I’m
heading down the main street in Cincinnati. I mean, nothing looks
familiar to me anymore, and I’ve lived here thirty years. I suppose
sometimes we can’t see what’s right in front of us too clearly as
if we have dust on our eyes all along. Well I was walking down 4th
Street, and at the far end I could see the first of the two tallest
buildings in the city, the Government Panopticon, which rose to a
height of 30 stories and was equipped with heli-pad, radar receiver,
transmitting beacon & antenna, as well as a network of cameras
and microphones all over the city placed in inconspicuous public
places. The better to keep an eye on us all.
But
it’s just me, Steve Pissoir, and I am on my way to a very important
date with a friend of mine who works over at the university between
the government tower, and the Nollij Corporation tower.
The
folks in the Nollij Corp. tower could give a rat’s ass for a toad
like me, but what I want to do (with the help of my good friend) is
to get a signal out, over the cosmos, using the radio telescopes of
the university (tied together with seven other large array and wide
beacon telescopes across the western hemisphere) as a transmitter to
send a serious SOS from our planet to any civilization within earshot
and get their help to preserve our living space before it all catches
fire- as it has been doing for the past fifty years.
I
don’t know about such things & all except that my friend at the
university does, because he is an undergraduate exobiologist with a
minor in astrophysics, and he is just as interested as I am in
getting the word out, out of our society, out into the universe,
where perhaps creatures of mercy can bring us to heal the planet….
I
know, it sounds like I am whining. But you weren't there when the
final ice shelf left Antarctica, and the last penguin croaked at Cape
Horn, and the seagulls of Carlisle ate the rotted flesh of a hundred
thousand Englishmen whose fortunes had been tied to the Humble river
when it overran its banks and filled fifty thousand acres of cropland
into desert of salt.
No
I suppose you were not there.
But
my friend and I, we need to work on this thing without the university
or the government discovering we are doing this. Our network of other
conspirators, for conspirators we indeed all are, across the globe
are well aware of the risks we are taking and have left no stone
unturned in keeping our work on this project undetected by an
investigators or superiors or government agents…
Because
we know that the government and Nollij Corporation are working
together to keep the fires fueled, and keep all the cars fueled, and
keep us all choking in an atmospheric soup of contaminated lead,
ethyl and premium. I suppose I can’t let on even to you but I think
you will believe me better once I get to the point of all of this.
Steve
Pissoir, and I am on my way to the observatory at Cincinnati U. I can
now see the tower of the Nollij Corporation, the people who instruct
the world in what knowledge we are to know. They are the largest
repository of the world’s information, but I know for a fact myself
that they have kept a large portion of it hidden like an iceberg,
deep in their AI brain’s recesses, and these truths are dangerous
and self evident… someone wrote them long ago. If the government
won’t try to contact the aliens out there, then it’s up to us.
I’m
now passing Nollij Corp. Tower. The glass windows reflect a blue sky,
blue in the ultramarine, rows of them, that continue on down the
block and just three blocks away I’ll be able to meet up with
Jorge.
Jorge
Torremolinos, my partner in this grand cybercrime we aim to commit in
the name of humanity, despite the thwarting bulking hide of the State
thrust before us. Jorge, with his degree and recent work, has got
connections to Chile and the Atacama VLA… along with our friend
Pieter in Johannesburg, we have got the ability, once Jorge gets his
Trojan horse into the mainframes of all three observatories, & we
can focus X Kw of power to send our message out to the stars for
exactly two and a half hours. Any longer, and there will definitely
be feedback loops from inside each country’s national security
cyber-defenses- they will not notice it is their own computer
networks hijacking the world’s most powerful radio telescopes….
Such
military secrecy! Well it had to be that way, since Jorge and I feel
there is little to lose (but our lives and liberty!) and a world to
gain for humanity if we succeed. That is, if we can even yet still
regain our world. I don’t really know any longer if we have even a
wing or a prayer to cast upon the waters but all I now is, that our
government has not done a single thing but contribute to the general
misery and malaise…
The
government and the Nollij Corp both have a vested interest in keeping
secret any contact information they might have about any visitors
from outer space, any civilizations out there which might have -or
might yet- attempt to contact us. The goal I think is to continue to
shrink the population of earth through eugenics and possibly even
cannibalism to get the earth back down into a sustainable population
of humans. As it is now we have shore stacked on shores of humans
distributed around the coasts of our continents, and every year more
of them are forced to withdraw for higher ground, pushing the already
burdened nation sates… but I digress. My mission comes first.
The
University’s observatory is but a mere four and a half blocks from
the Nollij Corp tower. It is entered through a small door on the side
of an auditorium (actually, it’s the planetarium, but it serves its
purpose for the student body to hold rock and roll concerts.)
Jorge’s
office (and the telescope, and the controls) are just beneath this
large congregating hall, and the signals are relayed by means of
transmission wires to the antenna and satellite dish on the rooftop.
Ingenious, actually, it was the best the university’s cash-strapped
astronomy department could come up with. Whatever it is, it works.
And
we are hoping to hijack the network. With 790.000 Megawatts of
broadcast energy, the sum transmission, traveling at the speed of
light, will reach the closest star at 6-11 light years. The next best
habitable stars come in the 20-50 light year range. But if there’s
anybody out there?
