Chapter 342: The Angel Visits Memphis, but not Graceland

Sunday, April 22, 2007 (Continued)

I discussed my plans with the parents, especially Mom and Dad because they'd be taking the calls.

Later that evening, I flew to Memphis, located a reporter typing up a story in his station's office. He was sitting within twenty four feet of the exterior wall, which made it even easier for me to type. During a pause in his typing, I machine-gunned, "Grab your phone, tape recorder and camera. Come to the roof for an interview you'll love." I repeated it five times, the sound alone guaranteeing to get his attention.

His eyes bugged wide, he looked around frantically, looked under his desk, looked at the screen again, then looked worried. He eventually summoned the courage to gather up the items and to take the stairs to the roof.

It took him a while to arrive, walking slowly and peering cautiously around every corner, but he finally spotted me and broke into a big smile. Even without his seeing my face, it's easy to recognize Archangel Michael.

He paused the smile long enough to ask, "Is this a prank?"

I lifted him a few feet in the air then put him down again. He seemed to find that quite convincing.

I told him, "I'm going to hold a small press conference and I want four reporters present; you and three others. I want you to call one of your coworkers, and two good reporters from other organizations. You won't tell them why, only that they should come to meet you outside your building's front door as fast as possible. Tell them to bring a tape recorder, and a cameraman if it won't delay them. Do not tell them anything about why, but do ask them for their ETAs. Can you do that?"

"Ahh yeah. But I can do everything they can."

"Are you really going to argue with me?"

"Ahh, no. I'll do what you want."

He pulled out his phone and started doing so. It took him a while to convince his competitors to come, but eventually there were three more reporters and two video cameramen gathered around the building's front door, and shortly after that, on its rooftop.

I told them to remove their cellphones and leave them on the roof, then I picked everyone up and we flew to a remote location. I didn't tell them why we were moving, but it was so that when I left after the interview, I'd have time to get well away before the military found out that I'd been in the area. I REALLY didn't want the military to get on my tail.

I started the interview by explaining that I'd come to Memphis in part to apologize to the Elvis fans for my comments about him. That resulted in several minutes of good sounding bullshit, the only intelligent question being, "Why don't you cure Elvis after you resurrect him, so he wouldn't need pills or eat so much?"

"Because of freewill. He chose to abuse his body and there are consequences of exercising freewill. In this case, one of the consequences is that he has invalidated himself as a candidate for resurrection."

"That's not fair! He didn't know that at the time."

"He took excessive food and drugs for years, so had plenty of time to see that he was killing himself."

Another reporter asked, "Many people think addictions are a disease?"

"If you're referring to my comment that the resurrectee will have his or her diseases healed, then I was referring to diseases which are caused by something which, if removed, makes the disease go away. If necessary, I will remove the resurrectee's viruses, or cancerous cells, or whatever the cause of his or her disease is. What could I remove from Elvis to cure him? I can't remove weak will. God grants freewill, and that includes weak will. Some species are stronger willed than others, and some individuals within each species are stronger than others - that's life. Even if we're so charitable as to say Elvis was only half to blame for his ongoing decisions to put things into his mouth, that still invalidates him as a resurrection candidate because there are millions of people who are entirely deserving of resurrection.

^-- "It's time to change the subject, so I'm going to briefly mention your navy's renaming of CVN-77. I will be leaving Earth soon and probably won't be personally back for a few decades or centuries. Your navy's bosses would be foolish to think that God won't know if they renege on the renaming after I leave. It wants me to pass on a threat: If there's an attempt to subvert the intent of my order, then the ship will sink at sea. The ship won't be unlucky in any respect before then - knowing God, it'll be lucky - but if there's an effort to go against my wishes, then the crew would be well advised to leave their valuable items on shore when it next sails; and themselves too if they can arrange it."

