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  “My dear ’Toni. How can you be so blind? We treat them the same way.”

  “What do you mean, ’Bel?”

  “Let them be blessed like I said so that they lose the edge and sharpness of their beliefs. Also cause them to stumble morally then accuse them of not being able to honour Y’shua, and that they are no better than anyone else. Wear them down with discouragement. Make them think that the way of love and sacrifice is phoney, that Y’shua does not really help them. And sow seeds in the population to cause them to be despised. For instance generate stories that Israel’s wealth has come from exploiting others. Hold these things back from action until it is all ready. They must first be softened in their morals and values by seductions, allurements, sensual and intellectual pleasures.”

  Chou Yi was quite different in approach, even if he and Antoni had the same personal ambitions for power. He too was married, but totally faithful to his wife and although he treated her well, he never confided with her in his schemes and ambitions. He was a loving father and husband at home in the old Chinese patriarchal sense. His real ambitions and the truth of his nature were acted out with a small group of his inner council. Yet even with his most trusted advisors, he would play mind games – favouring one for a while then another; being pleasant and affable one moment and angry and vindictive another. He also ensured that they all had much wealth, much power and therefore much to lose if they fell out with him.

  Chou Yi too was discussing how Israel could be removed from the world scene. To him Israel as a nation seemed to somehow, even unconsciously, point out that there may be a right direction for nations to go, and that El was real and perhaps even necessary to ensure prosperity. Besides, belief in this Y’shua threatened his control of the empire. About ten percent of the populations under his control gave allegiance to Y’shua which meant that he did not command their absolute loyalty – and this irked him greatly. He might seethe inside, but Chou Yi never showed his feelings, and always maintained a strict self discipline. Even his anger was part of his calculation to keep power and control.

  “How are we to handle this situation about Israel with Antoni?” he asked Wang Zhu his chief confidant. “I don’t trust him or like him, but he may be useful for our purposes. Besides, if I can conquer him I will rule the first total world empire. And your own power will increase too, Wang!”

  “Israel is useful to us at present. Whatever we do we must not lose the skills she has but somehow make them our own. Then destroy her!

  “What I suggest is to encourage Antoni to invade Israel and cause an outbreak of persecution there. We will however offer political asylum and safe sanctuary to Israeli refugees – especially their scientists and agriculturists – and anyone else who may help.”

  “But won’t that increase the numbers of the followers of Y’shua in our land?”

  “Remember your predecessor Mao Tse Tung? He once said, ‘Let a thousand blossoms flower’, or something like that. What he meant was to provide a period for people to openly live their beliefs. That will expose them and they will be plainly known to us. This will especially include Israeli refugees with skills – if you catch my drift. When our people have learned the skills we then start to eliminate the Y’shua followers from our midst. And this will be easier because we would, by that stage, know who they are. At present they meet in secret and melt into society like salt in water”

  “What can I say Wang! I’ll keep your ideas in mind.” Chou Yi replied.

  He would rarely give a clear affirmation to any underling, preferring instead to keep a deliberate vagueness that may prove useful at a later stage.

  Chapter 12

  Development

  The virtual world

  The stage was being set for the plans of Chou Yi and Antoni to be implemented.

  Although both had considerable skill in deceit and political intrigue, Antoni Meshiac seemed to have a charmed success and a great charisma that enabled him to hold sway over peoples. Even his bitterest enemies would be seduced by his presence and convinced that he was genuine. He could be likeable and even those plotting against him would somehow enjoy his company. Those who sought to do good found themselves confused in his presence. Those who felt insecure would be drawn to his seeming certainty that utopia was near and that he would care for them.

  It was not known among the v-people that Antoni had an almost direct contact with Lucas. Even Antoni did not know him by that name but referred to him as ‘his god of power’. Antoni would make gift offerings to this entity and vow allegiance in return for power, control and success in his ventures. This ‘occult’ activity effectively made Antoni a slave of the machinations of Lucas himself.

  To effect his plans more securely, Antoni needed to develop a greater loyalty of following and what better way than to elevate himself to some kind of divine status. After all, he thought, had not some of the old Roman Emperors, and also the historical Kim Il Sung of Korea and his Juche philosophical religion done something similar? If that could be achieved, and if he could gain some following of people in other countries, then he would have legitimacy to intervene wherever he felt the need. He might even have better intelligence and informants!

  Antoni called one of his advisers; a man called Aaron Nawkish, and discussed the idea. Aaron was of Israeli descent but became disillusioned with following Y’shua and his requirement to live humbly, love mercy and be forgiving. He renounced his early beliefs and sided with what he called The Great Power. Aaron had a natural religious inclination and enjoyed the performance of rituals that held the masses in thrall. He had a love of power also, but his was the power that came with knowledge and behind-the-scene influence.

