Part I
Four thousand six hundred and thirty. 4,630 dead. He watched the news in a stupor as the number cascaded down onto him. The number he was trying desperately to conceive as lives ruined. Then the implications – the families and friends who were irrevocably damaged by this act, this perverted justice – left Dryden Ubeznik surrounded in heavy, repentant thoughts. It was his fault. He felt alone in his guilt, despite Chuck sitting in the armchair that was just adjacent to the sofa he sat on.
For a long time they sat in the din of the news as the projected holographic picture rotated angles of the building, the explosion, and the victims. The holotron replayed it again and again with a variety of experts analyzing the blast and political pundits condemning the radical group that made it well known that it was their masterpiece. Numenicans. The name passed like bile through the lips of every talking head as Global Public Broadcasting (GPB) got their close ups of the familiar religious mark, the head of a snake with an eye in the center of its open maw. The executive vice-president of Omnitech, who was apparently killed before the blast went off, had not only suffered burn and concussion wounds, but the Numenicans had seared the mark onto each eye.
“What are we going to do?” asked Chuck, sobering up the moment.
Dryden couldn’t think of anything. He drew back the corners of his lips and shifted in his seat uncomfortably.
“Dryden?”
“I don’t know. I can’t believe they did this. I knew Derek would lead those lemmings of his like this, and I told him too! I told him to think in the long-term, and what would really bring genuine understanding about. He must have thought this was the answer. This will set us back… a lot.” Dryden stared as the GPB reporter spoke in front of uniformed people pulling charred bodies from out of the debris of the Omnitech corporate headquarters.
“I never thought you meant to do anything like this. I mean, of course we didn’t.” He reached for the words. “I never did quite get how someone like Derek could take the good message in Numenism, and then taint it for this, like this will solve anything. There are only, like, 200 of us who actually do anything, right? You know, not including the laity.”
“Around there.”
“And now this’ll split us almost down the middle,” Chuck remarked with striking sullenness as he realized the consequences for this that would personally affect him.
“Well, I want to believe I can bring us back together, but after this, it might be impossible.”
“What do you mean?”
“Unless we want everything we’ve worked for to be put at risk, we need to make a political stand.”
“Oh…. And what does that mean, exactly?”
“It means I need to go public with our movement beyond speeches on the street, and use the very media that we have been grappling with,” Dryden spoke deliberately and seemed to be planning even as he answered the question.
“You really think they’ll let you after all the times you’ve criticized them? Like when you said how the GPB was stifling individuality, personal growth, and truth through its, uh, focus on wealth as its main motivation. And that it was doing things not to better anyone in any way, but rather reveled only in its power to sway the masses for the sake of… well… money.”
“Yes, yes, that’s the speech. And how the power of the Greater Spirit, Numen, emphasizes truth for the sake of true understanding and happiness. I really believe in that too, and because I believe in Numen, I think they’ll let us on if we tell them honestly how it is.”
“I’m not real sure about that. Derek never….” He stopped himself glancing to Dryden with a guilty look on his face.
“Yes, Derek never thought they would. He thought the executives of this country were so consumed by greed that they were unreachable to true understanding. But don’t you see how killing them, like what he just did today, will only burn any sort of bridge we’ve been feebly building to create a real understanding with these people? How can anyone be saved if they stop listening, if the public stops listening and thinks we’re just death mongers?”
“I…. Yeah, you’re right,” Chuck resigned, but he still struggled with the idea of Dryden, his teacher and mentor – the man who really brought back the message of Numen, universal understanding and brotherhood, to the spiritually starved people of this country, Evanesca – having to ask the officials in GBP for airtime when he was more than likely already one of the suspects to be brought in for questioning concerning the bombing.
As they were speaking, a picture of Dryden and Derek eclipsed the reporter on the holotron. The reporter, an attractive woman in her twenties, began to characterize the two of these men as the leaders of the Numenican movement, a popular movement that had been coming to a head for a while now, and it has finally turned toward violence. The two of them sat and watched it for only a moment before Chuck shook his head in disbelief.
“This is obscene. You had nothing to do with this!” Chuck exclaimed, looking to Dryden sympathetically.
Dryden stayed quiet for a bit, a thoughtful frown pulling down on his lips. “I did teach Derek.”
“That doesn’t make it your fault.”
Dryden held his silence.
“Listen to me! His impatience isn’t your fault. He made his own decision, and so did everyone who followed him.”
His brow knit in disappointment and sorrow. He nodded. “You’re right. Now I have to go try to save our cause and save face.”
Part II
Dryden cleared his throat in anticipation as he watched a spokesman from the GBP introduce him. Surprisingly, they agreed to give him a place outdoors with an audience to deliver his speech. Unbeknownst to him, though, there was a well thought out reason for this.
After smiling kindly to the man who introduced him, he walked up to the podium and placed his tired, worn hands onto the sides of it, gripping it. He took a deep breath and transcended all his doubts and fears. His beliefs, values, and faith in a Greater Spirit held him steadfast. He knew what this chance meant to him.
The massive audience cluttered the center-square of the metropolis, Razon. The screens and holographic icons of advertising that would normally be spurting out their slogans were shut off for the time being. There was peace, for a moment.
“People of Razon, of Evanesca, of the world, I come before you humbly to deny any sort of involvement in the terrible incident at the Omnitech headquarters. As many of you know, there are radical groups within any religion. It is a sad inevitability, but that is not an excuse. I condemn those actions as counter-productive in every way to what we Numenicans are truly trying to achieve.”
This drift from the scripted apology unnerved the introducer and his last line was undoubtedly going to segue into a more Numenican-based message. Pangs of anxiety thumped in his chest, but there was little he could do now. His superiors would not like this.
“Many of you have heard the message of Numen, and many have not. This message goes beyond religion. It goes beyond advertisements. It goes beyond me. And it goes beyond this lifetime. There is more to life than the possessions you own, and you know this, you feel this, but we do not live it. The message of the Greater Spirit is really to live in the essence of truth, beauty, friendship, love…” he pauses, tilting his head downward. “It’s connectedness. It’s the reason why you do something, and it has no end point. It never goes on sale. It cannot be bought because you already have it. We have it. It never changes because humans have always needed and felt this emotion and experience of connectedness as holy.
“This connection is the love of your children, the love of your wife, and your close uncompromising friendships. This is Numen. Not your things at home, not your style, and not the appearances in life.”
The introducer anxiously buzzed his superior, the man who orchestrated the event, as Dryden kept going.
“Sir, he is going far off topic and preaching Numenicanism,” the introducer hissed into the phone clipped to his collar.
“Don’t worry, contingency plans have been made and will now be set into motion,” he replied coolly, expectantly.
The introducer was dumbfounded for a moment, “Alright, sir.”
Dryden suddenly fell silent, then back onto the stage. A bead of a hole was barely visible on his forehead as it began to gush blood down over his eyes while he lay motionless on stage.
The ensuing silence humbled everyone. Nothing could be said that was not felt by everyone.