Chapter 33 — Part 2

  Isaac watched Century Park Plaza in disbelief, shocked Super Jesus was rising from the center of the stage instead of Tupac. Had Tupac failed? Even from thirty-three stories up in the air and a block away, Isaac could hear the crowd's cheers once they recognized the night’s entertainer as their resurrected superhero savior. The sound was primal and delirious but quieted to reverent silence with a single, orchestral wave of Super Jesus’s arm. The audience was in Super Jesus’s thrall. This was no stunt double. This was the real deal Super Jesus, as portrayed by Manny Ortega. Isaac could recognize that narcissistic sneer anywhere.

  Isaac strained his ears to try and listen to whatever Super Jesus was saying to his followers, but the building’s glass was thick enough to muddle his message, especially when every cell phone in the room began to ring an alarm in unison.

  “Pick up, Isaac. It’s for you, ” Mr. Lennox said with a toothy smile, “you and every other human with a smartphone and 5G service.”

  Isaac reached for his phone and pulled it out to see a familiar banner on the screen. Again, it was an amber alert message, but it was for Super Jesus this time. When Isaac clicked on the notification, his phone began to play a live stream video of the Super Jesus show, the very one occurring below him now, complete with audio. He couldn’t navigate away from the video on his phone if he tried. His screen was locked.

  “Can I get an a-person?” Super Jesus commanded via the phone speaker, and Isaac didn’t need the phone’s playback to hear the crowd’s response. They were loud enough to be heard from Palos Verdes.

  “?Dios Mio! ?Dios Mio! ?Dios Mio!” the crowd shouted, deliriously greeting their savior.

  “It’s so beautiful!” Mr. Lennox puffed out his chest in pride. “Every human in America is tuned into tonight’s show, whether in person, on TV, online, or on their cell phone. And, if God forbid, there was someone in this country without a cell phone, then we gave them one.”

  Together, Mr. Lennox and Isaac watched as a crippled boy on crutches, Tiny Tim-status, ambled through the crowd toward Super Jesus. When the kid arrived on stage, with the assistance of some stagehands, Super Jesus knelt on the ground and kissed the boy’s feet before getting up, laying hands on his head, and leading the audience in prayer.

  “Yo, yo, yo, heavenly homie, up beyond the sky,

  Super Jesus is on the mix to amplify.

  *Super Jesus makes record-scratching sounds with his mouth*

  Got a lil' buddy down on Earth, strugglin' with leg pain,

  A young soul hustlin', grindin’, and feelin' the strain.

  Lord, bless him with legs that ride like a wave,

  Zuma's callin' so make him a surf god, so brave.

  Let his limbs be free, free, free, like the ocean breeze,

  So he can shred the waves with composed ease.

  In your name, we carve this prayer in your divine design,

  Vaya con dios, ride on lil’ man with heavenly vibes!”

  “A-person!” the crowd roared along with Super Jesus. Then Super Jesus released his hands from the boy, who, in turn, released his crutches, now healed. The audience went wild as the boy did a little jig before taking a running leap off the stage to crowd surf on the tops of their outstretched arms.

  With their fervor now at a fever pitch, Super Jesus introduced the new Super Jesus teaser without further ado. The stage went dark, and the screen above it lit up with the trailer’s first image, a monarch butterfly resting peacefully on the tip of Super Jesus’s nose. The camera closed in on the insect as a tranquil summer sun shone through its tissue-paper wings, and each languid beat of them transposed a shifting kaleidoscope of orange onto Super Jesus’s face.

  The camera pulled back and back, shifting the colors from orange and black to blue and white to produce a new, abstract image until it coalesced and formed the piercing blue eyes of a cat. It was Captain Flapjacks.

  Like the audience in the park, Isaac did not turn away from the arresting visual playing on his phone. The only one who could resist its siren call was Margot Robbie, whose eyes remained dead ahead, looking at nothing. Isaac finally understood. Margot was meditating! Ever since he entered Mr. Lennox’s office, she had been blocking out every sensory stimulant from entering her consciousness for this very moment, shielding herself from the spellbinding effects of the movie trailer.

