"He was the first man who asked and if I turned him down I was concerned I wouldn't get another."

"...Huh. I'm sorry if this is intrusive, but...why?"

"Because I'm ugly and lazy and a bad cook and same-sex-attracted and barely fertile and I cry a lot and have a history of self-harm and suicide attempts."

It sounds like a well-rehearsed list.

"You're not ugly," she asserts immediately. "I guess the other things might present a barrier to marriage. Do you actually value being married in and of itself?"

"I'm incapable of financially supporting myself, and women are supposed to get married."

"If it's just practical concerns, I can make sure those are taken care of."

"It's immoral to divorce except for sexual immorality, and he has never committed adultery."

"It's--look, sexual ethics change a lot with birth control. Divorcing him is fine."

"Do you... want me to divorce him?"

"I want you to do what's right for you. I don't...actually know more about the situation than that he shouts at you at night. It's your decision."

"I'll take some time to think about it."

"More than reasonable."

Everything is terrible! Christ has chosen her as her first disciple, and everything she ever knew about Him (Her?) was wrong, and none of the temptations she's good at resisting are sinful but all the temptations she's bad at resisting still are, and she's pretty sure God wants her to divorce her husband, and Rose is pretty sure that good disciples do not respond to miraculous healings by occasionally wishing that it had never happened so that the baby would be dead and thus incapable of crying. 

But it's okay. Everything is okay. She feels like she's LARPing and her sense of self is floating six inches above her head and she is fine.  

When Christina leaves she will methodically throw every one of her coffee cups against the wall in order to listen to them break but right now it's okay. She's fine. Fine. 

She sips from her cup of tea. It's cold because she abandoned it for two hours. 

"Have you looked at what people are writing about you?"

"Not very much. What are people writing about me?"

Rose grabs her laptop, opens Google News, searches for "The Second Coming," and shows it to Christina. 

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 is going to have to be more specific. There are a lot of 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?