By Joseph Chieffo
The world witnessed miracles, that week less that day. It saw, and seeing, it felt and shook as it healed with the gentle wave of her hand. It heard, and hearing, it calmed, taking comfort in her sigh as implements of great destruction were neutralized. And it joyfully wept as she smiled, as the fields and the deserts were made lush with bodily sustenance. In world-rounding words she spoke: In forty-two months, if you will allow, I shall offer the world a blueprint for enduring resolution of its innumerable problems and a return to Eden. The many gears that drive this earthly machine – medicine, industry, law, commerce, military might, to name but a few – could be obviated. Insight and understanding, the action of intelligence and the engagement of life, would become preeminent, and knowledge, appropriately, an appendage thereof. Some of you remain dazzled by the machinery, addicted to the power it lends, the pride felt in mastering the movements of its operation, in advancing its evolution and refinement. You continue to cling to it, to defend it, in spite of the many wonders that you have witnessed, and in spite of your belief in the promise and prospect of beauty, bliss, perfection, and eternity; but, I shall not press even one of you to drink that which is bitter to the taste, nor shall I raise, or allow the raising of, a shield in my defense. My life, and hence the life of the world, is in your hands.
And on the seventh day, a crack, rending the very air she breathed and sweetened. For the countless many it was the first frightful sound. For the near and discipled few, deadened to further auditory assault, the world – life itself – was quaked by a single sound: a sickening pop fused with blinding gruesomeness. But in the view of one perversely poetic expert, "There came a report most clarion, an unspoken proclamation that action-at-a-distance had been delivered at a mere thrice the speed of a human cry. Yet this was no 'anti-miracle'; causal law was followed to the letter in the overwhelmingly successful collaboration of an eagle's eye and curled claw and, therewith, a long and slender, thick-walled, steel-gray tube and a gleaming, streamlined metallic slug. Coordinate, harmonious action has left the head of a would-be savior like so many shards of the finest Ming vase.” From the proud masters came breathy sighs of relief, an earthly sign that the machine would trundle on.
July 30th, 2001