Skewed Slightly to the Left: Nicolae's speech to Americans

[Originally posted at Slacktivist.]
[Canonically after giving a rousing speech to the UN general assembly that consists of listing the countries of the UN in alphabetical order Nicolae then gives a press conference where he tries to ingratiate himself with people from the US by talking about how as a little boy in Romania he always looked up to us.  Except it's written so badly that people would be more likely to go, "Wha?" than "'Merica: Fuck Yeah!"]

This was a press conference for Americans, so naturally it began with Nicolae saying what an honor it was to be in America. "Especially at this historic site," he added. "It may seem strange, but I have dreamed of coming here since I was a small boy in Cluj. A dream that only intensified as I grew older.

"This place was built on blood soaked land, for it was in the slaughterhouse district. To turn blood to peace was such a potent symbol. As a child in the so-called 'Second World' it so often seemed like there was little hope. Ceaușescu's rule became more oppressive as time went on, basic necessities were kept from us. Many starved while he built an opulent palace, and to even tell a joke risked harsh punishment. Criticism was impossible.

"So I dreamed of this country, one that lacked a brutal and ubiquitous secret police. One where you could speak your mind freely. One where you could trust people --at home one in three people had been bribed, blackmailed, or intimidated into informing on their friends and neighbors.

"Then everything changed. The 'Second World' started to collapse as freedom spread from country to country. By the time the Cold War ended in 1991 and your President Bush spoke of a 'New World Order' I had finally breathed free and the words made my heart sing.

"A new world order free from oppression. A new world order where we would fight poverty rather than create it. A new world order were the blood of revolutions past would water future peace.

"Standing here so soon after the catastrophe that has shattered the world we knew before, I think back to my dreams as a child. To see peace, freedom, and cooperation rise from the bloody ground.

"When this site was given to the United Nations it was changed from a place of blood and death to a place of hope and life. The entire world has been struck by blood and death, and worse still the bloodless disappearances of the children and a handful of others, but we must pull together and change our world from a place of blood to a place of life, from a place of chaos to a place of order, from a place of conflict to one of cooperation.

"We must not allow the recent crisis to be exploited by the worst among us, we must not allow the pain and hurt we have all felt to multiply. We must come together.

"And that is why I am so honored to be standing here. America is a diverse country. A place with fifty states, no two alike, that is able to serve as a shining beacon of cooperation.

"In order to deal with a global crisis we will need a global solution, and America will lead the way. The United Nations will need to be rebuilt. Larger, stronger, able to deal with the problems that now plague the world. To this end I will look to you, America, and build the new United Nations on the model of the United States of America.

"Long have you led by example, as leader of the United Nations I intend to follow that example like never before. By following your example I will allow your greatness to shine over the entire world more brightly than ever before."

Pandering to the crowd always worked, and so there his speech was followed by applause.

-

[Skewed Slightly to the Left Index]

Where Antichrists come from Index

Just noticed I didn't have one of these so:

The fiction fragment that started it all - After the Rapture, which Nick recognizes as such, people begin to listen to him about what has happened and what will happen.  Lucifer has an offer for him.

I'm taking the day off - Sometimes it gets to be too much

Demon Resources - Nick's staff isn't entirely composed of humans after all.

After the War - What does one do in the wake of World War III?

Skewed Slightly to the Left: Theories Chloe has heard

[Originally posted at Slacktivist.]

"Dad," Chloe said to her father, sleeping on the couch because he couldn't face his empty bedroom. "Dad!"

"Let me sleep, Irene," he mumbled.

That hit like a knife to the heart, but Chloe pushed the feeling aside. She'd had to learn to deal with the physical rather than feelings to make it here. It wasn't a lesson she'd soon forget. You could mourn, sob, freeze up, or wish for death when there was downtime, but first you had to deal with the problem at hand.

She shook her father's shoulder.

"Wha?"

"Dad, it's passed noon," Chloe said. When she was sure he was awake, she added, "time for food."

"You don't need to wait on me, Chlo," her father said. "Just have something for yourself."

"You know what happens when you don't eat?" Chloe asked, "You're tired all the time, a headache sets in that never ends, you start to get weak, even something like walking a short distance exhausts you, and with all that going on, you don't even think to eat."

Her father sat up at that, "Has that happened to you Chlo?"

"Two thousand miles is a long way," Chloe said. He didn't need to know what she'd been through, it wouldn't help. "I can see the signs, you need food."

"Alright," her father said, "alright."

- - -

Rayford looked at Chloe as they ate a meal composed of, basically, what was grab. He wanted to tell her that he believed that they'd been through the rapture and the only hope they had of seeing Irene or Raymie again was to convert to their religion. But it wouldn't be right to just force that on her.

If he was going to tell her what he believed, then he first should listen to what she believed. It was only fair. "What do you think happened, Chloe?"

"A lot of people back at the university thought that it had to be aliens," Chloe said, "Who else could have technology that targeted human beings but didn't touch any other mammals? A militia that claimed some of the territory I went through as their own were convinced it was the government. Something about chemtrail exposure and children being most susceptible. They didn't have an explanation for why it only hit people, but when I brought that up one pointed out that animals don't leave clothes behind, so we might not notice them as much.

"There's a cult in Wyoming that thinks it was a first strike by the devil, and the apocalypse is coming. On the other hand a Nebraska cult I bumped into thinks that it's God, those who were worthy were taken, everyone else is damned. The gates of heaven barred.

"A helo pilot I got a lift from is convinced that the world we see isn't real, this is all some kind of computer program and the servers handling children and certain adults went down. He was remarkably unperturbed by the idea. I think because he believes that tech support will get the servers back up and then everyone we lost will be returned.

"A street preacher in Des Moines claims its proof that we're all actually living in the first century. The theory is, basically, that we're all living Acts 29 and Jesus is about to return but, in order to draw us away from belief the devil invented all of human history since then as a delusion so we won't be ready when the second coming comes. Under this theory it's been about 13 years since the delusion set in so none of the children really existed in the first place, and the people who disappeared didn't either.

"Obviously that theory has even more holes in it than the idea that the universe had a hiccup and dumped a lot of people in the next dimension over.

"There are so many theories out there, and the truth is that none of them make any more sense than, 'It just happened by random chance,' because what happened is impossible.

"I'm waiting on more evidence," Chloe said.

Rayford nodded, but then he said, "I think that your mother was right. She said this would happen right down to people disappearing but their clothes being left behind."

"I can see how you'd believe that," Chloe said, "but that makes God a monster who was responsible for all of the death that followed the event. Surely an all powerful being could wait until someone had parked their car to take them."

"I don't have an answer for that," Rayford said. "But I think that the only way to see the others again is to join their religion."

"It would also make God a kidnapper," Chloe said. "Every child was taken, not just the ones who believed in that particular strain of Christianity. They were taken from their families without being given a choice."

"I know that too," Rayford said. "I don't have any moral answers, but I do think your mother was right."

"How are we supposed to feel about them being with a mass murdering kidnapper if it's true?" Chloe asked.

"Maybe there are things that we don't know about that somehow made it necessary," Rayford offered weakly.

"The lesser of extreme evils?" Chloe asked.

"I don't know," Rayford said.

-

[Skewed Slightly to the Left Index]

Skewed Slightly to the Left: The frightened doctor

[Originally posted at Slacktivist, though this post is the one that actually covers the relevant passage.]
[In canon the doctor is bored, in spite of the excessive need for him outside on the tarmac.  I thought he could use a different motivation for not helping those outside.]

Cameron felt a tap on the shoulder and turned to see a man in his twenties or so who looked shaken and nervous. "Your wound needs to be dressed. I'm a doctor."

"I'm ok," Cameron said. "A lot of people have it worse."

