This Time: A 21St-Century Look at an Ancient Mystery That Changed the World

By Manny Gutiérrez

THIS TIME is a clear-and-to-the-point story that grasps the readers attention immediately. Unapologetically, Manuel Manny Gutirrez leaves no doubt that the newcomer flamme passionne has come to right unacceptable wrongs.

Jack Delgado,

author of The Trail to Golgotha (2009) and Crooked (2007).

Jacks website is at http://www.gate.net/~joachim/

The opening chapter of THIS TIME recalls the tragic, yet forgotten, catastrophes that afflicted humankind at the end of 2000 as we awaited Y2K. The chapter takes the audience around the world where many people die inexplicably-at the same time- mostly in fire-related incidents. I fully expect to read the entire book because this first chapter has me hooked!

Fernando Fernn Hernndez

is the author of 4 books; the last two are The Cubans: Our Legacy in the United States and his most recent one, The Cubans: Our Footprints Across America,

both available at Amazon.com. A retired educator, he resides in Miami, Florida.

THIS TIME offers a unique perspective on the past by rewriting the history of the present and recasting the most well-known of all stories in a different light. Highly imaginative, engaging, and intriguing, this book is full of unexpected twists that will keep the reader guessing what might happen next, and also what might happen if history were to repeat itself.

CARLOS EIRE,

author of Waiting for Snow in Havana (winner of the 2003 National Book Award for Non-fiction) Professor of Religious studies at Yale University.

Christmas Day, December 25, 2000a mysterious series of unexpected and unexplainable deaths happens across the globe during the birth of the only child of a rebellious young couple. Two clues only group the hundreds of cases together, but these clues are seen only by the sharpest and hardest-working investigators and journalists.

The child, a unique individual, is going to turn the world upside down. Although his power and actions are reminiscent of the best known rebel in history, his novel approach will delight his followers and make deadly enemies of his opponents. Will he succeed in his personal quest?

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Feb 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781489714596

Manny Gutiérrez

Manuel Manny Gutirrez, born in Havana, Cuba, 1947, emigrated to the U.S., 1961. Degreed as an Ocean Engineer and state-licensed as a Land Surveyor, he wrote often for family and friends, especially heartfelt requiems, poetry, short stories and serious essays. This is his first book. An anthology of short stories of dissimilar genres is in the making.

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Copyright © 2017 Manny Gutiérrez.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

LifeRich Publishing is a registered trademark of The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.

Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

LifeRich Publishing

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.liferichpublishing.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4897-1461-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-1460-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-1459-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018900810

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 2/5/2018

Contents

Acknowledgments

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

About the Author

This work is primarily dedicated to my cousin María Luisa Nené Orejas in Salinas, Asturias, Spain, who was the first to think that I was a writer.

And to the family members and friends who kindly read the first chapter when it was only a short story, and enthused me to go for a whole book.

Acknowledgments

I owe a great deal of gratitude to my father Manuel José Gutiérrez Ortiz (1920-2016) and to my 6th-grade teacher Juan J. Miyares (1911 - 1982) at a Piarist School in Havana, Cuba (Escuelas Pías de la Víbora, La Habana, CUBA) as they both instilled in me an undying love for learning, for good reading and for studying. To my cousin ‘Nené’ in Asturias (see Dedication page) for seeing me as an author when I started writing seriously in my early 40s.

I am thankful to my family, wife, children, etc., and to my Pedro Pan family (please see my website www.CampMatecumbeVeterans.com for details on Operation Pedro Pan) and to my many facebook friends for reading my newsletters and posts and for keeping me on track so many times when my passion overwhelmed my thinking. To Jack Delgado - the real one! - a published author [Crooked (2007), The Trail to Golgotha (2009)] and grown pedropan kid, who helped with constructive criticism on some of my literary works.

My sincere thanks also to Dave Fender, Geoff Stewart and Gwen Ash of LifeRich Publishing for guiding my baby steps during the development of the present work.

