“The Catalyst” Series
Chapter 25: Interfaith Community Outreach
Alex felt better about the concert that night. This was his
third one, well, the third big one, and he felt comfortable that they
were getting a better handle on it. It was hard taking the time to get to know
each person in the madness of a live rock concert, but they managed to get a
bunch of new followers at once, which made it more efficient. Also, the sheer
noise and confusion kept things from getting embarrassing. The number of new
followers went up with the increase in crowds for a Friday night concert, so
there were a lot of them, but they managed to cover any embarrassing scenes
fairly well.
Alex was on his way home from the concert with two new girls
he was planning to boost. Both were ideal candidates. Not only were they local
Seers, but they would make good contacts for the others in the community. One
had a small shop in La Villita, a small park made up of local Mexican craft
shops and restaurants. Although it mainly catered to tourists, it was a natural
place for Alex’s Hispanic followers to gather since everyone there spoke
Spanish. Alex had only met a couple of Spanish speakers in San Antonio, but he assumed
that was because he’d been holed up in the more touristy areas. He figured this
woman would be able to reach out to them, and find a good number of the
undiscovered Watchers and unactivated Seers in the community for him.
The other one was an older woman who worked in a hotel in
the downtown area, thus she could see many people during the day and could get
away to the nearby shops to discuss community issues with them privately. What
was especially attractive about both that made Alex’s decision to boost them,
was that they were very interested in getting pregnant as well. The
Mexican-American woman came from a big family and had kids but was divorced
from her husband, so she had a very large supportive family that would help
with them, and she had a good job and a good position in the community to watch
out for any children. The woman from the hotel put off getting married until
she now found herself with no husband as she neared forty, so she was more than
ready to take advantage of Alex’s offer of children. Not that Alex actually
offered, of course. As usual Alex made no mention of the issue. Instead it was
Cate who brought it up along with everything else they should know. Both women
told Cate they were interested, and Cate told Alex, who had already been eyeing
them for a possible boost. So everything seemed to have worked out for once.
But they were in the car riding back to the Menger hotel
when Alex’s attempt to get to know them better was cut short.
‘Alex? This is Shani. I’ve got something important to
tell you and you’re not going to like it, so make sure you’re ready before I
tell you.’
Alex sat up straight, alerting everyone around him that
something had happened, so the conversation was curtailed as the girls watched
him, hoping to get a clue as to what had happened to distract Alex so suddenly.
‘What is it, Shani? I can tell from your response that
you’re not quite all there. You seem, I don’t know, you seem weak, like you’re
struggling just to communicate with me. Are you OK?’
‘I’m OK,’ she assured him. ‘You’re right, I’m
frazzled, but I’m not the only one you should be concerned with. Alex, Anh had
an accident and, well, the rest of us kind of screwed up.’
‘OK, tell me what happened. Was Anh badly hurt? Is she
OK?’
‘Well, it’s fairly involved, but it started when we were
sitting here in the loft having drinks and talking together. Everyone was here
so there were a lot of us present, but Anh tripped and fell, hitting her head
against the coffee table. Since we’ve had so much exposure to this type of
injury at your old school, we were concerned.’
‘That’s understandable,’ Alex answered. ‘But you’re
also the best people to handle it as a result. You can see and evaluate just
how much damage has been inflicted, so you know when to have it treated. It’s
probably a good thing she did it there rather than anywhere else.’
‘Yeah, but that wasn’t the problem. It was what came
afterwards. We could see that she’d had a significant shock to her brain and
she was woozy. We know from experience how little success doctors have in
treating this type of injury. Our thinking was it would be better if we could
treat it immediately rather than waiting to get to the hospital and have them
spend hours doing inconclusive tests, while the damage settled in and became
worse, and possibly intractable.’
‘OK, so what happened then?’ Alex asked, already
guessing it was bad from the way she was presenting it. He noticed Shani wasn’t
even focusing on Anh’s injuries, instead she seemed to be preparing him for
something that was even worse.
‘Well, although we’ve been watching these types of
injuries, we haven’t had much success with treatments. Basically we know when
to take people off of the field so they don’t compound it, but—‘
“Yeah, I get the general idea. What specifically
happened, though?”
“I’m trying to get to that, but I need to explain what we
were thinking when we did what we did,’ she explained.
Alex held off responding, giving her the latitude to explain
the situation in her own terms, although he was growing increasingly anxious
about what may have happened. The unknown often is worse than simply knowing
what was wrong.