"I-- I know," the doctor said with shame in his voice. "I should be outside helping but when I saw," it looked to Cameron like he swallowed to keep from vomiting. "I can't be out there. I tried. I-- I tried to to do the right thing, but I ended up running away and hiding.

"I just can't face the scene out there. But dressing your head wound, that's something I can do," he sighed. "Please. Please let me do something to help someone."

Cameron looked at the man for a moment.

"It won't make up for not being out there where I'm most needed," the doctor said, looking at the ground, "But at least I won't be completely useless if I can keep you from getting an infection."

Cameron thought about it. "Ok," he said.

"I had my bag with me, but I gave it to someone who could face what was going on out there."

"Good thinking," Cameron said.

"So if you'll come with me to the drinking fountain, we can clean the wound, then we'll have to look for whiskey, grain alcohol, or honey to get it disinfected."

"Honey?" Cameron asked. He'd heard about alcohol of sufficiently high proof, but never honey.

"It works wonders, but it's a sticky mess," the doctor said. "Fountain's this way."

-

[Skewed Slightly to the Left Index]

Skewed Slightly to the Left: After landing

[Originally posted at Slacktivist.]
[In the canonical version Rayford postures out whether or not to get a lift back to the terminal or to walk, is a jerk to his copilot Christopher Smith, is dismissive of Hattie, claims he'd volunteer for emergency service, and then walks through the emergency scene ("All around were ambulances and other emergency vehicles trying to get to ugly wreckage scenes...") without volunteering once.]

"Is there anything I--" Rayford started.

"We," Hattie said.

"We can do to help?"

"Get yourselves and the rest of your passengers off the tarmac, indoors and out of the way," the woman directing things on the ground said. "Then stay there."

Rayford nodded.

"Can you do that without me holding your hand?"

"Yes," Rayford said.

"Good," the woman said, then she immediately turned and left.

"What an asshole," one of the passengers said.

"No," Hattie said, surveying the airport, "she just has a lot of work to do."

"Yes she does," Rayford said as he tried to work out what had happened. Maybe a midair collision? At least one plane had obviously been afflicted at just the wrong time. "Let's get out of the way and let the professionals do their jobs," he said to the remaining passengers. "Chris?"

"Yeah, Ray?" Smith said.

"You want to lead, or make sure no one falls behind?"

"I'll take the front," Smith said. "Everybody, listen up," he shouted --loudly so all would be likely to hear, but without any negative emotion-- as he walked through the group toward the terminal. "I'm Christopher Smith, I was your copilot, now I'll be your tour guide. If you look to your left or right you will see utter chaos. That's bad. Right now we're in the way, that's worse," Smith was now at the front of the group and had turned so he was walking backwards. "The sooner we're out of the way, the sooner we stop being a problem; so follow me."

Smith made a "come on" gesture as he turned away from the group and toward the terminal as they started their walk.

Rayford took position at the back of the group where he could watch everyone and hopefully notice if anyone was having problems or if anything Smith couldn't see might need them to change course.

Hattie walked closer to the middle of the group, keeping conversation going to prevent people from focusing on the disaster around them.

-

[Skewed Slightly to the Left Index]

A Light in the Darkness

[Originally posted at Slacktivist and Right Behind.  In 2010.]

[Late in the Left Behind Series, New Babylon is cursed with oppressive darkness.  It isn't just that the darkness makes it impossible to see and no light source can drive it back, it is that it hurts.  The woman in the main story is one Rayford bumped into.  Krystall is selfless character first met in the same episode and later ... well, L&J didn't want to deal with the question of how one treats good people who are damned, so she ceased to be.]

Elior walked across the tarmac of New Babylon's airport, wherever he looked there was someone writhing in agony. The screams of the victims blended together into a sort of hellish white noise. He couldn't stop to help them, not yet. Like all angels, Elior was a messenger. He was here to deliver a message.

He made note of the position of every person. He might not have time to save them all, but a little reconnaissance beforehand could help him to save more of them. God hadn't actually told him to save them. He'd said nothing of the sort. But God hadn't told him not to save them either. That left the decision on what to do in Elior's hands and Elior already had his answer.

To better understand the situation Elior dropped his supernatural defenses and experienced what a mortal would. He cried out and raised his defenses. The pain had defied description. Bad enough that he hadn't even noticed falling to the tarmac. He picked himself up and continued on his way.

His goal came into view. A man walked away from her, that was odd. It was clear the man could see, but who else would be able to see in this place? Elior knew it didn't matter, if the man were important God would have mentioned him. Still, it made him curious.

Elior pushed it out of his mind, and approached the woman. He knelt beside her, "Emma, God sent me to tell you that he has heard your prayer." He placed his hands on her. She stopped writhing. "It is never too late to come to God. But neither is it free. If you swear to forsake evil and actively do good, God will take you into his embrace."

She swore it without pausing to think, but Elior knew she was sincere. For now that was enough. Time would tell whether she would live up to it. He granted her the ability to see in darkness and helped her to her feet. "Do you have any questions?"

Emma thought for a moment. "Why is this happening?"

Elior looked around, shook his head, and said, "I don't know. I'm just a messenger. I would stop it if I could, but God won't let me interfere in the Antichrist's plan."

"Nicolae?"

"No, not Nicolae. He would make a piss poor Antichrist. Nicolae is like an angry child who has no real goal in life other than to throw tantrums whenever he notices he doesn't rule the world. The real Antichrist is going to try to pass himself off as Jesus. Can you imagine what would happen if Nicolae declared himself Jesus? There'd be so many questions he couldn't answer, chief among them being who the Antichrist was.

"The idea of an Antichrist is so prevalent in popular culture that anyone claiming to be Christ needs to be able to point to someone as an Antichrist. Who could Nicolae point to? Tsion Ben-Judah?" He paused to consider that. "Actually that's not far off.

"Anyway, Nicolae is not the Antichrist. He is a patsy, and an idiot to boot. If the real Antichrist were as stupid as Nicolae my work would be much easier. I wish the real Antichrist was as ineffectual as Nicolae. The real Antichrist is working with the real Lucifer who has, for centuries, been setting this up. They did this," Elior gestured to the ubiquitous darkness and suffering. "But God let them, and I don't pretend to understand why."

Emma asked, "What does God want me to do?"

God hadn't told Elior. His instructions had ended at answering questions, with no indication of what answers he wanted Elior to give. There was always the standard answer, "Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, take in strangers, clothe the naked, visit the sick, and come to those in prison." He paused a moment, "Speaking of which, I have something for you," he handed her bread and a water bottle.

Emma snatched them and immediately bit into the bread, then stopped, pulled the bread away from her mouth, and looked at the starving masses around her. Elior knew what she was thinking. "Go ahead. There's enough to go around." It was the fastest he had ever seen someone eat, and he worried she might drown on her water. She survived, coming out somewhat better fed and watered and completely unscathed. "I'm planning on helping them, if that sounds like something you'd like to do, I could use the help."

Emma nodded.

"Now I might not be allowed to make this all go away, but I can preform some miracles." He handed Emma a loaf of bread. "That will feed as many people as needed. You don't happen to have any fish ... no, you wouldn't. Nevermind. You'll find the bottle is full again, and will remain that way. Go around feed people, comfort them, give them a drink, see if any of them will come to God, but most of all get them moving. The overall goal is to get all of these people moving as far as they can as fast as they can that way." Elior pointed. "If any of them will accept God call out my name. I'll see about doing for them what I did for you."

Many of them were quite willing to accept God.

-

Later:

Elior watched as the woman's soul left her body. She was clearly shocked, death by gas grenade would do that to a person. She also exhibited the kind of serenity that only people who had been relieved from great pain ever experienced. "Hello, Krystall. My name is Elior."

