Glenn Beck - The Eye of Moloch

“Of course I will, if I can,” Noah said. “That’s a promise.”

Chapter 36

Noah returned to his room that evening and after a quick walkthrough to ensure he had the place to himself, he went directly to the computer.

There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that everything he did on this PC was being monitored, right down to the keystroke. The only question was how closely. Was someone watching in real time or was the spying more passive? Ultimately he decided that it didn’t matter; he was going to do what he was going to do.

The sealed note attached to the storage device that Ira had given him said “READ ME LAST” on its outer surface and so he put the paper aside for the moment. Then he found an open USB port on the machine, slipped in the memory stick, and watched as the screen responded.

A menu of videos appeared along with a listing of their archived locations on the Internet. The addresses were strange and unconventional, as though they referred to remote and secret places hidden safely outside the reach of the day-to-day corporate search engines. These files would be exceedingly hard to find if you didn’t know where to look, and so they’d also be difficult to scrub away if those in charge should ever feel inclined to order them removed.

He clicked on the first one, not really knowing what to expect. Maybe it would be yet another stirring but toothless speech from a fringe-libertarian rally, maybe some clip of Molly or one of her faithful, firing up the fresh recruits back in the days before they’d all been made into outcasts and targets of terrorism investigations.

The video began to play then, and if he’d been given a thousand tries to guess what it would show, what he saw next still would have surprised him.

It was a transfer of a grainy old analog videotape. A reporter was introducing a story from the location of a large, loud Washington protest march that had taken place at the height of the Vietnam War, while Nixon was still riding high. The camera turned to the subject of the reporter’s interview, and there stood a young Jaime Wilson—Noah’s mother.

Though his mom did pop up for a few embarrassing seconds in that Woodstock movie, other than that Noah had only photographs to remember her by. Those pictures were from later on, when she’d become a wife and a mother. Here she seemed barely older than Lana Somin but as fearless and confident in front of the camera as any seasoned spokesperson could be.

In the various videos it became clear that she’d been at the heart of a number of grassroots organizations, all dedicated to fighting and exposing the corruption that even then was dragging her troubled country toward disaster. But, one by one, she’d left the groups she’d helped create as they’d gradually been taken over by provocateurs and radicals. These agents—people like Warren Landers—had either come to weaken her work from within or to push these once-peaceful movements toward the violent paths of the Black Panthers and the Weathermen.

He watched each clip in utter fascination, lost in the sound of her voice and the strength of a message even more relevant today than it was back then. This was a part of his own history that he’d never known before, and as she spoke it was as though her words were for him alone. When he’d gone through all the files he came back to that first one to watch it again. At the end the reporter had asked her to sum up her message to the young people of America.

“My message,” Jaime Wilson said, “is that if you want things to change, first you’ve got to commit. Don’t look to me or anyone else, look inside. Educate yourself, learn from history, this has all happened before and it’ll happen again. And you can’t just grab a sign and find a march and think you’ve made a difference. You’ve got to wise up before you rise up.

“Every generation thinks it’s all going to be different when they finally get into power. They think a better world is coming just as soon as the old folks die off. Not true.

“This country only works if good people get involved. That better world you want won’t come on its own, and if you think watching from the sidelines and making clever comments and sniping and whining is doing something, you’d better think again. Don’t go to sleep at night until you’ve made this a better place than it was that morning. That’s my message: you’re the key. Without you we’ll all be dead and gone before we ever see peace and prosperity again.”

Noah got up from the computer in a daze, walked into the other room, and then saw Ira’s little radio on his bedside table. He sat down, put in the earpiece, and listened to the faint signal coming through. It sounded like an old recording of a speech that was playing, though he didn’t recognize the voice.

We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well, I think it is time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.

We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

With that the broadcast ended, concluding with the same sign-off as the previous night.

Noah was tired and troubled and it was getting late, but he remembered the folded note that Ira had given him. When he found it on the desk where he’d left it, he unfolded it and began to read.

Noah,

There’s a reason you were born in these times, and yes, to the father and the mother you were born to. There’s a reason you met Molly Ross when you did, if only you’ll believe what I know to be true.

I see something in you, Noah, and Molly did, too. I always look for signs, messages of guidance from above, and one was sent to me late last night as I sat at my old, broken typewriter, shuffling my cards and for whatever reason, looking for a sign in the letters of your name. And that sign was sent down to me then, in such a way that only I could receive it. That’s how I know that it’s real. I give it to you here.

Believe it, Noah, and then go and be the man you were born to be.

This previous section was handwritten; the final part was only two short typed lines. The first of these was Noah’s own last name, though with that uniquely imperfect d on Ira’s typewriter it appeared to be misspelled:

g a r d n e r

He felt a knot in his stomach the size of a softball as he read the line just below. There, the letters of his name had been reshuffled and arranged into a new order.

r r e d g a n

Oh, come on now.

He laughed aloud, sitting all alone in his room, and he wished that Ellen or any other sane and rational person could be there to help him counteract the craziness. No, it was beyond just crazy. Talk about grabbing at straws—

Noah’s thoughts were interrupted by a quiet knock at the door. He walked over and opened it to find Ellen Davenport standing there.

“Ellen,” he said. “I was just thinking about you. I thought you’d have gone home by now. Come in, you’ve got to see this.”

She stepped inside and hugged him for a long while, and there were tears in her eyes as she looked up into his. “I’m so sorry, Noah.”