Paul Jones - Towards Yesterday

Humphreys’ did not acknowledge her presence, taking not even a moment to thank her for staying so late at the office, instead he continued staring through the triangle of his fingers before finally, with a sharp intake of breath that made the jowls of his sallow face jiggle, he began: “Mr. President…”

Ursula Brahms was shaking as she left Deputy Director Humphreys’ office; she was trembling all the way to her very core. She had worked for many powerful men in her lifetime—from CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies, to the personal secretary of senators and the odd captain of industry, but never before had any position placed such a great burden of responsibility on her as she now felt.

She had been chosen. She could feel God’s gaze focused on her like a spotlight; almost hear his words in her mind: Your time has come, Ursula . The ecstasy of His love welled up within her heart.

Her last job had been for the Director of the FBI at the J. Edgar Hoover building, but that had come to an abrupt end in 2027 when, stepping out of the shower one spring morning, she slipped on a wet patch of tile and crashed to the floor of her bathroom, smashing her head against the porcelain sink unit.

Ursula had never married, never felt the need, and with no close friends to call on her, she lay on the floor of her apartment’s bathroom, unable to move while an ever greater pool of blood spread around her head.

She prayed for someone to come and find her.

No one came.

Almost thirteen hours after her accident—by that time she was falling in and out of consciousness—Ursula died.

The next thing she knew, Ursula had found herself walking to her car, keys in hand and her clutch bag in the other, on her way to some suddenly forgotten destination. The cold floor of the bathroom was replaced by the warm rays of the early morning sun, and the pain in her head was gone. She felt young and energized. She felt… ALIVE .

Ursula had always been a firm believer in God. A regular attendee of her local Presbyterian church every Sunday, she was convinced she was one of the chosen. When she had died alone on the cold tiled floor, there had been no real fear in her heart because she had known she would be going to heaven. So as the days after the Slip had passed by and, as much as she tried, she could summon no memory of her ever having been to Heaven, Ursula began to worry. She had begun to worry that maybe she was not in God’s favor. She had worried that her life spent in piety and denial—denial of both her own desire and of the few men whose interest in her had seen beyond her frozen exterior—had not met with the approval of the Almighty. She worried that maybe, just maybe, there was no afterlife beyond death, that the preachers and priests had all been wrong, and the atheists had been right all along. It had been too terrible a thought to contemplate—what a terrible waste of her life, if the unbelievers had been right all along.

Ursula had thrust the thoughts from her mind. But gradually, as the days ticked by, despair began to overtake her. A despair so dark and depressing it enfolded her like a funeral shroud, dragging her down into an abyss she knew she could never escape.

Deeper. Deeper. Deeper.

Until one warm spring afternoon, as she sat staring at her TV screen with the curtains of her room closed against the sunshine of the day, Ursula saw an angel of the Lord. Admittedly, for all outward appearances he was just a man, but as she listened to him talk so eloquently and knowingly, she knew he was an angel sent to save her, that the sign from God she had been waiting for had finally arrived.

The angel stared out of the TV screen, his eyes seemed to fix on hers, and his words had seemed meant only for her ears. The message of redemption he passed to her was the spiritual lifeline Ursula had been waiting for, and it showed her there was still a chance of redemption.

The Lord had not forgotten her. She was not abandoned.

Immediately following the interview, Ursula had called the number displayed at the bottom of the screen and spoken to a woman who told her the address of the nearest location of a branch of the Angel’s church. Throwing on her overcoat, she had left the apartment, not even bothering to turn off her TV set, such was her enthusiasm and excitement.

The man-angel’s name was Father Edward Pike, leader of the Church of Second Redemption.

Now, as Ursula slumped at her desk, her head still reeling from the information she had just learned from her boss, she quickly tapped in the number of her local church representative and arranged a meeting for that very afternoon to pass on the terrible news.

“Are you aware, that the instance you die, your body loses twenty-one grams of weight?” The questioning voice of Father Edward Pike wafted pleasingly through the stark room like a cool breeze on a warm day. “That’s the weight of a hummingbird.” The priest’s voice took on a tone of childlike awe as he continued, “Amazing isn’t it, the wonder of God’s creation. Truly amazing.”

The spiritual leader of the Church of Second Redemption regarded the only other person in the room with a serene smile. Seated across the simple wooden table, the other man was almost invisible, shrouded in shadow.

The room’s only source of illumination, a small window high up on one wall, allowed a single shaft of light to penetrate the room. The light fell directly on Pike, revealing the paleness of his skin and the contrasting dark bags hanging loosely beneath his eyes.

Dust motes floated gently from darkness into light and back again to darkness.

The room seemed more a cell than the office of the leader of what was quickly becoming one of the most powerful religious organizations on earth.

“Is science able to explain this?” Pike’s fist banged suddenly down onto the table, the explosion of noise echoing off the bare concrete walls.

“No! Of course, they cannot. What do they offer instead? Empty theories, ideas and possibilities. Anything but accept the simplest truth. The scientists promise us a technological paradise, but instead they open the doors to Hell.”

The priest’s hands came together above his heart and then apart in an imitation of a bird taking flight, “Twenty-one grams—the weight of the soul as it escapes the confines of our body.”

The other man in the room was used to these outpourings. As time had gone by since they first met, the priest’s frequent soliloquies had become more and more extravagant as his growing delusions began to manifest; his mood swings becoming more extreme with each passing day. As the priest continued his erratic tirade, the companion detected a hint of contempt, just a smidgeon of venom, creeping into the priest’s voice as he spat, “Scientists! They are as worthless as lawyers. They both take the truth and twist it to match their own warped perceptions.”

The other said nothing. He continued to watch impassively while the priest raised himself to his feet, leaned across the table until he was just a few inches away and whispered, “It appears the Devil has finally awoken and shown his face.” Tears ran down the priest’s cheeks as he spoke, collecting in a glistening pool on the top of the table, as his mood swung toward ecstasy.

“We have been given a task,” Pike whispered. “God has asked much of us before, but now he has sent us his final test and we will prove our worthiness.”

“Have you seen this?” demanded Mitchell Lorentz as he tossed a copy of the morning edition of the Washington Times onto the table next to Jim.