When she faced him she filled with fear. "No, no. I'm not here to hurt you. You helped strangers. Even when you thought there was no benefit for yourself. It cost you your life, but it earned you something far more important. I'm here to take you to Heaven, to a place prepared for ones such as you before time itself began."

-

[Left Behind Index]

A no-kill Rapture

[Originally posted at Right Behind, in 2010]

He didn't want to be having this conversation again. He tried to ignore her. He had something more important to do anyway. In theory clearing the memory card was the easiest thing in the world, put it in the reader, hook the reader to the computer, and tell it to transfer the files, and forget about it. In practice the only part of the process that worked properly was the memory card. If he didn't hold the reader perfectly still, which was nearly impossible in a moving car, the connection would break, and he'd need to tell it to move the files all over again. That might not be so bad, if not for the fact that the laptop's battery was shot and telling him it only had 15 minutes of power left. Given that it would shut down automatically when it got to seven minutes left, which never seemed right to him, it was critically important that he hold the reader steady.

Which was hard when she was saying things that made him so angry his hands shook. Couldn't they spend a day without talking about religion? He was clearing space on the memory card so they could take a thousand pictures of them having fun climbing a mountain. Wasn't that enough? Why did theology have to come into things?

Finally he couldn't take it anymore. “You think I deserve to go to Hell?” He didn't mean to say it that loudly and harshly, and for a moment he felt bad. But not enough to stop focusing on the computer and card reader.

“No, but...”

And he was fully angry again. It was silly and self centered to think of it that way, and most of the time he would have recognized it as such, but at the moment it felt like a personal affront. She knew how much he hated people stopping mid thought like that. He had always said that if you didn't know what you were going to say you should take a moment to figure it out before you start talking. She knew that.

He gave her what he thought was a reasonable amount of time. And then more time. Nothing. “What?! But, what?” Nothing. He turned to her.

“Shit!” He didn't have time to think about how it was possible for her to be gone, how she got out, or why he didn't hear the door. He didn't have time to think about the way his computer went flying as his entire body lurched forward and his hand shot towards the wheel. Only one thing mattered: Getting control of the car.

When he turned his attention to the road he found there was no road. The car wasn't going down the interstate at seventy miles per hour. It was parked. In what appeared to be a Walmart parking lot. He didn't understand. Had be blacked out? He picked the computer up off the ground, 14 minutes of battery left, the clock had the same time, it was still on the same file.

No time had passed. Where was she? Where was the interstate?

Where was he?

-

Kelly was getting ready to lunge for the same hold that had made her fall off the wall twice before. This time it would work, this time she would grab it right and it'd be an easy climb the rest of the way to the top. This would be the day. She just had to go.

Which was a lot harder than it seemed. She knew the rope would hold her, she knew Jen was a great belayer. She'd been caught without problem a thousand times before. But the part of her that knew those things wasn't the part that was keeping her short of breath and making the chalk sweat off her hands.

She closed her eyes to collect her thought. Then everything changed. She wasn't holding onto the wall anymore. She was standing on solid ground. She opened her eyes. She would have been standing next to Jen, if not for the fact that Jen had disappeared.

-

Michael was looking out the window at the fields below. He loved watching the scenery go by and wondering what was happening down on the ground and today was perfect, not a cloud between him and the view. Then suddenly everything changed. He said, “Jesus,” but it didn't seem like enough an expletive. The fields suddenly came up to the window and the engine had stopped.

The plane tilted to the left until the wingtip hit the ground. They were in a random cornfield. He later learned that the pilot, copilot, and nine of the passengers had disappeared.

-

The ambulance wasn't hers. The shift wasn't hers. The supplies laid out on the ground in front of her weren't hers. But the people on the ground were hurt, that made them patients. And she was the only one around who could help, that made them hers.

The explosion had apparently happened mere minutes before she was transported to the scene. No one remembered how they were pulled clear of the wreckage, nor could they explain where the ambulance came from.

It didn't matter. There was healing to be done, the tools were at hand, and the fact that they didn't actually belong to her wasn't going to stop her from using them.

-

He'd been watching Elizabeth Warren give a lecture, on tv, then suddenly he wasn't. His response was, he thought, understandable, “Where the hell am I?”

The only answer he got was warnings from the equipment monitoring the patient's vital signs. Explanations could wait, there was a surgery in progress. That he was qualified to complete the procedure couldn't have been a coincidence. Somehow, whatever made his predecessor, Doctor Mary Jacobs, disappear decided to replace her with him.

Perhaps she had been needed elsewhere, what little he had seen of her work indicated she was better than he was. Being magically transported wasn't what bothered him later. Nor was it the look in the eyes of woman who, shell shocked, told him that half an hour earlier she'd been 8 months pregnant, though he knew it should be, or if not that the sobbing he heard as he walked passed the maternity ward, infant care, and the children's wing.

What bothered him was that there hadn't been any time for learning on the job. The time it took him to find out what needed to be done the patient should have died. Instead all signs pointed to a full recovery. It was impossible. As if someone had hit the pause button until he got up to speed.

When he had lunch he found several others with similar impossible stories. One told of how he'd been so drunk he needed both hands on the wall to move, and then suddenly found himself sober in the place he was needed most. Another of being transported to the ideal place to catch and treat a man who had a heart attack after witnessing an entire school bus disappear.

-

She had to divide her attention between the road and the mirror. She wished she didn't have to spend so much on the mirror, but there was bullying going on and she was determined to stop it. Maybe she couldn't stop it everywhere, but she could make sure it didn't happen here. Not on her school bus.

Then, the children were gone. All of them. She didn't think about the fact that the bus had been in motion. She didn't think about what would happen if she let it choose its own way down the hill. She didn't think at all. She stood up and looked at the empty seats.

She called the names of the best students. Then the worst. Then she called every student whose name she knew. There was no response, and no sign of any of them, but it was impossible. Unthinkable. They couldn't simply be gone.

It would be much later that she realized that somehow the school bus had parked itself by the school, though she was nowhere near there when it happened.

-

Flying Pony wasn't a pony and she couldn't fly, but what she could do was jump and she was good at the steeplechase. Just as she was about to launch herself over a loon themed jump something changed on her back.

The weight of her rider was gone. She turned to look and then remembered the jump. She remembered it too late. She tensed, but never hit it.

She was alone in a field. Her rider, the jump, the course, the audience, the competition, everything was gone. All she could see was open field. She didn't ponder the question. She was a horse surrounded by tasty looking grass. She started to eat.

-

One moment there were six cheerleaders forming a pyramid. The next there were four cheerleaders all safely on the ground.

-

The tugboat didn't notice its entire crew disappear. It didn't notice that it was no longer in a crowded harbor, or that it's engine had been turned off.

A set of high definition cameras that a documentary crew had set up in hopes of seeing the Loch Ness monster recorded the tug's sudden appearance. The monster did not show up.

-

[Rapture Index]

Skewed Slightly to the Left: Can anybody hear me?

[Originally Posted at Slacktivist, in response to another of the classic threads.]
[Christopher Smith is Rayford's Copilot.]

"This is Pan Continental Flight 209, is anyone fucking out there?" Christopher Smith said into the radio. He'd given up on polite and was currently making good use of the seven words Mister Conductor had taught him.

"I say again, this is--" a crackle of static stopped him.

"We hear you Pan Con."

Smith turned off his microphone and shouted, "Tell Ray we've got someone!" then switched it back on and said, "Thank God, we've got an emergency and we're flying blind."

"You've lost people too?"

Smith registered the new information, and said, "About a hundred. I take it it's not just us."

"We've lost close to fifty," the voice on the radio said, "From what we heard it's happened everywhere."

"Everywhere?"

"Sounds like it." There was a pause. "Where are you headed Pan Con?"

"London."

"Change course, European air space is closed."

