The New Magic - The Revelation of Jonah McAllister - Landon Wark (bill gates best books TXT) 📗

And one night the staff of the hospital were roused by what sounded to them like loud and droning chants coming from one of the closed rooms on the upper level.

Some of the nurses on the floor went through the shift with their usual stoicism. Rich ladies inviting in bonkers faith healers was nothing new. It was a little odd that despite there not being any locks allowed on the doors they were unable to gain access to the room to see what was going on. With no audible screams or other signs of distress they opted to leave the practical matters to the next shift and the gossiping to the less experienced staff who spent a good deal of their evening trying to guess at the exact goings on within the closed room.

What was known was that the very next day the woman in the room, with barely subdued anxiety in her voice, requested new batteries of tests. When all of these came back the same as before the anxiety quelled and she became almost manic. At first she seemed determined to leave the hospital. The staff was semi-enthusiastic about the prospect. She had already overstayed her observation period and the occasional interruption of hospital operations by rumour inducing chanting sessions was an inconvenience. But her money was good. The health insurance that her benefactors had acquired despite her condition being the definition of pre-existing paid for most ancillary things and that same benefactor came up with out of pocket funds for anything else. In the midst of budget cuts it was difficult to let the golden goose just walk off.

Just as doctors were about to sign the release forms she decided on a longer stay. A shrug and a rubber stamp later and the room was assigned for an additional three days.

The next surprise was that despite her inactivity, the patient was improving. This was explained as some kind of placebo effect and the staff continued on with their monitoring duties.

Paul Kwon paced along the boards making up the floor of his room. His legs were little more than springs, taut with nervous energy. Whenever he came even close to sitting down they would propel him back into a walk. He ran his fingers through the thinning hair along the sides of his temples and bit down on his lip. The sin that weighed down on him was none other than the sin of pride.

His idea of God was not so Old Testament that he thought that a bolt of lightning was on its way to strike him dead, but he did believe that God was jealous and took pains to ensure the punishment of those who would intrude on his domain.

Perhaps Clayton James was right and God was retreating from numerous domains these days.

He considered himself a reasonably forward thinking man, but at the same time, years of keeping pace alongside the anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-liberal churches in the South had chipped out large chunks. There were some decisions that were not up to mortal minds. Only the greatest of minds should decide when a life should end, or what courses it should take. And that brought him to what had happened with Sandy Jenkins.

In fact, he remembered very little of it, mostly being out of breath and a flash or two of seeing Ezra Mansfield's red face across this niece's body. He was a little in the dark about the results as well. There was nothing really to be said about the results. The person he had known looked the same before and after, but having seen the changes in the mice had evoked ideas in the depths of his mind. He had gone along with the human experiment before fully plumbing the idea, consoling himself afterwards by thinking that it was just a medical treatment, the same as any other, but that was being gradually eroded by various talking points he had been exposed to over the years.

If they could completely change a woman's body, metabolism as Jonah McAllister had explained it, then what could they not do? Transform a man into an animal, like something out of a story book. Create life from nothing? If that was not intruding on the realm of God then what was?

He had been pulled in with promises of miracles, and instead he had found blasphemy. Making some money here and there? Money was mundane and he doubted the creator of the universe cared much for it. That had made them closer to God. But, how close to God could one become without being blasphemous?

He tried leaning against the dresser along the wall, but that proved to be too much like sitting for his anxious legs and he was once again on the move.

And what was worse was this new attitude coming from their architect. Anything is possible. That was the message that he wanted to carry out into the world. The fervour with which he seemed to be taking to this new direction sent a chill down Paul's spine. Miracles were supposed to be rare by definition. Putting them in the hands of every man, woman and child...

Paul ran his fingers along his temples again.

"Anything is possible," he whispered.

As in light no longer being divided from darkness. The sky no longer being divided from the land. It was a gruesome thought.

Was Jonah McAllister about to supplant God himself?

Paul shook his head. He didn't want to believe it. Aside from (or perhaps because of) his complete lack of social skills he liked the younger man. There was a total lack of guile that was a little disarming about him and he seemed to genuinely care about what happened to Sandy.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Paul exhaled, feeling the weight of too many thoughts starting to distort his mind. While