this is kinda in collaberation with LRD since we were talking about aliens and came up with some really interesting ideas and he told me i should use some of them in a story. i barely ever write sci-fi anymore, and i'm trying to develop a broad social-scape in the next few paragraphs. i see it as more social fiction (and some sartire/humor) until the aliens are involved and it's more like just me writing about some of my worst fears (which a lot of this story will be) ... but comments and constructive criticism is greatly appreciated. thanks for reading!
~Laura
Kelly Hawkins was woken up at 7 AM by her husbands voice emphatically reciting his sermon from their bathroom, practicing in front of the mirror before he had to deliver it in front of their ever-growing congregation of believers at the Faddenville Christian Church in an hour. She knew hellfire and damnation awaited her for her whore-like indulgence of sleeping in late, but after seven months of pregnancy, shed found her energy wasnt what it used to be, and she thanked God for every morning she wasnt hurled out of bed at 5:30 to vomit.
Matthew has told us, Watch, therefore ye know not what hour the Lord is come. And we have watched. And we have waited. And we have followed the Lords path as best we could. We have been baptized and we have resisted temptation when offered and repented when we failed to resist. Yes, we have never failed to ready ourselves for the coming of the Lord, and welcomed it further with the gradual decline of this country into decadence and moral decay. And now, I believe as many others do, that we will wait no longer because the promise of the Lord has finally been visited upon us in the most mysterious of ways.
Visitors from the sky, Kelly sighed, as George Hawkins hollered it on the other side of the bathroom door. She shook her head as she threw back the covers and began her search for her maternity-church clothes before they left for the chapel in five minutes.
It had started at the meeting between the Christian Coalition and the Republican National Convention that previous October, a month before the 2016 election. The meeting wasnt really between anybody, considering the Republican party had all but officially joined the Christian Coalition earlier that year, but they just liked to use that word to trick people into thinking the church hadnt totally overpowered the state.
Actually, it started in 2010. After gay marriage and adoption being legal in America for several years and nothing in the way of severe population declines, epidemics of homosexuality in the countrys youth, or Apocalypses happening, the right wing got really concerned. Church memberships increased drastically and a bill was even passed to start teaching Intelligent Design in school. That was fought against like hell, but the renewed faith of the countrys Christians made them turn out at polling places like never before. Abortion, gay marriage and same-sex parenthood were all but illegal. Catholics, Protestants, Methodists - all the different groups ceased to exist because every different faction of the same religion came together to form the United Christianity. Jews and Muslims joined, too. The centuries of fighting in the Middle East were brought to a glorious end. But what it shouldve shown about the dangers of religion was inverted and it became a message about the wonders that faith in God did. It didnt help matters much that the American scientists who were all of the sudden developing both a way to end famine in third-world countries by adding enriching nutrients to infertile soil, and more advanced weapons that cost less to make were publishing studies that said God was real and being a Christian would make you a healthier and more mentally sound person. America was undoubtedly becoming the most powerful country on earth and giving the credit to God.
Atheists, Democrats, and all the worlds pagans came together as an opposition that wasnt strong enough to change things, but was at least strong enough to still have representation. They had legal rights, but not social ones. And still, the United Christian/Republican Party tried to get itself sympathy by claiming that it was the victim of an anti-Christian bias in this country. The Reverend Pat Robertson, whod been cryogenically frozen in 2006 and thawed out ten years later to run for president, tugged at the heartstrings especially well.
Itd been right in the middle of something he was saying at the aforementioned convention when the aliens made their first appearance.
After being asked if his Parkinsons would affect his term as President, Robertson was in the middle of chuckling,
No, the Lord just makes me shake like that when his microphone went dead. Noticeably confused, he tapped it a few times before it came back with a horrible crackling noise that was projected all over the convention hall. A second later, the Jumbo-Trons displaying his image went black and then showed images of stick-like gray beings with large heads and almond-shaped black eyes. The audience was a riot of fear and shock, as was the rest of the world. Every television on earth was showing the same thing, and when one of the stick-men started to speak, the message was delivered in every language so the entire world could be made aware at the same time:
They were a harmless race from a small planet called Slauteria, which had never been discovered because it was hiding in the shadow of Pluto. They were a defenseless people who had existed for about the same time as humans and had been following the same religion as them word for word for just as long. The Slauterians hadnt realized that the people of Earth existed until they heard religious radio broadcasts that were now of such a high frequency that they could be picked up throughout space. Since the Slauterians were so weak and the people of Earth were so powerful, they wanted only to join forces and be welcomed to Earth to join together on the common platform of religion.
