With a Rod of Iron: A Parable, page 58
In fact, it was somewhat satisfying to be known by strangers but not to know them.
That’s what made fame so great.
“It gives new meaning to the phrase, ‘that’s one small step for a man,’” grinned her husband, making some obscure, and she supposed, literary reference. She glared at him, but he didn’t seem to notice.
The street was paved with dark black asphalt, freshly poured. The broken yellow stripe down the center was bright. On either side, grass and tiny new trees added green to what was otherwise a uniformly tan landscape. Beyond the few huddled buildings and the omnipresent artificial landscaping, the natural splendor of the planet showed through.
“This was an empty world before we came,” explained Ovid. “Like a blank slate, waiting for someone to write on it. Not a blade of grass, not a tree, not a microorganism had lived here before we opened the translocator and stepped across. It’s one of nearly five hundred empty globes that have been discovered thus far, and the government of Earth seemed overjoyed to let us have it. Didn’t even balk at our chosen name—hadn’t been used, yet, the woman said.” Ovid shook his head. “It’s like the Antichrist and his minions are glad to see us go.”
“I’m sure they are,” agreed Cassandra. “We’re a constant affront to them, an object of guilt, speaking words of truth against their lies.” She scowled.
“We don’t ever have to go back to see them, to have anything more to do with them—not until Jesus returns and we go to defeat the foe. We will wait, safe from the Tribulation that’s bound to come on them now that we’ve departed. Brother Sisyphus’s convinced our continued presence on Earth was why we hadn’t seen the book of Revelation get fulfilled yet.” Ovid paused. “So it’s vital that all God’s children should move here. It’s the only way God can have his way.”
“At least I’m not hindering his hand any longer,” commented Cassandra. Her husband gave her an odd look. “We’re never going back, are we?”
She asked with a sense of hope, not a sense of longing for what had been. Her husband shrugged. “Until Armageddon.”
She nodded, and mouthed the phrase back to him.
* * *
The center of New Jerusalem was a gleaming patchwork of glistening mirrored office towers, like glass pillars supporting the roof of the sky. Roads crisscrossed in dizzying profusion, moving them easily from the outlying districts covered with endless tract homes, to the center of the business district. Beyond, the road streamed toward the country, where rolling hills, barren and gray, awaited the coming touch of plow and dropped seed, that would spring to life in the periodic rains.
“We’re only a few kilometers from the ocean,” commented Ovid. “We decided to build inland—safer you know. But, we’re close enough that we should get good storms and plenty of rain for crops.
“It’s magnificent,” she said. Despite his and Brother Sisyphus’s promises, she had expected a rough settlement of prefab buildings and a handful of meager structures. She had never pictured a readymade city, alive with possibility.
Only when they were upon their destination, could she see the small figures of workmen dangling from cords, holding the sides of a structure as they busied themselves putting the final touches on the magnificent edifices.
Their driver stopped the car by the tallest building, a magnificent cylinder thrusting black panes of glass a hundred stories heavenward. Ovid thanked the young man, then they piled out.
“I’ll wait for you,” commented the driver.
“What?” Cassandra glanced backward, just as the car door closed behind her.
“We’ve got a meeting of the Board,” said Ovid. “Then we’ll go home—to our new house. We’re not really tired—and the time here is the same as it is back...on Earth.” He began rambling, jabbering on about nothing in particular as they walked inside. “New Earth rotates once every twenty-four hours—identical to Earth, to a few fractions of a second. And the year comes to an even three hundred sixty. No leap years to worry about, and all the months will be the same length. We’ll be reverting to proper months, and proper names of the days, though...”
When he saw Cassandra’s blank look, he explained. “We’ll get rid of the pagan god names, and we’ll rename the days. Like, Sunday will become ‘The Lord’s Day,” and Saturday will be the Sabbath. And the other days—they’ll simply be numbered: so Monday will be the Second Day and Tuesday will be the Third day and so on. And the months—we’re taking them right from the Old Testament.”
“All those hard to pronounce names?” she was almost horrified.
“We’ll get used to them. We’ve got to start fresh, start new. We can’t be bringing paganism with us. That’s why we won’t be celebrating Christmas—what with its pagan origins. And certainly no Halloween, a day of the Devil if there ever was one. Brother Sisyphus’s been hard at work coming up with the laws we’ll be living by.”
Cassandra nodded. It was like a dream come true. A whole world of Christians, where there wouldn’t ever be any illicit sex, no drugs, no bad movies or television, no bad magazines or art, only what was good and wholesome and decent. There wouldn’t be anything in New Jerusalem or the face of the New Earth that could corrupt or lead anyone astray.
An elevator sped them from a spacious lobby to the very top of the cylinder, where a huge reception room waited. A long table of heavy wood sat off to one side. Several men and women were milling about, cups of coffee steaming in their hands while they jabbered incessantly to one another. Looking at them in the brief moments before they noticed the arrival of their new governor, she allowed herself to wonder why none of them had shown up at the terminal to greet them. Why had there been no pomp and circumstance, no bunting, no speeches and adoring throngs? Why had they arrived alone, with only a driver waiting to drag them here?
