In 1975 Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson published The Illuminatus! Trilogy. It remains a seminal work of conspiracy fiction. Today, The Omnivore continues a serial-fiction experiment: Illuminoimia.
Everything You're Afraid Of Is True.
The Secretary of State meets with the President on Christmas Eve. He explains their places in the coming future and his view of the world to her.
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Previously On Illuminoimia
Ch 16: The True Kings of the World
Ch 17: The Second American Revolution
Ch 18: Angels In The Architecture
Ch 23: Riding the RailsCh 17: The Second American Revolution
Ch 18: Angels In The Architecture
Chapter 24: Inauguration Night
December 24th, Washington DC--The White House Presidential Bathroom
Evergreen stood in the president’s marbled private bathroom. Renegade was in front of her with his back turned, admiring himself in the mirror. He was snappily dressed--his butler having provided two strange metal cufflinks. She was sure, like the ring he wore engraved with a secret Islamic inscription and a thin blade used to make cuts that could mix infected blood, that these carried special symbolic messages for those who would pay attention.
She intentionally didn’t pay them any attention. She was furious.
“You son of a bitch.” she said. He practiced his winning smile as he admired himself.
“You know it,” Renegade said, spinning theatrically to point his finger at her like a gun. “A white bitch--but, yeah mos def still a bitch.” He winked at her and lowered his thumb, ‘firing it.’ Then he gave her a second look: “But what are we specifically talking about here?”
He turned sideways, checking himself again--brushing imaginary dust off his jacket.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go out to the Christmas Eve White House ball,” he said. “And then maybe I’ll come back--a little blow--bring in some of the--”
She cut him off. “I mean with Them.” She said. “I mean with the CDC.”
“Oh that. Yeah. I was going to tell you--don’t worry sweet-cheeks, you’ll be safe. I even got a space for the little girl. Hubby’s optional: if you don’t want him sequestered just say the word.” He adjusted a cufflink and examined it under the lights.
“Terrorists have distributed an infectious strain of swine flu. Blah-blah--we’re distributing a vaccine shown to work in most cases--blah-blah. There will be a government curfew on non-working days but we’ll compromise to effect a Friday sunset to Saturday sunset--leave the doors open for Sunday Mass.”
He winked.
She wondered if he knew that he was enforcing the Sabbath day observation under Moasic law. She imagined he was just doing exactly as he was told.
“National RFID chip implant for ObamaCare, baby!” He said the last with a vocal flourish when he voiced his own name. “If you want the vaccine you gotta take the chip--it’s completely voluntary!” He grinned, lopsidedly.
She forced herself not to stare. Mark of the Beast. It wasn’t like people hadn’t seen it coming--this was audacious though: would a terrifying flu and a withheld vaccine be enough?
“What about the rest?” she asked.
Renegade looked at her. “The rest?”
“A statue of yourself in Jerusalem? Two cherubic angels--the ‘King of Tyre’?”
He laughed. “There’s a plan for a United Nations basecamp--would you believe it--in Jerusalem Georgia. In LaGrange--population 29 thousand--it actually has transplanted catacomb stones and olive trees.” He grinned. “Gonna bulldoze that. For the compound, you understand.”
He flashed her the ‘gun’ sign again.
“They have some relics to set up--with the statues--including a big statue of me, I hear. Not as big as the Green Girl off New York--but we can do something about that too.”
She couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. He regarded her.
She held still--not trusting herself to speak.
Renegade: “Yeah. We’re going to do all the iconography there. They say it’s ‘charged’ enough or whatever. It’ll work. Once we exterminate the rebels--which’ll be soon--we set up shop.”
She had to say she was appalled at the blatant transparency of it all--but that was what he traded in, wasn’t it? A statue in Jerusalem--a throne with two angels--identical save for one with long hair representing the Morningstar--and a temple so thoroughly desecrated it would be considered by history to be an … abomination.
These were the acts of the anti-christ and Renegade was ticking through them one by one at the orders of his masters. Evergreen didn’t believe in magic--and she knew enough to know that the elites considered most of what was said about religion to be if not a lie, a complete misunderstanding--but she also knew that there were … patterns. That there were effects without causes. She knew that there were fragments of these things--these truths about the universe--in play like dark gravitic forces she could barely feel and neither see nor understand.
“Then what?” she asked--but she knew. She could feel the bottom drop out of her stomach.
