“The surviving senior managerial staff of the Goldman-Sachs bank have just released a press statement. It states that their headquarters building was totally destroyed by a direct hit from a rock with heavy casualties to the partners and senior staff. Due to the resulting reduction in their pension commitments for the next thirty years, the profitability of the bank will be significantly improved this year. As a result, the surviving partners have awarded themselves a special bonus to reflect the improved financial standing of Goldman-Sachs.”
Anita Blanton brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Well, nothing to be surprised at there I suppose.” She looked away for a moment and her eyes widened. With a level of relish in her voice, she then resumed. “A late breaking piece of news. The deceased partners and senior staff of Goldmans-Sachs Bank have applied for a restraining order against the living partners and senior staff, requesting that they be restrained from awarding themselves a bonus using the assets of the bank pension fund. The deceased members of staff claim that the terms of their contracts do not stipulate that they will lose rights to their pensions by dying and that they are entitled to continuance of their normal pension payments. They also claim that they are being discriminated against simply because they are dead and that they are fully entitled to any bonus payments that are made to living bank members. They are requesting the ACLU take up this case on their behalf.
“Attorneys for the deceased members of Goldmans-Sachs, the law firm of Bleedum, Grabbit and Runne, have also filed suit before the Federal Court asking for an injunction against the Securities Exchange Commission prohibiting the SEC from cancelling the trading licenses of the deceased Goldman-Sachs employees. Filing the action, attorney William Crook said ‘Being dead is no reason why somebody should not be a good banker.’ The case is expected to go to the Supreme Court before any resolution is reached.”
“Yes, Anita, but whose Supreme Court? There’s a lot of dead Justices in Hell. They could end up claiming jurisdiction.”
“Don’t ask me Brandon. I just read the news. On to our next item. With the first oil supplies arriving from Hell, the civilian oil price dropped below three hundred dollars a barrel today for the first time in almost two years…. “
Chapter Fifty Six
Interrogation Room, DIMO(N) Field Facility, Fort Bragg, North Carolina
“I have nothing to say.” Kathryn Branch had been left with little to hold on to in her life. Her family were either dead or under arrest, her faith had been shattered with the conquest of Hell and the war against Heaven. The long spell in a woman’s prison had robbed her of her values and self-respect. She’d even lost the ‘modest’ clothing she’d worn from choice. Now, she had to wear a standard women’s prison overalls, orange and cheap. All she did have left was her dogmatic refusal to answer questions and to that she clung desperately.
“Now that is unfortunate.” Agent-In-Charge ‘Kamikaze’ Smith was being cautious but the evidence gained here was not intended to be presented in court so the usual rules did not apply. “Several other nations have expressed an interest in interviewing you so we may well have to extradite you to them.”
“You can’t threaten me. The judge said… “
“That applies to a court hearing only. Anyway, if we hand you over to another country, what happens there is entirely up to their legal system. You may have heard of ‘extraordinary rendition’. By the way, don’t think that dying gets you off the hook. We’ll just be waiting for you at the other side and will carry on where we left off. One way or another Kathryn, we are going to get to the bottom of this. Unless you know you’re going to Heaven of course. We haven’t kicked the gates open there. Yet. But, you won’t need to worry about that, you are on your way to Hell.”
“No I am not! Hell is for those who turned their backs on the True Faith. The Faithful are exempt.” The words came out in a rush, an affirmation of belief that revealed desperation as much as anything else.
“Really? That’s not what Yahweh said. He said all humans and that’s what he meant. Ever since we’ve been occupying Hell, we’ve compared those who die here with those who turn up there. They match exactly, no exceptions. You’re going to Hell, Kathryn, only question is when and how you get there. And how you spend the time between. I understand that Indonesia is one of the places demanding your extradition. Prisons are pretty bad in Indonesia you know. You really want to spend the rest of your life screwing the guards for extra fish-heads with your rice?”
“You can’t threaten me like this.”
“In case you didn’t notice, I just did. Anyway, you might be right, Michael-Lan promised you entry to Heaven didn’t he?”
Kathryn Branch was sobbing. All the humiliation and abuse she had suffered in prison was catching up with her and it overwhelmed her. Even more overwhelming was the fear of much worse to come. She had believed that nothing could be worse than her present incarceration but logically she understood that she could be doing far worse. Now it appeared she would be. Mixed in with all that was something that she rigidly denied even to herself, something that contradicted everything she had been indoctrinated with since childhood. She was being betrayed by those she had worshipped.
“Michael-Lan promised me nothing. He just said that it was my duty to stand by the True Faith. My duty.”
“Well, that tells us what you would have found yourself doing in Hell.” Smith leaned back in his seat. “Have you heard of a man called Robert E Lee?”
Branch shook her head through her tears, then stopped as the name registered. “The great general in the War of Northern Aggression?”
“I wouldn’t have phrased it quite like that but that’s the one. Well, he’s been recovered and survived his ordeal quite well. You know what that ordeal was Kathryn? No? He spent the years between his death and his rescue rolling a giant boulder around. One only just within his ability to move. He couldn’t see where he was going so every so often he would collide with another boulder and be half-crushed when it rolled back over him. Well, we asked Abigor what gives? Why did he get that while most soldiers went to the river of fire or the toxic swamps. He said it was because those who got to push the boulders were the ones who allowed their obedience to duty to overcome their sense of what was right. I guess the boulder represented the weight of their sense of duty and the collisions what happened when their sense of duty collided with somebody else’s. Just my guess there of course. You were on your way there as well I’d guess. You still can go there, if you really believe that divine command is absolute. That ring is proving to be one of the quickest to empty but it’s still there. Like the idea behind it.”
Branch shook her head and started crying again. It was one thing to discuss Heaven and Hell in theoretical terms, no matter how vivid the imagery used by the preachers. To be told precisely what her fate was to be and the realization that there had been nothing she could do to avoid it was quite different. It had a reality, a concrete absoluteness that weighed down upon her. She could imagine, all too clearly, just how Robert E Lee had felt, pushing that rock around.
“Michael never promised me anything. When the message came, we all laid down on our beds and waited to die. My father, my mother everybody. Just as we had been ordered. My father told us all not to worry, that we were the righteous and faithful and that the condemnation to Hell did not apply to us. We would be part of the chosen, the saved. I remember laying there, hearing our dog whining outside, then the Archangel Michael himself had come down and stood at the end of my bed. He said that I had been chosen for a very special mission, to watch over the humans who were Left Behind. He told me that there were a very special group of humans chosen for this role. We would report back to him on what was going on and what was happening down here. When I was assigned to DIMO(N), I told Michael everything that I could find out about the research going on there. Eventually, he asked me the exact position of the facility within the base so it could be attacked.