Christopher Golde
Chapter sixteen
The Priest Part Three
"Here intelligence comes in. Let him who has the mind for it calculate the number of the beast, for it is a mans number, and his number is 666."
John: Revelation 13:18
Date: 12th January 1996
Location: Hong Kong
For a long moment there was silence and Julie thought about everything the young priest had said to her.
"Admittedly, what you say makes sense,” she finally restarted the conversation, “but I am a little perplexed by the time thing. If the mind has the ability to travel through time, does that mean events unfold in a predetermined order, or that time travels past us, not us through it, or what? I’m a little confused.”
He smiled. ‘Now she seemed to be getting into it.’
“Imagine time to be water travelling down a riverbed, we can either sit in a canoe on the water or stand on the bank. It will happen, or it has happened, and we only see it travelling relative to where we place our conscious mind."
"So does that mean the prophecies are real?"
Julie raised the whiskey glass but left it hanging in front of her face as he explained.
"The prophecies, or visions, or time travel, whatever they are to be called, are reasonably consistent. The problem is their accuracy.”
He remembered the discussions on this more clearly than most of his education in the Brotherhood. It was this subject that had disturbed him the most; especially the thought of people recording visions that were then used in the bible, his lifelong sacred guide.
”We believe that many of the visions were had either by people using some form of stimulant, such as a drug or whilst dreaming or even hypnotized.”
He swallowed as if finding the subject difficult to come to terms with.
“Then there was self-induced fasting, and of course, creation for convenience. In all cases, we believe about half of what they saw and recorded, were a real event and the other half related to their own personal lives and or experiences. As well,” he continued, “it is to be expected that if you were born in a primitive superstitious period of our history, such as 200 A.D., and you could see the future, you would have some difficulty describing what it was you had actually seen. A motor car or an aircraft, for example, would be interpreted much differently compared to someone who saw them in 1990.”
His mood, she noted, relaxed again and he became more analytical as if he were explaining the results of an experiment, which he most probably was, she thought.
"We reinforced our research by seeking early man in Africa, Great Britain, and Australia. As we explored more we discovered this early man had developed natural, extraordinary connections with the universe.”
Anthropology was Aldo’s area of expertise. He had majored in it while studying at the Brotherhoods European University. Discovering how ancient civilizations created and worshipped their God’s, had once again instilled in his faith in his own God.
“The Druids studied the heavens; the Africans lived with the spirit world and the Australian Aboriginal worshipped nature itself. As our research progressed it was not so difficult to understand how the Druids built Stonehenge, or how the Egyptians built the Pyramids, or how the Chinese were thousands of years ahead of everyone in science.”
He felt now like he was giving the lecture to an attentive class of Genesis graduates, instead of this young beautiful reporter.
“The African and Australian Aboriginals coexisted with nature in extreme environments where a man should not be able to exist; this was all because of their spiritual awareness.”
He then stood and walked to the rail of the balcony, looking out over the modern city before him and lifting his arms to indicate its entirety.
“They were in fact, connected to a pure source of all knowledge and to some extent time itself. They, as in all aspects of their survival, took only what they needed to satisfy their simple needs, both in a physical and metaphysical sense.”
He turned to face Julie.
“Perhaps it was providence, or merely evolution, but the modern man lost it all with his lust for much, much more. He desired power, he invented Gods that would serve his purpose, and he murdered innocence to gain superiority over his environment. In doing all this, he lost touch with creation and in turn his creator.”
Julie was starting to feel that there was some logic here but tried to revive her professional instincts and came straight back at him.
"That's all a very interesting hypothesis but what is your point?”
He looked back at her, this time he seemed to have a look on his face she had not seen before. His mind flashed back to his childhood, then to the church, he attended each week. The sermons, the talk, all about the number of the devil, the number being six, it was all so convincing then. He remembered his first encounter with Viventti.
‘Man's fragile balance of existence is determined by the stars and planets, their distances from each and their positions in our universe,’ he had said it so convincingly that it had shocked a young impressionable Aldo.
