The Messiah Medallions — Jack Salmela

"Abdul, I cannot pass on my name because I never had children, but I have brought you up as if you were my own son. And I now pass this medallion on to you. I want you to have it, and you in turn shall pass it along yourself. Hopefully to your own children someday."

Abdul sat there mesmerized by the medallion. He kept rotating it slowly in his hand, looking at it from slightly different angles as if not trusting its simplicity and determined to see something new.

A supernova appears in the year 2020, and an ancient order of Persian Magi wonders if the prophecy of a celestial cross is about to be fulfilled. For 2,000 years they have been guarding a gold medallion ... a companion to the long-lost primary gold medallion given to the Christ-child in Bethlehem. On the day the medallions become re-united, the appearance of the cross in the night sky will be imminent ... and peace will be at hand.

But life is different in 2020. A group of college-age friends innocently carry on in a society squeezed more and more by the grip of government power.

MIT graduate student Tim Malone sees the finish line in his seemingly harmless research into time warp quanta. Shukriyah al Maqadma, the astrophysicist, studies dark matter in the depths of the Milky Way Galaxy. They are being watched ... but by whom ... and why?

Medallions, college students, scientific research ... elements in a tangled web that Officer Pierre Preston must unravel. His investigation leads to a man from his past, a man struggling to find faith ... a man who has a destiny with The Messiah Medallions.

"Abdul, ... I have the sacred books. You have the slate, the instructions for the council and the medallion. So now it is time for you to go. You have far to go today."