Chapter 343: Introducing a Guardian Angel

Monday, April 23 to Thursday, April 26, 2007

Over the next few days, there was much media discussion about whether Mark Anderson should be on the list, and I was very pleased to see that most people agreed that I should be. I wasn't so silly as to think it was because I was a wonderful person. The possibility of learning how to make everyone super-healthy, the huge taxpayer bribe, and the possibility of gaining 120 IQ points were the main reasons, in that order. Plus, as one person said, "They can add Mark Anderson to the list, making it twenty one long. The angel was flexible, so adding Mark doesn't bump anyone off."

I was reasonably sure Jonathon would ensure Mark Anderson made it to the final twenty. Jonathon was clearly taking my advice to look at my videotapes carefully, so he'd realize that Archangel Michael had an interest in Mark Anderson, especially after God had taken so long to tell the angel about Mark during the Memphis interview.

Not quite as important as my getting resurrected, but Jonathon had also taken my advice to have a "Hot Date". Judging by his twice-daily press conferences, he'd been quite flustered about the job initially, but once the work stated flowing smoothly, he'd gained confidence enough to get himself a hot date. He hadn't even needed to ask for volunteers during one of his media sessions, so I'm guessing that he was getting unsolicited offers. However he got his date, she was HOT! They went to a show, dinner, then back to her place (she was very wealthy, with a penthouse apartment). He didn't emerge until the next morning, a fact that was very widely reported. Many religious people clearly wanted to get highly irate that a man with an important job direct from God would even have sexual urges, let alone act on them. But, of course, Archangel Michael had told him not only to have a date, but to have a hot one. Many religious people took that as definitive proof that Archangel Michael was actually the Devil. It was quite funny, and even Jonathon was smiling, although his happiness might have been caused by something else.

On Monday afternoon, stories started emerging from all over the country of investigators obtaining information on people who'd made it onto the hard list. Jonathon's investigators had asked people to keep it quiet, so only half of them were blabbing to the media. Or maybe they were bragging to their neighbors or just expressing their joy. There was even one family that took pride in going on TV and stating that they refused to have anything to do with the Devil's trick resurrection. The comments made about that family, whether supportive or condemning, were very funny.

People immediately demanded to know whether their dearly departed loved ones had made it onto that list. We wanted to know too, because no investigator had come to our home yet.

In his Monday evening press conference, a well-dressed Jonathon - he was dressing better these days, hopefully on the Government's or his network's dime - announced, "We'll be releasing the hard list on Wednesday evening, to give our investigators the best opportunity to get accurate information on those people."

Speaking for myself, I had no trouble imagining that people weren't happy with that. We wanted to know NOW! Preferably in time to complain loudly if the name we were looking for wasn't on the list.

We had until Wednesday, so we let Monday night go past without doing anything, other than worrying. Jonathon had said that the hard list names would be investigated in chronological order of death. I'd died just over a year ago, so I should be investigated soon, but not immediately.

He'd also said they'd stop when they reached a thousand people who passed the soft criteria. If the hard list had a number of names on it less than 7,000 then my place in the chronological sequence would guarantee I got investigated, as they couldn't get 1,000 soft criteria passers before getting to me (the hard criteria included people who'd died in only the last seven years, so 1,000 per year). If there were more than 7,000 people on the hard list, then my probability of being investigated started reducing. If there were 70,000 names, say, then they could easily find 1,000 soft passers before they got to me.

Tuesday early-morning, no investigator came knocking.

Tuesday mid-morning, no investigator.

Tuesday late-morning, no investigator.

At lunchtime, Dad got a call at his work from one of the senior local cops, telling him, "I thought you'd like to know that Mark's on the resurrection list. State told me to keep it quiet, so please don't spread it around."

Dad answered, "Thanks very much. We've all been worried sick about that." That was an exaggeration, because Mark Anderson was damned well going to be picked, one way or another. "How come no one has come to ask us questions?"

"Your family's circumstances are well known. I could answer every question without getting out of my chair."

"I don't suppose you know how well he scored?"

"No idea. Mark is the only candidate we did this for, and all I did was answer the questions and send the result back."

Dad was getting ahead of himself, as scoring didn't get done yet. This investigation was just to determine whether the person passed the soft criteria or not. There was no score, just a pass/fail result. I guessed the soft criteria had to be a good enough filter to eliminate at least 90% of the names on the list, so that implied at least 10,000 hard names, too many to thoroughly investigate.