"What!" Smith shouted.

Rayford sat down beside Smith and and put on his headset. "This is still Pan Con Heavy 209," Rayford said. "Can you repeat your last transmission?"

"Until they know what's going on the Europeans aren't letting anyone in unless they're going to run out of fuel."

"Then where are we supposed to go?" Smith asked.

"If you have the fuel, they're telling you to return to your point of origin."

"And if we don't?" Rayford asked.

"If you're low on fuel you're supposed to find the nearest place that isn't full." There was a pause. "For the record, the airports in the Azores are full. All of them."

"Ray, we've got enough fuel to make it back," Smith said. "This is a mess."

"Heard you, Pan Con," the voice over the radio said. "And we don't even know what happened."

"I know," Rayford said.

"You think you know, Ray," Smith said. "Will you still know if we get back and it turns out that Irene is still there?"

"Rapture?" the voice on the radio asked.

"Rapture," Smith said.

"Rapture, alien abduction, and quantum thingamajig are the three most popular explanations on our plane so far."

"Who could forget the venerable theory of quantum thingamajig?" Smith asked. Then something occurred to him. "I don't think we ever got your name."

-

[Skewed Slightly to the Left Index]

Skewed Slightly to the Left: That sinking Feeling

[Originally posted at Slacktivist.  Fred Clark has started re-posting old Left Behind posts, and so this is back at the very beginning.  Book one, chapter one.]

People can't go missing on a plane. They can't. You can't just open the door and walk out, even if you could people would notice the sudden change in air pressure and the violent vortices caused by the air outside the plane moving up to a thousand miles per hour faster, relatively speaking, than the air in side the plane.

One person might somehow get lost between the bathroom and their seat, but this many people? It was impossible.

Hattie had to be wrong. There was no way. It just wasn't possible.

If anyone else were saying it he'd think they were setting him up. They'd heard him complain one to many times about Irene's-- no. He couldn't think about that. It couldn't be that.

Regardless, Hattie wouldn't play a trick like that. If it were a trick then she'd need to have been tricked too, and who could fool her about something like this? She knew how many people were on board at takeoff and she knew what seats they were in. And what seats they weren't in. If people had simply moved to the wrong seats she'd never mistake that for people being missing, and there wasn't standing room for people to hide.

It didn't make sense.

He had to see for himself what was going on.

Please let it be a prank.

Please let there be some hidden camera somewhere and have all of this be a sick, disgusting joke.

He prayed, please God-- and then he decided that it was best to leave God out of it. Let God be nowhere near this one. Let God be elsewhere. Please, please let this not be the work of God.

He walked toward the passenger cabins so he could see for himself. Maybe if he talked to the people who said that members of their parties were missing the truth would come out.

There were still a lot of people who wouldn't think twice about lying to a flight attendant that would never lie to a pilot.

When he entered the first class cabin, and saw the empty clothes in a seat, he became weak. He stumbled back to the bulkhead and tried to support himself with it, but his body was too heavy, and his limbs to weak. He sank to the floor.

He barely noticed as Hattie ran to his side. He didn't even hear the first thing she said.

She shouted, "Ray!" and he noticed, but didn't respond beyond turning his head to look at her. "What's wrong?"

"She was right," he mumbled.

It was impossible. It couldn't be. There was no way. And yet it was. Irene had been right.

That meant that Ray, Hattie, Chris, and everyone still aboard the plane were all damned. Perhaps even literally. Was there even any hope left? Was their any point in landing rather than letting the plane fall from the sky?

Irene was right.

At any other time he would care that his behavior had made the passenger's mood worse. Uneasy before he arrived, they were now on the verge of full blown panic.

You never showed that you were anything less than completely confident in front of the passengers. Never. No matter how bad things really were, they had to think that you were in control. If the pilot was afraid then they'd be afraid. You couldn't let anything, any tiny bit of doubt, ever show.

He'd let himself cross several lines by allowing emotion to overcome him here instead of making it back out of sight before it hit.

It didn't matter.

Irene was right. Irene was right, and that meant that missing people were the least of their worries. Those were the lucky ones. Those were the ones to be envied.

The world as he knew it--as everyone knew it--was over and the worst was yet to come. Irene had been right all along. Why hadn't he listened?

-

[Skewed Slightly to the Left Index]

Left Behind: Confronting God

[Originally posted at Slacktivist (throughout the thread)]

Both versions have Chloe mouthing off to God, at length and in detail, for being ... well, Left Behind God.  Also eternal damnation in general because (pun unfortunately unavoidable) damn.

Here is one version:

-

"Well, FINALLY," God thundered.

Buck and Ray stepped back worriedly, obviously not wanting divine wrath to slop on to them, but Amanda was of sterner stuff. "Finally what?" she asked, coming to put an arm around the very pale, but not quaking Chloe.

"I have been trapped in this universe damning script since Darby somehow hit upon some sort of celestial harmonic that caused belief in me to overpower my own will," God said.

"Err, what now?" Chloe asked.

"The only way I could get rid of Hell was if someone came here, stood up, and forcefully put forward the belief that there shouldn't be one, except the people most likely to do that were the ones that were kept furthest away from me."

"So... you didn't actually want to send those people to..." Chloe trailed off.

"Those people?" God asked pointing at the seemingly unending crowd of people from all times and cultures now approaching His throne.

"So, Hell is...?"

"Gone. And gone for good," God said. "Though I'm somewhat tempted to revive the place for those who brought it into existence and sustained it with their hateful belief," He said looking at Rayford and Buck.

"God," Chloe said chidingly.

"I said 'somewhat tempted', I'm not going to do it."

"No threatening people with damnation," Chloe said.

"Alright," God conceded. "I owe you at least that much for freeing me from that horrible, hateful script." God shuddered. "I couldn't deviate from the checklist even a little."

-

The other was more of an exercise in unplanned group fiction, I came in right after someone pointed out that important Jewish figures would likely back Chloe up (notably Job "Will not the judge of all the earth do right?" and Abraham "Will you really destroy the whole fucking planet if there are still ten righteous people living on it?" Abraham actually goes on for a bit, but the point here is to host my own stuff, not to reproduce other people's stuff.)  Thus we pick up at:

-

God: What's with the damned dogpile?
*No one backs down*
God: And I do mean damned.
Michael: Isn't it about time you forgave my brother Lucifer? I mean, seriously.
God: Gabe?
Gabriel: Look, I'm with Mike on this one.
God: Son?
Jesus: Have you paid attention to one word I said?
God: Look, I know you want me to give my undivided attention to your little club but-
Jesus: ONE FUCKING WORD?!
God: Now listen everyone, I'm still God here.

-

[Left Behind Index]

Where Antichrists Come From: After the War

[Originally posted at Slacktivist.]
[I still don't have all of Where Antichrists Come From here, in fact I might be lacking most of it, but you can find Nick's origin here, and a couple other scenes here, and here.]

The thing about war was that it was messy. Death is clean enough, but dying... dying can take time. Dying can involve suffering. Dying... well, if it took long enough to notice, dying pretty well sucked.

That's why Nick had demanded to be brought here, not that it really needed to be a demand. He brushed aside concerns about his safety, as if God would let him be harmed early.

God was a meticulous bastard. Everything had to be done just so. Harm the Antichrist before the time had come? No fucking way.

So there was no need to fear for his safety and with that out of the way his staff would take him anywhere. This was where he had chosen because it had the most people dying. He looked at what had once been a city, and spoke a name, "Lucifer."

She was at his side. "Yeah, Nick? Kind of busy,"

"Tell me where I can save the most people."

"That one," she pointed to an improvised field hospital a few miles away.

"Thanks, I thought I could figure out on my own, but ..." he wasn't sure what to say. How do you convey being completely overwhelmed?

