Tanner's Immortality

Sunday:

Tanner, a pudgy man on the wrong side of ninety - though they said 90 was the new 70 - was getting berated by his spice.  "This monomania is...is..." his Barba began sputtering, "Monomaniacal?" her sister wife finished for her sarcastically.  Not that Tanner was falling for that.  Linna might dislike Barba, but they'd both unite against him on this matter.

As why shouldn't they?  At seventy he'd married both of them at once, each 50 - though they said 50 was the new 30 - and now here they were seventy and him speaking of immortality instead of passing on while they still had time to enjoy his money without him!

"You have your name on the Tanner R. Nassar Museum of Art of Boston!", Barba shrilled.  "Isn't that enough immortality for any man?"

"No", he answered, "It is not.  It certainly wasn't enough for the last man who had his name on there 'forever' until I offered enough to have his name removed and mine put on.  And I don't tease myself that what has been done four times in two centuries can't be done a fifth time.  And an eighty fifth time."

"Same with my own Foundation.  The longest corporations are measured in centuries, mostly changed past all recognition.  Names, goals, purpose.  One is lucky to find a dusty book in a forgotten basement speaking of the founder.  Or if he is still named, it's a useless vanity.  A neglected plaque on a entry way wall.  And is the name even right?  Did Ray Kroc found MickeyDees, Inc.?  Or two guys named McDonald?  Who is to ken or care now?  My foundation will last some time, but my immortality?  Not through that."

Linna spoke up, "There's your book.  They've made VRs of it five times.  It's taught in school.  There's your silly immortality!"

"I gladden at your valuation.", Tanner said dryly.  "But I'm no Shakespeare.  And guess what?  Shakespeare was probably no Shakespeare, so where is the immortality in authorship?"  Then, warming up to his favorite subject, he went on, "Aristotle, Newton, Pasterski - great thinkers, philosophers, scientists.  The depth is known of them, are they immortal?  No!  We know names but they are sounds!  They are not the person!  Plato, but we say playto when he said pluhtahn!  Or did he?  Personality unknown, dreams, hopes, fears, unknown, scholarship of theirs contested at least, plagiarized at worst, influenced at best, till nothing of the person can we be solid of!"

"As with music, as with art!" chimed in his spice spitefully, having heard this lecture more than they cared to think about.  

"Yes, yes!" Tanner exclaimed.  "To appreciate Rodin's sculptures is to know nothing of the man.  What does anyone know of Burt Bacharach besides that pediways are pleasanter with him in the background?  Euclid?  Beside that he knew math, who was his wife, what were his dreams, what did he enjoy doing, who was he, besides that which was one thing he did?"

"Why not start a religion then?!", said Linna, now just wanting to wind him up.

It worked.  She had known it would.  Barba shot Linna a dark look as Tanner rose to the bait by pontificating, "Would that such would work, but no more so than the great authors!  Look at the poor posers who started the false religions, Mohamet or Eddy or Hubbard!  They're unknown but for what they made up, and in too many cases, what little else is known is just scandal and gossip. Nothing of the depth of them, nor much of the breadth!"

He shook his head sadly.  "I'm no seer or prophet, and certainly no god.  No immortality for me by a religion, and they've all been started anyway, true and false alike.  Who can name the second Pope?  How few know anything of the first one, in theory Peter?  It's useless to seek immortality by fame, it is fleeting while you live, and useless upon death, and lost to all history!  Not a man is remembered, only twisted names and half remembered deeds, and them usually wronger than right!"

Linna said, "Dear, foreals you exaggerate.  There are biographies of various men and women, they are yet kenned!"

"By who?", he replied.  "By random scholars or bookworms here and there?  As an aid to a bit of conversational grass to offer up for the munching of others later?  Maybe like Homer, I can have a professor of the 50th century spend a twenty year career proving that my works were not wrote by Tanner, but by another wealthy wunper of the same name!"

Linna laughed at the old joke, starting to feel a bit more fondly to him.  "I ken, dear, I ken.  But they are read by those few, yes?"

"Yes", said Tanner, a bit mollified.  "But it's one scholar writing that the person was one way, another writing that he was the other way, and then a dozen more scholars building off that, each wishing to add their own bit, made up or not, each wishing to introduce another theory, valid or not, all to put a bit of themselves in it, and in the end, it's more of the centuries of scholars that you are scanning than the original person!"

Monday:

"I'm telling you, the digital downloading of your consciousness is the only tight way to real immortality!  This is poised to be the greatest invention of the 23rd century!"

Tanner pondered that.  But first noted that as it was only 2207 it was a bit soon to tell what was to be the greatest invention of the whole century.  Aloud he said, "This type of immortality has been chewed on since the mid-20th century.  I hear of tests, even that it's been done with indentureds, but has it forreals stepped along enough to be tight?"

"Let me give it to you," said the salesman, "It's stepped along that far.  We can download you completely into a wafer and none who get you could tell the difference.  If 'you' get buzzed, it will be your face aired.  Your voice.  And your responses!  For an additional fee, if you crave more than just pure consciousness, we've robodies warranted to last a century and a half with upchecks!  And when it fades, you can just have the wafer transferred into another robody! - and hold!  Before you ask, we've a feature that automatically downloads all your new experiences in real time back here.  So if something fast fades and the robody and wafer are destroyed, we can just place a new and fully updated wafer into a new robody!  Fool proof!"

Tanner digested that.  It was as he had read, though.  He still had questions.  "How?  No, I don't mean the techie details, but the broad of it.  My whole neural net, how do you download it?"

The salesman nodded, as if he knew this would be asked.  "It's been a long road.  But we send in nanites to do a total map of your neural net, and that serves as a base.  But we compare against your net persona that you've built over the decades.  We put a device on the back of your neck jacked into you and ask you a battery of questions, straight and then with you wired to the gills.  No one lies wired, right?  From all this we get 'you'.  The dupe neural must be at triple nine turing true before we say yes!  Your brats won't know the difference!"

"Triple nine?  That's a 1 in a 1,000 error rate!" Tanner exclaimed.  "Hold!" the salesman cried. "Reboot - the triple nine is after the point!  99.999% accurate, and you'd be off more than that just with a random achey head now!"

"True that", Tanner conceded.  "The kicker being this.  The process takes a week?"  Seeing a nod he continued, "And then you could have that wafer in the robody?"  Another nod.

"But what of me?  I'd still be alive.  So the wafer and robody would not be me!"

"Sir, sir!", the salesman said, "We don't animate till you've faded!  You go, you arrive!  Simple dimple!"

"No, no, because you could have it up sooner.  It's not my neural being put into the wafer, but a copy.  Not me living onward, but me dead and a close duplicate onwarding."

"Sir", the salesman said, sounding miffed, "That's been understood.  But it lets your 'you' carry onward your estate and not let it dissolve by bad proxying.  And family can seek wisdom from you yet.  Loved ones need no grieving."

But Tanner spun about on his huvvee and moved out quickly seeming at attention the whole way.  The salesman smiled, thinking that until a body was a 100, no one wanted to sit, but insisted on an inbuilt huvvee like they were still as mobile as ever.

