The Teacher

The Teacher: Part II Testament, Chapter 36

CHAPTER 36

ALL AROUND THE WORLD THE NUMBER of Disciple covens grew rapidly. People formerly loyal to other global organized religions were having the same enthusiastic response to the Guardian's gospel. Admittedly, they tended to be younger—less entrenched in the belief system they grew up practicing. Within a year, Disciples became the majority in countries and cities all over the globe, and rose to positions of political and economic power, holding high office and running major companies. From those positions they quickly moved more Disciples in, and mortals out of the institutions and businesses they controlled. Because of this relentless pressure, the number of Christians worldwide was in steady decline.

Realizing their very lives, as well as their ability to practice their faith openly were being threatened, Christians everywhere began retreating underground forming pockets of resistance, fighting back any way they could. The Disciple-controlled media branded them insurgent terrorist traitors in regular nightly broadcasts. Though brave and resourceful, the Christians had no chance. Any time they prayed, or even thought about God an alert surfaced in the telepathic Internet-like network that connected all Disciples, and the Christians were targeted, then, located.

Once captured, they either agreed to convert, or were subjected to having their memories wiped out through a type of psychic surgery, then used as docile slaves or farmed at feeding centers that were springing up in every large city. During this period of rapid growth, the Guardian's Legion was being secretly organized.

With a Disciple now at the head of each nation in the world, except in the Islamic Middle East, the United Nations was easily, and under the guise of a democracy, transformed into a representative body known as the Guardian's Legion. Now a formal political organization, the Legion's action arm, the powerful United Nations Security Council, was empowered to carry out the Guardian's directives. Through cunning and ruthlessness, Holden had risen up the ranks in this now global organization, and was installed as its Secretary General.

Early in the movement, Holden made his reputation by turning in his aunt and uncle for practicing their Christian faith in secret and keeping a Bible hidden in a secret passage behind a false wall up in their attic.

The Legion proceeded to issue an order that in each major city a massive Guardian's Legion complex be constructed—like the Pentagon, to serve as centers for ceremonies, governmental agencies, provide facilities for processing the Christian insurgents, and for setting up feeding centers so that local Disciples could go about their daily business without having to worry where they were going to get their next fix of soul plasma.

In those feeding centers the Christians were kept alive in incubators in a chemically induced coma, and nourished intravenously. Feeding was by appointment only. Something like giving blood, the Disciple would lie down and place a hand through an opening in an incubation chamber leading to the mortal's chest. Because of their passive mental state, simply touching their skin would initiate the transfer of soul plasma.

THE FLOW WAS MONITORED, TIMED, and automatically cut off when a useful dose was taken in to avoid any undue harm to the donor's body. Without energy concerns, and with so many extraordinary powers, a technology never-never land soon evolved as part of a highly advanced world the Disciples were creating. The new Cloud was similar in concept to the one originally developed by forward-thinking companies like Google and Microsoft, to take computing away from the desktop platform and off into digital cyberspace, but the Disciples took the idea way beyond the clouds to the cyber stratosphere.

Before the changes, the Internet had already taken on a life of its own. It could no longer be controlled, or turned off at the whim of any individual government, corporation, or person. Though that was the case, in fact the Internet was still dependent on the millions of individual pieces of hardware—the servers, routers, switches, optical fiber, and other connecting devices that provided the physical pathway needed for the Internet traffic to flow.