Chapter 338: Aftermath of the Angel's Vandalism

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

I woke up after my usual brief sleep, and lay in bed using my downstairs study's computer to browse the news networks' websites, primarily the print media because the TV networks use sound too much and, as I believe I've mentioned, I can't get goddamn sound blobs to work. The most important consequence of my activities yesterday was that Jonathon Winters was now a VERY busy guy. He now had a large office building, many people helping him, etc. The "Make a Shortlist of Resurrection Candidates" had gotten off to a slow start, but it looked like it was firing ahead now.

ABC's website had a link entitled "Jonathon's Blog", which led to a series of brief diary notes about Jonathon's experiences and thoughts. A few of those were addressed to the angel, describing the cooperation he was getting from the Government, the last ones letting me know that I didn't need to light any more fires under governmental asses (I'm paraphrasing the overall impression). There was no mention of "Mark Anderson" in any of it, but I didn't expect there would be this early in the process.

There were photos of the wrecks previously known as Air Force One and Two. Before I'd flown home last night I'd known that reporters had been granted access and I'd caught the first photos, but I hadn't seen more than a few minutes of the initial response to them. From hearing it now, it was obvious that my destroying such prestigious icons of the presidency in the middle of a supposedly highly guarded air base was a message that people certainly understood.

I was amused by the Government stating that they'd been considering replacing the two VC-25's anyway ("VC-25" was the correct model number for the two presidential jets).

#5: <They'll be considering it even faster now.>

I believed them when they said they'd been considering replacements, although I didn't really believe their stated reason, which was because the two planes were getting old. I think it was because several other people, mostly Arab sheiks, already had larger and considerably more impressive private planes, something I'd discovered while I was researching BBJs before we took delivery of our one.

The Navy had released photos of the captain's pillowcase to the media, but were saying that it'd take a day before they could open the containment vessels of the two reactors. I didn't know whether that was true or not, but it looked like the Navy was going to be reasonably forthcoming and I didn't particularly care about them possibly stalling for a few extra hours.

They hadn't yet renamed CVN-77. They were being non-communicative on that issue, maybe hoping it'd go away, or maybe waiting to see what was inside the reactors. I was willing to wait a day.

The official website for CVN-77 made no reference to Homer Simpson. The official website for the Simpsons did make reference to CVN-77. Matt Groening thought naming a nuclear vessel after Homer Simpson was very appropriate, given Homer's expertise in the area of nuclear safety; a coincidence I hadn't thought of.

I googled, "Angel Michael", and clicked my way one by one through the top several dozen listings (all of this googling was "one by one", as if I only had one mind. I didn't want thirty two simultaneous accesses of anything other than OSU lectures, because that's what the NSA knew we had a software program to do).

There were all sorts of stuff about Archangel Michael, none of it useful in any real sense, but good to read to get a feeling for what the public thought. Everything from naked women offering to have my baby through to religious rants, and sometimes both of those at the same time. There were condemnations on non-religious grounds, rapturous praises on religious grounds, supportive statements, puzzled statements, and even jokes about me (I admired those people for being brave enough to risk committing blasphemy). There were discussions about Jonathon Winters and his job: was he fit for it, what it all meant, etc. And there was much, much more. I'd created a monster that almost everyone seemed to have an opinion on.

In several of the sites there were comments to the effect that I only did terrible things (shoot people in the stomach or foot, destroy aircraft, raid military bases), when people were breaking my rules. So, the commentators suggested, "The Government shouldn't break them."

One person commented, "He looks like he's fun when no one's hassling him." Another wrote, "He seems very moral, but quick to anger and heavy-handed. I guess he hasn't got much tolerance left after billions of years." There were fewer of those sorts of comments than I'd hoped for, but it was good to see that some people were falling for my bullshit. Hopefully more would if I kept shoveling it.

There was a GREAT deal of crap. Every religious nutcase in the world (not a small number) had a perspective that they thought everyone needed to know. I particularly enjoyed the idiots who wanted me to resurrect everyone who'd ever died.