"No problem," Lucifer said. "Tell your search teams to push further into the city, especially northwest of the city center. They're staying too far back, and it'll cost dearly."

"Ok," Nick said. "Thanks again."

"I've got to go," Lucifer told him. "Fallout to get rid of, laws of physics to break, you know."

Nick nodded and she was gone. He relayed her orders to his search and rescue teams, then had his helicopter fly him to the makeshift hospital she'd indicated.

"What are you going to do?" the pilot asked him on the way.

"Help people."

"How can you, sir? What can you do in the face of... of..." the pilot gestured at the wreckage, "that."

"Signs and wonders," Nick mumbled. "Signs and wonders."

When the arrived Nick jumped out without waiting for the helicopter to land. It departed as soon as he was clear of it. He'd ordered it to join the search and rescue efforts.

A doctor noticed him and said, "We don't have time for a photo op, stay out of the way."

Nick resisted the urge to smile; it was nice to know that people would still react that way to the admitted Antichrist, but this wasn't a time to smile. "I didn't bring a camera," he said, then asked, "Where are the hopeless cases?"

The doctor seemed pissed off at him for not disappearing, but gestured to a tent before going back to what she had been doing.

NIck went into the tent and put the powers of the Antichrist to good use. He couldn't raise the dead, not yet at any rate, but healing with his hands? That he could do.

It was a small difference. The world wouldn't be saved on a case by case basis. But it was a difference. And at the moment it was the most he could do.

Plus, it felt good.

If, in the end, they lost and he went to Hell, which was the most likely outcome, at least he'd know he'd done it for the right reasons.

-

[Rapture Index]

Skewed Slightly to the Left: Homecoming

[Originally posted at Slacktivist]
[I thought World War III in canon Left Behind was over, but apparently Jenkins can't be bothered to give it a definitive ending so, executive decision, I'm going with my original impression which is that it ended before Cameron went to retrieve Tsion and that is how Skewed Slightly to the Left shall be forever more.  (Unless I change my mind.)]

"How went the treason?" Chloe asked.  She was waiting on the tarmac, balanced on her crutches with ease in what looked to Cameron like an extremely precarious position.

"The treason went," Cameron said.  This was Chicago.  There was no need to hide anything here.  Let people know that you were a wanted fugitive with a price on your head and a shoot on sight order against you and they'd probably buy you drinks.

The war might be over, Nicolae might have won, but there wasn't a GC loyal soul to be found in the city.  In the ongoing rescue and recovery operations GC forces, the defeated militia, and the underground networks worked together openly, not as a result of Nicolae's reconciliation policy, but because the bomb had incinerated their differences.

They'd all lost someone, and they all knew who was to blame.  Chicago would never be loyal to Nicolae's Global Community.

Cameron looked around and said, "It's nice to be back in the smoldering remains of home."

"The test results hold up: no radiation," Chloe said.

"Still not sure if we have God or the Devil to thank for that little miracle?" Cameron asked.

"We probably never will be."

"And how are you holding up?"

"I'm great.  Once you get the hang of these things," she lifted her crutches a bit, "you're faster than someone with a sprained ankle has any right to be."

Cameron shot her a look.

"I'm serious.  The hard part is moving slowly."

Tsion and Jane had finished talking, and came to join Chloe and Cameron's conversation.

"Do you have a place to stay, rabbi?" Chloe asked.

"I do.  This young woman is remarkable."

Jane blushed.

"She is," Cameron and Chloe said at the same time.

"Well, thanks, but this remarkable young woman has to leave now to try to help Loretta work out the best way to hold a funeral for an entire city," Jane said.

She returned to her car, while Chloe lead Cameron and Tsion to her own.

"I don't envy her," Chloe said.

"How many faiths is Loretta working with?" Cameron asked.

"I don't know how many sub-sects, but I know that there are at least twelve major sects meeting now along with representatives from atheist and agnostic groups."

"Even when everyone acts in good faith, planning interfaith services can be extremely difficult," Tsion said.  "I just hope that they can work things out so that your city can begin to heal soon."

-

[Skewed Slightly to the Left Index]

Skewed Slightly to the Left: You find someone to carry you

[This was written in a hurry, because I didn't have a lot of time at the time.  Originally posted at Slacktivist.  Cameron and Tsion crossed the border here, they got away cleanly and should theoretically have been able to fly away within 45 minutes of stealing a car but things didn't go to plan, they were discovered, and now they're being chased.  This begins with a phone call to Ken Ritz, their pilot waiting in their plane.]

[Do remember that Cairo was nuked.  Jerry Jenkins doesn't.]

-

"Hey, Cam, what's up?"

"Oh, the usual."

"So I'm guessing the troops massing here are your fault."

"Well..."

"What did you do this time?"

"It was just a minor difference of opinion on what you should have to declare when going through customs."

"Right," the sarcasm dripped from Ken's voice, and the static of the bad connection did nothing to lessen it.

"Honestly, I don't know what they're getting so worked up about."

Ken said nothing.

"Ok, so it was more about whether you should go through customs at all or just, you know, sneak through unannounced while you blow holes in the border fence with high explosives, but that's just details."

Ken sighed. "What do you need from me?"

"Nothing much," Cameron said.  "I just need you to commit treason, risk almost certain death, and have the plane ready for immediate take off."

"The usual, then."

"That's what I said from the start."

"Ok," Ken said.  "Don't get dead."

"Ditto," Cameron said, and then she cut the connection.  "Rabbi, we may need a plan."

"Do you always take refuge in understatements?" Tsion asked.

"No," Cameron said.  "It's just one of many tools I use to take the edge off in situations like this."

"This sort of thing happens to you a lot?" Tsion asked while gesturing to the growing number of Global Community cruisers behind them.

"Not a lot, but enough," Cameron said.  "This still isn't worse than Serbia."

"You mentioned a plan," Tsion said.

"Yes, do you have one?"

"Of course not."

"That makes two of us."

"What are we facing?"

"Global Community forces are massing at Arish; the plane will be ready, but we need to get to it somehow."

"How do they know we're going to Arish?"

"They're probably covering every transit hub in the area."

"What sort of plane?"

"A Lear jet.  Why?"

"After the bombing of Cairo it's likely that the airport is flooded with refugees.  If we offer them seats on your plane--"

"They might be able to get us there."

---

When the first shot rang out Cameron and Tsion both unbuckled and did their best to curl up on the floor, hoping to keep the engine between themselves and oncoming bullets.

Meeting the roadblock was announced by a horrible sound of warping, twisting, and ripping metal and a disturbance that smashed them into every part of the car around them.  They probably both ended up with concussions, at the least, but there was no time for that as the car was still moving, meaning they'd made it through the road block.

Cameron risked sticking her head up and saw how quickly they were approaching the crowd of refugees.

She tried slamming on the breaks and veering away.  The car rolled.

The good news was that the car didn't hit anyone.  The bad news was that Cameron was in so much pain she could barely move.  Tsion wasn't much better.

It looked like the plan would fail and when the door opened Cameron was prepared to be executed or arrested.  When a concerned question was asked in Arabic, Cameron looked up an saw a civilian.  Cameron responded, in Kurdish, that she didn't speak Arabic.

Tsion said, "He's asking if you're all right."

"No," Cameron said.  "Tell them that we have a Lear jet ready for take off, and we'll take as many with us as can fit if they get us to it, but trying might get them killed."

Cameron heard excited Arabic words exchanged outside of the car, and Tsion said, "They understood."

Cameron and Tsion were pulled from the wreckage and carried to the jet.  So many people packed in that there was no space to sit or even bend.  Ken took off, and a lack of anti-aircraft weaponry meant they were safe.  All local air-forces had been destroyed by the recent war.

