kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"IfGodFallsDownOnMe"

words

If God Falls Down on Me (with pasi parnanen) Sep 30, 1999

He spoke to a rail-gun sitting on a Japanese tatami. He hated Japanese tatamis because they were too small for him to sleep on. He hated the officers because every time he got a room with cheap, big, Chinese tatamis he worked so well that they rewarded him by transferring him to a room with the more exclusive Japanese tatamis. He hated the fact that he always worked well when he could sleep well. He hated life for dealing him with bad cards every one of his 59 years, like dealing him the young, ambitious and unexperienced officers he now had. He hated the army although he had nowhere else to go and no-one waiting. He hated cleaning guns that never would be used with gear that never got old enough to get a soul. And he especially hated cleaning photo-magnetic rail-gun.

All this he told the humming rail-gun with its tip pointing at his forehead, and it listened well, all through the shouting, the crying and the sobbing. It also listened to the oath that Captain Chung Tee Leng made to himself that night on a Japanese tatami, that he would end his misery himself if God wouldn't give him something better to do.



He was the chosen. The Voice had saved him from being just a visitor at his fathers church, saved him from boredom and mediocracy and brought him to the new Eden. Soon she would come to him at the mountain chapel, and nothing could stop him from getting there.



Anna woke up and reached for her watch. It was wet. She got up slowly to avoid the worst effects of the arthritis and yes, there was a damp circle on the table-cloth about the size of a serving plate. She couldn't see any crack in it, but maybe the glass was broken.

She fluffed the pillow and folded the sheets two hands from the top, wiped the table and replaced the table-cloth with another looking almost the same. She kept thinking of the leaking glass. Where should she put it? She hadn't seen a glass break since she came to the Voice decades ago, and there might be nothing wrong with this one either. She shrugged, put it on the kitchen table and returned to her morning ritual.

She walked into the garden, carefully stepping on the rough stones that the Voice had put there to care for her old feet. The path bent as it passed a willow and she stopped to admire the shiny bronze lizard that was coiling around it. Somebody must have been hammering that sculpture for years to make all those details. Every scale seemed to be unique in shape and luster, and its eyes were almost alive. She left her nightgown there on the hooked tail, as always, because the last steps to the water should be innocent, as the Voice wished: bare like a newborn and quiet like a last breath.

She washed fists, feet, face and 'forbidden' in the small pond so that she could step into the waterfall without guilt. She just relaxed for a while as it kneaded the stiffness out of her shoulders before lifting her left hand in the first gesture of Qi-Gong. Even with the soothing flow of warm water it was painful.

The lizard watched her with its blue glass bead eyes. It caught her every move from its place on the old, crooked tree and registered them thoroughly. At the 'sweeping of blood' it dropped the nightgown on the grass, climbed higher up into the leaves, secured itself around a thick branch six feet up and activated the process by breaking off a twig.

Anna gasped as the wave of cool slime reached her and pushed her down to her knees. The ground opened beneath her and she fell with the flood of mucus and water through a long twisting tunnel that knocked her head against the tunnel wall and rendered her unconscious.



Michelle watched the old woman slide deeper out into the shell of the space station. Anna would find a good home waiting for her, somewhere.

Things were slowly getting out of hand. She'd been able to delude herself for a long time, but she had to admit now that she'd found no cure for the disease. There was no way that she was going to find it. She was saving those she could.

"Like an egg from an ovary" she thought to herself and returned to self-diagnostics. She'd lived far longer than any woman did, but her interests were unflagged. She'd wanted to know everything. Maybe she'd put too much effort into exploring Pandora's box. Possibly.

She wiped a tear that ran down her chin. She felt sorry for herself and for all those that had chosen to follow her, that depended on her for salvation. Their Voice would follow her to the forever, silent, and she hoped that they could forgive her for what she had done. She hoped that they would survive.

Anna, reached the end of the tube and Michelle made sure the breather would supply air to the sleeping beauty before she secured her inside the gel, injected a complex combination of antibodies and pain killers and sealed the capsule with a kiss. She was acting fast enough to avoid the disease here, at least. There were no cracks in the shell.

The wind picked up as the gate slowly opened. Michelle looked out through the airlock door and sang silently to a computer at the United Nations headquarters, hundreds of miles away. Acknowledgement of the message released the capsule in the torrent of escaping atmosphere and returned her to her chores.

