Alternative Apocalypse

by Debora Godfrey

  Father Walsh took out an imitation-leather-bound book from his satchel. Its delicate pages were filled with columns of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Roman letters arranged under Arabic and Roman numerals. He also took out a legal pad, a pencil, and an eraser. Within an hour, he had filled two pages of the pad with a Latin translation of the manuscript. He didn’t slow down to read, he only transcribed what was in front of him. By the end of the hour, his arthritis was killing him. He sat up very slowly and winced as his joints popped.

  When he read what he had decoded, he giggled. He snorted, he chuckled. His joints no longer hurt so much, and he resumed his work and decoded the last page.

  When he read the entire piece, he laughed out loud and pounded the desk. A concerned clerk opened the door, fearing the old man was having a seizure. Upon feeling the hand on his shoulder, Father Walsh showed the confused clerk the translation, and the clerk laughed.

  They showed it to the Cardinal Librarian and Archivist of the Holy Roman Church, a man who hadn’t laughed in forty years. He howled until tears ran down his cheeks and he leaned against the wall for support.

  The Cardinal Librarian shared the translation with the Pope. His Holiness giggled and snorted all the way through his next audience in St. Peter’s square, where he read the translation in English, Italian, and Spanish. The audience collapsed in gales of laughter and got out their phones to share the Vision online.

  The text of Ethan’s Vision and the video of the Pope went viral within minutes. The Vision was translated into English, Chinese, French, Swahili, Hindi, Arabic, Russian, and Portuguese. It was funny in all of those languages and to everyone who read it or heard it.

  Giggling newscasters read the Vision to their audiences in place of their headline stories. Soldiers read it to each other and stopped shooting. A shouting match on the floor of an Asian parliament collapsed into hysterics when the prime minister read the Vision. The International Space Station crew learned it from the ground crew and laughed so hard that they forgot to hold onto something for stability and floated through the station until the ventilation system washed them up against the bulkheads.

  As the number of people laughing increased, the Earth’s seismic activity increased exponentially.

  Earthquakes erupted first on the Pacific Rim. The ocean reached up and swallowed the coastal cities of the Americas and continued around until the tsunamis and tremors collapsed Tokyo on parties of people hugging each other. The Arabian and Anatolian fault plates snapped and buckled, throwing the last standing antiquities on Jews and Arabs sharing hookahs in Jerusalem. Mount Etna roared to life as the African and Eurasian plates ground together. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge surged and split open. The seas boiled. Yellowstone erupted.

  Earth heaved and strained and came apart like a peeled fruit. Within minutes the planet and its orbiting hardware were replaced by a mass of red-hot debris.

  Saint Michael the Warrior stood on a reef of Space and Time and viewed the chaos with an un-angelic expression of shock and horror. Someone had failed to inform him of this part of the Divine Plan.

  He called Saint Genesius over to him, spread his great warrior’s hands over the remains of Earth and said, “What was that all about?”

  Genesius, patron of comedians, actors, lawyers, and half a dozen other groups that no longer existed, only chuckled. “Michael, if I have to explain it, it just isn’t funny.”

  Contributors

  David Bernard is a native New Englander who hightailed it to South Florida as soon as he was informed that grown-ups can live anywhere they want, and that in spite of opinions to the contrary, he was considered to be an adult. He does still keep an ice scraper by the door, because you never know. His previous works include short stories in anthologies such as Strangely Funny (Mystery and Horror, LLC), Snowbound with Zombies (Post Mortem Press), Legacy of the Reanimator (Chaosium), and The Shadow over Deathlehem (Grinning Skull Press).

  Rupert McTaggart Brackenbury is a business analyst & public servant. He lives in Wellington, New Zealand with his wife and two sons. News about his writing (and further ramblings) can be found on twitter: @RupertBBare.

  Ian Creasey lives in Yorkshire, England. His most recent book is The Shapes of Strangers, a collection of science fiction stories, published by NewCon Press. For more information, see his website iancreasey.com.

  Andrew Davie received an MFA in creative writing from Adelphi University. He taught English in Macau on a Fulbright Grant. He’s also taught English and writing in New York, Hong Kong, and Virginia. In June of 2018, he survived a ruptured brain aneurysm and subarachnoid hemorrhage. Links for his short stories and novella can be found on his website: asdavie.wordpress.com

  Tomas Furby is a graduate of UEA’s English Literature with Creative Writing BA and has worked in the publishing industry for a decade. He is based in Didcot, UK, and spends his spare hours writing strange stories and weird worlds. In 2018 he won Exeter Writers Short Story Competition and was longlisted in the James White Award. In 2019 he was longlisted for the Bath Short Story Award and shortlisted in the Frome Short Story Competition. His work can be found at tomasfurby.com.

  Henry Gasko was born in a displaced persons camp in Yugoslavia after World War Two, raised on a vegetable farm in Canada, and is now living in Australia. He has recently retired from a career in data analysis and medical research. He won the 2018 Sapiens Plurum short story competition, and has had stories published in the anthology "Dreamworks", Australia's Aurealis magazine, and in the SciPhi Journal.

  Michelle F Goddard is an AWADJ (artist with a day job), a musician who has played around the world, and a composer with credits to her name for original songs performed in musicals and films. Her short fiction has been published in Iguana Books’ Blood is Thicker anthology and Polar Borealis Magazine, with work forthcoming from Ulthar Press among others. She is presently working on several short stories and a Science Fiction novel. You can find her at michellefgoddard.wordpress.com.

  Debora Godfrey has had stories published in More Alternative Truths: Stories from the Resistance, Alternative Theologies, and Alternative Truths III: Endgame. She is also co-editor for Alternative Apocalypses. She’s working on a middle grade fantasy series, as well as a crime novel based in space. Debora lives in a modern commune on Bainbridge Island, WA, with a dog, a husband (part time), and a variable number of lawyers.

