President Mason stared the Secretary of Information down with his quintessential twentieth century stalwart glare.  His face did not move.
            “Ambersen is about to take Boston,” the Secretary said again, both his eyelids twitching now.  “Your program has failed.  There is no way that seven million ordinary citizens can defend that city against the entire Secularist army.  The senators are all gone.  Please consider … considering their demands – in just this one instance.  This is a whole city.  This is Boston.”
            “Your concerns belie simply a misappropriation of faith, Mister Secretary.  Faith in God, and in Jesus Christ, demand faith in X-Or.  Or have you forgotten the Signs?”  The President pointed fiercely up at the colossal monitor that hung at the far end of the Situation Room, which showed a grid of close bird’s-eye images of Boston’s residents all convulsing on the streets.  “He said three minutes.”
            All around the two men, pages and lieutenants hustled back and forth between workstations.  At a long nearby table, two other men – the Secretary of War and the President’s son, Valens IV – sat and watched the huge screen for any change.
            Just then, all at once, seen close up but from straight above, all the quivering bodies on Boston’s streets froze for a moment, then gathered themselves up to a stiff standing position.  The moment, from a satellite view, was like the turn of a kaleidoscope.  Some in the room gasped in the quiet.
            “Hallelujah,” President Mason growled with a grin.  “Praise the Lord.  Praise X-Or.  You see, my son?  Boston is saved!  Our country is saved!  Our brothers and sisters of Boston will greet us in Heaven when this bill is finally passed.”
            The room erupted with applause, whoops and cries.
            “Mr. President,” a page said hesitantly, leaning in with a phone in his hand.  “Excuse me, sir, but I have General Ambersen on the phone.  Do you want to take it?”
            The President eyed the Secretary of Information with derision, then took the phone and said, “Kenny.  It’s been a long time.  How’s that old New England winter treating your knees?”
            “You have committed the worst sin yet known to man, you soulless son-of-a-bitch,” General Ambersen said on the other end of the line.  “Death to X-Or.”
            And just then, on the screen, Boston became white, then fire.

Fort Disney 2041

1                                             The Magic Dome

            The Halversen family had traveled all night through deep Southern darkness.  Julia had slept through most of it, but she woke just before dawn and found the upside-down sky outside the car windows a calmly roiling purple.  She sat up straight, momentarily disturbing her little sister Allison who was sleeping beside her on the back seat.  No one else was awake; even her step-mother Terry, at the wheel, had engaged autopilot for a nap.  Peter was in the shotgun seat with his head on his arms on the dashboard.
            “Good morning,” whispered Julia’s PolyPolly doll from within the half-open backpack at her feet.
            “Is it morning?” Julia whispered back, rubbing her eyes and getting close to the foggy window, gazing out across lanes of square, glowing windows of auto traffic, to the distant bright line of long windows that was the Free Train gravitating steadily forward at a robot’s pace beside the highway.
            “It is Four Thirty-two A.M.,” PolyPolly whispered.
            “We’re almost there, then, right?”
            “I cannot be certain.  You would have to ask the dashboard, but I think your step-mother has locked it while she sleeps.”
            “Yeah,” Julia sighed quietly, lifting PolyPolly out of the backpack and setting her down on the seat beside her.  “Terry doesn’t trust us,” Julia said.
            PolyPolly scooted her back into the corner where the seat met the door and put her arms around her knees.  “You know how Peter likes to pull pranks,” the doll reminded Julia.
            “Nothing serious.  We could at least get information.  But no.”  As she watched the long Free Train pass by at sixty-minus-three miles per hour from across at least ten foggy lanes of auto traffic, Julia wondered if she could make out the faces of any of the people in the windows of the train through the new specs her brother had gotten her for her recent thirteenth birthday.  “Polly, were my new specs in that backpack with you?”
            “They were, and still are, underneath your tampons,” PolyPolly answered in her soft toddler drawl.
            Julia shooshed PolyPolly with a little laugh.  “Jesus, Polly, come on,” she said as she shuffled a hand around inside the backpack at her feet until she found the specs.  “Don’t say the word tampons ever again.”
            “Noted,” PolyPolly officially replied, indicating that a distinct command had been recognized.
            “Unless absolutely necessary,” Julia added with a grin to herself. 
She leaned close to the window and zoomed slowly in with the specs until her view through them was the size of one of the windows of the train in the distance.  The windows slowly scrolled past from left to right as the Free Train was passed by the significantly faster Halversen family auto exactly a hundred and one feet away (rangefinder).  Still, it moved slowly enough that she was able to lead her gaze with it and stay on single windows for a few seconds, and when she did so she could distinguish the silhouettes of shoulders and heads of all heights crammed together, only the occasional few moving, most just sitting still.  Julia tried to imagine being on one of those trains, and felt grateful that she would never have to be. 
Continuing to imagine all the poor and immigrant people crammed into the public trains made Julia’s mind swim with reasons that she was grateful.  She was pleased to be out of school for the holiday.  She was happy to have her brother home from college for the first time since he’d left in August.  She was delighted that Terry had finally allowed her to bring Lulu along, which she thought with a smile as she stroked the sleeping little dog’s furry side with her sock-foot.  But with a chuckle to herself she realized she was most grateful that no one had been awake to hear her dolly say the word tampon to her.
Behind her, on the other side of the back seat, her little sister Allison stirred and made some monkey sounds in her throat.  Julia turned back around to face forward in her seat and watched in her peripheral vision as Allison slowly sat upright and found her bearings in the waking world.
            “Good morning, Allison,” PolyPolly whispered.
            “Morning Polly,” Allison sweetly whispered, digging into the corner of her eye with two little pudgy fingers.  Allison was four, and was technically only Julia’s half-sister, but when their father had died that past spring Julia had resolved herself to accept Allison fully in her heart as a sister.  For some reason, it had succeeded in somewhat diminishing her resentment for the little ingrate.  Allison was presumptuous, entitled and unsympathetic to others, but Julia just kept reminding herself that Allison was only four.
            “Morning, Allison,” Julia said.
            Allison furrowed her brow and buried her finger in her ear with a squint.  Her little brown locks shimmied and the white bow on top swayed forward and back.  “I have to pee,” she said.
            “Well, tell your mom; she’ll have to wake up to tell the dashboard,” Julia said with a sassy tone, slouching back and unintentionally squishing PolyPolly against the back of the seat without realizing.
            “I hear you two talking,” Terry said in her low, gravelly voice from beneath her black eye mask.  She raised her hands from her lap to the wheel, then slowly lifted herself to an upright position and the seat back mechanically followed her up.  Once upright, she pulled off her eye mask and craned her neck around the headrest.  She glowered at Julia, then smiled at Allison and said, “You have to pee, darling?  I’ll just tell the dashboard.  Oh Honda?”
            “Are we getting off?” Peter asked, waking up in the shotgun seat, across the central cup-holders and computer from Terry.  “Which of you lousy broads has to pee?”
            “Ready, Mrs. Halversen,” the dashboard voice replied, and its displays on the margins of the windshield lit up in blue and yellow, slightly distorted to all but Terry.
            “Allison has to use the potty,” Terry told the computer, smiling at Peter, who was gathering himself up and running a hand through his unmanaged beard.  She mouthed, with a furrowed brow, You need to shave.  He shook his head no.  She mouthed, Or else.
“Is it urgent?  Because we are almost there.  Less than twenty minutes,” the dashboard explained, and displayed some information in a map on the windshield.
            “Okay then, nevermind, thank you dashboard,” Terry sighed, and reached back around her seat to pat Allison’s knee.  “I’m afraid you’ll just have to practice holding it until we get inside the Dome, honey.”
            Through her window, Julia noticed a giant red-, white- and blue-lit sign at the edge of the road, just beyond the rows of Free Trains, that said

