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thou shalt not bear false witness
Jesusland Bruce on the honesty planet
Permalink Mark Unread

Bruce has run out of homework, all too soon as usual, and is now out of distractions, so he's sitting at his desk watching the rain run down the window and dreading Hell.

Knowing his fate is what he deserves doesn't make it any easier to cope with. It just makes him a fugitive from justice, another sin added to the pile. The biggest one of all, really. If he could accept God's goodness, could trust in Him, could actually believe deep down that God was good and ask His mercy with a contrite heart, it would all be forgiven. But when he looks inside himself for that love and that trust, it isn't there. He wishes he could just be erased from the universe, and this too is a sin, ingratitude for the gift of his life, and he wishes it anyway and he probably always will.

The rain gets louder, and the thunder follows faster on the lightning's heels, and yet faster, and when the fire brigade searches the wreckage of the house they find no sign of Bruce. His parents weep, but gently, for they shall surely see their son again in Heaven.

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There is a bright flash and a boom and a moment of pain, which is startling, and then it all stops, which is surprising. And how he's--on the street of a mostly ordinary-looking city? He climbs to his feet and stands on the sidewalk, confused.

Why this. There's no reason to miraculously teleport him. Being struck by lightning, yes, that was definitely going to happen sooner or later, but this doesn't look like Hell at all, or like Heaven either for that matter. He just stands there for a minute, staring into the middle distance.

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A parade of small children holding hands and led by two teachers approaches him on the sidewalk. Some cars drive by.

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He rocks back and forth indecisively and then walks up to one of the teachers. "Excuse me, I'm sorry to interrupt, but can you tell me where I am?"

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She - frowns at him, and then points at the street sign. "...yes? You're at Martin Luther King Jr and 4th."

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"I don't think Greenfield has a street named that. Am I still in Greenfield? I, ah," he can't just say he miraculously teleported, they might think he's especially holy or something, "am having a weird day."

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"You're in Atlanta. I feel bad about ending this confusing interaction without helping you but if I get distracted one of these kids is going to wander off. Bye!"

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"Thank you. Sorry. Goodbye." Why is he several states away. Is this going to be one of those stories where a sinner experiences Christian charity and finds true faith and then testifies about it a lot? Bruce is pretty sure things like that don't happen to people like him but that's what those people always claim to have thought before it happened to them. He starts wandering off in a random direction looking for a police station or a library or something so he can call his parents and figure out getting home when he doesn't have any money for a bus.

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There are billboards.

 

PLANET EARTH

8 HOURS OF HIGHLIGHTS OF 5000 HOURS OF FOOTAGE

60% of viewers agreed it was the best documentary they'd seen this year

43% of all viewers and 35% of viewers who called PLANET EARTH the best documentary they'd seen all year watched at least five documentaries.

 

 

T-MOBIL

If you happen to be in one of the limited areas where our coverage is reliable we're a lot cheaper than the big carriers



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That's a weirdly thorough description of a movie for a billboard! It sounds like a good movie. If he wasn't stranded in probably-Georgia with no money he might want to see it. It would be eight entire hours of distractions.

He hasn't heard of T-mobil but apparently it's so small it actually admits to being small so that's not surprising.

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If he wanders for a while there's a public library. It's big and brick. There are kids playing on the steps and enormous concrete pots with dead plants between the sidewalk and the street. 

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As he walks past the first couple streets something starts bothering him. He doesn't realize what it is, at first, but by the time he gets to the library he's figured it out: he hasn't passed a church yet. Maybe Atlanta has just a few really large churches? Or this part of town doesn't have any for some reason and everyone here goes to a different neighborhood every Sunday? But now that he thinks about it he also hasn't seen any houses with crosses on the doors, and if anyone was wearing a crucifix necklace he hasn't noticed. It's--odd.

He goes into the library, which is also strangely undecorated, and looks for an information desk.

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It has a bored college student with her feet up on the desk. "Hey," she says without looking up. "Bathrooms are on the right."