We
are betting there is. The sheer number of viable exoplanets, Jorge
assures me, is enough to wager the risk is low that we will perform a
pure miss, and nothing will come of our efforts, except, perhaps for
all of us, a term in our local prisons.
Here’s
Jorge, and here I am, and I hand him the slip on which I have written
the message we will be broadcasting in binary formula out in hopes…
we can reach… them.
Hello!
Please understand who we are, we need help! Come to our star and help
us- our planet is choking and we need oxygen and other elements to
mitigate our existence! Help! Please come soon!
You
will never believe what happened next, but I am here today to tell
you. Within three hours of our shutting off the transmitters and
resuming our nonchalant roles in our respective countries Jorge,
Pieter in South Africa, and Alejandro in Chile had gone back into our
regular everyday positions, I in finance, and them just turning their
backs in their white coats - within three hours the most amazing
things happened.
First,
the sun hung in the sky at about 2:00. It remained at 2:00 for more
than fifteen minutes, then, a half hour, then, for yet another hour
it had remained in that one spot in the sky. All the world seemed to
come to a halt, as people everywhere could not help but notice that
the sun had stopped. Taxis and freight trucks ground to a halt, horns
bleated, tempers flared. Road rage broke out simultaneously in over
fifteen states on seventeen federal interstate highways.
It
was as if the sun had become a magnifying glass, and we humans were
little ants.
Smoke
and steam poured forth from the exhaust flumes of over three hundred
coal fired power plants in the Eastern Seaboard grid. One by one,
these began to black out. With that black out, lights and electrical
outlets all over the east coast went out too. Stereos and computers
died. Radios fell silent.
It
was but the beginning.
There
was a great sound like thunderclaps, and, lest you think I but jest,
the sound of a thousand trumps blowing in great arpeggios of glory.
How else can it be said. And we saw it.
It
was just like more than a hundred science fiction movies, above us
all in the sky, a gigantic alien spacecraft. It had lights all about
the perimeter, and- cross my heart if I am lying to you- it had a
little ramp that came down, and down that little ramp walked a little
man, clothed in a simple robe, and from it the music that was playing
as he came down the steps- something like a country-funk rythmn &
blues bop shuffle- he was snapping his fingers and grooving. And I
swear to god it was like a hundred angels came down out that
spaceship behind him, trailing their clouds of glory, and we all knew
who He was.
It
was up to Him to announce himself, though. All the world stood still
in awe. Just as the sun, now freed again, continued on its way down
the horizon, so did the Son of Man return to the planet he had called
home 2000 years ago, but that prophecy should actually come true? Had
the Messiah actually come just at the time when we of the scientific
community had been asking for help from any outside force, here it
was in all its force right in our faces?
My
God, I said to Jorge in a text message, I think this is the Second
Coming of… Jesus Christ.
About
twenty minutes later, I get a knock on my door.
I
go to it…
and
shit, there’s Jesus!
“Steve
Pissoir?”
“Yes?”
“Steve,
I’m here in answer to your message.”
“But
but, yes?”
“But
nothing. Hey, I bet you get a lot of shit about your name, hunh?
“Um.
I think I am used to it by now, yeah...”
“Well
hey, anyway. Look- see what we gotta do-”
“Yes?”
“What
we gotta do is, we gotta have a Press Conference!”
“A
what? And blow our cover?”
“”No,
I got your backs! C’mon. We gotta have a press conference so the
leaders of your planet know this shit’s come down for real!”
“I-
yeah, right, I guess.. we gotta… Yeah, OK, what do you need me to
do?”
“Go
to your university there and get the Astronomy Department head to be
present at our conference. We’ll present the case just like it was
some kind of scientific event, you dig?”
“Umm…
sure.. uh”
“And
who is not to take us seriously anyway! You know who I am, come on!”
It
was obvious that if Jesus himself was in on our conspiracy I had to
concede perhaps we were invulnerable. It might have been a mistake,
but I guess it was just a step I had to take.
I
called Alejandro.
Alejandro
Tiene, our man at Atacama. He was in charge of a program checking for
the Hubble Constant amongst a number of Messier objects which had
been classified first as white dwarfs, but we now considered to be
“sub atomic neutron fissile factories”- happening about ever 16
parsecs or so across the sky…
Anyway
Alejandro was the brain who got the link up happening with the
telescopes becoming a transmitter, and his job and ass were as much
on the line as any of us. In fact, it was really possible his
government cold pursue an espionage case against him, if the hacking
were discovered.
But
as Jesus said, he’s got our backs…
“Are
you kidding, man? It’s all over the tv and the radio down here,
man! -That bigass old alien space craft? Esta Jesu Christos, los
Salvador del mundo! I know it, too!
I
turned to Jesus. “You see? He already believes!”
“Tell
him, we have to coordinate...”
“I
know, I know, a press conference! OK -I am now posting to the
University Bulletin board--- and also to several local television
outlets, and a couple of national and international… carbon copies,
you dig… We can face the reporters at… 4:00? OK?”
“OK.
That will be fine…
“I
will be available on sat link whenever you want me...”
Alejandro
had a pleasant, happy boy expression on his face as I blinked off the
stare-screen.
“Roger”
OK,
so we have about an hour to get ready,” said Jesus. “I suggest
you hold it in the concert hall upstairs...’
“You
mean, the planetarium.”
