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."
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