I wasn't entirely bullshitting about its sinking, because if they did re-rename the ship, I truly would be tempted to covertly sink it. Doing so would remind people to take angels and God seriously and cautiously, making them more likely to leave me alone. The bit I'd said about luck was because of a comment I'd read about the Norfolk Naval Yards, that "It has no Pier 13 because that would be bad luck." I remembered hearing somewhere that sailors are superstitious and I didn't want the USS Homer Simpson to have trouble finding crew because I - as Archangel Michael - could be blamed for that, besmirching my good name and perhaps reducing my - as Mark Anderson - safety. I'd attempted to cancel out that worry, but without overselling the good luck aspect because I had no control over that.

(If I had been in charge of the US Navy, I would have named the piers: "13A", "13B", "13C", ... up to "13L" and then "Double 13". Anything to discourage superstitious people from working on ships with state of the art weapons systems and nuclear reactors.)

The reporters had several questions ("Where are you going?", "What will you be doing?", etc.) I refused to answer, saying, "Humanity isn't ready for that knowledge yet." During those questions, my radio blob saw the sudden glow of what was obviously a cellphone transmitting in one of the cameramen's pockets.

(When a caller calls your cellphone, the carrier company needs to find your phone to make the connection. One very inefficient way for the carrier to find your phone would be to start electronically searching for it at the North Pole and slowly working south through every cellphone tower in the world until it was able to make contact with your phone. Eventually, many thousands of attempts later, they'd find your phone. A better way would be to start with the last cell tower your phone used and search outward in spiral from there. That can still take too long a time because people get on jet aircraft and fly thousands of miles. So most cellphones "check in" periodically, just by making a brief connection to a cellphone tower in their area. The phones don't ring or anything else their owner would notice; it's a silent and invisible process, unless you happen to have a radio blob operating. I'd seen hundreds of examples of this happening already, and knew exactly what it was.)

I did answer some follow-up questions about the USS Homer Simpson, during which I used a sight blob to carefully search everyone for more phones, finding none. I made a mental note not to take media people's words in the future. When the current thread of questions finished, I said, "Remember before we left town, I told you to leave all your cellphones behind?"

None of them had wanted to leave their phones, so they certainly remembered, including the guy whose proximity sense was suddenly showing worry. I'd seen him leave a phone behind, so he must've had two.

I picked up the cameraman and his reporter partner by their ankles, dangling them upside-down and moving them a few feet back so the others could see them clearly. The others were very worried themselves now, so ignoring the first pair's screams and yells (from the reporter and cameraman respectively), I quickly turned the cameraman around so his cellphone-carrying pocket was closest to us, then I ripped it open, pulling out the cellphone.

I explained, "I insisted that every cellphone be left behind. This man put one down but retained another one. None of you have anything to worry about; only these two. The reporter because she chose to invite this cameraman, and the cameraman because he deliberately disobeyed me..."

"I forgot I had it," yelled the cameraman; lying, because proximity had shown his worry earlier.

"Has it occurred to you that angels can tell when humans lie? Tell me another lie and I'll break your legs."

He shut up, which gave the reporter the opening to start her own begging, "I didn't know!" she protested. "It was nothing to do with me!"

"Which is why I'm not going to punish you nearly as badly as I'm going to punish him, both for his disobeying my order and for lying to me."

I started ripping the cameraman's clothes off, shredding them as I went. I even shredded his shoes. I kind of had to, to show that I was an equal opportunity angel. According to my act, I wasn't human, and although I hadn't explicitly stated it, I was supposed to have no sex of my own, so I shouldn't only strip females. I let the reporter maintain her decency - she was holding her skirt 'up' as far as she could reach - while I stripped the cameraman totally naked, including removing his watch and ring.

When he was naked, I positioned his cellphone where he could see it and then crushed it flat. Then I did the same to his camera, making sure that the tape in it was pulled out and shredded into uselessness. I also crushed the other items of equipment he had, spare batteries and tapes mostly. I crushed his watch (six tons of pressure on a narrow point; it didn't have a chance). I took his ring in two pairs of fingertips and rotated them in opposite directions so it twisted and tore.