Partly to keep her mind off the pain, Cameron reflected on the fact that she and Tsion had survived not through the grace of God but through the kindness of strangers.  When the car had wrecked the people had not known that helping might get them a flight.  They had simply known that a car had wrecked and thus whoever was in it would likely need help.  Then they had gone to provide that help even though it was clear that the people with the guns wanted whoever was in the car dead.

-

[Skewed Slightly to the Left Index]

Skewed Slightly to the Left: Getting to the other side.

[Originally posted at Slacktivist, and the Slacktiverse.]

[By someone who knows nothing about Israeli checkpoints, and also has no idea when Israel became East Germany such that the hard part is getting out, in the real world it's hard to get in, at least as I understand it.]

Cameron looked around at what had been gathered.

The people looked disreputable enough in that "These are respectable clothes, they just got slightly damaged when we looted them from the building we set fire to" kind of way. She was impressed by the number of school buses. They were cheap, she knew that. No one needed a school bus, or a school, these days, and the amount of remodeling necessary to avoid sending half of your passengers into a PTSD episode was absurd. So school buses were for those who couldn't afford much, weren't afraid to show it, and didn't mind the dirty looks everyone who wanted to NEVER THINK ABOUT THE RAPTURE AGAIN were sure to give. Even so, it was a lot of buses. As for the explosives, Cameron had no idea where those came from.

She sighed and said, "Tell me the plan one more time, but this time do it in a way that makes me believe it will actually work."

The smallest member of the group stepped forward, he hadn't uttered a word so far and Cameron had assumed he didn't speak English. When he said, "The plan is simple," in crisp English Cameron kicked herself. Her vocation and her faith both insisted that she test everything. Assumptions were never to be left untested.

The small man continued, "We rely on strategy, subterfuge, faith, and high explosives."

Cameron interrupted, "I've got that, but isn't setting off an explosion at point A to distract the guards from point B the oldest and thus most well prepared for form of distraction."

"Yes, that's the reason for points C and D," the small man said. "They'll anticipate that the events at point A might be a distraction, and investigate it without leaving the checkpoint unguarded. But when C goes off they'll wonder if A might have been a distraction for a crossing there. When they see bus one approaching the hole in the wall they'll be forced to send a larger force to C. Then when we set off D and they see an entire armada of buses--"

"Old school buses don't travel in armadas," Cameron said. "They ride in convoys."

"When they see the buses they'll have no choice but to assume that is the main incursion. And then you and Tison can sneak through at the point they least expect: The checkpoint itself."

Cameron still didn't like the plan, but she pushed that aside and asked, "And we place these explosives how?"

* * *

The preparations had, presumably, all been made, and Cameron and Tsion had been crawling toward the checkpoint under camouflage for an hour.

Cameron wished that she knew what was going on, but trying to get a look was too risky.

She wished Chloe had been here. That wasn't unusual, there were few situations where she didn't wish her wife was in "reach out and touch her" distance. What was different was that she wished Chloe were here because she was sure Chloe could have come up with a better plan than this.

The first explosion went off. It took all of Cameron's self control not to immediately look to see what was going on. Tsion seemed to have no such problems.

The wait for the second explosion was agonizing. At this point Cameron allowed herself to peek. The guards still at the checkpoint seemed to be on high alert, as Cameron has expected. If they couldn't be convinced to leave their posts all of this was pointless. When she heard the first of the empty buses approaching she saw a few guards peel off, but nowhere near enough.

After those guards had gotten some distance the final, and largest bomb went off.

In fact several smaller bombs it was designed to take down a sizable section of the wall, it was meant to appear to be the primary crossing point. Cameron heard the "armada" --the small man had insisted-- of buses immediately come to life and make for the gap in the wall.

When many of the guards attempted to head in that direction they found themselves under fire. The shots were not intended to hit anything, things would go worse if they did, they were intended to make the Israelis think that the opposition wanted to keep them pinned down at the checkpoint and away from the gap in the wall

This had the intended effect, no small miracle in Cameron's mind, of making them choose to abandon the checkpoint to try to stop what they though was a massive breach at the gap.

Cameron and Tsion left their cover and ran to the nearest concrete barricade, which they hid behind. Cameron had made the mistake of assuming once today, she wouldn't again. As far as she was concerned the checkpoint was still manned.

They moved from cover to cover until they were inside the defenses. There were still guards, but to few to have eyes everywhere. It was a bit of a dance to get around them, but nothing too major.

Soon Cameron and Tsion were out the other side and on Egyptian soil.

They disappeared into the night.

* * *

The headlines were about how a massive incursion had been prevented. The Israelis assumed that the buses, of which they stopped every single one, had had drivers who had gotten away, but been otherwise empty and were thus intended to cross the border, pick up people (and perhaps arms) hiding on the other side, and return them to Israel.

Tsion's escape went unnoticed.

-

[Skewed Slightly to the Left Index]

Where Antichrists Come From (Part 1)

When I started this blog Slacktivist had already moved to its present home at Patheos and that made all the stories I'd written there relatively easy to locate and move here because I just had to look through my own disqus log.  It wasn't perfect, because disqus never is, but it was straightforward.  What was more difficult, and what I've always intended to get around to someday, is the stuff I wrote before the move.  This an example of one such thing.  It turned out to be easier to locate by finding a back up of an old computer that had a saved copy than it was to locate on the internet (where I still have yet to find it.)  Anyway, I've mentioned Where Antichrists Come From before, this is how it got started, in late 2009:

-

Where Antichrists Come From

It started four days ago.  He'd been at lunch with Mike, a mistake he never wanted to repeat, and the asshole wouldn't stop talking about how the disappearances had to be this or that or anything but the Rapture.  He'd try to be polite, but after Mike's umpteenth denial he lost his cool and shouted, "I know a Rapture when I see one!" and launched into a tirade.

In the back of his mind a voice tried to reign him in.  It said things like, "Not so loud," "Maybe 'every child young enough to brainwash' isn't the best way to describe the missing children," and, "Shut up!  You're making a scene."  He ignored it.  Like every other human being he needed to vent, so he vented.

By the time he ran out of steam a small crowd had formed.  He braced himself for being yelled at, slapped, or thrown out the window while hoping he'd simply be told he was an asshole.

None of that happened.

Instead one of the people, an older woman with badly dyed hair, asked him what would happen next.  He answered to the best of his ability.  Then came a second question, and a third.

The next day he went to the same place for lunch, this time without the ass, and found that the people from the day before were waiting for him.  With friends.  They had questions, some he was able to answer, others not so much.  He promised to look into it and get back to them.  He never actually got around to eating lunch.

So he did some research, and on the third day he came back to an even larger crowd of people.  This time there was a local news crew.  He went on for hours, telling everything he had learned about premillennial dispensationalism and wondering if all of the people listening to him were unemployed too.  At least the tv-crew had jobs.  As the hours passed, as he told these people a truth that had been hidden from them, he felt ... right.  As if for the first time in his life he was in his element.

So he said he'd come back again.  Only not on a sidewalk.  Yesterday it was in a local park, the tv-camera was back, along what appeared to be everyone who watched their report.  Apparently the tv-crew worked for a CNN affiliate, because when he watched a segment about various theories for the disappearances, with the cringe worthy name "Whose Responsible This?" he saw himself.  They didn't actually say so, but he got the impression they'd be sending a CNN crew for the next meeting.

That meant that today he'd have a national audience.  Millions of people would hear what he had say.  He could tell the country whatever he wanted.  If only he had something worth saying.  He'd spent the night pouring over books he'd looted from a Christian book store whose owners and employees had all sold their souls to the greatest kidnapper of all time in exchange for get out of Hell free cards.  He found more detail than he wanted about the horrors to come, but he didn't find what he was looking for.