Tuesday:

His doctor heard the tale of the digital downloaders and nodded.  He had warned him before but knew that he'd been ignored.  His patient was rather strong headed about ignoring what he disliked kenning.  

"It's still the same with your clone.  The first is forty now, three others are twenty, and nine are infants, but no copy of your neural net is going to be able to be 'put' onto the brain of any of them.  Did they speak of mapping?  The connections between neurons are in the trillions and shift about.  There is no one map.  Such a map would be larger than you can conceive."

The man who would be immortal shook his head.  "I digested that before.  Had to check.  But what about using one as a total spare? Not just a heart or a lung, but the whole body.  Take my brain out, put it into a younger clone of me!"

The doctor shook his head.  

"Won't wash", the doctor said, "The number of nerves needed to cut and then re-attached are beyond the abilities of our compudocs.  And even if it could be done, it wouldn't be immortality.  Your brain is wearing out, a new and youthful body isn't going to change that.  The research into it will continue, and it may aid in giving sixty more years to a person, but there are issues of senility that pertain no matter what."

Tanner sighed.  "Okay, what of my idea about the wafer installed in my head?  Then half my brain could be replaced with a new half from my clone.  When the healing is full, then the second half?  And all in a new clone body?  Continuity, yes?"

Now the doctor sighed.  

"The shock trauma, the repeated shock trauma, would be enormous, no matter how many stages and no matter how slow.  Let us say we could.  The continuity would only be 'you-ish'.  What part of you is in which part of the brain we can know the broad of, even know many deep parts of it, but the depthy broad we cannot.  The first new half would get data from your still original half and the wafer with the total digitized memories, traits and data.  But the wafer wasn't fully 'you' and so it won't be putting back fully 'you'.  Then you're doing a new updated wafer of the not quite you 'you' and then repeating with the second half?  It might act like you, but it would not be truly you."

Tanner asked, "But how is the digital storage of the wafer so bad?  Do we have so much further to go?"

The doctor said, "Not so much that, but yes, we do have further to go.  No, it's that the recordings are of the surface, and don't take into account the drives, the hormones and chemical influences, the totality that made that data that data.  One reason why those wafer and robodies that they're trying for will always fail is that the end product will be flat."

"Flat?", Tanner asked. 

"Flat", the doctor replied.  "Your 'you' without testosterone, without adrenaline, without a hundred other chemical influences is not really 'you'.  The wafer is a flat copy, depth in data, but no depth in drives.  Your brain transplant in stages is a part of getting around that, but only a part.  Some might even say it is 'you', but I know you enough to know that if it's not perfect, you're not up for it.  There is a copy degradation.  However slight.  And that only builds up over the ages.  One might conceivably keep you 'you' enough to make no difference the first time.  The second.  The third?  Fourth?  At some point, some century, what is in the eighth cloned body with the swapped out brain/wafer/brain transplant will bear little resemblance to what we think of as a baseline 'you'."

Wednesday:

The geneticist said, "1,000.  It dropped to a low of 986 some years back, but per your instructions, more of your embryos were unfrozen and as each of those 14 children of yours died before having progeny, a new child was created and placed by those who wanted superior children.  All 1,000 are in middle age, most well into it, and all have had children themselves."

His lawyer chimed in, "Each 1,000 have inviolate trusts that will take care of each of them for their life time.  And upon the death of each, the child of theirs who has had the most children will receive that trust.  And so on.  Each generation, the descendant of each of those 1,000 who has the most children will receive the trust."

Tanner nodded and with a negligent hand wave, dismissed the lawyer.  He looked at the geneticist.  "Will that do it?"

The geneticist said, "As much or as little as we already went over.  Each of those children have half of your code.  Your grandchildren will have one quarter of your code.  Great grandchildren one eighth.  Great great grandchildren 1/16th.  After that..."

Tanner finished, "Each child starting with 23 pairs of my chromosomes, so for the great great great grandchildren, they may get some bit of me, they may not.  And by the following generation, my own particular genetics may be swamped out."

"Or may not.  And this is only very broadly true, the depths we know a lot of, but not all of.  Still, given random mutations, and the ever increasing number of other contributors over the generations, by the dozenth generation, the odds would be small of much of anything distinctively 'you' left."

"What of the 500 clone embryos?", Tanner asked his clonician, not even bothering to dismiss the geneticist who looked annoyed then hurried off.

The clonician looked a bit annoyed himself, but strove to hide it.  He knew that the Trillies were always eccentric, even back in the days when they were called "Billionaires", or even more anciently, "Millionaires".  He should be used to this kind of thing by now, given the other crazy requests that clonicians got called upon for, and not just by the wealthy wunpers.  

"The embryos - each a clone of you - are in readiness.  Safely frozen, perfectly secure.  The quiet foundation you started to research genetics in general has as a minor and undiscussed part of it's mission to see to it that one is thawed and brought to term and given a trust - but given that trust only on the condition that it breeds with a sixth generation descendant of yourself.  I should point out again that doing that doesn't really do much to 'enhance' the line, as at that point the sixth generation descendant is almost indistinguishable from a total stranger."

Tanner nodded, and made no mention of the three other caches of 500 embryos he had at three other facilities.  "And?" he asked.

"And", the clonician said, "A generation is approximately 25 years, and you want an influx of 'you' each 150 years.  With enough 'you' to keep doing that for 75,000 years, which if forgiveness can be had, fails to make sense."

"Why?" Tanner asked, "Our species can't evolve that fast, I read we're still identical and would be interbreedable with specimens from 100,000 years ago.

"Sir", the clonician said, "There is always more doubt in those greatly exaggerated time estimates of mankind's history then is generally admitted.  And evolution as a viable theory took several blows to it a few decades back, more than most scientists care to admit.  But you mistake me.  It doesn't matter which side of that eternal debate you come down on, no one has ever denied ordinary human machinations.  Take yourself, for instance."

"What of myself?" Tanner asked.  "What are you?", asked the clonician.  "You mean my heritage?  That would be for you to say!", Tanner replied.

"Your heritage, like almost all Westerners and Easterners, and a good many of Islamics and Afros who want to be modern, is 'the gattaca'.  Named after an old-time vid, it means that each of you is the best you you can possibly be.  But more, each of you is very near 142 centimeters, medium brown skin, epicanthic folds in your blue or green eyes, and all with red or blonde hair.  Your not so distant ancestors took a blend of all the so-called 'races' and came up with that."

"Why?", Tanner asked.  

"To avoid any other genocidal attempts.", the clonician explained.  "By U.N. directive, and to forestall any further ethnicity based plagues, it was done, and all but the Islamic nations and some African nations complied.  Most populations were not so recalcitrant.  Most eager, given the enhanced IQ and life span - noticeable.  Now IQ 100 is what used to be IQ 120 and if anyone dies at less than 100 they say 'too soon, too soon'!  And no one can wipe out nations with a virus tailored just for their genetics."

"This matches the topic how?", Tanner interjected impatiently.

"Who can say what we'll be like in 150 more years?" the clonician said.  "Experiments are in process that would dampen our emotional extremes, our pain reflexes, or give us abilities like enhanced taste/smell or even sight into more of the spectrum at will!  Not to mention the work on coming up with a human that doesn't need gravity yet grows and develops correctly!  Or better machine/neural interfaces, and other cyborg enhancements.  Adding you in could be - in a few hundred years - like adding a 1.8 meter tall white skinned round eyer to ourselves!"

