“With few left in Israel to bomb, the remaining Muslim forces turned their anger to the only remaining Jewish population in the region, Jerusalem. Sick and dying from the genetic attack, they were still able to overrun Jerusalem’s defenses. It’s hard to imagine why, but they chose to use their final days to torture and butcher every Jewish man, woman and child they could find. They even made a gruesome six pointed star pyramid out of thousands of severed Jewish heads.”
A picture of the pyramid appears on the screens on cue.
Do you get it now?
“Once their black flag flew over the Temple Mount an Israeli submarine commander made the decision to use his last nuclear missiles to bomb Jerusalem. The guidance system of the first missile failed and it hit several kilometers outside of the city. His second missile stayed on target and turned what used to be the Temple Mount into what we now call the Temple Crater. At his war crimes trial he made a single statement: “If our temple is not to be ours, then no one shall have it.”
I pause again.
“Before the Final Holy War the earth had a population of eight point seven billion people. Once it was over there were less than six billion people standing on planet earth.”
I watch their faces. They barely stir. I know it was over one-hundred and fifty years ago but you’d think discussing the death of nearly three billion people would at least cause them to bat an eyelash.
“I see we have some questions,” I say as I scan through them on my monitor.
“Mr. Schmidt in Buenos Aires, your question is just one word. All you asked is ‘why?’”
His face comes up on the screens.
“What I mean is; why’d they do it? I mean, nukes were really bad things right? They destroyed entire cities and back then they didn’t have ways to clean up the radiation. If you nuked someone you couldn’t even go and take their stuff, there was nothing left to take, so why do it?”
“I’ll get back to your question in just a minute Mr. Schmidt, please excuse me for a moment.”
I step off the stage. I’ve set the lights and cameras to follow me.
If death doesn’t get their attention, I’ll hit closer to home.
“Mr. Taylor I can’t take any more. You have a com in each ear and I can hear your horrible music from the podium. Please come here”.
The bewildered student comes to the front. He’s very tall and lanky with a long mop of dirty blonde hair on the top of his head and a scraggly beard on his face to match. I judge he’s in his late twenties despite some low grade facial enhancements designed to make him look younger. To me his expressionless eyes make him look much older.
“Remove your com and turn off the racket.”
He takes the com out of his right ear and turns off the music but the left com remains in his ear. His ear is pierced in three spots with screws that lock the com into his ear so it won’t fall out and deactivate when he’s asleep.
He could be sucked into a tornado and the com would stay in his ear.
“And the left one.”
Looks of horror and then defiance come over his face.
“No way man, it’s locked.”
“I have respect for your time by switching my com to teaching mode and giving this class my full attention and I expect the same from my students.”
He crosses his arms and stares at me.
He looks tough on the outside but his eyes are darting and his feet are positioned to run rather than strike.
“Are you going to remove it or not?”
“No.”
“Get out.”
I point to the door.
“Make me. This is how I learn man.”
I see some heads nod in agreement.
“My patience is ended, Mr. Taylor.”
I look away but when I face him again I’ve transformed my face into something my old colleagues in the corps said would scare off a trained kill team. I feel like I’ve even willed the sparkle in my eye to go dark. I wonder how many times I can do this face before my eyes go dark for real.
I hear people in the audience inhale and hold their breath. Someone to my right whispers “it’s The Death Mask” and another responds “I thought it was a myth.”
Poor Mr. Taylor is visibly rattled and his eyes move to checking his possible escape routes. I move a half step to the left. It doesn’t physically block him but I’m still trapping him in cage of his own fears.
“I… um…” He reaches up and starts to unscrew the locks from his ear with shaking hands.
As I turn to the audience I return my face to normal and the sudden switch sends a second shock wave through the class
“This studio is now a com-free zone. I want the coms out of everyone’s ears right now. Anyone who can’t live with the new rule can make their way to the door.”
Mr. Taylor is still fumbling with his ear and looks as if he’s about to cry. About half of the students in the live audience remove their coms but many are wearing com locks like Mr. Taylor. Some begin to gather their things to leave. Out of the corner of my eye I notice Martha McLeod smirk and nod, though she doesn’t remove her com.
She’s the only one who saw through me.
I start to laugh and the class looks at me like I’m insane then start to smile when they realize they were taken in. Providing this sort of surprise and entertainment is the reason so many sign up for my classes.
Unlike the rest of the class, Martha is neither smiling nor laughing. With a little training I bet she could do a hell of a death mask.
“Have I answered your question Mr. Schmidt?” I ask the screen.
“Put your lock back on and sit down Mr. Taylor,” I add over my shoulder as I return to the stage.
“It would seem we can classify roughly half of the studio class as ‘com worshipers’ and the other half as not. I challenged Mr. Taylor with a belief system different from his own and when I pushed him hard enough I thought for a moment he might make the fatal mistake of attacking me. Now does everyone see how a difference in belief systems can lead to conflict?”