Senior people from the 'sensible religions' (that appears to be an oxymoron, but it's not when they're compared to the other religions) were being pressured for their churches' opinions, even of just my comment about condoms. If I resurrected someone soon, that'd be the greatest religious event of the past two millennia. On the other hand, I had said, "Don't get hung up on religion; it has surprisingly little to do with God." That sounded horribly like secularism should be extended to include God! The man-in-the-street didn't recognize the significance of that, but professional clergymen and people who'd done as much religious research as I had did, as it'd leave the concept of "religion" as an empty bag of hot air. If religion had no meaning, what was the point of the churches? That statement of the angel's was a VERY threatening one, and many of the studious religious commentators hated it even more than they hated my comment about condoms - that's how bad it was!

Plus there were UFO-freaks, Elvis-freaks (thousands of people were still clamoring for me to resurrect Elvis. It occurred to me that maybe I should have turned up as Elvis rather than an angel), and the eco-freaks were particularly strident because "The animals love him." Many people thought I was a Government conspiracy, while others still thought that I was promoting a Hollywood movie. Some non-judgmental people claimed I was both.

The moralists were having conniptions. They hated the graphically displayed shape of my excessively large cock, hated that I'd made an exhibition of women's bodies, and weren't too happy that I'd shot people either. I'd even said I'd be disappointed if Jonathon didn't get a "hot date". The moralists were convinced that I was Evil Incarnate. Only Evil would show the shape of his cock, so obviously my resurrecting someone was going to be a trick. That last point is one that amused me highly: every religious person had no doubt whatsoever that God could resurrect someone and that the Devil could not. Where did that certainty come from? As far as I could tell, virtually every part of the Bible is endlessly argued about and there's even been huge religious wars over tiny differences of interpretation, but no religious person at all doubted the resurrection capability of God and incapability of the Devil. I was sure that certainty came from people's unanimous desire for that to be true. I would've liked for interviewers to question people about that assumption because I was sure the answers would've been very amusing, even if unintentionally so, but no one raised that issue. It was an accepted 'fact'.

Gun and ammunition sales were way up as people prepared for the End Of The World and/or the Alien Invasion. All the dead were about to rise up and/or millions of alien body-snatchers were expected any minute, so clearly people needed lots of guns and ammo. Unfortunately, some of those newly acquired guns and bullets were being put to bad use already, by people with a variety of insane justifications such as, "I thought she was possessed, like Archdevil Michael is," or, "I don't care if you arrest me. I got my revenge and the world's ending soon anyway." There weren't just murders either, but several suicides from people who wanted to end their world before The End Of The World. One group of fifteen nutcases had a different motivation, committing suicide while holding hands and praying, so they could be my "Helpers On Earth". I wasn't quite sure how they expected that to work, but I was sure that people can be self-deluded to an astonishingly unrealistic extent.

I felt bad about events like these, but I'd have been stupid to think I was responsible for them. No one else was blaming the angel either; although one woman was blaming me (as the angel) for her cat dying and was demanding that I resurrect it. Other than Catwoman, I was getting a lot of positive comments for only messing up equipment and not killing people, as I obviously could have.

The stock market was bouncing up and down, with people unable to agree which industry segments my appearance benefited or harmed, although oil had surged $15 per barrel on the expectation that I'd be "taking care of the Arabs shortly," which would presumably interrupt oil supplies.

Last but not least, the question of "Who Should Be Resurrected?" was being endlessly discussed. A surprising number of those discussions actually included sensible attempts to develop suitable criteria along the lines I'd suggested, but most simply started with a name and then attempted to justify it. Suggested names varied considerably, from Hitler (so he could be tried for war crimes and then sentenced to death), through to Biggie Smalls (the rapper a.k.a. "The Notorious B.I.G."), and I even saw a suggestion for The Spice Girls (the person who suggested that was VERY confused, on a number of levels).

There were several online polls. According to one, Elvis got more votes than Jesus, probably because the voters were aware that Jesus wasn't an American citizen who'd died in America - the voting was open to everyone in the world, so not just Americans. JFK and Martin Luther King got a good amount of support, with Princess Diana being up there too (the foreign voters' influence again). Strongly featured were several religious people, such Pope John Paul II - not likely!

