The Mayan Resurrection (40 page)

Small waves lap relentlessly upon the deserted beach, tickling Samuel Agler’s bare feet. He stares out at the dark ocean, its wave tops illuminated by the reflection of the three-quarter moon.

The sound of the surf soothes his restless soul.

‘Thought I’d find you out here.’

Sam turns to face his surrogate father. Gene Agler is in his late fifties, his curly black hair graying around his ears, his six-foot frame stooping at the shoulders.

‘Mind if I join you?’

Sam pats the sand next to him.

‘You feeling okay?’

‘Guess so.’

‘Everything all right between you and Lauren?’

‘Fine.’ Sam watches a hermit crab scamper up the beach. ‘My real mother … she’s in town. She wants me to travel with her tomorrow.’

‘I know. She called me last week.’

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

‘Didn’t think it was my place.’

‘It’s not right what she does, waltzing in unannounced, turning my life inside out.’

Gene picks up a fragment of shell and tosses it at an incoming wave. ‘Try to understand, it’s been very hard for her. She’s led a lonely life.’

Sam lies back on his elbows, the sound of surf deadening in his ears. ‘Dad … I’m thinking about quitting football.’

‘Well, now that is a pretty big decision. What brought this on?’

‘My teammates. They think I’m sandbagging it.’

‘Maybe you’ve spoiled them.’

‘Selfish bastards … all they care about is themselves. These guys’re supposed to be my friends.’

‘There are all sorts of friends. Some inoculate us against pain, others walk out the minute there’s trouble. It doesn’t necessarily make them bad people, it just means they were probably never really good friends to begin with.’

Sam gazes at the stars. Says nothing.

‘Are you thinking about turning pro, or are you intending on quitting football altogether?’

‘Quitting, I guess.’ The stars blur. Sam pinches away tears. ‘It’s … complicated. I … I don’t think I can compete at the same level anymore.’

‘Because of one off game?’

‘Dad, I can’t … I just can’t do it anymore.’

‘Well, you know what? I’m glad.’

‘You are?’

‘Sure. For someone sitting on top of the world, you don’t seem very happy.’

‘They’ll label me a quitter.’

‘Who cares? As long as you know it’s not true.’

‘A lot of people will be very upset.’

‘Yes, the world will certainly be disappointed, but the sun should still rise, and the birds will still sing, so how bad can it be?’

‘I feel like I’m letting everyone down. Maybe I should just suck it up and deal with it?’

‘Maybe it’s time you asked yourself why you’re playing football?’

Sam looks up. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Do you remember Rabbi Steinberg’s sermon on
Tikkun Olam
and
Tikkun Midot
?’

‘Not really.’ Sam grins. ‘Sorry. Guess I didn’t make a very good Jew either, huh?’

Gene ignores the remark. ‘
Tikkun Olam
means to mend the outside world.
Tikkun Midot
deals with acts of internal healing.
Tikkun Midot
is a self-awareness that enables you to reach beyond the natural and instinctive, past the reflexive and knee-jerk responses, in order to refine the soul. It means we have recognized the need to turn our lives in a better direction.’

‘I thought I was going in the right direction.’

‘Success and prosperity doesn’t necessarily equate to living a good life. Something’s obviously bothering you about your future. Whether you choose to play football or not should be your decision, not your peers’. You can’t allow your friends to make their agenda yours. I think Philip Roth expressed it best when he wrote, “The human stain that touches all that we do is inescapable.” Do you understand?’

‘All but that last part.’

‘What Roth was saying is that placing great faith in human beings is not only impossible, it’s downright foolish. Everything we touch as humans is stained. Roth saw modern man falling into the same rut as Abraham—creating and serving lesser gods—false idols that neither redeem nor save us.’

‘What does any of that have to do with me?’

‘Think about it, Samuel. Look at what you’ve become. You were born the false idol, a mythical twin worshiped by the masses. You successfully escaped to a different identity, but like some insecure Hollywood actor, you still covet the spotlight. It’s like you’re afraid to let go, afraid to disappoint. None of this attention is real, son. Fame is fleeting. The only thing that counts is what’s on the inside.’

Gene looks up at the moon. ‘You know, I’ll never forget the night you and your brother were born. Such a crazy time. Sylvia and I watched the whole thing on TV. There must have been ten thousand people surrounding the hospital. Rabbi Steinberg told me the air literally seemed charged with electricity. And everyone inside—the doctors and nurses, President Chaney, all those nosey reporters and the armed
guards—all were anticipating this wondrous miracle. Your poor mother, she was exhausted and in pain, but she hung in there, refusing any drugs … so afraid it might affect the birth. Anyway, the blessed event happened, and they finally showed footage of your mother holding you in her arms. I remember looking at you, so innocent, wrapped up in that tiny blanket, and I thought to myself—this is a special child, a gift from God, but from here on out, it’s downhill all the way. Because how on Earth could any child, or any adult for that matter, live up to the expectations humanity seemed to be placing on you and your brother?’

Sam sits up. ‘It always played with Jake’s head—all those crazy expectations. I think he was trying to become something everyone wanted him to be. Somewhere along the line, he just lost it mentally.’

‘And isn’t that the reason you wanted out of that life, to escape all that craziness?’

‘Yes.’

‘Looks to me like you jumped from the frying pan into the fire. Samuel “the Mule” Agler—everyone’s all-American hero. To do
Tikkun Midot
means to overcome our less worthy instincts, not to succumb to peer pressure.’

