How Could You? [Chapter 24]

I've started posting the chapters of Resolution 786. I'll post each successive chapter roughly every 3 or 4 days. Here's Chapter 24:


2083 Anno Domini — the World is finally at peace. Every framework of theological belief enjoys equal reverence. Utopia is the gleeful offspring of the twenty-first century’s Omega Wars, a tumultuous time of manmade and natural upheavals that witnessed the violent rise of fundamentalism in each sect of humankind.
Fundamentalist pawns occupied the seats of most major governments by the middle of the century. Democracy proved only as good as its elective results.

Most historians of the time postulated that the emergence of multiple strands of diametrically opposed fundamentalism would create a cataclysmic clash that would consume civilization. They were wrong. In response to the rise of fundamentalism, secularists militarized their rhetoric, their organization, their abilities, and themselves. It was this clash, the clash between fundamentalism and secularism, that begat the Omega Wars.

A series of armed skirmishes erupted between the two rival factions, lasting a bloody one hundred and eight days and culminating in a nuclear exchange. Three sunrises after the nuclear holocaust, the Sanskrit symbol for Om appeared in cloud formations around the world. The symbol continued to appear and reappear for forty days and forty nights. Combatants, distracted, ceased hostilities. Then a large crucifix appeared and reappeared in the clouds for forty days and nights, followed by the sun symbol for Ra, a meditating Buddha, a pentagram, a Star of David, a compass and square, Ganesh, a crescent and star, and, finally, the All Seeing Eye. Humanity laid down its arms and embraced peace. World Government was created to protect and preserve tranquility. Humankind named this period of global reconciliation “the Age of Aquarius.”

Immediately upon the end of the Omega Wars and at the beginning cusp of the Age of Aquarius, humanity was graced with a more personal dialogue with all the faces of the Lord. One face began to take precedence in that dialogue. Gradually, that face grew more antagonistic towards humanity. Humanity reciprocated. The Seventh World Congress passed Resolution 786, global legislation that forbade the Lord from interfering in human affairs. Using the resolution as a founding premise, World Court initiated legal proceedings against the Lord. The Lord, reacting in anger, refused to answer the court’s charges.

In various conversations, the Lord had revealed that he resided “on the other side of Light.” Einstein postulated that the speed of light was the upper speed limit of the universe. However, by the 2050s, physicists had empirically harnessed tachyons, massless particles of pure energy that travel at superluminal speeds. During the course of a particularly antagonistic exchange with the Lord, World Government secretly showered his voice with a focused beam of tachyons, revealing the lightly flickering shadow of a physical form.

The equations were simple. If energy equals mass times the speed of light squared, or E = mc2, then mass equals energy divided by the speed of light squared, or m = E/c2. World Government did not know the Lord’s mass. But c2, or the speed of light squared, is a constant, so World Government varied the energy, or E, of the tachyon beam until the value of energy divided by the speed of light squared, or E/c2, equaled the unknown mass, or m, of the Lord’s physical form. When the value of E/c2 reached 171 lbs, the Lord’s apparent weight in earth’s gravitational field, the Lord materialized in human form.

He was immediately captured and imprisoned.

It was under the direction and the authority of World Court that Adam Hueghlomm had spent the better part of a sullen, introspective year composing, coordinating, staffing and defending an indictment of the Lord. But then, he had had the time. A year ago, fate had suddenly and callously robbed him of his mother, relieving him of any remaining family obligations. Becca, his perennial and sole source of friendship, affection, affirmation and care, had never asked him for anything more than a good laugh. Circumstances had allowed Hueghlomm to immerse himself in scripture, to investigate legal precedent, and to note and document multiple sources to corroborate the Lord’s alleged infractions of Resolution 786. Now, with the Lord’s capture, World Government would move forward with the tribunal and the inquest.