The Whole Foods Revival at the Alameda and Stockton.
Brian Dawkins had been proud to serve his community as a Postal Service Officer. Today he had the sad task, to be done before noon, of delivering the last paper mail. He had been thrilled, after a weird fashion, with the return of paper mail. Phones and computers, watches and even neurolinks, had stopped flashing the news. Official Public Sector announcements and government mandates continued to be flashed through a Closed Portal to the Post Office, equiped with a reconditioned printer sourced from the local Notary Public. He had been directed, suspiciously before The Crash, to secure the printer in the Faraday Vault and only print out ten copies of each News Flash to be posted at prominent locations.
His other copies secure in his chest pack, wondering at his mission viability, as no Civil Safety Drones were hovering aloft to stop violations of gun bans, Post Officer Major Dawkins balked inside. Armed only with a bullet vest, pith hat, badge, arrest powers and a solar powered tazer that was down to one charge do to low daylight luminosity, to protect the Urgent News chest pack, the Major, highest ranking, and last law officer in San Jose, wilted with doubt.
>Extra Solar Magnetic Event
>Shelter In Place, August thru September
>Recommended Shelter: Concrete Structure, Basement Levels 3 thru 9
‘Jesus,’ he ruminated within, ‘only parking garages, all of which are flooded since the Grid went and power failed?’
Brain passed a mumbling Link, [1] gibbering on the curb, as he marched, News Flash in hand, for the Revival Center. The boarded up grocery store front to the left and the beer garden to the right on the second story, re purposed as a pulpit, hemmed in a good hundred souls come to hear the Preacher’s Open Service.
The flock parted for Brian’s cold if rude intrusion, making way for the Post Officer, holding between his hands the ominous notice. These people held their bricked phones in hand, as if they were stones to cast upon the unbeliever. He knew though, having lost his wife to the Link Lock [1] and his Daughter to the nameless Preacher’s Flock, that the man named only Preacher, had predicted that Jesus would return, his beneficent face appearing upon the unpowered phones, before the food market that no longer held a loaf of bread or a can of food. Here, too would revive the Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes.
‘There she is, my poor, lost, BABY GIRL!’
He yearned to go hug her. But she had been taken away, head bent, kneeling on hard, cold, summer concrete, praying silently for Jesus to power up the world net and appear on her dark blank screen. Others prayed to their dead watches.
There were a few Links that were not gibbeirng like the damned, but holding the port behind and above the ear where their dead link sang only of silence, their eyes blind and vacant, perfectly functional eyes rendered ueeless by the failed neurolink within.
The Deacon, twisted in his attitude of Record, spray painting the Date, JULY 30, glanced at Brian with a sneer, as the day dawned without a visible sun, veiled as it was behind the gray vault of the eastern sky.
Officer Dawkins made his way to this man, the Deacon, the Recorder of Christian services, of the daily proverb, and presented the News Flash. He, as a Public Servant and Law Officer, was not permitted to post here in Open Christian Service. He had been told, pointedly, had been the subject of a sermon on such an occasion as this, that The Devil, the Great Government Satan, owned his soul.
‘I cannot even hug her!’ agonized he within as he walked by her kneeling form, her hair hiding her face from her fortaken from father.
“Deacon,” his quavering voice croaked, “the Final News Bulleton.”
He held this paper up as the tall, twisted man read it with his eyes and recorded the message in spray paint, red paint, signifying evil, on the wall, as his needle like voice recorded for all… and most of all, the tall Preacher standing in his white robes above:
“Devil says, Extra Solar Magnetic Event. Shelter In Place, August thru September. Recommended Shelter: Concrete Structure, Basement Levels 3 thru 9, the Devil means to draw us down!”
The tiny multitude shivered and mumbled in prayer.
Preacher above roared, “And so Jesus Christ shall come to so SAVE the Faithful… who stand above and beyond the grief, the gall and the defiles erected by Satan’s Minions against SALVATION!”
“Amen,” burned the praying flock, some rubbing their dead neurolink ports, others their black watches, still others their as yet faithless, bricked phones.
Brian, husband and father no more, soon to be decomissioned, Postal Officer, turned and staggered away on shaken legs, his body quivering, his lips quavering, his eyes watering with tears unquenchable. His outward progress was narrated by the Cipher of a Shepherd above and behind:
“So goes the Servant of Satan, his shield shivered, his sword broken, his heart embittered… his soul to God Almighty forever foresaken!”
“Praise God,” sang out the chorus, the sweet voice of his former daughter, dear Baby Betty, lost among them, depriving him even of the last sound of her voice against his duty.
“Good Lord,” he blubbered through the salty taste of tears over his cracked lips, “Spare Betty, please.”
…
Notes
-1. Fully 70% of the population of Brian’s District were rendered blind, some mute, some deaf, when the grid crashed and theur Neurolinks went dark. How representetive of the fate of U.S. Citizens and Persons this was, Brian had no clue, as all internet news feeds known to him went dead, and his only view of the outer world was had through the Faraday Vault that had been curiously installed without explaination by Public Sector Engineers, on May last, a month before the virtual world went dark on July 5th. Some had called the condition Link Lock.