I am indebted also to the many excellent authors that I have humbly tried to emulate for narratives, dialogue and content in my writing; such as Louis L’Amour, David Baldacci, Stephen Hunter, John Sandford, Vince Flynn, William R. Forstchen, Scott McEwen, D. J. Molles and others; to the eclectic Harry Crews, a Southern gothic author and my English Composition and Creative Writing professor at Broward Junior College in Davie, FL; and to the more serious literature of Pat Conroy, Ayn Rand, Thomas Sowell and Barbara Tuchman. (What an odd assemblage!) And also to the Spanish journalist and writer Wenceslao Fernández Flores’ Las Siete Columnas(The Seven Columns) [1926] for giving me a boss idea!

A special THANK YOU to my son Jose Luis, ‘Joe’, who once got me to write a Martial Arts short story, a subject I knew little about; to my son Juan Manuel, ‘John’, who gave me the best advice of all to advance the possibility of making this book appealing, and to my daughter-in-law Stacy Givens Gutierrez for IMPROVING the book’s cover!

To the real Brian Einkauf, a real IT, for help in computer terms; to Drs. José Ojea, MD and Dr. Jesús Jiménez, Vascular Surgeon, Boynton Beach, FL, for medical reviews.

Any medical or technical errors you find are totally mine.

My lifelong dream of writing like Ayn Rand, looking like Steve Reeves or Arnold Schwarzenegger, and singing like Caruso or Pavarotti has been somewhat fulfilled, for I have written often to criticize Ayn Rand’s ridiculous agnosticism, managed to look like Pavarotti and I finally sing like Ahnold!

Manuel ‘Manny’ Gutiérrez, Boynton Beach, FL

January 2018

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8 : 38-39

New Testament.

1

T he year 2000 was coming to an end. TheY2K bug, also known as the Millennium Bug, had come and gone with only a minor gaffe. Since 20 th -century software depicted the four digits defining the year with only the two end digits, it made the year 2000 inaccurately the same as 1900. In fact, some electronic clocks showed this error after midnight of December 31, 1999.

But it was only a minor inconvenience and not the catastrophe anticipated by so many, despite the fears instilled by John Hamre, the United States Deputy Secretary of Defense. In fact, the idea that the third millennium would start on January first of 2000 was in itself erroneous, as there was no year zero, and the third millennium actually started on January first, 2001.

For those who knew this, there was still the fear of a destructive computer ‘bug’ that would create havoc with all operating systems, as it was known, or suspected, that computers do not handle certain data glitches well. December of 2000 had a few nerves quite raw.

This upcoming ‘catastrophe’ had been termed CDC (Century Date Change), FADL (Faulty Date Logic) and other acronyms. When David Eddy, a Massachusetts programmer referred to it in an e-mail in 1995 as Y2K, the name took.

The year 2000 had already had some minor catastrophes, of course, as every year does. In January the Tagish Lake meteorite impacted the earth in Canada; Kenya Airways Flight 431 and Alaska Airlines flight 261 MD-83 crashed on consecutive days in January, killing 254 people, and seven months later a Gulf Air Bus A320 crashed near Bahrain and killed 143; two months afterwards, a Singapore Airlines Boeing 747-400 crashed on takeoff into construction equipment and killed 83; a mass murder/suicide of more than 800 members of the Ugandan cult ‘Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments’ was orchestrated by its leaders; the Oscar class submarine K-141 of the Russian navy exploded and sank during a military exercise in the Barents Sea; in November, 155 skiers and snowboarders perished in a cable car fire in a tunnel in Kaprun, Austria.

And for die-hard football fans, in an AFC wild card playoff called the Music City Miracle, the Tennessee Titans beat the Buffalo Bills 22 to 16 in Nashville in the last 16 seconds of play, on a field-long run by Kevin Dyson, scoring the touchdown that won the game! (Of course, the St. Louis Rams defeated them at the end of the month for the Super Bowl with an almost identical score = 23 to 16!)