Once Jonathon's group had received 1,000 names that passed the soft criteria, they'd stop the current investigations, and send the investigators back to those 1,000 to obtain the considerable amount of additional information they needed to calculate the scores. [Actually, Jonathon later explained that they sent a pair of investigators to those 1,000, different from the investigator that'd first gone, to double-check the first result and to help minimize the effects of bias on this more critical stage.]

Dad thanked our considerate cop, then spread the word to all of us.

The information required to determine whether a person passed the soft criteria was - on average - fairly easily obtained, especially because it only took one wrong answer to terminate each investigation. To save time and expense, the questions were listed with the easiest to determine and hardest to pass questions at the top. Most of the eliminations only took two or three questions. The result of this was that it didn't take long for the 1,000 soft names to be determined. Actually slightly more than 1,000 made it to the soft list, as the hard list investigations took a while to shut down, and their results came back in somewhat random sequences, depending on how fast the investigators sent the results back.

In any event, over 10,000 investigations didn't take as long as it might seem. It was a nationwide effort that spread the work out, and the Government had allocated a lot of staff to it. They thought that'd be cheaper than replacing a $5 billion aircraft carrier, or whatever else the damned angel would do to punish their being tardy.

Every name on the hard list that made it onto the soft list had to be re-investigated to obtain the information for scoring them. There was no need to do those investigations in any particular order, so in some areas it only took a few hours before the first cycle of investigations had finished, their results sent to DC, the passes determined, and the much shorter list of soft names readied for sending back to the area for pairs of investigators to revisit.

Jonathon's group delayed sending out the second round of assignments for a few hours to give more time for the first cycle to finish, so many investigators could start the second round simultaneously. The second round was going to take more time per candidate because every question had to be answered and there were far more questions. By timing it well, a large proportion of those 1,000 started at the same time, minimizing the chance of the questions getting publicized widely and distorting the results of the later investigations.

Mom got called Tuesday evening, and asked if a couple of cops could come over now to do the soft list scoring investigation. Mom very happily agreed.

Amusingly, but frustratingly, I wasn't allowed to attend, as it was for "Immediate family only" in our case. I had a feeling that claiming to be the dead person himself wouldn't be a good idea, so I had to wait in another room. I could spy on the cops' clipboards to see their questions and the answers they were recording, but that wasn't as satisfying as being in the room or hearing the discussion.

#14: <We should've gotten the army to design this house with spy holes, like medieval castles.>

#20: <Remember that for when we change homes again.>

#28: <I was about to laugh, but that's probably going to happen a few more times. We can't stay in Corvallis all our lives.>

#20: <Yeah. If we pull this off, we'll be off to a university somewhere, then presumably off to somewhere else after graduating. God knows what university, and I doubt even God knows where after that, but moving will happen.>

[[We NEVER would have guessed where our next home would be.]]

The cops were pretty relaxed, coffees were served, I saw laughter several times, and I saw the answers the cops were recording, but I had no idea what effect they'd had. Was my being a minor at the time of death a good thing or not? How many points would I get for it? Was having two sisters a good thing? On the resurrection score sheet I mean; it was certainly very good in other respects.

The cops weren't recording our scores, just the raw data from which the scores would be calculated in DC. But even if they'd had the scoring system, that wouldn't have told me what my position was compared to other people.

The questions themselves were many, varied, and mostly subjective. The cops sat apart from each other and both wrote their answers for every question on their own copy of the form, held on a clipboard. The interview being was videotaped too. Most of their subjective answers were on a 1-to-10 scale. That may have looked like the score but it was clear from the instructions printed on the forms' first page that it wasn't. They were merely the subjective answers that would then be scored. For example, two of the questions were "How missed is the candidate?", and "Is the surviving family able to financially support the candidate?" Both cops gave me "10" for both questions, but obviously the first questions was far more important and would be worth more points in the final score. As far as the second question is concerned, there'd be no practical difference between the cops answering anywhere from "6" to "10", so those answers would probably earn the same increase to the final score.

The process seemed well designed, and the questions were focused on people who'd been in the dead person's close circle, especially immediate family. My scores were generally higher than the midpoint, but that also meant nothing because every other candidate's could have been too.

The cops left after three hours, leaving the way clear for the rest of us to grill the Andersons on what their impressions had been. They knew even less than I did as they hadn't see what the cops had written down, but their overall impression was that they thought it'd gone well. The local cops certainly treat our family well, especially because their jobs are made easier and more enjoyable by having brand new everything. Most of them live in Benton County too, so got payments from the settlements. Hopefully they'd been biased.