‘Anyway, while we were trying to evaluate her, we thought
about how you’d likely respond, and we agreed that you’d be more successful at
it than the hospital would, when Liv got this wild idea. Rebecca Boles had
already called for an ambulance, but again, we already knew they couldn’t do
much for her other than document what we already knew.’
‘So what was this wild idea of Liv’s?’ Alex asked,
trying to figure out where this story was going.
‘Well, she mentioned that each of the Seers has a small
amount of your energy that they get from being tied to your brain. More of it
than would naturally occur, that is. She suggested that, although it would be
difficult, maybe if we worked together we could try to duplicate your own
healing process.’
‘Oh, that does NOT sound like a good idea,’ Alex told
her, already getting images of what likely happened. ‘You girls don’t have
enough energy to accomplish anything like that, and you also don’t have any
experience—’
‘You’d better let me finish, because you’ll find out what
happened a lot faster than you will by guessing,’ Shani warned him. ‘Anyway,
we knew we don’t have your energy, but we decided that the small amount we each
had coming into our brains might be enough if we worked together. So we decided
to try that approach.’
‘Go on. I’m interested in what happened, but I’ve got a
bad feeling about what did,’ Alex told her.
‘So we all pointed a finger at the regions of her brain
we could see had been impacted by her fall. We meant to give it just enough
energy to help it recover and minimize any lasting damage she may have
suffered. However when we tried it nothing happened.’ Alex started to
respond that he knew they wouldn’t be able to do anything when Shani continued,
cutting him off. ‘Then Molly Bishop got the idea that, if all your energy
enters our brains through the portal you created, then the energy must be
strongest there.’
‘Oh, no,’ Alex groaned, imagining what must have
happened, so Shani continued to describe what they’d done.
‘We each put our heads against Anh’s, which as you can
imagine was pretty difficult. We were all there, Allison, Brooke, Diana, Molly,
Liv and I, so we had a fair number of people to contend with. Since Liv knew
more about the brain than we did, she organized everything, standing over us and
directing us with telepathic images of what we were trying to do. We didn’t
have to worry about being able to see what we were doing because of our shared
mental images. So we each tried to project our energy into the affected area of
Anh’s brain. We figured that you do the same thing with your finger, that
there’s nothing magic about your finger, that you only use it because it’s
easier to point with. So we simply concentrated and tried to force the energy
to flow in the direction of Anh’s injury, and it worked. Sort of.
‘We tried for a couple of minutes, and figured it must be
working because we could feel the energy draining from us. Or rather, we felt
our own energy draining from us, much the way you lose energy when you try to
heal someone.’
‘Slow down, Shani, I can feel the exhaustion in your
connection, so I know you still don’t have much energy left,’ Alex
cautioned her. ‘Take your time and make sure you tell me everything that I
need to know, but don’t hurt yourself in a hurry to tell me everything at once.’
Shani took the time to compose herself, working to slow down
both her breathing and her heart rate. Allison and Brooke had been doing
‘mindful meditation’ exercises with them, so they were used to slowing down
their bodies’ responses. When she was ready she continued, although by that
stage Alex was a nervous wreck, as were the girls watching him in his car. Gail
kept driving, knowing she’d hear about it when Alex was done, and they’d be
better able to deal with whatever it was from a comfortable hotel room than
they could sitting by the side of the road.
‘Anyway, we were feeling the drain on ourselves, but then
Liv excitedly announced that we’d done it. That Anh’s brain was responding and
was steadily looking better. But by then we were exhausted so we simply
collapsed on the floor.
‘Being excited by what she saw, and not wanting to leave
our work unfinished, Liv tried to finish the treatment, trying to do what we’d done
by herself. Before you get upset with her, it wasn’t an unreasonable thing to
try. After all, she wouldn’t need to impart as much energy since we’d done most
of the work already.
‘Anyway, the end result was that, when the EMTs we’d
called earlier finally arrived, we were all lying on the floor in utter
exhaustion and Natalie and Rebecca were both trying to feed us ice cream and
cookies trying to revive our energy. The EMTs panicked when they saw us.
Apparently Ryan told them it wouldn’t appear severe, but that Anh’s injuries
were probably hidden so they had to make sure they responded with the utmost
urgency. What’s more, they knew the entire hospital was anxious about Anh. They
initially thought we’d all been exposed to something, then one of them
suggested it may be an symptom of our abilities, since many of the people at
the hospital know of your getting sick. They ended up calling a bunch of
additional ambulances. We tried to object, to tell them that we simply needed
to eat, but we were too exhausted to say much of anything more than mumbling.