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"Actually I was hoping I could use your phone? I, uh, was in Greenfield, Iowa and spontaneously appeared here. By the grace of God," he adds, because he doesn't want to claim to be especially holy but even more doesn't want to give the impression that he thinks he can do that himself. "And I need to call my parents."

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"By the whatsawhosit? Yeah, you can borrow my phone, as long as you're planning to give it back and not look at my pictures or anything."

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Did he mumble? He must've mumbled. He's in a very mumblesome state of mind. 

"I will give it back and not look at your pictures or anything." He attempts to dial his house's landline.

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"What?" says an unfamiliar voice. "I was napping and if you're a scammer I'm going to disconnect this fucking phone."

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"What, no, this is Bruce. Who is this? I'm trying to reach 631 Luke Street."

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"This is Cynthia Harris. Never heard of Luke Street. Maybe you pressed a mistaken button."

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Wow, he is just inconveniencing everyone today even more than usual. "I'm sorry, I probably did." He hangs up and checks the call record very carefully to see what typo he made in his own phone number.

Nope, that sure is his number all right. . . . Did the lighting strike burn down his house instead of leaving everything except him miraculously untouched and they already reassigned the number? Why? His parents are good people, they don't deserve to have their house burned down God's justice is perfect as always. He hopes they're not hurt. Surely they won't be hurt if he's not.

(Bruce is staring at the borrowed phone with an expression of barely-restrained despair that looks very at home on his face.)

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"Kind of want my phone back but you look like you're about to cry so I don't want to be a jerk," the girl says. 

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"No, you're right, I--here you go. God bless you." Social scripts are a nice thing to have when saying anything more relevant will definitely result in crying.

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"Say what?"

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"You're right about how I should give you the phone back?"

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"No, I heard that part, I meant 'God bless you.' I've never heard that before. What're 'God' and 'bless'?"

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"You know . . . God? Omnipotent creator of the universe? Sent His Son to die for our sins?" They're definitely both speaking English right now because he doesn't speak anything else so what the fuck.

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Her mouth drops open. "I did not know that. ...how did you know that?"

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"I thought everyone on Earth knew it. My parents probably told me first but also my teachers, and all the history books, and if you really don't know about Christ then I have to tell you but I am a terrible person to do that so hopefully you're just messing with me to cheer me up or something." If this is an undiscovered country of heathens who haven't heard the gospel why do they have ENGLISH and PHONE NUMBERS.

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" - Wow. No, I absolutely didn't know that! An omnipotent being who created the world? - I don't know what you mean about ...messing ...with ...you?"

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"Never mind that second bit, the important thing is that you have to learn about God! I'll start with the short version and answer any questions but eventually we need to contact the rest of christendom and get some good missionaries here. Uh, if it's everyone here who doesn't know and not just you, somehow. God created the universe and is perfectly good and just and loves everyone and wants us all to live forever with him in Heaven, but humans are innately sinful and can't reach Heaven on our own. So God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to Earth to live as a human and then die and then get resurrected, as a sacrifice to cleanse humanity of sin, and if you accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour and love Him then you get to go to Heaven."

Usually at this point in the missionary stories the heathens are unconvinced and there's a bunch more explaining and some metaphors and then God sends a miracle and the heathens all fall to their knees in worship, but Bruce is the worst possible missionary so probably it will be more complicated than that.

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" - wow," she says. "Shit. That's so important - I can't believe we never knew - we need to get you on the news immediately so that everyone can know!"

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Oh wow apparently the Gospel is self-evident even in the mouth of a damned kid. This is probably the moment where he's supposed to feel true faith and love and get saved himself but that doesn't appear to be happening and he doesn't have time to worry about it because he might be able to save this ENTIRE CITY from Hell and that is the thing to focus on not fucking up here!

"Yes! Definitely! Where should I go to get on the news?" Every minute he waits is a minute that someone might die unsaved aaaaaaaaaa.

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"Let's just run over there right now!! Come with me!!"