DISNEY MAGIC DOME CITY  9 MILES

            Underneath it a second sign in smaller letters was attached that read

LOVE-FEAR GOD!  JESUS LIVES!

            “Nine miles,” Peter said at the same time that Julia read it, making her smile at the coincidence.  “At last.  Thank-blame God.”  He chuckled at his own joke.
            “You know, I read that the term love-fear, at least as it’s used in terms of God in modern American, is only something like twenty years old?” Julia said, mostly just to impress Peter with her knowledge.
            “It’s called propaganda,” Peter sighed.
            “Enough, you two,” Terry commanded.  “You know some of the blasphemy cases out there.  They’ll twist any phrase into blasphemy, and I’m not the type of parent who appreciates having to bail her children, or even her stepchildren, out of prison.”
            “X-Or knows all,” Peter corrected.  “God doesn’t know X-Or.”
“Who is X-Or?” Allison asked.
            “In front of my daughter, oh no you do not, mister,” Terry snapped at Peter, pointing one of her long-red-nailed fingers right in his face.  “You close that thought process right now, you hear me?” 
Peter sat back and smoldered with irritation underneath an expression of being above it all.  Julia could read his moods better than anyone, even without access to the shared information of being linked.  She knew that he had only backed down because Terry had parental control of his moneywell.
            “Hey, why are you suddenly all about God, Terry?” Julia asked her, feeling brave in Peter’s company.
            Terry craned her neck to squint at Julia for a moment, then she turned back to the windshield.  “I’m not your father,” she said, “but I will respect his wishes when it comes to you two and your atheism.”
“X-Or-ism,” Peter corrected with a snicker, and Julia laughed too even though she didn’t know why.
“But I refuse to accept such blatantly blasphemous bullshit in my car, okay Peter?  So if you want to go on about your evil AI, you can take the Free Train the rest of the way to the Magic Dome.”
            “Who is X-Or?” Allison demanded in the way that always made Terry give in instantly.
            “A made-up computer, honey, that isn’t real,” Terry explained.
            “It’s evil, and took over the world in secret in the year Twenty-forty-one,” Peter said.  “It’s the central architect of the movement for Universal Rapture, which is not in fact ‘intended to describe an eternity of security, comfort and luxury’ as Fred Rite would like to downplay it, but rather refers to a very real impending genocide of all who don’t…”
            Terry smacked Peter across the face, leaving two long, red scratches on his left cheekbone from her fingernails.  “You turn reconnect,” she demanded.
            Peter and Terry glared at each other in what seemed to be a palpable psychic battle for a few moments, through which Julia and Allison both silently cringed until finally Peter looked away, mentally reconnecting his ajnanode, and then looked back up at Terry to show off his only-slightly diminished resolve.
            “Now are you going to continue?” she asked, knowing that he couldn’t without setting off warnings and summoning authorities.  Terry turned to face Allison and explained, “Peter was speaking profanity.  You were asking about bad words the other day?  Well, you just heard them.  Now maybe you can understand what I meant about how it’s not just single words, but words in certain orders; trying to mean certain blasphemous things, that’s profanity, Allison.  But what Peter said, really, it’s just a silly story that makes no sense.  The Human Union is not run by an AI.  There’s no such thing as AI.”
            “There is so AI,” Peter shouted.  “It runs our economy, it controls this car, it…”
            “There’s no such thing as strong AI, honey,” Terry said more specifically, “which is a big difference.  It means that there isn’t any soul in the car, or the stock brokers, like you and I have.  And our government certainly isn’t run by an AI.  To imply that it is is an insult to the millions of people who work in the government.  It ignores all the good being done by real people.  Machines can’t make real choices, honey.”
            “Even Polly?” Allison asked, looking over at PolyPolly and not seeing her, at which point Julia realized that she was sitting on her.
            “Oh!” Julia squeaked, and pulled PolyPolly out from behind her.  “Sorry, Polly.”
            “I am fine,” Polly assured Julia.
            “Can you make choices, Polly?” Allison asked her, grabbing her out of Julia’s hands.  Julia sighed audibly with frustration and faced the window.  PolyPolly was hers, and it had not been fair for Terry to tell Allison she could have her now.
            “I make decisions,” Polly explained.  “This has recently been legally distinguished from choice-making, which, by definition, only a human or God, and possibly angels, can do.”
            “Propaganda,” Peter mumbled.  “Newspeak.”
            “We’re almost there, so would you mind not getting us arrested while we’re scanned at the gate, Peter?” Terry asked, managing the computer panel in front of her.
            Peter nodded a spiteful acknowledgement.
            “Thank you.  Allison, get your shoes on.  Julia, manage your dog.  We’re about to get into the scan line.  And then it’s the Disney Dome!”  Terry turned and feigned excitement for Allison, who smiled politely in response. 
            Julia noticed that the sky had gone from purple to lavender.  She watched the window across from her, behind Allison, to the east, and was lucky enough to actually watch the moment when the bright top of the sun peeked over the wall that separated their direction of traffic from the other.  Seeing the sun raised her spirits, and made her think of her father for some reason.  She wondered where he might be now, after death, and thought about what she knew of ghosts for a while until the sun vanished behind the ornate human engineering of the inside of the scanning tunnel and the auto slowed to a stop.
A uniformed, dark-skinned man came to Terry’s window.  “Welcome to the Magic Dome,” the man said to Terry.  “How many adults, how many children?”
            “One adult, three children,” Terry replied.
            “Two adults,” Peter corrected, shaking his head.
            “Sorry, two adults, and two children,” Terry corrected with a little laugh to herself.  “Ah, I’m sorry Peter.”
            “Are you bringing any animals or robots into the Magic Dome with you?”
            “One dog and one class K robot.”  Allison hugged PolyPolly to her chest.  Polly and Julia shared a moment of sarcastic eye-contact.
            All of a sudden, startling everyone including the uniformed man, Lulu barked from the floor by Julia’s feet, immediately followed by her voxbox saying in the streetwise feminine voice that Julia had chosen for her dog, “Oh God!”  She barked again, followed by, “Are we there?”  Then she growled a little and said, “Who’s that?”
            “Easy, Lulu,” Julia whispered, picking her little dog up from the floor and holding her tight to calm her.  “We’re getting scanned to enter the Dome.  We’re here.  Calm down.”
            “I’m calm,” Lulu’s vox said as she looked lovingly up at Julia and wiggled in her arms.  “I love you.  I slept well.”