But the world was not ready for the happenings of December 25, 2000.

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- Damn! How could I miss that shit? - Joe screamed swinging his cue stick aimlessly.

- "Guatch it, man!" - Morales dodged the swing and moved to the other side of the pool table. He sounded friendly but was not smiling. The half dozen or so idle bystanders moved back a couple of feet. Joe Green did not like to lose at nine-ball when he played pool, he could get downright stupid when he was down a couple of bucks. And he was down more than twenty!

Pablo Morales easily pocketed the six that Joe had missed, then banked the seven and took his time cutting the eight in the corner pocket to get shape on the nine. Now he was smiling and grinning. Very suavely, he sank the nine and straightened up. The forty- nine-year-old Cuban had previously worked at the steel mills with Joe and could be found at Benny’s most evenings taking the boys for some change. Pablo worked at the vats holding the high-temperature molten steel a while back when Joe had done the carpentry work for the forms, railings and benches. Joe thought his pool game was better than most people’s and usually made the mistake of betting too much.

Pablo extended his right hand, palm up. - Thass ten moar bocks, Yoe. he smiled.

But Joe had more beers than usual and consequently less sense. Having grown up in Pittsburgh, where pool players think they have a monopoly on ability at billiards, and having played and won all over Pennsylvania, he thought that in Bethlehem he could make some money off the dumb steel workers yet had never been able to rake in the cash the way he had expected, and now this dumb foreigner was beating him regularly. He was not a happy camper!

He did not know that Pablo Morales had cut his teeth at his uncle’s billiards parlor in Luyanó, a seedy suburb of Havana, and had played the game well since he was six.

Then he cursed, taking Jesus’ name in vain - Pablow! You ain’t taking any more of my money! Joe raised the stick as if to swing at the older man.

A couple of the guys rushed in and grabbed him and moved him away forcibly.

- Easy, Joe! - Nick Colander urged him. -Why don’t you call the house and see about the baby, uh?

- I tole you befoar not to tek the Lors name in bain! - yelled Morales and threw the three ball at Joe but missed.

It took five of the onlookers to pull them apart and quiet them down.

Finally Joe shrugged off and unscrewed his stick to put it away. J*, to think I gotta put up with this shit from a damn foreigner! Joe muttered under his breath and closed the cheap cue case.

Nick continued to pacify them.

- Hey, Pablo, why don’t you go home to your family? It’s Christmas Eve, for God’s sakes. Shouldn’t you be with your kids?…. Joe, why don’t you call Mary Ellen and see if the baby is ready. OK? Shit, man, you don’t look like a guy about to be a father!

Joe’s bleary eyes lit up. Yeah, maybe I should. then he looked at his watch. J*, it’s late! Gotta go, guys.

- Joe Nick continued, maybe you should name the kid Jesus, uh? which made everybody laugh heartily. You mention him all the time!

- Up yours, Nick. Joe mumbled and walked out.

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And so it happened that at 3:33 am on the 25th of December of 2000, a boy child was born to Joseph and Mary Ellen Green.

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Joe made it home with plenty of time to drive Mary Ellen to Lehigh Valley Hospital - Muhlenberg on Schoenersville Road, where she was volunteering part-time. Since the Union Medical Coverage took care of eighty percent of the expenses, Joe was not worried about getting too deeply in debt. He was, however, worried about the responsibility of fatherhood. He knew nothing about it, being orphaned at an early age. His mother’s brother had acted the way one expected a favorite uncle to act, but the truth was that he just wanted somebody quiet to listen to his constant complaining…..about the lost jobs, the late homecomings, the lack of money, the bottle he could not find….so he let young Joe hang around with him, and even took him fishing some Saturday mornings.

But that was in the distant past. He had become his own man and did not need anything from anybody. Or so he claimed.