Mom and Dad explained that the cops had started the interview by warning the family to answer honestly. They'd be verifying some of the answers from other sources, and dishonest answers would incur a sizable penalty (other than a method of forcing honest answers, there was also a real justification for this. Jonathon's group wanted an honest resurrectee, so lies by the family should count against the score). In our case, the cops knew enough about us to judge the honesty of the answers on the spot. They'd do some perfunctory cross-checking, because they'd been told to, but it'd be a rubberstamp.

As he'd promised, Jonathon's organization released the hard list on Wednesday afternoon, by which time the soft list had been determined and almost every scoring investigation completed.

That the soft list was being worked through was already widely known, with many of the questions being revealed by those questioned. The rapid developments and approaching 'deadline' (either an appropriate or inappropriate word; I can't decide which) were spurring public interest to increasingly high levels. It was almost like the Survivor TV series, except with dead contestants playing in reverse.

Tomorrow was the tenth day since the angel had told Jonathon, "In about ten days or so." They'd caught up the earlier lost time because nearly all the families were being extremely cooperative with the investigators. There were only a handful of families who hadn't been revisited for the scoring interviews, so few that if they didn't make themselves available tomorrow, then it'd be tough cheese for their possibly not-so-loved one.

During the interview in which the hard list was given out, Jonathon had added, "I'll reveal the soft list tomorrow evening. By Friday evening we should have finished scoring everyone on it." Jonathon's team was ahead of that timeframe, but they were evidently cautious about letting the public know what was happening; probably because all the Government employees involved preferred it that way. "That will tell us who the top twenty four candidates are. That's the list I will be giving Archangel Michael. Unless he tells me not to, and provided we're ready in time, I'll give out the alphabetical list of the final twenty four on Friday evening. We won't give out anybody's scores. They won't be relevant because Archangel Michael will be making his own final choice."

I'd seen the forms the cops had filled out when interviewing my family. It'd take only a few minutes to get the results into a computer, which could display the total score immediately. The news networks couldn't tell how far through the scoring interviews the investigators were, but I doubted it'd take until Friday evening to finish the job, so it was definitely time to email Jonathon.

I'd grown concerned that I was leaving home shortly after it became dark then flying somewhere and doing something. If the Government analyzed the times at which I started doing things, they might notice a trend that the greater the distance from Corvallis, the later the events started, with Corvallis's sunset being the base time. They wouldn't be able to zero in on Corvallis, but they might be able to get the general area. To counter that possibility, I deliberately waited until 2am Thursday morning before I left home.

During my trip to Boise, Idaho, I did some more thinking. For several days I'd been puzzling over how to contact Jonathon, and I hadn't come up with a method that pleased me. Having read how good some of our military's surveillance and weapon systems are, pleasing me was a very difficult hurdle to achieve. One of the major problems was that the Government almost certainly had Jonathon under heaps of surveillance now. If I contacted him, or even got within five hundred feet of him, the Government could acquire me. Three things worried me:

1. If there were multiple surveillance systems in place, I might not be able to get rid of them faster than they could be replaced or reacquire me.

2. I couldn't be sure I got rid of them all. Visual surveillance particularly worried me because I couldn't detect it happening. Some of the high-flying surveillance planes had superb visual tracking abilities, including infrared, which was difficult for me to get rid of.

3. What else the Government might do besides surveil me. My day could be ruined by a cloud of knockout gas, a sniper's bullet, a hundred smokeless Mach two missiles, or several REALLY big missiles each with a 500-foot kill radius.

There was a great deal of risk in meeting with Jonathon and there was no real need to. Jonathon could email me his candidates, then I could let him know my choice by emailing him back or by holding an impromptu press conference. All things considered - with how to keep my skin intact being especially well considered - I was seriously thinking of not meeting Jonathon again. There was no need to let the Government know that though, so I'd keep my options open.

When I got to a good location outside of Boise, I set up a new email account, "Archangel.Mickey@gmail.com", as "Archangel.Michael@gmail.com" was already taken. I was curious by who and for why, but I had more important things to do. I used my new address to send Jonathon an email.

I identified myself, gave the, "The cat sat in the hat" authenticator, then wrote the body of the email:

Well done on working so rapidly, Jonathon Winters. You're getting close, so please reply with the current soft list in descending score sequence. If the scoring is incomplete when you reply, please indicate that and resend the list when it is complete. The first twenty four names of the fully scored soft list will be your final candidates.

I have only one instruction for how you publicize any of your results: don't release your final list until 24 hours after you send it to me, to allow me time to investigate them unhindered. Please publicize the body of this email too.

Starting from the end of my 24-hour investigation period, keep with you no more than a single briefcase with paper files about the final candidates. I will 'pick you up' when the time is right for us to review them.