‘It took four separate ambulances to carry all of us to
the hospital, and the whole emergency room staff was there waiting for us when
we arrived. Anh was taken away immediately, while the EMTs were busy checking
us and trying to prevent us from eating, telling us it could be dangerous before
they knew what we were suffering from. But Rebecca knew what happened and she
knew how to respond to it. After she screamed at them they hooked up some IV
drips to get some nutrients into us a little faster, but we were responding too
slowly and they ended up taking us in anyway.’
‘Damn, Shani, you should have known better than to
attempt that. You’ve seen what it does to me,’ Alex argued.
‘We knew it drained you, but we figured we weren’t trying
to do as much as you do, and we also knew that you normally don’t lose that
much strength doing the simpler procedures. We figured since we weren’t trying
to restart a stopped heart like you did in New Orleans, that we’d be OK. And we
were successful. If we hadn’t tried Anh might have suffered significant mental
impairment. As it is, we’re all recovering here in the hospital, and we’re
doing OK now. Ryan had the nursing staff bring everything they could find for
us to eat, and they each stood over us feeding us while the IVs dripped in our
arms.’
‘Yeah, I can picture what a scene that would have been.
What, you figured I didn’t manage to have enough embarrassing public scenes
that you needed to pull one of your own?’ Alex asked playfully, trying to
lighten the mood, since he knew Shani was embarrassed and ashamed that they’d
potentially let him down.
‘It was pretty embarrassing. But luckily everyone at the
hospital knows enough about us to listen to what we told them and didn’t try to
force conventional medicine on us. If they had, we might have had a major
trauma as our energy levels dropped even lower. Brooke and Ryan were correct,
the best thing for us was simply to eat as much and as fast as we could. I
guess it was pretty funny watching us gobbling bottled Cokes and ice cream
sandwiches from the vending machine while all the expensive hospital equipment
sat around unused.’
‘You realize you could probably have done the same thing
by simply giving her an aspirin, don’t you?’ Alex teased. ‘Although it
would have increased any internal bleeding, it would hopefully have prevented
the blood from coagulating and causing damage to Anh’s brain.’ Shani was
silent for a moment.
‘Don’t worry about it, Shani, I wasn’t serious. While I
worry about all of you trying something like that, I’m really proud of each of
you. So how is everyone now? Did Anh make out OK?’
‘Yeah, she seems fine. Any damage she’d have had would
have taken a while to show anyway, but we can see the damage was lessened. She
still has a bad headache, but we think we prevented any serious repercussions.
Actually, I think Liv’s headache might actually be worse than Anh’s at the
moment.’
‘Well I’m glad you’re all OK now. You’ve got to be
careful trying out something like that in an uncontrolled environment,’
Alex cautioned her.
‘Believe me, if it’s a choice between watching a close
and trusted friend suffering possible damage as a result of our inaction, we’d
each try it again. But at least we learned something from it,’ Shani
responded, sounded decidedly uncontrite.
‘Is Anh healthy enough for me to speak to her?’ Alex
asked.
‘Oh, sure. You know you can always pop inside any of our
heads and we can reply without using much energy. We managed to do it with you
when you were only semi-conscious after your attack. I just wanted to let you
know what happened first, so that you’d have a complete explanation before you
spoke to anyone. But I’m sure that Anh will want to speak to you about it, even
if only to apologize for getting us involved and thereby threatening our own
health.’
‘Well, we’re just pulling up in front of our hotel so
I’ll talk to Anh on our way in, then we’ll get settled before I check in with
everyone. I think we’ll save an analysis of events until later when everyone is
thinking more clearly. Does everyone else know? My parents, Kitty and Chalise?’
‘Yeah, Ryan made sure they were informed. Last we heard
they were on their way in, but we recovered pretty quickly once we got some
food in us. I still feel weak, but I figured I was strong enough to communicate
telepathically with you.’
‘Well, you just keep eating. Whenever I go through that I
find that the more I eat the better I am. You sometimes think you’re going to
be OK, but then you get hit with another sag in your energy so you’ve got to
keep that in mind. Leave it to Ryan to explain to everyone what happened. I’m
sure he’ll want to know. If you’re too weak to talk we’ll call and explain to
him what happened.’
‘We’ve been able to speak a little, though we can’t talk
very loudly yet. It probably wouldn’t hurt if you called him and discussed the
situation with him, simply because you understand what we went through better
than anyone else. I’m sure he’d appreciate getting your feedback on how to
handle and when to release us.’
‘OK, I’ll do that. Now you take it easy and concentrate
on your recovery,’ Alex told her before he finally turned to the others in
the car and started to explain what had happened back home.