“No,
I mean the concert hall. That’s the only function it will have for
the duration as long as Dad and I are in charge...”
“Dad?”
“Dad?”
“Yes,.
You know. The Almighty. Our
Father. You didn’t think I was just gonna try and set this up by
myself again, did you, after what happened to me the last time?”
“Umm,
OK, right. But please explain...”
“Yes?
“So
many questions! Sorry, I cannot actually think straight enough right
now to ask you the right one…
think
of an important one to ask...h- how did you hear our message?
“Hear?
You think we needed to hear
it? But, me and Dad been working on you guys for a whiles now. We
sort of have a “6th
sense”,
you might say, of when and where we’re needed most...”
“Ahh,,,”
“But
just one thing. You know, we can’t just keep coming here and
bailing you guys out like this all the time! You need to learn and
take the lessons to heart, because we can’t
always
be here for you!”
“Hmmm...”
“Does
it make sense?”
“Yes.
But … What are you going to do?”
“You’ll
see. Let’s get the press job set up.”
The
University’s Public Address crew spun into action, setting up a
table, a dais, a large flat screen pulled down from the back wall,
stanchions around the sage to hold back the reporters, most of whom
would leave that space for the cameramen. At 3:$5 the first reporters
began showing up. Me, Jorge, and JC were all seated at the table, to
begin.
I
rose to the dais.
“Good
afternoon, members of the press. I’m sure all of you have many
questions, but I’ll explain, first.
“My
name is Steven Pissoir...” (Immediately, several reporters began
laughing and choking on their coffee. The slight disturbance was like
a ripple in the little room.)
I
began again.
“My
name is Steven Pissoir, and I am just a bank
clerk
for
Frosteez.
But I had a vision one day that I would be called upon to send a
message out across space, to some superior civilization, to come to
our aid and help us with our great current climate catastrophe. My
partner here, (I pointed to Jorge) -is an exoplanetary biologist who
works here at the university. We set up a satellite link with our
brother in Chile,
Alejandro Tiene, who will soon be joining us on the wide screen above
and behind me.
“We
sent a transmission just three hours ago, toward the area of the sky
where we know the nearest habitable stars are. We know it was an
abrogation of our duties as paid employees of science agencies and
universities, but we felt that -in the absence of any action by our
governments- that it would be up to us to try and get this SOS out.
And look what happened.”
“Much
to our surprise, the result is what you have seen here today-
“It
is my proud pleasure to introduce to you, the man many of you have
been waiting for all these years, as did your parents and your
parent’s parents parents… without further ado, Mr. Jesus
Christ!”
There
was a mixture of baffled humor, shock, awe, and even a little
applause, which I swear had not been planned but apparently, the
campus PA guys had cued up just especially for the moment.
Now,
Jesus took the dais. His hair was immaculately curled into
dreadlocks, and a bright orange-yellow halo nimbus surrounded his
head. He had a great wide smiling grin on his face, and his eyes-
well, they sparkled, sparkled like trillions of star-seeds would
launch from their orbit.
“Hi,
y’all”
A
pregnant silence followed, interrupted by the coughs of some newsmen.
He was obviously stalling until he had their full attention.
“Hi,
y’all. You know, it’s been a while, huh? Last time I came by you
were all in a horrible way about what’s sacred & what not, &
I thought me & Dad had fixed you all up, with Moses and Noah and
the boys, but you didn’t get the point.
“-I
did. No, sorry, I meant that as a joke.
“See,
from where we are outside of space time, you would think we do not
hear your prayers, your cries for mercy, when you are in pain, on the
edge of a nervous breakdown, and more?
“Well, of course we do.
Me and Dad… well I know you have more questions about “last
time,” but I am not here today to answer any of them. I am here to
help you NOW.”
There
was silence, more coughing and muttering in the press corps, and then
he turned to the screen behind us and pointed to Alejandro’s face,
which had as wide a grin as his own, and dominated the entire back
wall of the hall.
“This
man here, Alejandro of , is the first of you to acknowledge my
authority. As such, I will make him and his friends here-” he
nodded at us, staring at our shoes, or fidgeting with a water glass-
“My
deputies in the great project we have ahead of us, which is called,
once again, coming-to-help-you fix your-mistakes.” Jesus he could
be sarcastic!
"A
lot of you are not going to like what we're going to do next, but,
lest ye see miracles, ye would not believe…."
There
was silence in the hall for a minute or two, since nobody knew what
to expect, and since nothing happened in the hall, it just made the
reporters all more nervous.
But
this is what happened. We later called it “La Milagro de los Autos”
because of what it was, and how sudden it was, and how it affected…
all of us.
Across
the planet, motorists who were just tootling along merrily one moment
were sprawled out on the pavement the next, 2 billion bottoms
scraping asphalt, their automobiles… gone.
From
the dais, Jesus now continued.
“Like
I said, some of you will not like it, but Dad and I decided this was
the most important thing all of you could do, and none of you wanted
to do it, so we were forced to put it upon you all. I know, many of
you are without your radios now… but we will allow the use of cell
phones for the next three days in order for you to contact your
family, your friends, and your business associates as to what you are
going to have to do next...”
Jesus
stepped aside, and came over to my chair to whisper.
“Allow
Alejandro to talk to them for a while, it will keep them distracted.
