suffer.
From mortality to immortality, from hell to
heaven, in the time it takes for the spear to penetrate Satan’s
heart.’

‘
How do I know you’re
right?’

‘
You’ve always known
this.
Your book is called
The Unholy Grail:
The Secret Heresy
.
All along, you knew
there were two competing religions.
This struggle has gone on from
the dawn of time.
You understood.
Not the precise details, but you
intuited the big picture.
The essence of your book is exactly
right: two rival Gods, one of them true, one false.
The legend of
the Holy Grail has always been one thing and one thing only – a
coded reference to the search for the identity of the True God.
All
those who succeed join God in heaven; all those who fail are
condemned to hell, to lifetime after lifetime of despair.
A
never-ending wheel of human misery.
Until now.’

Lucy continued to stare at the
depictions of the Spear of Destiny in the mural.
They were
flashing, glowing with a vivid blue colour.
She could almost reach
out and touch them.

‘
Like every Grail
Quester, you’ve always been searching for the truth, Lucy.
Place
your faith in the one True God.
Let his divine light guide
you.’

‘
But I’m not the first
to be in this position, am I?
Others have been here before
me.’

‘
Not exactly like this,
but it’s true that Cain’s priesthood has assembled this way four
times before.
The first time was in ancient Atlantis.
Their attempt
to carry out their sacred mission went disastrously wrong and
Atlantis was wiped from the face of the earth.

‘
The second time was
when the great Cathar families of France came together to form the
Knights Templar.
They went to Jerusalem to discover the ancient
treasures and secrets in the Temple of Solomon that would allow
Cain’s destiny to be fulfilled.
The Inquisition stopped them before
they could finish their work.

‘
The third time was
when the Freemasons came together to create the United States of
America – the Templars’ fabled
Merica
, the new Atlantis.
But too many
secrets had been lost and they were unable to discover the
whereabouts of the Grail Hallows.’

‘
The fourth time was
when the Nazis thought they had assembled all of the Grail Hallows.
They carried out the ceremony in the ruins of Montségur, but
nothing happened.
They failed because three of their Grail Hallows,
and the Ark of the Covenant, were fake.’

Sinclair explained that the Nazis were
completely unaware of Raphael’s hidden mural.
It was only when he
himself became a senior figure in the Vatican that things changed.
Rumours circulated that the Pope kept visiting the tomb of Pope
Julius II.
Sinclair befriended the Pope’s most trusted aide and,
after years of perseverance, managed to recruit him to the cause of
Gnosticism.

‘
You killed the Pope,
didn’t you?’
Lucy said.

Sinclair nodded.
‘The Pope’s aide,
wearing special gloves, handed the Pope a note impregnated with an
untraceable poison.
We needed the Vatican to be in crisis.
We
assassinated the American president for the same reason.
Without
those two symbols of temporal and spiritual power, the world would
be rudderless at the moment of its greatest peril.’

‘
You’ve thought of
anything, haven’t you?’

‘
There’s no room for
error.
If we don’t get it right this time, we’ll never get another
chance.’

‘
You haven’t told me
the most important thing of all.’

‘
What do you
mean?’

‘
You’ve told me what
the weapon is that can kill Jehovah, but you haven’t said how
you’ll make Jehovah appear.
The Spear of Destiny is useless if you
can’t make that happen.’

‘
We
have
Jehovah.’
Sinclair smirked.
‘In a
box.’

‘
What are you talking
about?’

‘
Jehovah’s only a mile
away, at our final destination.’

‘
I don’t
understand.’

Sinclair pointed at Raphael’s mural.
‘The Ark of the Covenant, Lucy, that’s where Jehovah lives.
The Ark
is waiting for you – at Glastonbury.’

80

‘
I
t’s time to
finish this.’
Sinclair ordered his knights to collect the Grail
Hallows and the head and bones of Baphomet, and take them to the
trucks parked outside.
Several soldiers escorted each of the
knights.
Gresnick and James were pushed forward at
gunpoint.

‘
Burn down the castle,’
Sinclair said to Morson.
‘We won’t be coming back.’

As Morson collected
some petrol canisters from a storage area and doused the hall, Lucy
wondered why Sinclair was so confident.
It seemed ridiculous to say
that he had God in a box, as though the Creator were some caged
animal.
Surely Jehovah could do whatever he liked.
This was
his
world.
Even Sinclair
said so.

‘
Why hasn’t Jehovah
killed you?’
she asked.
‘Why has he let you come this far?
If he
were as powerful as you say, he wouldn’t let you take another step
towards him.
You would never have been able to trap
him.’

‘
Lucy, everything in
this world is part of Jehovah.
The law of conservation of
mass-energy – the first law of thermodynamics – says that
mass-energy can be neither created nor destroyed.
When Jehovah
created the material universe, he had to use a vast amount of his
personal energy to accomplish it.
All of the matter, dark matter
and dark energy that physicists study is all born of Jehovah, and
is imbued with his evil essence.
Much energy was also channelled
into the Spear of Destiny.
The result is that Jehovah is feeble
now, with little of the power you’d expect.
Shaking the planet with
his crude, spiteful earthquakes is the best he can do.