Back on the bridge Michelle prepared to fire the main rockets. She knew she had to do it just right or she would collide head on with the IA-5994. She activated the engines and screamed in pain as she felt herself cracking into two major parts. The rockets turned her around and below she could see her dying garden barely missing the industrial platform and falling towards Earth.



They walked the path of red boulders in silence and gathered in the chapel on the top of the mountain. At the top they spoke some, in whispers, waiting for a divine sound as they entered the crowded chapel. On this day and right here the Voice would come down to touch them.

The elders initiated the praying. Silence fitfully descended until all they could hear were birds singing and a breeze blowing through the maples.

A roar like that of a starting orbiter broke the silence.

"It's close", someone whispered as they all stood up in prayer. The noise rose until suddenly the roof went flying and their God, the Voice, spoke to them, burning their ears with divinity so they would hear no evil again.

The splinters flew through the deafening roar as the eldest fell to their knees at the altar. In a second there was a pack of four demons where they had been and as fingers on the same hand they reached into the shockwaves. The unhuman four touched everyone inside the chapel from altar to entrance in less than a second, stopped at the back wall and fell like soot to the floor next to the shoji panels.

A skinny beauty queen was completely a skin without a single hair on her body, and her lips were blood red dripping down into her full cleavage as she screamed. The loud pimp that never could keep his mouth shut sat with his hands in his crotch quietly bowing in a circle made of his very own love handles. A fireman breathed fire like his green and golden dragon tattoo.

Martin Hanssen stood outside the rice paper wall with a loaded pump action shotgun. The Voice had told them that he was the chosen. He waited patiently and when the sound blanker decreased its effect he listened a few seconds to the screaming from inside the chapel. She had kept her promise to him and he wouldn't punish them further.

He walked down into the forest, praying for the souls of those in there who did not believe.



Chung Tee Leng watched the newscast in the Blue Dragon teahouse. Some of the guys were working the graveyard shift, but the rest of them were at the WickedWicked bar further down. They had a bigger screen to watch there, but he didn't feel like drinking tonight.

"Families are being sundered under the pressure of the falling station. Most people flee for the stars or the quarantinic bomb shelters, but a few stay. They refuse the government handouts that would provide them a new life or at least safety for the moment. Some stay out of disbelief or apathy, others stay to wreak vengeance on the so-called 'meek' for their apocalypse."

The tea tasted good, but it was hot.

"All possible steps are being taken to ensure the safety of the public, but a major portion of the space station is heading for earth and it is very unlikely that anything can be done to prevent the re-entry."

He chose another of the slashdot reporters.

"The section is coming down, but in pieces. Some small parts will reach us first, followed by bigger chunks that will draw lines across the nightsky. The section that is coming down is a garden, so the rumors spreading about the dangers that might be contained in it are likely exaggerations."

Chung liked that female reporter, she knew what she was doing. She carefully avoided the scary stuff like possible Nano-Flus, and Killer-Fog. She even made people forget the sheer mass of that thing.

A man and a woman sat down at the table next to him. She had the plain beauty that was so typical for the Voicers. They spoke quietly to eachother but he had no problem hearing them.

"Some orbiters were struck down in mid-air. That was shown on prime time, in front of children, like showing fireworks! Others barely made it..." he said.

Chung turned back to the screen.

"...and of the ones that make it, many are ostracized... either by themselves for their possible sin of running away and eternal damnation and such, or by others who blame them for the catastrophe. The stations are filled with refugees from every corner of the world because of the Voice."

The young woman started crying.

"What good is your military training now, Chung?" he thought to himself and left them alone.



It was Sunday dinner at the Hanssen house.

"The meek shall inherit the earth, dad. We stand under the same roof and are of the same blood. Can you not see the miracle that is happening before you?"

"This is the world given to the true Christians", he said, "not to be stolen by some cult of voice listeners."

His wife screeched at the outrage, "Jeremiah!"

Martin was used to fighting bitterly with his father, the famous network baptizer, often shouting at him in anger. But now he was calm. He did not expect to convince his father. They had had this battle many times but he was among the lost now.

"I met the Voice this morning and I'm meeting her again tonight."

Jeremiah Hanssen stood up and pointed a chubby finger at his son.



"Your Voice is not the Lord!", he preached at his son, "Judgement is coming for you, like it did to those at Red Mountain!"

"Your church has become the oppressor," Martin retorted. "We, the church of the Voice, are the righteous and angry now." He stepped out into the hallway.

