Refiner's Pyre

The problem started years ago, or was it minutes ago. That's immaterial.

  The world was in crisis. It had gotten to the point where the survival of humanity depended on a nearly absolute control over the peoples of the earth. It was an identity crisis of sorts. The rich were getting richer, while the poor were getting poorer, and starving in the process. The moneyed masses currently in power realized that their golden goose was about to go extinct on them. Crime at every level had increase exponentially and their profit margin had suffered a systemic hit. The single most important element in the elimination of the cost of doing business was to close the loopholes to corruption; that being mainly anonymity. By implementing foolproof identification on every man, woman and child, crime of all types could be virtually eliminated. Everyone would pay his way and no one could get away with murder, so to speak.

  The method of choice was to place a marker in the form of an implant on every individual. This marker would store personal data internally as well as being constantly linked to a master database. A GPS kernel would provide for the effective means of tracking of all individuals.

  It was thought by many that such a scheme could never be sold to the privacy minded individual, let alone the Christian segment of the population with their “666” paranoia.

  The RFID chip had been under development for decades. It had been tested in one form or another on pets, children, people with health issues and mentally challenged people for years. It was a proven technology.

  The final nail in the coffin was two fold. First, it was introduced in small test areas around the world and had proven to dramatically improve the economic environment in every case. Secondly, the monitoring of the movements of the individuals on probation had virtually eliminated repeat offenders as well as improving the investigative powers of law enforcement. So based on what had happen, it was clear what would happen if the RFID implant was to be mandated for every man woman and child.

  White collar crimes would nearly vanish. Repeat sexual offenders stood little chance of dodging authorities.

  The promise of reducing the economic overhead in communities nurtured such a significant hope for survival, that the voices of the detractors were effectively rendered mute.

  The Bible is quite clear on the subject of the 666 implant. But even with its threat of eternal damnation, its pressure in the form of convenience and transparency were enormous. Supporters in favor of the implant overwhelmed the dissenters, who used every kind of perverse logic imaginable. It definitely separated the wheat from the tares.

  Anyone could see that the scanning code used with the RFID was in fact modeled after the IPC scan code on every retail item in the world. It was a simple matter to demonstrate that a numeral '6' was embedded at the beginning, the middle and the end of every personal ID code as well. This “number of man”, as the bible calls it, is the universal registry code for each individual and is logged on the International ID Registry resident in the “Beast” in Poughkeepsie NY.

  Regardless of how fervently the issue was dodged or clouded, it sent a destructive ripple through every Christian Church around the world. It crossed denominational boundaries and clarified the battle-lines within the church.

  Even outside the church the personal struggle showed itself. Families were torn apart from a spiritual perspective. The positive economic pressure was enormous. Rather than an anticipated reluctance there was a wave of overwhelming acceptance that occurred.

  Was Martin’s faith strong enough to stay with a promise rather then cave to a threat that might lead to imamate doom? Was he willing to gamble on a “hope of things unseen”? This was the context of the struggle. His wife, Teal, was not confused in the least, it was clearly a struggle of flesh over spirit. For her as well as for him it wasn't a matter of the exercise of love for one’s spouse, it was a personal issue between a man and his God.

  Most people think that it is a choice between heaven and hell and that they will simply choose the middle ground. The problem is that nobody chooses hell. Hell is what they get if they don't choose; it is the default. It is by faith that you get what God offers, which is a ticket out of this mess. It is faith that qualifies you for a ticket out of the realm of a cycle of birth-life-death into a realm of unending life. In that realm there is no specter of aging, no consequence of time, no threat of pain or separation. This is not obvious. We don't have a precedent for this. It is not consistent with our experience of creation. It is not a given; it is a promise through faith alone.

  At issue was Martin’s love of Jesus Christ. Did he believe Christ was the personification of the creator, or did he see him as the figurehead for noble causes and good works? Does He hold the ticket to everlasting bliss or just the mascot for eternal guilt?

  Martin didn't know if he could chose to subject himself to earthly persecution and the threat of capital punishment for the sake of a promise. His only alternative was to void his “ticket to the clouds” for an earthly security of questionable and temporal merit.

  As it turned out, the opportunity to dodge the issue, at least for the moment, presented itself in an unusual manner.

  He had vacillated one prayer too long and, before he knew it, Teal was gone. The Rapture of the 'Church' happened as advertised. Well, not exactly as advertised, but close. Most believers supposed that it would be a glorious affair of world wide proportions. Well it did occur around the world. But it was cloaked in the greatest earthquake resulting from the CME.

  God's presence is usually an opportunity for an earthquake. Not that all earthquakes are evidence of his arrival. But this one was; at least for those of the bent.

  Many people died as a result of the quake. Many people went missing. In the trauma of the moment, many bizarre accounts arose. Most were accompanied by an earthly explanation, but many of the explanations were of the more supernatural kind. So, was it or wasn't it the rapture? Church population remained on an upswing around the world and attendance skyrocketed. Still the question remained for many.

  The Bible defines the True Church as the body of believers, those who are believers in God as the Creator through the person of Jesus Christ. For the people that remained, church-goers or not, it was business as usual. Those taken included many who did not attend church. The dividing lines were blurred to say the least.

  When it comes to things of a spiritual nature, God always seems to allow the blindness of self-deception to take hold. Good people and bad, Muslim, Jew and Christians all perished more or less equally. A 'church' remained. It was still easy for the naysayer to scoff.

