The Religion War (18 page)

Al-Zee's bodyguards had given up trying their phones and Internet connections. But they kept the television on, watching nothing but local news, filled with guesses and speculations about what was happening in the outside world.

At first, most of the world thought there was nothing more worrisome than a communications network problem. They had experienced network outages before, and this seemed similar. After a few hours, some of the older guys dusted off their ham radios, antiques but still workable. They were showing off, as if to say the old ways are better, tongue in cheek. It was fun to find a friendly voice in other ham operators who had the same idea. They gossiped and introduced themselves andjoked.

Then they heard from San Francisco. Now it wasn't a game. The ham operators spread the word over long distances, and people spread the word over the short distances.There was panic. The war was on. Everyone knew that this was the big one, that there was no hiding. The looting began immediately. The shooting started soon after, as virtually all adults owned a legal firearm. Would there ever be food again? The grocery stores were hit first, their shelves cleaned by armed neighbors, who in turn were shot by other neighbors for what they had looted. All commerce and traffic stopped. The rule of law evaporated. Civilization in San Francisco dissolved.

Mackey could feel the first choke of al-Zee's deadly gas in his lungs. It had a sickeningly sweet odor. He could feel some stiffness in his extremities that he assumed was the first sign of a complete body lockup. He tapped on his keyboard to free up a program he'd been working on for years, mostly for his own amusement, because it could never be used without riskingjail. He had named it the Giver-of-Data program, or GoD for short, because he liked the name. The GoD program snapped to the screen. Mackey checked the boxes labeled "Self-recovery," "Universal," and "Permanent." He laughed as he clicked Execute, and the laugh turned into a cough.

Mackey was the prime architect and keeper of the most comprehensive database on Earth. It knew where people lived, what they bought, what they liked and didn't like, how much they were worth, their medical histories, their families, their friends, their legal and criminal records, a thousand other things, and— most important at the moment—their phone numbers. GoD was like a central nervous system that connected all of the data in the world to all of the phones of the world, a superset of the Universal Phone Directory that Cruz had ordered disabled. GoD spread like a virus, attacking the networks of the telephone companies, all of which had connections to GIC, to which they were required by law to feed their information daily. Once inside the phone companies, GoD overrode their internal directories and pointed to the GIC database for user information. In a matter of minutes, all phones on Earth became unfiltered. Anyone could call anyone. The virus was unstoppable. It reproduced itself and hid copies. It changed its shape and size and characteristics on the fly, making it impossible to identify or capture. It was everywhere. It owned the network. Once unleashed, the program wasn't a physical thing; it was a concept that could not be undone.

Mackey tried to dial his phone, to reach his parents, but his fingers weren't responding well. It was a struggle to press the last few keys. His eyes became unfocused, and his breathing was shallow. His mother's voice came on the line.

"Hello?"

"I love you," he said, then closed his eyes forever.

"
Do
you know why God spared me and killed the old man, Waters?" asked Cruz, perched on the side of the hospital bed. Waters just looked at him. "Because I'm
right.
God wants me to finish the job, to rid the world of al-Zee and his misguided followers. God did this same thing once before, with Noah. Sometimes you have to clean the barn and start over." Cruz stood and walked over to the Avatar's lifeless body. "This is the part of the barn that God didn't need—the stuff on the ground, if you know what I mean. I'll shovel it out and start over. That's why he picked me, Waters. I know what God wants. Before today I admit that I had some doubts about my plan to eliminate al-Zee's people, but God could have changed that plan today if he wanted. I could be the one with the bullet in my heart instead of this little flesh wound. God is telling me I'm on the right track."

Stacey shuffled down the hallway away from the hospital area. She had lost her only friend inside H2, and she couldn't reach her husband, Mike, on the outside. He was either dead or soon to be. In the next few days, most of civilization would be eliminated. There was no turning back. For the first time in her life, she was out of optimism. Then her phone vibrated.The caller ID showed "Unknown." She considered not answering it, thinking it was a phantom ring. "Hello?" she said, barely able to voice the word.