There was a lot to follow up on, after all, there had been a
lot of stuff to sort through the previous day. After Alex talked to Anh the previous
night, telling her to take it easy and concentrate on her own recovery, he
spoke to everyone else, telling them not to stress over what they may or may
not have done wrong or what it might mean. There would be plenty of time for
that discussion later. They took that advice to heart and Alex could feel them
release many of their hidden worries. He’d spoken with Cate about it, but he’d
told her the same thing.
“I want us to think about this before we finally start
debating what it means. This involves a lot of little things, and we’ll have to
consider a lot as we try to figure out what direction to take it. I don’t think
any of us is ready for a post-op at this point, so just let the ideas percolate
for a bit before you try to figure anything out concerning it.”
She, like everyone else, accepted that simple advice.
Receiving such scary news about so many people all at once had unsettled Alex,
especially once he managed to reach both his parents and his girlfriends, Kitty
and Chalise.
“Hello?” Chalise said over the phone.
“Hey, sweetheart. I’d love to whisper sweet nothings in your
ear, but I just wanted to talk to you about the—”
Alex heard the sound of the phone being fumbled then another
voice responded.
“Alex? What the hell is going on?” Caroline asked him,
sounding clearly upset. “We’re just pulling into the parking lot and everyone
is beside themselves. How is Anh and what happened to everyone else?”
“Calm down. Everything is fine. Anh fell and hit her head,
but she’s recovering now. As for the others, they, uh, they got the bright idea
to pull one of my tricks and they tried to repair Anh’s concussion themselves.
They actually managed to do it, but the effort wore them out. When the EMTs got
there they were all wiped out, but they’re recovering now. By the way, instead
of going right in the hospital, make a stop by a grocery store or a fast food
restaurant and grab the most calorie rich foods you can find. They need to
restore their energy as quickly as they can, and I’m not sure three month old
vending machine food is going to be their best option.”
“Sure, we can do that. So they really tried—?”
“Caroline, not to be rude, but you yanked the phone away
from one of my two favorite girlfriends, and I’m sure she’s just as anxious as
you are, and would like to hear it from me directly. Could I possibly speak to
her please?”
“Oh, sorry,” she responded. “I was so upset I guess I
overreacted. Those women have been so helpful to us and we owe them so much.
When you were injured they—”
“Caroline?” Alex asked, reminding her once again who he’d
originally called.
“Sorry again. I’m… actually I’m so upset that Kitty
volunteered to drive me. She was spending the night. So which girlfriend were
you hoping to speak to?”
Alex laughed an easy laugh. “Just put me on speaker phone,
then you can all hear it at the same time. I’ve been saying the same thing
several times over, it would save a lot of energy if I didn’t repeat it another
three times.”
So he spoke to them about it, then spoke to his parents who
were just as upset. He asked if they had checked up on Brooke’s kids, but it
turned out a neighbor had volunteered to watch the kids when the EMTs came
storming in. His parents went to bring them to the hospital so they could see
their mother and explain what had happened to everyone as best they could. No
one knew quite what happened or what it meant.
However, now that Alex was pulling up in front of the
Schertz Unitarian Universalist Community Church, he asked himself again what
the hell he was doing. It was a quiet little building in a small community
located just a short distance from the Randolph Air Force Base. It actually
looked quite peaceful, a wooden building devoid of crosses, painted a pleasant
pale gray color with scattered trees around the yard and a big playground behind
the church. There were also several cars parked in front, so Linda must have
managed to make her last minute arrangements for the impromptu meeting.
“Oh, good, I see you made it,” Linda Tamar said, giving him
a big hug hello as he entered the building.
“What, you didn’t think I’d do what I promised you I would?”
Alex asked her, always surprised how people didn’t seem to think he’d react
like other people would.
“No, no, it’s … heck, I’m not sure what I thought. But I was
just sure that you’d either get scared off or you’d get called away.”
“Called away by whom? God? Remember, I’m the one who doesn’t
believe in him, so I wouldn’t be likely to answer his call,” Alex joked. “Well,
I’m here, although I don’t have anything prepared. I’ve never actually done
this sort of thing before, so you’ll have to let me know how it’s done. You’ve
got a real nice place here. I can see why you come.”
Alex took in the people already there. Despite it’s being
such a small church, there were somewhere between thirty to fifty people in
attendance. Alex wasn’t quite sure how many there were since many were crowded
around the edges. The coffee pot seemed to be working overtime to keep up. He
didn’t think Linda could gather this many people from the small church this
quickly, so he assumed she’d called the other local UU churches and he was
speaking to members of several churches scattered throughout the area. Linda
noticed him glancing around.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I invited a fair number of
guests. Just to assure you, I didn’t say anything over the phone to anyone. I
just told them we have a very notable figure that represented a new religious
viewpoint that they’d like to hear. We even got a couple of non-UU people. Each
group contacted their own call lists and got the word out.” Alex nodded that he
understood, so she continued.