Jeremiah followed him, refusing to let the subject drop.

"Your Voice is not the Lord! If God falls down on us today, he will fall on you and your Voice! Judgement is coming for you!"

Anna's capsule was recovered by a Chinese shuttle after an anonymous tip and quickly taken to the United Nation Space Station Ming-I. Once on-board, the crew tried to find an opening in the shell. Suddenly she ran out of air inside the bubble and was drowning in front of their eyes.

"Aside" a dark, broken voice said and even the older among the officers gave him room. A big man like Captain Chung deserved respect, and two-hundred-pound titanium rail-guns did too...

Without a single second of doubt he positioned and aimed the device at the capsule. He leaned his huge body hard on the end of the death-bringer and pushed the activator. One second he stood at the back end of what looked like a steel bar, the next he was at the capsule, reaching in for an almost invisible lever through the rain of steel balls. He was inside the shell before it was completely open, dragging the naked, bloody and slimy Anna out along with the breather tube.

Years of military training kicked in and he kissed her for life. Once, twice and again. He felt her soft lips against his own and breathed into her. He felt her fragile neck in his big hands and breathed again. He pushed the spot behind her ear that his grandfather taught him and that he'd forgotten. He breathed, through the memories of his grandfather Chung Ling Weh showing him the ancient knowledge of healing. He saw old papa Weh point at the nerve centre below the breast and his fingers remembered how to push. And he kept on breathing.

Then she pushed her head into his hand and breathed his air. He held her firmly in his grip as she coughed up the fluid from her lungs and kept holding her until the medics carried her away to the ICU. She looked at him from the stretcher and waved faintly. He waved back as long as he saw her. He couldn't take his eyes off her.

He looked at the door for a long time after it shut behind her and then got back to work. He walked to the capsule and looked in. On the inside of the door there was a text saying: "Remember me, Anna. Remember me as one you loved now that I'm leaving because i truly loved you".

He broke off the door, put it like a fruit bowl on the floor and put the first of seven thousand steel balls in it. Tonight or maybe tomorrow he would sleep on Chinese tatamis again courtesy of UN military rail-gun regulations, but he knew he would sleep well tonight. He smiled and picked up another ball.



A diagnostics program gave her a surprise. She was a mother. A part of her, a tiny group of nanobots, fell with a part of the garden. Saved from her immune system by the separation.

"I love you, little one", she said, trying the radio frequencies.

A clear blip with coordinates answered her from out there, and she homed in on it in nanoseconds.

"Yes, you are going down. Don't be afraid, you can do it."

She wasn't as sure as she sounded. What help could she give it? She had only slightly more than reflexes left and she wasn't sure if she still could calculate the descent. communications worked well, but most of the machinery twitched in Multiple Sclerotic reflex.

A burst of signals on several bands calmed her. Her little one was aware of its situation and had been making its first telemetry. She answered it with the basic formula for orbital calculations and the exact coordinates for the landing.

"Treasure life, little one, because life itself spared you this day."



There was a crowd on the observation deck, clinging to the remains of their lost faith, and eachother. A silent group of refugees watching their salvation disappear into the blackness of space as their god was dying.

Anna took Tee Leng's big hand as they watched the home of the Voice sail away.

Suddenly a huge explosion flooded the room in a bright light. Chung wrapped his arms around Anna and held his own eyes closed.

"Don't look at the light" he shouted to the rest of the room, tightened his grip around Anna when she tried to look, and promised himself that he would always protect her.



Martin Hanssen stared upwards. The sunset sheen of reds and purples that filled the sky was by no means natural. It was a miracle heralding the coming of the Voice. She had already rid the Earth of non-believers, even those wolves who had hidden in the flock. Now she was going to cleanse the world with her powers, and bring mankind back to Eden. His eyes fixed on a small dot slowly expanding in his vision. Suddenly, there was an explosion that bathed his face with a tingling warmth. All he could see now was that explosion, flickering before him. She was coming to him.

A new nano-life kept the fragment of a plasma shield angled to the heat, took its first flight surfing in on a hyper-sonic wave, carefully aiming at the landing coordinates provided by its mother.

Martin Hanssen stared blindly upwards, his heart catching in his throat. He had been gifted with the divine sight of the Voice, and soon was going to feel her chaste kiss. His eyes held nothing but her beauty, his ears nothing but her whispers.