Tanner said, "You mean the future generations might not follow my instructions?"

"No." said the clonician.  "They may well not."

"Let's say I've got that covered, as money will talk no matter the era.", Tanner said.  "Anything else?"

"Yes", said the clonician bluntly.  "The obvious.  We can't know if a frozen embryo will be viable in 150 years until some we froze a 100 plus years ago are finally thawed out and a donor womb found for them.  And while we may hope, it passes reason to assume that even a frozen one will remain viable after 1,500 years, let alone 150,000!"

Thursday:

"Vanity and vexation", said Tanner's psychosopher.  "You aren't the 'you' I met 50 years ago, and that 'you' wasn't the 'you' of when you were 15, nor was the 15 year old the 'you' of when you were five!"

"You believe immortality, by any means, is impossible then?" asked Tanner.

"Impossible, impractical and utterly not important.  Even to the subject - who is never the 'subject' for more than a few years at a time!"

"But I do want it." said Tanner.

"You want not to die", said the psychosopher.  "But you have enough self-awareness to know 'you' already have, and several times.  Are your hopes and dreams and drives of five the same as now?  Or did they die before you turned 15?  And the motives and matrices of your mind at 15, weren't they gone by 25?  And those by 45?  And what do you have in common with your long gone 45 year old self?"

"There is a continuity", Tanner began, but the psychosopher interrupted him.  "Nonsense.  Because you have the same name and fingerprints made up of new skin cells?  You're like the USA in Exile, those half a million living under the domes of Ganymede, imagining that they are the same as the farmers of the 13 colonies three or so centuries ago!"

"They lay claim to the same ideals", Tanner again started, but the psychosopher again interrupted.  "Still nonsense.  Because they still say the word-sound 'freedom' while living lives more regimented than those in the Greater Igbo Empire?  Like your foundations and non-profits, there is a thread of continuity, but only with squint eyes, big heart and small thought.  It's like the Ship of Theseus.  You replace a plank on the ship each time it wears out, when does it stop being the same ship?"

"I know that one," said Tanner, and held up his hand to forestall yet another interruption.  "But the answer is to take the ship not as a three dimensional object but a four dimensional one.  Thus at different stages in it's fourth dimension it may be made of differing materials but is still the same ship."

"Foreals?" the psychosopher said.  "Then to the compudocs for the wafer and brain transplant you should go!  That you don't shows that you know of the transporter dilemma!"

"Yes", said Tanner, "I know of it.  If we could teleport ourselves it would not be us, as even if we used the same matter, there would be a break in continuity, and more deeply, it would be a copy since the process could be stopped and started, or done twice or thrice."

"I've more skinny for you that you won't care to scan." the psychosopher said, not sounding too sad to have to impart such.  "I was dwelling on your passion and realized that you're in a Bitch-22!"

"What's a Bitch-22?" asked Tanner.

"It's my own neolog", the psychosopher lied, looking pleased at being asked.  "It means that either way a given thing turns out you can find a reason to complain.  Like if the guard of your gated community asks for your wrist for an ID scan, you can complain that he should know you.  But if he doesn't ask, you can complain that he's up for letting anyone in."  

Looking very impatient, Tanner said, "Get on with it."

The psychosopher, unfazed, said, "All these ways that involve changing parts of you mean that eventually you've changed completely. So you could complain that it's not you.  But if you did find a way to simply halt the growth and decay of your brain, then that very act of freezing in place would be substantively different than the 'you' that has as integral to it the characteristic of growth!  So you could complain that such is not 'you' either!"

Friday:

"Nothing work ready now, and even later, probably not of value.", said Tanner's futurist.  The man had made a life foretelling trends and plotting the probabilities of new sciences, or new depths to old sciences, or broader breadths then norm.  Usually his sort worked for megacorps, but he worked only for Tanner.

"Give me another run down." said Tanner curtly.

"It may be possible to break all the data of the 'what' of an embryo into neat trinary code.", the futurist reviewed, "Then a large, but finite number could represent the entirety of the information needed to reconstruct an embryo of 'you'.  Applied then by an advanced compudoc with access to the raw materials, a 'you' embryo could be constructed any time any one had the means to.  Your matrix, instead of stored on a wafer, could also be numerically represented.  The two combined would be 'you', in a sense."

"Same problem, though", the futurist continued.  "It would be you, but can that tech be profitable enough for any to even pursue developing it?  And if they do, would anyone care to reconstruct you?  And then though the future would be talking to 'you', it would still just be a copy, not the 'you' speaking to me."

Tanner said, "I have the lifeship enthusiasts working on it.  Anything that lets them take more breeding stock to the exoplanets they like.  Radiation might damage a store of embryos, but if they could simply take a coded sequence and raw materials...hmm...yes, they're interested.  And personality templates with skill sets could be of use, that might give them all kinds of professionals for the price of downloading that 'person' to a matured clone.  No one will care that they are copies.  What else?"

"We can do a thing where we put the combined knowledge of man on a ten centimeter by ten centimeter square plate.  That knowledge would be microprinted on one side and your autobiography and your most famous book on the other side.  Scatter 1,000 of them - 10,000 of them -  all over Earth, the moons and a lifeship or two, and surely some will survive for a few tens of thousands of years."

Tanner said, "I am doing that one.  Not sure that many will still speak System in 10,000 years, certainly none of us speak Sumerian.  But that's not really different than Foundations and books in general and other faint intimations of immortality."

The futurist nodded, pleased that his project of wanting the combined knowledge of mankind preserved would be done by the man he regarded as a raging narcissist.  Keeping his face impassive, he continued, "There's the mouse mentality dodge that may come to be in a few decades.  Could be unavoidable side effects, though."

"This sounds new.  Go on." said Tanner.

"Mice think faster than us.  It's why they're so dodgy and darty.  They don't have anything like even a dog's intellect, but what they have, they use much, much faster.  What is a second for us seems like two seconds to them.  If we can duplicate that in us, we could think one and a half to two times as fast as we think now.  A 120 year life span would seem to be 180 to 240 years!"

Tanner asked, "And the side effects?"

"Our bodies would need a re-design from the DNA up, to be able to move in sync with our faster mental processes.  Experiments accelerating a dog only got us a twitchy and fast faded dog."

"The dog died from his body not being able to cope?", Tanner asked.

"Or from lack of proper sleep.", the futurist clarified, "Which is another front worked on.  We need at base two hours of deep sleep, but if we were on mouse time, maybe four.  But it takes six to eight hours of regular sleep to get even that two hours of deep sleep.   If we could have a device put us down deep instantly, then even now we could add six hours per day to our lives."

Tanner seemed more interested at that and asked, "How much would that add?"

The futurist was prepared for that question.  "120 years means 1,051,200 hours of life.  Divided by three is 350,400 hours of sleep at 8 hours per night.  Or forty wasted years.  But while 8 hours is 1/3rd of a 24 hour period, 2 hours is only 1/12th of such a period.  Out of those million plus hours of life, what if you only needed to sleep 84,096 hours instead of the 350 thousand plus hours?  You'd have only 9 and half years of sleep needed, not forty!  Which conversely, is an extra 30 years of life!"

