Set-Up
Part 2: Gabe’s Blog
Part 3: Erix Blog
Part 4: Tom’s Blog
Part 5: David (care of Troy’s Blog)
Part 6: Sam’s Blog
***
Mark David Chapman puts away his smoking revolver and opens his cell phone. “It’s done, Master.”
Half a world away Pato Hoffman smiles. “Very good,” he replies. “Now prepare yourself…they are coming. And Mark?”
“Yes, Lord.”
“If his son gets in the way…you know what to do.”
Hoffman hangs up the phone, satisfied–but wondering how it’s all going to work out in the end.
To Be Continued…
***
The sun is beginning to drop below a beautiful white plain of clouds. A jet flies quietly across this dramatic skyscape.
Inside, a weary John Travolta checks his dials and read-outs. Sighing, he removes his headset and combs his hand through his unwashed hair. He looks behind the cockpit at his weary passengers. Cruise is asleep with his arms crossed and his feet kicked out. Foster has curled up around his boots like a puppy beside a warm fire. Travolta looks back out at the sky…
WWWRRRMMMMMMMMMMUUUUMFFFFFF
A deep sound groans from far away, waking Cruise and Foster. The sound continues for almost a minute, traveling up through their bones. They look nervously at one another. Looking down, Travolta notices that every indicator on the dashboard is spasming- flickering back and forth without rhyme or reason. The plane begins to shake and shudder. An alarm sounds from the dashboard and the plane fills with blinking red light.
Outside, as the tiny wedge of sun that remains above the clouds lowers to darkness, the small Cessna Jet dissambles in mid-air. Every individual part and piece flies apart and further decomposes into dark clouds of particles. The mass of darkness, among which are three crimson-colored spheres of disintegrated matter, begins to float down towards the earth…
Chapman smiles at the complicated digital readout on his iPhone.
“It truly does work.”
He scrolls for a moment through the phone’s contacts and makes a call.
“Yes master, they have been taken care of. The remote focusing system appears to work perfectly. The second test is complete. No, I don’t believe The Son was onboard. The GPS readouts indicated that they stopped at Travolta’s mansion, perhaps he could be found there? I shall investigate. Yes sir.”
The circle of blood grows wider around Mrs. Travolta’s head as Chapman makes his way down the stairs. At the bottom is an ominous steel door with a touch-screen keypad in the center. On the right of the display is a single blue post-it note which reads,
“Honey, Don’t feed the Christ-Child. But if you need to get in- 188389888. Luvs, Johnny T.”
Chapman smirks and punches in the code. The door slides aside, behind it a room, ten feet by ten feet and stark white. In the middle of the floor- a hog-tied Jesus. Chapman smiles.
Jesus awakes to find himself hand-cuffed to a cushy leather office chair. Before him is a beautiful mahogany desk, almost as large as his father’s. The elegant nameplate reads, “Pato Hoffman” in a cursive script. The Firstborn Over All Creation darts his head around looking for other features but the room, while classy, is non-descript. Besides the nameplate, all that lay on the desk is a glass of water and a ball-point pen.
Christ’s eyes grow wide as he hears a door open behind him.
“Have section 8 checked and re-checked. I want the results, as well as today’s news feed routed to my desktop within the half hour.”
SLAM
“….Jesus!”
From behind the chair emerges Pato Hoffman. His long hair flowing behind him, he walks behind the desk and pulls out his Emperor-worthy chair. As he sits, his beautifully-cut suit folds just right.
“…Jesus.”
Pato smiles.
“Feeling lonely?”
“Fuck you.”
The smile widens. He picks up his glass of water and begins to take a sip, pausing with the glass at his lips. Looking down, he smirks and sits the glass, now filled with blood-red fluid, back on his desk.
“I wouldn’t expect He Who Died for Our Sins to have such an unholy mouth.”
“Suck my dick, Hoffman.”
“I think not, Nazarene. Today is my day. It is my dick that shall be sucked. I will have my revenge. I SHALL BE THE MEDIATOR OF THE FINAL COVENANT.”