  Eventually, Isaac found the strength to match Margot’s, combating Super Jesus’s charms by turning away from the program. Once he did, he saw the crowd's complete and utter state of rapture. Every person shared the same stupified look as the focus group from the Twin Towers. None of them were unaffected by the hypnotic power of the Super Jesus imagery, not even the crippled boy or Super Jesus himself, who was, of course, only human and not the messiah he pretended to be.

  It made Isaac sick. Mr. Lennox was wrong. No matter what euphemisms he used, these people were zombies. This was Isaac’s worst nightmare and why he bought a gun all those years ago. Now, his fingers twitched for it like a phantom limb. He couldn’t survive the apocalypse. He didn’t want to.

  He looked at the gun on Mr. Lennox’s desk, ignored by its new master, lonely. Its trigger looked inviting. Isaac was going to lunge for it before he saw Liz focused on him. Somehow, she was able to resist the effects of the trailer. Then he remembered their dinner at the diner and how Liz revealed that she had never seen Super Jesus before. Now he knew why. She was in on this plan from the start. Her virginal eyes were unaffected by the seductive images.

  “If you think that’s something, get a load of this!” Mr. Lennox put a hand on Isaac’s shoulder, steering him toward the bay of windows opposite their position, the ones facing downtown LA. When Isaac pressed his nose against the glass, the city was aglow, but this time it wasn’t with the usual twinkling of domestic and commercial lights spread across the basin.

  Outshining them all was a big, blinding explosion that rocked the city. Boom! Boom! Boom! Once the concussive blast that shook the building and the dust died down, an eerie, ethereal red glow remained, outshining the hundreds of localized fires that now dotted Isaac’s view. It was as if the fires of Hell had come to Earth.

  “Dios Mio,” Isaac whimpered.

  The red light crisscrossed the city from Dodgers Stadium to Long Beach to where Isaac stood now in Century City. It formed a pattern, one Isaac recognized from earlier tonight. It was the loss symbol, and Isaac didn’t need to be Robert Langdon to realize that these lines followed the new “Metro” tunnels under the city. Isaac broke out in a cold sweat as he watched Los Angeles drained of its force. This entire time, the conspiracy was right under his nose. He was so enchanted by the idea of good public transit and so spiteful toward traffic that he didn’t see it. He didn’t want to see it.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “Glorious!” The only thing glowing brighter than the rune in all of LA was Mr. Lennox’s smile. “Do you feel that?” Mr. Lennox asked Isaac who shook his head. “That’s too bad. You can blame Dr. Rousseau’s poor tutelage for that, but if you were attuned to the force, you’d feel how great a rush this is! It’s delicious!” Lennox’s tongue tasted the air. But Mr. Lennox’s victory tour was short-lived. His smile faltered as the rune’s red light dimmed briefly as if its power source was being messed with, which it was.

  Mr. Lennox ran back to the opposite set of windows to see what was happening down at Century Park. Isaac was hot on his heels.

  “Tupac!” Isaac cried out. Below him, Tupac, using his red bandana as a blindfold to shield himself from Super Jesus’s allure, charged through the zombified crowd toward the stage, pinpointing its location by following the sound of its speakers. Although he was still strapped with Uzis, Tupac’s weapon of choice was a giant sledgehammer he held with two hands, using it as a walking stick/battering ram. To Isaac’s surprise, he could see some subtle cracks in the audience’s stupor as Tupac brushed by them.

  “Not Tupac!” Mr. Lennox cried out, dismayed. “Get this under control, Liz!”

  When Tupac ascended the stage, he spun around and around to build as much momentum as possible before tossing the sledgehammer high into the air. The sledgehammer, tumbling end-over-end, smashed into the center of the jumbotron, cracking and splintering it until the Super Jesus visual was lost and the screen snowed with static.

