After fourteen hours of manually transporting stacks of Bibles from the conveyor belt to the shipping depot, John Warner followed the crowd of fatigued workers to the auditorium. John didn’t want to go to the auditorium. He wanted to make love to Daisy Sapphire, and then fall asleep to the rhythmic sound of waves crashing on a warm, sunny beach. But the ubiquitous Christian Policemen wielding semi-automatic rifles compelled him to confine his desires to the realm of phantasy.
When everyone was seated in the auditorium, Bradley Manning, Chief Executive Officer of Word of God, Inc., spoke into a microphone:
“Today, as you all know, marks the tenth year of President Baker’s service to the United States of America. And we would like all of you to share in the celebration of his decade of service. We have a special treat in store for you, brothers and sisters. In a few minutes, President Baker will address the nation in a live television broadcast—and we are all going to watch it.”
A murmur rippled through the audience. As workers in an industrial commune, they rarely had the opportunity to watch television. The last time most of them had watched television was about a year ago—in the same auditorium—when the last of the fugitive clones were executed. As President Billy Baker’s first official Act of God in 2057, he outlawed cloning and demanded that all clones be arrested and executed because they were “soulless creatures brought into this world by the sin of science, not by the grace of God.”
After the murmur abated to awe-inspired silence, Chief Manning pushed a couple of remote-control buttons that dimmed the lights and lowered a gigantic television screen. The television did not impress Manning. As C.E.O. of a major publishing company, he had his own television in a deluxe apartment near the industrial commune. He found television to be rather boring since President Baker’s Communication Regulation Act of 2058, though he would never say so out-loud. Manning secretly preferred television programming of the old days; back then, he could zip through hundreds of unique channels instead of choosing between seven government owned and operated networks. His favorite channel in pre-Baker times had been the Jerry Springer Network.
Manning stopped reminiscing about the good ol’ days when a ten-foot-tall image of President Baker’s face appeared on the screen. Baker’s hair was as white and straight as the teeth which comprised his divine smile. He wore a navy blue suit and a tie of the same color. Behind him hung the new American flag. Fifty-four white stars formed a crucifix in the center of a blue rectangle that bisected thirteen red and white stripes.
“Good evening, brothers and sisters,” said Billy Baker with the same tone he had used in his early days as a televangelist.
“Ten years ago, in those bleak times of the past, the Lord chose me to deliver this great country from darkness. He chose me to cleanse this nation of sin by ousting Satan’s minion, Ann Dallas.”
Ann Dallas had been President of the United States of America before Baker. As a member of the Transhumanist party, she won the election of 2052 with the campaign slogan “No more death! No more taxes!” She proposed a mechanized, cybernetic economy of ideas in which every citizen would be a shareholder in a tax-free government. She encouraged space colonization and longevity research with government grants and prizes. During her administration, scientists discovered another vaccine for AIDS and two different cures for cancer, engineered a domed community on Mars, and developed nanotechnology capable of reviving the cryonically preserved.
On March 2, 2053, nearly every American tuned their television screen or computer monitor to the first attempted cryonic revival. An ebullient President Dallas stood beside the doctors as they jump-started a heart that had been in suspended animation for 55 years. Unfortunately, the nanotechnology did not work as well as it had in the chimpanzee trials. The patient, Mark Andrews (1939-1998; 2053-2053), came to life briefly, only to flail around on his bed and say, “Can’t see! Where’s Lolita? Eee! The goddam pins and needles! Oh shit.”
Then he died—again.
Mark Andrews’ second death sent a shock wave of fear through the mind of every citizen. President Dallas tried to explain that failure was part of the scientific method and that the nanotechnicians had discovered the source of error (something about T-cells in the immune system) and would rectify the problem soon. But most people refused to listen to her. Already skeptical of Dallas’s radical ideas, many Americans turned against her. To make matters worse, financial nightmares became realities in the recession of 2053. Everybody blamed Ann Dallas for the economic disaster, though it the improvidence of American consumers and the policies of her predecessors were at fault; their Trade Wars with China had come back to haunt the United States now that China controlled the global economy. Most Americans were low on cash, confused, and scared. And Reverend Billy Baker took advantage of their vulnerable mentality.
As the world’s most famous televangelist, Baker began his verbal assault on President Dallas soon after Mark Andrews’ second death. Baker already had the support of all religious groups because of Dallas’s well-known atheistic statements such as “Religion does nothing for man that man cannot do better for himself.”
