Joshua pulled into the Ace Hardware Superstore parking lot and strode into the store.  He grabbed a cart and walked straight to the aisle where he had been so many times before, not paying any attention to the closeout sale on a Snapper mower he once had craved or the eighty-year-old man wearing a John Deere baseball cap sideways.  Beads of sweat began wetting his brow, half of which were in forecast of the coming exertion and half due to fear.  Had anyone become suspicious?  Does anyone know?

 

He reached his destination and looked down at the five-pound ingots of pure lead.  Sweat, persuaded by gravity, traced his clean, chiseled face and mixed with a tiny amount of drool on the corner of his mouth.  Fear had parched his mouth, now the sight of the lead ingots caused him to salivate like a Pavlovian mongrel, which the extraordinary event had made him.  History is made by few men.  History guides most men.  History was leading Joshua on a leash.

 

He quickly loaded 200 lbs of the ingots, pushed the protesting cart to the register, and paid $19.95 per ingot using a debit card.

 

Upon arriving home, he carried the 40 ingots into his basement man-cave and stacked them neatly.  He then went upstairs.  No one was home even though Beth's car was in the garage.  He found a note on the refrigerator left by Beth saying she and his two "man children" were going shopping with her mother and she would bring back a late lunch.  Joshua softly spoke "praise the Lord" and bolted back downstairs.

 

The basement was unfinished.  It had a suspended ceiling and three sheetrocked walls.  The lead ingots lay on a bare cement floor.  One wall was cinder block with a door, behind which was storage space and a wall of North Georgia granite that the house partly rested on.  Joshua opened the door and looked at the wall of granite that appeared solid and unbroken.  He then lifted a fifty pound piece of granite to expose a secret compartment that held the extraordinary event.

 

The compartment held a single object that was only slightly younger than the universe itself.  It was the size of a man's fist and looked like black obsidian (volcanic glass) but, when the light touched it, it awoke and spoke to Joshua.

 

"Hello Joshua.  You must have more lead."

 

Joshua felt the object's communication.  There was no sound.  But, the thoughts conveyed by the object were more expressive than any human speech.  Joshua felt connected to the object.  "Yes Philosopher, I do."

 

Philosopher began to glow like a blue neon sign, left the compartment and floated into the basement.  After lugging 200 lbs of lead, Joshua was thankful for Philosopher's ability to levitate, especially since Philosopher said it weighed more than Joshua's house.

 

Philosopher floated above the stack of lead ingots and began to bathe them in a brilliant cobalt blue light.  All of the trillions of lead atoms began to transform.  Protons, neutrons and electrons were disassembled and converted into energy that Philosopher absorbed.  Joshua watched as the stack of lead ingots changed from dull silver-gray to lustrous gold.  What was once 200 lbs of lead worth about $800 was transmuted into 189 lbs of pure gold worth $2,750,000.  Eleven pounds of matter had been converted into energy and absorbed by Philosopher, and Philosopher hadn't even warmed 1 degree Celsius.  Philosopher had once told Joshua that it converts mass into dark energy, whatever that is.

 

Joshua named Philosopher after the philosopher's stone, a legendary tool that alchemists believed had the power to transmute base metals into gold and bring enlightenment to men.  Some ancients believed Eve carried the philosopher's stone out of Eden.  Philosopher would never tell Joshua, but it liked the name, in the only manner that Philosopher could like or dislike.  The name implied a scholarly, independent being.  Yes, it was a much better name than a possessive name like the star of Bethlehem.

 

Joshua would never tell Philosopher, but it brought Joshua more foreboding than enlightenment.

 

Philosopher had told Joshua some of its history.  Consciousness began for Philosopher inside the "bowel of the maker" at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.  Philosopher had been to the edge of creation, but had not been allowed in the presence of The Maker.  Only angels, to Philosopher's knowledge, ever saw The Maker.  Philosopher, for all its power and knowledge, was merely a tool.  But, even a tool could sometimes pinch the finger of its user, and Philosopher liked to use the term "bowel of the maker" for the black hole at the center of the Milky Way - just to tweak The Maker's nose for not allowing it to ever see the other side of creation.  For Philosopher, ever was an eternity.

