12: A Handful of Events

Since there wasn’t any direct threat, and since the paper hadn’t specifically identified him, Alex decided they could remain in the French Quarter a little longer. As much as he was afraid of exposure, he really enjoyed the city. He didn’t feel the need to patrol the city looking for new followers, figuring with as much attention as he’d gotten around the city the majority of people with either type 1 or 2 traits had already been detected and included into the community. So with a fair amount of trepidation, they set out to wander the streets of New Orleans for a few hours before dinner.

Alex and the other non-natives were having fun, especially since the local girls had so much to tell them about the places they passed. They headed northwest, keeping off of the busier main streets, hoping to avoid any scenes which would attract attention. They were enjoying themselves when they noticed a boisterous group ahead of them.

“It seems to be some kind of protest,” Cate offered.

“Yeah, they’ve got placards,” Brandy observed. “That can’t be good.”

“No, it doesn’t look like it,” Gail added. “It looks like an organized protest outside of a local church. It must be in response to today’s article about you.”

“There’s a sign that says ‘No Atheist God’,” Cate said, squinting to make out the shifting signs. “Another says... ‘No God But Christ’.”

“None are particularly apt or accurate, but the meaning is clear,” Alex complained.

Gail motioned them back. “We’d better detour around this. There’s no sense purposely walking into trouble.”

Mattie stepped forward, leading Rodger around the others. “Well, since we’re here, I’m going to continue this direction. I’ll avoid the protest, but my apartment is in this direction and I need to feed Roger before dinner, so I can join you later.”

The others wished her goodbye and turned back. They were just heading onto a side street when shouting attracted their attention.

“Hey, look, it’s her!”

Turning back to see what was occurring, they saw that one of the protestors had noticed Mattie. They’d all been cautious about people focusing on Alex, but no one had considered the rest of them a target. Although the images on the video were indistinct due to distance and motion and the picture of Mattie had been vague, the combination of her looks with her dark glasses and a Seeing Eye dog made it easy enough to make the necessary connection. A group of the protestors broke off of the main group and approached her.

Brandy, seeing this, grew upset and stormed off before anyone could stop her. Gail, thinking quickly, grabbed Alex and dragged him down the street at an angle so anyone seeing Brandy approaching wouldn’t immediately connect her with Alex. She also broadcast a message to Caitlin to move the other girls so they were between Alex and the protest group.

As they did that, the splinter group gathered around Mattie in an apparently angry mood.

“Are you the woman in the news today?” one woman demanded. “You know, the one who was given her vision?”

“Yeah, she is. Look, she can see us,” someone else stated.

“What kind of scam are you running? How can you give credence to a group who claims the Christian church is ‘misguided’?”

Mattie stumbled back, trying to find a way around them but they quickly hemmed her in. One man waved his hand in front of her face, trying to see if she was really blind, and she swatted it away. Some more words were spoken, indistinct due to the distance, but it wasn’t looking good. Just then Brandy, who’d been storming forward, reached them.

“Yo, leave that poor lady alone! You think you’re defending Christianity but ya hardly doing it justice, acting like an angry mob, frightening lonely women with hatred. You should be ashamed of yo’selves. You’re showing exactly why they don’t think much of the Christian church.”

The group turned on Brandy, whose tirade only attracted the attention of the other protestors. Cate started after them, trying to defend the two women, but Alex told Caitlin to restrain her. This might get ugly, but they couldn’t be sure yet. He wanted to see how Mattie and Brandy defended themselves, and he also didn’t want to focus the group’s attention on themselves either.

Part of the group squared off against Brandy while the rest looked around in confusion, allowing Mattie to quietly slink away. However someone in the crowd noticed and approached her again.

‘Caitlin, tell Cate to record this. If something happens we’ll need proof of what happened,’ Alex instructed.

‘Shanna, call 911 and report a disturbance. It will take them a while to get here, and if we don’t call them now it’s likely to be too late.’ They both did as he suggested.

“We should leave before this gets ugly,” Gail reminded him.

“No, we’re staying,” he insisted. “We’re far enough from it we can get away if we need to, but I want to see what happens and provide assistance if I can.”

Several women approached the confrontation; it was hard to tell who was involved and who was merely observing. One stopped and glanced directly at Alex and he thought maybe he’d been exposed, but she turned and marched forward again and Alex realized what was happening. As always there were Watchers following him. They’d apparently seen the disturbance and were now rushing in to defend one of their own.

The man who’d approached Mattie, angrily waving his placard, drew near enough to trigger a defensive action in Roger. Despite being extensively trained to be social, he could detect the man’s intent and growled menacingly at him, causing him to pause.

“What a bunch of cowards,” Brandy cried, her voice rising with the increasing din of confusion. “You accost a blind woman who did nothing other than have her vision restored, and blame her because someone questioned your beliefs?” She was hoping to provoke the crowd enough so they’d focus on her, allowing Mattie to get away, but she was also pissed at how people could so easily forget what they supposedly professed. “How weak is your faith if someone getting healed undermines what you stand for?”