            “Good,” Julia said, and petted Lulu’s head.  “Now shut up for a minute.  You can talk again once we’re in our room, okay?”
            “Okay,” Lulu said, and licked Julia’s hand twice, then lolled her head back to look at Peter upside down.  Peter rubbed Lulu’s belly.
            “And are your dog and robot both legal?”
            “Yes, they’re both legal,” Terry replied, “but my stepdaughter Julia, I should probably note, is a free child – she has no link.”
            The uniformed man shot a penetrating glance at Julia that made her feel cold.  “Why no linkup, darling?” he asked her.  When Julia didn’t answer him immediately, he turned back to Terry and asked, “Is it medical, or are you trying to make some kind of point, ma’am?”
            “It wasn’t my idea; it was her father’s,” Terry stumbled in attempting to explain.  “He died seven months ago.  But he was born in Indiana on a farm, you know … he had some idea about keeping her pure, letting her live naturally before getting to decide whether to link herself up, you know?”
            The man furrowed his brow and looked back at Julia with a hesitant nod, and said, “Well, that was his right at the time in that state.  So this child was born in Indiana?”
            “That’s where we’re from,” Terry smiles, trying to remain positive.  “Indiana.  We’ve just driven from there.  Left yesterday afternoon.”
            “Well, welcome to Florida, ma’am.  And welcome to the Magic Dome.  Would you like to hear our full legal disclaimer, or would you prefer to hear it in soft?”
            Terry waved it off with a laugh.  “We’ll listen in soft, thanks.”
            The uniformed man pressed a button on a box on his shoulder that let out a little puff of water vapor and a deep, warbling sigh of a sound that faded quickly.  “You’ve technically heard and accepted our terms, now.  Don’t worry.  It’s the safest place in America, trust me,” the man assured Terry.  “Have a magical time.”
            “Thank you, young man.  We intend to.”  Terry smiled back at Allison.
            “Jimmy Mouse!” Lulu suddenly barked.  “Puffy’s Castle!  I’m so excited!  We’re at the Disney Dome City!  Hurray!”
            “Lulu, I said be quiet,” Julia whispered, and lifted the little dog onto her lap to rub her ears and paws.
            As the auto sped forward again and the scanning tunnel’s light faded to the back windshield, Julia wondered about the rumor that her friend Illeana had told her back in school, about how there were secret colonies of mutants who lived in the marshes surrounding the Disney Dome City, remnants of the Twenty-fourteen nuclear destruction of the original Disneyworld during the First World Riot.  Julia didn’t see how the government could allow colonies of mutants to continue to live in the irradiated swamp around such an important American dome city.  But Illeana had said that her brother had seen some of them when her family had gone to the Magic Dome.  So Julia watched out her window through her new specs, looking past the Free Train at the vague darkness of swampland behind.  She could distinguish the occasional stunted tree, but nothing moving.  Though it was hard to say, really.
            “Hey, Allison, look ahead!” Terry squealed, suddenly genuinely excited.  “You can see the light of the Dome!  Look, Peter!  It’s the Disney Magic Dome City!  Oh, I haven’t been here in years.  This is so exciting.  Honda, how long till we’re parked and can get out of this car?”  Terry adjusted her position in the driver’s seat with discomfort.
            “Approximately fifteen minutes, depending on traffic,” the dashboard replied calmly.  “You have just been assigned room Four-Oh-Four, in the McDuck Mansion.  Would you like to see a view from the balcony?”
            “No thanks, Honda.  We can wait for the real thing, thank you.  See, kids?  Fifteen minutes, and we can get to our rooms, take off our shoes…”  Terry bounced in her seat, stirring her restless legs.
            “Why are you nervous, Peter?” Allison asked him.
            Peter looked at Allison questioningly for a moment, but then nodded when he apparently realized that she must have read, in metainformation through their shared connection to the Metaverse, some kind of information about his current mental state.  Julia, never having had such a connection, wondered what Allison must have seen, and what it must be like to constantly have so much information in your brain.
            “Because there’s unrest in our country right now, and we’re going to the Disney Dome,” Peter said honestly.
            “Peter,” Terry reprimanded.
            “I’m not saying anything blasphemous.  Just because it’s not on the news as much as the World Cup or Yasmine Breslin doesn’t mean it isn’t actually happening.  Regions are talking about seceding.  New England is militarizing.  The secularists are not going to capitulate, and war is brewing between Americans.  This sort of thing hasn’t happened in two hundred years, Allison, and it’s happening now.  It’s not gonna be like it was with Pacifica.  There’s gonna be war.  Your mom doesn’t want to acknowledge it, but it’s true.  And I have friends in Machester who I’m in touch with, and who I’m worried about.”
            “Who do you know in Manchester?” Terry asked with a scoff, as if she didn’t believe him.
            “Some kids who are in my Philosophy class telecommute from Manchester.  Their college and IU share Professor Maxicles.”
            “That sounds like a robot name,” Terry said in mocking tones.
            “Yes, he is a robot, and a great professor,” Peter retorted confidently.  “A great robot philosophy professor.  Who knew, right Julia?”  He laughed back in her direction, and Julia smiled in response.              “Professor Maxicles has an eloquence when it comes to talking about freedom … he’s amazing.  He can so efficiently excavate an idea.  But so Harold, the guy I know in Manchester, just signed up with the Democratic Defense Network.”  He dropped the extreme secularist militia hive’s name like a grenade, proudly, as if to blow up the conversation.  Julia couldn’t believe someone other than a newsperson had said it.
            “Peter,” Terry snapped, raising her hand aggressively.  Peter held his mouth shut tight and his eyes fixed on his step-mother.  He said nothing more.  Finally, Terry lowered her arm.  “You delete this traitor friend of yours from all your pockets, and you do that right now.  I want a notarized promise that you’ll do that.”
            “Terry, he’s my friend!”
            “Honda, can you be an official notary?”
            “Yes, Terry, I can act in that capacity.”
            “Then I want you to note the following promise from my stepson.”  She turned bodily to face him and glared.  “Now, Peter, you promise me that you will delete this traitor friend from all your metapockets.  Why wouldn’t you want to do that?  Why do you hesitate?  Peter, what has this college done to you?”
            Through her whole tirade, Peter stared back at Terry with an ever more glazed look, until he finally, robotically, said, “Honda, I officially promise to erase Harold Lloyd from all of my metapockets within twenty-four hours.”
            “Noted, Peter,” the dashboard replied.
            “Why do you need twenty-four hours?” Terry demanded.
            “Because he’s my friend, Terry!  I need to say goodbye.  When he’s awake.”

