Thunder cracked and roared over the speakers, followed by slow but heavy drums and mournful accompaniment. Lament hung in the air, wordless but keen, rising to occasional soft wails.
Infidels / In a broken time / Our fathers bled the ground / Chained and bound
Another wail built and echoed in listeners' ears.
Castaway / Should the remnant die? / My hopes were growing numb / Overcome / She bewitched / With a Siren's cry / She beckoned, "Come and learn" / Is there no return?
Babylon / Born in your walls / Bred in your will / Captive and still / I hear the heavens cry
Eyes blinked. After last week, everyone was primed for more wrath, more judgment, more indignation. Something strident. This felt more like...grief. The word "infidels" had stung, but now it was being tempered with...compassion? How could one defend against this? Was that even desirable? Where was she going with this?
Aftershocks / And the sorrow grows / Some make their slow descent / Some repent / Rescue me / These idols lie / I cannot bear the shame / Make this desert rain
Babylon / Born in your walls / Bred in your will / Captive until / I heard the heavens cry / Babylon, this is goodbye...
Now thoroughly flustered, the audience waited anxiously for clarification. It was with a melancholy much like that of the song that Sophia began.
"My fellow citizens of Wakanda, allow me to address you one last time. I say 'last' because what I have to share with you today will almost certainly make me even more of a lightning rod than I already am, though not necessarily for the reasons you might have anticipated coming in. My perception has changed, yes, and my sympathies have expanded, but I have not ceased to love my own people. This is part of what I meant by 'promote or die'. Where before I saw in only three directions and could only act in two, one square at a time, I now see in eight and can act in all of them, and today I implore you to likewise promote, as our lives really do depend on it.
Again we find ourselves in Babylon. Funny how that works. As it turns out, Babylon is strangely significant to us in particular, both as a starting point and a source of pride and as a place of captivity from which we must escape. 'Come out of her,' the Lord says to us. Come out of Babylon the great and fallen. Come out of Babylon the whore, that ye be not partakers of her sins and that ye receive not of her plagues. I cannot say with any authority that Steve Taylor had us in mind when he wrote this song, but intentionally or not, he described us with such precision that the album he released it on, 'I Predict 1990', might as well have been named 'I Predict 2090'.
Infidels in a broken time. That's us, for reasons I will explain.
Our fathers bled the ground, chained and bound. The parallel there is obvious.
Castaway...the remnant. Also obvious. And bewitched we most definitely have been, by just such a Siren's cry. Sirens called seductively to sailors, luring them to shipwreck and death, and our Siren says to us precisely the words Steve used: come and learn."
Eyes widened. Was she hinting at an enemy within? At the college itself?
"Babylon, it turns out, is part of our ancestral legacy: the golden head on the statue that Nebuchadnezzar dreamt of. The first and greatest of the mortal empires that ultimately must bow before the King of kings.
Nimrod, son of Cush, known to some of us as the patriarch Lamurudu, founded Babylon and built the Tower of Babel.
Nebuchadnezzar, of course, ruled Babylon at its peak and built the legendary Hanging Gardens.
Our more recent ancestors were similarly blessed, possessing great wealth, but humbled by the lust for more and their own diabolical cleverness in getting it. They hit upon the idea of selling their captives, their rivals, their undesirables, to foreigners for a profit, ridding themselves of ongoing expenses and solidifying their own power at home. Two birds with one stone. Under these circumstances was the trans-Atlantic slave trade born."
Listeners gasped.
"The unfortunate souls who left the continent on those ships and their descendants came into contact with God during their captivity, bringing their cause before Him, and He heard them. He moved upon the buyers to stop buying at the height of their power and to repent of their sin. And that made the sellers very upset. One of those sellers was Dahomey in what we know today as Benin, which trained warrior women who captured slaves for the trade. These warrior women would later serve as the inspiration for Wakanda's Dora Milaje. 'Wakanda Forever,' the saying goes, but knowing this detail and that death and life are in the power of the tongue, are we sure that we want to keep saying it?
Hands rose to gaping mouths.
"The Devil doesn't come to you with horns and brute force if he can avoid it. He prefers to save that for later, when you are already in his power. Instead he comes to you with a trade, with something you want, hoping you will sign the dotted line. As we learned previously, he promised many things to us in the form of communism throughout the 1900s and beyond, but through one man in particular he marketed directly to us.
