Collapse

The smoke drifted down the street, obscuring the ruined buildings.  Shouts and screams reverberated around me -- shrieks of fear, perhaps, or pain or maybe just cries of despair. They had begun almost a week ago and hadn’t subsided since. By now, I was used to them.

To my right I saw movement and a running man who blindly came straight towards me.  We collided and I tumbled backwards, certain I would soon feel the knife in my belly and the slow bloody end.  But he had fallen too and the look he gave me was one of surprise, not rage.

“What happened?” he asked. He was calm and composed, his voice modulated, his manner unthreatening.

“You ran into me,” I answered, slowly standing up.

“No,” he said weakly, his arm reaching out and gesturing around into the smoke, the ruin, and the death. “This.”

“It’s the collapse, my friend. The destruction of the Western world.”

“Who did this? Terrorists?  Iran? Fanatic Islamists? North Korea?  The commies?”

“Where have you been?” I asked, incredulous.

“Suffolk County jail. I hadn’t buckled my seatbelt, a cop stopped me, one thing led to another…” He shook his head. “I heard noise and just hid in my cell, afraid to go out. I’d never been in prison before. But eventually I got so hungry and the cell doors were just open.”

“So you really don’t know,” I marveled.

I looked directly at him. “It wasn’t the terrorists, man.  It was the movie, the damn movie.”

“Michael Moore?”

“No, Ron Howard.  The Da Vinci Code. It was a sensation. Huge crowds. And suddenly, faster than you could say Malcolm Gladwell, we were past the tipping point.  More people knew the secret than didn’t. The awful truth, the one the Catholic Church had conspired for two thousand years to hide, was suddenly known to everyone.”

I paused, collecting my thoughts.  “It turned out the Church had been right all along.  This was the secret that should have stayed a secret. Our entire civilization had been based on a lie. But the lie had worked. It had been the underpinning of everything -- from democracy to indoor plumbing to the Internet. And now that we know what really happened…” My voice caught. “The end of civilization…”

“But,” he said, “What secret? I never saw the movie.”

“It’s about Jesus and Mary Magdalene,” I told him. “They were married.  They had a child. She -- and perhaps they -- ended up living in France.  The Merovingians were their bloodline.  Their children are still with us today.”

He looked at me and before my eyes I saw his face change, his eyes widening and his mouth contorting into a rictus of shock. “No,” he said, “That’s not possible.  Not possible.” He started to shout and charged at me, his hands out.  I tried to fend him off but he had me by the neck, squeezing. My knees buckled. “Why couldn't He have just remained single?” he wailed, spittle spraying from his mouth as his hands gripped tighter. The world faded to black.