"And combined with this manic mouse thing means that out of 240 years of consciousness I'd only need 20 years of sleep, or an effective span of 220 years?", Tanner asked.

"For the person who could have this, yes.", the futurist said, "Remember that the baby would have to be genetically designed to accommodate these changes and that we're not there yet."

"I see.  What of stuff for me?  Anything else?"

"I assume that going off on a specially designed ship to reach near light speeds, and then coming back in one year to you, several centuries to Earth..." the futurist stopped as he saw Tanner shaking his head.  They both knew that was not adding any life span to him, just offering an opportunity to see any new changes in man's progress.

"Perhaps.  Still pondering that.  Only if that would let me come back to an expected breakthrough in longevity.", Tanner said.  "What else?"

"There are nanitic reconstruction and biomed techniques that might one day hold some promise.", the futurist said.  "If nanites with access to certain chemical compounds could replace faltering cells in the brain, then doing so bit by bit would alleviate the shock trauma of half brain transplants and wafers and such.  Yet it would still be the Ship of Theseus in a sense, as eventually, even in a few centuries, each cell, each part of the brain would be replaced, even though by organic replacements."

"That sounds promising", said Tanner.  "Yes", affirmed the futurist, "But that is still decades away, and there are copy degradation issues.  It can't totally and completely replace a cell identically, only provide a basic brain cell that would incorporate into the rest of your existing network of cells.  Whatever made that one cell unique to you would be lost, and while that would not matter at first, it would add up in the end."

"The benefit", the futurist continued, "Is that there'd be total continuity, and the shift over would be so gradual as to be no more noticeable than the shift you've had in your personality, your 'you' all your life.  Ultimately, that may be the only viable route."

"What of the shock trauma of that brain - my brain - put into a clone body?", Tanner asked.  "Or would the brain go into a robody, a cyborg solution as it were?"

"Ideally, while those breakthroughs in brain preservation come, there'd be similar advances in transplanting.  See, part of what makes the you 'you' is the chemicals and hormones that come in unique proportions from your body, and so you want the clone body solution. Unless the robody could not only support the brain but artificially put in chemical compounds in the same proportions that your body would have.  Still, while this could conceivably buy a man 1,000 years, I suspect that a psychosopher would speak of copy degradation, as each new brain re-work, each new robody or clone would have subtle differences."

"Enough to notice?", Tanner asked.

"Could be another of what your psychosopher called a Bitch-22.  If we got it so that it was always locked into this present you as 'baseline norm', then where is your real growth?  If it does shift even a bit each time, as I ken that it would no matter our precautions, then while there'd be a you calling yourself you, it might not, after a couple of thousand years, be a 'you' that you'd agree now would be."

Saturday:

Pastor Alain of the Seventh-day Adventist Church knew of Tanner's story, having heard of it through the web like most who follow the wunpers, and from just having heard a brief synopsis of the man's latest weeks updates.

"I wonder what you're really after.  You surely know that this side of the grave, that if there is no heaven, no God, that there can be no immortality in the sense of 'forever'?  Your secular scientists say that the Sun will eventually explode and die, and if nothing else, after trillions of years, the same scientists say that the universe will be in what they call a heat death.  I wonder also if you can conceive what a million years would be like, let alone a billion or trillion."

Tanner asked, "What do you mean?"

The pastor said, "Yes, you want to live forever, but that's an awful long time for how you - how we all are - here and now.  Most of us aren't equipped to wile away a boring Sunday afternoon, and you propose so long?  120 years, I understand.  200, I get that.  1,000, yes, maybe I can grasp the yearning of it.  But how much past that?  What will be left new to do?  And if you're thinking that there'll be new wonders, will there be?"

Tanner looked surprised.  "Why wouldn't there be?  I could entertain myself just watching history unfold."

"Could you?" asked the pastor.  "When everyone else will be living forever, also?"

Tanner looked surprised.

"You didn't see the depth of your passion?", the pastor said.  "If you can have it, why not others?  Few at first, as the process, what so ever it may be, would be expense filled.  Then more people as it was economized.  A world in which every one lives to at least 1,000, let alone 10,000 would be a slow changing world."

"Why?", Tanner asked.

"Because it's the old who control things, and already in this era of a 120 year lifespan things have slowed.  New ideas, new trends, new ways of kenning things, new paradigms, it all takes a new generation in charge, or more clearly, the old generation retired or dead.  The changeover centuries ago was every forty or fifty years.  By the 20th century, every 60 or 70 years.  Now it's every 100 or so years. Picture even a 500 year changeover, and for us that would be like having those of 1707 - with all their zeal for hunting witches and buying slaves - in charge of our world!"

Tanner pondered that.  "Any other objections?"

"Yes", the pastor said.  "Even if it was just you, how long could the novel be novel?  How long could you be entertained by any one thing, or any number of one things?  How many sky-surfings of the Jovian red spot, how many asteroid claims staked, how many women loved, how many children raised, how many buildings built, books wrote, songs sung, art learned or created or admired?  How long before it palls?  1,000 or 10,000 years?  20,000?  100,000?  And the knowledge that you had as long to go when you first started?  I tell you honestly, I would think that after 900 to 1,500 years, tops, it would be suicide, and that if not much sooner." 

"You done?" Tanner said, sounding exasperated.  

"No", said the pastor, flatly. "What of your memory?  How much do you remember of your seventh summer?  Your ninth?  Now how many centuries till everything you've experienced up to now is forgot, or only some dimly recalled highlights here or there?  How many tens of thousands of years before nothing of the first thousand is recalled?  And if you rely on artificial aids, like a wafer or a book or VR reminding you, then how is your immortality any different than me reading of a pirate 1,000 years ago and simply pretending that I'm him?  It would mean as much, no?"

Tanner thought for a few seconds then cried out in frustration, "But man, it's your own mythos you're exploding!  It's your faith that insists on offering this very thing as a reward, and here now you claim it shallow?"

The pastor raised his hand.  "Hold, sir, you misgrasp.  Immortality for you or I as we are would be valueless, would be as your psychosopher said, vexation and vanity.  But as we preach, one does not get immortality as we are now, broken and sinning and fallible. One gets it when one accepts the sacrifice and atonement of Christ, and after judgement, is resurrected in a perfected body, there then to commune with their Father in heaven, their Savior, and others similarly saved.  An enormity of difference."

"In what way?", Tanner asked. 

"Every way."  the pastor said.  "Your whole quest is but an attempt to evade the sentence gave man in the Garden of Eden.  God said that if we ate of the tree of knowledge that we would surely die.  Satan lied and said we would not surely die, and you have spent a life time - a life time coming to a close however you delay it - at trying to prove Satan right!  But he wasn't right.  The knowledge of man, stole sinfully in that Garden and then earned by the sweat of our brow over the millennia, is not enough to give us eternal life.  That is a gift of God, and it is only through his son Jesus Christ."