  Again, Isaac turned over his shoulder to look out the back windows, now seeing that the red rune was flickering. A loud war-whoop erupted from Isaac’s lungs in celebration, but he choked it back down when he re-examined the audience. They were still frozen. No one was saved. Was Tupac too late? Was it all for nothing? Lennox seemed to think so. A cautious smile tugged at the corner of his lips.

  Luckily, Tupac didn't panic. No longer fearing the hypnotic trailer, he ripped the bandana from his eyes and grabbed the microphone from the stupified Super Jesus. “L.A.!” Tupac cried with full force, “I'm back, baby! ” Isaac listened to him from his phone's speaker. Despite the interruption, the live stream continued to broadcast. “Ya'll have to forgive me for leaving ya'll for so long. I'm sorry. I've missed you. It was only supposed to be seven days, but one love.” But no one stirred at his speech. In frustration, Tupac flung his bandana into the crowd, hitting a guy in the fifth row. The physical touch of the fabric still doused with Tupac’s force roused the man, shocking him back into reality. But he promptly fainted again at the sight of seeing Tupac alive.

  "Fuck!" Tupac bemoaned. He looked out to the audience with somber eyes. "I know y'all deep in that cave. But I know y’all can hear me, so listen up. Let my voice echo into that cave. Hear me when I say that death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we’re still alive. Never surrender!” He paused, hoping to let his message sink into his audience’s subconscious, but no one was moved. His words had fallen flat.

  Then, screwing up all his rage, Tupac yelled, "We 'aint going out like this! We’re not a bunch of bitches. Get mad y’all. West side! Let’s ride! All eyez on me! What do you say, L-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!?" He held the word and didn’t let go. The sound built and built and built until the speakers on stage and on Isaac’s phone threatened to blow. The park vibrated with energy, but the people remained catatonic.

  Tupac didn’t know what was wrong. Had he been gone for too long? Had he lost his influence? His force? Then he realized he had to reach them on a spiritual level, not an intellectual one, so he cut off his scream and began to rap California Love. He was going acapella. “California... knows how to party.”

  Finally, a ripple of energy surged through the crowd like a wave. The audience not only started to move but also to groove. And when Tupac rounded out the first chorus with “Shake, shake it, baby/ Shake, shake it/ Shake, shake it, mama," people took it as an order to shake any of their still-dazed neighbors awake, so by the time Tupac rapped “California dreamin’” and “hoochies screamin’,” a large swath of the crowd had awoken from their suspended state and began to party with him.

  It could only be Him. Tupac’s performance gave off a wholly different energy than the Super Jesus trailer, and even from Isaac’s considerable distance away from the action, he could sense that the momentum of the force was shifting away from Mr. Lennox. But there were still some unreachable members of the audience. Anyone older than a Boomer or younger than a Millennial remained a living statue, the people who had escaped Tupac’s influence during his 90s heyday.

  "Oh no!" Isaac cried. He watched as the Fox security team finally responded to their party crasher. Equipped with full tactical gear and armed to the teeth, they stormed out of the surrounding buildings in squads of three, all heading straight for the stage and Tupac. "Call them off!" Isaac pleaded to Mr. Lennox.

  A consummate showman, Tupac didn’t stop rapping after taking cover from the advancing soldiers, who fired upon him as soon as Tupac was in their sights. A blizzard of bullets hit the stage or ricocheted off its metal supports and into the crowd. The park descended into complete chaos at the crack of gunfire. Those awake in the audience ran for their lives in total hysteria, uncaring if they trampled any of those still petrified.

  “Cowards! Bitches!” Tupac taunted the gunmen. Unfortunately for Tupac, the security team hid behind the remaining paralyzed people in the park as they neared the stage, preventing him from returning fire. But Tupac couldn’t fire his gun anyway.

  Crack! Super Jesus had woken from his slumber and karate-chopped Tupac from behind. Tupac stumbled but caught himself to turn to face his newest opponent.

