CHAPTER 33
It had been a crazy month. A very crazy month, indeed. In all the
moons that had passed since that first monkey stood up on two feet
to try and pull it down to earth, this was probably the balls-out
wackiest.
It seemed as if every country in the world had momentarily
stopped worrying about their political maneuverings, their gross
national products, their trade imbalances, their misguided younger
generations, the declining quality of television programming, the
ominous spread of new viruses, the dissolving ozone layer, unstable
neighboring military regimes, race wars, secessionist movements,
and other such minor irritations. Instead, catalyzed by the hooplah
over the could-be prophets, the only things on everyone’s mind were
religion, scripture, prophecy and doomsday. Neatly divided into two
camps, most people were either frantic or smug, the former fearing
the worst, while the latter finally getting the opportunity to say what
they had wanted to all these years: “I told you so.”
Of course, since
pro tem
leaders of any organization lose their
power when the original big cheese comes back, all the leaders of
religious organizations denied that these were in fact the prophets,
and declared the entire spectacle to be only the most heinous form of
blasphemy. Many people, venerating the medium over the message,
felt compelled to honor the opinion of their church and poo-pooh the
presumptive prophets, while others couldn’t wait for their god-men
to finally free their temples from corruption—to “throw out the
money changers,” as it were. Others didn’t really have an opinion one
way or the other and just thought the whole thing was really exciting.
It was something to really fight for, even if they weren’t sure what the
fight was all about. It made the big world feel just a little bit smaller.
Instead of a horror, eschatology was turning out to be pretty fun.
Television channels were already fighting over who got to make a
mini-series out of the whole thing.
Everybody wanted their share of the prophets. Media outfits
would do anything to get them on the air, employing armies of
helicopters and daredevil camera crews in what was closer to the
biggest commando mission in history on American soil than
anything resembling journalism. Fed up with all the attention, they
secretly retreated to an undisclosed address, where they collected
their thoughts and made final preparations for the show. No one
H O L Y S H I T !
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