"Ah, the first one, yes, definitely, but--I don't think you can go to Hell and put the fire out. And, and you're not supposed to, the Bible says that everyone deserves to go to Hell and we can only avoid it by accepting God's mercy. So it would be morally wrong." He doesn't know what he's doing and he's going to lead them all into heresy aaaaaaaaaaa

"It would be morally wrong to put the fire out."

"Well, Cathy, I have to say, if my grandma's on fire, I'm going to put that fire out!"

"And I certainly don't blame you for that, Jim. But it sounds like it's going to be a real challenge getting to Hell in the first place. Do you know where it is, young man?"

Fuck fuck fuck why didn't these people get an actual prophet or at least someone who knows what they're doing "Some people think Hell is in the center of the Earth but nobody has actually dug down that far to check. And I don't know if if that's true do your dead go to the center of this Earth or the other Earth. But either way it's definitely blasphemy and you shouldn't do it!"

"Why not?"

"Because it's God's right to determine people's eternal fates and not our right." He's just parroting the answers to the questions he asked when he was four and has never actually managed to believe, but everyone else believes it and maybe he can convince these people of true things without having to believe them himself.

(Or maybe that's the test, maybe that's why him, maybe he has to start meaning it in order to convince anyone and if he doesn't let go of his pride and mistrust this whole planet will be damned. He looks into his heart again, but all he finds is hatred and he can't tell if it's for God or himself.)

"So it's God's right to determine peoples' eternal fates and not our right," Jim says. "And...God lit my grandma on fire?"

      "You know what, Jim," Cathy says, "I think we should amend whatever document says God has that right, and say instead that no one has the right to light people on fire."

"I can't say I disagree with you, Cathy."

Someone at ZLC has been watching TV. They've alerted everyone and Griffith agreed to be the one to call the TV station since he did do a commercial recently.

The TV station gets a phone call. "Hi, I think it may be one of the most urgent things ever for me to talk to the person from the other world!"

"- hey - sorry, we have high call volume - do you still think that knowing that a couple thousand other people have called?"

"Yes, probably. I work for a company that makes people maybe sort of not die including if their heart stopped over an hour ago."

" - wow, didn't know that was a thing. Okay, yeah, I'll put you on as soon as we get a good opening in the conversation here."

Griffith waits on the line. On their other phone line, someone's already started explaining their situation to the government to request emergency funding and additional staff and supplies, it seems worthwhile to do this in parallel if that'll get this resolved faster.

"You can't just amend the--" Bruce splutters for a bit and collects what of himself is available. "You know what, I should back up and explain it again differently. Suppose someone committed a crime, and the judge said, 'You're guilty and you deserve to go to prison, but I'm going to let you go because I'm nice'. You wouldn't start complaining that he should let everyone else out of prison, right? You'd just say thank you and go."

"Well, I wouldn't think he should let everybody out of prison! Some people are serial killers. What does this have to do with God?"

"It's a metaphor. Everyone deserves to go to Hell but if you accept God's gift of salvation you can avoid it."

"Well, it still seems like it'd really be helpful if Hell weren't on fire! I wouldn't be nearly as upset about this Hell thing if Hell were just, you know, a bit of a fixer-upper. Where there wasn't a fire."

"We have some viewers calling in with questions for this young man," says Cathy. "Here's our first caller."

"How dead do you have to be to go to Hell? Is it when your heart stops and can't be restarted or when the information in your brain gets lost or something else?"

"Uh. I'm not a doctor but I know there are people with artificial hearts, or transplanted hearts from dead people, who are walking around fine? I mean the people who have the transplanted hearts are walking around, not the dead people."

"My company fills people's bodies with antifreeze and then stores their heads in liquid nitrogen because we hope maybe in the future we can make the information in their brains do alive-people things again. We think the brain information stays a little bit after their bodies stop working. Will preserving the brains of everyone whose bodies stopped working really really recently make them not go to Hell?"

"I don't know" but I would absolutely try it, possibly right now "and if it did work it would probably be blasphemous."

"Alright! If there's a chance we'll get started right away and see about getting emergency government funding about it. If you have more information, please tell us or any other cryonics company as soon as possible, and maybe also please explain blasphemy unless you have something more important to explain first?"

"Uh, blasphemy is when you--insult God, or deny His authority, or try to escape His judgment or tell Him what to do, anything like that. It's a sin."

"And what is a sin, exactly?"

"Something that's bad, something God said not to do." He sounds like a first grader taking a theology exam but that's about how good he is at theology, is good enough to memorize every string of words that's going to be on an exam.

" - well, I'm just having a hard time understanding why God wouldn't want us to put out the fire in Hell. Are we allowed to put out other fires?"

"What? Yes, putting out other fires is fine. The fire in Hell is a punishment for sinning."