“Then I become the Secretary General of the United Nations. You get picked to the be President of the United States--and that’s--” he snapped--”that. You come out of the shelters. We’ve divided everything up into prefectures. Disbanded congress. Suspended the constitution--no word on whether we can get a replacement in there so I can literally--you know--” he made an obscene wiping gesture with his hand--”with the real one … And you get to be Prez--for life.”
“And you?” She asked.
“I’m King of the World,” he said, clearly quoting The Titanic, arms outstretched.
He adjusted his tie.
“And the anti-christ.” She said. Her voice sounded hollow and unpleasantly resonant in the huge lavish bathroom.
He turned on her then, suddenly.
“You want to know something?” he asked her--suddenly sharp … bitter. She was seasoned enough not to flinch--she stared him down. “Do you want to know something true?” he asked her--taunting--but his eyes were alight with rage.
“Go ahead,” she said. She was wary. Had They revealed something to him? They must have told him things to get him onboard with the whole anti-Christ plan, she thought--but all the same she doubted they had revealed Truths to Renegade. She was pretty sure they saw him as a court jester rather than even the kind of ‘partner’ she was.
“You know where Liberals get religion wrong?” He asked. His voice inflection changed a bit--into the professorial speaker mode--into lecture. “They assume that there cannot be a Hell of eternal damnation and suffering because of God’s love.”
He looked at her as though to say ‘Point.‘
She looked back. She’d given up on the comforting idea of a loving universe long ago.
“But that is exactly the opposite. There is a Hell of unimaginable torment because of that very love.”
“We know that, for some of us, His love is very real.” He surveyed her. “We are told this by scripture and we know it in our hearts to be the truth.” He had the cadence going now. He was in front of his ever-adoring audience.
“The problem,” he said--he repeated himself, “the problem, is how to reconcile that love with the idea of eternal agony. How can it be,” he asked rhetorically, “that an all-loving being can condemn us to the fiery pit for time unending?”
“The answer,” he said, “is also straight forward and presented to us in the scripture: God cannot abide the presence of Sin.” He said it with capital letters. “This is the one thing an all-powerful, all-loving being is unable to countenance. He is so pure that He cannot stand us when we are laden and reeking.”
“So we must, if we are unshriven, exist outside of God’s grace.”
“Which brings us to our next player--the Morningstar--the greatest angel of them all--who was cast out.”
He turned slightly, striking a bit of a pose.
“This being is eternal--and was God’s greatest adorer--and has been rejected as utterly as anything could ever be. When we are rejected,” he said, “how do we react?”
He waited long enough that in the silence between them, Evergreen wondered if she might be required to respond. Thankfully he went on: “We become angry--bitter--and we seek revenge. We cut up all the clothes they left in our closets and throw their CD collections into the trash.”
“A Liberal,” he said, “if they even believe in God, will tell you that a being such as a great and mighty Angel would be so sublimely advanced that it could not fall to human pettiness--but that, simply, is not the case. Our divine traitor--Lucifer--is angry--beyond the scale of human imagining--but not the scope. He is impotent to attack his creator--but not, as it turns out, to hurt Him.”
“He does so--extracts his revenge--by harming--eternally--the very things that God loves--us. Hell is his revenge for being cast out. It exploits His eternal weakness--His love for us.”
His voice fell.
“I will become what they say,” he told her. “And I will go into protection when I die. The rest of you--you’re on your own.”
He turned and strode from the bathroom to his Christmas dinner.
She stood there in the now darkened room. I’m not even going to be elected, she thought He said I would be ‘chosen.’ Then she thought almost nothing for a very long time.
Continue to Chapter 25: The Nicest Man In The World Part 2
Continue to Chapter 25: The Nicest Man In The World Part 2
Huh. I wonder if he's right.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I like the Obama take. Not stupid, just intentionally shallow and very ruthless. Actually a (heretical) Christian, but willing to use Islamic iconography and so on.
One typo: you misspelled "angel" and "angle" once.
Thanks for the correction. We should get some insight as to whether he's correct or not ;)
DeleteThe Obama model is based on a set of 'allegedly real' "insider accounts" of the White House (I don't have the link handy--but they were unintentionally funny reading). He's supposed to have the Islamic inscription ring and I added to it the alleged blood-infecting ring some GLBT activists are 'supposed' to use ...
-The Omnivore
Meh. So-called "White House insiders" are either RNC plants like that guy in a squirrel costume who's been following HRC around at book signings, or else people who got fired for streaming Honey, Where's My Pants? at work.
DeleteNot that there's anything wrong with that! Oh wait, actually there is. A lot.
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