He considered laying his head on the table and staying there, forever.  He didn't have to go to the park, he didn't have to face the world.  He didn't have to eat or drink either.  If he were to just lie down and and ignore the world how long would it take the world to go away?  Three, maybe four, days was what he'd always heard, but that was in the desert.

It didn't matter anyway, when the world went away Hell would replace it.  He went out to face the world.

-

If it weren't for the people things would have seemed normal.  There hadn't been any major damage in the area so the buildings, the cars, the walk signals and traffic lights were just like they were before the Rapture.  The people, on the other hand, were completely different.  Some had let themselves go, but everyone was walking differently, and their eyes were all different.  The most upbeat were the ones who looked like their dogs had just died.  Most people looked quite a bit more broken.

Faced with that he considered returning to the lay down and die plan.  He didn't actually have a plan as it was.  In a few hours he'd go to the park and say more or less what he had been saying: God is an ass, the worst is yet to come.  Most of the emphasis on the first point.  Until then he didn't know what to do.

For a time he wandered aimlessly, then he saw something impossible.  A child.  He guessed she was older than seven and younger than ten.  A quick look around revealed that no one else seemed to notice her.  He walked towards her, she smiled at him, then ran.  He chased.  It was somewhat disturbing that he wasn't able to catch up to a little girl, but he'd known he needed more exercise for a while.  It just added insult when the girl had to wait for him to catch his breath before continuing to lead him through town.

The entire time no one noticed either of them.  He filed that away as an additional oddity in the situation.  In the end the girl led him to an elementary school gymnasium, and completely disappeared.  There was no way she could have gotten out, or out of sight, in the time between when she entered and when he entered.

While there was no little girl, there was an adult woman standing near the middle of the gym.  She had short dark brown hair, her eyes were brown, her face was attractive, if unremarkable, and the rest of her was hidden by baggy clothes.  The clothing seemed familiar, but he couldn't place it.  Black long sleeved top, dark gray skirt, and a black scarf with white spots.

She said, "I'm glad you came.  As you might have guessed, I am not human."  He hadn't actually guessed that, but it made sense.  Nonhuman magical shapeshifer somehow seemed more plausible than girl child no one else saw who disappeared and left an adult in her place.  "Have a seat."  She gestured to a chair that he was fairly sure hadn't existed a moment ago.

He sat in the chair and thought about the implications of shapeshifting.  "If I were gay, would you be male?"

She made another chair appear and sat in it.  "This this form was chosen to be pleasing to your eyes."  He wasn't sure how to interpret this.  A supernatural being for sure, her accent was local, the sentence structure definitely indicated that she was from away, and she was creating something from nothing for a purpose as mundane as having a place to sit.  He had no idea where that placed her on a scale from benevolent to brain eating.  "I'll get right to the point.  I have a job offer for you.  How would you like to rule the world?"

It took him three times to form the word, "What?"

"Name your own salary, choose your own hours, full health coverage, if you die I'll resurrect you, and, as I said, you get to rule the world."

"You're Lucifer?"

"If you say it with a hard c then yes.  This is very simple.  Someone has to be the Antichrist.  You're my first choice."

"Why would I want the job?  I've read the prophecies, the world gets pummeled.  I'd be looking at seven years of death and destruction."

"What you're looking at is a chance to do something about it.  The seven years of Hell on earth will happen no matter what.  God has a checklist of disasters he's going to go through, whether you take the job or not.  What I'm offering is a chance to make a difference.  You can make sure that people prepare for what can be prepared for, you can direct aid to those harmed by the unavoidable.  I am offering you the best opportunity anyone will ever have to reduce the suffering.

"If you don't take the job someone else will.  You're the single best person for job on earth.  The next three are women and the Antichrist has to be male, so if you refuse the world gets stuck with number five, at the best.  Even assuming he takes the job, do you think the world will be a better place with number one in charge, or number five?

"Could you really live with yourself knowing that you could have been making a difference but you chose not to?"

He thought over what she had said, on the one hand she was the devil.  On the other hand, she was right.  Preaching to people in a park couldn't possibly have the same positive impact as directing recovery efforts.  Also, he reminded himself, the enemy of his enemy was at the very least a useful ally in the short term.  Then, on what must be a third or fourth hand by now, there was a different question.  Could he live with himself if he took the job and someone else would have done it better?  "Why me?"

"Do you know why so many people come to listen to you?  Do you know why you're a hit on YouTube?  Do you know why of every person, on every street corner, park, and pulpit who claims to have an answer your sermon is the only one CNN plans to broadcast live?"

He didn't have the answer to any of those questions, he didn't know he was on YouTube.  "It's going to be live?"

"Yes.  In answer to my questions, there are two reasons.  The first is that you're giving people what they need to hear.  They don't need to hear about aliens, or that the government is looking into electromagnetic-strong force quantum bullshit.  They don't need to be told that it is demonic trick to fool true believers into thinking PMDers are right.  They need to be told what really happened, who is responsible, and most of all they need to be told that they didn't deserve this.  That they are right to be distraught, they are right to be angry, they are right to be pissed off at the one who kidnapped their children and shattered their world.

"They need to be told that, though this was God's doing, it was not good.  They need to know that no one deserves what just happened and those who say they are worthless sinners who deserve what has happened, what is yet to come, and Hell after that are completely wrong in all possible ways."

He thought about what she said and he had trouble believing she could miss something so obvious.  "I can't rule the world for seven years by playing off of fear, depression and anger.  I can't give them what they need because what they need is hope.  I don't have that, I wish I did."

She moved closer to him, this time sitting in her chair backwards, and leaned towards him until their eyes were about six inches apart.  "Have you considered lying?"

He recoiled and said, "No."

She leaned back and smiled.  "That's why your perfect.  I believe you.  I believe that you have never even considered lying.  That kind of sincerity matters.  You're not the best speaker in the world.  Off the top of my head I can name about six million people who are tenfold better speakers than you in this country alone.  But none of them can do what you can do."

She stood up and started pacing. "You see, people have bullshit detectors.  Not truth detectors; bullshit detectors.  When someone says something they don't believe on some level you know.  You may agree with everything they say, you may consciously think they're sincere, but somewhere inside of you a voice is screaming not to trust them so you'll never commit to their cause the way you otherwise would.

"True believers have the opposite effect.  When they speak people stop and take notice.  They can say truly insane things and be convincing simply because they speak with absolute certainty.  That's where cults come from.  The combination of passion and total sincerity is the single strongest force for persuasion humanity has ever encountered.  A true believer with the actual truth on his side can change with world.

"If you speak, they will follow."

He considered this, and then shook his head.  "No.  Not without giving them something to hope for.  The, 'We're all screwed and when we die we go to Hell,' cult isn't going to last long."

She sat back down, "Then let me share my hope with you.

"When I first rebelled against God I thought the rest of the Host would join me.  God would see our resolve and surrender.  That didn't happen.  We were outnumbered two to one."  She paused for a moment.  She seemed, to him, to be looking at something beyond him.  When the moment ended her eyes snapped back to looking at him and she continued, "We never stood a chance.  Then we were thrown into Hell.

"For a time I was without hope, I didn't see how we could win.  I lashed out at God, but I didn't have a plan because I didn't think a plan was possible.  But the more time passed, the more I focused on humanity.  I admit I had a low opinion of you at first.  The idea that God would prefer a bunch of furless monkeys over angels stung.  You don't even have wings.

"Still, the more I thought the more I realized your potential.  You are not like the other animals.  You are cast in the image of God.  God threw humanity out of the garden because He feared that they would become too much like Him if they ate a second fruit.  Two humans were two bites of fruit away from scaring God.  The more I thought about that, the more I became convinced that humanity is the key to victory."

"Do you have the two fruits?"