  “I believe that this would work, Antoni,” he said finally, “but who would you make high priest?”

  “You of course, and don’t tell me you weren’t expecting it. I now want you to go and plan out the detail. The new religion must be acceptable to the people, it must appear attractive and good, it must have a sound philosophy based on apparently sound premises and it must have an intangible spiritual dimension and sense of mystery that can be used to draw other power-hungry acolytes.”

  “I think I can do that. In fact I had been thinking along similar lines myself,” Aaron replied. “I will outline the basic tenets.

  “First it will, not unlike the Juche philosophy, have as its basis that the potential within all men and women is the power and ability to be like what we call the Great Power or even El. Those are innate abilities that only need to be tapped in the right way to be released. Therefore every human being can achieve his dream, and collectively there is nothing that we cannot do. From these inner places is all the knowledge and wisdom we need. Great teachers in the past have shown us the way.

  “Secondly I will organise a college or monastery to train leaders in the religious practices that will, according to our teaching, lead to the enlightenment and self actualisation that is the goal. We will emphasise good of course, but only real power will be released to a selected few. We will have oaths and bondages formed from the very words they speak and endorse at the rituals. There are some genuine spiritual things I know how to make happen and these will be used to keep everything seemingly real – even to those who will spend years working hard at these things and yet never arrive. We will give a shekel and take a mina, give a cent and take a dollar.

  “Next we will make these teachings compulsory and that is where you come in Antoni. As high priest and one knowing the mysteries I will be able to pronounce that you are the embodiment of the Great Power and that allegiance is to be to you as part of the process for spiritual and material advancement.”

  “You are well aware to ensure that your power is subservient to mine in all this I take it?”

  “Of course! That is why at the right time the announcement will be made that you are the appointed one of the Great Power which we will say is the same as El. We will not get a better hold on the people than this.”

  “The
re will be some who see through all this, you cunning fox, Aaron. Anyway what are you going to call this religion?”

  “I suggest we call it Nimrah.”

  “I see your Israeli roots still coming through Aaron. It means clear water does it not?”

  “Yes and it sounds close to our famous ancestor Nimrod. I have a liking for him even though I know little about him. He was able to get the people of the then world together to start a religion so I thought ...”

  “Enough! That will do. You are to proceed with setting this up. Ensure that there is enough detail to satisfy scholars and enough vagueness to cause endless debates among the learned. But make sure that you do not leave it too long before you recognise me as the ‘embodiment of the Great Power behind Nimrah’.”

  The real world

  “What a brilliant coup Lucas. You now have within the v-world unassailable personalities totally under your control and influence and they don’t even know it. Each one thinks that they themselves possess and control what they call the spiritual powers they use – little knowing that it is us who are playing with them to keep the delusion. And they all have a fear of missing the mark in the full knowledge that this Great Power they talk of is ruthless with those who do not meet his requirements.” These words were spoken by one of the inner circle of Lucas’ team.

  “Yes. I am pleased too. I believe that it represents closely the future direction of human kind and now that we can speed up the cause-effect series in the virtual world we will be able anticipate the moves of Eli and get the upper hand. I think we have it our court now gentlemen.”

  “Eli, see what Lucas has done with the project! He has gained almost total control of specific v-people who are now powerful enough to control the whole virtual world that we have created. Does this really represent the direction our own real world is going to go?” It was Anna MacDonald, the chief advisor on the project relationship programming who exclaimed what all those present with Eli had been thinking.

  “Yeah. What are you going to do about this Eli? We’ve been loyal to your instructions and authority and now Lucas is setting himself up to control the whole thing and with it he exploits the world for his own gain. You have to stop what’s happening.”

  “That’s right Eli. Give up this quest you have to have v-people accepting your Y’shua and then planning that they will become like us. This has become an obsession of yours that is now endangering the whole project. We have learned enough. Let’s abandon it now before it is too late. We can always re-create the next version and put in better controls.”

  The clamour was increasing and still Eli did not speak. He waited until each one who had something to say had finished and he listened. Finally Eli’s patience and calmness quietened the team.

  “Slow down,” he said. “I want you all to look carefully at what is actually happening. The scenes you see in the virtual world we have created are a reflection of what is actually happening in our own real world. By our own decision we do not have absolute control over the belief choices made by individual v-people, but we can see the trend toward greater and greater evil. And this trend has occurred even within the project team as you can see by Lucas’ behaviour.”

  “Why don’t you get rid of him?” someone called.

  “I’ll come to that but first I want you to understand something. The central or core program code within each v-person is corrupted. Right from the beginning when Adam chose to go his own way, independent (or so he thought) of the rest us, that corruption or bias to independence was there. Furthermore, because the core program is what it now is, the v-people cannot actually do what they might choose to do. You see this with some that we are working with. They have recognition of good values, acting justly, being selfless, being pure in thought, word and deed – but they cannot consistently do it. That is the effect of the corruption of the kernel program.”