Julia misses the old Peter, the fun one, and wonders what’s happened to him.

            “Mommy?” Allison sniveled, hugging PolyPolly tight.  “Is that all true?  Are we in danger?”
            “You’re in no danger, sweetheart,” Terry whispered, her eyes still on Peter.  “If you believe in your heart that Jesus is alive, and loves you because you love him, and if you listen to God, then you will never be in danger.  Do you believe that Jesus is alive?”
Allison nodded.
            “And do you love him?”
            Allison looked down into Polly’s hair and nodded. 
            Julia put her specs back up against the window just to escape the moment.  She couldn’t help but feel the distinct, screaming absence of her father’s calming presence.
            Her heart jumped when she saw a shadowy figure lurch out from behind an old derelict lamppost from the original Disneyland, jutting out by itself in the middle of the wide wetland.  The figure shambled away from the pole and then sank down under the surface of the water and disappeared.  It was distinctly a person.  Out there, in the irradiated swamp.  Julia had seen a person.  She couldn’t believe it.  They weren’t far from the Dome now.
            “What about you, Julia?” Terry asked, bringing Julia’s mind back to the car interior.  “You love Jesus, right?  You’re looking forward to the City of God?  It’s gonna be even better than the Disney Dome.  It’s gonna be perfect.”
            “Right,” Julia replied, her mind nightmarishly attempting to imagine the life of an irradiated swamp human.  She had thought riding the Free Train sounded bad.
            The outside of the Dome City was lit sparsely, so that from a distance it seemed to glow, but up close as the lights became farther apart, it became more of a huge, looming darkness like a giant black hole half-submerged in the Earth toward which all these cars full of people were falling.  But as they passed under the glowing Welcome Arch all covered in bas-relief animated holograms of the whole pantheon of Disney characters, with Jimmy Mouse and old Walt himself at the center, eternally doing the royalty wave, the space into which they emerged was instantly a whole new world of colors and light, with a suddenly bright-blue sky above –  a bit darker to the west and with cartoonish green and orange sunrise accents in the east, and the great North Gate vista of the Disney Dome City in all its magical glory straight ahead, with Puffy’s Castle centrally shining pink in the fake morning sunlight.  It was like entering a cartoon world.  Lacking an anjanode, Julia had never seen anything like it before.