This man told us everything we wanted to hear, fanned the flames of our anger, fear, and trauma, and convinced large numbers of us that he was our best friend and could therefore be trusted with power over us in a commune, with goodness and justice for all. He told us that our 'sky god' was not going to save us, that we should stop wasting time by trusting Him and personally make our dreams come true on the ground, through revolution. We listened to him and so became infidels, breakers of faith, trading the truth of God for a lie. His name was James Warren Jones."
Silently a man walked the halls, his attention riveted on what he was hearing.
"In many ways, Jones was the ultimate 'ally'. Such was his allure that he was able to fracture families--especially mixed families. Swept up in his rhetorical magic, many of us followed him to Guyana when he began attracting suspicion in the US, denouncing siblings, spouses, parents, and other concerned family members as we did so. The commune quickly became an armed encampment, rife with fear. He abused those in his care. Some wanted to leave. When the suspicion followed him all the way to Guyana and he was forced to let some people leave the commune, he made his final move: convincing his remaining followers to drink cyanide, first giving it to their children and then drinking it themselves so there would be no one to 'capture' and 'torture' when the government came to investigate. He had practiced this several times before, training them to drink what they falsely believed to be poison, but this time he did it for real. Those who did not drink it were injected with it."
To his left the man spotted a door with a glass window set in it at eye level and peeked in.
"These final moments were recorded on a cassette, over some music. One of the songs on that cassette was titled 'I'm Sorry'. Given what was recorded over it, I find that eerily appropriate, so I am going to share it with you not as a closer but as source material. But before I do, I would like to make some apologies of my own." She drew a long breath. "I'm sorry, Lord, for having inclined my ear to seducing spirits for so long. I'm sorry, Gampa, for having failed you up to this point, even though you were spared the pain of watching me do so in person. And I'm sorry, dear listener, for showing you such unpleasant things, even though I must."
Behind that small window he saw a young woman with raven-black hair and a glowing sign above her head with the words "On Air" in red. He brought a hand to his mouth, eyes watering. He didn't need to see her face to know who it was. A part of him wanted to watch, but another part of him knew that he shouldn't risk startling her. Not yet. He shied away from the window, content for now just to listen and silently guard the door. Drums approached the ear like running footfalls, followed by swaying, bittersweet tones.
My love, I ran around on you / Yes, I broke your heart in two / And I want the world to know I'm sorry (sorry) / So if by chance you want to know / If I really love you so / All you have to do is come and ask me
And never mind what they say / Never mind what they do / I'll tell you / Tra la la, la la la / And you'll know that I love you / Tra la la, la la la / Know that I love you
Throats constricted. No one had been ready for this. The bird's eye view had given way to the microscope, past races and nations and straight into the family unit, shining a painful light on how crude, bird's eye perceptions had been used to turn body parts against each other. Hand versus foot, organ versus blood, red cell versus white cell. Familial cancer, misdiagnosed as enlightenment.
Ooh, now I hunger for your touch / I never knew you meant so much / I know that I have hurt you and I'm sorry (sorry)
Sobbing broke out as listeners remembered the alienation, the amputation, the psychological blockades and embargoes imposed on "problematic" siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents...the systematic othering of whites, "white-adjacents", and "traitors" who had refused to fall in line with the doctrine, who had refused to drink the cyanide and so had been forcibly injected with it.
Pangs of conscience long ignored and numbed with pat intersectional excuses were coming back stronger than ever, amplified by phantom limb pain for the dead, with whom reconciliation had become impossible. Throughout the broadcast radius, faces burrowed into upraised hands and tears ran between twitching fingers.
So darling, take me back again / And our love will never end / Don't listen to the whole world talk about me
Please never mind what they say / Never mind what they do / I'll tell you / Tra la la, la la la / And you'll know that I love you / Tra la la, la la la / Know that I love you...
Leaning against the wall, a trembling hand over his heart, the man looked upward with bone-deep gratitude. Even if this had been his only purpose here, the only reason he had been sent back, it was worth taking time away from heaven for. His heart had just begun to settle again when he heard the familiar milky opening notes of the ghastly Jonestown tape. His eyes hardened with somber approval and he nodded.