We got a big problem going on with this, and I am sure Dad wants me
to be available...”
I
got back up and turned the wire over to Alejandro.
“Greetings
my brothers and sisters!”
Across
the planet, those who were on the streets now, their belongings
somehow left in place, but their automobiles
now missing, began to form up in groups around those with radios and
cellphones.
“Jesus
is back!”
“Jesus did that?”
“Jesus
Christ- that goddam motherfucker, where’s my fucking truck! I had a
load to get to the
East Coast by tomorrow, now my boss will kill me!”
“Let’s organize!
“Yeah!”
And
on freeways around the globe, these strange, bedraggled armies of
commuters, pleasure travelers, day-to-day deliverymen, and big rig
drivers formed into long lines and...walked their ways back home.
“Greetings,
Brothers and Sisters. We are on the cusp of a great new astrological
age! Those of you of other faiths, be assured, we are not going to
persecute you for your ways. Nor even you, atheists. But just rest in
faith
that El Salvador is going to help us, and this is all for the good,
esta bueno, si? We will all get along! After all this is the New
Kingdom…”
Alejandro’s
connection must have broke, because the screen behind us clicked
black.
Jesus
stepped back up the dais.
“Yes,
this is
the New
Kingdom of which I once spoke, in another mind, but it is also a work
in progress, and it always was. Those
of you who are missing your cars… I know, I know, I can see you
even now, in your legions, marching homeward so you can go get your
weapons
and come after me with your pitchforks…
“But
I already paid that burden for you once, and I will not again. I want
you to know you WILL all be compensated! What you should be doing now
is, go home, get your shit together, and wait for our next phase.
This will begin as soon as Dad and I are assured that there will be
no insurrections among ye.
“Insurrectionists
will be rooted out and cast unto the bottomless pit! Heh heh heh.”
I
could not but wonder- but of course, God and Jesus are
authoritarians! Why, they are the highest authority, how could they
but not be! Was all the philosophical
wondering over “free will” and “determinism”
now all moot? It looked like the boss was back. But rather than being
mad, he seemed…more like gently amused.
Nonetheless, they
often warned me that fascism might come wearing a happy face mask and
waving a handkerchief someday…
I
could only wonder what he means by the next step...
What
was going on inside the planetarium was not passing unnoticed by the
powers that be, either in the
Panopticon,
or the HQ building of the Nollij
Corp.
Inside,
bureaucrats, investigators, detectives, cops, generals and squares
were all debating how they should respond to the gigantic seizure of
power by “the God Bros” as one Pentagon wag called them.
“What
the fuck are we doing messing around? Send in a SWAT team!”
Actually,
they did attempt it, but when the SWAT team arrived at the university
planetarium, they were met with a strange occurrence. Every single
one of them collapsed on the floor outside the auditorium door,
laughing and jagging into fits of euphoria. Dropping their weapons
and laid back, spaced-out, against the walls, they resembled none so
much as victims of an LSD-dosing experiment undertaken by someone
else’s army.
So
that did not
work.
Over
at the Nollij
Corp,
where Splendor Bendix ruled everything with an iron fist and
burrito-filled glove, he saw his own blood pressure begin to spike as
the teletype gave him a careening
stock market
and just like that, Seven trillion dollars had been debited from his
estate. Rather than commit suicide, Bendix decided that he would have
his revenge as well on the “God Bros” in due time.
But
even Bendix was not prepared to see the entire financial structure of
the planet earth, all its intricate networks of trusts and financials
and regurgitables and vegetables disappear,
Just
like the cars had. Sent
into another dimension, Poof.
Which
was what Jesus had meant when he said
“our next step...”
The
press conference broke up with the reporters yelling and screaming
madly for Jesus to comment or answer a question, but JC had already
split and headed back down into Jorge’s lab. There, me and Jorge
found him later in the afternoon, his feet propped up against the
back another chair, arms folded behind his head, and that same
shit-eating grin plastered all over his face.
“See
how they like it now.. no cars, no money… no more rat race!”
I
smiled. I knew I had to talk to him a little more about the speed of
these things taking shape, but he seemed so pleased I dared not
disturb him.
I
stuck my hand down the pocket of my jeans and where I last remembered
having some change, it was there no more. Just like Him, I thought,
he’s gone and disappeared all the money too. Just like the cars.
Are these really miracles for our own good? Or will civilization
collapse? I gotta try and stay on his side though- never know if he
might even decide to throw me to the bottomless pit.
He
let us rest up, and I did that at my own home, walking there as I
did, surrounded by dozens of other people, some of whom lived nearby,
and most who did not. It was a funny feeling walking amongst all my
fellow people, and none of us had a dime in our pockets. Like, the
world could go on, and somehow, even us humans with nothing left at
all- no car, no money, maybe you saved the coffee mug from the last
car trip and are wearing it like a pilgrim’s badge by now-
But
every single man and woman on the streets had been suddenly
de-statused, or perhaps, I hoped, “re-statused”- as would be the
primary idea behind a move like this by Jesus and Dad.
I
sort of resented not having the money or the wealth any longer. Now,
we were all just serfs in Jesus great kingdom though I am sure he
would rather prefer to call us his sheep.
Sheep
or not, I know there are still plenty wolves out there. Like,
Splendor Bendix and his crew, and all those long haul truckers out
there who sat, defiantly, beside their cargo loads, as they waited
for company representatives to come, inventory the goods, and release
them back to their family and homes.
