Homer Milton Dante and the school's totally truthful documentaries (Astronauts and Snakeheads)

Mockumentary

The school that I attended was a good old-fashioned private religious one that did not believe in teaching the science of the Free American Islands, nor it did not have any trunk with that nonsense that Denver was actually a Free City-State. No, my mom made sure that me and my siblings were sent to a proper school with spankings, scrounging, confession, and enough misread Christianity that you could choke a horse. Anything less would dishonor her and her ancestors who only worshipped one of the three faces of the Jealous God and came from the real America. Someday, the illegal and pirate-ran government of Free Denver would fall and she (not us) would be welcomed back into the loving arms of the only proper way to run a society. Therefore, my siblings and I had to be properly educated, so that we would not bring any shame to her.

Part of a proper education was the mandatory annual protest about the horrors and child slavery practiced by the astronauts-soldiers of New Egypt. To offset the influence of living in Denver, a den of iniquity of the like that hasn’t been seen since the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah, the students were forced to watch hours of films that expounded the wonders of the Holy American Empire and its First Minister while reminding you that those who thought there could be other ways of doing things were going straight to hell, most likely after being burned at the stake by the First Minister’s loyal Prayer Guard.

Many of my fellow students believed the propaganda show; I didn’t. My permanent record includes a note that I was not allowed under any conditions to attend career day, the one day of the year where a New Egyptian representative was allowed by law to come to the school and ask if anyone wanted to take the test to see if they were implant compatible.

“Can you believe it?” My mother would moan to the church congregation. “The city of Denver allowing one of those people come and corrupt our children with the idea that their culture and economy is better than our own. It isn’t. And even if it was—which it isn’t—no one should be allowed by law to sell their soul to the false gods that the Egyptians worship. No, I chose to keep my children safe and sound. It is better that they find jobs cleaning bathrooms and flipping burgers than become. . . scientists. Even prison would be better. There should be a law, I tell you.” There was a law. Several in fact. But they did not say what my mother wanted them to say.

One of the conditions that the New Egyptians imposed on all concerned parties—both sides of the warring Americas and the Free City-State of Denver—was their absolute right to visit any country that they desired to. After all, it was not like you could actually stop them—the Neos managed to drop three space pods and full crews with enough firepower within their chosen dropzones to stop the armies that both Americas decided to send to crush the rebellion in Denver. Sure, there are those who claim that if the Pan-Pacific War had not started the very next day that the combined might of the Americans, who had set aside their differences to make an example of a city that told both sides to take their civil war and bugger off, that the rebellion could have been properly crushed by the two Americas. Never mind the fact that a country fresh from the biggest mass causality event ever in human history, with a society that had just lost ninety of its population, and no longer had a functioning government and civil service, nor a functioning infrastructure, had against all odds managed to cobble together three functioning rockets; never mind that a culture that had been “nuked back to the Stone Age” did in the space of a month what had took the pre-Collapse unified United States over four-hundred-thousand engineers, countless support personal and a Cold War blank check to accomplish, using only seven angry women and a village of unskilled labor. When First Minister Midas and President Gomez (may they rest in peace) signed the agreement, they knew what armchair Pattons and Robertsons didn’t—the New Egyptians had been looking for an example to prove that their military might was not only strong enough to hold the Nile from those who wanted to liberate it, but also strong enough to claim outer space and the gravity well that enveloped Earth as their domain; Denver had merely been a target of opportunity. With soldiers who were immune to the combined firepower of two of the Big Five superpowers and the ability to drop them anywhere they wanted to, New Egypt carved itself a niche in the collective societies of Earth.

As part of that niche, the New Egyptians declared that governments under their protection gave them access to the citizenry and allowed them to enlist anyone who wanted to join up and was implant compatible. New Egypt did not want you to pay for your protection using things like money and trade; they wanted something more rare and precious—people with the potential to fully integrate with a piece of “miracle science!”

Not everyone liked this. My mother certainly didn’t. Then again, she longed for the days when her family was respectable and had proper standing in the community. What do you expect from someone who still has their grandfather’s Confederate-Two uniform hanging in their closet. So I was never allowed to come in contact with any New Egyptians, but I absolutely had to be at school every time the principle decided that it was once again time to remind all the students that science was the work of the devil. I could have been dying from zombie pox and Mom would have still sent me to school—it was so important that her Holy Work—otherwise known as a secret affair with one of the deacons, an affair known to the entire congregation, but not her loving husband—could wait while I was subjected to hours of Public Service and Civil Defense films.