"It's Mike. I'm inside H-Two. Where are you?"

"Mike! I thought you didn't make it."

"I talked my way in. I said I knew you. Can you believe that crap? They only let me in because the guards were regulars at your restaurant and you comped their meal one day. They actually remembered that. Where are you?"

"Let me find one of those 'you are here' maps and I'll tell you in a minute."

"I wonder why the phones are working now," said Mike.

"Look at him, Waters," said Cruz, over the Avatar's body. "These machines are keeping his body from rotting, but he's dead. Is he in hell yet, I wonder? Do you go to hell for trying to subvert God's will? He wanted peace, but if God wants war, how can that go unpunished?"

The doctor in attendance tried to ignore what he was overhearing. Waters couldn't look at Cruz.The pounding in his head was increasing. It felt like a dam ready to burst. The sound of Cruz's voice was making it worse.

"It's the weak that die.The undeserving.The unbelievers. God had no need for him. Maybe hell will have a place. Bad things happen to people for a reason, Waters. He did something to piss off God, that's for sure. He looked innocent, but people die for a reason. It's part of the plan."

The dark-haired doctor had heard enough. "Bad things don't happen for a reason.Theyjust happen," he said.

Cruz turned on the doctor. "That's what sinners say, Doc. By now my forces have cut offthe major roads out of al-Zee's territory and grounded their air travel. No one gets in or out ever again. And in the next few days, I'll start stomping those rag-wearing bastards like an elephant on an anthill. There
is
a reason. Every one of them picked the wrong religion. They offended God, and God picked me to set things right."

"Most are children," the doctor replied. "What have
they
done?"

"They got born to the wrong parents, that's what. Maybe they had no choice, but they're wrong, and they'll grow up to stay wrong unless I stop it now. This is my time. It ends here. God's glory begins today!"

The catastrophe of noise in Waters' head had turned into a rhythm, a pattern, more curious than painful. It was soothing now, almost musical. His vision cleared, and he saw Cruz differently: hideous, evil, and almost serpentine.

The lights dimmed briefly and phones began to vibrate everywhere. Mackey's virus had finished its work. For the first time in decades, anyone could call anyone else. And they did, massively, spontaneously .They called loved ones and friends, business associates and schoolmates, then strangers. They just dialed randomly and talked to whoever answered, no matter the language difference. Mackey's program linked voice recognition databases with language translators. All conversation arrived in the listener's native language no matter how it was spoken.

Stacey and her husband huddled together in the hallway of H2, calling people to tell them they were okay .They soon discovered they didn't need phone numbers. The network had voice recognition, and it knew everything about everyone. You could ask for your "brother Bob" and it knew who that was.

"Yeah, pretty screwed up," said Stacey to her business partner, who was at his private island. "The funny thing is that both sides think God is on their side. I mean, not funny
that
way, but you know. Even worse, what if God actually
was
on your side? You'd be on the dumb team."

"How can you say God is dumb?" asked Stacey's business partner. "Maybe you just don't understand what he wants."

"Let me put it this way. Let's say God designed you. He's all-powerful, right, so he can design you to be
any way
he wants."

"Right."

"So, here's my question: If God is so smart, why do you fart?"

The business partner was silent for a moment, absorbing the concept. Then he laughed. "I have to call someone and use that line. Do you mind if I say I thought of it?"

"It's all yours, goober."

"Don't call me goober."

"Whatever.Who are you going to call?"

"I have a minister friend. We're always arguing about this stuff. I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with your point, but I don't see it."

"Don't hurt yourself trying. By the way, I'm glad you didn't die yet."

"Same right back at you."

The bullet tore through General Cruz's skull and lodged itself in the hospital wall. Waters watched the general's body crumple at the feet of the dark-haired doctor.

"I found a donor,"Waters said, bolstering his weapon. The doctor stared in horror. "How will you explain—?" "That's my problem," said Waters.
"Your
problem is on that table."

