In between worlds, there is a bar.
In the bar, at the moment, there is a woman sitting at a table. She's scribbling in a notebook. Extant phrases include "abortion=surrogacy?" and "add sterile mosquitos to malarial areas"
In between worlds, there is a bar.
In the bar, at the moment, there is a woman sitting at a table. She's scribbling in a notebook. Extant phrases include "abortion=surrogacy?" and "add sterile mosquitos to malarial areas"
Christina will read the following information:
At least a dozen millennialist cults have formed, with levels of extremism ranging from "sit in a room talking about how Christina wants us to vote for liberal political parties" to "about a week away from murder-suicide."
Crowds have started thronging various churches in Canada, Cascadia, Australia, and Europe.
China is censoring all information about the Second Coming. Chinese diplomats have stated that they believe Christina to be a fake by Gilead.
Various non-Gileadite Protestant churches have taken credit for Christina (evangelicals), declared Christina to be the Antichrist (weird fundamentalists), or stayed awkwardly silent (mainline denominations).
The Pope has not made any official statement about what Catholics should believe about Christina. Catholic commentators generally seem to agree that she's the Virgin Mary, with strong minorities advocating for various saints. A handful of Catholics think she's the Antichrist.
The Gilead government has announced that she agrees with Gilead completely in every particular, which is why she started healing people in their country. Church attendance has spiked. The Eyes have done major arrests of homosexuals, heretics, and atheists in order to clean house for Christina.
Jews everywhere are really pissed off that Christianity is right.
The Lilite Satanist spokesenby says that it is too little, too late, but that they support God going through an appropriate redemption process.
The Gileadite Google News does not really understand that religions other than Christianity, Judaism, and Satanism exist or that people might be interested in their responses to what's going on.
Sigh.
"Not surprising. Thank you, I need to go resurrect a baby on television and explain some things."
"Like that evolution is real and homosexuality is not morally wrong and you shouldn't stay up twenty hours a day praying in your cult compound?"
"So many things! I'll probably have to resurrect a whole bunch of babies just to be time-efficient."
"It might be a good idea to have a press contact so that in the future people can call you and ask if you're a space alien."
"That's probably a good idea," she agrees. She closes her eyes and hums and checks, thinking strategically--press people with dead babies? Eyes with dead babies? Commanders with dead babies? High-ranking Chinese people with dead babies?
She boosts her processing a few times--she can afford to do that, what with all this new attention--and skims candidates' histories for signs that they would be liable to accept baby-related bribery and/or go along with her without that.
One Commander she might be interested in is Fred Waterford, a thoroughgoing hypocrite. He runs housing and urban development more-or-less incompetently, has a secret safe full of illegal science fiction, and had one dead baby and three miscarriages. His wife is significantly smarter and harder-working than he is and the only reason he has any political power whatsoever. She submits to him with the intensity of a frustrated CEO forced to spend all her time folding laundry and organizing the church bake sale. He cheats on her with a desultory fashion but really wishes she would be able to write again.
Commander Waterford looks promising. She likes his taste in science fiction.
Is he alone right now?
Fred recovers. "Uh, I mean-- I'm reading it for research purposes! Really! Got to know what those Satanists are up to!"
"Why is everyone's first impulse 'lie to God?' At least the other guy was actually doing something objectionable. I wasn't being sarcastic, I decided it would be convenient to have a Commander publicly on my team and picked you because you have a dead baby I can resurrect on television and you have good taste in books."
"Yeah, suddenly showing up has that effect on people. Anyway, the Gileadite government is in fact wrong about a whole lot of stuff. Sooooo much stuff. I'm going to go on TV and resurrect a bunch of babies and explain stuff the Gileadite government is wrong about, and I can protect you from the Eyes afterwards. Also, you should stop cheating on your wife, the books are fine but adultery is in fact bad."
"If you're planning on eradicating adultery among the Gilead elite it is going to take a while."
"Not especially, but you seem like a mostly okay dude. And also I'm about to declare a lot of supposedly sexually immoral things fine, so it seemed worth clarifying that having sex with someone not your spouse without said spouse's knowledge or consent was still not fine."
"First, is Keturah okay? Last I saw of her I was arranging her marriage to a Satanist Canadian spy to avoid having to forcibly impregnate her against her will, but we've fallen out of touch."
"Iiiiiii will have to check up on that, I am not omniscient qua omniscient while in human flesh and also I prefer to not invade people's privacy for the heck of it."