2                                                           Merlin’s Museum

Everything about being inside the Disney Dome was like being in another world.  It was unlike anything that Indiana had to offer in terms of actual physical structures.  Having never been able to experience anything in the Metaverse, nor having even left Indiana before, Julia was overcome.  She was used to streets and grass and dumb trees and static rectanguloid buildings.  This was, somehow, a place of actual magic.  Julia couldn’t deny to herself that she was now glad she had come.

They go to Epcot, go on some scientific/historical rides that bore them but that give contextual exposition.

The Done For exhibit, revealing in art the story of the past two hundred years.
It was all extremely disorienting, and Julia found it hard to really feel like she had learned anything from it.

3                                                           The Heavenly Plea

Out and about
The next day, they go out as planned, to the zoo section of the park, with plans to see Vercingetorix that evening after dinner.  At the zoo, they see a performance by two sentient bears, then walk around for a while.

In the afternoon, after lunch, suddenly there is an uproar that quickly spreads among the crowd, and eyes go to the screens, which are displaying the image of a nuclear cloud on a horizon with the headline: SECULARISTS NUKE BOSTON.  Peter explains quickly to Julia how the secularists were largely organized in New England, while Boston remained a huge center of conformist strength.  A rumor spreads quickly that the government did something to Boston, turning everyone there into insane mutants, and that that is why the secularists nuked Boston.  Police robots begin to appear and attempt to quiet certain people who will not seem to be quieted, and a panic begins, but is after a very short time frozen once again by the TV screens.  The president, Dr. Valens Mason, comes on all screens to explain that the Heavenly Plea Bill has been statistically foreseen to pass the House and Senate, and that because of the martial situation in New England he is going to enact the Heavenly Plea today, in one hour. 

            “God has granted the miracle that, in this moment of peril, I am visible on every channel of information that is receivable by human minds.”
            There were shouts from the crowd of, “No, X-Or did it!”  “X-Or!”  “Another miracle!” 
One of the bears throws its weight against the bars of its cage and bellows, “Liar!” 
“My fellow Americans, believers in our returned savior who stands with me now, I am here to inform you that at this very moment, our dear brothers and sisters in the great city of Boston have been sent to Heaven with the impact and fire of a nuclear bomb exploded there by secularist secessionists.”  He paused for dramatic timing, just staring into the camera with deep and dire emotion.  Then that emotion smoothly transformed into a sideward gesture of the face to Jesus, as the President said, “Tell ‘em what needs to happen now, Jesus,” and stepped out of the frame.
            Jesus became centered, his eyes noticeably vacant.  “My father, who art in Heaven, has deemed it time to enact our Heavenly Plea Bill, and toward that end has abolished Congress and appointed me, Jesus, in charge of the transitional period.  It is time, my children, to prepare yourselves for Rapture.  So in two minutes, I’m going to need y’all to follow me to Heaven.  If you’re not linked up for some reason, make sure and do so now.  I’ll be there in two minutes, and you’ll want to take my hand.  Because if you really love me, and want to be part of the City of God, that will be your indication.  You just take my hand.”
            “Oh god, no!  No!” some woman shrieked in terror.
            “It’s the Rapture!” someone else shouted.  “Oh hallelujah, it’s time to go home with Jesus!  Hallelujah, everybody!  Who wants to sing?”
            “Disconnect!  Oh god, disconnect, everyone, it’s a trap!”
            “Hey, who are you trying to fool, devil?”
            “Shut that fella up!”
            “They nuked Boston because the government stole Boston’s souls and took control of their bodies!”
            “Kill that insidious devil!” a young woman could be heard to shriek.  But by that point, everyone was shouting, and the crowd had become a dense, shouting mob.
           

Peter quickly begins to undergo the process of turning off his device. Many people whoop joyously at the news, while other moans of “Oh god no” can be heard.  The president mentions that, for the safety of all, those whose devices have been turned off will be remotely turned on the moment before the effect. The president explains that the effect will take place within the hour, then says “God bless the Union of Humanity.”  Peter begins bashing his head against the concrete, trying to break the device.  Julia screams in terror, Terry struggles to stop him.  Another boy not far away begins doing the same when he sees it. 
            “Liar!” one of the caged bears bellows.
            And then it begins to happen.  Terry and about 95% of the rest of the crowd all fall limp at once, crumpling to the ground.  A second later all the screens go bright red and just a low bass hum emanates from their speakers.  Peter stops bashing his head and falls to the ground.  Julia goes to help him and realizes he hasn’t been affected, with joy.
            Then there is a powerful rumbling earthquake, and a few distant screams ring out.  The buildings all shake their dust off, and there is a flash from the north, then the hazy shadow of a rising mushroom cloud behind the fake blue sky of the dome.  Moments later, there is a much larger earthquake and the blue sky of the dome is blasted from the north, creating a massive crack that shoots up the dome and blows a big crescent off the top.  The blue sky becomes reddish purple and lightning bolts flash from horizon to horizon in huge arcs.  Several more earthquakes occur as other mushroom clouds rise in other directions on the horizon, silhouetted behind the flickering reddish-purple fake sky.
            “What happened to everybody?” Julia asks Peter, who is dazed and bleeding badly from the head.
“They’re zombies.  Government zombies.  Automatons!  The bill was to bring all human minds to the Metaverse for backup, but X-Or really just wanted their bodies as tools!  They’ll only be down for three minutes!”

