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The Trinity Game

The Trinity Game

Titel: The Trinity Game Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Sean Chercover
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feed on any garbage. But the newspaper industry was in trouble—many would say mortal danger—and nobody knew what the hell to do about it.
    Julia watched the muted television for a minute—a helicopter shot of the congested highways leading into Atlanta. How to make sense of all these people? It wasn’t really fair to label them
all
as lunatics—after all, there were hundreds of thousands of them and growing by the minute. But really, what was going through their heads? Why were people so eager to embrace religious explanations for the things they didn’t understand?
    Julia was an atheist, sure. But unlike many of the other skeptics she’d known, she didn’t consider herself intellectually superior to the vast majority of humans who did believe. She felt, rather, like a bit of a mutant. Like maybe 10 percent of the world’s population had somehow been genetically deprived of whatever neurological wiring caused the other 90 percent to perceive this thing called God.
    That didn’t mean there was a God. It just meant the mass illusion was invisible to her. There was a level on which she would never be able to relate to believers, and while they might derive great comfort from their belief, that didn’t excuse turning a blind eye to all the destructive influence of religion in the world.
    All the wealth and time and labor we pour into propping up our respective priests and reverends, rabbis and imams, monks and gurus, building grand cathedrals, churches, temples, mosques, and mansions; sacrificing our young on the altar of war, war over whose imaginary friend is the
real
imaginary friend (might as well print
My God Can Beat Up Your God
T-shirts); the bigotry, misogyny, subjection, intolerance and guilt. All that human energy, wasted, in response to the simple fact that we know we are going to die, and we don’t know what happens after, and we’re afraid that this life is all there is. The question haunts us—from the chilling childhood moment when we realize that we and everyone we love will die, until we exhale our final breath. And if a kind of mass self-hypnosis called Religion helps us cope with our fear, fine, but we have to look at the unintended consequences of embracing an irrational philosophy. We don’t have to look far. Ground Zero in Manhattan will do. Or the Gaza Strip, if you’ve got some air miles burning a hole in your pocket. While you’re over there, make a stop in Africa, where the pope is preaching to a country ravaged by tribal war, overpopulation, chronic food shortage, and AIDS. The pope tells them to stop using condoms, or the all-powerful and all-loving God will cast their souls into the fiery furnace of eternal damnation. Nice.
    So much for journalistic objectivity. Clearly this story was pushing all her bias buttons. She would have to watch herself, tread carefully.
    Her cell phone vibrated on the table. She glanced at the little screen, picked it up.
    “Sheriff, thanks for getting back.”
    “You may be the only civilized human being in your profession,” Sheriff Alatorre groused. “Your colleagues are operatin’ under the misguided notion that talking to them is my primary function. Can’t get a minute to do my goddamn job around here.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry. Been a long couple days.”
    “It’s all right,” said Julia, thinking:
Make him your ally
. She put a smile in her voice. “Have to admit, that’s a true assessment of a great number of my colleagues, Sheriff. And I do appreciate your time.”
    “That’s why I’m talking to you. Your message said you’re looking to interview survivors.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Young lady, I am about to make your day.” He rumbled a baritone chuckle in Julia’s ear. “Get out your pen. I got a survivor you are
definitely
gonna want to talk to.”

    The home number rang unanswered. Julia punched in the cell number and Andrew Thibodeaux picked up on the second ring. She identified herself and asked him to repeat what he had told the sheriff. As he spoke, she scribbled shorthand in her notebook.
    “Well, it’s like I told the man,” Andrew said. “Went to work, foreman said he’d got a crazy call from Reverend Trinity, sayin’ we gotta shut down the refinery, and there’s gonna be an accident. Something about visions and tongues. Foreman thought he was drunk.”
    “But you didn’t?”
    “I seen him on the TV night before. Just surfin’, you know?—and suddenly my remote goes on the fritz, and I’m

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