Uncle Joe found the seven commandments with the help of the black warrior ants, the ones with the red beetle helmets. The commandments were discovered in a black, 1993 Buick Regal, in the trunk.
Joe wanted to release the commandments to the world, but the ants disagreed. The Ant King, Enlil the Large, declared that the commandments were to become known only as time seemed right- as it rarely did anymore.
The ants were afraid that humans would worship the words and miss God again. Humans had done so much damage to the planet in the name of their Gods they could no longer be trusted to rule. After the Collapse, ants became the dominant species.
"Shut the Fuck Up", that was the first commandment. The ants thought it was clear enough even for humans to understand. But humans did not understand.
God hath decreed that human beings shall forever more: Shut the Fuck Up.
"You mean, we should find "Fuck" and shut it up?"
They debated. They wrote books. They gave speeches. They preached. They pondered. They worshiped the God "Fuck".
There were Baptist Fucks, Catholic Fucks, Muslim Fucks, Jewish Fucks, Unitarian Fucks, Evangelical Fucks, Atheist Fuckers, and about six hundred other Fucking Congregations. All the Fuckers were absolutely sure that their religion was the favored one of God.
One day while playing Monopoly, the conversation turned to religion. Faces froze. Biceps twitched. Fuckers started throwing abstract words at each other. The words got larger, heavier, and violent. Chairs started flying. Bibles got poked in peoples faces. This led to spitting and middle finger gestures and then they started burning rival Fucking churches full of women, children, and pets. They were just getting the S-Bombs out of storage when the ant police attacked.
The ants allowed human beings to have their Fucking Religions, but they quickly intervened whenever humans lost control. The ants, of course, were not pacifists. They had a long history of territorial warfare; they were heroic soldiers. The Collapse left them civilized and sophisticated. They no longer battled their neighbors. They were now a federation of black, red, and caucasian ants, fighting for the eternal good- as God wanted. From 2050 to 2070 they fought and annihilated the cockroaches, mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, and anteaters. They then turned their attention to humans; the next most powerful species on the planet after the cockroaches.
It would have been a long bloody war except for the coalition.
It gets quiet in the hospital sometimes. It's not all nursing and back rubs. Sometimes in the dark all you can hear is a hum, a sound shadow that is very ancient. If you stop being human and just melt into the sound, then you forget that your brother is dead. You can't hear your mother weeping and gasping for breath. You can't even hate the Stupid Fuckers. You fear nothing. Your pulse slows and you almost go away. I think that is where God really is, on the other side of that hum. Evidently, you can only communicate with God when you shut the fuck up.
Dear God,
I was just thinking about you, but you must have been busy, because the words just evaporated into the hum and no one picked up on your end. I was wondering where you live and if you drink Pepsi, like they claim in the commercials on the Mann Glasses.
Dr. Plutus, my shrink says that I am pretty good at beginnings, but I never get much beyond the title of my novel. He says he has sixteen different titles, twenty three first pages, three beginning Steven Ishmael Bibles, and reams of abusive material regarding God. He says I have a conduct disorder and that I fear authority. He says I keep trying to kill myself so I can be reborn.
What doctor Plutus and his professional colleagues do not understand is that there is no me. All the many me that used to exist are dead, and the new ones come and go so fast I hardly get to know us. They creep around in my skull and hide in the fissures.
Sometimes, I hear myself over there, and then I'm over here, and then there are six or twenty of me arguing whether to pee or have a donut or be a saint or fuck the nurse with the steam coming off her butt. How can you be a good guy when six of you are bad guys and three don't care?
You didn't come to Tim's funeral. You didn't donate six billion shekels to help the grieving family. You didn't even send flowers or an apology.
Where did he get a level five nanoblaster? Where could he have gotten the money to buy such a high tech weapon?
Who even had the expertise to put one together from all the scraps. There are so many dials on the weapon, it's hard to even figure out where the trigger is on the damn things.
I think you and I need to talk.
The next day in class, because we had survived orientation, we were issued our professional uniforms. It was not as exciting as I had anticipated. For one thing the green robes were three sizes too big; we looked like kids playing dress up. Each crown of thorns was designed not to fit upon the head, but to slip down and rest in front of the eyes, or on the nose, or it fell around the neck like a necklace. And the thorns were real; they were sharp and there were lots of them, most turned inward to slice against the flesh.
Alaster explained that as Potentials our stature was too small and our characters too insignificant for the robes and crowns to fit. Only a true professional had the body and maturity to wear Holy Robes. Potentials had to grow in character before they could fit into the uniform of a real professional.
We did get a certificate saying we had attained as first degree Nincompoops of the Royal Fanny of Fantasy; something like that. I threw mine in the trash.