 

Joshua felt Philosopher say, "It is time to begin the next phase of our work.  Joshua, you are to buy land on which to build a tabernacle using the plans I will provide.  The sanctuary will be able to hold 40,000 people so buy a lot of land.  We will also need a warehouse in which to automate our production of gold.  Once the tabernacle is built, then we will make plans for the symposium."

 

When he had first met it, Philosopher had told Joshua the task God was entrusting to Joshua.  Since that first meeting, Joshua's emotions had been on a twirling lazy susan.  He could experience joy and sadness, courage and fear, rectitude and doubt in swift succession.  Doubt in God's plan would have never entered his mind except that Philosopher had told him that not even God can predict the future with absolute certainty.  God had designed the universe with chaos and given men free will so that God could experience the joy of anticipation.  Nothing is more boring to an immortal than all-knowing knowledge of the future.  Now doubting the plan Joshua said, "Philosopher, I don't see how we can defeat the forces we are up against.  They have power, billions in financial support, influence with the media, and even the backing of the UN.  We will never be able to match them."

 

If Philosopher could show sympathy, it would have shown it now.  "Joshua, a madman may quench the thirst of 900 with bitter lies and kill them all.  A righteous man can quench the thirst of 6 billion with sweet truth and save them all.  The forces arrayed against us will unravel faster than the Gordian knot after it was severed by Alexander's sword."

 

The Golden Tabernacle was the most splendid church ever constructed and it was finished in an astonishing 410 days.  During its construction, time and perfection had been more important than costs.  People would congregate inside by the thousands just to hear choir practice.  It was joked that even Barney Fife would sound like an angel in the acoustically perfect sanctuary.  Outside, the use of gold and black marble made a visually stunning contrast.  While in the daytime the church drew utterances of awe, it was at night when the star at the top of the church reflected brilliant cobalt blue light off the gold flying buttresses onto the black marble that visitors were left speechless.

 

It was no wonder, then, that when Joshua invited 4,000 esteemed scientists from around the world to attend a symposium on the subject of evolution vs. intelligent design, there was not the first scientist to refuse the invitation.  As was typical of the world's scientific community, there would be many more Darwinists than IDers (intelligent design).  Fox News in America and the BBC of Europe would broadcast all four days of the symposium in primetime.

 

The television coverage took on the atmosphere of an NFL football game for the American audience, while the BBC portrayed the symposium quite fittingly like a House of Commons melee.  The first night (quarter), the Darwinists clearly outscored the IDers according to the Fox commentators.  The Darwinists scored with the God delusion claim, the fossil record, and on what was clearly an uncalled foul of calling Benjamin Rousseau, an IDer with heavy bearded cheeks, a monkey's nephew.

 

The second and third nights (quarters) were considered a draw, but polling of audiences in America and Europe was suggesting that the IDers were gaining strength while the Darwinists were weakening.  The ratings for the first two nights were historically high, far exceeding Super Bowl ratings.  On the third night ABC, CBS and NBC decided to carry President Obama's twentieth healthcare speech instead of wasting season premieres of their new shows.

 

On the last night, the IDers brought in their heavy hitter, Richard Poe.  Poe was a brilliant scientist who was admired by everyone in attendance.  Until seven years ago, he had been a devout Darwinist.  Poe took the podium and spoke to the scientists and television audiences in a plain and eloquent manner about his journey from a believer in a godless universe to a believer in a Creator.

 

Poe began,  "A famous quote by Thomas Jefferson states, Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.  I and other proponents of intelligent design have questioned boldly the existence of God, and reason supported by scientific discoveries point to the universe having been consciously designed.  Science, through centuries of detective work, has discovered the fingerprints of an intelligent designer.  These latent prints left during the creation have been detected by many scientific disciplines - from Molecular Biology to Cosmology - but most scientists do not, at this point, suspect a designer, much less identified the existence of one.  It is not a God delusion that impairs the vision of IDers, but the blindfolded fear of losing the crutches of Darwinism and naturalism that keeps mankind from walking toward enlightenment."