"The old man is brain-dead.There's no hope."

"I'm not so sure," said Waters, helping the doctor lift Cruz's body to an operating table. "He doesn't think like us."

Years later, historians disagreed about why the war suddenly ended. There was no surrender, no victory, just a universal and abrupt shift in motivation. Both sides lost their reason to fight. Most scholars pointed to Cruz's death as a turning point, speculating that the loss of leadership changed everything. Others pointed out that the fighting had mostly stopped before anyone knew Cruz was dead.

The young deliveryman listened intently as the Avatar explained what happened during the dark days of the Religion War. The Avatar rocked gently in his wooden chair, speaking softly, his borrowed heart nearing its limits. The fireplace light played on his ancient features while a tattered red plaid blanket warmed his legs. At times the young man didn't believe what he was hearing. Other times he had goose bumps and felt electricity throughout his body. He had delivered his package and it was time to leave, but he couldn't. He belonged in this room, this house. It was his time to listen and learn.

The Avatar explained that after all terror attacks ended, the GIC database found a new purpose. People loved the fact that Mackey's program allowed anyone on Earth to call anyone else.

Ideas and knowledge flowed continuously and freely. Anything known by one person was available to all. People observed the results of their actions, and they fed that knowledge back to the whole, thus changing the collective consciousness. It was later discovered that Mackey's program would destroy all calling history records as soon as they were created, ensuring total privacy.

"Is that why our phone calls don't cost us anything?" asked the young man.

The Avatar confirmed that the best minds in the telecommunications industry had tried to stop Mackey's program, to limit its obsession with privacy at least enough so they would know whom to bill. It was too late. Mackey's program had no physical form, changing by the minute, like a benevolent spirit in the hardware. No one ever learned how Mackey had created such a program. It seemed to be based not on rules, like all code before it, but on morality. It had a sense of right and wrong, and it seemed to learn. It developed preferences, and it devoured any code that opposed it. It was Mackey's preferences, disembodied, permanent.

Eventually, governments funded all communications costs because there was no way to identify how much of the network any particular customer was using. In time, people wondered how the world had ever tolerated limits on communication.The days of restricted communication were viewed as the darkest period in human history, when people had more technical ability than awareness.

The major religions changed after the war. "Modernized" was the word most often used for the disintegration of primitive beliefs.The free flow of ideas caused dangerous religious thoughts to perish under the weight of common sense. Most notably, the idea that God was limited by a human personality, with human wants, and human intelligence, evaporated. Now the mental health profession handled people who believed that God was talking to them directly; the voting public never got a chance to elect such people, whether they were charismatic or not. Religions came to be seen as traditions that lent flavor to holidays and encouraged good behavior, nothing more.

The public didn't know who said it first, but it was the most powerful question in human history. In nine words it overturned centuries of tortured logic and magical thinking. It pushed superstition into a cage and gave common sense room to maneuver. The cause of the Religion War sprung from one colossal religious misunderstanding: that God
thinks like humans,
except smarter, and that we humans can comprehend his intent. That crippling misunderstanding was swept away in a single wave of clarity.The question was translated into thousands of languages, published billions of times. In English it was "If God is so smart, why do you fart?"

Every living person knew the question and remembered where they first heard it. It put everything in perspective, cutting across age, education, and background. Until that day, the world was held hostage by an imagined supernatural being who had the curious qualities of being all-powerful, yet being unable or unwilling to make an odor-free human. That absurdity and a thousand similar ones had been accepted as harmless truths until the Religion War made it clear that unbridled superstition would destroy civilization. The system of human ideas had frozen. It needed to be cleared and restarted.When Mackey's GoD program removed the government filters from the worldwide phone network, the nine-word question swept across civilization in a matter of hours. Everyone who heard it felt the need to repeat it to someone close, someone who would listen. The question spread from person to person along unbroken chains of influence, until every role model and mentor had spoken with every person in his or her sphere.