Heads nod but Martha’s hand shoots up and I stare at it for a moment. I’ve never had a student raise their hand to ask a question before, they always use the electronics built into their desks.
“Ms. McLeod is it? Did you have a question?”
“I don’t think you’ve explained anything at all.”
Unlike Mr. Taylor’s challenge, this is precisely the sort of challenge I’ve been seeking from my students.
I find I can’t help myself, I smile at her.
“Is that so? Go on.”
“Choosing to wear a com isn’t a belief system. It’s a useful thing, a tool, something we can prove exists. Cultists have nothing but their faith.”
“Believer’s had nothing? Are you sure?”
Martha goes stoned face when I emphasize “had”, like I’ve caught her in a lie. Ironically, cult hunters are trained to refer to religion in the past tense so I imagine she’s worried she just blew her chance of joining the corps.
“The tablets that contained the Ten Commandments were physical objects,” I continue. “The eyewitness reports of Christ’s miracles and his resurrection were something.”
“A tablet just proves someone chiseled words into stone, not that it was done by some supernatural being and eyewitness accounts of miracles are just unverifiable stories. They’re both far from scientific proof for the existence of God.”
She’s very difficult to read with these lights in my face. I’m getting no eye or facial movement.
“Let me ask you a question,” I say. “If I told you a comet the size of Australia was on course to hit the earth in a year would you be worried?”
“Of course not. We’ve changed the course of space objects in the past, a year would give us time to reach it and deal with it despite that kind of size.”
“So even though it’s much larger in size than anything man has done in the past, you believe manki
nd would use its technology to save itself. Even if it meant creating new technologies? Technologies you can’t see or touch today?”
“Yes, of course.”
“So isn’t it fair to say you believe in something you don’t know for certain exists or will exist a year from now? Wasn’t that the essence of faith in gods?”
Martha takes a moment to think.
“It’s not the same thing. A belief man will come up with tangible solutions to a tangible problem can’t be compared to believing that some all-powerful force is watching over us.”
I reflect on her argument for a moment then continue.
“Okay. For the sake of argument let’s say the solution to the comet problem is reached only because two scientists happen to run into each other on vacation and start talking. Let’s even say one of them was supposed to go on vacation a week earlier but his plans were changed at the last minute because he got sick. If he hadn’t been sick the meeting would never have happened, the solution would never have been found and bam the earth is a pile of space rubble.”
I smack my fist into my palm.
“Was the fate of mankind just saved by a coincidence? Was it just a random occurrence like the random mutations that allowed mankind to evolve in the first place? Or should we make just a tiny bit of room in our thoughts to consider that an external force could have been at work to make the meeting happen?”
The question is, can YOU Cephas make a tiny bit of room in YOUR thoughts?
Martha opens her mouth to speak but I cut her off by raising my hand and earn a sour look.
“There’s no need to answer the question because this is a history class and not a philosophy class. The fact is that in 2036 Jews and Muslims did believe in God and both did believe their belief system was the true belief and therefore they did drop bombs on each other and wipe out three billion people. So to get back to the question Mr. Schmidt asked of ‘why did they do it’, the answer may very well be they believed God had directed them to do it. Hence we call it the Final Holy War”.
I pause for a moment as I consider ways to challenge them further.
“However, for those who are interested in ancient philosophy, perhaps the more interesting question to ask is whether mankind has really grown beyond faith or if we’ve simply replaced those worship systems with a different kind of worship system. Could the argument be made that instead of worshiping one or more Gods, mankind now worships himself and his technology? Are Ms. McLeod’s faith in man’s ingenuity and Mr. Taylor’s desire to wear a com at all times just forms of self-worship of mankind? Anyone who cares to turn in an essay on that question will receive extra credit.”
It’s an empty offer. Nobody’s ever done an extra credit assignment for me before. Nobody’s even cared about their grade before.
Chapter Three
I go to my office and try to read the news but with a summons from the corps hanging over my head I can’t focus so I give up and start walking home. The com is out of my ear again. Contractual obligations to wear it be damned, I’d rather think.
Ahead of me I see some female students walking to their classes, one of them drops a banana peel on the ground and a flying litter drone swoops in from nowhere to pick it up and carry it to a trash can. It’s a warm day so they all take off their shirts and continue walking topless. Public nudity is also a protected form of self-expression. My thoughts drift to their half-naked bodies and what everyone on the planet would do with them. Everyone not saddled with maintaining the persona of The Cult Hunter that is.
I look away.
Some male students approach the topless girls which causes me to pay attention again. I’ve seen it so many times, it’s obvious what’ll happen next. The boys will invite the girls for sex and will most likely be successful, though hopefully not here on the sidewalk. Having sex with a stranger is supposed to be the simplest thing in the world. Legal adulthood is tied to reaching reproductive maturity so most people have had multiple partners by their early teens and dozens if not hundreds by the time they reach my age. But not me.
