The Book of Strange New Things

by Michel Faber

It was monumentally ugly, like all architecture not built by religious devotees or mad eccentrics.

Maybe the collapse of big corporations won’t be as disastrous as everybody’s been saying. Maybe ordinary people will just trade and sell things locally—

the way we SHOULD have been doing all along.

“You really believe the world is coming to an end?” said Peter. “Jesus fucking Christ, padre, what kind of a Christian are you? Isn’t this the whole fucking point for you? Isn’t this what you’ve been waiting for for thousands of years?”

“You one of those decaffeinated Christians, padre? The diabetic wafer? Doctrine-free, guilt-reduced, low in Last Judgment, 100 percent less Second Coming, no added Armageddon? Might contain small traces of crucified Jew?”

“Well, this project here,” declared Tartaglione, imperious in contempt, “is sorta like the Rapture by committee. Rapture Incorporated.

All the scars ever suffered by anyone in the whole of human history were not suffering but triumph: triumph against decay, triumph against death.

Now, their slogans had mingled in BG’s mind with a thousand windblown leaves from the Qur’an, the Bible, assorted self-help books, magazines and TV programs, combining into a mulch. A mulch from which his self-esteem grew healthy and strong.

The way things had turned out, they might need to manage without a savior; they might need to forage and scrabble for whatever future they could get on their own. And the thing about the Bible was, once you asked for a future without faith, the Scriptures washed their hands of you. Vanity, all is vanity.

BG blinked slowly. He did not lose his temper. He had no temper left to lose. That was his tragedy, and his mark of dignity too.