"You aren't the only holy man I've talked to." Tanner began, but the pastor interrupted with, "But I'm the only one telling you the real truth.  As you know or you'd not be here.  Buddhists offer only some bare hint of being in a cosmic mashup of merged consciousness, with you and the plants and bacteria and cows as one.  Hindus offer a reincarnation valueless as your 'you' is wiped clean each time, almost as if there is no real reincarnation at all!  Which since there isn't, makes sense!  Even the Islamics, who at least honor the same God as we, want you to be content with some horny and hedonistic teenage boy's conception of paradise!"

Tanner laughed, "Yes, I did wonder why any man of any maturity would want 72 virgins!  Or to ceaselessly eat grapes while slaves fanned him!"

"Because that's all false." said the pastor.  "And note they picture you in that heaven as a 'slave' of Allah, rather than your birthright as a son of our Creator.  A depthy difference in that, I'm sure you ken."

"If I understand you then," Tanner began, "The immortality you speak of is qualitatively different, being that the body will be perfected and thus be able to grow while not decaying, and the very Creator of the Universe himself is there to address any continuity problems?  Oh, and we'll have more productive things to be about then virgins and figs?"

"Yes", said the pastor smiling, "The 'continuity problem' as you put it we don't see as a problem.  When you die, you'll know nothing, a pause if you will, then resurrected you'll be in the perfect body and to you no time will have passed."

"Sounds like a re-creation.", Tanner opined.  "Which is like a copy."

"Yes", said the pastor, "I see why you scan it that way, but note the word used was not 're-created' but 'resurrected'.  I can't pretend the ancients who first coined that word knew the process by which the Creator would make us whole and eternal, and I can't say I scan it either, but I know that if it can be, then with He who made all, it will be.  Doesn't that make sense?"

"Yes, it does.  And I get that when dealing with magic - or faith", Tanner amended hastily at seeing the pastor's reaction, "that one can always assume that there's an answer even if we know it not.  I even mean that seriously, not in a mocking way.  A creator can command his creation, that I ken.  Now how does one get it?  There's a lot of varied answers on that!"

"It's not easy.", said the pastor.  "Or it's easy.  Hard to know how to put this.  It's easy in that you need only accept Christ's sacrifice.  But hard in that you must truly accept Christ's sacrifice."

"I ken", said Tanner.  "More than words are needed.  I have to believe foreals and he'll know if I don't."

"Yes, I'm afraid so", said the pastor.  "And like anything else, if it is worth having, it's worth a bit of work.  You'll need to make changes in your life."

"I thought", Tanner said, "that it was by grace we were saved, not of our works.  Or did the last priest I spoke with steer wrong?"

"No, no", the pastor said, "Reboot.  It is by grace, yes, no work of yours can get you eternal life, and I know you've tried a lot of kinds of work!  No philanthropy, no creations, no charities, no businesses, no nothing will get you there.  But if you accept Him, you still, as a part of that sincere acceptance of Him, would then want to follow His will.  His commandments.  And that can be work for some people.  That's all I meant.  You can't just say 'ah buh-leeve' and then go on deliberately sinning."

"Makes sense.  You have a class on all this?  For preparation?  Having tried all else, I'm not missing any bet, however the odds are against it!"

"I worry about the spirit in which you approach this, but yes", the pastor said, "we've classes.  If you like, come here next Wednesday at six, and we'll get started.  This is a more important decision than you scan yet."

"Fine, fine." said Tanner.  "And relax, I'm only 90!  There's yet time, and with my compudocs, I'm good for more than the usual 120!"

Next Wednesday:

Tanner's secretary called Pastor Alain.  "I'm sorry, but I'm calling all those who he had an appointment with to let them know, in case they'd not heard, that he faded Tuesday.  Yes, a runaway pediway, it accelerated spontaneously and threw the pedestrians into a wall.  The maintenance logs are being checked.  Yes, a tragedy."

Pastor Alain lifted a finger that ended the call and brought back in his holographic display the book he'd finished reading earlier.  "Scattered Leaves" by T. Nassar.  He flipped back to the beginning of the first chapter, to read it again with new insight.  

And mourned the man who had indeed surely died.

Fulfilling the Law

1.

Ralph had been Catholic all 32 years of his life and was on his daily walk when he was struck by an eddy in the space/time continuum and found himself a glemmen or two sidewise in probability.  Not that he even noticed, a glemmen being relatively small.  Not so small as a fimp, that would have had him in an alternate universe so nearly the same as to be the difference between whether he had left two dimes and a nickel on the dresser before leaving or three nickels and a dime.

But neither was it so large as a dath, which would have had him swimming in a vast primordial ocean till he drowned looking for the only two mile square island peaking up over the endless waves some where around the area that he'd have thought of as the Bering Sea.

No, two glemmens, or there about, was going to be nothing too large.  But nothing too small, either. Medium-ish?  Guess it depends upon your perspective.

He stumble stepped, wondering what had disoriented him, but noticing nothing new or different continued on and forgot about it before he had reached the corner of the block.  He made it home - and it was his home - and kissed his wife - and she was his wife - and smiled at his son - and he, well, he was still not really his son, but he'd got used to that long ago.  Mostly.

He started getting ready for Mass, which he took his family to every Sunday, like clockwork.  As he had been took to Mass every Sunday as a child, like clockwork.  All his life.  And now all his son's life.  Well, all his wife's son's life.  Why had she done that, he wondered for the thousandth time.  Yes, he forgave her, and it never even came up any more, but that didn't stop him from thinking of it almost weekly.

"You ready for the orgy, dear?" he thought he heard his wife call from downstairs.  What!  What had she said?  He surely must have heard her wrong.  Hastily throwing his suit jacket on, he took the stairs down two at a time while adjusting his tie.

There his wife and the boy were sitting in the kitchen, he not dressed for church yet, she having removed her robe and wearing...and wearing...blushing, he turned sharply to James and said, "Get upstairs, now!"  At seeing no movement from the boy, just puzzlement, he took a step forward and barked, "Now!" which got a reaction. James, seven and sassy, had nothing to say this time but just ran upstairs and slammed his door.

Looking again at his wife, who was wearing a skimpy lace see-through negligee and a questioning look upon her face, he asked, "What in the name of God are you doing?"

"The orgy, dear", she started, "It's Sunday, remember?  We have to hurry or we'll be late!"  Giving him an even more questioning look, she asked, "But what are you doing dressed like that?  Cosplay is only for Wednesday Night Vespers!"

He stood gaping at her.  This must be something stress related.  Work.  His high blood pressure.  His ceaseless fretting about her infidelity with the FedEx driver 8 years ago.  Almost he fainted.  But he caught himself and sternly told himself to stop - he was tired of not being the man he liked to imagine himself!

He strode toward her, and the look on his contorted face must have been truly frightening, for she backed up and into the stove top behind her.  Glowering he reached out and grabbed her arm, hard, deliberately hard, and started with, "Look, you utter tramp, I forgave you once when you slept with the guy who fathered James, and that was more than I should have, but if you think this is funny or - " but she never learned what the "or" was, as she had clocked him with a cast iron skillet that she'd frantically grabbed from behind her.

