Morningstar/Alignment by Keith Trimm (people reading books txt) 📕

Brother Follett and Brother Thomas stacked boxes on a two-wheel dolly for the others to roll outside to the awaiting trucks. The men filled and stacked boxes repeatedly keeping focused on the task at hand, refraining from wasteful conversation.

"Brother Follett! Brother Thomas!" shouted a faint voice from the basement below. The two men ran to the stairwell and stopped at the open door.

"What is it?" Follett shouted down the staircase into the dark.

"Come quickly!" the voice replied, and the two men scrambled down the steps as fast as they could. At the bottom they turned only to be blinded by a single sixty-watt bulb next to the breaker box in the electrical room.

"Where are you?" Thomas asked, looking around for the source of the voice.

"Over here in the furnace room!" the voice shouted.

The men followed the sound around the corner then stopped in their tracks. Holding a flashlight, Brother Davis shined a beam of light into a small dark room illuminating a naked young man cowering in the corner. Around the mans neck was a collar of iron, welded shut with a chain attached to it leading to an iron pipe sticking out of the cement in the center of the floor. The room smelled of rotted food and feces. The walls were cracked and mildewed, stained with dark streaks running from ceiling to floor.

The man did not speak. He looked maybe twenty years old, unshaven with hair running the length of his back. He held his hand up to block the light from the flashlight blinding him, squinting as if he had never seen light before.

"Has he said anything?" Thomas asked.

"No, I just arrived here myself." Davis replied.

"He looks like a Goddamn monkey boy." Thomas added taking the flashlight. He stepped into the room, keeping the beam on the creature before him.

"What is your name?" Thomas asked.

The creature just stared back. The other two men stepped in closer blocking the doorway.

"What is your name?" he asked again.

The creature shifted, dragging its chain across the floor like an animal in a cage. As it moved Thomas noticed the name Alex scarred across its right shoulder and chest.

"Alex?" he asked looking down upon the monster before him. "Is that your name?"

No response.

"Alex, I am here to help you," Thomas said taking another step closer.

The creature gripped the chain tied to his collar and pulled trying to get away. There was nowhere to go.

"What do we have here men?" Thomas whispered to the two behind him.

"I have no idea." Davis replied.

Let me see!" boomed a familiar voice from behind. Everyone stood back and allowed the dark figure to enter the room.

"Looks like an ape." Seth stated.

"Yes sir." Thomas replied, shaken by Seth’s sudden appearance.

"You weren’t going to invite me to your party?" Seth asked Thomas.

"I didn’t think you wanted to be bothered by this," was his lame reply, and he knew it.

"You didn’t?"

"Yes sir."

"Who is the high priest my son? Who is your spiritual leader? Who do you answer to here on Earth?" Seth asked condescendingly.

"You sir."

"Then why are you making decisions for me?"

A moment passed. "I am sorry sir."

"Just pray my son that your actions do not keep you from your plan of salvation."

"I beg repentance."

"That is a wise choice." Seth stated, glaring at Thomas. "Now go get me five men! We will need help here!" he yelled at Davis and Follett.

The sheriff’s car pulled up to the house; the two men just back from their morbid duty. Two officers exited the vehicle and went separate directions. The deputy headed off to the end of the street where barricades were placed so non-church members could not drive past the house. A yellow work truck with the words "Denton Light and Water Dept." was parked by one of the barricades and workmen pretended to be hard at work running a hose down a manhole.

The sheriff walked across the terrace and up the steps to the house. By this time the house was on its way to being empty. The sheriff looked to his wristwatch, 2:00 a.m. it read, and he proceeded into the living room. He scanned the bare walls and patterns left by the furniture in the carpet satisfied with the progress.

"Hello Brother," said one of the cleaning crew to the sheriff. This was the common church greeting.

"Hello Brother," was the sheriff’s response, he said it like without thinking. "I see Seth’s car parked out front. Do you know where he is?"

"In the basement," he answered.

The sheriff rubbed his chin, gritting his teeth in anticipation of his encounter with Seth.

The sheriff walked into the kitchen to the stairwell and looked down the steps to the basement floor. A faint jingle of metal and the sounds of muffled voices reverberated from below. He stepped down one slat at a time as the boards creaked under his feet. He was listening, trying to make out what the voices were saying. He noted Seth’s voice immediately

"Sheriff!" Seth’s voice boomed from around the corner. "Your services are required here."

The sheriff came around the corner and joined the men standing at the doorway. Seeing Seth, the sheriff bowed his head and said, "How may I serve you father?"

"Have you seen this creature before?" Seth asked, pointing into the small dark room.

The sheriff raised his head and took a look at the man illuminated in the beam of the flashlight.

"No sir, this thing is unfamiliar to me," he replied.