Yet he felt uneasy. For years he had not worried much. His carpentry work was better than average, though he drank and gambled slightly too much. He could always find a job, but he didn’t take much from his superiors, any little slight set him off and he would get into an argument and eventually quit. He had dragged the quiet Mary Ellen through the whole northeast, his jobs lasting weeks and sometimes only days…..but now the realization of the family addition was hard to swallow.

Mary Ellen had been the best thing that had ever happened to him. She was the first person to believe in him and to treat him with respect. She was also a terrific-looking chick!, he liked to remind everyone. For a prejudiced non-practicing Jewish boy and a staunch Catholic girl to hit it off so easily was not, of course, unheard of; but for them to continue together through two more years of high school and then to defy both families and elope had certainly been unexpected for the most part.

He was taken with her sweet disposition and the loving way she looked at him and asked for advice on anything. She simply loved him…and did not know any way to love but to love completely. But seven years of his discontent and bad moods had taken its toll. Separated from their families because of his denial to follow ANY religion and her total, unflinching support of him, they had only had each other. She suffered in quiet silence his behavior and subsequent loss of self-respect, still loving him but not quite knowing why now….

Yet they still shared those few magic times when he would hold her and caress her and run his hands through her long, black hair…just as he had done as an adolescent. She wanted to know how to make those moments last, but she was contented just to have them - in the middle of all the uncomfortable times; the constant moving, the fights, the occasional drinking to excess, the unanswered questions……

He was never abusive, in word or deed, and he never took to other women; but he was definitely not the Joe she had married, the Joe that had held so much promise! She had always known that he was special. It was a gift of hers…to know people. And she was hardly ever wrong! But Joe was not coming through.

So they had moved back to Pittsburgh and Joe did his best to stay on the same job for a while, finishing his apprenticeship and becoming a Journeyman Carpenter and getting his journeyman card. After a couple of years of steady work, Joe went back to the late nights playing pool and the weekends fishing by himself. When he thought about Mary Ellen, he felt her to be a stranger….a very sweet and loving stranger he had known for years….but he still could not understand why she stayed by his side, and nursed his headaches, and listened to his outrageous excuses.

Inevitably the drifting began again. But this time it went toward the East, as though drawn to a special destination, almost on a pre-determined straight line they went through Greensburg, Johnstown, Altoona, Lewistown, Harrisburg, Reading and eventually Allentown. He had no trouble finding jobs in construction sites, since there was plenty of municipal growth in the late 1990s, and he did his work well and the local carpenters’ union was very strong, but constant fights with his bosses got him back on the road and for those three years they never lived anywhere for longer than six or seven months. Mary Ellen usually occupied herself as a volunteer helper on nurseries in hospitals, so the constant moving never hurt her work. Then all of a sudden, two events coincided to make their lives brighten up again; the day Mary Ellen came home from the doctor with the news that she was pregnant there was a thick envelope in the mailbox from Bethlehem Steel. Joe had been finally accepted as a forms carpenter in the prestigious firm, a position he had applied for years in advance, as soon as he had moved to Altoona and read the notices in the papers.

His experience and ability - and the help of the union - had finally gotten him somewhere, luckily his moody and unfriendly behavior was not a part of his employment file. As soon as they arrived in Bethlehem, Joe had the good fortune to find a large inexpensive house in a nice neighborhood. The Bethlehem Steel Corporation had ceased shipbuilding in 1997, but retained its steel making operations. The corporation would file for bankruptcy on 2001 and would be dissolved in 2003; but its site would become SteelStacks, an arts and entertainment district. The union kept Joe busy hiring him out to different concerns that would eventually build a performing arts center, a casino, new studios for PBS station WLVT-TV, three outdoor music venues, the Air Products Town Square and others.