He complained, "That was my wedding ring!"

"You can tell your wife you lost it because you were repeatedly dishonest to an angel. She probably already knows how stupid you are."

I flew the two pieces of his ring in opposite directions, letting the pieces fall when the fingertips self-canceled. I flew his wallet to me, saying, "I'll drop this in the lap of a homeless person in some other city. I'm sure it'll be appreciated."

I moved the reporter and cameramen a hundred feet away and faced them away from us, then invited the surviving reporters, "Next question please."

"Why did you punish Stephanie?"

I knew that was the reporter's name as I'd heard the conversation when she'd been invited to meet my first contact outside his building. I answered, "Like I said before, she invited him to come tonight, so she's partially responsible. Plus, I want their employer to miss out on this interview because they employ people dishonest enough to lie to an angel. Or am I misinterpreting your question? Maybe you're suggesting that I should strip Stephanie naked too?"

That idea appealed to all the guys, but they decided to deny it. They even laughed to prove they treated it as a joke. I let them get away with their lies.

I'll omit most of the rest of the interview, quoting only the important part of it: One of the reporters finally got around to asking the question I was waiting for, "The Andersons - Mark Anderson's parents, the boy that the CIA experimented on - they wondered whether his body would've let our doctors find out how to cure every disease?"

#4: <Not exactly an accurate description of what happened.>

#7: <You need to lower your standards when you're dealing with reporters.>

#4: <I thought I had. Maybe I should just get rid of my standards entirely.>

I answered, "I never met the boy. Let me ask God..." I paused, holding my body still (I don't move it around to face whomever I'm talking to, but that doesn't mean I behave like a statue. I was now though, which was a noticeable difference).

I held it still for several seconds. One of the reporters started asking another question, but I held up my hand to silence him.

After a few more seconds of stillness, I suddenly relaxed and chuckled to myself, then explained, "God had a great deal to say. It hadn't explained much about Mark Anderson to me before. Now I understand some of It's earlier orders, such as having me start my Majestic Countdown role with the CIA file on Mark Anderson.

^-- "God has told me to partially answer your question. You asked about curing disease, but that's focusing on a minor benefit. Increasing people's IQ would've PROFOUNDLY changed humanity. You would have solved problems easier, advanced quicker, made fewer mistakes, and had far better quality of lives than you're managing now.

^-- "I know you can't appreciate the difference that much more IQ makes, so I'll put it this way. The difference between human and chimpanzee IQs is half of the difference between you and what the improved humans would've had. In a few decades, New Humans would've looked back on your current society, way of life, achievements, and everything else that you've got now, and they'd think that you might as well have been walking around naked in a forest picking fruit and scratching for bugs.

^-- "You had a great prize in your hands, but your stupidity and immorality destroyed it. In Los Angeles I said that immoral societies destroy themselves. Losing Mark Anderson is a perfect example of that. Within a few decades, every problem that this humanity can currently imagine would've been solved, but now they're going to be major challenges to your survival, several of which could wipe you out or set your civilization back for hundreds of years. You're a very stupid species sometimes."

"But you can resurrect him, can't you? You said you don't need a body?"

"It's tricky without a body, but you're right that God through me could resurrect Mark Anderson." I had planned to make this specific point in my next meeting with Jonathon, but this press conference was a better and easier time to do it, so I carried straight on with, "There needs to be a volunteer donor, for example. Someone willing to give up their body for the resurrectee."

"Would you explain that some more please?"