  Still, many chose to believe the stories of people ascending before the eyes of others; ascending into the clouds. As a symbol and a sign, thousands of graves were opened around the world. For the witnesses it wasn't much of a leap of faith. Many accepted that the rapture had occurred and that they had been left behind. It didn't take much imagination to see the change. The world was a different place with new rules, and new rulers.

  The oppressiveness of the New World Order was “necessary” in the post-CME turmoil.

  Drastic measures were put in place to assure the survival of mankind. A 'New World Order' took hold and the 666 was universally mandated. To survive was the prize.

  The enforced implementation of the RFID chip was put in motion. Pockets of employment that slipped under the radar remained for a while. It became increasingly difficult to dodge the chip.

  Employers were required to provide for the implementation of the implant to all their employees, or to verify that prior implementation had occurred.

  Martin had been employed in contract engineering and took a job through an agency in Tempe, Arizona. Though it was a temporary job, it did offer a cloak from the RFID chip implant requirement, at least for the time being. He realized that sooner or later he’d have to pay the piper but not till another day.

  The job was with a particle physics research company
headquartered in Boise Idaho. They were into advanced research, of the secret kind. The agency initiated the reactivation of his security clearance.

  Martin knew nothing about particle physics but as it turned out the prime selling point in his resume was that he was recently 'widowed' and without children or even any living relatives. Apparently they needed someone who presented a low cost profile, someone who could die cheap. They liked the fact that he could also use a hammer, but that was definitely a secondary attribute.

  They sent him through a battery of tests, mainly to determine his state of health and the nature of his genetic make up. At first he thought that they were looking for a prime physical specimen, which he assuredly was not. Realizing that they overlooked that particular deficiency, he finally settled on the reality that his function in this endeavor was somewhat less glamorous than he had imagined. “Lab rat”, as Ned had so eloquently put it, seemed to appropriately encompass the true nature of his job description.

  They were pleased at his ability to endure extended periods of inactivity. Dyslexia was a point in his favor; go figure. The time spans between trips to the toilet were tabulated as were the number of times he chewed his food before swallowing. He passed the body hair density count as well as the hair analysis. He flunked the intellectual focus examine. He passed the elevator music test, intended to measure his immunity to random audio distractions.

  At the end of three weeks of testing Martin was introduced to the project manager. As best as he could figure, the manager’s whitey tighties were in a knot. No one ever saw him smile. He introduced Martin to the team and took him on a tour of the clean room where he would meet his true calling. The clean room housed several projects, each cordoned off and in some cases with partitions. Everyone wore white bunny suits complete with booties, hairnets and even mustache bras when necessary. Some techs wore rubber gloves and facemasks to limit any chance of sneezes contaminating their work.

  The project he would participate in was separated into two sites. The sites were located in opposite corners to maximize the distance. Harold, the project manager, explained that eventually the sites would involve greater and greater separations.

  He was lectured on history of their experiments, starting with Einstein. Harold brought him up to date with recent unpublished discoveries relating to Higgs-Boson particle research.

  His participation in the research involved advance experiments in mass translations from one site to another. There were many experiments focused on the rapid gathering of large databases. It was his part to be the mass of record. The plan didn’t involve him being actually translated. What was supposed to take place was quite something else. The project involved the development of hardware and software designed to translate his bio-definition from one place to another without the lapse of time.

  The mechanism incorporated a phenomenon that had been identified in the roaring 20’s by Albert Einstein. Actually he only acknowledged the authenticity of the demonstration of the phenomenon. He readily acknowledged that he didn’t have a clue. He called it “spooky action at a distance”; a name that has survived the decades.

  He did publish a paper at a later date, but the phenomenon remains a mystery.

  The phenomenon involved the fracturing of a photon and sending identical particles in different directions. I was found that while the particles remained active, that when one was manipulated in some manner, then the twin would demonstrate the same alteration at exactly the same instant. There was no measurable time lapse even though it happened across a significant gap.

  Since then, the experiment has been replicated over greater and greater distances with increasingly larger masses, one of them being an eleven mile separation. It can be demonstrated that the transmission time difference is zero. This is in spite of the accepted speed limit, that being the speed of light.

  In the 60’s, Mr. Higgs, in related research, furthered the cause by theorizing that a key player might be a yet to be discovered particle which they cleverly named the Higgs-Boson particle.

  Because of the strange nature of this apparently mass-less particle, it was also aptly monikered ‘the God Particle’.

  The closer they got to isolating this illusive particle, the more mysterious it seemed. An experiment recently resulted in the suspicion that one of the functions of the particle was to give the proton clusters at the center of atoms the essence of mass; it made things that were unreal appear to be real.

  Some researchers went on record to say that they believed that the particles’ elusive character was actually a supernatural cloaking that would set scientific investigations back to square one every time a break-through was approached. This effectively denied the researchers their due.

  Research continued until the most expensive research tool ever conceived and constructed by man, met its match. During an attempted to probe further into this apparent particle physics keystone, the instrument experienced a catastrophic failure. Besides the apocalyptic disaster that ensued, particle physics faced a major reality check. While much soul searching went on, particle physics research continued in the back room of science.

  A modified instrument of lesser proportion was built on the prairies of Idaho, or more correctly in the prairie. With much reduced attention, the research continued.

  It was in this research that Martin found his means of escape.

  About the time of the required RFID implant, he entered the field as a technical contractor.

  That is where he is today, participating in an experiment that may render him extinct, a more and more acceptable fate in his view.

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