Baker brutally attacked Dallas’s atheism and her support of science. He blamed either science or Ann Dallas for everything wrong with the world. “Science is Satan’s playground,” he often said. He tantalized famous scientists with obscene amounts of money and bribed them to claim that “science is moving recklessly towards Doomsday” and to condemn scientists who “insist on playing God.” He referred to President Dallas as “Satan’s minion” and accused her of mocking the Omnipotence of the Lord. He called for a return to “Christian values” and the establishment of the United States as One Nation Under God. He claimed that a “solid Christian work ethic” was the only answer to the economic problems. In a time of political disorientation and discontent, he founded the Fundamentalist party and ran against Dallas for President of the United States of America in the election of 2056. And he won--in an election with the lowest voter turnout of the century.
Ann Dallas disappeared shortly thereafter.
After outlawing cloning and ordering the execution of all clones, Billy Baker outlawed cryonic preservation, too, claiming that it stripped God’s children of their souls. President Baker banned any type of non-government scientific research. He shut down all private universities. He required all children to attend government schools beginning at age three. They learned English, math, etiquette, and an edited versions of science history. No evolutionary theory. No psychology. No philosophy. And no literature besides the Bible and other Christian texts. After the eighth grade, students who excelled in math and science went to work for the government. Most other students joined industrial communes to make money. Without money, people incurred debts. If people could not pay their debts, Christian Policemen arrested them and sent them to prison, where the guards forced them to work sixteen hours a day and sexually violated them during the remaining eight hours. Students who neither worked for the government nor joined a commune either committed suicide, fled to another country, or hid in abandoned areas. But it was exceptionally difficult to escape and even more difficult to hide from the Christian Police Force.
President Baker complained that “sinners and foreign heathens are taking away all our jobs.” He deported all non-Christians, all known homosexuals and bisexuals, and anyone who could not pass a simple test covering Christianity and the English language—with some $pecial exceptions, of course. Christian Policemen patrolled all borders and airports. Nobody could enter or leave the United States without government permission. The few who escaped did so by hiding in industrial ships or airplanes. They could seek refuge in neither Canada nor Mexico; both countries complied with U.S. requests because they depended on its economy and feared its military.
The military experienced a drastic restructuring under Baker. He established the Agency for Investigation of Victimless Crimes and reestablished the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which had been abolished in 2035, and made it part of the Christian Police Force, which also consisted of all former military branches plus local and state police departments. All officers of the Christian Police Force carried semi-automatic rifles and wore a small version of the New American flag on the right sleeve of their navy blue uniforms.
Baker invented wars against “heathen countries” so that he could reinstate the draft and increase weapons production. The U.S. military grew larger than it had ever been. The only legal scientific experimentation occurred within the dark shadows of the Military Research Agency. They developed new forms of mind control, natural disaster generation, and nuclear, chemical, sonic, electromagnetic, and biological weapons.
On April 23, 2058, President Billy Baker proclaimed and put into effect Executive Order Number 11490, declaring a state of National Emergency because of multiple tsunamis along the Eastern seaboard and the threat of nuclear war with North Egypt. This put the United States under total martial law; Baker had set up a military dictatorship overnight. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which had been operating behind a black curtain since 1979, employed the massive Christian Police Force to take over the United States.
Baker rapidly activated a string of consecutive Executive Orders that allowed the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports; to seize and control the communication media; to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels, and minerals; to mobilize civilians into work brigades (communes) under government supervision; to take over all health, education, and welfare functions; to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft; to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations; to take over railroads, inland waterways, and public storage facilities; and to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit, and the flow of money in any U.S. financial institution.
Executive Order 11647 provided the regional mechanisms and manpower to carry out the provisions of E.O. 11490. Signed by Richard Noxin on February 10, 1972, E.O. 11647 set up Ten Federal Regional Councils to govern Ten Federal Regions made up of all of the 54 States of the Union.
Baker also acted on the recommendations of Lt. Col. Olive R. North’s 1984 REX 84 plan by suspending the Constitution, appointing military commanders to run state and local governments, and transferring over 40 million Hispanic and African Americans to "assembly centers and relocations camps to prevent rioting."
Within four years of Baker’s stay in office, the U.S. economy was as strong as it had been since the late twentieth century. The industrial communes, in which workers toiled for fourteen hours a day, produced mass quantities of goods with cheap labor. International companies gave all their manual work to the United States. No American citizen went without food or shelter, and unemployment was nonexistent. All free citizens worked for the government or an industrial commune; everybody else was in prison--at least that's what the official census reported. President Baker had carried out what some called an “economic miracle.” Christianity Today, the national daily newspaper, quoted him as saying, “Anything’s possible when you’re on God’s side.”