#3: <I was going to anyway.>

"If you want. The resurrected person needs a body. If his or her corpse isn't available, or is too badly damaged, then God has told me that It will require someone else to volunteer to be a body donor. God - through me - will take the donor's soul out of their body and put the resurrectee's soul in, then I'll change the body's DNA to start the process of the body reforming itself into that of the resurrectee's, which will take a few months. Exactly how long will depend on how much difference there is between the donor's and resurrectee's bodies. Different ages, heights, weights, genders, etc., will affect the speed of that process. As I said, it's trickier than having a corpse readily to hand, but God doesn't want to restrict the possible candidates to only those people."

I'd said the process would take months because I needed the first two weeks to get from the angel's body to close enough to Ron's to not be suspected of being the angel. I could hide my body's current shape from my gardening staff by wearing shapeless clothes, but we'd have to prevent the press from seeing my body for the first two weeks after the so-called resurrection because they'd want close looks of the transformation process. After I'd speedily become sufficiently Ron-like, I'd say, "I feel psychologically ready to let you see my body now." They'd get regular chances (every morning say), to document my SLOW transformation from Ron to Mark. Going slowly was also a good idea in case I ever needed to do some quick changes in the future. No one would know that I could do that.

#19: <They don't look shocked enough. I don't think they get it.>

#3: <It doesn't look like it. I didn't plan how to word it, so it wasn't as good as it should be. I'll check their understanding.>

I said, "You're not as surprised as I expected, so I suspect you've missed the key point. The donor must be alive at the time of the resurrection."

"Huh? But what happens to the donor?"

"The donor's body has its DNA changed to that of the resurrectee. The donor's soul, which means their mind too, are removed by God to make room for the resurrectee's soul and mind."

"You're going to KILL the donor!"

"God's not going to kill the donor. The body will remain alive obviously, because killing it would defeat the purpose of the resurrection. The donor's soul and mind will be removed. That's 'removed', not 'killed'. God will be taking them."

"What will He do with them?"

"God's not a 'He'. What IT will do with them is the same as what It does with all of humanity's souls, which is not for you to know."

The reporters, and even the remaining cameraman, got even more agitated than I'd expected, and the discussion turned chaotic for a while. In no particular order, because they were often mixed up, the following points got discussed.

^

"You're STEALING a soul!"

I replied, "If one of these types of resurrections occurs, then it'll be the soul of a VOLUNTEER, so a gift rather than stealing. God will be returning the soul of the resurrectee so the net result will be no change in the number of souls anywhere. Billions of souls have left their Earthly bodies since we've been talking, and you haven't made a fuss about any of those."

"Huh? Billions? But there aren't that many people alive."

"First, yes there are. Second, not only humans have souls. You're just the only species arrogant enough to believe you're unique that way."

^

"Why doesn't God create a new body for the resurrectee?"

"It told me It wants to do the resurrection the way I described. I didn't ask for It's reasons and I won't do so just to satisfy your curiosity."

"You've asked God questions before. We saw you ask about Mark Anderson."

"Asking about Mark Anderson was to obtain information I didn't have and that I could make use of. I don't need to question God about something It has already decided and described to me. Your little finger has got more chance of arguing back with you when you tell it to bend, than I have in questioning God's instructions. I'm an instrument of God's Will, and It's Will is clear."

Reporters never take "No comment" for an answer, so they argued some more. I just stood there silently until someone asked a question on a different topic.

^

"Some of our readers will think this is a trick for you to get someone's soul?"

"Your mythology about the Devil buying souls is childish nonsense. First, you can't sell your souls. If I asked any of you to give me your soul, or to try to stop me taking it, or just to show it to me, none of you could do any of those. You have no control over your souls. You don't even know what a soul is. How can you sell something you have no control over?

^-- "Second, God can take your souls if It wants. They all go to God when you die, but It could take them earlier if It wanted. It has total control over your lives, deaths and souls.

^-- "Third, it would only take me a few seconds to obtain many millions of dollars' worth of gold and jewelry. You're such an avaricious species that I'd have no trouble finding people willing to sell their souls for that much money, if there was such a thing as selling souls, which there isn't.