“Father and I made the correct choice when we gave Phillip Seymour the talent…”
“Dare you mention his name!” Hoffman slams his fist on the desk, knocking loose a single strand of beautiful ivory hair. He composes himself and combs it back into place, “I have killed your father, Rabbi, and your power is uprooted. I have already won and I will not allow you to spoil my victory. You are here to bare witness to my triumph and to allow me the satisfaction of having the King of Kings watch me take his father’s place. My revenge is complete.”
Jesus spits onto Pato’s desk, narrows his eyes, and whispers, “You’re full of shit, and I will kill you.”
Hoffman’s smile returns, and he chuckles. After breathing in this beautiful moment for a few more pauses, he stands and walks behind Jesus’ chair. He places his hands on the Savior’s shoulders.
“You should have done a few more pushups Christ, instead of sitting there at the right hand. You’ve gotten scrawny. BOYS!”
Two burly men enter the room and move to either side of Jesus.
“As I give you your tour, Dismas and Gestas here will make sure you don’t make trouble. Now, if you will, I’m going to show you the means by which I will take the place of your fallen father.”
Having unlocked the handcuffs, the burly fellows haul Jesus up by his shoulders and walks him out of the room. Hoffman follows behind, chuckling as he closes the door. The empty room, with it’s empty chairs, and empty desk, save for the glass of wine, grows silent…
“16 miles of genius,”Hoffman beams, “16 miles of unbroken, unprecedented genius”
“What the fuck is this thing?” Jesus demands.
“This is my key, Nazarene. This is MY Alpha and Omega. It is with this beautiful machine that I shall take my rightful place as head of all things.”
“What. The fuck. Is this thing?”
Pato, Jesus, and the two burly men stand on a steel deck, stretching out over a a cold room. In the center of the room is a massive metal cylinder, covered in readouts, pipes, hoses, cables, and all manner of equipment. The cylinder extends into the wall on each side of the room. Pato has his arms stretched out, grasping the railing of the deck, surveying the machine. Suddenly, he spins around to face the Christ.
“This is the Large Meme Collider, Jesus. The Large Meme Collider.”
The good shephard raises a single eyebrow.
“It didn’t take long after the emergence of the internet for us to realize it’s true unforeseen potential, Big J. This is the natural conclusion of that realization.”
“Who is WE?”
“Ha ha. I’m not a fucking Bond-Villian, J. Though, I did audition once for… either way…. You don’t get every answer.”
“Then what’s with the fucking machine?”
“That, I will tell you.”
Hoffman lightly trots down the stairs on the side of the deck, down to the lower-level floor. He walks besides the steel behemoth and runs his hand lightly down the side.
“Culture, oh lamb of god, is the most powerful force man has at it’s disposal. You know this, as it was the culture of the church that instated you and your father in the first place! Times have change though, and I’m sure you’ve noticed? Have you and Daddy been feeling faint for the last century or so, Big J? Hahahaha…. Surely you’ve felt the mass cultural tide of the internet growing?”
Jesus simply scowls. The truth is beginning to hurt.
“Focus! Focus, Jesus. Focus is what the internet lacked from the start! While the ability for billions of humans to communicate with unprecedented instantaneousness represented a power never before seen in history, with no focus…. it was worthless. WE… heh heh….. WE have had the idea and the technology for this machine for decades, but no energy process man has yet invented was capable of providing the enormous amount of power necessary for it to function. However, it came to me, if proper focus could be brought to the World Wide Web… then a power source like no other would be available.”
“So we set out to bring focus to the untamed ocean. We started with 4chan… and immediately our success was impressive. From the very first moment we could tell, there was no stopping us. We moved on, created more. Email Forwards, .GIFs, and an entirely new culture of message boards! Hamster Dance! LOLcats! Goatse! Ron Paul! Facebook! Myspace! It all worked beyond our wildest dreams. Soon our meme’s could be found in every tube in the series! Finally, our ultimate triumph…. a tool that would allow for the most effective dissemination of Memes yet! A tool that would have memes emerging on their own, with no prodding from us! Simple, beautiful, sublime…. YouTube. And Christ, Christ did it work. All the while, we worked on our beautiful machine. However, when it was done we were presented with a new challenge. We were able to explain our 16 mile long machine to the elitists and intellectuals with scientific physics mumbo-jumbo, but what about the very culture we were harnessing… How would we hide it from them?”
