The Penguin Brief

From his perch on the edge of a glacier, 21,000 feet high up in the Himalaya mountains, Corey Kerr could see the great sweep of history rising to meet him in successive waves.  The words of his mentor and boss, Heinrich Manfried, echoed in his mind “All global trends are converging on a single point of transformation, a point of no return for the human race.” Impossible as it seemed Corey had begun to glimpse what that the converging point might be…but he didn’t want see it…and even though he saw it more than anything he didn’t want to believe it.

6 months ago Corey was content to track the mutating trends on the web that seemed  to be creating  something like a global mind linking together people from every nation at the speed of light. That was his job at the World Thought Institute’s Planetscope project.  He fondly visualized his small family nestled among the redwoods in the hills of Santa Cruz, his wife Chiyako, son, Joshua and baby daughter, Caitlin.  He liked to think that his computer skills and web savvy research was helping him play his own small part in the evolution and survival of the global community while providing a good life for his family. They formed the nexus of his life and gave him deep comfort and a reason to contend for the future against all of the gathering darkness that threatened the world with terrors unknown to past generations and even with the real possibility of outright extinction.

But now in half a year all that had changed. Here he was dressed like a Tibetan Sherpa facing the icy winds of the upper Himalayas, waiting to rendezvous with the mysterious and formidable Lei Kerala, a key member of Corey’s team , who was on the run from one Khan, a modern-day messiah in his own mind, with his own army in the Hindu Kush to back up his claims to be the awaited one,  a lethal messianic combination of Kalki of the Hindu tradition, Maitreya of Buddhism and Al Mahdi of Islam who along with Isa the Islāmic “Jesus” would usher in a new age of peace and righteousness….but only after the unimaginable destruction of  a global 3^rd world war.

Corey knew little about  religion, prophecy, or messianic movements, but that is exactly why Heinrich Manfried, founder and leader of the World Thought Institute assigned him to the so-called “Messiah Project” for an unknown client of WTI… Manfried gave him one primary instruction “ You must approach this like an unknown field of science without preconception and present a comprehensive report on the global movements that are awaiting or anointing a Messiah figure, a world saver.”

Corey remembered Chiyako laughing at him seeing how out of his depth her super-smart husband was floundering in the strangeness and magnitude of his assignment. He had all the money and resources he needed at his disposal and once he recovered from the shock of being thrust into a new landscape he was moving fast assimilating a team of experts including his old college buddies Assibi Abbadu, now a UN Climate Change expert and Wan Li, leading researcher of paranormal and transpersonal psychology.

But now Manfried had thrown him a huge curve. The yearlong project now must be completed in the next 6 months.  The timing was critical for world events were moving fast and quickly getting out of hand. And for the first time in his association with Heinrich Manfried, Corey saw a shadow of doubt, a glimmer of fear, in those calm blue eyes…something or someone had gotten to him and that shook Corey to his core for he had relied on Manfried to supply the stability he desperately needed while navigating the onslaught of constant change.

It had been several hours of traveling up the virtually impassable trails, using high-tech powered sleds, that seemed to float over the packed snow…with dizzying drop offs on one side and unimaginably steep cliffs on the other. They had finally reached their destination and now all they could do was wait.

The vast fields of ice that stretched out before him struck him in stark contrast to the recurring dreams that had alternately disturbed and comforted him during the past year.  For unlike the thick ice surrounding him on these magnificent mountains his dream was located on the seldom explored and virtually unknown 7^th continent at the magnetic bottom of the world, Antarctica.

“I’m melting…what have you done? I’m melting!”  cried the Witch of the South in a pitiful voice of anger and despair.  Huge slices of her glacial body were thundering in slow motion silence into the seas while thousands of miles away islanders in Kiribati prepared to leave forever their beloved atoll as it sunk inexorably into the rising Pacific ocean. “

It was into these dreams on these melting ice fields that strode the Penguin Emperor, as  one destined to take control  of the world and heal the planet.  Though the dream changed over time, the cries of “I’m melting” and the absolute authority and piercing eyes of the Penguin Emperor remained the same.

Cory had not asked for these dreams, or for this assignment.  He had been quite happy with his scientific technological world-view and dreams and spirituality were like misty intruders on the clear horizon of his rational mind. Now there seemed forces beyond his control that were relentlessly pursuing him, forcing him to confront the unknown. Why him? Why now?

