In last week’s episode, David confronted the ghost of Lieutenant Rodriguez. In this week’s episode, David continues learning about the reports he must write…
“You’re up early, Mr. Wilson” Ranell handed David a cup of coffee.
“I couldn’t sleep.” It was about five o’clock in the morning.
“We’ve got quite a bit of time before breakfast. Ranell gave David a brief look of concern, and then continued to pull a dish from the refrigerator. He flipped over some slices of French toast in their egg and cream mixture, and then added a pinch more cinnamon and cloves. “Would you like to continue our discussion about your reports?
“Sure.”
“Let me see… where were we?”
“You were talking about the Day of the Lord.”
“Ah, yes.” Ranell seemed to appreciate David refreshing his memory.
“Technically, though, it’s Days of the Lord – plural. As I was starting to explain, this Biblical terminology is generally used to indicate a prophetic foretelling of a future event. For instance, Zephaniah accurately foretold the catastrophic sacking of Nineveh in 612 B.C. And while it’s not clear if the passage from Joel was referring to the Assyrian invasion of 701 B.C., the Babylonian invasion of 598 B.C., or the Babylonian invasion of 588 B.C., it is clear that he was referring to a local, historical fulfillment of the prophecy that has already taken place…”
David interrupted Ranell’s disquisition with a poorly suppressed snort of laughter.
“What?” Ranell asked, confused.
“I’m sorry, Doc.”
“What is it, Mr. Wilson? Did I say something funny?”
“No, Doc, I’m really sorry, it’s just that we just came back from the flight deck a few hours ago where we saw one of the coolest things ever, and now we’re sitting here talking about all this, this stuff…” David lifted both hands towards Ranell, imploring him not to be offended.
Ranell was not offended. He was intrigued; “This stuff? Do you mean this Christian stuff?”
“I was going to say old stuff.”
“Ah.” Ranell folded one arm across his waist, holding the elbow of the other arm while he scratched his chin reflectively. “Come back up front with me to the display screen. I’ve got something else to show you.”
Coffee cups in hand, they made their way back to the main cabin, and Ranell spent a few minutes calling up a screen and creating a display. When he was done, a series of five oblong round dots strung vertically, one above the other. On top, there was a dark green dot, below that was a light green dot, below that was a yellow dot, followed in turn by an orange and finally a red dot. There was a blinking rectangular box above that into which Ranell typed the words “Reality Spectrum” in bold letters.
“All right, Mr. Wilson, you see here that I have built a simple chart I am calling the Reality Spectrum. I’ll have you know that the Reality Spectrum is another category of inquiry for the Rabban. It’s just not the one you are assigned to investigate. You are assigned to the First Cause Spectrum, but since our conversation has drifted to this spot, I thought it would be an appropriate jumping-off point for us.”
“What’s a Reality Spectrum?”
“I don’t want you to think that there’s anything mysterious about it, Mr. Wilson. It’s just a tool we are giving you to help score interviews. For instance, we were just talking about the differences between the technology aboard the St. Paul and ancient scriptural texts. So, let’s just go ahead and label this top, dark green circle with the name ‘Real.’ OK?”
“All right.” David had no idea where he was going with this.
“Remember how structured arguments use lots and lots of answers to simple questions to make sense of a complex question?”
“Yes.”
“The very simple question asked by the Reality Spectrum is: ‘What is real?’ So, if we’re thinking about technology, like the demonstration of the Barco dome we saw, would you consider that technology real, or would you consider that… hmm… what’s the opposite of real?”
“Illusion?” David offered.
“Just right!” Ranell typed the word “Illusion” at the bottom of the string of dots, next to the red one. “In your opinion, then, would you say that the technology is real, or is it an illusion?”
“It’s real, of course.” David extended one hand emphatically towards the flight deck. “We just saw it a few hours ago.”
“Are you sure? One hundred percent?”
David was used to this type of inquiry from the Army. Drill sergeants and officers used this trick to get you to second-guess yourself, and he wasn’t falling for it. “Yes, I’m sure. One hundred percent. Why? Don’t you believe it’s real?”
“Hold on, hold on, Mr. Wilson, we’ll get to my opinion in a minute.” He turned back to the screen and said mildly, “One hundred percent… hmm, strong opinion. Can I just write your name up here at the top next to the dark green dot indicating that you think technology is one hundred percent real? Is that OK?”
