Richie stood over Ellen and Mark and helped them to their feet. He grinned at them, carrying calm with him like a kind of glow, no longer caring a fig for the men with guns; and his two friends found they were not afraid to stand either. The panic and violence of a moment before seemed unspeakably remote. Richie said: “Someone’s here to see you both.”
The man with the loud voice, exasperated and disappointed at how easily and inexplicably his quarry had given him the slip, bellowed an oath. “Never mind them now!” he shouted. “We’ve lost the element of surprise. “We’ll have to rush the place before they all get away!”
They were too late, of course; everyone got away. The only person they found was a bewildered Joanne Grey, who was no help to them at all. There was nothing for it but to burn the place down and hope no-one from the Forensic Department would be sent out to inspect the ashes and possibly notice the troublesome fact that there were no dead bodies.
“Hold on,” said the trigger-happy gunman. “I have a better idea. Would one body be enough to discourage them from poking about in the ashes too much?”
“Perhaps,” said Loudmouth. “Go ahead.”
They shot Joanne. You may be shocked at the callousness of that; but I believe I’ve already mentioned to you that these were violent times.
*****
“...the Government wishes to reassure everyone that they will be fully informed as soon as we have all the facts. So please stay at home, stay tuned for further bulletins, and once again, do not panic. Thank you.”
*****
“I told you it was scaremongering nonsense,” repeated the Churchman. “It’s most irresponsible of you to keep alarming people by harping on about this.”
“I’m not scaring people,” said the Ufologist. “I’m offering a message of reassurance. UFOs took them.”
“Rubbish!” shouted the Churchman. “No-one is missing -”
“But we have eyewitnesses!” said the Ufologist, just as loudly.
“- and anyway, what’s so reassuring about that? If anyone was going to be taken by UFOs, it ought to have been you!”
“If anyone was going to be taken by God,” countered the Ufologist quickly, “it ought to have been you.”
That stopped the Churchman in his tracks. He had to struggle to find his next words. “Exactly,” he said. “Which simply proves that both theories are wrong.” He sat back in his chair and tried to relax, but found he couldn’t; his companion’s words kept returning to him like an echo that refused to die away.
It ought to have been you.
PART 6: Hereafter
www.belfastmirror.org
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www.newnorthernmirror.org/editorial
It’s been over three years now since the war, which is plenty of time to reflect; and every thoughtful person must surely have come to the conclusion by now that the war was a watershed in history - not simply because it involved the widespread use of nuclear weapons, though that was momentous enough - but because it marked a unique departure from the past. The mind-numbing repetition of the same historical mistake has been brought to an end by Lewis McDonald. There will never be another religious war. The new era of rationality which the Victorians erroneously thought they were ushering in has finally arrived.
This is so significant that many people believe a new system of dating is now justified, and we at the Mirror would like to add our voice to this call. Among the most useful suggestions we have found which might replace AD are: PN, for post-nuclear age; SA, for space age, which might consider the year we first walked on the Moon - 1969 - as the year “dot”; or the most likely (and convenient), CE, which keeps the current year number but relabels the age “common era”...
www.christiandemocrats.org
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*****
“TOLERANCE - we are a cosmopolitan society, of course, but not in a sense that previous generations would have been content with. We are a step beyond that kind of cosmopolitanism. We understand more; we have McDonald’s Proof, and we’ve lived through a war caused by fanatics which almost wiped us out. We know that a society which is tolerant of everything cannot survive.”
- from “Instant Wisdom” by G.C. Campbell (revised edition).
*****
“You have now reached the stage where obituaries are pointless.
“Beyond here, those who die are never heard from again, and those who survive will never die again. The lesson of death is so well-learned, or so completely ignored, that no further reminder has any purpose.
“The wheat and the chaff are separate, just as (in their deepest hearts) they have always longed to be; but the wheat prospers, multiplying thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold, whereas the chaff finds that loneliness and self-destruction are the natural result of putting self first.
“Most of us did not understand that the next step in the evolutionary process was the development of a creature which could resist the evolutionary imperative to survive, to put self first. We were no longer mere animals; we were capable of seeing that there are higher goals than survival, and that, oddly enough, they are the only things which could ensure our survival in any meaningful sense. Chasing our hearts’ desires - putting our own interests above all else - was a step backwards. Putting Someone Else at the centre was the only solution to our problems, the only way of attaining our hearts’ desires.
“There was, however, a sense in which everyone else got their hearts’ desire at the end. The dead had many wishes, but neither a genie in a bottle nor an omnipotent God could have granted them all, for the granting of one was often the thwarting of another. The very fact of selfishness rendered impossible the existence of a universe in which everyone’s wishes were gratified all the time. But what they willed most deeply was given to them in the final moments: simply to go on being what they are, and to be left alone by God. Thus, the darkness, loneliness, thirst, heat, and suffocating, claustrophobic smallness of Hell: ‘Go away,’ they told Him. But if He is absent, how can there be anything good left behind?”
- from “Raptures” by John Andrews.
Afterword
This is a novel, not a theology textbook. However, I hope you’ll grant me that it does at least convey a flavour of the dark days ahead, showing how our world might easily blunder its way into becoming the one pictured in scripture; and that no matter how dark things get and how impossible the prospect of deliverance may seem, deliverance will most certainly come.
If the tapestry I have woven here does not happen to match your interpretation of scripture, it’s entirely possible the reason might be that I’m not as wise or spirit-filled as you. Sorry. I hope no harm has been done, nor offence caused, nor anyone led astray. In the meantime, if you think people shouldn’t be reading this book, why don’t you recommend to them the one they should be reading? (Big clue: it starts with a B.)
Fanatics: Zero Tolerance Page 16