But suddenly, they were noticed, and with that notice, the room became so somber that the soft hiss of the air conditioner became audible.
“Welcome to New Jerusalem, Governor—Mrs. Demeter.” The announcement finally came from a dark-haired man in suit and tie, standing next to a not unattractive woman in brown skirt. Ovid smiled and extended his hand.
“Good to see you again, Wooly,” said her husband, clamping tightly and shaking firmly. “You’ve met my wife before?”
“I can’t say that I have.” His eyes focused on her and he grinned. There was no surreptitious scan of her physical attributes, though. Instead, his eyes simply bored through her face, as if he could read her mind or something. She smiled sheepishly, and let him shake her hand.
In the next several minutes, they wandered the room, shaking hands and hearing more names than she could ever hope to keep straight. But she smiled politely, and did her best, and decided she could just greet these strangers in the future with a “hello”—without ever using their names. They were less important than Ovid, after all; less important than her. So, there was no reason she needed to remember them—not if it meant getting a headache or something.
“You been to see your house, yet?” asked a woman in a blue chiffon dress, whom Cassandra felt had entirely too much chest. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been noticeable ordinarily, but the dress accentuated her problem, even though her breasts were entirely covered without even a hint of cleavage. Her narrow waist and long legs further emphasized her burden.
Cassandra shook her head, perhaps too slowly. She wasn’t really paying very close attention to the woman’s words.
“I think you’ll like it,” said the stranger with the big boobs. “It’s nothing like the way it was when we first moved to Holiness Television Park. No more stupid tents or having to make do without running water. I wouldn’t have come here if I’d have thought I’d have to live that way again! Living like homeless bums once was bad enough—and completely unnecessary if you ask me.” She paused. “They’re doing things right, this time.”
Cassandra nodded. “I’m relieved to know that.”
“Even going to have a few malls,” she said. “I was checking the phone listings—I found at least three malls—one downtown and two out close to the suburbs, where I’ll be living. Where are you living?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh—I’m sorry. You’ll be living in the governor’s mansion. That’s so obvious.” The stranger’s face turned red, starting at her ears and spreading outward, painting her cheeks and then her neck. Even her nose began to glow.
Cassandra chose not to comment.
* * *
“What was that all about?” she asked once they were safely back in the car.
“It was a welcoming party,” Ovid commented. “I know, it seemed pretty low key and pretty stupid—I hope you weren’t too bored.”
“I met several people.”
“Good, that was the point. These are the people I’ll be working with—and spending most of my time with.”
“You’ll be spending all your time with boobs?” she asked.
“What?”
She scanned her mind, trying to find the name. The woman had finally told her, then turned red again, when she realized how long she’d gone jabbering without properly introducing herself. So many names, so many faces. She’d thought the New Earth was empty. It was already overrun with bureaucrats.
“Veronica,” she said.
Ovid shook his head.
“Her husband’s in charge of the department of Energy...”
“Oh—Jerry’s wife.” He paused. “I won’t be spending time with the wives—that’ll be your duty.” He shook his head. “You know that the women can’t be in charge of anything. You have the home to take care of. That’s enough, don’t you think? The Bible’s so clear—”
Cassandra held up her hand before Ovid could start on one of his favorite topics. Not that she didn’t agree—but having heard it a hundred times, it was no longer especially interesting. It was a wonder he didn’t get bored telling it over and over so often.
“I thought she might be a secretary or something.”
Ovid shrugged. “I wouldn’t know about that.” He paused. “I’m only the Governor. I don’t know what’s going on, not like all these other people. Some of them have been here a long time—even before the first buildings went up. They’ve seen it all.”
“How could they build a city in only six months?” asked Cassandra, suddenly cognizant of the reality. They were speeding along a six lane elevated highway. Countless buildings, mostly houses, were speeding past them. No advertising billboards littered the roadway—everything was pristine and clean.
“Brother Sisyphus gave me a copy of the final list of Christians,” he said, ignoring her question and tapping the briefcase that held his notebook computer. “There are just a little past fifty thousand. So that’s how big New Jerusalem is. There are fifty thousand houses—that’s actually a few more than we need, what with so many of those fifty thousand being children...”
“Yes, yes, I can see all that...but how—”
“Replicators,” said Ovid finally. “We were able to build a whole infrastructure using replicators. It’s the latest technology. Came online only a month before we made the decision to move to New Earth. It’s what sealed the deal for us and convinced us that we could do it.”
“Replicator?” The word was meaningless to her.
“I don’t really understand it myself. Has something to do with Einstein’s equation E equals MC squared.”
“I thought that’s what caused the atom bomb.” She shook her head fearfully. “I don’t trust anything a stupid scientist would come up with—”
“Just because evil men discover something—even under the Antichrist—doesn’t mean we can’t use it for our own ends.”
She nodded, not entirely convinced. “So this replicator, that’s what made it possible to build all this stuff so fast?”
He nodded. “Yeah—it means we don’t have to suffer and do without any more. You just take a replicator and you tell it what you want.”
“How do you tell a machine what you want?”