Gene Agler stands, brushing away the sand. ‘When I was eleven, two boys at school beat me up pretty bad, just because I was Jewish. For a long time after that I remember feeling ashamed of who I was. One afternoon my father gave me a card and inside was a poem.
“Be your own soul, learn to live; And if some men hate you, take no heed. If some men curse you, take no care. Sing your song, dream your dream, hope your hope, pray your prayer.” ’

‘Whatever you decide, Samuel, do what’s best for you. Do what’s best … for your soul.’

Jacob?

Are you out there, son?

If you are there, I have no way of knowing.

The Abomination has blanketed my senses, shielding your thought energy from me. While I cannot hear you, I pray you might still hear me in the hopes that my experiences on
Xibalba
can protect you.

At one time we spoke of love. It’s important you understand the power of the emotion, and how its absence can taint the soul.

As Michael Gabriel, I had lived an existence devoid of happiness—a lonely childhood, followed by a bitter adolescence. I was life’s victim, my later years spent in isolation in a mental asylum. Even those precious few moments spent with your mother were fleeting, the pain of her loss filling me with an angst I cannot put in words or thoughts.

Was it mere coincidence that the Guardian arranged a shared existence with the Mars colonist, Bill Raby—himself filled with an emptiness as bad, if not worse than my own? No, I no longer believe in coincidences.

But it was not just Bill Raby who experienced this heaviness of heart, nearly every colonist marooned on
Xibalba
shared the same unspoken feeling. It was a feeling of shame, of survivor’s guilt, magnified beyond the scope of human despair.

Nine billion people on Earth had perished so that a chosen few could survive. Many of us had ‘conspired with the Devil,’ meaning we
had been selected for Mars Colony based neither by lottery nor merit, but by political affiliation, by favoritism and ethnic background. We survived because of who we knew and how much money we had so that we could manipulate the selection process.

Now, marooned on
Xibalba,
the immorality of our affairs was tearing us apart inside.

Not all of us, I should say. Your cousin, Lilith, and her son, Devlin, along with their ‘coven’ of friends, seemed quite content with our bizarre predicament.

The rest of us, however, were left to wallow in our existence. ‘Live for those who died,’ became our creed. And so we faked our joy, pretending the whole affair back on Earth was just a test of survival.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily … life is but a dream.

Was Bill Raby’s existence but a dream?

Was Michael Gabriel’s? Can one truly exist without love?

Yes, but it is a self-imposed hell.

It was your love that saved me, Jacob, but in your unselfish quest to release me, I fear you have condemned your soul to the same purgatory, the same ultimate destiny.

You cannot simply be Hunahpu, you must retain your humanity. Step into the real light. Allow yourself to love again, or you will find yourself on the same path as your cousin, Lilith.

Having said what I needed to say, I’ll return to my journey on
Xibalba.

Each of the alien planet’s days was divided into three shifts consisting of labor for the collective, personal time, and more labor, for it was essential to our existence that our first crop yield a bountiful harvest.

During these first six months, I was assigned to a habitat shared by seventy-eight single men and women.

It was there that I met Jude.

Judith Fields was a fellow genetics expert whose specialty was in agriculture. Using the surviving portions of our gene bank, she and her colleagues had begun the process of cloning livestock for New Eden’s farms.

Jude was a country girl, originally from Idaho, with long brown hair, hazel eyes, and a great sense of humor. It was Jude who made me feel again, and over the months, our puppy love blossomed into a strong bond. I found myself, or was it Bill, thinking about her constantly. Whoever it was, our time together was one of great happiness that, at least for the moment, sweetened both our souls.

Jude introduced me to Tan Rashid, an astronomer, originally from England, who entertained us with his ‘theories’ regarding the location of our new home world. You see, despite his computers and star charts, despite his infinite knowledge of the heavens, Tan simply could not discern the location of our planet. Was the distant red supergiant Betelgeuse? If so, none of the other constellations were familiar. Seeking answers, he and his fellow astronomers set to work on building
Xibalba
’s first telescope.

As for me, my alter ego—Bill Raby—was a marine geneticist. Since there was little we could do to contribute on an alien planet devoid of oceans, we were assigned to the geology department.

Drone scouts gave us the ability to map New Eden’s entire domed landscape, which spanned nearly 3 million square miles, making it roughly the equivalent of Australia. Engineers determined our floating continent had been built in sections over eons. With its temperate climate control systems and agricultural pods, which we still could not
access, they estimated New Eden could house and feed more than 2 billion human beings.

Located twenty feet below the habitat’s rich layer of soil was an inaccessible subterranean chamber, its alien carbon fiber plating composed of the same composite materials used in the dwellings. Within this sealed level, we theorized, had to be the environmental systems that perpetually purified the cloud city’s air and water, fertilized the plant life, and controlled the dome’s shielding mechanism.

The first crop was a bountiful success, and the future of our colony and our species seemed secure.

Two weeks later, the plague struck.

The human body is an amazing and complex machine. There are over a hundred thousand different genes in the human genome, and one single gene may contain more than 2 million nucleotides. Our bony framework consists of 206 bones, most of which are in our hands and feet. Our heart and lungs are the power trains behind a circulatory system that supplies muscles and organs with blood, oxygen, and nutrients, all the while removing carbon dioxide and other waste products. Our nervous system and hormones control bodily functions. Our digestive and reproductive systems are marvels of engineering, our brains more complicated than any computer. In fact, the human body is akin to a combustion engine, producing the same amount of energy as a hundred-watt lightbulb.