“We traditionally invite clergy from other religions as part
of our Universalist background, so we’ve had various religious figures; Islamic
Imams, Native American holy men, Buddhist priests, all sorts of people come in
and discuss their backgrounds, so I think you’ll find a very receptive crowd.
But as you can imagine, they’ve only heard about your organization from what’s
been reported on TV. As a result they’re probably anxious to hear your response
to the most obvious questions first.”
“Well, it looks like we’ve already got a full house so I
guess we should get started. Just let me—”
“Don’t worry, Alex,” Cate told him, pushing him forward,
“I’ll get you your coffee and some water as well, since we don’t know how long
you’re going to be talking. I’ll bring them up to you.”
As Alex strode to the front of the room he could feel
everyone regarding him with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism, so he tried
to prepare himself for whatever happened. After all, he couldn’t blame anyone
else if he screwed up, since he’d brought this on himself.
“I’d like to present someone I’ll only introduce as Alex,
for fairly obvious reasons I’m sure you can understand,” Linda said. “Alex is
the supposed ‘Angel of New Orleans’. Due to the recent press coverage about him
he’s found it hard to continue to reach out to people, so he’s trying to stay
out of the limelight, but he agreed to speak to us today to describe what this
new religion of his entails.
“Now Alex has told me that he hasn’t exactly prepared for this,
since he hasn’t given any talks on the subject before, so I thought I’d just
toss some questions out and he can run with it.” Linda saw that everyone seemed
to accept this, including Alex, so she continued.
“Alex, as I’m sure you’re aware, Fox network has been
proclaiming that you’re making a mockery of Christians and Christianity, and
that you’re nothing but a charlatan promising false hope to susceptible people.
That you’re essentially no better than the unauthorized offshoot sects of the
Mormon Church, where supposed ‘Christian leaders’ convince multiple women to
marry them for their own benefit. I’m not sure I’d go that far myself, but I’m
sure it’s something everyone here has thought of, so I thought that would be a
good place to begin. How would you react to those statements?”
“Well, Linda, I’m glad to meet you too,” Alex answered to a
quick round of laughter from the room. “Maybe when I’m done we can discuss
whether you’ve stopped beating your husband yet?” He found himself strangely
comfortable in his current situation.
“As for whether I’m making fun of Christians, let me just
explain that that’s because I explained to Albert Rodriguez, the New Orleans
reporter who first reported about me, that I’m an atheist myself, and that I
have problems believing in the existence of an independent soul. Many Christian
groups have taken offense that someone who doesn’t even believe in God would
serve as his spokesman. So I’ll tackle that position.
“This mission, what we’ve taken to calling Alexandrianism in
reference to the actual angel that’s working around the world leading this
mission, and from whom I took my own name, has a very syncretic belief
structure, meaning that it doesn’t matter what you believe. My own part in this
has been to reach out to individuals. Alexandria told me to just go out amongst
people, and that I’d know who to reach out to and what to do for them, even
though I wouldn’t know how it was done. Thus she means this as a personal
one-to-one ministry that has no bearing on preaching a new religion or judging
others.
“That’s exactly what I’ve done, and while I don’t understand
how it works, or why I’m doing specific things for select individuals, or even
who’s responsible for my position, I’ve found it works quite well. My current
thinking is that, if God is responsible for this, that he’s tired of the
failure of organized religions in the past and wants to avoid them altogether.
That’s why Alexandria has purposely sought out Buddhists, Muslims, Christians,
Jews and even me, an atheist. I also suspect it’s why she’s avoided men for the
most part, since they were the ones responsible for establishing the current
balance of power in the world, both that of the political and religious worlds.”
“So you’re saying this isn’t a new religion, then?” someone
from the audience asked.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. I don’t preach, I don’t
lecture, and I don’t dictate what anyone is supposed to believe. Instead, I
seek out people that I can help. I do so in a number of ways; by helping them
see their world in new ways, by helping them trust their feelings, to believe
in the unbelievable and, yes, even occasionally healing their afflictions.”
“So you admit to having performed so called miracles?” asked
an older gentleman who didn’t seem to be malicious, merely curious.
“Well, I’d hardly call them miracles. Coming from my
background, I tend to find secular explanations for what I see happening, so I
usually have alternate theories about what happens.”