“Hey Timmy—how would you like to become a New Egyptian astronaut?” 

“Golly gee, Mistress Hel—I would love to serve in your army of evil. Where do I sign up?”

“Not so fast, Timmy. Mistress Hel is trying to corrupt your soul. And you care about your soul, don’t you?”

“Golly gee, Mister Jealous God, I would hate to lose my soul when you could have it instead.”

“And do you know what the New Egyptians use souls for? They use them to fuel the furnaces of hell.”

“There is no way that you are doing that, is there God?”

“Never mind the voice of the devil. Listen only to me. Not only will you lose your soul, but also you will die a horrible death. In the vacuum of space, your blood will boil; your eyes will fry; your brain will rot. Every day could be your last day…”

“Unlike on the ground where God gives you the proper two-week notice that he is cancelling your contract.”

“Shut up daughter of Satan! And worse of all, you will be laboring to advance the ideals of science, protecting us from rocks that will never hit the planet, non-existent space armadas and time travelers.”

“Last week’s Star Trek Crusade sure had a lot of that stuff in it. Are you sure that God’s imagination is worse than that? Only capable of dreaming up one planet with somewhat intelligent life? Sounds like a pretty poor god to me. Hashtag—just saying!” 

“Timmy, pray with me. How would you like to help me, the One and Only God in the Whole Universe, with a little science experiment?”

“Golly gee Mister Jealous God, what do I need to do?”

“Timmy, get into this tin can and strap yourself in.”

“Then what Mister God?”

“Then I am going to threw you up into space.”

“But Mister God, won’t I starve or die of suffocation?”

“With a wave of my hand, I—your Only God—can produce manna from heaven. You will have plenty of the necessities of life—plenty of food, water, and air—enough for any well-fed Big Belly Buddha Burger customer.” Takes out a Ten Commandment sized calculator and presses a few buttons. “At the current dollar-pound exchange rate, that would be. . . Hey Timmy, could you help out by consuming half of your present life and health needs. Thanks.”

“How long will I be in space, God?”

“Just a year. Not long at all. And it will count towards early Purgatory release.”

“Wait! Am I going alone? Without my phone?”

“Yes, no time to waste. Bye!”

A year passes during which a roomful of monkeys post billions of random social media updates and cat photos. Then God yanks down the capsule using something that looks suspiciously like a greedy gravity well. Opening the pod up. . .

“Oh no, what could have happened to you Timmy?”

“I am a goldfish. I am a goldfish. I am a goldfish.”

“Is that three X goldfish? Or goldfish raised to the third power.” 

“And all your brains seem to melted, and where did all your muscles go?”

“I am a goldfish. I am a goldfish. I am a goldfish.”

“You know that there is a cure for all that, right?”

“Oh your parents will howl with grief. And if they do not, I will visit them with boils and frogs.”

“I am a goldfish. I am a goldfish. I am a goldfish.”

“Some time for the grief, some salve for the boils, and a couple of cats—all of that can be fixed.” 

“Oh well, you go to a better place dear Timmy—hell, you little bastard. Hey humanity, I need another Timmy.”

“Oh if it was that easy to find replacement parts. . . ”

 Still one can understand my mom’s, my principal, my alternate science teachers, my confessor, my Bible study teachers, butcher, baker, and megaphone preacher’s intentions. They might even be noble, in a self-serving way. The safety of my soul which would be permanently corrupted, if it was exposed to the realities of science and heretic astronauts. It would not look good in the eyes of their Lord and Master to have failed him in the safe keeping of my soul—after all, he needs all the coal he can get to fuel the fires of hell.

Don’t like that joke? Either did my mother. Or anyone else, for that matter. Well, there was one—but my dad always had a strange sense of humor. “If you would have been born in the Holy American Protectorate, you would have been burned at the stake at age seven.”

The only thing that my mom disliked more was my decision to become an astro. It was an epic beating. And it was the first, and last time, that I wanted to do something with my life.

Coming soon--I swear!

 Want more Homer? Another chapter is available to read on my Occult Garden Parties blog.