Back in the Word of God, Inc., auditorium on January 3, 2067, John Warner dreamed of Daisy Sapphire and tried to ignore President Baker’s televised speech. Baker’s speech lasted nearly an hour. He cursed selfishness and pride, and praised selflessness and altruism—especially if that altruism benefited the Nation. He urged everybody to “love all your Christian brothers and sisters equally and unconditionally, but beware of those with sympathies for the evil enemies of Jesus.” Any man, woman, or child suspected of anti-Christian or anti-government inclinations was sent to prison. Baker moved on to discuss the war against Bolivia, claiming that this South American country had produced sinful mind-altering substances long enough. He justified the violence and the death—in fact, he justified all of his actions—by explaining that they were “In the Name of God.”
Baker claimed that he was closer to God than anybody on Earth. He even accused Pope Mary Jane of idolatry, blasphemy, and hedonism because of her humanistic, lighthearted view of life. After she gave birth to her second child out of wedlock, President Baker made an internationally televised speech titled “The Best Little Whore House in Italy.”
Baker proved his intimacy with God by predicting the Great Tsunamis of 2058. On the eve of the disaster, he appeared on every radio station and television channel (he had outlawed personal computers a few months earlier) to warn the people of the United States: “God came to me in my sleep last night, and He told me that He put me in office for a reason. He chose me to lead the American people into the Light of Salvation. But . . .”—Baker wiped away a single tear and smeared his mascara—“He also told me about His sadness and anger—His anger toward all the sinners in this world. He told me that sometime tomorrow a great tsunami will strike the coastal lands of the East to wash away our sins.”
As Baker predicted, a train of tsunamis crushed everything on the East coast from Washington D.C. to Miami. Philadelphia, Baker’s home and the nation’s new capital, was spared. Orlando received the most damage; waves there reached a height of almost 50 feet. Thousands of people were killed; some ignored Baker, others did not want to leave, and a few had not heard about Baker’s warning. Most people, however, safely escaped before the tsunamis arrived. As a result, millions of people felt that they owed their lives to President Baker and his personal connection with God.
Baker continued his Tenth Anniversary televised speech with lengthy interpretations two of his favorite Bible verses:
If any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
Then he concluded his speech by praising the United States of America and saying, “And so, it gives me great pleasure to say that now, after ten years of hard work and prayer, we are truly One Nation Under God. Amen.”
That night, in Slumber Room # 3 of the Word of God Commune, a nurse pushed a rolling tray to each of the 52 cots, distributing a red, crucifix-shaped pill to each of the 52 workers. She said they were vitamins. The pills did indeed taste like kiddy vitamins, but everybody knew they contained more than essential nutrients because the workers fell into a deep sleep soon after ingesting one of the little red crosses. John guessed that the pills contained mind-control chemicals. To test his hypothesis, he had stopped taking the pills a couple of months ago. He suffered through a brief period of withdrawal, but then a halo of nebulosity lifted from his mind. He had been thinking—and planning—clearly ever since.
When the nurse arrived at John’s cot, he took the pill in his right hand and deftly concealed it between his middle and ring fingers. He feigned the act of popping the pill into his mouth, then grabbed the small cup of water with the same hand. He took a sip of water and swallowed dramatically. Then he opened wide to allow the nurse’s gloved fingers to sweep the crevices of his mouth. The nurse moved on, assured that John had swallowed his pill.
The nurse soon completed her duties and turned out the light as she left Slumber Room # 3. John lay on his lumpy mattress, pretended to sleep, and waited. Finally he heard a fellow worker rise from his cot; it was Marcus Gordon, the only African American stationed in Slumber Room # 3. Marcus had avoided a trip to a relocation camp because his mother was white.
Marcus exited Slumber Room # 3 and stopped at the security desk outside the door. John looked toward the security desk, moving only his eyes; he could see silhouettes of Marcus and the Christian Policeman on duty. He could also hear their conversation, barely:
“Shouldn’t you be asleep, boy?”
“Yes, sir. But my stomach woke me up. I’ve really gotta go.”
“It’s that damn synthetic chicken from the cafeteria," said the Christian Policeman. "Tears up my stomach every time, too.”
The Christian Policeman paused and sipped his coffee, remembering that it was against the rules to have mundane conversations with the workers. “All right," said the C.P. "You can go. Just make it quick.”
As Marcus scurried off to Hygiene Room # 2, John heard what sounded like a loquacious duck with a sore throat. The harsh quacking noise emanated from the far corner of Slumber Room # 3, where a man flopped around on the floor like an insane trout out of water—writhing, screaming, drooling, and quacking his way through a convincing seizure. When the lights came on a few seconds later, both the nurse and the Christian Policeman hurried to the far corner of Slumber Room # 3.
So far, so good, thought John. Everything as planned.