“Such as?” someone asked.
“Well, for instance, the whole idea of whom I ‘choose’ to
help. Actually I don’t so much choose who to help as they choose me. I’ll tell
you what, I know it’s hard to believe in miracles so how about a demonstration.
How about you?” Alex suggested, pointing to one woman. “I see you sitting with
your friends, so it won’t seem like I planted you just for this demonstration.”
“I’m not sure if I’m a good choice for this,” the woman said,
fidgeting as she approached.
“Don’t worry, this won’t hurt a bit, but I’m just going to
do a little something,” Alex said, placing his palm against her forehead for a
second and the woman’s eyes suddenly opened wide. “You seem to be surprised by
what just happened. Could you describe to everyone what you felt?”
“I … I’m not sure. Suddenly my mind seemed clear and I feel more
… alive than I’ve felt for a while.”
“That’s because I seem to give off a certain type of energy.
It’s an energy that fills all living things, but is invisible to the naked eye.
For some reason that I haven’t been able to work out fully, Alexandria seems to
have given me a larger dose of this energy. The women that I help seem to be
able to feel this energy in me from a distance, so they seek me out. It also
seems that I’m able to help them because they have the ability to respond to
this energy. Thus I see the whole phenomenon as being more about biology and
genetics then I do being religious or spiritual.”
“What are your issues with God? Just what is it about
religion that you can’t accept? We have many ‘secularists’ in the UU church, so
we’re curious just where you’re coming from on a personal basis.”
“My problem is that I believe in physical things. I see what
others describe as someone’s soul as being dictated by the physical reactions
in the body. What may be someone’s soul, their basic personality, changes over
their lifetime, so it’s hardly an eternal entity that can exist outside of
their body. I just can’t believe that an intelligent entity can exist without a
physical presence needed to interact with the world around them. Science can demonstrate
the physical reactions associated with thought occurring in the brain, so how
can a ‘spirit’ think if it has no chemical processes associated with it. And,
by extension, if you can’t believe in the existence of a soul, most of religion
just falls by the wayside. Without a soul you can’t believe in eternal life, in
resurrection after death, or of a giant soul that governs the universe that
floats around in the sky. I’m not saying I have anything against anyone else
believing in those things, and I wouldn’t criticize them for believing it, but
I just can’t wrap my own head around them.”
“So you reject this designation of being an angel?” someone
else asked.
“Well, I’m hardly an ang—” Alex noticeably jerked when Gail
scoffed at him telepathically. When he turned and looked at her everyone else
noticed and did likewise, so she spoke up and said what had been bothering her.
“I was just telling him that he’s full of bull,” she said.
“He keeps pulling this ‘I’m just a normal guy’ routine, but he knows very well
it isn’t true. He can see it in everyone around him, and he knows how they feel
about it as well. He also knows he can’t explain what’s happening to him on a
purely secular basis, so he struggles with what’s behind it. So I find it a
little disingenuous when he claims to be just like everyone else.”
“So you think he’s an angel, then,” the same person
asked Gail.
“Well…,” she started, not sure how to respond. “I’m not sure
I’d say an angel specifically, but everyone that chooses to follow him believes
he’s being guided. They may attribute it to many different things. The
Christians call it God, some call it spirits, he’s occasionally attributed it
to ‘the fates’, but he seems to have this uncanny knack for being in the right
place at the right time and for always knowing just what to do. It happens
frequently enough you can’t just chalk it up to random chance. It looks like
he’s being guided, nudged and prompted to do certain things. And I think if you
ask him, he won’t be able to deny it,” she explained.
Everyone turned back and watched Alex, not saying anything
but clearly waiting for him to respond.
“All right, I’ll admit it,” Alex responded. “The
preponderance of evidence suggests that there’s a ‘guiding influence’, but I
have no idea what it is. I just don’t think it’s some bodiless spirit that
watches over us. I have no clue what it is, but I’ve learned to trust it.
Everyone keeps telling me to trust in it, since it hasn’t failed me yet, so I
take their word for it and that faith hasn’t yet let me down.”
“But you say that you’re the only atheistic angel amongst
those this Alexandria has scattered across the world?” Linda asked, just to
make sure they all understood what he was trying to tell them.
“Right, Alexandria is an interesting case. Every time I’ve
seen her she appears as just a typical person. She’s older, a little feeble,
not very quick, but I’ve never been able to follow her. As soon as she finishes
with me she walks off, and if I try to keep up with her she just seems to
disappear. I have no idea how she does it, but I don’t think of her as a
traditional angel as a result. I see her as a physical person with some unique
talents, just as I am. I have some strange abilities which might seem
miraculous, but I’m hardly an angel. You can call them, and me, anything you
want if it helps you wrap your mind around what we’re dealing with, but I’m
uncomfortable claiming to be an angel.”