Terrified as much as how quickly she'd knocked him unconscious as by his inexplicable attack, she called 911 at once.  And started crying, wondering what she'd tell James.  Or how she'd explain her absence at the orgy to her parish priest, a man known for his lack of tolerance of any improprieties.  Like missing orgies or beating hubbies, she thought inanely and let out a horrified giggle.

2.

Ralph came to groggily, mostly due to trying to scratch an itch with his right hand, and it not reaching his nose.  He tried to focus his eyes, and could start to make out that his hand was - handcuffed? - to the bed rail like in the cop shows.  Sitting next to his hospital bed was a bored looking young man, maybe not even 21, playing with this iPhone and dressed in that polyester fashion that screams "security guard" without even having to see the company patch on the shoulder.

"What...where...?" he mumbled out, and the guard sighed and put his phone in his shirt pocket.  Silently the guard reached over and hit the call button for the nurse and then sat back down.  "She'll be here in a minute, just take it easy."

"What happened?" Ralph asked.  "Well", the guard said, "You attacked your wife and she defended herself.  You also missed the orgy, which while yeah, Sabbath laws aren't enforced like in the old days still won't go over well with the judge."

Ralph shook his head, but winced as a fresh wave of nausea overcame him.  Don't move your head too quickly he thought.  Take it slow and easy.  Something was up, but what?  "What is this orgy, and why would it be something I'd take my wife to on a Sunday?" he managed to ask, even if nervously.  What a question, he thought, and wondered why the guard didn't react the way he'd have expected someone to react to such a question.

Looking concerned, the guard explained, "Buddy, she must have really got you good, glad she's not my wife to deal with!  She said it was like you didn't want to go to your Parish's Sunday Orgy, that you weren't even dressed for it.  When she told you that you were going to be late, she said you attacked her."  He stopped, looking for all the world like he believed such an explanation was rational and meant something.

Ralph dropped his head wept.

The nurse came in and shot a dark look at the guard, as if it were his fault for Ralph's crying.  The guard got a "Who me?" expression on his face and folded his arms defensively.  "Hey, I just told him how he got here, he's not been convicted of nothing yet!" he grumbled.  Ignoring him, and the double negative, the nurse started touching the bandages on Ralph's head, then satisfied, started shining a pen light in his eyes.

"What's this about not wanting to go to your church's orgy?" she asked, for all the world sounding conversational about it.  Ralph, looking like a punch drunk fighter said, "Please, please, I don't understand. Can you explain, like I'm from Mars, why a church would have an orgy, or why I'd want to take my wife to any orgy?"

The nurse contemplated this silently for a moment, then letting the guard know to follow her out by means of a significant look, exited.  She shut the door firmly behind her, leaving Ralph alone.

It was a half hour later that a priest entered, wearing the black robes and white backwards collar that was known world wide as "Catholic".  Must be a Catholic hospital, Ralph thought.  Perhaps now there'd be some answers for him he hoped.

The priest said, before Ralph could talk, "I'm Dr. Tobias, the staff psychiatrist.  What's all this about church orgies?  What does this have to do with your domestic violence?"

Ralph had had some time to think.  Not that he had figured anything out, only in the movies does the hero suddenly "get" that he's in an alternate universe.  Instead, he was trying to figure out whether he was truly insane or whether an unlikely number of random strangers were trying to play a joke on him that was not in the least funny.

He was hoping for the second, but feared it was the first.  Still, he did not feel insane, though he admitted to himself that he really would have no way of knowing what "insane" felt like.  But no matter what, he figured that his only real recourse was to play this out and see where it went.  For he clearly was going no where, not while still chained to the bed.

Taking a deep breath, he asked the priest/psychiatrist what he'd asked the nurse.  For an explanation about this orgy thing that would assume he was from Mars.

3.

Dr. Tobias pondered that question, but while it seemed like being asked about why water was wet, felt he could afford to indulge this man who might well end up being his full time patient.  Violence displayed to loved ones, general disorientation, not seeming to understand where he was or how he got here, the nurse already thought that a 72 hour hold would be of benefit and Dr. Tobias was already thinking that the nurse had called it correctly.

Well, here goes, he thought.  "Young man, the Universal Church, ever mindful of their responsibility in shepherding lost souls to heaven, hosts such orgies so as to keep weak and fallible and sinning men from violating the commandment against coveting their neighbor's wife.  It was noticed early on, even in the time of Moses, that men just wouldn't stop doing this, so the solution, obvious in retrospect, was to let every man have every other man's wife once a week, and thus they'd not have to covet those wives during the week."

Dr. Tobias paused, and seeing Ralph just staring at him figured on giving the rest of the old boring seminary lecture.  "Remember too, the prohibition is about coveting your neighbor's wife, not the wives, plural of all your neighbors.  Thus you can get it out of your system Sunday, and be safe for the rest of the week from any odd random temptation over any individual wife."

Ralph couldn't really think of what to say to this fantastical nonsense, but of a million questions he could ask, did ask, "And so you do this instead of the weekly Mass?"

Dr. Tobias looked surprised.  "No, no, of course not!  Mass is held on the Sabbath!  Why would we hold Mass on the first day of the week when the 4th commandment clearly says, 'six days shall ye labor, and the seventh ye shall rest'?  The seventh day is the Sabbath, and the first day of the week is for the orgy!"

Ralph said, "The usual reason gave for moving the Sabbath to Sunday is that Christ fulfilled the Law when he was crucified.  And so in honor of Him, and the 'new creation' of his resurrection, we worship on Sunday."

Dr. Tobias made a note that this seemed to be a well-developed delusion if his soon to be patient had reasons already for his irrational beliefs about how the world was.  But before he could respond, Ralph asked, "If you put such great store on the exactness of the commandments, why are you breaking the one about adultery?"

Now Dr. Tobias looked genuinely puzzled.  "But...but..." he stammered, "Christ fulfilled the Law, that part of what you thought was true, but we are still to keep most all of the commandments!  But that adultery commandment we no longer observe in honor of Christ pardoning the adulterer!"

"Adulterer?", inquired Ralph.  "You mean the adulteress?  Is that why you're claiming that all this is okay?"

Dr. Tobias said, "What do you mean, 'adulteress'?  I'm speaking of the part in the Bible where Christ forgave the man brought to Him in adultery.  The crowd wanted to stone the adulterer for he having seduced and defiled a woman not his wife.  A woman the adulterer had long coveted.  Christ in His mercy and wisdom set aside the man's punishment, and thus we honor Christ by making it as easy as possible for men to avoid the sin of coveting another man's wife!"

Ralph pondered this vaguely logical nonsense.  Was this then what it was?  A weird theological joke? Tentatively he asked, "So if I understand you, instead of ignoring the Sabbath being on the seventh day, like I thought we could, it's the commandment about adultery we can ignore?  And that's in honor of Christ, same as I thought about the Sabbath being moved?"

Dr. Tobias frowned thoughtfully. "I guess it does boil down to that.  Christ did fulfill the Law, but we are still to follow it.  But to honor Him, we do go to great lengths to keep any man from being punished for adultery, and to do all we can to make coveting impossible.  And from what you're saying, you theologically agree in principle, but prefer that we not entirely follow the Sabbath commandment instead?  To also 'honor' Him?"