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Yes! Running! Excellent plan! He has the cardio conditioning of a potted plant but he already had a head start on adrenaline so he can move pretty fast for a few blocks before he starts gasping.

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Well it's not that many more blocks after that. 


"It's an emergency!" the girl says to the receptionist. "This boy is from another world and there's an omnipotent creator and a place called Heaven and you only can go to Heaven if you know about it! We have to tell everyone right away!"

 

"Wow! That's you that's from another world?" the receptionist asks Bruce.

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"Yes, that's me! Except I'm not sure if I'm from another world or just another continent but God is Lord of all creation so it isn't important except for how many people I need to broadcast to!"

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"I'm pretty sure if in Africa they knew this someone would have mentioned it!!" says the receptionist, and races to the elevator. "Well, come on! We have to get this on the news!"

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They definitely know this in the Africa Bruce knows about but he has already used up all the air he sucked down during the brief period of not-running so he doesn't mention it. In the elevator he sucks down some more air and tries to make himself look presentable. 

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"We're live, Amy," someone hisses at the receptionist when she enters the studio. She ignores him and charges across the room to in front of the cameras. "We have important news. Probably the most important news you'll hear in your entire life. A man is here from another world and he has some information for us." Then she blushes and turns to the newscasters. "Uh...to you."

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Bruce walks out in view of the cameras, twitchy and saucer-eyed, and tries to figure out if he's allowed to start talking or if the newscasters are going to object or what.

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"Well?" says one of the newscasters. "You're from another world?"

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"Yes, I'm from the United States of America on the planet Earth. Both of our worlds were created by God, who is perfectly good and loves everyone. . . ." He gives the thirty-second explanation of salvation again. "Do you have any questions? Do you want me to lead you in the sinner's prayer so you can accept salvation right now?"

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"Wow, young man, I have so many questions I hardly know where to start! Do we go to Heaven as soon as we say this prayer of yours? Can we come back any time we want?"

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Wow that is a really reasonable question to have when you don't know anything except his terrible explanation! "No, people only go to Heaven when they die and can't come back unless they're miraculously resurrected. And killing yourself is evil. Ignoring safety precautions is okay but you might end up injured instead of in Heaven so if you're going to be reckless be careful about it. Also everyone should be very careful not to die until they're sure they're saved because if you die without being saved you go to Hell and--it's really bad, you're just on fire all the time forever." His voice, previously a high-speed treadmill of Very Important Good News, falters a bit.

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" - wait, what? Everyone who dies without being saved goes to Hell where they're on fire, all the time, forever?"

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"Yes. That's why I had to tell you so quickly. I'm sorry nobody got to you sooner--we thought we had found everyone--we didn't know to look for you . . ." all the emotions of the last hour or possibly the last fifteen years are trying to catch up with him but he needs to NOT have emotions, he needs to stay coherent until everyone watching this broadcast is saved and there's a plan to save everyone else and then he can go cry and hate himself for crying somewhere no-one but God is watching.

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" - so my grandma, who died last year, before we knew any of this, she's - in Hell and on fire constantly?"

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Why why why why don't ask why. "As far as I know yes. I--maybe this world is different but the Bible says everyone and that definitely meant everyone on the other Earth so probably everyone here too."

Some of the missionaries whose memoirs they read in school talked about this part; they all found consolation in God's love and the opportunity to save those currently living. Bruce feels like he's floating around the ceiling watching someone else talk.

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" - is there a way to check?"

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"There are apparitions, sometimes, and prophets get visions, of both Heaven and Hell, but any given person isn't especially likely to be in any given vision. People could try praying for one? I can explain how prayer works but I shouldn't be the one trying it, I'm--it's more likely to work if someone who's a really good person who loves God does it."

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The newscasters look at each other. 

"Well, some shocking takeaways here, Jim. I don't know about you, but I'm really upset and overwhelmed."

"Me too, Cathy, me too. I guess it sounds like there are two important priorities here: getting everyone saved, and then getting to Hell and putting the fire out. Does that seem right to you, young man?"

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"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

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"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?"

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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!"

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"Why not?"

