Alternative Fun Facts: The Last Campaign
On faith, fake news, and over-achieving angels | Fiction | Fresh Soup
This time in Alternative Fun Facts, we’re going to learn why the end will be catastrophic and why, despite everything, it’s not entirely our fault.
From the outside, you have it easy: you’re omnipotent, you’re omniscient, and so you have no right to complain about pretty much anything. But when you’re in the weeds, listening to a winged bloviator standing on a cloud lecturing you about how your brand has been diluted over the generations, you don’t take kindly to it. You haven’t spent billions of years creating universes just to have some entry-level angel with a mopey look on his face turn up to inform you that being called “Father of Christ” by some people and “Allah” or “Jehovah” by others is a branding nightmare that needs to be dealt with, stat. “And,” the angel adds with a sigh, “don’t get me started on how we handle the ones who claim you simply don’t exist.”
You nod gravely while you listen to him, but deep down inside you’re thinking: What do I care what they call me, or if they even believe in me? Seriously, you’re the Creator of the World, not some Instagram influencer. The angel reads your mind, as usual. It can be annoying sometimes, but you’re the one who decided to make them telepathic. “Begging your forgiveness,” he says, bowing his head obsequiously, “if my words seemed to imply that his Holiness…” You give him a reassuring nod. His name has slipped your mind. And since you made him a mind-reader, he knows that. “Haziel,” he reminds you helpfully, “and of course there’s no doubt that this whole miracle of creation is not for self-aggrandizement but purely altruistic. In your case, however, weak branding is more than just a PR screwup: it’s a fundamental flaw. I’m going to put this out there: with all due respect for the Coming of the Messiah venture—which, by the way, I’m one hundred percent behind—when you have every member of this mixed multitude calling you a different name and ascribing you a different will, we just can’t make any progress.”