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Prologue Pastor Albert Chambers was a warm, loving man. He was tall and slender, armed with muscular hands that would swallow most others within their firm clasp. From the top step of the Cordele Baptist Church, a small steepled affair nestled in a clearing of dense Georgia cypress one-hundred and forty miles from Atlanta, Pastor Al stood waiting to greet his morning parishioners as they made their way into Sunday morning mass. Though the overall cloud cover was moderate, the day glowed bright from a powerful summer sun; the pearl white walls of the church and the Pastor’s face warmed by the few radiant rays reaching through the gaps in the cotton ball sky. “Glorious morning, Mrs. Oakley, God is pleased.” He smiled and gave out his arm to the aged woman as she slowly made her way up the low steps. “It’s a wonderful morning,” she replied, emphasizing wonderful. He loved this part of Sundays most of all. The time before they are all gathered, as they come to him, when he can greet his flock, take each one by the hand and look them in the eye, so together they can share the Holy Burden of spreading the Good Word. That day was a very special day indeed, for the youngest son of Georgia Senator P.H.Murray was coming over from Atlanta to hear the Pastor’s sermon. Word was spreading about the Pastor, it seemed.He hoped this was just the beginning of more special guests that would soon bring the press, and with it, an ever growing flock. They said, too, that the boy had growing political ambitions of his own and it wouldn’t hurt Pastor Al to make a few early connections should the time ever come to be. From within the church the choir began to sing as the first parishioners began to be seated. Oh, the glorious sound of faith resounding against the walls God built. A deep sense of pride swelled within the Pastor. “Wherever He leads I will follow.
Their hearts rang out in song for the verse, and he wanted to go join them but lingered a few minutes more in hope to personally see in the Senator’s son. It was time to enter, he resigned that perhaps the young man wouldn’t arrive after all, but then a swirl of dust filled the narrow drive leading from the clearing of the church to the road, and from it a lone white limousine emerged. Pastor Al smiled and turned back to face it. “Good Morning to you, Pastor, I’m sorry my driver isn’t going to win any NASCAR Cups driving the way he does. I do hope my late arrival hasn’t caused any bruised feelings.” The boy was a young man indeed. He was taller than Pastor Al had expected, with a new white suit and straight, glistening teeth to match. “None at all,” replied to Pastor over the rhythm of the choir,“we were just warming up our Glory to God.” The two men stepped inside, and Pastor Al closed the Church doors gently behind him. A few breaths later, when the blast erupted through the church, it was like a giant wrecking ball of fire stormed in from the rear and blindsided the congregation all at once. Wood ripped apart, bodies flew forward, blowing down whole pews in their path. The organ let out a curdling, snuffed out whine. No one had time to scream. In the wake of the blast there dwelt a void of sound, a stunned silence to which all were beholden. As the initial dust began to settle, scattered moans entered that void, followed by a few cries for help, and then the piercing screams of an injuring child. Pastor Al regained consciousness, but could not see his shattered flock, nor tend to their pleas for help. He was on his back, pinned down under a massive object he could not tilt his head far down enough to see. Only his left eye would open. Above him was the crucifix that hung above the altar, off its perch yet still clinging to the back wall. Could the blast have thrown him all the way across the church? Many must be dead. The great weight upon his chest was crushing his lungs, with each gasp he lost more breathable real estate, unable to draw in against it what must be a stone or building truss of some kind. The meager air he could inhale brought in a fist full of dust, forcing him to choke it out. The more he coughed, the less he could breathe, until he was left with only a succession of fast, gasping breaths. He was fading and he knew it. As the dust settled further a thick, warm finger from the sun reached out and gently caressed his face. He closed his eye and prayed that the Lord may find mercy on the on the dead and dying all around him. He prayed too, that the eye of God would bring justice to those who trespassed against them. Way up, far above the smoke and the dead, and the tips of the cypress and even the thick of the clouds, a different kind of eye took note of the day’s events. An unfeeling, unknowing, unthinking eye locked in a geostationary orbit sixty miles above the earth. “Without publicity,
-Jeremy Bentham, Inventor of the Panoptic Prison, 1843.
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