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"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.)

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"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."

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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!"

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

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

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" - 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."

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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.

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"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."

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"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?"

 

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

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"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."

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"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?"

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"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."

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"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?"

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

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"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?"

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"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."

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"And what is a sin, exactly?"

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"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.

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" - 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?"

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

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"Well, if it turns out to be blasphemy we can always unfreeze people later. It's not like we expect to make people live forever, anyway, the universe can probably only support life for so long. Thank you for your time!"

Griffith hangs up and gets to work. It's a busy day.

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Is there a next question because if there isn't Bruce might just slump to the floor and put his head on his knees. Too late, now he has done that.

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There is a next question. This questioner wants to know who put God in charge.

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"God put Himself--" he's mumbling into his legs and people probably can't hear him. He picks his head up and stares at the floor. "God put Himself in charge when He created the universe."

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Right, well, are there term limits on that? Maybe there should be! Maybe someone else should have a turn being in charge!

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This is the part of the story where he's supposed to proclaim the glory of God in a voice like a trumpet and then the Earth will shake and everyone will fall on their faces with fear and trembling. Except, one, he can't actually proclaim anything in a voice like a trumpet, and two, he--doesn't want to. Which is possibly the most awful thing he has ever done, he's never wanted anyone else to be damned before, but now when he imagines it going like it does in the stories that feels wrong and bad. The TV studio lights are very bright and everything is very loud in a way that doesn't involve any specific actual sounds and if nobody is going to listen to him whatever he does maybe he can just put his head on his knees again and hope they forget he's there. (He's still in the middle of the studio in front of all the cameras.)

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" - young man," Jim says, "I can't speak for all our viewers. But I am personally very glad you told us about this. Yes, it sounds like the situation is complicated, and it might be necessary to make some changes. But now we know. You did a very brave thing, coming here to tell everyone this news."

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"I fucked it all up," he mutters into his knees with no particular attempt to be comprehensible.

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"Did you want to tell us the - prayer we need, to go to Heaven instead of Hell? It sounds like at this time, Hell is on fire so people might prefer to go to Heaven, especially while we aren't sure if head-freezing works."

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Ugh ugh ugh they're clearly not going to forget he exists and he needs to actually keep trying even though he's evil and doesn't want to. "Yes, but--so you need to actually repent of your sins, and accept Jesus as your Lord and not try to--write laws against Him and stuff. Or it won't work."

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" - well, I have to say, young man, I'm excited about this afterlife situation, but first and foremost, I'm an American, and we don't have Lords."

        "I don't think it's likely we'll write laws against Jesus," Cathy says. "Laws against lighting people on fire, yes. - in fact, there are already laws against lighting people on fire. We'd just be enforcing them."

"Cathy, I am being asked to cut to an emergency address by the President of the Fractious States. We'll be right back, folks."

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"My fellow Americans. I was having sex with my wife when we were interrupted by this news, but I'm trying to present the solemn and respectable face our nation needs right now. We have learned some crucially important things in the last ten minutes. We have learned that there is a God, who created the universe, and that there is a Heaven, where we go if we accept God's gift of salvation.

We also learned that there is a Hell in which everything is on fire, and that our dead loved ones, our less-loved ones, our revered founding fathers, and  - my analysts are telling me possibly a hundred billion people, all are possibly on fire. I don't know what to do about that, but I have a military. And if anything calls for a military, a hundred billion people being on fire seems like the kind of thing that calls for a military. 

I don't have the authority to declare war, only Congress can do that. However it might take them a while and I want to be seen to be addressing this emergency right now. For that reason, I am announcing a special military operation to put out the fire in Hell. It might get upgraded to a war once Congress acts. We spend a ton of money on our military. I know a lot of you think it's wasteful and some of it definitely is wasteful, but it's kind of nice how when a very confusing bad thing happens, we can declare a special military operation on it, and not worry about whether our planes really work and our tanks really shoot. Our tanks and our planes are genuinely really good at what they do. And we expect to be greeted as liberators in Hell - I know that usually people are wrong when they expect to be greeted as liberators, but usually the people they're liberating aren't on fire.

