Kingdom of Ten Thousand Years

The Apocalypse came and the dead rose from their graves, but there was no Messiah.

So begins the plot of Kingdom of Ten Thousand Years, which Faye recently lent me. What remains after this resurrection-without-redemption is an extremely difficult politics as groups with entirely different understandings try to live in society alongside each other. Germanic tribes struggle to adjust to a world far too crowded for their migratory way of life. Renaissance thinkers leave tight-knit neighborhoods of their century's former inhabitants and wander through the cities, trying to take everything in. Ancient African nobles try to use their influence over former subjects to get nice jeeps and build McMansions.

Initially, twenty-first century governments stay more or less intact, but the issues of how to accommodate the extra billions of people reveal deep-seated differences between different segments of the never-dead population. How many inhabitants should an overcrowded Europe be allowed to send to America? How much religious freedom should be granted to the often shocking faiths of the past? Should divorces be handled according to the customs of the couple in question's time and place, or should society have one standard divorce law? And what about language--is there room in England for schools to teach Old English?

As the newly risen begin to adapt to the new system, vote, and attempt to assert their influence, the conflicts between centuries eclipse many old and bitter conflicts between contemporaries. Old rivals like the Medicis and Strozzis, for example, drop old differences to work together in defense of their worldview. Lancaster and York, Mughals and Marathas, likewise see each other in a new light. Twenty-first century U.S. Republicans and Democrats begin to feel they have more in common with each other than they had ever thought possible before, and that have hard feelings for the nineteenth-century versions of their parties, and some progressively serious differences with many of the Founding Fathers. Trust between these different factions erodes quickly as levels of violence increase...

The story that eventually unfolds is one of increasingly repressive and brutal autocracy by the natives of the present and their allies in the face of a thousand challenges from the past. But it reads as particularly poignant because as a twenty-first century reader, you tend to side with the never-dead in the book. How are they supposed to react when the standard levels of domestic violence in medieval ghettos escalates into a pattern of murders of wives and daughters who try to leave? And how are they supposed to react when virulently anti-Semitic Christian extremists from the early Reformation period assassinate a Jewish scientist as part of what turns out to be a plot to get their hands on a nuclear bomb?

This is one dark and wild ride through the future into a churning mess of the past.

Dinner with Peter

Met up again with Peter last night (thanks, by the way, to Lonnie for her advice to keep up contact with him). He's a little disappointed that another year is ending and the world isn't ending with it, but his vision of the Apocalypse is still strong.

The days are coming, he tells me, when restraint and righteousness have been delayed too long, when the earth runs dry and the blood in human veins runs cold, when brother will fight brother to the death over a glass of clean water, when the piece of technology children most long for is a sharp knife. In those days, he says, women will have nothing but sackcloth left to wear, will have their faces covered in ash and soot as soon as they step into the air outside. In those days, food will carry with it the taste of desolation, night will hang so thick it's hard to see the moon rise red, hearts will groan because they are too tired to break. In those days, prayers will only be whispered because of the scorn that will follow anyone who still believes in a good God.

Then comes the miracle. Cities torn asunder as primeval forests spring at once from the ground; the atmosphere aflame, burning itself free of toxins. The earth closes her wounds, swallows her scars. Adam returns to the world he once knew to meet his descendants, who are rising from their graves, whose spirits are pouring out of the Ganges into resurrected life.

Apocalyptic reminiscence

The sun shined red through the smoke of wildfires last night and a deer crossed the road in front of me on my drive home several hours later. Both are signs of impending apocalypse: deer, for example, are known to be demons (they get so desperate here in winter that one almost hit me as I was walking from Nicole's house to my car). Red suns, while less foreboding than blood red moons, are similarly bound to signify something.

The whole thing makes me miss the Club. Maybe I'll see if Peter's free for lunch later this week to catch up or something.

Or maybe I'm just being silly. Maybe it doesn't make sense to feel, in every unexpected astronomical event or cervine encounter, an impending & radical change. Maybe it doesn't make sense to miss old friends over silly little things like a few forest fires.

Maybe I won't call Peter after all.

It's not just a balloon--respect the Apocalypse

Rough meeting at the Apocalypse Club yesterday; I think we'll be breaking up. Tina suggested that our main priority should be getting more people to attend Neil Gaiman's Apocalypse Party; Ben said that was ridiculous, and a horrible way to promote the End of the World; a third member (who will remain unnamed) suggested that each of us say what we wanted out of the Apocalypse and then take a vote on what our goals should be.

Turns out we all expect completely different things and our Apocalyptic cooperation has been a sham all along.

So farewell to Gloria's muffins of doom, which made morning meetings oh so worthwhile. Farewell to the gloom and doom of Fay, and the ecstatic anticipation of Peter and Paul. Goodnight blood red moon we've had evening meetings watching for. Good night one-legged cow of dharma who will not be able to jump over said moon until the end of the current Kaliyuga. Goodnight bear and good night chair (I don't know what those have to do with the Apocalypse, but that's what happens when you get yourself stuck in a children's book.)

Maybe it's not so bad if the world doesn't end just yet.

Motivating America

Listened to NPR on my way to the BYU Apocalypse Club meeting this morning...they interviewed this guy named Michael Shellenberger, of the Breakthrough Institute, who said that the trouble with preaching global warming is that guilt and doom only motivate a small percentage of Americans. That is, admittedly, shameful and foreboding, but probably worth acknowledging.

Shellenberger has decided to shift his focus from direct discussion of global warming to positive, opportunity-based discussions about investing in research on cleaner new technologies. That's more resonant with the American Spirit, he said. We like to invent stuff; we don't like being told the world is going to end.

Which has me thinking about how we at the Club could recast the Apocalypse as an opportunity for America...maybe we could get people to fund one of the horseman, so they could feel some sense of accomplishment when the plagues and wars come....hmm....