Ralph pondered this.  The priest was still speaking seriously, like this wasn't a joke.

4.

Ralph was sitting in Group, hearing about how someone's wife just wouldn't listen, and was convinced now that he was insane.  There was no way that everyone could be so thoroughly in on this weird and not even funny joke.  True, he at the least now had a healthy respect for why it would be best to follow all of God's laws, as wrote, not as interpreted.  Kind of funny to even call something "honoring" Christ, or to blame Christ for a change, when the "change" involved violating His Father's laws!

An orderly interrupted his reveries.  "Your wife is here, sir."  With a grunted "'scuse me", Ralph got up from his plastic chair and hurried over to the Visitation Room, eager to see his wife for the first time in two days. He went up to hug her, and the intern stopped that from happening, but not before he saw her flinch back. His heart broke.

"Honey, I'm sorry for scaring you, that wasn't my intention, but to see you dressed like that...!" he began. Sniffling a bit, like she'd been crying, she said, "I was dressed the way I was supposed to!  And how could you have called me that ugly name, or criticized me over your own son?"

His anger rushed up, in spite of his desire to be out of here and with her again.  "My son?  My son?  How sorry can you be for cheating on me with his father if you're going to deny it now?"

"Wait...what?" she began, "I never hid from you who the biological father was, I slept with George - yes, yes, a FedEx driver - at one of the Parish Orgies!  To hear you go on about it, I slept with him during the week!"

And with a flash, Ralph got it.  No, he was not aware of the nature of the omniverse or how one might find oneself slipping betwixt the alternates randomly.  But what he "got" was that no matter how, no matter why, whether it was a joke, a gaslighting, a scam or simply an insanity of his, that the world was now this way and that he'd better adjust to it.

Sabbath on Sunday?  That makes no sense when you think about it.  No one could seriously think that honor was done to Jesus by flouting the laws of His Father.  And likewise, these people were making the same mistake, but over something he was not used to.  Honoring Jesus by forgiving adultery each week, and making it impossible to covet, as you could freely have that which you otherwise would have coveted!

Madness!  You can't honor Jesus that way!  But here they do.  Here they do.  He clung to that as if a log in a raging river.  Here they do.  Here they do.  Deal with that, with what they are doing, not with what I think they should be doing.

"Honey", he said, in a different voice from before.  A calmer,  more rational voice, that caught her attention at once.  "I've been...been...not feeling well.  There's been some work stress.  I've not felt myself, that's the truth.  I'm sorry for what I've put you through, for you catching the brunt of it.  I think I'm feeling a bit more in control, though.  I know I need some aid."

She looked skeptical, but a bit hopeful.  "I think that you should stay here, just for a week or so for observation.  Then, Dr. Tobias says that if all goes well, you might be able to come home and have outpatient therapy twice a week.  I've already called your work, your insurance was paid up, so you've three months coming and they're nothing but sympathetic."

Ralph looked grateful.  All he had to do, he told himself, was keep reminding himself that it doesn't matter how or why things have changed or seemed to change.  The Sabbath commandment is kept here, the adultery one is not.  In fact, he thought - probably sinfully, as far as he was still concerned - it could even be fun, if that church secretary he always had errant thoughts over was still attending!

He nodded humbly to his wife, a tear rolling down his cheek, the tear being of relief that there was an end point in sight, that he'd not be here forever.  "Yes, yes," he said to his wife, "Whatever Dr. Tobias feels is best, that's what I want.  To get myself back in order and be there for you and...and..." She looked up sharply at him and he quickly finished, "...our son."

She beamed.

5.

It was Friday and Ralph was so glad to be out.  It was good not to be confined to a single floor any more and be told when to eat and when to sleep and when to go to the bathroom.  His sessions with Dr. Tobias had, he felt, gone well, though having to make up a narrative to account for his insanity had been difficult at first.

But with each group session, with each private therapy session, and with each bit of quiet time to rehearse things, his story and the delivery of it came easier and easier, so much so that after 90 days - he'd been in longer than his wife had told him it would be, but no longer than his insurance covered - it was easier to remember the narrative than what he still sometimes thought of as "reality".

He looked at his son doing his end of the week homework in the kitchen, though given how fast sunset was approaching, he'd need a light on soon.  He went ahead and turned the light on now and smiled briefly at his son before ducking out.

Yes, he told himself, his son.  James was not to blame.  Had she "cheated" on him, a word that no one seemed to know the meaning of but him?  Or had she got pregnant at a church event in which he was busy sleeping with another woman at the same time?  Either way, he had either forgave her or not minded, so it was best to put all that behind him now and just accept James as the innocent boy he is.

Idly he wondered how it was going to be this Sunday.  His first Sunday of freedom since what he thought of as "my episode".  He had gone online almost immediately upon being released, so that he could google how these orgies were conducted.  As usual, Wikipedia assumed that the reader knew nothing, which made it great for him.

Each parish had their own orgy each Sunday, said orgies lasting for one hour.  There were rules as to what you should not do.  You should not be with your wife at all for that hour.  You should not be with just one other woman for that hour.  There was no maximum number of women you could be with, but three was the socially accepted average.

Men picked the women, women could not decline without cause.  But if they didn't like the man, then they could opt for it to just be foreplay and that the first time asked also be the last.  A request rarely made, but always honored.

He was feeling an anticipatory shiver.  He was anticipating Marla, the church secretary, being there, and he had always, well, "coveted" her!  In theory, this would "cure" that, though he still didn't in his heart of hearts believe that any of this would be okay.  Still, everyone said it was okay, and there were pleasant sounding reasons, and the priest said it was all right, and bottom line?

How much effort does it really take to persuade a man that sin is not sin?  Never much, he thought.  Never much.  He'd apparently been sinning in Sunday worship - false memory, false memory, he silently admonished himself.  So now he could sin in adultery.  Because here they do, here they do, here they do!

He shivered.  Part still in fear over the strange three months, part at the thought of Marla.  Do all insane people wrestle this way?  Well, if it was this or the asylum, he'd stay out and say whatever he had to.  If the choice was between Group Therapy or Marla...!

He shivered yet again, this time at the thought of what a sinner he truly was.  He should not give in to this, just for having a carnal desire.  He should rather have spiritual purity in the asylum, then carnal pleasure for a brief time then Hell hereafter.  But...but he knew himself.  He knew he'd sin.  Not a sin, because here they do, here they do!  Not a sin!  Because here they do!  Maybe in enough years he'd believe that and quiet his conscience.

He was almost done with his walk, glad to feel the fresh air on his face and to see real sunlight, what little there was left of it.  You don't realize how valuable that is till you don't have it, he thought!  He stumbled briefly, and resumed his walk smiling at the laughter of a child across the street.  And unaware of the additional half glemmen he'd been shunted sidewise!

Darn eddies!

Seeing Marla across the street, he grinned roguishly, winked broadly and said, "See you Sunday!"  Her face instantly went cold.  Drawing from a concealed shoulder holster with a rapidity that was astonishing, Marla shot straight at Ralph's chest and the shot landed true.

