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

"Hey monkey boy!" the keeper said as he taunted his victim and raised his leg as if to kick him. He turned to his friend and said "Watch this," and he took a swing at the prisoner’s head. The swing connected and the man fell back to the wall.

"Kick him in the ribs!" his partner shouted.

"What is your name Monkey boy?" he yelled again to the prisoner who was now cowering against the wall. "I don’t know what Seth has planned for you monkey boy, but if I had my way I would have you on the slab tonight," he said laughing.

Brother Follett, feeling more at ease, came around the corner from which he was hiding, clicking his heels on the tile floor.

"Brother Jake, Brother Paul, how is our friend this morning?" Follett said, crossing the floor. His voice caught them off guard.

"He is a dirty filthy animal." Brother Jake responded stepping towards Brother Follett meeting him half way across the room. "It does not matter how he is. He is just lucky to be at all."

"Yes he is," Brother Follett stated looking down upon the terrified creature chained to the wall. "Do we know why Seth decided to spare him?" he asked.

"He has not said anything to us," was the reply.

"This man looks retarded," Follett scoffed pointing at it. "Does Seth now show compassion for the weak and helpless?" he asked rhetorically. "Lucifer demands a sacrifice! Who are we to deny him?"

From behind Follett, a low booming voice replied, "I do not deny my Lord!"

Follett turned his head and reached down to his pant leg pulling the knife from its sheath. The sheriff, standing next to Seth in the doorway, pulled out his revolver.

"You lead the resistance?" Seth questioned as he looked to Follett. "I assumed it was you and now I know."

"Lead?" he asked back. "There are no others. I stand-alone. I have seen the truth, the light and the way," his voice echoed off the walls.

"Oh there are others Brother Follett, that is one thing I am sure of. I have seen a change in the heart of many members and now I know who instigated it."

"Why do you save this man?" Follett asked Seth pointing to the helpless creature. "I see change in your heart Seth. Something in your heart made you spare this mans life."

"Yes something did, but not what you think,"

"Seth, you can repent, it is not too late."

Seth chuckled at Follett’s attempts to point fingers in his direction and said, "No Brother Follett, I have not changed. I shall not repent. I have seen to it that our Lord Lucifer has his sacrifice."

"You don’t mean this creature? He is too old for the sacrifice. You know the doctrine!"

"You think I am going to sacrifice him?" Seth said laughing. "You fool!" he added taking a step forward. "This creature as you call him is no sacrifice. He is your Messiah. The chosen one."

Follett clutched his knife harder as he listened to these words.

"It has been written that he would be delivered as an empty shell that we would fill with the spirit we maintained in the secret vessel of the church."

"Secret Vessel?" Follett asked, "I have never heard of such a thing."

"Of course not. I am the sole keeper of the doctrine."

"What is the vessel?"

"Not what my Brother," Seth replied stretching out his arm. "Let me introduce you to the vessel."

The sheriff took a step forward, and his eyes glowed red.

Chapter 8

"I find it interesting that in the age of cavemen, we invented a God in order to explain the supernatural, and now that we are modern man we have chosen do disbelieve our own past, and choose to continue to believe in the God," Tony said.

"Don’t be so sure young man," Brinkman replied. "We have some new results on the skeletal remains that may change your mind."

"You sound like old man Parsons," Tony added. "He’s into that kind of stuff too, like creationism, God and all that miracle mumbo jumbo. What do you have that’s so interesting anyway?" he asked.

Brinkman paused and rubbed his chin." You know about the DNA database that we’ve been checking all remains against?" Brinkman asked.

"Yeah, It’s all that CIA, DOD, NSA crap spy stuff," Tony said.

"Crap?" Brinkman asked. "You won’t think so for very long."

"I’m listening" Tony said.

"We checked the DNA from your remains in storage against a sample we took recently."

"You’ve been digging through my hairbrush?" Tony asked.

"It’s all necessary and quite legal," Brinkman replied. "And the results were beyond belief."

Tony sat confused waiting for an explanation like a dumb dog staring at its master waiting for a treat.

"You don’t have DNA," Brinkman said. "At least like any I have ever seen before."

Tony thought he was joking and waited for the real answer. After a moment he spoke up and asked, "You think I am an alien or something?"

"You have sequences and strands that no other man woman or child has" Brinkman said. "Beyond the normal set."

Tony did not know what to say. He rubbed his hands together and contorted his face as he absorbed this information. He looked at Brinkman, then at the floor, and back again scratching his ear as he twisted and bobbed his head like a bird.

"Nope, don’t get it," he said. “I don’t have any extra body parts growing out of me. Sorry."

"Not all DNA has to do with physical make up you know," Brinkman said. "It may have something to do with your talents or mental abilities."

"Mental abilities?" Tony asked. "I can’t levitate spoons. I wish I could. Neat party trick."