At first they had avoided having children. But after a few years and the insecurity his ways brought to them, they decided on their own that the best thing that could happen to them would be to have a child. In one of those irresponsible and unexpected reactions that young married couples have, they decided to drop all birth control measures and to attempt to conceive a child. They had agreed it would bring them together….yet they had never voiced their fears that they were drifting apart.

His drinking slowed down some, and he started to spend more time with Mary Ellen on the weekends. Her hopes built up again, Mary Ellen got a real part-time job at Lehigh Valley Hospital - Muhlenberg and began to save money for the new addition to the family.

Three months after starting work at Bethlehem Steel, they became fully covered by insurance through the Union; - little did he know that the Company was ‘going down’ - and the attending physician on the first of Mary Ellen’s visits had asked them if they wanted to know the gender of the forthcoming baby.

Joe looked at Mary Ellen tenderly. She slowly shook her head and smiled.

- J*! No way, man. Joe laughed. We want a nice surprise. Just make sure nothing happens, we’ve wanted so much to have this baby! - his smiling eyes caressed the young mother.

- It’s a very healthy baby, Mr. and Mrs. Green. Dr. Acheson reassured them. We don’t expect any complications. You can come back in two months unless something unexpected happens or you feel unusual pains, OK?, he shook their hands and quickly ushered them out of the office.

Everything seemed to be working out. The happy times had arrived. Joe was almost the model husband Mary Ellen had dreamed of….except for the twice-weekly visits to the friendly pool hall.

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Now Joe was waiting outside the delivery room. Not wanting to witness the birth despite having been invited, he spent the waiting hours wandering about the immediate future. At exactly 3:45 the doctor came out and said in a very non-committal and hollow voice, which sounded nervous and not at all reassuring : Congratulations, Mr. Green! You have a healthy 8-pound son. A nurse will bring him out in a couple of minutes. Your wife is doing fine. I…uh, I gotta get some sleep. and he waved himself back through the double doors and out of sight.

Yet he never looked Joe in the face. Joe smiled, his eyes watered. He had never been happier.

The doctor had not mentioned the strange occurrences in the delivery room. Joe would never know from Mary Ellen because her birthing pains had been so intense she had passed out during the delivery. Only the doctor and the three attending nurses had been witnesses to what possibly was the strangest birth ever recorded.

As soon as the baby’s head appeared his eyes opened widely and he started crying, deeply and convulsively. Long before the doctor could take him out and spank him, the baby was breathing and crying. But it was not the typical wailing of a baby. It was a very sad and poignant crying that impressed and shook up the four witnesses. These professionals looked at each other momentarily stumped. The eerie ululations lasted for the best part of three minutes and died out interminably slow. It was a cry of expiation, a cry of impending death, a cry of immolation, a cry of immense sorrow…of a hurt that could never be healed.

And when Dr. Acheson dared to lift the baby and placed him on top of his mother’s body, the little tiny uncontrollable arms hugged the unconscious woman tightly, whether seeking refuge or in an attempt to protect the helpless mother they could not tell; yet the fact remained the child appeared to have some unfathomable knowledge that only the crying had betrayed.

Then the baby slept placidly. The attending team exchanged questioning glances and waited for the physician to say something.

- I’d like to have a word with all of you later on today before we mention this strange phenomenon to the parents. Is that clear? Dr. Acheson softly commanded his staff while he took the green garments off. He threw the crumpled paper clothes in a hamper and went out to see the father who waited, unencumbered with the knowledge of the strange happenings the others had shared.

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But neither the doctor nor the surprised staff knew of the sudden storm that whipped up in the desert near Jerusalem. The wind drove the sand fiercely and made vision impossible. For the better part of five minutes no one could move. Desert storms were not, of course, unique to the area, but the suddenness, the power and the short duration were definitely not normal.

It had started at 10:33 am - in that part of the world. Oddly, four bandits who were awaiting the next hapless pilgrim or caravan to rob, were quickly incinerated by a mysterious fire that started in their robes. Men of a small caravan that was coming saw the flames and tried to help them but no avail. They wrote down the details for the report to the Israeli Police.