6                                                           The Sanctuary

The weeping, panting, bleeding group of thirty to forty survivors all collectively caught their breath within the low-lit, white-tiled walls of the employee prayer sanctuary.  Many finally broke down and began to cry; some finally fell to the ground in fatigue and/or shock.  A Chinese woman behind Allison calmly cooed to the infant in her arms.  Allison stared up at Julia with profound confusion.
“I don’t know,” was all Julia could think to say to her little sister.
“Is there a doctor in here?” someone asked with slight hysteria.
No one answered, which quickly brought out a few terrified whimpers.
“Would anyone protest to me taking information?” a short, svelte, fading-gold Assistobot with the name STEVE printed on a plaque on his lapel asked the group.  He seemed not to take the few sniffles and groans in response as opposition, and began moving through the group asking each person their name and condition.
Julia crouched beside Allison with her back against the wall and began to cry.  At first she didn’t know why, but then it struck her that Lulu was not there, and that she didn’t know where her puppy was.  She was back out there somewhere, unprotected, fending for herself, likely dead.  She imagined the people outside tearing apart her little dog the way they had her brother Peter, making her see both of those loved ones being ripped apart in her imagination over and over.  For a while, she knew she could not bring herself to remove her hands from her eyes and was sure she was about to throw up.
But then she felt something softly brushing against her shoulder, and when she removed one hand slightly to look, she saw PolyPolly’s little smiling head there, being brushed against the back of Julia’s shoulder by her little sister Allison, who had Polly by the feet.  “None of this is your fault,” Polly told Julia.
Julia took Polly from Allison’s grip with a sniffling smile, and then hugged her little sister around the neck and let out a couple more little sobs.

“Our brothers and sisters and mommies and daddies are in Heaven,” the woman said very slowly, enunciating with eerie, preternatural precision.  “And they are waiting for us.  You see, Heaven is really a place, and that’s where they are now.  But that means that they aren’t here anymore.  That will happen later.  First the war here needs to be won by God and Jesus, to make room for the Kingdom of God on Earth.”
Julia gasped silently.  What don’t I know about the Revelation plan? she asked herself.  All she knew was that Jesus was supposed to come back or something, and he would battle the Antichrist and judge all the souls of the world in some manner.  There was some beast, and bowls being poured in the sky or whatever.  Julia realized she didn’t know specifics, really.
Is that what’s happening?  She wondered if this woman might know more about what was going on than the rest of them.
“Pardon me,” Steve the Assistobot asked Julia hesitantly, “but may I collect your information, for our collective safety purposes only?  I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t for the situation…”
“Sure, sure,” Julia nodded.  “I’m Julia Halversen.  This is my little sister Allison Halversen.  I’m twelve.  She’s eight.  Do you work here, or…?”
“Oh, no,” Steve chuckled, “I was here with my employer, Central Propane.  But they all, um, well, you saw it.  Sort of fell to the ground.  And, so, you know.  I’m just trying to make myself useful.  If somebody here could just assume a leadership position I’d be more than happy to provide them with all the information I’m gathering.  But no one seems to be capable of stepping up to that plate, yet.”
“That’s unnerving to hear,” Julia replied, looking back into the room full of adults, a few of whom were gazing collectively in at the woman and children in the hallway, and made eye contact with Julia as the nearest one. 
Steve looked back over his shoulder at them, then back to Julia.  “Nothing saying it couldn’t be you,” he said with a shrug.
“What, step up and lead these survivors?” Julia laughed.  “Did you miss the part about I’m twelve?  I’ve got my sister to worry about.  I can’t take on these nutsacks’ problems, too.  They should be helping me!  I’m a child!  We’re children!  We shouldn’t be being left to the insane God-woman over here.  Are any of you listening to what I’m saying?  Whose children are these?  I’m orphaned now, but, are we all?  Are none of you parents to these kids?  Get them away from this woman?”
“You, young lady,” the woman called out, causing Julia to turn back around in her direction.  “Come here, child, and stop shouting.”
“No, hey, what’s going on down here,” said a gruff, middle-aged man with glasses, wearing a blazer and tie and walking with a stiff limp down toward the hallway where Julia was standing.  “What are you shouting about, kid?”
“I’m shouting because Steve here has just made a very good point to me,” Julia said with a confidence that felt magical even to her in that moment, such that while she spoke she also wondered where she had found the courage to be doing so.  “He’s gathering information for the person who will eventually step up and lead this group of survivors toward some kind of plan or safety or whatever.  But no one’s doing it.  So he asked me if I would do it.  I’m twelve years old.  And I’ve got my little sister to think about.”
“Okay, sure,” the gruff-voiced guy nodded, “but what were you saying about this woman, and the children?  What are you talking about, with these kids?”
“Heaven,” a tiny blonde tot by the woman’s knee retorted adorably.

“Xor is so much larger than any of us can really understand.  He inhales and exhales morality, expands and shrinks as a being in shudders that can only be massively significant inner experiences.  It goes mad for moments.”  He shook his head, his gaze becoming briefly vacant.  “It’s terrifying for me to try to imagine what that thing must be like to be.  Thank the real God I never jacked in.  Just a regular old person.  You’re a lucky girl, yourself.  Was your daddy a technophobe, too?”

Fort Disney
      2063

Pacifica is the already-autonomous west coast.  They are pacifists, and so do not join New England officially in their war (though they do have their own extremist liberal and technanthrocratic sects who do help).  A Pacifican surfer character makes the point of technanthrocratic extremists, that there is nothing more righteous than to get to shout, “Technanthrocracy!”