To the Federal employees who are impolitely reading this email: Attempts to surveil or intercept Jonathon or me while we are carrying out God's business will be punished in ways I consider appropriate. You should know that already, but I wish to make sure you have no excuse.

Keep up the Good Work, Jonathon
Archangel Michael.
p.p. God.

#15: <That should get us the information we want, while encouraging the Government to concentrate on Jonathon fruitlessly. Okay?>

#All: <Agreed. Send it.>

I hit "Send".

I had borrowed an engineless old car and had sat in it, parked on a side road, while I wrote that email. Now I rolled the car down the road and for another fifty miles before I abandoned it and took to the sky. I was getting paranoid and was fearful that my email to Jonathon might've gotten a satellite immediately switched to searching my area with an infrared camera. Rolling away in the dead car wouldn't give out any infrared from the car or me so I'd be invisible to them in the infrared, and in the visible wavelengths too at this time of night. I'd be visible if I passed under a streetlight but I'd chosen a remote location that didn't have them. Even if momentarily illuminated, my image would still look fine unless visual and infrared were simultaneously compared, which I thought was so unlikely as to make this method of escape far better than driving away in a functioning car.

Knowing that I absolutely had to shake any surveillance if I'd been acquired, I continued to take more than my usual level of precautions. I went west all the way to the ocean, submerged, then motored north for two hours before sneaking up a small river. After I was inland as far as possible, I surfaced and flew home with a thin water shield on top of me. To find and track me, a camera had to be zoomed in so far it covered only a small area. By going underwater and moving fifty miles away before I reappeared, reacquiring me should be damned near impossible, I hoped.

I was also having some paranoid thoughts about the two weeks after the announcement that Mark had been chosen. Under my existing plan, the angel would've said that Mark was the choice, that Ron was the body donor, and that the resurrection had already been done (that had to be the case, because the angel and Ron couldn't be in the room at the same time). Archangel Michael would also say that a Guardian Angel had been assigned and had arrived. I'd already roughed out a description of how fixated on defending its assignment the Guardian Angel would be, and how anyone would be stupid to threaten Mark. Despite that warning, it was too easy to imagine the Government swooping in to grab hold of Ron/Mark. The swoopers would get themselves into a great deal of difficulty because of the Guardian Angel's defense, but if they got a look at my body the angel scam would be instantly uncovered. That would have VERY bad consequences!

It would be much better to have the angel delay naming the resurrectee for two weeks to allow time for Archangel Michael's body to revert to Ron's. That way, if the Government did swoop in and overcome the Guardian Angel, what they'd capture would be a body that had Mark's DNA and mind, but looked like Ron, exactly consistent with my story.

Before breakfast that morning, I had a Faraday-caged discussion with the families. I had no trouble convincing them that I should be more cautious. Prof in particular had been thinking along the same lines and had already decided that we needed to change the way we did the endgame. He was happy with my new suggestion.

It was quite easy to reduce my exposure, as Archangel Michael's remaining jobs could be reduced to just two:

1. Publicly explain a couple of minor details about the resurrection, and the major detail of the Guardian Angel.

2. Pick the final winner, explain God's cunning logic behind why it is Mark, and include an explanation for the two-week delay.

If I could insert a pro-meat industry comment in either of the two real jobs, that'd be yummy. Notice that performing the resurrection itself isn't one of the jobs. It will be a fictitious job that we'll pretend happened.

The second task couldn't be done in public because by then I would've already had to change my body into Ron's shape. It could be done in public if the angel hid its body shape, which was not something it'd ever done before. Doing so might cause suspicions about bodies, while the angel simply sending an email explanation wouldn't create that suspicion because the angel uses emails a great deal. As Majestic Countdown it'd sent many dozens of them.

In Jonathon's morning press conference, he produced the body of the email I'd sent him last night. I'd been slightly worried that it'd be intercepted and kept from him, so I was pleased to see that hadn't happened.

Judging from the reporters' questions and the commentaries afterward, my email got a good reaction, but it was mostly because it helped fan the flames of the excitement about the upcoming resurrection. The commentators agreed among themselves that the Government would be foolish to go against the angel's wishes by surveilling Jonathon, because the angel didn't like it when people went against its wishes. The commentators did wonder why the angel objected to surveillance so strongly, but they didn't have any clue about that so they quickly moved on to something else.