"Mark Anderson" didn't appear on any list of potential candidates, which was disappointing; I'd thought I looked REALLY good in those bright yellow Speedos. How quickly people forget. The only list that mattered was Jonathon's, which I'd do something about if Mark Anderson was inconveniently left off it.

In a not-unrelated issue, many people had raised the issue of there having to be a body to raise from the dead. Many of the famous names that were being suggested no longer had available bodies, or even more often, people argued about whether it was available or not. As is the case on the internet, many of the arguments were highly insulting and personal. I couldn't understand how people could get into a screaming frenzy over whether Mozart's body was intact enough. They seemed to take it personally, but I was pretty sure it wasn't.

There were lots of side arguments over issues like whether the Government had the right to hand personal data over to the angel or Jonathon's group. They were all ignorable, although I did smile at the thought that it'd make my plan much easier if Mark Anderson was the only person put on the list because everyone else objected on privacy grounds.

I also liked the comment from one guy that only rich people should be candidates, "Because they've already proved that they're successful at life, so they'd be good people to give another life to." No one else seemed to like it, probably because none of them were dead and rich like I was.

As best as I could judge - after ignoring all the idiots who ranted and raved about their favorite topic regardless of its disconnection from reality - the tone of the sensible people had shifted. After LA I'd seemed amazing, but in a way that was mostly irrelevant. After DC people realized that I had an agenda and great power to get it enforced. That sobered them. They didn't think it was necessarily bad, as proving my divinity would be an AMAZING thing, but it was clearly something VERY serious indeed. People 'remembered' the historic fiction that Archangels are POWERFUL beings not to be taken lightly. It worried many of them.

There were a pleasingly large number of idiots who said, "It's God's Earth, so the angel can do whatever he wants." I wondered if any of them had big-titted, teenage daughters.

There was no official US Government response, not that I would've believed the official response to be the real one anyway. It's sadly true that total distrust of the Government is automatic. There were very few comments from international governments either. The Israeli Government invited me to pop in for a chat (they used different words), but I thought I might skip that. The Vatican was still in an emergency meeting. They'd had 1,500 years to prepare for the Second Coming, but were apparently caught unprepared for a scaled down version of it. Poor contingency planning on their part, I thought.

International reactions didn't really matter, as I wasn't able to fly fast enough to visit other countries.

^

[By the way, I have a plan for trying to learn how to fly faster than the sound barrier, but it scares me too much so I haven't attempted it yet.

Ava and I would take off in my two-seater Cessna, Ava in the pilot's seat (we've both got our Private Pilots' License now). We'd climb to 10,000 feet then I'd get out to do my tests. We'd both wear skydiving parachutes, mine with its Automatic Opening Device set to 9,000 feet, as I'd be doing my tests at 10,000 feet (all skydivers have AODs, usually set to about 1,000 feet. The devices open the reserve chute if the skydiver falls through the set altitude with a too high rate-of-change-of-altitude, that implying that the main chute isn't deployed or working properly).

If I passed out or was injured during my tests, I'd fall to 9,000 feet, my chute would open, and I'd float 'reasonably' safely back to Earth. That "reasonably" wasn't comforting, as landing unconscious could be injurious.

If Ava saw me descending under chute, she'd try to talk with me on the walkie-talkies we'd have. If I was in trouble, then she'd fly to a few hundred feet above me, would point the plane west, bail out, pull her own ripcord, and descend beside me. She'd have some medical gear and a radio with her to call for a helicopter pick up as soon as we landed (we'd have a chopper on standby somewhere close but out of sight). Ava suggested that she should have a water pistol to try to wake me up during the descent, which I thought was a good idea, even though I could easily imagine her using it even if I was conscious.

We hadn't tried this yet because the idea of tumbling out of control at very high speeds didn't appeal to me. It was too easy to imagine my arms, legs and possibly head being ripped off. I could do my tests with my body firmly sandwiched in an NP-cocoon, so my body parts hopefully wouldn't flail around if I went unstable, but it was still a very scary thought. I was pretty sure my wonderful minds wouldn't be able to regenerate me a new body from the neck down, so that image was more discouraging than the benefit from being able to fly at my theoretical maximum speed, which was Mach two, triple my practical maximum speed.