Where,
just like everyone else, there was not even a single article to be
found related to the fossil fuel industry.
From
nowhere, thousands of kitchen sinks had their underside cabinets
scoured of plastic bleach bottles, garbage bags, weed killers, and
air fresheners. Everyone would still have their phones, but sure as
shit, I knew that, come tomorrow, Jesus would be up and at ‘em
early in the morning wanting to get the new Kingdom off on a good
foot for the First day.
On
the First Day, the Food Panic had set in almost immediately. Once all
those multitudes formed their long lines off the freeways and began
their homeward treks, those who’d been waiting for their return
panicked. No car! Most then began walking for their local
supermarkets, and predictably, these started selling out their stocks
before closing, Many shopkeepers marked up signs reading “Closing-
Permanently” but were shocked, when in the morning, they returned
to their shops to begin the process of making the adjustments, when
they saw their shelves had all been mysteriously resupplied! There
was nothing amiss, at all… except.. the food was all “generic”-
there were only a little tag at the end of a bag, or on a box, to
tell what it was, although every item was in the exact place that the
display merchants had slotted it.
It
was truly a miracle…
As
for those multitudes on the highways, overnight, Jesus had sent out
an army of angels armed with reusable water flasks and loaves of
bread, (and cookies!) at way stations along the roads There was no
reason anyone with a healthy body could not return to their abode
within a day or two, and unless they were far from home, there was no
problem.
Jesus
keeping the cellphones on for longer than he first had planned had
something to do with the fact that, by the end of the third day,
there were very few cases of madness, insurrection, or
disgruntledness.
Except,
of course, in the halls of Power.
On
that first morning, when I had finished my last cup of specialty
Columbian coffee, and had steeled my mind for the worst, I headed
back to Jorge’s office, which of course, was now the command post
and HQ for all of the Good Lord’s Earthly Operations.
He
was seated in the same chair, in the same way, with the same smile on
his face, when I entered. Only behind him now, standing, with stern
looks on their faces, were two large angels.
“Steve,
meet Gabe and Mike. They’re my bodyguards...”
“Umm,
how do you do?”
They
stood silently and only nodded in my direction, an indifferent
acknowledgment, I felt.
“We
did get some overnight reports about some problems, mostly those
interstate truck drivers. What a tough breed they are! I can
understand how inconvenienced they must all feel. Listen, I sent out
squads to every large disturbed region- you know, the ones where
there’s the most freight just lying out on the road, you know? Told
them that my angels will guard the shit so nobody can rip them off.
Then I sent all the truckers home. That sort of nipped their anger in
the bud. They weren’t happy with the loss of their wallets, either,
but, I assured them that their wages will be made up,
when we have the final edge of the operation functional. And you,
too- you will miss your coffee, too, I know! But hey- remember what I
said now! Take no worry for where or how you shall eat or what your
raiment shall be, alright? We’re all gonna be in this together, and
every last jot and tittle will be accounted.
“Now
Steve, I want you to be my ambassador, intermediary, or whatever you
want to call yourself, to these others, the seven billion of you here
on this little blue rock of stardust.
“You
are my PR guy, my go to for questions of which of course, I might
know the answer, but, maybe also I don’t, you know? Being only
half-human and half-Holy Ghost, I can’t actually see past a certain
fog in my own perspective...”
“Got
a log in your eye?”
“Ha,
ha. No really, there are things you will have more familiarity with,
you know? I only get to check in here every couple of thousand years,
and while Dad’s crystal ball shows him and me a lot some days it’s
all cloudy… too many bad vibes going on here with you guys all
fighting between yourselves! When the problem here is Everyone’s. Can you grok that?
I
grokked. It was one thing for Jesus to be an omnipotent omniscient
being able to create miracles at will, it was another for him to be a
visitor and just a visitor to Planet Earth. Clearly
someone who understood decorum, diplomacy, and the various madnesses
of Earthlings would need to handle the job he was pegging on me.
I
sighed. It was gonna be a long week.
Splendor
Bendix, as his name implied, was a man born to opulence and
convenience, and used to having his way. As he stared at the blank
screen on his desktop PC, while it still existed, (it had not
been transformed into some hyper-string dimension, as the
automobiles) It did not seem to function.
While
the power light went on, the screen remained blank, dark. He pulled
out his cell phone and punched the fast dial number that would summon
up the phone of Fenstermeier, his number 2 and CFO of the Nollij
Corp.
There
was no answer
There
was not even a ring.
For
all intents and purposes, the hour had come “of which no man shall
know.”
The
cell phones of billions were now not much better than cheap storage
banks for their pictures and videos.
Jesus,
I knew, had anticipated this new panic, too. Because, in fact,
everything which had relied on either a satellite relay or “the
cloud” (as it was quaintly referred to four decades past) was
non-functional. And might as well have been just another piece of
junk to clutter up the landscape.
“Goddamn
those fucking GOD BROS!” he stormed, tossing a paperweight so hard
against the glass front wall of his office that it shattered into a
pile of fragments.
A
secretary came running at the sound.
“Is
anything wrong, Mr Be- uh -oh- OH!”
She stared at the
pile of glass.
“Yes,
Diane, something is. Everything is broken!”
