THE SWORD AND SICKLE

CHAPTER ONE: WHISPERED WORDS

THE SWORD AND SICKLE

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

WHISPERED WORDS

The Secretary of State, Claire McDowell from Missouri, spoke up. "Gentlemen, I know Levi Jackson, and I know he hints about this in his book on Dreams. I would suggest we get him out of hiding and bring him in to help us. He may be an invaluable help to understanding this phenomenon."

Wright interjected, "Good idea. Get him in here so we can control things. Mr. President, how do you feel about bringing this character in?"

Jovian thought for a moment and said, "Can we control him? What if we make the situation worse, and the movement seeks him out? We will be making him a prophet or perhaps a Messiah if the public learns we are turning to him. Government sponsorship of this man might not be the right thing to do. If the public hears of his aid, he could become the most powerful human on Earth, and then where will the government stand?"

Claire replied, "Mr. President, I know Levi and he is very reluctant to start a new religious movement; in fact, it is that fear of starting a new religious movement that has resulted in his social isolation."

"Exactly," said Walter. "We will have a reluctant martyr on our hands, and then we will have lost control of the masses. Who knows what this thing is in space, or if it's nothing more than an alien spacecraft that has come to observe us from a safe distance? We had them in the past, and we managed not to alert the people. Perhaps, it is just monitoring our broadcasts from afar and is using our religious beliefs to frighten us before it comes in and decimates us. We should just present it to the people as mass hysteria and leave it at that. My concern is to keep the scientific community quiet about this object in the sky."

Hammett responded, "We could easily calm the nation about this..." he waves his right hand above his head, "Err...thing, by having NASA state that it is a new moon captured by Jupiter's gravity, and then back it up with the images from the Cassini-2 spacecraft. That should work, and then they won't draw a correlation between the object and this shared auditory dream. Hopefully, this will also calm the rest of the world in different time zones, as we have the only means of getting a close-up picture of it; all we need is another UFO scandal."

Secretary McDowell said, "That is well, Mr. President, but astrologers will draw a connection, as will the Sons and Daughters of Levi; those new-agers, and even some eastern types of religions; plus you have those nuts standing on the corners preaching doomsday, and then we won't have control of the scenario that unfolds. Everyone on Earth heard that message; everyone...even the deaf. The UFO part is just a part of our problem, because that message is an end-of-time message. We need to get out in front of this thing before it runs us over, and we will have riots in every major city. I still make the point that we need Levi, and I think I can convince him to help us. He will calm the people and make a connection with the masses. Who knows what that object will do or say next? We can tell the masses all we want that it is a new moon of Jupiter, but we know better, and we'll need Levi's knowledge to help calm his people. If he is on our side, then we can control him, but if we just leave him out there for some group to seek, or for some redneck to murder, then it is we who will be the worse for it. We haven't had a living American prophet living in America since Joseph Smith. It is your decision, Mr. President, but I believe we must find him; it would help to have a living prophet on our side."