Kingdom Collapse

On July 5 of 2033 Antarctic bases McMurdo, Davis, Casey and others reported earthquakes of 6 magnitude on the Richter scale.  South Africa and Tierra Del Fuego in South America had minor tsunamis shortly after the earthquakes.  Helicopters flew to the suspected center of the disturbance near the South Pole.  What they saw was deeply disturbing.  An area of hundreds of thousands of square kilometers had subsided anywhere from a few to a hundred meters deep.  What appeared to be naked humans were slowly digging out of the steaming slush.  As the observers goggled at the scene, something like a red guided missile flew out of the depression so fast it was just a blur.  There was no safe landing place, so the helicopters which were short of fuel flew back to their bases.  When the film they had taken was released, the world observed a second odd event.

Only seconds after the “missile” had left Antarctica, a red giant with goat horns wearing a loin cloth and nothing else took over the United Nations.  It had no problem taking over the podium during an active meeting of member nations.  He spoke in English but was translated for the member countries as is usual at the UN.

“Hi there.  You might know me as Satan, but I prefer Lucifer.  Hey, have you heard that Rolling Stones number ‘Sympathy For The Devil’?  Love it.  Lucifer is from the Hebrew and means light bearing.  I know I’ve got a bad reputation, but I serve a valuable purpose, like a garbage collector.  That may be a bad analogy, but OK.  For sure, you wouldn’t want to mingle with my guests in the afterlife”

The giant covered its chest with his hands as five gunshots were heard, then collapsed.  Everyone turned to see a security officer with a smoking gun.  The stunned crowd watched Lucifer as it lay motionless.  A minute and half later the body made strange noises which turned into laughter.  Lucifer got up and looked at his assailant.  “You got spunk kid.  I like your style.  Would you like to do a podcast together?”

After a silent and motionless sixty-four seconds, the gunman said “Ah.  Sure.”

Lucifer seemed pleased and continued “I got a little off track.  You may want to know what happened in Antarctica.  The roof of Hell collapsed and put out our heating system.  I suspect that the inmates are not happy with hell freezing over, but at least it’s a change.  As you may know, it’s a good thing for all the guys whose girlfriends said they wouldn’t have sex with them until hell froze over.”

Lucifer laughed loud and long.  The audience was stunned into silence by the unexpected frivolity of Satan.

“I could go on and on, but maybe you want to ask questions.”

“You from Bulgaria, what’s on your mind?”

“Do you mean hell is a real place where bad people go when they die?”

“That’s right.  Oops.”

Lucifer’s loin cloth fell off.

The audience gasped, laughed, cheered, and made many rude and crude remarks.

Lucifer pulled up his loin cloth and said “Oh, grow up.  If you think that was weird, be glad you didn’t see the flip side.  Anyway, haven’t you ever seen two dicks together before?  How about the president and vice president?”

While the audience was cheering and booing, the Bulgarian delegate grabbed his chance before anyone could pose another question and asked “Follow up.  Why locate Hell in Antarctica?”

“OK, that was a dumb idea.  Fire and ice don’t mix very well.  It was the idea of my colleague.  It thinks it’s some superstar, but it’s not the boss of me.  I shouldn’t have accepted Kolak’s idea of where to locate hell.  As we had to expand due to our population explosion, we kept weakening the structure.  Boom!  Roof falls down, puts out our heating, everything freezes.”

An unidentified person yelled “Kolak?”

“Yeah, that’s its name.  For some reason it’s known on earth by a multitude of different names.”

“You, shorty from Albania.”

“What are the demographics of Hell?”

“Just like earth’s criminals, mostly male.  All of your major religions have contributed a lot of souls.  Masters of war of course, and any soldier or civilian that enjoyed killing and destruction.  Pretty high percentage of politicians.  No surprise.  Common criminals, not so much.”

Lucifer pulled out something from somewhere on its back that looked like a cell phone and looked at it.  “I see we have 2,678,534,968 souls currently and that the number goes up about twelve hundred a minute.  Because of space limitations, we cycle inmates between actively tortured and time outs as small cubes.”

A woman from Canada yelled out “This might not be a question for you, but do you know if there is intelligent life on other planets?”

“Other planets, yes.”

“You from Sweden.”

“How do you handle all of the inmates?”

“You must be a bureaucrat back home.  I have thousands of trustees to make life unpleasant for the inmates.  They are chosen from the worst people – mass murderers.  They hate everyone and are hated in return.  They whip, burn, slice and dice their fellow prisoners who are in constant revolt inflicting damage on the trustees.  Win – win.”

“What’s your question Canada guy?”

“Do you ever do that Faust thing about collecting souls?”

“I have dabbled, but only for amusement.  Thing is, it’s easy to cheat a cheater, so that part is fun.  There’s this business guy recently who was an easy mark.  I delivered for him, but he will regret it.  Some well-known actors.  The involuntarily celibate.”

“The guy with the bad moustache from Sri Lanka.”

“Lucifer, what are you plans for Hell now?”

“I’m not in a hurry to decide.  If the earth people want some zombies to wander their streets, I could lend a few billion, but that seems unlikely.  More likely I’ve got my eye on some real estate on Pluto where we could relocate.  The guys in Antarctica can have snowball fights while they freeze until I decide.”

“I see you have more questions, but I’ve got a hot date with a demon from Mars, so I’m getting out of here.  Don’t pet or feed those guys in Hell while I’m gone.”