Then about 5 months ago came the final assault on Corey’s well-managed world. It appeared one day on the very computer screen where he ruled, the digital realm he excelled at throughout his schooling at Stanford and gave him geek-cred that Google offered him an incredible salary right our of college.  Instead he had listened to Heinrich Manheim’s compelling vision of the future and knew right then he sharing in it was his destiny.  Like all computer centric people Corey was prone to spam, the endless attempts to thrust some useless information before millions of eyeballs hoping to reel one in and make a buck.  So when the first message came…”Look at the numbers” he quickly sent it to the junk file.  The next message “Look behind the numbers” suffered the same fate. It was the third message “This calls for wisdom” that finally caught his attention.

“Wisdom?”  Corey repeated the word in his mind. “Really?” For wisdom was the kind of word nobody around him liked to use. It was an anachronism from a past era.  The world was moving too fast to do anything but keep up with the data flow and try to apply analysis to the currents. But wisdom, the deep understanding of the meaning of things and applying it to life…who had it? No one Corey knew…he couldn’t even call the great Heinrich Manfried wise…he was incredibly smart and adept at satisfying the needs of his clients for truly new and creative visions of the future…but Heinrich only saw the what that others missed but not the why.

And so this third message reached Corey in a place he was vulnerable…a kind of void in his life that hungered for something he had never tasted before…but that he somehow knew existed, the hidden meaning and purpose of things. Against all of his better judgment and past experience of web kooks and cons, he wrote back. Thus started his relationship with the one he ended up calling “cyber-angel”, whose cryptic messages infuriated Corey even as they intrigued him … but it was their focus on numbers that really hooked him. Since he was a young kid numbers spoke to him in a language he intuitively understood.

“6 is too short, 7 is heaven, but 8 is too late” came the message on the 4^th day.

It was a riddle that made absolutely no sense to him at the time, but today, seated half way to heaven in the impossibly blue sky above the highest mountains in  Central Asia, it made sense in ways that terrified him, and made him question everything in his existence.

Corey checked his iPhone and noticed it was May 25^th, 2010 exactly 3 months since Heinrich put him in charge of the ‘Messiah Project.’ To him it seemed an eternity.

That’s when Lei Kerala stepped from the deep crevice she was hiding in and bowed to him in traditional Asian greeting. “Thank-you Mr. Kerr, I knew I could count on you. Lets’ get out of here”.  Soon they were sitting on a terrace sipping hot chai looking out over Katmandu to a spectacular peak seeming to float above the clouds.  Lei Kerala was breathtakingly beautiful framed against the mountain as she debriefed him on the Khans messianic plans, his discovery of her covert mission, and her deceptive escape utilizing ghost GPS to lead her executioners on a wild goose chase over the Russian steppes.

­“So Corey you have met with the Theosophists and learned about the roots of the new age that spring from these very mountains, the Tibetan masters DK, who taught that all religions are one.  Your contact at Theosophical Society, briefed you on their search for Maitreya, the world teacher to come…in fact who many say is already here.  This is good.” Lei reviewed his trip for him since  they had been regular  in communication along the way.  “Then you visited  Aurobindo Ashram and the Auroville ,  the city of Human Unity, the home of the one whose followers believe is Kalki the 10^th avatar , the earthly manifestation of the God Vishnu who comes at the end of the Kali Yuga, the Hindu iron age of materialism and disintegration establish righteousness again and usher in the new Sat Yuga, the golden age of truth.”

“Finally you spent time with Ramakrishna Gupta, the Brahmin Hindu who converted to Christianity and wrote the book from Alpha to Omega, his attempt to correlate the ancient writings of the Jewish and Christian scripture with the modern-day global situation. I am sorry I had to call you  him to help coordinate my rescue…it’s one the hazards of my job.”

“It was actually a relief” answered Corey. He had felt crushed under the weight of these traditions and ideas that seemed so foreign and bizarre.  Still he was glad he had chosen to visit first hand and meet the people and places where they arose and where they live in their intensely devoted lives. For it was this very devotion that made these movements so compelling yet so potentially dangerous.

Lei Kerala looked at him in bemusement knowing exactly the upheaval going on in his psyche.  Suddenly she turned to the valley below and said, “Look up for your deliverance is near”…and when he looked above the mountain floating in the clouds she laughed liked a crystal stream and said “Made you look”.  Her humor seemed refreshingly out of character for this messiah-stalking adventurer but what struck him like a rock falling from some unseen cliff was the clear fact that Corey Kerr was already looking.