Chapter 141

0745 am, local time
Wednesday, 30 July, 2014
The Wright Residence
Beckley, WV

The bath that I took just then wasn’t alone, as I took it with Stephanie and Tania. I had just fucked both of them while they ate each other out, not long after I had initiated the last virgins of the nocturnal tradition that I had established. My Slavic beauties naturally didn’t waste any time worrying about where my cock had been the night before. They had bigger worries as most of my lovers slept off the many drunken orgies of the previous evening. We listened to what passed for news again, incredible reports about events in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan.

“So, the Hindutva National Movement controls Hyderabad, Bangalore, Jaipur, Pune, and Kerala. It has to fight fierce resistance from the Punjabi National Revolutionary Front in Punjab, from the Azad Islamic Liberation Mujahideen in Kashmir, from various maharaja, warlords, swamis, gurus, and small factions, in several different states of India, and there are two distinct Communist parties seeking power in sixteen major and moderate sized cities. The Reds are strong in many urban centers, but weaker in rural areas.

“Most factions persecute Christians, Jews, Parsees, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains, but the HNM does not. It does, however, persecute Muslims, as do most other factions, including several Islamic ones. Shia Muslims are particularly vulnerable to persecution by Sunni groups such as the Mujahideen, which considers them to be heretics. Muslims also persecute Hindus, including pogroms and fires set to Hindu shrines.

“In Pakistan, three factions of the former armed forces have been fighting for dominance, and like some Indian groups, all three possess nuclear weapons, at least of the tactical, low-yield kind. Nobody dares to use them, however, as they wish to take the whole country in one piece. The city of Lahore is home to the People’s Republic of Pakistan, a Communist group, which seeks to play all three major factions against each other in a bid for an eventual Marxist revolution.

“The rival army corps are led by three generals with a shared antipathy toward parliamentary democracy and the rule of law, as well as some degrees of religious zeal and a keenly Islamic brand of nationalism. Hindus, Baluchis, Sikhs, and other religious and ethnic minorities tend suffer as a result. One colonel reportedly hanged fourteen Hindu men and forced their wives and children to convert to Islam, after which the corpses were circumcised as a final insult added to injury. This has led to a recent increase in ‘self-defense leagues’ that are paramilitary forces in effect among such minorities. One man was supposedly shot for keeping an autographed photograph of Benazir Bhutto, the nation’s only female prime minister.

“In Bangladesh, two major factions have emerged: the United Democratic National Front, a leftist movement that has attempted to restore law and order while reforming the country.; and the United Islamic Revolutionary Front, which favors a Mahdist ideology and whose leaders have especially targeted Hindus as well. Atrocities on both sides have been extremely high and gory. There are other key factions, such as Communists, anarchists, and Hindu separatists, but they are smaller in size.

“In both Bhutan and Nepal, royalist, republican, and sectarian militias continue to battle for supremacy in utterly destructive civil wars known for their bloodshed, mayhem, destruction of property, and dislocation of persons. A total of seventy thousand refugees have flooded into Tibet, not to mention Assam and Sikkim, which both seceded from the defunct Indian republic. There hasn’t been any decrease in horrible war crimes so far, especially by the Maoist Nepalese People’s Action Corps, which frequently slaughters even small merchants and landholders. By some accounts, the NPAC has slain as many as six hundred eighty-eight victims since the collapse of the Republic.

“This is all based upon reports coming out of the areas in question, as embedded journalists and correspondents have become a thing of the past since Fireball Day. This is, unfortunately, the best that we can do for news under the circumstances: rumors, gossip, speculation, extrapolation, and conjecture. Testimony from refugees to a limited extent. Nothing more than that. For the Grand Wireless Service, this is Pilar Delgado, a Spaniard living in England, signing off,” the heavily accented, charmingly feminine voice ended its latest broadcast.

“Will there ever be justice for such atrocities?” I mused aloud.

“In time, somehow, I believe in my heart, even without my full omniscience, yes. Just not any time soon. It will get much worse before anything improves, I fear. Not even I know everything yet. For instance, I know that the Coptic Christians are fighting for their lives in Egypt, dying for a God who doesn’t even care what happens to them, any more than Jehovah/Yahweh/Allah does about anyone. The only states aiding them are Israel, Lebanon, and Cyprus.

“Greece is sympathetic, but it’s got enough on its plate at the moment. The war in the north against Albanian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian militias has consumed much of their time, money, and energy, naturally. They don’t have the EU or IMF to aid them financially, either. They are mostly on their own, a balm to their national pride, but a real strain on their resources and standards of living. Less revenue available for the welfare state, after all. The current center-right coalition government has been given a further mandate as a result of this predicament.

“In Turkey, the Kemalists and Erdoganists have fought each other bloody for a good while, with no end to the civil war in sight. This has killed plenty of civilians as well as soldiers, as such wars tend to do, has wasted much of their economic potential, and has weakened them militarily. This has enabled the Kurds to entirely secede and form their new nation, the Democratic Republic of Kurdistan, with support from Israel, Lebanon, and Cyprus. Rumor has it that Iran plans to recognize Kurdish independence, or at least the military technocratic regime in Shiraz does. The insurgents in Qom are a different sort, of course, with starkly different ideas about the future of their country,” God announced his presence again with some sobering thoughts.