How very much I have loved you. How very much I've tried my best to give you the good life... Hmmm... But in spite of all that I've tried, a handful of our people, with their lies, have made our life impossible. There's no way to detach ourselves from what's happened today. ... And we--we are sitting here waiting on a powder keg. I don't think this is what we want to do with our babies. I don't think that's what we had in mind to do with our babies. It was said by the greatest of prophets from time immemorial, "No man may take my life from me; I lay my life down." ... If we can't live in peace, then let us die in peace.
...
So my opinion is that...we be kind to children and be kind to seniors and take the potion like they used to take in ancient Greece and step over quietly because we are not committing suicide; it's a revolutionary act. We can't go back, they won't leave us alone... They're now going back to tell more lies, which means more congressmen, and there's no way, no way we can survive. ... Anyone that has a dissenting opinion, please speak. ... Yes, Christine?
Is it too late for Russia?
Here's why it's too late for Russia. They killed. They started to kill. That's why it makes it too late for Russia. Otherwise, I'd have said, "Russia, you bet your life."
Jaws fell open. Russia? Yet again? First the assertions, then the Kalashnikovs, now audio. Just how deep did the Russian connection go?
...They said deliver up Ujara, who tried to get the man back here. Ujara, whose white mother has been lyin' on him and lyin' on him and trying to break up this family, and they've all agreed to kill us by any means necessary. You think I'm going to deliver them Ujara? Not on your life. ... Who walked out of here today? Mostly white people. Mostly white people walked. ... Please get us the medication. It's simple. It's simple, there's no convulsions with it, it's just simple. Just please get it before it's too late. The GDF will be here, I tell you, get movin', get movin', get movin'.
Listeners shuddered. Medication... Was that the cyanide?
Well, we're all ready to go. If you tell us we have to give our lives now, we're ready. I'm pretty sure all the brothers and sisters are with me.
Heads jerked backward. Yep ..
And I'd just like to thank Dad for giving us life, and also death. And I appreciate the fact that...the way our children are going. Because like Dad said, what they're going to do with our children, they're going to massacre our children. And also the ones that they take...capture .. They're gonna just let them grow up to be dummies, the way they want them to be, and not grow up to be a socialist like the one and only Jim Jones.
Palms hit foreheads. This poor youth actually said that? It sounded like something out of a bad movie!
Hello, all I'd like to say is that my so-called parents was filled with so much hate--
(Okay, stop this, stop this, stop this, children, stop this crying, all of you!)
And treachery. I think you people out here should think of how your relatives was, and be glad about ..that the childrens are being laid to rest. And all I'd like to say is that I thank Dad for making me strong to stand with it all, and make me ready for it.
Breath hissed into shocked lungs. Each new tribute seemed to dig a new hole in the floor of decency. And what was that noise in the background? Was Jones literally slapping dying children for making too much noise?
It’s been a pleasure walking with all of you in this revolutionary struggle. No other way I would rather go than to give my life for socialism/communism and I thank Dad very, very much.
...
Take our life from us, we laid it down, we got tired. We didn’t commit suicide. We committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world...
With growing nausea, listeners finally heard the slow, slurred residue of the chorus from the song they'd heard mere minutes prior. Hauntingly beautiful in its original form, the song now dragged like a cruel parody of itself, seeming to coat the ear with old, coagulated blood. After a brief moment of silence, Sophia reactivated her mic.
"As you surely guessed from the fragmented nature of what just played, this is only a cross-section. The original recording is 44 minutes long. You will never be the same after hearing it. Nine hundred people died that day in 1978, murdered by the fox that Malcolm X warned us about: the false friend who smiles at his victims, gains their trust, invites them into his lair, then eats them for dinner. We are sitting in that lair this very moment, being fattened for the kill with just such words as the ones that Jones used, and if we do not get our friends and enemies straight, we will be the lamb chop on somebody's plate."
Hearts raced and breathing quickened, everyone having felt a wind whistling past the backs of their necks like that of an axe having barely missed its mark.
"Sometimes the people we are most primed to distrust are the ones who were telling us the truth. This is true both of the people who warned us about Jones, whom we ignored to our own detriment, and of the man I will now introduce to you. Just as we followed the Slavs into bondage, I now propose that we follow one out of it.