“So where did the name come from, then?” the girl he’d done
the experiment on asked.
“Oh, whenever someone I help comes up to me they tend to
make wild claims to account for what they see and feel,” Alex explained. “As a
result, several of them have called me either an angel, or claimed I was
Jesus reincarnated. I’m neither, but it’s a natural enough thing to assume,
given our shared cultural understandings.”
“Wait, you’ve said something about ‘seeing’ several times.
Are you suggesting that certain people can see something about you that the
rest of us don’t?” someone else asked.
Alex resisted sighing, figuring it wouldn’t help anyone in
the room. “That’s exactly the case. Some of the people that seek me out
literally have their vision altered. They don’t see ‘visions’, but they manage
to see this energy that both I and everything around them possesses. Again, I
suspect I do something to them to enable these new abilities, but the end
result is that, when they see me, they see so much energy coming off of me that
they see me as a larger than life figure glowing with this bright energy. The
only reference we have for that sort of thing is an angel, so that’s how they
respond on meeting me.”
Once again, everyone turned in unison as if it was prearranged
and regarded Gail.
“Yeah, I’ll admit, that’s how I see him,” she told them.
“That’s why I can’t look directly at him without squinting or shielding my
eyes. He literally hurts my eyes when I look at him, but no one else sees
anything out of the ordinary about him. That’s why I have so much trouble when
he claims to just be ‘normal’. He’s hardly that. He’s extraordinary, no matter
how you choose to define him.”
“Wow, Linda, this is so much better than our previous
sessions, this is touching on a whole bunch of different issues,” an older
gentleman observed. “So you say you see him as a glowing spirit, but what do
you see when you look at anyone else that has this energy?”
Gail took a while to answer, trying to figure out how to
express it without giving too much away. “I see exactly what I’ve always seen,
but I also see everything with this array of colors over it. The colors are
unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, as they aren’t a part of the normal
visual spectrum. You can’t see them because they’re not composed of light.
Instead they reveal the things that traditionally make up what we think of as a
soul, but like Alex says, it’s always associated with a living thing.
“We’ve had to struggle with it over time, trying to
associate meanings with the various new colors we see, but they reflect the
basic personality of the individual. We can also see an outer glow that reflects
their emotions at the moment. It seems to be an outer glow because it’s only
temporal, and isn’t part of their basic personality.”
“Wow,” the man said. “So what do I look like?”
“Again, it’s hard to describe since we don’t have any words
to describe what it looks like, but I can tell that you are a caring individual
that has a stubborn streak, and that you are quick to anger if you feel
offended. I can tell that you’re sometimes dishonest if you feel you need to
be, and I can also tell that you have gout, several precancerous lesions on
your body that you need to watch, and you are having problems with your liver.”
There was a collective gasp at this, though whether it was
because they recognized the truth of her words or they were just shocked that
she claimed to have this ability, Alex didn’t know.
“As you can tell, these are the kinds of things that we need
to keep quiet,” Alex hurried to explain. “That’s why I try to stay out of the
limelight. We don’t want to announce that there is a whole subclass of people
with the ability to see things that no one else can see. First of all, no one
would believe them, secondly, no one would ever react to them the same way
again. Generally it’s best if you don’t think of what they can or can’t see,
but if one of these people tells you something about someone, about how they
‘feel’ something about them, you’d better believe it, since it’s based on more
than just a random guess.”
The discussion basically broke down at this stage, with
multiple people shouting out various questions which Alex tried his best to
explain, but everyone was much too excited to follow any standard rules of
conduct in asking them, so it was hard to keep track of. They let it go on for
a while, but finally Linda stood up and shouted to get everyone’s attention.
“OK, I think Alex has given you a very good overview on what
he believes and what he’s trying to do. You can also see why I asked you not to
try recording this lecture. Not only does he not want the message of what he’s
doing to get out, but he’s told me the energy he gives off screws up any
efforts to record him, although it won’t damage idle cell phones or other
devices. But I think we’ve taken up enough of his time. From what he’s told me
he’s got other obligations to get to. So let’s all thank him for taking the
time to speak to us today.
“That’s not an absolute,” Alex corrected her. “It seems to
be a matter of some sort of static electricity. There have been photos taken of
me, but usually they don’t come out and it damages other pictures in the
device, so I didn’t think it’s worth taking the chance.”