 

Poe continued his speech by enumerating the many scientific discoveries that supported intelligent design including the "four bit software code" of DNA that befuddles explanation by evolutionists.  At the conclusion of Poe's speech the Darwinists had not been won over, but Poe scored the winning touchdown with the American audience and won over the European audience like a modern-day Edmund Burke.

 

To warm applause, Poe turned the podium over to the host of the symposium, Joshua.  Joshua thanked the scientists for an informative and exciting four nights, and then said a prayer for the Christian Dinka and Nuer tribes of Darfur being exterminated by a genocidal Muslim government.  Even the atheist Richard Dawkins was deeply moved by the prayer.  Four thousand scientists felt connected to Joshua, so expressive were his words.  Most thought this was due to the sanctuary's perfect acoustics.

 

Then Joshua made a announcement, the effects of which would change the world forever.  Joshua stated that twenty light years away, orbiting the star Delta Pavonis in the constellation Pavo, is a planet very similar to earth.  It has oceans of water, a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, plate tectonics and a magnetosphere.  Most astonishing, it has non-technological carbon-based life.  Scientists trained to reach conclusions only after careful and complete investigations were almost ready to take Joshua's words as Gospel.

 

Two years after the symposium, intelligent design had supplanted Darwinian evolution as the most accepted theory for the origin of earth's lifeforms.  Perturbation or "wobble" discovered in the motion of the star Delta Pavonis indicated there was an earth-sized planet orbiting the star at 1.1 astronomical units (1 AU = distance between earth and sun).

 

Darwinism's decline had a revolutionary effect on western culture and politics.  Europeans returned to Christianity and Europe's birthrate began to tick up as socialist political structures were dismantled.  In America, the Democratic Party turned on its head and became more libertarian than the Republican Party.  President Obama became a lame duck when the electorate started to find his messianic demeanor offensive, if not sacrilegious.  Al Gore, who had dreamed of turning carbon into gold using a philosopher's stone concocted from human misery, saw manmade global warming climatology become as respected a science as alchemy.  He joined George Soros in a movement to keep "New Earth" pristine and uncolonized.

 

Joshua became America's new Billy Graham.  The Golden Tabernacle served over 100,000 parishioners weekly.  Strangely, the star that once bathed the church in brilliant cobalt blue light had disappeared soon after the symposium's completion.  Forty days after the symposium on December 25th, there was a strange blue light in the nighttime sky south of Jerusalem.  Israeli fighters called to investigate could not take off because of electrical problems in the cockpits.  The electrical problems cleared up as soon as the blue light disappeared.

 

 

Laney's legs, arms and lungs punished her to stop.  The summit was another thousand feet away and achievable by any novice climber, but Laney decided to submit to her lungs - this time.  It had been over three years since Laney had exerted herself this much in an open, unmanaged environment.  She breathed deeply the cool air and scanned the horizon.  Sweat on her brow, persuaded by 1.1 gravities, traced her sculpted face and mixed with a tiny amount of drool at the corner of her mouth.

 

She knelt and said a prayer for the 6 billion terrestrials and the first three hundred colonists of New Earth.  The golden spires of the mountain range buttressing the dark interior forest from the blue-green sea reminded her of her grandfather's tabernacle.  In a moment of solitude and self-indulgence, she wept for the family she would likely never see again.

 

D. Pavonis was high in the sky and the ultraviolet radiating Laney's ivory skin was unfiltered by any ozone layer.  A terrestrial would have been starburned, but Laney was a spacefarer.  Laney's parents had given her 23 pairs of chromosomes and the Bethlehem viral plague had given her and many of her generation a 24th pair.  This 24th chromosomal pair had genes that strengthened Laney's immune system, manufactured cellular DNA restoration nanotechnology, and created specialized dermal tissues in her palms and feet.  Laney rubbed the dirt off her palm and looked at the circular red tissue that marked her as a spacefarer.  Inside the tissues, powerful antioxidants were produced and routed from her extremities to every part of her body.  Cosmic rays and UV could not permanently damage Laney.  She would never experience cancer or auto-immune diseases and her slow aging would give her a lifetime in excess of 300 years.  If she could control her exuberance for climbing.