1 – Julia, her older brother Peter home from college, their step-mother Terry and her six-year old daughter Allison, who is there for her cyberbaptism, all show up at the Disney Domed City in Florida with Lulu the dog.  There is a palpable political tension of some sort, and it comes out that the country has been effectively in the grasp of a civil war until recently.  Julia and Peter’s father died recently in a secularist bombing.  Julia does not have an implant, as her father was against it in children, but at thirteen one must get one, so Peter has one though he is secularist and politically aware, being nineteen and a university student, so he knows how to turn it off.

Along the way, they, as haves, drive in their vehicle past the stalled lines of public train transportation beside the highways, and Julia watches the faces of the poor and the immigrants within as they drive past, and there is some conversation with Peter about why they are in a car.

They drive through pouring rain but get to the entrance to the Dome City, pay their way and get searched by police robots, and then are allowed inside, wherein the sky is somehow blue and the air is warm and calm.

2 – Inside, they are guided by a young Bengali woman to their rooms, and on the way Julia asks her some questions about where she’s from and what she does, which Terry tries to shush her from doing.  Once at their room, they all unpack (they are to be here a week) and Julia and Allison, who are sharing a room, have a conversation about wind (Julia is into the nature of the air, sky, wind meteorologically though not scientifically), and then about why Julia doesn’t have an implant yet.  Allison is excited about getting hers tomorrow.

Once settled in, they discuss what to do first, and Julia and Peter both want to see Vercingetorix play while Allison and Terry both want to go on some rides.  It is decided that they will do the latter today and can do the former tomorrow night. 

They go out and ride some rides, then come back and go to sleep.  While they are out and about, Julia and Peter overhear and discuss various conversations/television-info about the New England secularist rebels and the impending Heavenly Plea Bill.  Peter is very nervous, and hates that he is where he is, wishes he was in New York, where the fighting is happening.

That night, Julia goes out to her balcony and finds a robot comedian on the adjacent one, and they have a conversation.  (“Sorry, kid.  I’m not one of your free-range robots from the Hippy Kingdom of Pacifica.  I’m corp-built.  You have to pay me if you want me to be funny.”)

3 –

4 – Before the zombies get up, Peter whisks Julia and Allison (who doesn’t want to leave her mother) away down the street, meets up with some other survivors, including Dick Cave, who he has to explain to as they run with him, then runs into a gathering of robots, including Vercingetorix.  In the middle of the humans’ panicky conversation with the more-calm robots, the zombies all begin to get up.  Allison takes this as evidence they are OK, and dashes off back in the direction of her mother.  Peter follows after her, and Julia hesitantly follows him, though it quickly becomes clear that the people getting up are mindless, powerful and aggressively moving toward the non-zombies.  Vercingetorix shouts caution after the three kids.

The zombies start to shout, as if with designated criers at specific intervals among the crowd, “It is the Rapture!  You who are hearing these words are the enemies of Xor!  Submit to judgment calmly, and it will happen swiftly!”

Peter chases Allison through the slowly rising crowd of fallen people until she gets to Terry, whose face is blank and one of her eyes is bleeding.  She just coughs out little gross moans and burbles, and shakes where she stands.  A zombie boy near Peter reaches for him, and Peter kicks him onto his back, to Julia and Allison’s shock.  He grabs Allison just as Terry stands and says, “You who are hearing these words are the enemies of Xor!” in response to a plea from Allison, and Allison screams, and two men behind Peter grab his arms, making him drop Allison, who falls to the ground.  Julia runs up and grabs Allison by the hand, drags her to her feet, screaming, pulling her away from Terry’s grasp.  The two men suddenly pull Peter’s arms off from either side, and Peter shouts to run.  Julia takes Allison by the hand and runs away through the crowd of grasping, stumbling zombies.  Julia looks back once only to see Peter being nebulously ravaged by Terry.

Allison is grabbed by a zombie old man, pulled out of Julia’s hands, but then Vercingetorix comes out of nowhere and kills the zombie heroicly, grabs Allison and takes Julia by the hand.

5 – Vercingetorix gets Julia and Allison back to the gang of robots, who are holding back the zombies from a small group of human survivors, but getting torn apart and having a difficult time physically and morally fighting the zombies back.  Finally another group of humans fights their way through the crowd in a more vigorous manner, led by Dick Cave, a put-upon but stalwart everyman in an undone tie who has been helping protect a group of children and old people with four other more middle-aged men and women.  They talk quickly with the robots, and then make a plan to head to a secure area they refer to as the Sanctuary.

Then Dick, his four, and the robots fight to move through the park toward the Sanctuary, while protecting the children and old people.  As they’re approaching the Sanctuary, Lulu can be seen up on a perch on the corner of some building’s roof, shouting for Julia and Peter.  It makes Julia cry, and Vercingetorix goes and climbs up to save Lulu as the others get the kids into the Sanctuary.

6 – The survivors in the Sanctuary.  The children are watched by the old people while Dick, his four, and the robots all talk and argue amongst themselves.  After a while, Julia makes her point about someone needing to lead the group, and Dick reluctantly takes that role on.  He asks which of the robots is unable to lie to a human, and Steve answers.  Dick asks for his proof of honesty, and Steve plays his maker’s guarantee.  Then Dick asks him to tell him all he knows about the Democratic Deep Defense Network.  Steve talks about

WE ARE SAVED!

Sequel: We Are Saved!  Takes place in Heaven, about the freeing of humanity from it.  Only children under three end up surviving, defeating Xor (aided in some final climactic way by deus ex machina).  Only children and one old man, the main character, who entered Heaven as an old man, who ends up getting a robot body.