Jonathon mentioned that he had replied to the angel, so I spent all day itching to check that email address, including worried that the damned Government might've deleted the email. In the list of tasks the angel had to do, I left out contingencies like punishing the Government if they misbehaved. Hopefully there'd be none of that, but I'd do it if necessary. Another contingency was if Mark Anderson didn't make Jonathon's final list of candidates. That was the main reason I'd instructed Jonathon to wait 24 hours before going public with the list, to give me time to check my email and get him to fix his mistake if he left me off the list.

I'd had a momentary thought of rewarding Jonathon by flying down to LA and taking as much money off every drug dealer and other criminal I could find, and giving it to him for a job well done, but doing that was too dangerous. The drug dealers didn't worry me in the slightest; it was the damned Government.

^

I arrived in Seattle, Washington about 11pm Thursday night. As much as I wanted to check my emails, the first job was a press conference because I'd have to flee the city after I logged into my emails.

I arranged a press conference in much the same way as I had in Memphis, except I simply grabbed the first guy, holding his mouth shut until he reached the rooftop and saw me. After I got him calmed down, I then got him worried again by promising him that all sorts of bad things would happen to him if he mentioned anything about me while he called for a cameraman to come. I only needed one reporter this time because it wasn't going to be a Q&A session. I normally need several reporters for those to ensure that at least one of them asks a question I want, but this time I was just going to be making some statements so all I needed was someone to record them.

When the cameraman was picked up, calmed down, and was performing his job, I started my little speech: "I have some statements to make. First, I'm running out of time on Earth and will be leaving soon. I've lived for billions of your years, but I'm still busy and run out of time. I have another task waiting for me that I need to get to work on. That means the resurrection will be done soon..."

"When?" interrupted the reporter.

One of the problems with wearing a full-face mask is that you can't glare at people to shut them up. It was a poor substitute for a glare, but I told him, "No questions until I finish speaking. As I was saying, the resurrection will be accomplished soon, and then I have to leave. God believes humans might mistreat the resurrectee, so I want to make it very clear that whoever I choose will merely be a lucky, deserving human. There won't be anything profoundly different about that person, so don't try to turn him or her into another Jesus Christ. He or she must be allowed to resume a life of his or her choosing.

^-- "To ensure that, God will be providing him or her with what I'll call a 'Guardian Angel'. I've mentioned before that I wasn't born. Angels are created by God to fulfill a variety of functions. There are several different types of angels. Some are like me and many are different. All angels get their powers from God. In many respects God works through us, although we also have freewill and can decide for ourselves what we'll do and how. God can alter our powers at will too. That's unusual because we're normally capable of performing our allotted tasks, but it does happen occasionally, such as for my resurrecting someone since that's not one of my normal powers.

^-- "I'm telling you this because God wishes me to warn you about Guardian Angels, otherwise you'll find out the hard way, and that wouldn't be good for you. Guardian Angels have one purpose and one purpose only: as the name implies, it is to guard. To enable them to perform that task capably, they're very different from me.

^-- "They do not use a body, whether a host like I have now or any other type of body. Doing so would split their attention between guarding their body and guarding their assignment. Having a body would make them vulnerable to weapons, which is a disadvantage that God doesn't want them to have. God has therefore created Guardian Angels as bodiless and invulnerable. There's absolutely nothing in humanity's arsenal that can affect a Guardian Angel.

^-- "They are single-minded. I don't mean simple-minded, because they're not; I mean they're focused. They don't exist to provide conversation, guidance, to give interviews, or any of the sorts of tasks that I perform for God. Nor are they in any way the servant of the person they're assigned to. Their only job is to guard, and they do that with endless patience and with great effect. If someone or something threatens their assignment, they remove the threat. They are working for God, so they rightfully consider that God's Will supersedes all other considerations. They're not strong believers in what you call due process, or giving suspects the right to an appeal, or of any of your other legal processes. There's an amusingly apt expression you sometimes use that talks about killing someone and letting God decide what to do with them. When the resurrectee's Guardian hears that expression it will laugh at its relevance. They won't kill unnecessarily, but they won't give a threat the benefit of the doubt when it's time to do what's necessary.

^-- "As well as being invulnerable to weapons, they're also considerably more physically powerful than I am. They have some of my powers but more so, and they have additional powers, especially in the physical domain. Plus God can always increase their abilities if It wishes to, of course.

^-- "They're a great deal more intelligent than humans, because intelligence makes them better guards. If someone rushes up to their assignment and gives that person a big hug, the Guardian will remain passive. If someone approaches with hostile intent, that person is unlikely to get time to wonder what hit them. In the unlikely event that a Guardian Angel is unsure whether its assignment is at risk or not, it'll take defensive measures while it determines the true situation, and then it'll act.