He
kicked hard at the pile of shards, stopping just before the tongue of
his shoe slipped beneath a large one.
“Can’t
do well without my foot now, can I?”
Splendor
Bendix- fifty five years old, captain of industry, the picture of
health, wealth, and success, once known as “the richest man in the
world” (before his company was forced to cede certain patents to
the Government Panopticon) -reduced to mining cryptocurrency for the
past three days and nights as he attempted in any way possible to
recoup his treasure…
Was
now without even that remedy for his anxious and bitter greed.
He
paused.
“Is
your cell phone working, Diane?”
She
checked.
“Why,
no!”
“Thought
so. Looks like the GOD BROS have struck again, Goddamnit!!!!”
“We’re
now well into getting the heavy lifting over with...”
Jesus
smiled.
I
stood in front of Him, Gabe and Mike looked rather bored, but at
certain points in the conversation, they might nod, shake their
heads, or in some way let me know that they actually did take note of
my presence.
“Yes,
the heavy lifting is over. My Family Reunification Squads have been
busy the last couple days, but they report that everyone’s back
home, safe and sound. Of course, nobody liked it that first night,
when there wasn’t any food left in the stores. But the shopkeepers
all sang a different tune Wednesday didn’t they?”
Freed
from the bondage of money, most communities now reverted to the
barter system, or the shopkeepers, attended by other angels, would
distribute food to all and any who wanted it. Some greedy people
tried stockpiling it, but it was soon obvious there was no need for
that. Every morning the shelves magically refilled by themselves.
Nobody was hungry or thirsty.
Of
course, being all generic products, nobody could get Just Exactly
what they were used to, but the absence of competition in the food
industry actually hurt nobody but the market research and advertising
industries, who had made their own fortunes picking on small
differences which were, for the most part, so miniscule to begin
with, that having all the food be “generically packaged”
presented no real issues.
Most
of the world’s population, in fact, were happy campers now. Had
Jesus been a politician, I am sure everyone would have elected him
King, at that point!
He
laughed again.
“So
now we are into the other phase. Now that we have the worst of your
-madnesses- controlled, we’ll get to work on the- Chemical
Problems.”
From
what I could tell, Gabe & Mike weren’t just JC’s bodyguard’s-
or obvious “heavy muscle”. It turned out they were in charge of
the millions of angels who now composed the world’s police force.
The
nation-states, powerless now in the face of the Divine Authority,
were doubly confused and insulted why the fact that, around the same
time the cell phones had all disappeared, so had all insignia of rank
on uniforms, medals, & standards of Officialdom. There was left
in fact, only one flag- that of the United Nations. Some of its
appointed representatives took issue and umbrage with this. For what
had all these smaller nations combined into the USA’s One Hundred
Stars to begin with, if not to enjoy the rights and privileges
granted by the US Constitution?
“I
didn’t come all the way here just to pay my obesiance to the Ten
Commandments and the United Nations Bill of Rights,” thundered the
ambassador from USA/France.
“It’s
also insulting that we have had to ditch our free markets for this
undiluted- Communism!” echoed his USA/UK counterpart.
Part
of their problem was that with all those angels watching the highways
for “poachers,” they were also on nearly every street corner
doing good deeds, like, helping old ladies across the street, preventing stray dogs from being bullied or tortured, watching over
children on their way to school- it was also noted inside the great
Government Panopticon- just nine blocks away from where we were, at
Jesus’ HQ- that the angels apparently had a better take on mass
surveillance (as well as the local kind) that the business of the
government keeping tabs on everyone was now redundant.
As
they lunched, lonely in their cubicles, the employees of the Nollij
Corp. had their own beefs.
“Now there’s a greater
intelligence at work than even our own AI!”
As
it turned out JC’s “Chemical Problem Project” would involve
much more than a gang of angels and omnipotent wisdom. JC needed some
actual scientific help, and he got it.
Remember
Pieter in South Africa? (Almost forgot about him- you thought!) He
was called on by JC to do some leg work by traveling to Antarctica
and taking measurements there of the ozone hole, as well as an
atmospheric examination. How quickly was JC’s “oxygen insertion”
taking hold in the lower atmosphere, and how soon would the actual
CO2 /ppm measurements fall back to the level that JC, Dad, and all
the angels sought? (This had been fixed at 1790 AD, a reasonable
enough place, thought JC, before autos or the practical applications
of electricity…)
It
so happened that the employees of Nollij Corp, disallowed their usual
lunches of catered food of high and mighty artsy-fartsy cuisine, now
forced to eat generically wrapped tuna sandwiches and fruit salads,
sent a memo to their boss complaining about the loss of morale it had
engendered.
When
Bendix got it, he agreed.
“This
bullshit about the grocery stores is too much. We have to have
a way to get back to the way things were, to monetize appetite, and
have diversity in menu choice again! There’s got to be a way I can
manipulate everyone under our platform into choosing our way
over the God Bros!
“Hmm. Maybe if I had a chip they
could implant into the consumers, that would allow them access to the
things they’re used to having again, they would all go for
it. For who wants this generic crapola every day anyway! I don’t!
And I like my oatmeal to be made from steel cut rolled oats, not
whole oats! Even if they are organic!”
So
it was, that Bendix announced the new chip, and anyone who wanted one
could come to the Nollij Corp building and get one implanted, for
free.