“You talk to it, same as you talk to me. It can understand words.” He looked irritated. “In any case, you just tell it what you want, and it takes energy and turns it into your request.”
“That sound’s demonic.”
“It does seem like it, doesn’t it?” He shrugged. “We did an exorcism and it still worked, so demons don’t have anything to do with it. Anyhow, replicators come in lots of sizes, so you can have big ones make buildings and houses and roads, and then you got smaller ones to make household items like tables and lamps and stuff. It’s neat. I saw one make a house once. You just say, ‘Make me a house, design so and so.’” He snapped his fingers. “You see a little glow in the air, and then there it is, a whole house, just as solid and real as you please, exactly to the specifications you requested. You can put up a good ten houses an hour just by yourself with one of those machines—you’ve just got to keep moving it around to empty spots so you got room. Of course, we couldn’t do it haphazard—had to have a master plan. And then of course, there’s all the electric hook ups to make and the plumbing to connect...so that’s why it took even the six months it’s taken. That’s what those guys working on those buildings you saw were doing—putting in the electricity and telephones and stuff.”
She nodded, mildly amazed.
* * *
Cassandra awoke late the next morning; she was alone in her bed; the white linen sheets lay scattered about her, as if a tornado had passed by. Sitting up, she looked around the room. Plush carpeting on the floor matched carefully the color of walls and ceiling, while the understated furniture was, nevertheless, clearly of high quality. But could she expect less? The wife of the governor—surely the governor’s mansion would be a nice place to live.
Why should they have to suffer till Jesus came?
Clambering out of the bed, she prepared herself in an oversized bathroom with a Jacuzzi tub. She had yet to see a cent, in the month since they’d moved in, but they lived like they had money to burn.
Ovid was already safely at work, doing whatever it was that the governor of a whole planet had to do. Her day was one of leisure, given over to puttering around the house like the good wife that she was. Ovid would be home by six, by which time she had to have supper ready for him. Between now and then, she’d also have to thoroughly dust and vacuum the house, and make sure that everything had been put in its place.
Combined, those few duties would take her no more than an hour; the rest of the day was hers, to do what she needed to grow closer to God, to become that much more perfect of a wife.
She’d found a study guide, Becoming a Holy Wife, which she’d encouraged a few of the other women to start reading. Now, every Friday morning, they got together to discuss it, learning how to the things that would make her husband proud. There was a handy checklist at the back of the book.
Examining the food in the refrigerator as she contemplated breakfast, she asked herself the three questions: was this honorable? Was it likely to offend another Christian? Would it lead her away from God?
When she had decided, after long soul searching, that the eggs and bacon were sanctified, she prepared and ate them. She left the coffee in the can, afraid that perhaps it might be a little offensive to some people. Wasn’t caffeine a drug? And weren’t drugs, by definition, evil? Therefore, if she was truly to remain righteous, she’d have to cut back on her coffee drinking—maybe leave off drinking it all together.
What, really, was the difference between drinking coffee and having a beer? Weren’t both putting an unnatural substance that could affect behavior into her body? Weren’t both habit forming? Weren’t both probably harmful to her body?
Cassandra decided never to drink coffee again. She grabbed the can from the shelf and dumped it into the recycle, where it vanished in a puff of incandescence. That was the last time she’d order coffee from the replicator; really, she’d have to talk to Ovid about whether it was such a good idea to even allow it on New Earth. Any unrighteousness in their lives was certain to prolong the reign of Antichrist back on Earth. They had to do their part to get Jesus to come back soon.
She finished getting ready and then took off for Nancy’s house. That’s where they met to discuss the book.
* * *
“My husband’s been busy making a list of things that need to be banned,” said Veronica. She pinched the top of her nose and made an odd sniffing sound. If she was to be believed, she was actually past seventy years old, though she didn’t look a day over twenty. Of course, no one ever did. Agelessness was part of the Antichrist’s evil—or perhaps part of God’s mercy to this generation. It was so hard to be sure which, and the debate still raged. No one, no matter what their thoughts on the matter, had yet decided that holiness required enforced suicide at, say, ninety or some such thing. Not that suicide would even work. Death had, from what Cassandra had been able to determine from her own life the last twenty years, become absolutely impossible.
For herself, therefore, she preferred to interpret deathlessness as part of God’s mercy—the rain on the just and the unjust. It was a gift to his true church, allowing them to survive until he would finally arrive to rescue them. But it had also slopped onto the rest of unwashed humanity. Hardly seemed fair, but you couldn’t argue with what God did.
“I hadn’t even thought about coffee, you know,” Nancy added. “But you’re right. It’s just a drug we use to stimulate ourselves, and as such, it has no place in our lives, any more than alcohol does.”
Cassandra nodded, smiling happily at her well-received contribution.
Veronica continued: “We make so many compromises in life—there are so many things we just take for granted, that we use without even thinking about. You wouldn’t believe all the things that we’ve allowed into our lives that need to be gotten out of them. Take mouthwash.”
“Mouthwash?” Cassandra felt surprise.
“It’s fifty percent alcohol; yet we put it in our mouths.”
“But we spit it out.”