"I thought we owned the market on keeping secrets," Seth said, and walked back out to the main basement room followed by the three other men. "Take him to the church," he added as he turned to the men.

"I beg your pardon father, but we know nothing of this creature. Are you sure this is the wise thing to do?" Follett asked.

"Am I sure?" Seth asked, his brow low on his forehead. "It is this kind of dissonance that will be our downfall!" he barked at Follett.

"I am sorry," Follett said back swallowing hard.

"I require no apologies, only obedience!" Seth yelled at the man now cowering down shaking. "I see no reason not to inform the council of your words."

"No. Please! Father I shall repent!"

"Yes you shall. I will see to that," he stated. "There is a faction among the flock, a dangerous splitting of the members which is detrimental to the survival of the church. If I find you are among them I shall see that you join our Father post haste."

"I shall obey." Follett said.

"Take him to the church! Now!" Seth barked to the three men before him.

Chapter 6

The group gathered in the laboratory, with the stainless steel artifact, ready to attempt to extract the recorded information locked inside. The room was lined on the inside with multiple computer terminals hooked to a mini mainframe processor and a satellite hookup to a larger faster system. All the electronics imagined for field exploration were incorporated into this lab and was manned with some of the military’s top on site research personnel.

Jesse Brinkman asked one of the technicians to hook up the phone plug to the recording device and attempt to download what information was on it. The group watched intently as the line clicked in and the tech started working on the computer trying to draw forth what was hidden for so many thousands of years. The sound of a modem connection was emanating from somewhere above and a box appeared on the screen of the computer terminal with the prompt "Password" above a row of four spaces, blank spot and then another five spaces.

"Show time," Jesse said to Tony. "We ran our computers on this for years, running the entire dictionary, random numbers and the kitchen sink trying to crack this passkey. We figured we had a five- percent chance of breaking it without your assistance. We could have saved a whole lot of time if it weren’t for this damn code."

"Come on Tony," Alex piped up. "What’s the password?"

Tony looked at the screen and recounted the number of spaces he had to fill and looked at the blank spot between the two segments. He hummed, rubbing his nose and closed his eyes.

"It’s ok to guess," Brinkman said. "I don’t think your going to break it, or we would have a long time ago."

Tony leaned over and typed "Jack, space Emily" then hit the return key.

The computer answered with a beep and a prompt reading "Access granted."

"This was too easy," the technician said. Tony just smiled knowing it would be a very simple process. The window simply stated "Saved to disc drive." Below it said "Best viewed with any media playing software created after 1997 and before 2008, click here to view file." The tech turned to Brinkman looking for directions.

"Who is Jack and Emily?" Brinkman asked.

"My parents," Tony replied.

"Let’s see it." Brinkman said and the technician clicked on the box. The screen went blank for a moment and a prompt box came up stating the file was being read. From a set of speakers mounted on the wall came the sounds of people chatting in real time and on the screen was a still frame of the back of an airliner seat and the back of someone’s head.

A digital clock was counting backwards from thirty minutes on the upper right hand corner of the screen as the sound of glasses clinking and music came from the speakers. Every thirty seconds a new still appeared on the screen showing different views of the back of this persons head and sometimes a shot of a magazine in the viewer’s lap. It was evident that the recording device was constantly recording and was probably looping every thirty minutes recording over the previous recording keeping the images current.

Tony got shivers down his spine seeing images he made realizing he was viewing the last thirty minutes of his life. It made sense to him that the recorder was set up to stop recording after the electric current in his body was determined to be no longer detectable. This way they could get an accurate determination of what it was that sent the plane to its watery death.

"I want copies of this," Brinkman said to the tech as the he watched the screen intently. There was almost no degradation in the quality of the picture and sound making the playback crystal clear. The video was only hampered by the low resolution of the camera sensor placed in Tony’s eye and a slight motion blur that occurred when a still was made in the turning of his head.

Minutes passed and the images were very uneventful other than the sound of distant thunder crashes and an occasional glimpse of a flash of lightning. It seemed the weather was poor and some of the passengers could be overheard talking about it remarking about the rain and lightning outside their windows.

The group listened intently for anything unusual, hoping to find out what it was that sent the airliner crashing into the sea. Tony was on the edge of his seat straining to listen to the sounds from the speaker and looking for anything out-of-the ordinary on the computer screen. Jesse, Sonja and Dorothy all had strained looks upon their collective faces as this bizarre movie unfolded before them. Only Alex stood in the back almost seeming uninterested by what was happening and made no effort to join in the group acting like he had better things to do with his time elsewhere.

More sounds of thunder shot over the speakers as a view of the storm appeared on the screen. Louder crashes became more frequent, seeming to interfere with the electronics of the recording device. The clouds in the distance seemed to light up in the still frame and the reflection of Tony’s face could be seen in the glass of the window. His breathing