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Three men sat around a small fire in the Blue Ridge Mountains. They appeared at first to be hoboes, aimlessly wandering in the mountains, not daring to take their homelessness to the cities, where so many of their brethren were already sheltered. But after closer scrutiny, one could easily tell that their clothes were expensive and well-kept, their stances were erect and purposeful, and their eyes betrayed uncommon intelligence.

A taller man dressed in exquisitely matched tan and beige garments, richly sewn though homespun; with a dark red coat and silver-white hair, squatted to one side facing the other two younger figures. One of the other two, the one wearing an unequivocal mountain lion’s pelt coat over his clothes, was absent-mindedly caressing a young black bear cub that wanted to play. A dozen feet away, a wild 300-pound fierce she-bear watched the interaction without a care in the world.

The other young man, dressed all in black and protected from the cold weather by a long double-thick black mink coat was handling a beautiful six-feet-long diamondback rattlesnake which kept getting inside his warm coat and tickling him.

A few hundred feet away the Rappahannock swept placidly by and added to the music of the wild winter night. The wind was pleasant and the sky was clear.

It was 3:33 am and the men were not cooking anything on the fire or carried any visible foodstuffs as part of their meager belongings. Then a shooting star lit up the northeast sky, lasting only a brief instant, yet shining many times brighter than any star in any other constellation or even Venus, which could be seen in the western sky. The taller, silver-haired man stood up suddenly. The other two looked at him for guidance. He was pensive and alert.

He glanced around the sky and perceived sounds that would not be common to the mountain night. His brows furrowed and a slight frown appeared.

- It has happened again. He gave no other explanation and the two other figures arose slowly and moved nearer to him. They also looked around at the night sky and sensed the differences that were rising from around the world.

-The hour has come to be of service. his glance bore into the others with the enormity of what they had understood. No questions were asked. The three grabbed their belongings and thoroughly put out the fire, making sure no dangerous smoldering embers remained.

- Is this, then, the end? the black-garbed young man with the snake asked, not in fear, but in anticipation. "It is the end of the millennium!"

The older man sighed and looked up again. His countenance softened immensely and he smiled a contented smile that showed the true and undeniable beauty of his face.

- Yes, Balthraska. he explained lovingly. But it is also the beginning of the millennium.

Then his smile disappeared and he said as a warning:

- "This time we will not leave Him alone." the others nodded looked at each other and then nodded, slowly but resolutely.

Milkore, the elder, who by that name was known, sighed - This time it will be done correctly. He was a judge imposing a sentence.

- But…won’t we be breaking the Law? - said Balthraska with some hesitation.

- No, I knew there had to be a reason He kept around all this time. He said not unhappily. And they packed up and began the trek eastward.

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At 32 minutes past midnight, - in that part of the world - a unique kind of celebration had been going on for a little over half an hour. A black mass was being offered to Satan in an expensive private residence at the south end of Beverly Hills. A recently gutted young virgin of 12, not quite dead yet, was lying on the altar table, spilling entrails and drying blood giving off a bittersweet smell that did not seem to bother the two dozen people gathered there. She was moaning softly, coming in and out of consciousness at irregular intervals.

This, however, was no everyday black mass. The significance of the date and the upcoming end of the century and the millennium only six days away had created a fantastic opportunity for the Satanists of four different sects to get together and have an unsurpassed offering to Satan. Nine priests and five priestesses formed a circle around the table while the rest of the onlookers chanted, holding candles made of black tallow.

So far it had worked to perfection; they had found the young girl among the homeless, verified that she was a virgin, and had been able to abduct her without having to kill anyone. Not that it would have mattered, but the noise might have attracted attention and it was imperative to get back to the house and commence the rituals at exactly midnight. The young victim, in refusing to die, had given them the perfect