‘It’s all about numbers boy, all mathematical and it can be calculated, and it has been calculated, the beginning and the end. It’s what we have discovered from these calculations, we find so hard to accept.’
“Put simply,” he continued, “everything relates to numbers, numbers are the universal language, the language of creation itself. Planetary positions coinciding with the birth of great persons are not coincidental, or the aligning of great events to certain star formations, it is fact proven and we can foretell them by astrological cycles."
He remembered what he had been told at Sunday prayer meetings when he was young.
‘The number seven relates to our Father in heaven, all that is good, that’s why the seventh day is the Sabbath. Six is the number of the devil, it says so in the Bible,’ and they were the beliefs he had grown up with.
He licked his lips before he continued as once again he found himself becoming too dry to speak properly.
"We found that planetary cycles seemed to be of great relevance to important events and where key numbers were involved in the equation, it became more relevant, or more specific.”
She eyed him suspiciously but he decided to continue, he had come this far with her.
“We believe that every ecliptic cycle and corresponding year of the new millennia will be marked by events that will change our future dramatically. Those events that will have the most effect will be those with a close relationship to the number six, or for that matter, it's derivatives or multiples."
Julie moved restlessly; either the heat was getting to her, or it was where she felt this conversation was leading that was making her uncomfortable.
"What do you mean derivatives," She asked cautiously?
"Six, eight and nine were all created and derived from the number six."
"But these are just numbers," exclaimed Julie.
"Yes, that is very true and that is why the number as we have created it, has little to do with its seemingly mystical nuances. It is the universal mathematical meaning of the number that is important, no matter how it is written or said. Primitive man discovered by watching the stars that there is a strange relationship between numbers and events. Data since has confirmed that he was right, it was his primitive superstitions that clouded his judgment of those events, and to some degree that has been passed on to us.”
Again, the subject broached his favourite anthropological expertise and he just had to add for good measure.
”Modern man inherited many of primitive man’s rituals and stigma, almost genetically. The fear of spiders and snakes, superstitions that concern certain numbers such as thirteen and seven, the stigma associated with full moons and so on. We have even forgotten in many cases why."
Sipping water again, sweat beading on his brow, he continued. “You see we cannot explain all phenomena, but we do record relative repetitiveness throughout history and it is no coincidence that in the majority of cases there is a connection. Mankind to some degree self-determines his own fears, his own evil, and the destiny of all around him, but it is still connected to something divine. We in the Brotherhood believe this to be God.”
He looked relieved to once again be back on the topic of God. He settled a little before continuing.
“The connection is like a telephone number or the impulse binary system that operates a computer. The numbers determine the connection, six, eight, and nine are the connections we are looking for in this case and they can be encoded by boundary numbers.”
"Boundary numbers,” she asked, beginning to look suspicious again?
"When numbers are used to plot a course or time they sometimes require a spacer or fill in number. This will usually be a binary number, one or zero or ten. We just call them boundaries, say 1999, three nines and a boundary of one, or 10699 as a serial number, ten is the boundary."
Julie shifted uneasily.
"I take it then you are suggesting numbers with six or another derivative have a direct connection to,” she hesitated not even wanting to think it, let alone say it, “to someone like…” so she didn’t say it.
He walked again to the balcony and looked out over the landscape of glass skyscrapers and blue water, all surrounded by rocky peaks. She could not tell whether he said it in frustration or angst, but there was something different now in his tone, something almost sad.
“Yes Miss Pierce, it could even be a direct connection to God, but I personally believe that what we are looking for is much more insidious, and the world is in considerable danger. I can feel it."
“Are you suggesting that you are looking for an individual then, someone amongst us that is a danger to us all,” she asked, absolutely incredulous that someone could even contemplate telling her that a living being could be Satan or some other such mystical monster?
She had seen this sort of stuff in movies, and even then, it had seemed only half-believable. Now she took all that back, in reality, it was just too incredible to possibly be true.
Aldo Dominique, a holy man of the cloth and scientist, looked her squarely in the face. He knew it was too early, but if he didn’t tell her now, he might lose her and he needed her on his side. He had strict instructions from the papacy that she must be convinced.