THE CHANGE - CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

PART EIGHTEEN - DECISION TIME / LAST MIRACLE OF THE NIGHT

PART EIGHTEEN

DECISION TIME

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22ND

ECHO COVE INSTITUTE OF INQUIRY

FIFTY-TWO

After getting Martha set up in her new room for the night – no TV, internet, or phone, but a private bath, a fully-stocked mini-fridge, and a super-comfortable bed with many ultra-soft pillows – Dr. Emily James bid her adieus to all and sundry, then made her way back to the cavernous parking garage.

By then, it was almost midnight, and the parking was slimmer by half. Her footsteps had twice the reverberative echo. But at last she was alone.

As was her custom at the end of a long session, she took out her phone and quickly scrolled through the day’s events. With new examples of staggering Change popping up every time you turned around, she knew there’d be a ton to catch up on. And Ambrose didn’t disappoint.

After the morning’s shocking apologies and tears, America’s Pants-Shitter-in-Chief had been mercifully silent. But evidently, the Russian President was more than making up for it with his own brand of paranoid psychosis, threatening nuclear war against pretty much all that lived. No report on what his Conscience might have had to say on Sunday. But hundreds of thousands had taken to the streets of Moscow in protest. Unthinkable last week. Unsurprising today.

On the flip side, the Taliban must have had some sort of profound collective vision overnight. Because suddenly, there were millions of women in Afghanistan peeling off their hijabs, and nobody was firing a shot. Meanwhile, in North Korea, their fearless leader apparently puked up a horned homunculus in mid-military parade, though the images leaked by satellite leaned more gila monster than demon.

In Brazil, the enormous statue of Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado, overlooking Rio de Janeiro, was weeping real tears and bleeding real blood from its great stigmatic soapstone hands. No reports on him getting up off his pedestal and walking around yet. But at this point, she wouldn’t put it past him.

And then there were the thousands who jumped to their deaths, from bridges and buildings and mountains and docks. Unable to roll with such seismic upheavals. Unable to face what they’d become.

But mostly, there were stories of the hundreds of millions who were singing and dancing in celebration of The Change. Attempting to rise to the miraculous occasion. Some of them transforming into miracles themselves.