He reached into a slit in his mattress and pulled out a handful of little red crosses. His right hand pulverized the pills into a powder while his left hand returned to the slit in the mattress. This time he withdrew a blanket and two flattened pillows. It had been hell sleeping on that lumpy mattress.
I hope it was worth it., he thought.
The nurse looked around to make sure all the workers were asleep. John laid still until she turned back to the paroxysm. Then he silently fluffed the pillows and placed them, along with the extra blanket, under the sheets, and molded the lumps into a human form. Suddenly he felt like an eight-year-old kid sneaking out for a midnight adventure with his best friend. But he knew that this escape attempt was not a game. It was a matter of life and death.
After making sure the C.P. and nurse were still occupied with their spastic patient, John Warner slipped under his bed, grabbed his boots, and belly-crawled under a line of ten more beds—all the way to the exit. He tiptoed out the door of Slumber Room # 3 with his boots over his shoulder and a faint smile on his face as he dropped a handful of red powder into the coffee mug on the C.P.’s security desk.
John hurried into Hygiene Room # 2. He saw a familiar pair of boots in one of the stalls.
“Marcus,” whispered John.
The stall door opened to reveal a slender black man who appeared to be about twenty-years-old, despite the patches of gray in his hair. John stepped into the stall and closed the door.
“Man, I can’t believe you’re doin this,” said Marcus.
“Don’t worry,” said John, “you’ll get outta here someday. We all will.”
“Yeah, well, I jes hope we don’t get killed for it.”
John smiled at Marcus and placed his hand on Marcus’s shoulder. Marcus reciprocated the farewell gesture by slightly nodding his head and slowly blinking his large, intelligent eyes. Then he said, “Don’t forget to tell my uncle that I’m all right, if you talk to him. I hope you find him. If anybody can get us all out of here alive, it’s him. You remember the password, don’t you?”
John nodded his head.
“All right then,” said Marcus. “Let’s do it.”
Marcus lifted the ceramic top off the toilet. John looked inside and found a rusty screwdriver taped to the inside wall with duct tape. As Marcus replaced the lid, John climbed atop the seat and began the task of removing the ventilation grating high upon the wall.
Back in Slumber Room # 3, the nurse and Christian Policeman took care of the epileptic worker by strapping him to a gurney and taping his mouth shut. After injecting him with a strong sedative, the nurse rolled him off to Infirmary # 1.
The C.P. switched off the lights and returned to his security desk. He drank the rest of his coffee before remembering that the black boy had not returned from Hygiene Room # 2.
John had one more screw to remove from the grating when he heard footsteps approaching. He remained standing on top of the commode and quickly crouched, as Marcus sat down on the toilet and began to grunt arduously.
“Hey, boy!” yelled the guard as he entered Hygiene Room # 2. “What’s taking so long?”
Marcus spoke between grunts: “Like you said sir, it’s that damn synthetic chicken.”
The guard’s chuckle ended abruptly. Silence prevailed as John struggled to maintain his balance. Marcus began to sweat as he imagined the semi-automatic rifle a few feet away. The C.P. did not move. At last he spoke: “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull on me, boy, but I know that any man who suffers from synthetic chicken diarrhea relieves himself with his pants down.”
Both Marcus and John glanced down at Marcus’s fully clothed legs, then up at the stall door as it flew open from the impact of the C.P.’s boot. The C.P., a brawny fellow with a red beard, stood there with his rifle pointed at them, smiling.
“Well, what do we have here?” said the C.P. “A little faggot party?”
Suddenly the ventilation grating fell from the wall and swung back and forth on its single remaining screw, like some sort of ominous pendulum. John and Marcus expected to be riddled with bullets any second now, but when they looked back at the C.P., his eyes were half closed and he swayed on his feet. With a slurred voice he said, “You faggots . . . oh . . . my.” And then he fell backwards and crashed onto the stained, malodorous floor of Hygiene Room # 2.
Marcus laughed; he couldn’t suppress it. John jumped down from the commode and began to undress the C.P. He tossed the screwdriver to Marcus and nodded toward the iron grating.
"Are you sure you don't want to come?" asked John.
"I'm sure," said Marcus." "There's only one uniform, and you've got a better chance than I do. I don't even want to think about what the C.P.s would do if they saw a black guy wandering the streets in one of their uniforms."
A few seconds later, John climbed through the ventilation aperture wearing the C.P. uniform and carrying the semi-automatic rifle. After John departed, Marcus replaced the ventilation grating, hid the screwdriver inside the commode, and returned to bed.
At noon the next day, a C.P. would be executed after waking up naked in Hygiene Room # 2 of the Word of God Commune without the ability to recall how a worker had escaped with his uniform and rifle. The last thing the C.P. remembered was sitting at the security desk, drinking his coffee.