The man who’d been arguing with her started to respond, but couldn’t quite think of a response and hesitated. By then the other women reached the scene. One walked right up to the man who was facing off against Brandy, said something to him and slapped him hard across the face. He spun around and was halfway into the motion of throwing a punch when he caught himself, realizing he was about to strike an innocent woman in the name of the Prince of Peace. Brandy started to shout something else, but the words were lost amid all the activity.

The other women reached the man accosting Mattie, who was rapidly backing away from a snarling Roger. She shoved him from behind and he stumbled, scrambling off to the side afraid of confronting the angry dog. Mattie, able to see everything happening, kept tight control of Roger’s guide bar, preventing him from actually biting the man confronting her. She knew if Roger, a guide dog, ever bit someone, he’d be put down sooner than you could say “Excuse me?”.

The other protestors glanced around in confusion, as they were suddenly confronted by a group who were not supportive, which is what they were here for. They’d hoped staging a public protest would garner attention and draw people to the demeaning things this so-called ‘Angel of New Orleans’ was saying about the church. Instead they were now losing a fight with a blind woman they’d attacked, they were arguing with a fierce black woman who wasn’t afraid of speaking her mind, and they were about to be beset by a crowd of onlookers. One of those on the outskirts of the group threw down his placard and took off, having lost his nerve once he figured out they wouldn’t be able to easily intimidate their opposition.

When he ran off several others slunk away as well. Another woman moved up and began arguing with Brandy, though. Despite the distance, Alex could figure out much of what was being said via his telepathic link to Brandy. The woman started to shout things about atheists being the Devil’s minions, when Brandy started quoting scriptures counteracting everything the woman claimed. It was clear Brandy not only spent a lot of time in church, but she’d clearly studied the good book, not only the parts she agreed with but the other parts as well. She ended up telling the woman she couldn’t pick and choose which parts of the bible she chose to accept while claiming it was God’s law written in his own words. Confronted with someone who could argue her points and wasn’t intimidated by attitude, she quickly backed down.

The protest group quickly disbanded, first those attacking Mattie and the others who’d stayed behind. Several of them shifted nervously to the side of the church, but the minister finally rushed out of his church, yelling at them to pick up their “damn signs” and stay away from his church. The entire scene had only taken a handful of minutes. In the distance they heard a siren heading in their direction.

“That’s our sign to go,” Gail told Alex.

“But I have to thank those who helped us,” he tried to argue as she steered him around the corner and away from the group.

“They know what they did. They also know it helped you and that’s all the acknowledgment they need. Knowing you did the right thing is its own reward,” she reminded him.

Alex sent messages to the other women, arranging their movements and making sure they would be OK. Both Brandy and Mattie remained where they were just so they could report what had happened to the police when they arrived. The scene was what Alex had been afraid of, but it hadn’t exactly gone as he’d feared. That Brandy is a real firecracker, he told himself. I wouldn’t want to be on her bad side, he thought, but then remembered her own warnings to him.

They eventually gathered for dinner at a nice quiet restaurant down by the waterfront and compared notes. The police had taken a while to show up, but Mattie, Brandy and the minister had been waiting for them, and had filed complaints against the people who’d accosted Mattie, many of whom the Minister knew. They told them that since no actual assault had taken place there was nothing they could do.

“What about an illegal assembly?” Brandy asked. “What about disturbing the peace, threatening behavior or public intimidation?”

The two police officers had backtracked after that, saying they’d file a report, but it was clear they wouldn’t do much more than that. Brandy asked them if they could say whether they’d take any action as a response and they informed her they couldn’t commit, as it was an open investigation—despite the fact they hadn’t filed anything yet. She told them she thought there was a video recording of the events, but when they demanded she turn over the device she told them she merely remembered seeing one, however, although there were a fair number of onlookers, the other Watchers who had participated had left by then. Little did they know that Cate had already sent a copy of the video to Lisa Woodall as well as Patricia, with a message to have one of the ‘girls’ forward it to both Mr. Rodriguez and to the local television stations. If the police wouldn’t address this directly, then they’d only have themselves to blame when the public became involved.

Gail and Alex had avoided any groups after that, which in the French Quarter is pretty hard to do. They’d taken refuge in a nearby store for a while until they thought the attention had dissipated, and then they’d headed to the restaurant to wait for everyone else.

After they’d discussed it, Alex asked for quiet and pulled his own phone out and made a call from the table, allowing everyone to listen in.

“Hello, Albert Rodriguez speaking.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Rodriguez, this is Alex. Have you gotten the video link we sent you about the trouble at a local church today? Your article is causing trouble not only for me and my people, but also for others with no connection to me.”