A squad car that had just then been driving down the street screeched to a halt and two cops got out.  They looked at Ralph, laying there dead in a growing pool of blood.  They looked at Marla in all her curvaceous glory holding the smoking gun.

Glancing at his watch, the first officer said, "Good thing Sabbath is not for another five minutes!  Thou shalt not kill - on the Sabbath!"

"After all," the second officer said, "Christ fulfilled the Law!"

Left Behind

January 20, 2017:

Denny woke up with a start, it seemed as if some loud sound had awoke him.  He looked about his room with the sun only just now starting to brighten it, and shook his head in puzzlement.  A factory horn, he vaguely wondered, though he knew the factory had been closed for years.  Stretching, he put the memory - dream? - behind him and started his morning routine.  Which began with waking his husband.

Jim was piloting Oceania 921 at a steady 30,000 feet when it suddenly dropped several hundred feet.  I'm awake, I'm awake, he thought ruefully as he brought her back up and steadied her in the turbulence. Without being asked, his co-pilot was already calming the geese down with some tale of an "air pocket".  Truth is, he didn't know what had caused this, but it was over now, and he could get back to dreaming of his little side piece in Tokyo, and the rest of the flight would prove uneventful.

At a revival tent outside of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the crowd was being warmed up to a fever pitch as the Reverend Rich "Righteous" Richards was striding up and down the stage, calling upon the excited congregants to let the Good Lord hear how much they loved Him!  From the sounds of the Hallelujahs, Amens and Praise Jesuses, they apparently loved Him an awful lot!

Though had a pollster been gathering data on the crowd, he could have broke it down to 33% of them using alcohol and/or drugs with some degree of regularity, 32% of them cheating on their spouses or fornicating with their unmarried significant others, 21% guilty of a variety of petty thefts in all manner of situations, 11% currently indulged in beatings, bullyings and other forms of assault lumped under "domestic violence" and 3% who had raped.

Not that the entirety of that crowd was not also guilty of taking the Lord's name in vain and failing to remember to keep the Sabbath holy.  And there was the 75% of them who said that they were "more spiritual than religious" and that they could find and commune with God even at a fishing hole or shopping mall.  Except that none of them ever really did.

A sound man in the far back of the tent looked at the briefly fluctuating laptop screen, but then made a negligible adjustment to the bass and looked satisfied.

At NORAD, A1C Glenn Adams looked up in surprise from his iPhone with femdom leather porn dancing on the screen, but wondered why as no alarm had sounded, though for a second he had thought it had. Checking he noticed that some satellites that make up a part of the early warning system were reporting a missile, or at least an oblong object massing about 40 kilos (96 pounds), but wait, something was funny, it was rising up from somewhere in - North Dakota?  Now just who is attacking who and where is that missile heading?  Adams had just enough time to wonder that before it winked out at about 12 miles up.

Bruce and Jordan were arguing heatedly.  Bruce was the owner of what he called "the last family farm in Iowa" and Jordan was R. Jordan Williamson, in house counsel for a Big Agro company that had an unusually high love of copyright, patents, trade secrets and anything and everything related to growing corn.

Bruce was believing that he had a right to harvest anything that grew on his land, and Jordan was explaining that no matter how the seed was acquired, it still belonged to his client.  Bruce was of the opinion that Jordan's mom had not been a particularly virtuous woman, Jordan thought to himself that such was probably true, but pointed out to Bruce that he'd be back with the Sheriff all the same.

To say that both men were living examples of the truth of Romans 3:23 would be an understatement.  Bruce couldn't have the close relationship with his daughter Tonya that he used to, her having got into the Army as quickly as her dumb mom could sign the papers when she was 17.  But Bruce was lately developing an unhealthy interest in Tonya's sister Rhonda, just turned 13.

And R. Jordan?  Well, he's a corporate lawyer, right?  Enough said.

Both took their leave from that spat, without further incident.

All over the world that day, while about 1% of the populace seemed to have a moment of disorientation, it was nothing more than usually happens each day anyway, and for a million different reasons, and passed unnoticed.

February 3, 2017:

Tanner knocked for the third time on Mrs. Krebb's apartment door.  He figured that she probably just didn't hear him, but she sure seemed to hear her gospel shows okay, she had them blaring 24/7 lately, where it used to be she'd turn off her TV at 8pm each evening to go to bed.  Kind of unlike her to be so rude as to leave the set on to disturb her neighbors, but given the help and kind words she'd had for each of her neighbors over the years, no one had had the heart to complain to her these past two weeks.

Tanner used his passkey, he'd have preferred to leave it to another day, but his dad was adamant about the rent, and given that she'd not mailed it to them this time when it was due - another change, she'd always been so prompt - it was on him to go see to getting it.

"Mrs. Krebb?" He called out, but there was no answer.  "Mrs. Krebb, hello?  Hello?  Anyone home?" he called out repeatedly as only those who are going into another's house without permission ever do.  If he still expected a response, he was disappointed, as the small apartment was quickly seen to be empty.  It was neat, it was clean, the TV was blaring - he hastily found the remote and turned it off.

Silence fell, at first that was a relief, then it was a bit eerie.  The apartment was very neat.  Very clean.  By her recliner was a little end table where the remote had been on top of a King James Bible that looked like the giant kind in pulpits.  Oh, large print, he realized, seeing her open glass case - with the glasses still in it?

A drink, only half drunk, was also on the stand.  Cola.  Flat.

He spun about and immediately started calling out her name again, this time going back to the bedroom and checking the other side of the bed, that narrow space between it and the wall.  No body - wait, no Mrs. Krebb, he corrected himself!  He checked the closet, no one there - and all her clothes still there, and a suitcase on the floor inside there.

Her purse was also in there - with her pocketbook inside, and her ID and credit cards inside that.

He pulled out his cell phone and called the police.

February 28, 2017:

"I'm telling you, we have no leads, and yes, we're still working on it!", Sgt. Jennings said, sounding as exasperated as he felt.  "She may be visiting one of her relatives, and yes, yes, I know no one leaves their purse behind.  But no one kidnaps poor 68 year old women, either!  Now listen - people go missing every day, all over the world.  Mostly for harmless reasons.  So you quit calling me on this number and I'll call you if I hear anything!"

Tanner heard the hang up and winced.  He was 22 and had ambitions to be more than a landlord like Dad. He wanted to be a detective, and really thought his sleuthing at Mrs. Krebb's apartment was a step in the right direction of impressing the local police.  But according to the curt dismissal by Sgt. Jennings, he was starting to think that such was not the case.

Angrily, he left the office to go see his girl.  She'd better be home he thought.

March 1, 2017:

On this day there are approximately seven billion, four hundred and ninety million people on Earth.  And each of them was going about their business, and none was aware that anything at all was amiss.  Perhaps for the good reason that there was really nothing different about anything at all.  Thus as it had been, was thus as it was now, and - so they imagined - thus as it would always be.

But 50 miles above Earth and 32 glemmens to the sidewise, was a 68 year old lady from Bismarck standing in the gate of a vast golden city, a tall white robed man with a beard behind her and a host of angels behind them.

"I know I've had you look each day for 40 days now, but is there truly no one else to rapture?", Mrs. Krebb asked.  "No", replied her Savior sadly.  "No one at all."