For many years I explained it away by concluding that entering college at ten years old caused me to miss the usual preteen education on the subject of girls. Later I convinced myself that being the Cult Hunter included seclusion but I’ve come to realize there’s more to it than that. I can’t explain why but every time I’ve been pursued by an attractive woman for sex I’ve found myself backing away. No matter how much the world assures me random sex with strangers is “right”, something inside me assures me it isn’t.
I observe every subtle facial motion, every voice inflection, and every bit of body language the boys use and commit it to memory.
I can duplicate virtually any facial or body movement. Why does this stuff elude me?
I’m watching and listening so intently to the guys’ pickup methods that as I pass the group I don’t look away when one of the girls smiles at me.
“You’re Cephas Paulson, The Cult Hunter.”
Focus. Use the moves you just learned from these guys. Maybe it’s possible.
I turn to face her and try to find a balance between what I’ve just observed and what’s expected of me when I interact with the public. She’s topless but when any other man would complement her by “enjoying the view”, I instinctively look over her shoulder.
You’re blowing it. The boys didn’t look over her shoulder.
I can’t overcome instinct and continue to look at a tree behind her.
“That’s right.”
Inflection was all wrong to express interest in her.
“We’re just going to my place. Would you like to join us?”
This isn’t the first time I’ve been in this situation. As a local celebrity it happens quite often. The boys don’t look happy with the plan change.
Avoid eye contact. Maybe you can do this if you don’t look at her eyes.
I can’t help myself, I look her in the eyes. Part of me instantly wishes I hadn’t while another part flushes with relief that I did. I tell myself that I can see a tiny sparkle in her eyes but I don’t really believe it. I imagine myself accepting her invitation and watching the final bit of light leaving her eyes in my bedroom, making her into another doll. I guess a look of sadness or maybe revulsion crosses my face at the thought of it because she takes a half step backwards.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I guess that was presumptuous. I’m mean, you’re The Cult Hunter and all.”
Give up Cephas. It’s easier to just be alone.
I switch back to my usual public persona but chance a look at her body and secretly wonder what might have been possible if circumstances were different.
“Not at all. You’re quite lovely, really. It’s just that I have some urgent business that can’t wait.”
She backs further away from me. The boys are pleased and promise to make it up to her. One of them even says he knows a cult hunter “game” they can play.
I’m left on the sidewalk wondering why this happens every time. Everyone assumes I have countless conquests and more partners waiting in line. It’s easier to just maintain the illusion than risk releasing the secret that The Cult Hunter is actually a virgin. That headline would hit millions of coms in just seconds. The corps might or might not deny it, might or might not block further transmission of the information and might or might not make people disappear over it.
I turn to resume my walk and find myself face to face with Martha McLeod.
“You enjoy that, don’t you?” she asks.
Before I can think what to say or what persona I should project I flash her a smile but quickly recover and feign indifference with my tone and body language.
“Enjoy what?”
“Having half-naked women throw themselves at you. I bet it’s a real ego trip.”
She’s searching for ways to throw me off balance. I don’t know if I’d call her demeanor towards me hostile, but she’s definitely bent on challenging me at every
turn.
Instead of responding right away I allow my training to kick in and take my time looking over her features. I know most of my students faces only from a screen or in the studio with the lights in my face so it’s rare for me to meet one close up. Her face is quite striking with delicate features, a light complexion and long blonde hair pulled back into a bouncy ponytail. At first I’m not sure why I find her so striking until I realize, like me, she’s not enhanced.
Here it comes, time to look at her eyes.
Years of cult hunter training keep me from betraying the surprise I feel when our eyes meet. Martha’s blue eyes sparkle like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I just keep staring into them because… well, because I can.
“Well?” she asks without breaking the stare.
A slight dilation of her pupils. She’s sincerely interested in my answer.
“Well what?”
“I asked you a question. Does the mighty Cult Hunter enjoy women throwing themselves at him like that?”
I regain my focus on the conversation without breaking eye contact.
“No. I don’t.”
One millimeter upward eyebrow twitch. She’s surprised by the answer but tried not to show it.
“What would be the challenge in that?” I ask. “And speaking of challenges, thank you for challenging me in class today, it makes the class so much more interesting.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing compared to the challenges you faced when you were an active cult hunter,” Martha replies. “That’s really what I want to hear more about, but the university wouldn’t let me into your advanced classes until I took this one.”
What is it about those eyes?
“I take it you’ve read my books?”
“I’ve read a lot more than just your books. I’ve read everything ever written about you.”
Yet there you stand with crossed arms. You clearly don’t like me.
“Books are often embellished for the audience Ms. McLeod. The greatest contributions I made to the corps were little more than using a combination of specialized knowledge and good powers of observation.”
“Modesty from the Cult Hunter? Now that is a surprise. You cracked a code that everyone said was impossible to crack. You personally captured more Christians than all other cult hunters combined.”