People.
Steff stared up at the man on the cross, a man of professed deep faith - deep even as the ocean - in God and in the life that would follow this one. The man in turn was looking out upon the dark, dark blue of the endless Pacific, its waters poised to rise in divine rage against the oblivious city . . . but only if his professed faith was real.
The Fed, the cop and the actress looked understandably anxious.
The photographer wasn’t.
It was the year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Ninety-Nine.
The second millennium AD was well into injury time and the referee was looking at his watch. It was too late for the scoreline to change, and Steff Kennedy knew that the star player had utterly failed to live up to the hype.
Jesus Christ had changed nothing.
Sorry.
Two millennia after he ‘gave his life to save the world’, the world was no nearer to being saved - if indeed saving was what it needed - than before.
For the two thousand years since his death, and for many thousands more before his birth, people the world over had been loving their neighbour as themselves, turning the other cheek, and forgiving not seven times but seventy times seven. They had also been hating their neighbour, striking out in violence, and avenging every wrong done them. BC or AD, armies rampaged, men murdered, raped, stole, hated; BC or AD, people cared for one another, were selfless, loved, forgave.
Jesus Christ changed nothing.
Using his gift for oratory and communication he had sought to spread humanitarian principles, but he did not devise them. And those principles had survived until now not because of the churches that bore Christ’s name; nor even in spite of them. They had survived simply because they were part of man’s nature.
It was part of man’s nature to love and to care, just as it was part of man’s nature to hate and destroy. If the good side was ever to overcome the bad, then it would not be through fear of God, nor even through love of God. It would be because man had evolved.
Christ’s teachings were irrelevant to the growth and self-sustainment of the Holy Roman Empire and all the sects it spawned. The legacy that was the Church, the legacy that was Christianity, was not the legacy of Christ, his words or his deeds. It was the legacy of men and their ambition. It was the legacy of power, of wealth, of dominion. And however much men like St John talked about the Kingdom of God, the kingdom they were really interested in was right here, on this earth.
‘What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?’ Jesus asked. But Steff knew there was a very important flipside to that question. As they said back home, it’s no use being the richest man in the cemetery.
St John’s eyes closed slowly and his head slumped forward. Then the tears began to leak, seeping gently from the tightly shut lids and running over his contorted face, before heavy sobs started shaking his chest.
For all the souls it would save, the new America it would forge, the greater glory it would bring, upon his God and upon himself, the man on the cross did not want to die.
He mumbled, his croaking words barely audible.
‘Sorry, what was that? Something about “See you in heaven?’”
St John sniffed and swallowed, then spoke again. ‘One, six, five, eight, seven,’ he said in a broken whisper.
‘One-six-five-eight-seven,’ Steel relayed immediately into the phone. ‘Repeat, one-six-five-eight-seven.’
‘You still ain’t goin’ nowhere until six o’clock, Reverend,’ Freeman added. ‘So if that code was bullshit, I’d own up now.’
St John hung his head and shook it gravely.
‘Well hallelujah,’ Steff shouted. ‘Halle-fuckin’-lujah. You’ve justified my faith in you, Luther. I knew there was an atheist inside you somewhere - you just had to listen to his voice to see the light. And now you’re one of us - a true non-believer.’
Steel held up a hand for quiet, then slowly clenched the fingers into a fist and punched the air. ‘McCabe says we’re clear,’ he announced. ‘Show’s over, folks. Thanks for coming. It’s been very.’
Freeman gave the longest sigh Steff had ever heard and slumped down on to a nearby wooden bench, like he had deflated. He held up a hand and Steel slapped it heartily, before the G-man also flaked out.
St John began weeping again, crushed moans rising from his throat as his upper body trembled from the convulsions of his grief.
‘Hey, c’mon, cheer up Rev,’ Madeleine said, putting an arm around Steff’s waist. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’
Madeleine Stephanie Freeman was born in a Santa Monica maternity hospital at 06:20 on August 13th 1999.
On December 31st the same year, at 23:59, she was shitting in her pants.
She wasn’t the only one.
A minute later, the world failed to end.
Again.
A new century got under way, and despite the efforts of certain parties, it continued to witness unchecked the sins of godlessness, blasphemy, fornication, homosexuality, miscegenation, pornography and cheesy B-movies.
Amen to that.
From: Jerry Blake
Date: 9 March 1999 14:47
To: [email protected]
Cc:
Subject: Uh-oh
Maria.
Just when the rest of us had decided to stab the pair of them. Bruno Calvi and Helen Schwarz finally coughed up the fabled last frag.
I think it might cause some trouble.
Hold tight.
Jerry
[email protected]
Extract: (site KS / sole fragment)
In the desert, once, I met a man, a messenger. He was thirsty and tired, journeying back to his people with tidings from the south. We gave him water and received him into our tent for the night, speaking in our shared tongue of the Egyptians.
He asked what had cast me so far from my homeland to be wandering the earth, and I told him of my flight with Karu, who sat at my side, my wife. In turn he told me of his own people’s escape from slavery in the land of Goshen, under the yoke of the Egyptians. He told me of the plagues his god, Jaweh, visited upon their oppressors, and I understood he was one of the Israelites of whom Ankham had spoken when last I ever saw him.
But he also told me of the strange events that had followed.
His people journeyed eastwards, as many as six hundred families. In time the Pharaoh mustered a force to pursue and retrieve them. The Israelites learned of this army’s approach, and knew that, so many in number, they could not outrun it. Greater despair fell upon them when they reached the place called Baal Zephon, where the sea to the north breaks through to mingle with the waters of a broad lagoon extending to the south. Men had been lost in attempting to cross it, for though it was not deep it was dangerous with quicksand. With the Pharaoh’s army drawing ever closer, they feared their freedom was at an end.
But then the waters withdrew from before them, retreating until the ground beneath them was dry. Their god, Jaweh, had moved back the waves that they could pass to the other side.
Once they had crossed, they looked back to see the Pharaoh’s chariots in pursuit, but Jaweh sent the waters forth again, rushing in to wash the Egyptians’ army away, that not a single man survived.
I asked the messenger how many years he was then, how many years he was now, and in which season this miracle took place. His answers confirmed to me that he spoke of the very time when Tira met its brutal end.
I was left to wonder.
If the god Jaweh caused these events to save his chosen people, why would he also visit so much destruction upon lands far, far away, bringing death to a thousand times the numbers of the Israelites?
If the god Poteidan caused these events to punish proud Kaftor, why would he at the same time grant such a boon to a people who gave him no glory?
Or could it be that there are no gods?
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Not the End of the World Page 44