The Lord has Left Us... - By Tom Oliver
'God? Who needs God?' I tell myself. I need no God. I tell the crowd, but the crowd won't listen. I avoid another stone, which crashes into the rostrum.
'Heeeathen!' 'Blaspheeemeeer!' 'Deeevil!' - The cries are increasing in volume.
'But...', I pitifully call, as if I was overwhelmed by sorrow, despite my advantageous position, 'There is NO God! I have seen the many troubles of this world and there is but NO God.'
The crowd mutters its disapproval and I'm forced to duck behind the stand again, as the metal keys, broken bricks and plastic cups cover the rostrum with litter. I raise my head again.
'The use of God, is to control your minds, not to free them! What happens to the faithless? If they can't protect themselves like me, they are killed and removed from society. Society is falling into the abyss...'
'The Abyss is where you belong, fool!' Cried one, picking up a pebble from the ruins on the right side of the street.
'Yeah! The Abyss...!' Cry the people, blind to their own words.
I try to reason with them, unsucessfully.
'What happened to all our fuels? Why've they stopped? What about electricity? The ruins - why can't we build anything anymore?' My voice seems lost and open, dispite the amplification.
'The Young Ones took them from us, you cretin!' A wizen old man shouted out to me from the angering crowd. 'They stole our light and took the word of the Lord away from us, and the Lord has left us...'
'It is not the Young Ones!' I roared, eager to convince people of the true way of things, 'but ourselves who lost the Light! We deserted all the services that didn't help us directly! No power production, no mining, nothing but farming and forestry! We are back to point zero!'
The crowd, many of whom were farmers, found this too much to take and began to attack my guards' positions. I despaired as the mindless fools tried fighting the guards' lasers. I told my guards to fall back to the shuttle and prepare to leave. I closed my briefcase and descended the rostrum.
The shuttle rose punctually, as always, and the masses that had gathered, with their farming implements and basic tools, had no one to fight - except themselves. The place erupted in violence and many died in the confusion. I sat in the wide seat, gazing at the clouds beneath me, as the shuttle returned to the stars, from where it had come.
I span the image of the world in my head and wondered where to try next. Cairo? Next year?
I felt tired from the endless denial, ignorance and hatred of the truth. The last of our world seemed back in the past. I turned and looked at my steel guards. They'd never replace those stupid farmers in the place of things, would they? It had to be humans that took humanity forward. Didn't it?
Copyright Tom Oliver 1998