Georgian Banov was born in Bulgaria, into communism. Shortly after escaping to the United States, he was saddened to learn that his new home had been seduced by the same spirits and ideas that had corrupted the land of his birth, and so he wrote the song with which I now close. So deep and thorough is the pickling into which we were born that his words will probably grate on our ears at first hearing, but he was likewise pickled, so I make bold to hope that a few of us at least can make the same recovery that he did, heed his warning, and follow the path he laid for us out of the slaughterhouse."
Drums rolled, piano undergirded, and a sweet tenor pleaded.
Think about the days / When you were just a child / When your thoughts were pure / And your heart was undefiled / You always stood for what was best / No matter what the test / And everybody knew / That you were different from the rest / Remember when the truth you knew was still aflame / And your simple honesty gave you a name / But something happened deep inside / To swell you up with pride / The day you left your sovereign guide / Was the day your conscience died
So return (return) / Return to the innocence of your youth / And recall (recall) / Recall the purity of truth / Oh revive (revive) / Revive the freedom you knew then / And put your trust in God again / America
Yes, Sophia had read the audience correctly. The instinct to scoff was a strong one, the insistence having been hammered in ever since anyone was old enough to read that there was no innocence to mourn, that America had always been a hole in the ground where hell punched through, conceived in deception, slavery, and all manner of evil. But there was no denying that they had been lied to, both about world history in general and about the American story of race, so how could it be known that the lie was Georgian's and not that of the people who had swept Jonestown under the rug? No one had even known about the Jonestown tape until it was played and given that Emmett Till was still a favorite topic on campus, that stank to high heaven. How could one boy in the 1950s be more worthy of remembrance than 900 people more recently, many of whom had been even younger than Emmett? It was a bitter pill, yes, but they just might have to swallow it, and how much good had rhetorical validation done the people of Jonestown?
You used to fight to bring all evil to an end / But then you let the enemy become your closest friend / If you would open up your eyes / You would realize / The pleasure that you idolize / Is a traitor in disguise
So return ( return) / Return to the innocence of your youth / And recall (recall / Recall the purity of truth / Then revive (revive) / Revive the freedom you knew then / And put your trust in God again / America...
America...
Listeners stared in shock. A song like this one should have been trite, easy to dismiss. And coming from a fellow American of the same complexion, it would have been, so complete was the programming. But coming from this man, against the background from which he came, it was a dagger between the armor plates. There was padding in place against anger, but what defense could be mounted against the sorrow of one who wanted better for you, who had already been where you were going?
Where one might normally have expected derisive laughter, a tense silence hung instead, broken here and there by ragged breathing, weeping, and outraged huffing. Astonishment at having come so close to being one more lamb chop, remorse at having done so much pointless damage along the way, anger at having been so utterly deceived. Others glared, ground their teeth, and formed fists, still too wedded to the power they now wielded to forsake it, too addicted to their pride to admit that they had been duped.
Beside the door, the man bowed his head in tribute to the courage it had taken to do what he'd just witnessed. Raising a finger to tear-streaked cheeks, he dabbed some of the moisture onto the doorknob and walked away.
Utterly spent from the psychological exertion, Sophia wiped sweat from her forehead and stuffed her phone into her pocket, already dreading the firestorm that surely must follow. She closed her eyes and heaved a sigh. The burning sensation in the chest that Lazarus had shown her in his little book was hers now. Was this what it felt like to be a hero?
Cracking a small half-smile, she reached for the door. She couldn't say why, but approaching it felt different somehow. As she walked through the frame and the door swung, she reached out to steady the knob and ease the door shut as quietly as possible while she prepared to lock it. To her surprise, the knob was slightly wet. Upon touching it, she saw herself still at the soundboard, felt a flood of paternal pride, sympathy, and tenderness course through her and toward the image of herself that was too profound for words. Then her field of vision blacked out for a few seconds, as if her eyes had closed, and when her vision returned, she saw a white hand with tapered fingers rise to her face and then lovingly touch the knob, A soft baritone hummed in her head.
En ed upim, Ûra.
Startled, she came back to herself and looked both ways. In the growing dimness of the hallway to her right, she could faintly discern a lone figure rounding the corner.