"Or it could be a by-product of your travels through time," Brinkman said. "Like a mutation made from radiation bombardment."

Tony stumbled for the right words to say. "You don’t think that’s it do you?" he asked.

"No," Brinkman answered. "I think there is a much larger story going on than either of us understand. You are special Tony."

"If I were special I could have stopped Dorothy from being attacked and almost burned to death," Tony replied.

Both Tony and Brinkman sipped their coffee and headed back out into the field ready for another day’s work at the site. Tony’s mind was full of the images of Dorothy running through the dark of night in a ball of flame being trampled on and put out by military men. The smell of her burned hair and skin still sickened him and he felt guilty for feeling this way.

The two men caught a ride to the site on a Hummer feeling the extreme heat once again burn their skin like fire. Brinkman wore shorts and sunglasses and Tony opted, for a wide brim hat, and jean shorts, to go along with his sandals. In the back of the vehicle were there work uniforms strangely suited for work in the cold.

Alex and a crew of many men, met Tony and Brinkman at the entrance of the building smoking a cigarette. Alex wore a tank style T- shirt, allowing a long scar to be visible, running the length of his chest from shoulder to opposite hip. The scar was almost invisible hidden behind a mat of dark chest hair and glistening sweat

"So did you learn anything from the download?" Alex asked Tony.

"Yeah, I did," Tony responded. "Something became painfully obvious to me after viewing the recording."

"What was that?" Brinkman asked as he blocked the sun from his eyes.

"That time travel is a naturally occurring event," Tony replied.

Alex wiped the sweat from his brow and took a drag off his cigarette, squinting as the bright sunlight beat down upon him. He put his hands on his hips and shuffled his feet as if he were nervous.

"Naturally occurring?’ Alex asked not believing what he had just heard.

"Just like life in the universe," he said. " If the conditions are right, it just happens, spontaneously, no God, no miracles."

Both men just looked at him waiting for him to tell them it was a joke. Even though they were all men of science, to make such a claim was to stab at one’s faith and belief systems, obviously Tony had no such beliefs. The temperature was approaching ninety degrees and there was no breeze as the men continued to try to understand the problems they were facing.

"And what is your theory Doctor?," Alex asked.

Tony turned and looked at Alex like the skeptic he was. There was no use trying to convince this man for he had predetermined values and beliefs that no one, especially Tony could shake. Alex had the look of an opponent waiting to do battle. No matter what Tony said it would not pass the judgment of his senior colleague.

"It was the lightning," Brinkman said.

"That is correct," Tony said as he quickly turned his head in amazement. "It stood out like a sore thumb."

"Are you trying to tell me lightning somehow sent that plane back in time?" Alex asked. "You didn’t even believe traveling back in time was even possible two weeks ago and now you have stamped your seal of approval on your own theory."

"The video proved it," Tony said.

"The video proved nothing," Alex replied. "I saw nothing that would lead me to believe lightning had anything to do with this. It was an act of God."

Tony started to get agitated and argumentative with Alex hoping to prove him wrong. The only problem was that he only had a theory and had little evidence past the recording, which was average to poor at best.

"Somehow the electricity effected the plane at the molecular level, changing its properties enough to phase it out of our space and time. I will need time to work out the details but it isn’t important now anyway," Tony said.

"And why not?" Alex asked.

"It’s not like we are planning to duplicate it. Now that we know what happened we can stop these passengers from facing the same fate twice."

"Twice? You assume this is only the second time this loop has occurred?"

"You are correct. We may be in a forever looping chain of events, but let us hope it is not and we can stop it before it recycles again."

"How do you propose to do that?" Alex asked.

"Retire the plane, I don’t know. It can’t be that hard."

"If this a never ending time loop, there will be no way to stop it from repeating. If we are the only three men who know of the truth of the matter, then it is not possible, that we would be able to stop it from continuing to the same fate," Alex said, "The most plausible scenario is that we will be unable to stop it. Most likely we won’t live long enough to try."

"All we really have to do is clean up this mess and bury it under some secret military installation and pretend it never happened," Tony said. "As far as I am concerned this is a closed book. I am satisfied with my findings, I am sorry you are not Dr. Parsons."

"What makes you so positive?" Alex asked.

"I have studied time travel since I first read science fiction comic books as a child. I have spent twenty years on and off researching and formulating ideas and concepts concerning its likelihood and had come to the conclusion as a grad student that time travel into the future was not only plausible but possible and happened all the time. Time travel into the past is another story all together."

"Go on," Alex said. "You seem to be contradicting your own research paper."

"I will admit I don’t know all the answers. I just think the popular concept of time travel is incorrect." Tony said. "From the stand point of physics you can draw some conclusions that I will stand behind as fact."

"Like what?" Alex asked.

" If you approach the speed of light, your body in relation to whence you came slows the aging process," Tony replied. "In effect, allowing your home base to continue to age at a faster rate. Once you again incorporate with