Surprisingly the audience was very gracious, curtailing
their remaining questions and applauding him for what he’d managed to convey.
Alex thanked them, shaking hands with Linda and several others before he, Cate
and Gail managed to slip off.
“Whew! I’m glad that’s over with,” he told the others
as Gail pulled the car out of the parking lot.
“Still, you once again handled it with aplomb. Not overly
polished, but done just the way it should have been. I really don’t see how you
can claim to know how to handle a situation like that on your own,” Gail said
as they drove off on their way to Dallas, where the next leg of Patricia’s
concert was playing that night.
They pulled into a big hotel near the Plaza of the Americas
Mall in downtown Dallas. It wasn’t exactly a prime location, and it wasn’t that
close to the stadium they’d be at that night, but it was in the populated
downtown area, so Alex felt sure they’d have a decent draw, and as always being
in a mall meant it would be easy to find a convenient location to watch for new
followers.
The concert that night was being held at the Cotton Bowl
stadium, which with a 65,000 person capacity was hardly as large as the newer
Cowboy Stadium in nearby Arlington, which was farther away from downtown
Dallas, but it was better for Alex since it was closer to the crowds
surrounding the Dallas business district.
They parked in the garage and headed up to their room. Alex
wasn’t ready to face any new followers yet, so he was eager to head to the room
first. When they made it to the attached mall food court, Alex was happy to
finally just sit down. His experience of exploring San Antonio had been worth
it, but he didn’t have long before the concert started and he was wanted to
take it easy for a while. He knew he was unlikely to be able to do that with
new people always surprising him, but this seemed a better alternative than
risking the kinds of exposure he took wandering around San Antonio’s River
Walk.
He did manage to take it fairly easy, and he wasn’t terribly
surprised by anyone approaching him this time, but his mind was preoccupied
with worries about what tonight promised. Although Cotton Bowl stadium held
fewer people than he’d had to face so far, the crowds had been growing each
night as it neared the weekend, and here it was, Saturday night in a major
city. While the Houston stadium had been larger, both it and the Alamodome
hadn’t been at full capacity, so he wasn’t quite sure what to expect tonight.
Somehow, he thought tonight was going to be different. He knew he faced a
larger crowd, and with more people came increased chances of something
going wrong. He hoped he was just being paranoid, but he wanted to be prepared.
So he concentrated on finding enough new followers in Dallas to support him
when he got to the concert. He only had a single shot that night. They had a
couple of days until their next show at Oklahoma on Tuesday, so he still had
time to investigate the city, but only one chance at the tightly packed crowds
that a weekend rock concert offered. He just hoped everything went well.
Anthony was anxious. Everything was going wrong. He’d
managed to lose control of everything, and for someone used to maintaining a
tight control over all the facets of his life it was highly unsettling.
He’d had it out with his daughter several days before and
she’d stormed off, refusing to listen to his cautious advice. In return he’d
threatened her with cutting her off financially, yelling after her that he
wouldn’t just sit by while someone tried to take her for all she had. As a
result they hadn’t spoken since.
However, he’d gotten a notice recently about some unusual
activity in his financial records. It seemed his wife had purchased tickets for
his daughter with her credit card. He didn’t know where they were for, but he
knew he was about to lose his daughter forever, and that his wife was actively
helping her destroy her life. He’d been hoping that all he’d have to do is to
show them both what this ‘angel’ character was up to, but that idiot PI had
screwed that up. How a businessman could let some woman distract him from what
needed to be done, he simply couldn’t understand. But then again, he couldn’t
comprehend how an employer would let an ‘underling’ determine his business
practices, even if he was sleeping with her. The investigator had been a
disaster, but he still had hopes of resolving the situation.
All he needed to do was to confront the man. Hopefully he
could talk some reason into him. Persuade him to leave his daughter alone. If
he told him she had no access to his money, that she was cut off and could no
longer help him, then hopefully he’d lose interest in her. If not, he could
always threaten him with exposure or legal action of some kind. There had to be
some way of resolving this crisis.
So Anthony’s mind was in flux as he boarded the plane that
was taking him to Dallas. He only had one shot to save everything he held dear,
and he still had no clear idea how he was going to handle it. For someone who
always had his business negotiations clearly planned out in advance, this was
troubling. Not only that, but he was feeling frazzled, worn out, and out of
control. He’d been so worried about everything that had been happening that he
hadn’t been sleeping well, and he’d found himself switching between cool
confidence, emotional distraction and unbelievable anger in only a moment,
leaving him uncertain as to his own frame of mind. He just hoped he could hold
it together until he’d finally dealt with the issue, one way or
another.