^-- "Fourth, the Devil doesn't exist. That's religious claptrap invented to keep commonfolk obeying the orders of their religious leaders who use fear to manipulate people. There's nothing fundamentally different between humans and other species. All animal species have brains, minds, souls, bodies, and various physical and mental abilities. There are some things humans do better than other animals, and there are some things other species do better than humans. You humans aren't as distinct and important as you think you are, and you CERTAINLY don't have a mythological boogeyman running around fixated on your souls as if they were somehow special. That's as absurd as imagining God sits on a cloud strumming a harp all day long.

^-- "Stop being superstitious savages, and try to pretend to be well-educated, enlightened, 21st century men and women."

They REALLY preferred the "superstitious savages" role, especially the "superstitious" half of it. They were obviously highly uncomfortable with the idea of souls being moved around, and deeply suspicious of it. They were pathetic.

#14: <If these dimwits represent the population at large, then we've underestimated how pathetically superstitious and fearful people are. They don't even know what a soul is, but they're looking terribly worried that we've spent several weeks setting up an elaborate scam so we can fool a single human into volunteering to let us take his soul.>

#22: <I'd like to say this group can't be representative of humanity because they were stupid enough to argue emotionally in favor of our resurrecting Elvis ahead of every other person, but we saw how many other people voted for Elvis so maybe this bunch is representative. In which case, we might have a problem.>

We agreed on what to say, so I exclaimed with exasperation, "Good grief, you're pathetic! The WHOLE point of my resurrecting someone was to prove that I'm a divine being operating on God's behalf. Now you're upsetting yourself with superstitious, thoughtless fear that I'm the Devil. Make up your primitive minds! God is going to take the donor's soul. If you can't trust God with a soul, who can you trust!

^-- "It occurs to me that your attitude is a very good example of what Jonathon Winters would call a 'soft criterion'. Once Jonathon's short list is published and volunteers are called for where necessary, the only people who'll volunteer are the sensible ones who use their brains to think with, rather than run around in circles spouting fearful religious claptrap. There's a good chance that some of the possible resurrectees won't know any altruistic sensible people, which will eliminate them from the list quite nicely. It'll be interesting to see how much damage your species' superstitious stupidity does to some candidates' chances. Next topic please."

They didn't want to leave this topic, which gave me the opportunity to add another thought, "I would never TAKE someone's soul from them; that'd be very immoral. If a volunteer wishes me to do so, so their loved one's resurrection can go ahead, it would be immoral of YOU, or anyone else, to stand in the way of their gift. You have NO moral control over someone else's soul! Anyone who thinks they do is an immoral, arrogant fool. I'd like to say 'they'll go to Hell for it, ' only there is no such place. There are times I regret that."

^

Eventually I got another sensible question out of them, "Does the volunteer have to be a loved one of the candidate?"

"God wants them to have some connection. I don't want mental hospitals full of unstable people volunteering to be donors for every candidate. Nor am I going to provide 'Suicide by Angel'. When Jonathon's final list is published - twenty or so names - his organization will call for volunteer body donors for the people on that list whose body is unavailable. Every volunteer will have to include an explanation of their connection to the candidate and their reasons for volunteering. In the interests of saving time, that will have to be done by email or couriered letters as I'll only be allowing 24 hours for that process because I'm running short of time.

^-- "If I choose a resurrectee who needs a donor body, I'll read their volunteers' letters to review their reasons and connections, then I'll interview those of them I feel pass those criteria. It'll be easy for me to determine the truthfulness of their gift. If a potential resurrectee doesn't have a usable body and no worthy volunteers, then I'll pick another candidate and repeat the process until I find a candidate who meets all the requirements.

^-- "As much as it would amuse me to have several candidates miss out because they were too suspicious, and their friends and loved ones were likewise, I doubt that'll happen. I hope Jonathon's team will identify people who are truly worthy, and such people tend to attract loyal, high quality, friends."