I want all Americans to react to this news in a sensible and restrained way, even though that's definitely not going to happen. I don't really know what a sensible and restrained response is, because all this happened ten minutes ago and there are still a lot more questions we need answered. But my ideal scenario here would be that everyone keeps watching TV, doesn't have a nervous breakdown, and does what we tell them to do as we figure out more - for example, about that freezing-people thing, which my chief of staff Dave thinks is promising. Also I hope you remember me as a paragon of reassuringness and masculinity and courage, and tell pollsters you approve of how I'm handling this crisis, which will not only stroke my ego but also make it easier for me to get Congress to do what I want. 

Thank you. And God, if you're listening, the Fractious States of America are open to diplomatic talks, which can proceed in parallel with the special military operation to put out the fire in Hell. I chose that phrasing to make it clear we're not backing off the firefighting thing because really, dude, what the fuck. Can you cut away now, that's all my prepared remarks."

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"Wow," says Cathy. "Well, Jim, events are developing fast."

    "They sure are, Cathy."

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"You're all gonna be damned and it's all my fault," Bruce mutters, which is about as useful as saying 'there's an avalanche here' while falling down a mountain alongside several thousand pounds of snow.

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"Can you say more about that, young man? We are all going to go to Hell and not to Heaven, because of the special military operation to put out the fire?"

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"You are all going to go to Hell when you die because instead of repenting of your sins you decided to rebel against God!"

(If Bruce had ever felt it before, or was in the habit of having emotions he didn't want to flinch away from, he might have been able to recognize that the thing he was currently feeling was admiration. Instead it mostly feels like dizziness.)

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" - huh. Well, I'd say that makes it all the more important to put out the fire, wouldn't you say, Cathy?"

       "I have to agree, Jim, if I'm going to go to Hell then it's less 'oh no, we should put out the fire because it's the right thing to do' and more 'we should put out the fire because I'm going to have to live there in that place that is currently on fire'."

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"God is omnipotent, if you try to put out the fire you will fail," Bruce groans. It's not a theologically sound argument, you're not supposed to only refrain from sinning because you know you won't get away with it, but maybe it will get them to pay attention long enough for him to try again. 

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- it does get them to pay attention. "God is omnipotent? Wow. That's - really surprising to me," says Jim. 

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Bruce has occasionally wondered why, if God is omnipotent, he hasn't been struck by lightning yet, but has always tried to stop wondering that as soon as he started for obvious reasons. Having apparently been struck by lightning doesn't actually make the question go away. It also has no effect on the question of why human missionaries had to carry the Gospel to every corner of the world when surely God could have done it faster, or the question of why God wanted to get the Pharaoh's permission to bring the Jews out of Egypt, neither of which he has ever admitted to wondering about either. It also doesn't give him any better of an understanding of the treatises he's read in school about whether God can create logical contradictions, change what's right and wrong, etc.

If he had known he was going to have to bring the Gospel to an entire planet of heathens he would have paid more attention in class. 

"I don't understand it either but that's what the theologians say."

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"Well, it doesn't seem like God being omnipotent necessarily means he won't let us put out the fire in Hell? It means he could stop us, but not that he will stop us, if I'm understanding correctly."

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"I mean He put the fire there so I would really expect Him to stop you." He is doing a bad job of this argument and it's probably because of the lurking worry that they're all fundamentally like him and the only reasonable thing for them to do is despair like he does and he doesn't want to see them despair like he does. It's short-sighted and awful and he should be willing to throw the whole planet into despair for a whisper of a chance of saving one of them.

(How many times has he wished he didn't know he was damned, so he could have tried to enjoy the time he had on Earth? It feels wrong, disgusting, not wanting to know something, and he has wished it anyway. Is that the choice he's trying to make for everyone here? Even if he knew for certain there was no hope he still wouldn't have the right to make that decision.)

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"How does he stop people, when he objects to what they're doing?"