  “Let’s go, super cunt!” Tupac cried. “Come at me.”

  “You’re nothing. Not anymore. A nobody,” Super Jesus spat. Super Jesus fought fiercely, fueled by anger. No one would upstage him on his big night, not even Tupac, so he battled the rapper with everything he had. He could feel his audience's admiration — their force — turning from him toward Tupac. This aggression couldn’t stand.

  Blow for blow, the fight was brutal. Tupac, licking blood from a cut on his lip, battled his opponent to a draw by pitting his street squabbles against Ortega’s Muay Thai technique, a skill the actor picked up while training for his Super Jesus fight scenes. Ortega didn’t always use a stuntman for his dirty work, and it showed. His textbook flying knee strike was how he planned on earning back-to-back Oscars.

  Oof! Ortega’s knee connected with Tupac’s stomach to knock the wind out of the rapper and silence him for a moment, long enough that his rap antidote wavered on his audience members, with some returning to a zombified state until Tupac resumed spitting more rhymes.

  "Cut the feed!" Mr. Lennox ordered Liz. His rune's glow was now weak and labored.

  Liz snapped to attention, but only after a moment’s delay. Like everyone else, she had been caught marveling at Tupac’s debut from the dead. Liz ran for Mr. Lennox's desk phone to call production as her iPhone was locked into the Super Jesus Amber Alert like every other smartphone in America, but her hesitation proved costly as Margot Robbie got to Lennox’s desk first. Now no longer in danger of going under a Super Jesus trance, Margot had made her move.

  “Move, bitch!” Liz demanded, but Margot held her ground. The two of them fought with hands, feet, and hair, but Margot made quick work of Liz by deftly throwing her down and chiding her with a slur new to Isaac. “Lizard lover,” Margot spat.

  Alas, Margot’s victory was not meant to be as Mr. Lennox was quick to Liz’s defense, rushing over to his producer and picking her up with an ease that belied the man’s elderly appearance. After dusting Liz off, he turned and pushed Margot up against a wall with enough force to crack the paint. “Ugh,” Margot whimpered, straining for breath. When he let go, she crumpled to the floor, unconscious. Mr. Lennox reached for his desk phone next, ready to give the order to cut the transmission of Tupac.

  “Stop it. Don’t pick it up,” Isaac warned.

  “Isaac, my boy, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I wouldn’t want you to do anything you couldn’t take back.”

  Mr. Lennox was dialing the broadcast room when Isaac struck him with all the force he had, charging into Mr. Lennox head first, but he swatted Isaac away with minimal effort. A brief look of pity crossed Mr. Lennox’s face, no different than if you accidentally stepped on your favorite house spider. Oh well.

  Bright lights burst into Isaac’s vision from the blow. The amount of power behind Mr. Lennox’s hand was tremendous. Only his ears worked at the moment and they caught nothing but Liz’s cold laugh.

  Next came the old man’s feet. A kick lifted Isaac off the ground and into the air until a wall broke his flight path. Isaac couldn’t get up after he landed. He didn’t have the chance. Mr. Lennox knocked Isaac around the room while snarling into his phone, “Get me production!”

  Reeling from the hits, Isaac tried to get up whenever an opportunity presented itself but could not get his battered body to do so. He had to do something, though. He had to buy Tupac more time. Every additional second Tupac rapped could mean the difference between another person waking up from their entertainment-induced slumber.

  Desperate, Isaac groped blindly for anything solid to help him stave off Mr. Lennox until his hand bumped against something hard. It was his gun. It must have fallen off Mr. Lennox’s desk while Isaac was getting his ass kicked up against it. Isaac held onto the gun for dear life. This was his chance. He had to fire it before Mr. Lennox disarmed him. But instead of aiming it at Mr. Lennox, as the executive producer expected, Isaac took a last look at the remaining zombies below him before turning the gun on himself.