Free The Jericho Deception: A Novel by Jeffrey Small Page A

machine didn’t work at all?
    Elijah’s theory about the nature of mystical experiences was controversial, and their colleagues looked on them with skepticism at best. If the machine worked, they would be vindicated. But then, what if their peers were right?
    Scientists had learned more about the brain in the past two decades than in all of prior history. They now had pills that could affect one’s emotions, and others that could stop schizophrenic hallucinations. Experiments demonstrated that electrodes planted deep in the brain could trigger memories of certain smells or tastes; other electrodes could induce orgasm. With all of these advances, the one area that had never been conquered was the control ofone’s thoughts and beliefs. What better way to attempt this, Elijah had first theorized years ago, than through religion—one of the most powerful belief systems of the human mind?
    Inevitably, Ethan’s thoughts drifted down a path he’d tried to repress for years—the secret that had plagued him since he was a child, the answers that he’d sought for two decades.
    Suddenly, Obi Wan dropped the orange from his mouth. Ethan felt his breath catch. He waited for any sign that might suggest the monkey was about to begin convulsing from a generalized tonic-clonic seizure. Rachel, who stood beside him, stiffened.
    “He’s okay,” Chris said.
    Ethan wondered whether the grad student believed his comment or was expressing his hope. He bent forward to stare more closely. The monkey’s eyes appeared to be tracking something that none of them could see. His arms hung by his sides inside the wire box, but his body didn’t slouch—he appeared relaxed. Ethan even imagined that Obi Wan looked thoughtful.
    Rachel exhaled. “Yes, he is okay.”
    A strange thought occurred to him. They’d come here to test that the magnetic pulses from the Logos didn’t cause a seizure in the animals. Could it be that something else was happening—something he wouldn’t have thought possible in a non-human primate?
    He turned to Rachel, who stared at Obi Wan with her head cocked. “Monkeys, they don’t—” He struggled with how to phrase his question. “Do monkeys have mystical experiences?”
    “I think all living organisms have the capacity to experience the deeper dimension that is the creative energy of existence.” Her eyes locked onto his. “Don’t you?”

CHAPTER 10
UNDISCLOSED PRISON FACILITY
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
     
    ----
    W here am I?
    Mousa had asked the same question countless times—for how many days, he was no longer sure. The helicopter ride from the airport had taken an hour or two. Then he’d been shoved in a van and driven to a prison where he was strip-searched, given a blue cotton jumpsuit to wear, and tossed in a rancid cell. The brief hope he’d held at the airport for a quick resolution to whatever misunderstanding had brought him this trouble had vanished. He’d been neither asked nor told anything since he arrived. When he questioned the guard who probed his naked body, the only answer he received was a stinging slap across the head.
    How was he supposed to clear his name if he didn’t know what he had to clear it from? They had his ID: his passport, credit cards, and hospital pass. Maybe they would realize their mistake on their own. The empty feeling in his gut indicated that this was unlikely.
    The terror he’d felt at the airport still coursed through his veins. His body had been pumping cortisol, the stress hormone, since he’d been taken captive. He guessed his blood pressure was a steady twenty points higher than usual. The lack of sleep made his exhaustion worse. American hip hop music blared from a speaker in his cell’s ceiling at random intervals, which, along with the bare halogen light bulb in the ceiling of his two-by-three-meter concrete cell, made sleeping all but impossible. On his first day, he’d made the mistake of unscrewing the bulb. Not only had he burned his fingers,