David just nodded as Ranell typed.
“Now it’s my turn, Mr. Wilson.” Ranell turned to face David and asked, “I understand you have participated in an RLV session, yes?”
David remembered the two-hour Reflective Listening Visioning session with the Sanhedrin Council and all the questions they asked him about his book. Sometimes he would play back parts of that meeting in his mind, experiencing again the wonderful sense that someone was genuinely taking an interest in him and his ideas. He also remembered his mini RLV session with the Rabban that turned into… something else. These guys sure use RLV a lot. “Yeah Doc, I did an RLV session.”
“Good, you understand the principle, now then,” Ranell folded his hands across his stomach and offered David an open expression, “Mr. Wilson, please tell me where I am on this Reality Spectrum. Do I think technology is real, or do I think it is an illusion?”
There was a pause, “What? How am I supposed to know what you think?”
“You just ask me, Mr. Wilson. Or to be more precise, you interview me.”
“Oh, I get it now! You’re trying to teach me how to do the interviews for the Rabban.” Understanding dawned on David’s face.
Ranell gave David a knowing look, but then he just spread his hands wide and repeated, “Do I think technology is real, or do I think it is an illusion?”
David considered the question for a moment. How could Ranell not think technology was real? They could take a couple of steps and just place their hands on the Barco dome. They could see the images of the sky… That gave him an insight, “OK, you think that we weren’t really looking at the sky, but just images of the sky taken by cameras on the hull and projected on a screen, right?”
“Right, Mr. Wilson.”
Then there was silence. Ranell let the silence stretch out until it was uncomfortable. Finally, David asked, “What?”
“Are you done? Are you ready to score me?”
“Oh,” David hesitated. Could it be this simple? It all seemed kind of patronizing like Ranell thought he was stupid. “OK. Well, I guess you don’t think it’s 100 percent real, so I could put your name next to the lighter green bubble, or dot, or whatever that is.”
“I wouldn’t agree with that assessment of my beliefs, Mr. Wilson.”
David was confused. “Why not?”
“Because when I think about what is real, I think about what King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes. Now there was a guy who had more wealth than anyone in the world. He tried building palaces and indulging in pleasure, he tried hard labor and amassing worldly goods, but in the end, it was all meaningless to him. Nothing but dust.”
There was another long silence until David finally said, “I wouldn’t have guessed that Doc.”
“You’re not supposed to guess. You’re supposed to ask. That’s the point of this exercise.”
“So, you don’t think anything’s real? Should I mark you down for the red bubble, then?”
“Oh no, Mr. Wilson, I wouldn’t go that far. Now perhaps if I practiced Hinduism, I might agree with that categorization. The idea that all of this…” He made a sweeping gesture with both arms. “Everything that seems to exist is just Maya, or illusion - is not what I believe.”
To David, it seemed like Ranell was intentionally giving him vague answers. This feels … slippery. David wanted the quartermaster to just come out and tell him what he wanted to know. David didn’t have much patience for what he considered to be mind games. I get enough of those from Lieutenant Rodriguez, and he didn’t feel like playing games now. Perhaps he could just eliminate the possibilities and get the final answer. “So, you’re not a hundred percent green, and you’re not light green, and you’re not red either. So maybe you believe that everything is dust, but maybe there is something real, what is it?”
Ranell was serenely unperturbed. “Something real to me is the Rabban. He’s been my friend for over thirty years, and he reminds me of King Solomon in the Bible; fabulously wealthy, but he has come to realize that all his wealth is essentially meaningless. Now he’s dying, and he’s using essentially all of his resources to pursue something that he considers to be true and real.”
From the tender tone in Ranell’s voice, David was certain that the quartermaster had just shared something deeply personal about himself. He was describing a deep friendship, even love, of a type that David had never experienced.
“Do you know what the acronym ‘PIRA’ stands for, Mr. Wilson?” Ranell asked.
“Um…” The question caught David off guard. He’d been told before, and it was on all his employee paperwork, of course. But he couldn’t remember now what all the initials meant, although he knew some of them. “It’s some kind of Disaster Relief Agency.”
“That’s almost right. It’s the Parousia International Relief Agency… do you know that first word? A lot of people are unfamiliar with it, Parousia?”
“No, I’ve never heard of it.”