There had been skepticism, but not for long. The humans soon viewed the coming of the Slauterians as the second coming of Christ and made preparations for their arrival on Earth, though population growth and depletion of natural resources was forcing the humans to look at colonization of Mars. Some scientists even prophesized that Mars would become the home of a human-Slauterian hybrid race.
~Laura
Kelly Hawkins was woken up at 7 AM by her husbands voice emphatically reciting his sermon from their bathroom, practicing in front of the mirror before he had to deliver it in front of their ever-growing congregation of believers at the Faddenville Christian Church in an hour. She knew hellfire and damnation awaited her for her whore-like indulgence of sleeping in late, but after seven months of pregnancy, shed found her energy wasnt what it used to be, and she thanked God for every morning she wasnt hurled out of bed at 5:30 to vomit.
Matthew has told us, Watch, therefore ye know not what hour the Lord is come. And we have watched. And we have waited. And we have followed the Lords path as best we could. We have been baptized and we have resisted temptation when offered and repented when we failed to resist. Yes, we have never failed to ready ourselves for the coming of the Lord, and welcomed it further with the gradual decline of this country into decadence and moral decay. And now, I believe as many others do, that we will wait no longer because the promise of the Lord has finally been visited upon us in the most mysterious of ways.
Visitors from the sky, Kelly sighed, as George Hawkins hollered it on the other side of the bathroom door. She shook her head as she threw back the covers and began her search for her maternity-church clothes before they left for the chapel in five minutes.
It had started at the meeting between the Christian Coalition and the Republican National Convention that previous October, a month before the 2016 election. The meeting wasnt really between anybody, considering the Republican party had all but officially joined the Christian Coalition earlier that year, but they just liked to use that word to trick people into thinking the church hadnt totally overpowered the state.
Actually, it started in 2010. After gay marriage and adoption being legal in America for several years and nothing in the way of severe population declines, epidemics of homosexuality in the countrys youth, or Apocalypses happening, the right wing got really concerned. Church memberships increased drastically and a bill was even passed to start teaching Intelligent Design in school. That was fought against like hell, but the renewed faith of the countrys Christians made them turn out at polling places like never before. Abortion, gay marriage and same-sex parenthood were all but illegal. Catholics, Protestants, Methodists - all the different groups ceased to exist because every different faction of the same religion came together to form the United Christianity. Jews and Muslims joined, too. The centuries of fighting in the Middle East were brought to a glorious end. But what it shouldve shown about the dangers of religion was inverted and it became a message about the wonders that faith in God did. It didnt help matters much that the American scientists who were all of the sudden developing both a way to end famine in third-world countries by adding enriching nutrients to infertile soil, and more advanced weapons that cost less to make were publishing studies that said God was real and being a Christian would make you a healthier and more mentally sound person. America was undoubtedly becoming the most powerful country on earth and giving the credit to God.
Atheists, Democrats, and all the worlds pagans came together as an opposition that wasnt strong enough to change things, but was at least strong enough to still have representation. They had legal rights, but not social ones. And still, the United Christian/Republican Party tried to get itself sympathy by claiming that it was the victim of an anti-Christian bias in this country. The Reverend Pat Robertson, whod been cryogenically frozen in 2006 and thawed out ten years later to run for president, tugged at the heartstrings especially well.
Itd been right in the middle of something he was saying at the aforementioned convention when the aliens made their first appearance.
After being asked if his Parkinsons would affect his term as President, Robertson was in the middle of chuckling,
No, the Lord just makes me shake like that when his microphone went dead. Noticeably confused, he tapped it a few times before it came back with a horrible crackling noise that was projected all over the convention hall. A second later, the Jumbo-Trons displaying his image went black and then showed images of stick-like gray beings with large heads and almond-shaped black eyes. The audience was a riot of fear and shock, as was the rest of the world. Every television on earth was showing the same thing, and when one of the stick-men started to speak, the message was delivered in every language so the entire world could be made aware at the same time:
They were a harmless race from a small planet called Slauteria, which had never been discovered because it was hiding in the shadow of Pluto. They were a defenseless people who had existed for about the same time as humans and had been following the same religion as them word for word for just as long. The Slauterians hadnt realized that the people of Earth existed until they heard religious radio broadcasts that were now of such a high frequency that they could be picked up throughout space. Since the Slauterians were so weak and the people of Earth were so powerful, they wanted only to join forces and be welcomed to Earth to join together on the common platform of religion.
There had been skepticism, but not for long. The humans soon viewed the coming of the Slauterians as the second coming of Christ and made preparations for their arrival on Earth, though population growth and depletion of natural resources was forcing the humans to look at colonization of Mars. Some scientists even prophesized that Mars would become the home of a human-Slauterian hybrid race.