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"Sometimes He just lets them keep doing it and eventually they either repent or go to Hell but sometimes they get struck by lightning or eaten by miraculously appearing bears or if it's a whole city the city gets set on fire or there's a plague of locusts or all the water turns to blood or the earth opens up and swallows them or--stuff like that." If this planet gets destroyed he has no idea what that will look like because he's never seen a planet get destroyed before, obviously.

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There's an appalled silence. 

 

"I've.....never heard of any of those things happening," says Jim slowly. 

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"Wait, really? Did this world have a global flood a few thousand years ago? Do you know where your world's Eden is and what happens to anyone who tries to get in? Do you have miraculous healings?"

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" - I have never heard about a flood a few thousand years ago. I don't know of a place called Eden. We - don't have miraculous healings that I've ever heard of?"

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"Okay that's really weird, because everywhere on the Earth I came from had stuff like that, even before Jesus. Maybe God just--doesn't do anything here for some reason? But that doesn't explain why I'm here." 

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"The explanation that jumps to mind, young man, and I don't know if I'm right, is that God might be powerful in your world. But here? Maybe not so all-powerful."

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There are probably tons of good arguments against that but Bruce can't come up with any of them because he just had the thought that maybe when people in this world die they just don't exist at all anymore and apparently hope is actually more painful than despair.

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"I think it might be a good idea to start at the beginning here," says Cathy. "This young man is from a world that, it sounds like, is different from ours in several ways. Some of those are going to be very relevant - and important - for the effort to put out the fire in Hell. Let's - and I know we're all really excited by all this new information - take a step back and let him explain more about his world and all of the ways it's different from ours."

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Bruce nods, takes a deep breath, realizes he's still on the floor and gets unsteadily to his feet. "Okay. Yes. Okay. In the other universe, six thousand and two years ago God created the universe: the crystal sphere of the stars and everything inside it. Which is the Earth and the sun and moon and the seven other planets. Heaven always existed. Hell was created before the universe unless it's in the center of the Earth in which case it was probably created at the same time as the Earth, scientists are still trying to figure that out. Angels--God's servants and messengers--always existed but sometime around when the universe was created some of them, led by Satan, rebelled against God and became demons and Hell was created to imprison them. Demons are evil and want to drag everyone down to Hell with them."

Bruce pauses to see if everyone is following along so far.

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They look fascinated.

"This all sounds pretty different than our universe, which is billions of years old," Jim says. "Go on."

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"Billions? Wow." That's fascinating but also he's feeling dizzy again and has to grope for his train of thought. "Uh. Anyway. Uh. Humans! After God spent six days creating the sky and the earth and all the plants and animals He created humans, first a man named Adam and then a woman named Eve, and they're the ancestors of all humans. He created them in the garden of Eden, where every kind of edible plant grows including the Tree of Life whose fruit prevents people from dying, and the weather is always perfect, and He said they could eat anything in the garden except the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Uh, Adam and Eve didn't know right from wrong, they were just instinctively perfect without having to think about it. And then Satan told Adam and Eve that if they ate of the Tree of Knowledge they would know Good and Evil and become like God, so they disobeyed God and ate it, and that was Original Sin. It contaminated all their descendants so all humans--in my world I mean--are innately sinful and inclined to do things they shouldn't. And for their sin Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden of Eden and had to work to grow their food and couldn't eat from the Tree of Life which is why humans get old and die.

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They listen, wide-eyed, and gasp with shock at 'they disobeyed God and ate it' and at 'cast out of the garden of Eden'.

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They're very gaspworthy moments! "And then they had kids and their kids had kids and after several generations God saw that humanity had become exceedingly wicked so He decided to start over. He found one family of good people, Noah and his wife and his sons and his sons' wives, and he told them to build a giant ark and take some of every kind of animal on it and once they were inside He flooded the whole earth with forty days and forty nights of rain, and all the people and animals not on the Ark died, and then He let the water drain away and the land reappear and Noah's family repopulated the Earth again."

