THE SECOND COMING...

A future in which a weird mixture of ancient myths and old stories combine to create a new belief system...

The Pontiff stood silently for a moment and his congregation waited, hushed, expectant. Then...

Dearly beloved...

It has been many a long century since the Great Collapse and as a people we have gathered together, slowly, painfully, searching through radio-active remnants of mighty cathedrals and in scorched humble chapels for the wonderful substance of our past.

And, dearly beloved, on this special day, when once a baby lay in the manger, four thousand years ago by dead reckoning, we are gathered to remember our own great story.

Many have died in the search. Many have been mutilated by the invisible forces of radio-activity or persecuted by the monsters that still lurk beyond the reaches of our fledgling civilisation in deep caves and deeper pits...

But we finally have our book! Our Bible!

Finally, we have gathered the ancient texts, and dearly beloved, we see the wondrous story of our birth and growth... bit by bit we have pieced them together until it was possible to replace the little that has been totally lost with sensible connections and hence we have lost nothing...

And our book tells of the Creation … the voice in nowhere commanding somewhere to exist … the Adam and Eve glorious beginning with feasts at the apple-table and wine in their grail, and they begat, dearly beloved the races of man on Earth. And those races persecuted each other in the glorious name of God, they thrashed the slaves for being unfree and they stoned their sons for being churlish... And amongst them there rose a pregnant virgin who was laid on a table by an emissary from the Almighty and pumped full of glorious seed until her stomach swelled...

And four thousand years ago the child was born.

Goldilocks they called her, and three bears they gave her for companions, but such was her strength and the glorious length of her hair that they took her to a garden and there they persecuted her and screwed her on a cross of untarnished steel...

And the years passed and man lost wisdom, and there came a second coming...

Goldilocks came on waves of fire and smote all until our world became a radioactive pyre from which only a few survived...

And of those few there rose, in wonder, our sacred Lord, transformed in glory...

Our Sacred Lord to whom we pray...

And sing our praises…

“Lord of all mightiness,

Lord of all strength,

Lord in the Heavens

Creating our length,

Hear of our weakness

Magnificent daughter,

And reach in our frailty

Eternal Harriet Potter...”

There was a long silence, and then the congregation breathed and altogether, in marvellous unison, whispered Harriet Potter...