Of
course, there would be a monthly usage fee. Six dollars and
Sixty Six cents. And that since Jesus had suspended monetary
currency, Bendix said that the Nollij Corp would hold all these usage
fees in abeyance, until either the “Tyranny of the God Bros is
overthrown, or we’re all cast into the Bottomless Pit.”
Most
citizens, being unaware of how the Bottomless Pit actually functioned
(one could not arrive there unless Jesus himself had adjudicated it, on a case by case basis) were afraid enough of it, but there was,
yet, a sizable portion of the population for whom all these changes
wrought by the New Kingdom At Hand were the worst things that might
ever have happened.
Not
just Splendor Bendix, but, speaking of your average man in the
street. After so many centuries and generations of humans coming and
going, leaving their descendants a world that was exponentially more
complicated than before, the loss of -free movement (no cars) free
markets (generic foodstuff!) and no tv, computers, or cell phones (No
social media! No business!) they had, in fact, begun to organize. And
the same emotions displayed by the long haul truckers were patched
onto every fifth man in the nation, and his children and dog as well.
Everyone who got the implant was now marked, in more ways than one.
For
those who had accepted the Bendix/Nollij Corp offer, they met with
scorn and derision from the angel guardians on their block.
Everywhere they went they would be subjected to laughter, for the
angels could tell who had the chip and who didn’t, with merely a
glance. And the citizens who had gone under to the angels would
merely go about their business as nothing occurred otherwise, for
they were happy in their material guarantees already, and saw nothing
but oddness in the ones who deemed to make trouble for JC, Dad, and
their Plan…
On
the Fifth Day, Jesus met with me in the planetarium HQ office.
“Steve,
I gotta really good one for you today. Today’s the day we put in my
own public address system. We’re going to be checking it out
at...” He looked at the clock on the wall...”10:00, just three
more minutes. While we wait why don’t we go over some of the stuff
I’ll be layin’ down in our first broadcast...”
I
looked at him. That same smile, those same shining, confident eyes.
The halo about his head that was really only his aura, but which
always seemed so magnificently radiant… radiating serenity and an
easy seductive calm.
“One.
I did not really want to involve Mom in this project, but,
seeing as she’s really just a sort of keep-to-herself sort of
person, but she insisted. Mom’s in charge of all the… Other
Animals.
“You
see, ever since the time of Noah you guys have actually had all the
advantages. Who’s to speak for all the other species here?
“Mom
decided she had to be the one, and Dad, he just said, OK and
went along.
“Mom’s
put everything else except you guys on the Endangered Species Act
list, and THEY are being protected by angels now, too. But we’re
working on letting you guys gradually bring their populations
down, when we are talking about your usual food stock species-
chickens, cows, pigs, fish you know. Eventually, in another year, you
will all be vegetarians, but, you can’t really blame me for that.
“Anyway
you can still get your ground beef down at the store for a while
yet.”
“But
is it grass fed? I asked I knew immediately he could easily see
through me and take me for a fool.
“Of
course, silly, just like the organic whole oat oatmeal!”
“Two,
we have adjusted your atmosphere to a particular point in your past.
You guys better not blow it this time! And start all that crap back
up again! Mom promises punishment anyway for those who molest or
torture draft animals, or who fin sharks, and as it is, there’s too
few of the actual Endangered Ones left to sustain them much longer,
unless our changes can help them too.
“Everyone’s
got to work together to keep it together this time!
“OK!
“10:00!”
At
ten, it was the most amazing sound. Louder (or loud as) a jet
takeoff, it began with a sweetly pitched note like a flute, which
revved into a very low note as from millions of horns in the lower
registers. But then he spoke.
“Testing-
one two, check, check...”
The
voice was coming from every point in the sky and was heard
everywhere!
(Alejandro,
on the stare-screen, gave Jesus the A-OK sign with his thumb and
forefinger. JC was transmitting to those other stars we had tried so
hard to reach!
Angels
had been hard at work in this “Oxygen Insertion” program. For it
had not been just brought in, from God Knows Where, but they were
busy planting trees and grasses in many places which had not seen
them for centuries, like the Sahara and Gobi deserts, the tundra
lands of Siberia and Alaska, and even so far south as Tierra Del
Fuego. Everywhere where new plant life could be set in, so it was
done, for the only real exceptions were those mountainous regions
which had never had enough topsoil to sustain them to begin with, and
they filled in the gaps in the Amazon Rainforest.
Pieter
was overjoyed with the results. From his phone in Antarctica, he
spoke to us on the stare-screen.
“Hey,
Steve! Hi Jesus! Hey- look, I think this is going to work. In just
the past 24 hours we have seen the ppm’s shoot up over 4000
percent! I think we’re all on the right track finally now!
Jesus
looked at me and again smiled, that smile.
“So
Steve, looks like this is almost a done deal now, eh?”
“I’d like to think so, and so would you, but there’s still
these forces...”
“Oh,
you mean the Incorrigible Ones? (this was his new nickname for all
the Bendix-types with the chip implants & the $6.66/mo
memberships)- “that’s nothing. Listen we can have off with them
in a matter of another day.”
“What
do you propose to do?
Well, since I ‘d probably be up all
night checking the process papers on each one of them, I tell you,
I’m farming that work out again to Gabe and Mike. They’ve done
such a swell job already...”