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"That's - I actually don't have any idea what to say about that," says Jim, "which is bad because millions of Americans are tuning in and looking to me to contextualize this."

       "Well," Carol says, "I think we might need to stop this God before he kills again."

"Yes, you're right, Carol, we might."

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It's like they're going through every question Bruce has ever asked and been told it was a stupid question, every emotion he's ever concealed because it was an evil emotion, every thought he's ever tried to stop having in the middle of having it, going through them and just saying them out loud on TV in voices with a manageable amount of fear and no guilt at all. 

They're wrong, of course, they're just as wrong as he is.

He has no argument to convince them because he has no argument to convince himself.

What does it even mean for a position to be right if there's no convincing arguments for it?

He has to convince them anyway because not going to Hell is more important than being right. 

Why does that thought feel like a handful of worms and the sight of the newscasters feel like a faceful of sunlight?

He should say something true and important but everything true feels stupid and everything important feels meaningless.

"Look, is there any way I can convince you not to do this? I don't want you to be hurt . . ." He doesn't know if that's true but he wants it to be. "God is good, really, I just haven't explained right." That's definitely true even if he doesn't believe it.

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" - well, I'm definitely relieved to hear that," says Jim. "I admire the courage of our men and women in uniform but I'd rather they not have to go up against God if they don't have to. And I want the fire put out as quickly as possible, and that'll definitely be easier with God's help."

"I do think there's still a strong case for accountability here," Cathy says. "Even if Hitler had reformed and become a good person after 1945, I'm not sure we'd have been wrong to put him on trial for the genocide. But I guess it's less urgent if he's not going to do it again."

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This is still a huge fucking mess but maybe the "God is good" bit will get somewhere if he runs with it. 

"God created all the beautiful things in the world and then created humans to enjoy them. God heals the sick and feeds the hungry and makes the sun keep shining. When bad things happen it's because humans are wicked."

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"Just clarifying - when you say God created all the beautiful things in the world, do you mean your world, or our world, or both? And same thing with - God heals the sick and feeds the hungry and makes the sun keep shining -"

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"Well you said you didn't have any miracles in this world so I don't know but definitely in mine. People pray for healing and if their faith is strong they instantly recover, or for food and they get manna--uh, spontaneously materializing breadlike stuff."

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"- so that's good," says Cathy, "but I mean, usually, if you murder some people and cure others, it doesn't balance out, like, we don't let heart surgeons do a little murder on the side."

"I agree with you about that, Cathy," says Jim. "One law for everyone, that's the American way."

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They're all like him and it's the worst possible thing--

. . . actually maybe it's just these newscasters and everyone else is totally different. Well, these newscasters and the President and his staff and the blasphemous medical thing guy. But maybe it's like half of people.

"Um, so I just realized, I've been answering your questions but if there's a lot of people watching this broadcast they might have different questions, or be thinking about this differently, and I don't know anything about television broadcasting even in the other world but do you have a way to find out what kinds of opinions the viewers have or take more questions from other people? I definitely do want to keep talking to you too I just don't want to totally ignore everyone else."

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"Sure! I'll ask our technical team if we can let some more listeners with questions through."

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"Hi, there, this is Gladys from Omaha and I want to know what it means for faith to be strong? I would like to stop having cancer."

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That's--not actually good but much better! "You have to love God and believe that He's good and believe that He can and will heal you, and then you kneel, ideally in a church but I guess you don't have any churches yet so at home is fine, and ask that God heal you if it's His will that you be healed. You'll be able to tell when it's worked; you'll glow gold and feel amazing."

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"Well I've been watching this program so I know the good part and the healing part, but I'm not sure how to go about loving somebody who's set my Roscoe on fire and hasn't even come by to explain himself and maybe drop off a fruit basket. How do you go about that part, young man?"

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This is the WORST and he should have never been BORN

"I don't know, I'm sorry, I don't know, but back where I came from everyone except me can do it so it's probably easy and I'm just defective, please try to be better than me, I'm sorry."