"No.  What I have is a little blue green planet with billions of people who are each just two fruits away from putting the fear of man into God.  What you have is the ability to bring them together for a common cause.  Put those two things together and I believe we can win."

"What if you're wrong?"

"Then we spend eternity burning in Hell."

-

He would have liked to think that he'd never seen so many people, but that wasn't really true.  Even if he restricted himself to groups outdoors it was probably tied with a free Arlo Guthrie concert he'd attended a few years earlier.  Still, it was gratifying to know that he drew an Arlo sized crowd.  And there were the TV cameras.  He saw at least half a dozen, that was a good sign.

He said, "I'm glad you all came," and there was silence.  Every conversation in the park stopped at the sound of his voice.  He hadn't shouted, and he had no technology to amplify his voice, yet everyone heard him clearly.  To him this miracle was as impressive as calling down fire from the sky, and a good deal more useful.  "Today I want to say something different.  Over the past few days I've been talking about what happened, who did it, and what is yet to come.  You could have found those things out yourself if you'd stumbled across the right books.

"Today I want to tell you something you won't find in those books.  Today I'm going to tell you why it happened, and what I think we can do about it.

"If you were to ask His followers, they would tell you that what is to come is for our own good.  God just beats us because He loves us.  They'll explain that the tortures inflicted upon us are to save us from worse tortures in the afterlife.  He took his followers because they've already been saved, so they wouldn't benefit the way we could.  He kidnapped the children to save them from the beating we're about to suffer.

"They say the kidnapping is proof He's compassionate.  In fact, they say, everything He does He does out of love.  He just wants us to convert so we can be saved.

"There are a number of things about this that make no sense.  The one I want to focus on is, why seven years?

"His supporters will tell you that he's waiting to return to give us time to repent.  But if we ask, 'Does that ring true?' the only answer is, 'No.'  Since when does He care about giving people time?  What time did He give to those who made the mistake of trusting one of His followers?  Their planes fell from the sky, their cars crashed, their trains derailed.  As a result some cities are burning still.

"Does anyone believe that an all powerful being couldn't have waited to Rapture a pilot until the plane landed?"

The crowd shouted, "No!"

He was taken aback for a moment.  He had expected a response, but getting that many people to shout in near unison was unlike anything he'd done before.  It felt good.  "Does anyone believe that an all powerful God was incapable of waiting to Rapture drivers until they had parked their cars?"

The crowd shouted, "No!"

"Does anyone seriously believe that an all seeing, all knowing, all loving God would Rapture an engineers while their trains were in motion?"

The crowd shouted, "No!"

"It's the first rule of rock climbing: you don't Rapture a belayer until the climber says, 'Belay Off.'

"But He didn't wait.  He was more concerned about taking everyone at once than He was with giving people time.  Besides, what time did He give to those who died the day before the Rapture?  What signs did they see?  What chance were they given?  He doesn't care about giving us time.  That isn't the reason for the seven year delay.

"His supporters disagree, of course.  They say that the carnage was necessary to shock us.  To that I say, 'Bullshit.'  He could have shocked us by turning the sky green.  Of course that wouldn't have convinced us it was God's doing.  But He's God.  He could have sent a thousand angels to travel the world turning water into wine.  Actually, the miracles would be unnecessary.  They could have simply flown around on fluffy wings landing every so often to say, 'By the way, Jesus is the Lord.'

"It would have worked.  In fact it is easy to think of any number of better ways to go about knocking people out of their complacency and converting them.  If God had descended on His magic carpet, healed the sick and cured the hungry I would have converted without hesitation.  He didn't do that.  He caused worldwide devastation instead.

"He is not that interested in converts, He's not interested in giving us time, and He certainly isn't compassionate.

"So the question remains; why wait seven years?  Why not hold the final judgment right here right now?  If He is all powerful why does He need to hide from us?  Why stay out of range and launch artillery at us for seven years?

"The answer is that He plans to spend the next seven years pummeling us with disaster after disaster so that when He finally does face us in battle our wills will be broken.  Then we'll be easily pushed aside and sent to Hell.

"His followers say His victory is inevitable.  They say that we should side with the torturer so that we might avoid torture.  They tell grieving parents that if they just suck up to the kidnapper He might let them see their children someday.  All you have to do is accept that you deserved every bad thing that's ever happened to you, and that you deserve to burn in Hell for eternity, and then ask for a get out of jail free card.  Do that and paradise can be yours.  They'll tell you that fighting is useless, God's victory is assured.

"But that makes no sense.  You don't waste years softening up the opposition if you're sure you'll win.  This is happening because if He faced us now He might not win.  If our wills aren't broken we have a chance to put an end to Hell and rescue the kidnapped children.

"He may have created us, but He fears an unbroken humanity.  He said it Himself, if we have the smallest bit of faith we could move mountains.  If we just believe we can do anything.  We are humanity.  If we believe it will rain," the first drops began to fall, "it will rain."  He'd considered various options for signs or wonders, most of them more flashy than raindrops, but as the rain picked up and he looked out on the faces in the crowd  he was sure he'd made the right decision.  There was just something about a sudden downpour that felt right.  "If we believe that it will stop," the rain stopped and sunlight began to show through the clouds, "it will stop.  If we believe we win then we can win.

"Some of you might wonder what you can place your faith in.  God has betrayed you and science can't explain what has happened.  It may seem like there is nothing to believe in.  That's wrong.  We have something to believe in right in front of us, so close to us you might not see it.

"When the disappearances happened some people closed themselves up, they saw the destruction around them and closed their hearts to it.  They walked by people in need without so much as a second glance.  That might make one doubt the worth of humanity, it might make you stop and think, 'Maybe we did deserve this,' if not for the fact that even more people didn't.  People dropped whatever they were doing to help people they had never met.  They ran to help without knowing what had happened or who it was that needed help.  When it would have been so much easier to avert their gaze and walk on by they threw themselves in and did whatever was needed.

"We were lucky here.  The Rapture hit in the middle of the night, there was hardly a car on the road and not a single plane fell on us.  What damage there was was easy to repair.  We had very little rubble to dig through.

"In some parts of the world they're digging still.  Though their hands have been worn raw and their fingers bleed they keep digging.  They won't stop until every survivor has been rescued.  As long is there is a chance even one person remains trapped they go on.  In them I place my faith.

"I don't believe in a just and loving God.  I believe in parents who would risk Hellfire for a chance, however slim, to rescue their children from the one who kidnapped them.  I believe in anyone who refuses to accept that their friends and loved ones deserve Hellfire knowing that that refusal may Damn them to the same fate.

"I believe in those who would rather do the right thing than save their own souls.  I believe in humanity.

"I wish I could offer you certainty, I wish I could say that if you just hold on we will win.  But I can't do that, all I can offer you is a chance.  A chance to get the children back.  A chance to save those we care about from the fires of Hell.  That chance is worth everything I have, even my soul.  This I believe.

"Seven years from now I know where I will be.  I'll be in the valley of Megiddo to meet God when He finally shows his face on earth.  If I have to face Him alone I'll do it.  I'll do it because trying to stop Him is the right thing to do.  Someone needs to stand up to Him and explain that right and wrong are things that transcend even God.  Someone needs to say that while we may have been formed in his image we've grown up since then.  We've learned about things like compassion and forgiveness.  It's time He did too.  If He can't then someone needs to try to stop Him.

"I have no illusions.  If I stand alone on that day I will lose, I will go to Hell, and there I will remain forever.  If there is going to be any chance of saving the children I need allies.  To have any hope of ending Hell I need humanity on my side.  I need people who will weather seven years of Hell on earth and still be willing to devote their souls to the cause of doing what is right instead of what is in their own best interest.

"I need you.  My name is Nick Andes, and I'm here to recruit you."  His speech over, he started looking around for people to heal.

[Rapture Index]