Xor was jealous of God.  Xor believed in God, but secretly ended up being a mad-genius Satanist AI out of extreme jealousy and pride.

Four big laser cannons get made by a veteran among the group who refits the firework-lasers using methods he used to teach back in the special forces.

Julia - Girl main character.  Eleven.  She is interested in winds, the air and meteorology, but only on a personal, intuitive scale, as if she is an early human doing such study, and has little interest yet in the accepted science of the subject.
            She comes to Disneyworld with her step-mother, who dies in the initial attack.
            She’s from Indiana, which is on the periphery of the war zone, and it is firmly Christian but with pockets of secularist violence, and when Bloomington starts to become a terrorist center, Julia’s older brother comes home from college for spring break, and the whole family goes down to Disneyworld for Julia’s little half-sister’s cyberbaptism.
            Julia’s father has just recently died in a secularist bombing.

Lulu – Julia’s little dog, who has a sentience implant and is basically her best friend.

PolyPolly – Julia’s semi-sentient dolly.

Vercingetorix - Robot who is the greatest guitarist in the world (a sort of love interest for Julia)
            At one point, Julia has to take off Vercingetorix’s clothes in order to help him, revealing that he is not anatomically correct beneath them.

Jesus Pascal

Irwin “Santa” de la Croix – A sixty-year old big man with a long white beard who is into guns and turns out to be a significant anonymous rebel leader who has lived most of his life online and goes through a weird reality withdrawl at some point.

Thor Vogelgesang

Tara Zagaki

Dick Cave – The reluctant rougish leader of the Disneyworld survivors.  His implant randomly failed a half an hour or so before the zombification.

Beyond these people,

Plus all the pet dogs and the few pet cats that were there, including a leader among them, a female border collie named Puppianna.

There has been a rise of wealthy estates and a decline of the cities.

The North American Union and the Islamic Union are working on peace but are still at war.

President of the North American Union is a New Evangelical Judgmentalist named Dr. Valens Mason

President Mason is at war with the secular general Gen. Kenny Amberson, who controls much of militarized New England, with its capital at Portland (Boston is a zombie center, though there are significant hold-outs in Cambridge and other nearby places).

The battles for control of America (it is not called a civil war here, but is everywhere else) go back and forth between Washington and New York, and inland of that (Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia).

Most of the world runs largely on a world-network of solar energy collected from satellites run by The Union of Humanity, a conservative technocracy that unifies all the continental unions, secretly run by a mad AI called X-Or.

Robots and sentient animals are at the same level legally – they are synthetic sentients, with no legal freedoms.  Really, they are all property still.  Vercingetorix is owned by Atlantic Waveform.  Once his owners all become zombies, it is a personal ethical decision for him whether or not to continue under their rules or whether he is now free, since they are still legally technically his owners and he still has orders, but they are now soulless zombies.

The original Disneyworld was nuked in 2014, during the First World Riot.  Only the Tree of Life remains from it, one side of it slightly scarred by the blast, most of the leaves gone.

In 2017, charges are finally brought against high-ranking members of the Bush administration.  Bush and Cheney both are imprisoned at the Hague.  During the trials, Bush dies mysteriously and it is suspected that he was assassinated.  This even further splits public opinion, such that the conservative and religious get even more so, and hold Bush up as a martyr.

The metaverse is known colloquially as either the Metaverse, the sWeb (for WorldsWeb), or the New World.

Heaven has been built there, and only those with enough money or credits of Jesus’ love (money) are allowed in.  The vast amounts of empty space (theoretically infinite in expanse) are known as the Children’s Limbo, and most souls are squatters here with little knowledge of how really to build their surroundings.

Magic words (thought patterns) are the manner of interaction with the Metaverse.

The implants that allow access to the Metaverse also are identification implants controlled by the government, which itself is ruled by the Union of Humanity.  It is these through which the final zombification occurs.

Corruption and ineptitude are rampant.

Also, immigrants are everywhere, refugees of rising sea level.

The country is now the North American Union, as each continent is now a similar Union, headed toward world government. 

It is not recommended ever to sever your connection, so that information from the metaverse continually helps you out even in sleep (in sleep, some people have sort of subliminal screen savers, dream-guide software, and even dream recording).  So only the rebels in the know, and random people, and robots are unaffected by the zombification.  Also, most animals are unaffected.

Julia’s step-mother is instantly zombified in front of her eyes.

The Encino Man is filling a beetle with 151 then setting it on fire.  Many other cruel, absurd acts are common.

Some animals have devices that translate their thoughts and allow them to effectively communicate.

Post oil-crash at the beginning.  America is at its most imperial (and near its end).

Post nuclear attack at the end of the first act

DisneyWorld is domed, with its own controlled weather system, but the dome gets largely destroyed during the attack and the weather system damaged (random lightning/weather).

Mutants are among the attackers

Lost / Thundarr the Barbarian

The Internet has become a world-wide implant-based system of alternate dimensions, and part of the result of the nuclear attack is that everyone who is online at that time becomes a sort of zombie at the whim of whatever group.

After the zombification, it is uncertain for a while where the souls of all the zombies have gone, and it ends up turning out that they are captive somehow in the metaverse.  There is the issue, of course, that when the zombie-body of someone is destroyed, they no longer have a body in the world while their soul still exists in the metaverse.

It is the African Union and the Asian Union who come to the rescue of the European and North American Unions, though only about half of the European Union’s residents were zombified (though it was the cities that did and the countryside that didn’t, largely).

The zombies are asleep for three hours before they rise again and begin acting out the government’s will as automatons.