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"Um, this is Tallulah from New York and I just want to ask—can you explain again from the beginning, what people need to do so they won't deserve to be on fire forever, because I'm not sure I understood the first time, and it sounds important—"

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This one at least is back on ground where he can recite first grade exam answers. "So, um, everyone deserves to be on fire forever because everyone has sinned, but if you love God and accept His gift of forgiveness He'll save you anyway. That's part of God's goodness: you don't have to deserve salvation to be saved."

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"Oh..." says Tallulah from New York, in an even smaller voice than before.

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"It's good news," he says earnestly. "You don't have to worry about not being perfect. No matter what you've done, God is always ready to forgive you."

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The next question is from "Wendy, calling from Detroit?  I don't understand why God made humans that would disobey him and punished them for disobeying.  If he's omnipotent, couldn't he have just made humans that would obey him?"

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"God gave us free will because He wanted us to freely choose to obey. If we don't have the option to be evil being good is meaningless."

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"...but like," Wendy says, "it he didn't just make humans with free will, he made humans that used their free will to do things that he didn't want them to do?  Like, I'm not going to burn down an orphanage tomorrow, but that's not because I don't have free will, it's because... that's just not how I'm going to use my free will?  If God had an orphanage in the Garden of Eden, it seems like he could've chosen to create me, a person who's not going to burn down that orphanage, instead of creating a different person who would burn down the orphanage, without denying me the option to burn down the orphanage."

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"I think that might still be meaningless but when you get into hypotheticals like that you really want a theologian and not an idiot whose only qualification is being from another planet."

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"All right.  I am too socially anxious to continue this conversation much longer anyway.  Thank you for trying to explain!"

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There are a lot more callers! They have questions about why, if God is good, He does bad things, and what exactly it means that everyone deserves to be on fire, and what prayers to say, and what exactly the fire comes from, like, is it a coal fire or a petroleum fire or an oxygen fire or what, and where God is, and what God is made of, and whether God sent Bruce here, and how the first humans had children without fucking their siblings, because ewwwwww, and whether even tiny babies who died being born are in Hell, and what God thinks about environmentalism and quantum physics and cats and documentaries and the death penalty and plastic surgery and space exploration and Prince Andrew and pendulums and abortion and poverty tourism and drunk driving and heroin and the Tetris World Championships and the World Wars.

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God never does bad things; all the things He does that the people here think are bad are actually good. Everyone deserves to be on fire because sin is a betrayal of the God who created them, and God is perfect so by default sinners can't be in the presence of God and the only place in the spiritual world that's totally removed from God's presence is Hell. Bruce knows lots of prayers of petition and contrition and gratitude and praise and can recite them in a weirdly rhythmic monotone. The fire in Hell is mostly fueled by sulfur.

(Bruce is very thirsty but answering these people's questions is a lot more important than getting water so he shoves that thought aside.)

God is omnipresence but His presence on Earth is attenuated and His presence in Heaven is complete, which is why sinners who haven't been washed clean with Christ's blood can't be there. Bruce has no idea how he got here but God is kind of the obvious explanation but Bruce doesn't know why himself in particular. The first humans, and also Noah's descendants, did a lot of having children with their siblings and cousins but it was okay back then because there hadn't been time for genetic mutations to accumulate (that's also why they lived hundreds of years) and also God said it was fine.

(Bruce's voice is getting hoarser and harder to understand.)

Babies too young to talk are like Adam and Eve before the Fall, they don't know right from wrong so they can't sin and they go to Heaven if they die. But abortion and contraception and regular babymurder are all wrong and so are drunk driving and heroin and wars. Environmentalism and quantum physics and cats and the death penalty are all good, pendulums and documentaries and Tetris are probably neutral, Bruce's Earth doesn't have large international wealth disparities or Prince Andrew so Bruce has no idea. He remembers the justifications for most of these rulings; some of them were relayed through prophets but some are just "the churches reached this consensus and didn't get a sign one way or the other so they're at least not very wrong".

(Bruce is getting kind of incomprehensible; he doesn't seem to have noticed.)