“Ah, I was wondering whether I’d hear from you again. Alas, I can see the problem, but you’ve got to admit, it’s the kind of thing which needed to be reported, even if it causes some problems. After all, it affects the residents of New Orleans, and your followers are becoming an increasing presence in the city.”

“I’ll concede that, although I’m clearly trying to avoid any media coverage. I’m not looking for attention, and I’m not selling anything to anyone. I’m looking to connect with individuals, not religious groups, so it really doesn’t impact any specific groups. My mission isn’t against any group or involving any agenda. I’m simply trying to make a couple of personal connections.”

“Ah, that’s interesting. What, exactly, is your ‘mission’?” Albert asked.

“That’s something between me and my nonexistent God,” Alex joked, though he wasn’t sure the reporter would get it. He seemed to take it a bit too seriously.

“So what you’re saying is that you aren’t specifically taking a stance against any established religion then?” Albert asked.

“Exactly. I’m not trying to establish a new religion. I’ve got no message to deliver, thus I’ve got nothing which needs to serve the fodder of the media. What I do and say is strictly for those I meet. There is no social movement here. That’s why you haven’t heard from any of what you refer to as ‘my followers’. There’s simply nothing to convey.”

“And I’ll duly note that when I report on the troubles you alerted me to. I hadn’t been aware you were the one who sent it to me, since it arrived anonymously, as I’m sure you know. I checked the police reports on it and they list a number of people as being involved, most notably, a certain Mattie Adams, who they list as being blind. Might that be the same blind woman you healed? The police marked her as being blind due to her having a seeing eye dog and glasses, but I don’t think they actually checked whether she could see or not.”

Alex sighed theatrically, even though he’d anticipated this. “Yes, it is. I figured you’d ask to interview her. But you’ll have to contact her on your own since I’ve already conducted what business I had with her.”

They signed off and Alex turned to Mattie.

“Well, you’re about to get your official fifteen minutes of fame now. I hope you’re ready for it. As a result we’re going to have to curtail our involvement for a while, since I still want to avoid the limelight. You can say what you want, but give them just enough to temper reactions. Tell them there was a miraculous event and you can ‘see’, but don’t tell them any more than that. Don’t tell them just what you can see. I’m sure once they hear you can only see a series of lights and can’t pass a vision test they’ll lose interest quickly. It will seem amazing, but hardly earth shattering.

“I’ll have one of the Sisters keep in contact with you, since she’ll appear to be just another friend. However if I show up there would be too many connections. Contact me if you need anything and we’ll see you get support. Let’s see if we can support the press just enough to give them a blasé event. That should be better than avoiding them altogether.”

They decided that sounded like a good plan, then Mattie decided to change the topic.

“Alex, since this may be the last chance I get to ask you, what’s the deal with this Alexandria? Is she a real person or not?”

Alex laughed, “She’s as real as I’ve been reported to be. I only see her when she needs to see me.”

Cate cocked her head at his response, but Gail took exception to it.

‘Alex, I understand how you want to foster the story to take the pressure off of you, but I’ve got a problem with you lying to your most important followers,’ she argued.

Alex considered it for a moment. “All right, let me correct that. Quite frankly, there is no Alexandria. She was an invention of mine designed to alleviate the fascination with me. I figured if the general public had someone else to talk about, they wouldn’t be as interested in me anymore. However, Gail points out I shouldn’t lie to you about this. We seem to be building a tiered approach to information, and I want the Seers to know what’s real and what’s not. So here’s the official story. I’ll tell the Seers I’m the real deal, since they need to know it anyway. After all, no one else is going to show up to activate them. However we’ll foster the story amongst the Watchers, and all of you can tell your friends and relatives about her. We need to get this story spreading if it’s to do any good. If I get especially close to any of the Watchers, like you, Tina and Amy, I’ll keep them apprised.”

They agreed that seemed a logical approach to the problem, which left just one more issue.

“Now, I’d like to cover one more topic. We seem to have managed to avoid a lot of trouble by the skin of our teeth. But I still think I can move around the city freely, but not if I have a large contingent of women following me around all the time. So we’re going to have to split up. Cate will accompany me, after all, she is my sister, and we should look like any other tourists. Gail needs to be near, but she’ll remain in the background, watching from a distance ready to jump in if I need it. Her actions this afternoon demonstrate her usefulness in that regard.

“However, the rest of you will have to disperse. I’ll meet Brandy and Caitlin back at Allison’s. I’ll give you my key so you can get in. Gail has the other key so I’ll be fine without one. The big thing is to try to get everyone to play down the recent events. I can’t afford a big entourage anymore, and with Mattie’s help we can potentially play down my latest miracle, so hopefully we can tamp down expectations and any further protests. I think Albert will do a good job reporting on the overreaction by the church groups, which should work to our benefit. Is everyone clear on all of that?” he asked