“But
Splendor Bendix? Isn’t he a power to be reckoned with?”
Amazing
how scared you all are of this one dude! Sheesh. Anyway, no, do not
fret, like I said, his day will come. And soon.”
It
was at that point I shrugged OK and turned, and again headed back to
my place, where I could at least have a cup of generic coffee
(Mountain Grown- the richest kind!) and a few pieces of toast.
I
wondered just how he was going to do it. The next day- Day Six- I
brought back the same question.
“So
what are you going to do about Bendix?”
“I
would not be so worried! Listen, most of his “chippies” are
actually willing to come over to our side, all they need is the right
encouragement, and to see the error of their ways. Of course there’s
quite a lot of them who would refuse to leave behind the old ways.
But when has that ever stopped human progress, huh?
“Perhaps
the time has come to give Mr Bendix his justice due. I seem to think
there are a lot of things about how you all thought we were going to
act when we came back, which are highly amusing to us and not at all
necessarily what we mean to do. For no man could know that, not even
John the Writer. No, I suppose the time has come to uproot the evil
branch. I summon him before me this next hour!”
Gabe
and Mike were off in a flash to go apprehend Splendor Bendix. Sitting
in his now valueless penthouse, stripped of class status and just
another Neighbor on the Street, he knew when the angels came to get
him that this was not gonna be good. I didn’t really want to
stick around for the interrogation & all, knowing while Jesus
would not resort to torture on poor Bendix, but that in his mercy he
was bound to let Bendix himself decide if the Bottomless Pit was for
him, I split back to the pad for a highball and a joint. The rest of
the day would probably be all taken up with tribunals and angel
kangaroo courts, and I figured the best thing to do would be to hide
out, kick back. And dig the new world order in my own way, out of the
way of all that angel action going on outside.
For
sometimes even that would break into my solitude as morning turned
to afternoon. There were screams, yes, but these were only
individuals not masses huddled together as such went to the Nazi
death ovens. I knew that out there, individual rebels were coming up
against angels, but always finding themselves defenseless against
them, no matter what sort of weapon they meant to take them on with.
And it was not gonna look too good if when they got to Jesus himself,
the o so bad ones, they had a 50 50 chance of the bottomless pit,
lest they chose it as a means of suicide.
Which
was what Splendor Bendix did. Nobody missed him when he left us all,
and even if he had not been the great Antichrist of the Patmos island
scribe but just another greedy capitalist slob underneath it all, the
choice he made to jump into the Pit was one offered by Jesus not as a
condemnation, but a protest of Splendor Bendix’s free will.
“So
it goes, my dear friends,” Jesus thundered out through the clouds.
When all is said and done, the best plans of mice and men come to
naught, eh? That’s why the changes we are making include allowing
the Other Animals even twice the predatory powers they had over you.
I’d be more afraid of taking in house cats from here on out, if I
was you, since we have the bird populations to think of.
“You
wouldn’t want to go the way of the passenger pigeon yourself, would
you, O Man?
“I
think sometimes back to the days when I was here last. When I spoke
of not the water but the fire next time, I meant that, the fire is
your air! And so. I was warning y’all. I had no idea it was Dad’s
plan all along to make me die like that back then, but since those
days, me and him have gotten to be good buds, like a good father son
relationship. Sorry to have seemed so pathetic and disraught at the
end on the cross, but, if Dad hadn’t sent me that message of “tough
love,” I don’t think we’d be the good pals we are today.”
It
was late afternoon. They’d spent most of the day tossing evildoers
into the Bottomless Pit, and the angels had started up talent shows
in the neighborhoods which had been most particularly afflicted by
thugs, miscreants, and plain ornery a-holes. They’d finished
mopping up and now they wanted to party. Kids were break-dancing on
street corners and tabletops, karaoke singers croaked calypsos of
palpitating hearts, and wannabe folk singers sang odes to the moon,
the stars, and the planets. You could even hear echoes of it though
JC’s cosmic PA!
The
angels partied on well late into the night. You could hear the shouts
of joy, random blasts of trumpets, loud
guitars and drums, tribal dances, and choirs of hosannas. I ventured
out for a short stroll and the neighborhood parties were all really
swinging by then. Everywhere I went there were crowds in the streets,
celebrating with wine and beer and an ever changing array of costume
and mummery. Would this be what our future looked like? I wondered
about how he meant we’d “all be vegetarians within a year, but
that’s none of my doing?” Whose would it be then? Were the
animals going to bully everyone into it? That was certainly a
possibility, but I also considered that the Other Animals also now
had the Holy Mother and all the angels on their side. If there had
been a cosmic police force, then they were it, and it did feel to me
like things were definitely going to be different in the days ahead.
And Jesus’ idea to give everyone who’d lost a car a free bike!
What did he think that would do, when so many
who had loved their cars were still a little more than wary of his
motives?
I couldn’t spend much time though on the future. He’d set it
all up so that I’d have to be the one to explain it all to
everybody, and I suppose I just surrendered to the idea when I
returned home and began jotting things down in the order they’d
need to be addressed, when he’d ask me to take them all before the
folks at the Panopticon and the Nollij Corp Tower. Now those two
buildings loomed ahead in my life again, and it wasn’t because I
chose them. I guess He chose Me...
And on the Seventh Day, He rested.