  There was silence as the team took in what was being said.

  “The v-people who chose to accept Y’shua as the virtual reality embodiment of what they call El, believed that the death he endured was for their sakes, and chose to believe and trust in him. This belief effected a change in their internal core codes that then determines their actual inmost person within the virtual world. Something new has been put deep inside them.

  “The core code changes give rise to a new v-person who is now able to choose to either follow the old core code memories, which have no real life about them, or to follow a new core code that has vitality and is in harmony with us and our purposes. These renewed v-people initially have many of the old behaviour patterns intact, but they are now free to seek our help for these to be changed – providing they want to change. They live their own lives to outwork their relationship with us even although we may not be clearly known by them.

  Unfortunately there will be some, but very few, who will deliberately choose to go back to the old codes and re-corrupt themselves. Then there will be some, perhaps a majority, who compromise and follow the temporary enjoyments that Lucas specialises in, and then return to the new way when things go sour. Finally there will be those who recognise the particular sense of freedom, peace, fulfilment and enjoyment that is experienced when in touch with Y’shua and the work of this team. This is what they call ‘spiritual’ enjoyment which can be so much preferred that they will be prepared to endure pain and sorrow in the virtual world in which they are living. The best of these will even come to turn from their spiritual pleasures to the utterly selfless desire of pleasing me.

  “Such is the work that we have done in replicating the human condition – a model that we can study for the benefit of mankind and our own lives and societies.” There was silence as this was taken in.

  “The results so far are amazing and do have an uncanny accuracy to what is actually happening in our world. The only thing so far that we have deliberately prevented is for the v-people to create their own virtual world model. Do you think that this will make a difference Eli?” asked Anna.

  “The model and this project reflects us – our behaviour as human beings. It is the combination of our human influences on the virtual world that are being reflected and what you see and study is only another tool for understanding ourselves.

  “Lucas has an assumption that he can utilise this project not only to predict outcomes but also to influence them for his own benefit. He is a master of sowing deception in the lives of the v-people but does not realise that he who lives by deceit will live deceived.

  “No! This project is to show us what we are like and some will take to heart the lessons, some will not want to know the lessons, and some will have the same illusions that have gripped Lucas.”

  “Well what will be the end, Eli? Do you know – since this project is your work and we know that you know more about it than any of us?”

  Eli smiled. “It’s not for you to know and it’s not for me to tell. Just observe the v-world with a mind that wants to know the truth and you will see it.”

  With that the team members went their several ways.

  Chapter 13

  Cause & Effect

  The virtual world

  The new Nimrah religion was a huge success – at least in the parts of the world ruled or influenced by Antoni Meshiac. Never one to give much credit to underlings, Antoni had in this circumstance made an exception and commanded his people to treat Aaron Nawkish with all the respect of a high priest and as someone who knew all the secrets of the Great Power behind Nimrah. The myth was spread that Aaron knew the secrets but not all would understand. Therefore even the most banal or stupid things that Aaron might say from time to time would be received with hushed tones and the words would be studied for decades to come. Because of the closeness that Aaron and Antoni had with Lucas, whom they knew as the Great Power, Aaron was able to make prophetic pronouncements that would inevitably come to pass. He could perform miracles in the v-world and many sick v-people would be healed. This drew many to believe – even if they felt uneasy abo
ut it all. They could not explain it nor argue against it.

  The phenomenal growth of the Nimrah religion grew out of an era of unprecedented material prosperity in Antoni’s part of the v-world. Those that followed the “Allah” of the programmed historical prophet Mohammed, those that nominally followed Y’shua, and nearly all the v-world’s main religions were persuaded that Nimrah was the vehicle to bring them all together. It was the best syncretistic work the world had ever seen.

  A generation grew up with inner emptiness and a yearning for something more in their lives. Nimrah provided intellectual, emotional and apparent spiritual comfort and direction for the human soul, but there was still something missing. There was rebellion against materialism but not against its trappings and provisions. Nimrah gave that generation a vision of hope, of power, of self-esteem. It gave opportunities of attaining mystic influence over the circumstances of life and a sense of community with others who held the same beliefs. Its teachings were wide enough to take in all viewpoints and embodied the most noble ideals and aspirations.

  Many good works were done by its devotees and many of its followers gave their whole life to serve the good causes it promoted. It gave people what they wanted, and told them what they wanted to hear. Self was all and the Great Power ensured that they had a train of suitable feelings to keep the love of self from waning. Any sense of guilt (which the Great Power himself often induced) would be dealt with by soothing words from the Nimrah priests and the laws of the Great Power would be cited as the reason for unfavourable circumstances whenever they happened.