“Parousia is kind of an ancient Hebrew legal term,” Ranell explained, “to denote the arrival or visit of a king or emperor. In Christian theology, the Parousia is used to refer to the second coming of Christ.”
David cocked his head, “Sorry, Doc, what does any of this have to do with whether or not you believe technology is real or not?”
“Don’t you see, David?” Ranell’s use of David’s first name startled him. The quartermaster leaned forward with his hands on the table, “All of this, this ship, this mission, everything we are doing, and even this very conversation – it’s all part of the Rabban’s plan to find evidence of Christ’s return: the Parousia. That Barco dome over there wouldn’t even be here if the Rabban didn’t think it would advance him towards that goal. That pursuit is the underlying impulse of everything he does, and it is taking place on a massive scale.”
Ranell spoke an urgency and passion that David felt like a tangible force. Caught up, David rode that feeling to ask his next question. “So then this quest, this search for Christ; that is what is real to the Rabban? Then what about all the disaster relief stuff?” David remembered the tears he’d seen forming in the Rabban’s eyes when he discussed the suffering of the people on Vanuatu. How does that square with all this mumbo-jumbo about Christ’s return? Was the Rabban just lying to me to get me to stay on the St. Paul? “There must be some connection between the Parousia (David struggled to pronounce the unfamiliar word) and responding to disasters?”
Ranell cocked his head and raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “That’s very insightful, Mr. Wilson. The connection is the Days of the Lord. We believe that by responding to natural and man-made disasters we are positioning ourselves perfectly to gather evidence of Christ’s return.”
“Then it’s not really about relieving human suffering?”
“Of course it is, Mr. Wilson! Don’t you see the connection?” Ranell seemed to be pleading for David to understand something vital. “We can’t prevent human suffering, but Christians are called to relieve human suffering where we can as an act of faith in the Lord who will end all suffering when he returns.”
“Is that true for you too?”
“Yes,” Ranell said, chuckling slightly as he relaxed back in his chair and reached for his coffee. “Yes, that’s what’s real for me, too. I was with him as his ideas developed, and I’d like to think I shared in their genesis. Heck, I was the one who came up with the name PIRA.”
With the tension in the room dissipating, David also picked up his cup. He smirked a bit and asked cheekily, “So Doc, can I put you down for an orange bubble?”
“That depends, Mr. Wilson. The scoring is entirely up to you. It’s a purely subjective ranking system. Tell me, do you think you understand my point of view well enough after this interview?”
David felt like the man had bared his soul to him. In the space of just a few moments, Ranell had shared his religious beliefs, confessed his deep friendship for the Rabban, and told him the history and purpose of the massive effort behind the PIRA organization. David thought he understood what they were looking for. “I think I get it, Doc.”
“Then you can score me any way that seems good to you.” Ranell said. “But there’s one more thing, Mr. Wilson.”
“What’s that?”
“Do you think you could write down a short, concise sentences describing our discussion that would justify, say, scoring me with an orange bubble?”
David thought about that for a long moment. He hadn’t been taking notes. “All I’ve got is impressions, Doc.”
“Do you remember everything that happened during your RLV session?”
“Yeah, pretty much.” It would be hard for David to forget anything from that two-hour interview.
“At any point during that session, did the Sanhedrin Council members write anything down?”
“Yeah,” David said, remembering. “There were a lot of times I would say something, and one or more of them would look down and write something, but I couldn’t see what it was.”
“They were scoring you during the interview. They came prepared to find answers to certain questions, and they were scoring you across several different spectrums, mapping out your beliefs.”
“Oh my god!”
“Indeed.” Now it was Ranell’s chance to smirk. “So, do you think you could write up a report like that if you were prepared in advance and knew specifically what to look for?”
“I… I guess so, Doc.” David stammered a little. “I could give it a try.”
“Good.” Ranell made a show of saving the diagram and powering down the view screen. “You will be using a simple memo format, and you will be conducting interviews using two categories of questions in the First Cause Spectrum. The first question you will ask is: do you believe there is One Power or Many Powers?”
“What’s the second question?”
“Is that Power Personal, or Impersonal?”
“That’s it?”
“Not quite, Mr. Wilson,” Ranell stood up and clapped him on the shoulder. “In addition to writing reports, I’m going to have to show you how to upload them onto the SEAS system, but that can wait until another time. It’s late now. Do you want to try to get some more sleep, or would you like to help me get an early start on breakfast?”