Pato gives another wide smile and begins walking up the steps on the other side of the deck, having made a complete circle around the room with his dramatic speech. He continues as he steps up.
“It is said Jesus, and this is your area of expertise so perhaps you can confirm it… It is said, that the greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world he didn’t exist. With this in mind, we hid the machine that would end the world in plain site, behind a meme! A meme revolving around the Large Hardon Collider and it’s impending apocaplypse. How perfect that the tool of our creation, our memes, had so organically saved us again! We hid our machine and its purpose, behind the machine and its purpose! I have to say, I impressed even myself with that idea. The set-up complete, we’ve been charging the machine for months. Our own meme, of the LHC itself, provided the final crest of energy that we needed.”
“It was time to test the machine, Jesus. We couldn’t outright kill God himself, we had to test it first. Unfortunately, we knew that turning on the machine would alert the sleepy old bastard to it’s existence! He would know what we were up to, and erase everything before it could truly begin. So, we gave our machine a smaller task for it’s first test. Firing up the Meme Collider, we pulled God from his heaven and brought him down here, to mortal level.”
“Our tests weren’t without their repercussions, Jesus. Our tests have made waves around the world. Hell, our last test, which dispatched your three friends I might add, nearly destroyed the world economy! Heh heh. But no matter, God was now a man, subject to mortality like any other. The plan would continue. Of course, I wouldn’t want to rip off the Clerks guy, so I just had my assistant blow his head off, instead of some stupid coma plot.”
Jesus drops to his knees, “Noooo!”
“HA HA HA HAAA! IT’S OVER JESUS! YOUR GOD IS DEAD, AND ONLY A FEW PEOPLE CARE! My beautiful machine pulled him from heaven on it’s first test cycle! At full power, it will be nothing at all for it to materialize me in the All-Father’s place! I will be God, and you will watch.”
“YOU COCKSUCKER! I’LL STOP YOU!”
Gathering sudden strength, Jesus flips the burly men head over heels and they both slam onto their back. Jesus darts his head towards Hoffman, who smiles one final time.
BEEP.
Pato relaxes his finger, and slides it from the button in the center of the tiny remote in his hand.
WRRRRRMMMMMUUUFFFFM
The machine starts to give off a faint hum that begins to build. Within moments, it begins to take on the familiar tones that were the last sounds heard by Cruise, Travolta, and Foster.
“Nooo!”
Jesus runs at Pato like a bull, eyes fierce with fury. With barely a wave of his luxurious hair, Hoffman snaps out his hand, grabs the Christ by the throat and clotheslines him onto the ground. He squats down, leaning his head into Jesus’ ear and whispers,
“I win.”
Jesus’ eyes narrow, “Oh no. You lose.”
Pato whispers acidly, “I am God, and you are an orphan. Just relax, and die like the rest…”
“You can’t be God if you’re fuckin’ dead,” With infinite grace, Alpha and Omega, Almighty Advocate, Author and Perfecter of our Faith, the Passionate Christ plunges a ballpoint pen into the throat of Pato Hoffman.
Hoffman jerks, slides back, and sits on his ass. He stares at Jesus blankly as blood streams and gobs down his throat. Without a word, he wavers and falls back on his back. His face loses it’s color, and the architect of the end of the world dies.
With hands the bloodiest they’ve been since Golgotha, Jesus sits back, his father avenged. He looks toward the Large Meme Collider and the situation returns to him. He leaps up, dives down the steps, and runs towards the behemoth….
Jesus has stopped. He is no longer moving towards the machine, in a giant sterilized room. He is somewhere else. He feels a familiar clarity, that of being everywhere, and everything. He sees all sides of all things, feeling all time that they will and have inhabited. He feels the consciousnesses of six billion other beings, and for a brief moment…. All is one.
As that moment ends, so does the universe….
***
To Be Continued…. Right here.
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