  Jean Graham began making up stories at the age of three, and never stopped. Her work has appeared in magazines such as Mythic and Weirdbook, and in the anthologies Time of the Vampires, Memento Mori, and Killing it Softly 2, among others. A member of both SFWA and HWA, she resides in San Diego, CA with her husband Chuck, five cats, innumerable dust bunnies, and many, many books.

  B. Clayton Hackett is an attorney who lives with his wife and two children in South Texas, a place that is becoming more dystopian by the day (even by Texans’ standards). He hopes his unlikely work as a calendar model was merely an anomaly and not a portend of some impending apocalypse. He has previously appeared in Daily Science Fiction. “The Golden Disks” marks his first publication in an anthology.

  Stuart Hardy is a British internet comedian from the Youtube channel Stubagful where he makes offbeat and cynical video reviews of TV shows like Doctor Who, Stranger Things, Black Mirror and Inside Number 9. He’s been writing sci-fi and satire for a very long time but only started taking it seriously in 2016 when the world got noticeably worse.

  Philip Harris was born in England but now lives in Canada where he works for a large video game developer. Not content with creating imaginary worlds for a living, he spends his spare time indulging his love of writing. His published books include the Serial Killer Z series, the Leah King Trilogy and an homage to the old pulp science fiction serials - Glitch Mitchell and the Unseen Planet. His short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines including The Jurassic Chronicles, Tales from the Canyons of the Damned, Bones, Uncommon Minds, The Anthology of European SF, and Peeping Tom. He has also worked as
security for Darth Vader. You can find more details of his work and his blog at http://www.solitarymindset.com.

  Larry Hodges is an active member of SFWA with 103 short story sales and four novels, including When Parallel Lines Meet, which he co-wrote with Mike Resnick and Lezli Robyn, and Campaign 2100: Game of Scorpions, which covers the election for President of Earth in the year 2100. He’s a member of Codexwriters, and a graduate of the six-week 2006 Odyssey Writers Workshop, the 2007 Orson Scott Card Literary Boot Camp, the two-week 2008 Taos Toolbox Writers Workshop, and has a bachelor’s in math and a master’s in journalism. In the world of non-fiction, he has 13 books and over 1800 published articles in over 160 different publications. He’s also a professional table tennis coach, and claims to be the best science fiction writer in USA Table Tennis, and the best table tennis player in Science Fiction Writers of America! Visit him at larryhodges.com.

  Liam Hogan is a member of the Post Apocalyptic Book Club and loves stories that begin: “The End”. London based, his award-winning short story “Ana”, appears in Best of British Science Fiction 2016 (NewCon Press) and “The Dance of a Thousand Cuts” in Best of British Fantasy 2018.

  With a couple of mouse clicks, you can find out more at: http://happyendingnotguaranteed.blogspot.co.uk or tweet @LiamJHogan.

  Daniel M. Kimmel is the 2018 recipient of the Skylark Award, given by the New England Science Fiction Association. He was a finalist for a Hugo Award for “Jar Jar Binks Must Die… and other observations about science fiction movies” and for the Compton Crook Award for best first novel for “Shh! It’s a Secret: a novel about Aliens, Hollywood, and the Bartender’s Guide”. In addition to some two dozen published short stories (including in Alternative Truths and Alternative Truths III: Endgame), he is the author of the novels Time on My Hands: My Misadventures in Time Travel and Father of the Bride of Frankenstein.

  Brian K. Lowe is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), with over 40 story publications to his credit. He has also published seven novels, including his trilogy The Stolen Future, available from Digital Science Fiction, and the continuing adventures of Nemesis, a 1930s pulp hero. He is currently working on a spin-off novel set in the world of The Stolen Future. Look for him on Twitter @brianlowewriter, his blog Graffiti on the Walls of Time (brianklowe.wordpress.com), or at brianklowewriter@aol.com.

  Christine Lucas lives in Greece with her husband and a horde of spoiled animals. A retired Air Force officer and mostly self-taught in English, she has had her work appear in several print and online magazines, including Daily Science Fiction, Pseudopod/Artemis Rising 4 and Nature: Futures. She was a finalist for the 2017 WSFA award and is currently working on her first novel. Visit her at: http://werecat99.wordpress.com/.

  Ugonna-Ora Owoh is a Nigerian poet and model, He is a recipient of a 2018 Young Romantics/Keats Shelley prize, and a 2019 Erbacce Prize. He is a winner of a 2019 Stephen A Dibiase International poetry prize and a 2018 Fowey short story prize. He was a highly commended poet for the 2019 Blue nib Chapbook Contest. His recent poems are on Confingo Magazine, The Malahat Review, The Matador Review, The Puritan, Vassar Review and elsewhere. He is featured in Pride Magazine and Puerto Del Sol Black Voices series.

  Sandy Parsons writes literary, philosophical, humorous, and speculative fiction. She has studied physics, math, molecular biophysics, and medical science, but only ponders the fundamental nature of reality for fun these days. When not writing, Sandy is an anesthetist and an associate editor at http://escapepod.org/. More information can be found at http://www.sandyparsons.com/

  Mike Resnick is the author of 77 novels, more than 280 stories, and 3 screenplays. He has edited 42 anthologies, and currently edits Galaxy’s Edge Magazine and Stellar Guild Books. According to Locus, Mike is the all-time leading award winner for short fiction. He has won 5 Hugos (from a record 37 nominations), a Nebula, and other major awards in the USA, France, Japan, Spain, Catalonia, Croatia, Poland, and China. He was Guest of Honor at the 2012 Worldcon. His daughter, Laura, is also a science fiction writer, and won the 1993 Campbell Award as Best Newcomer.

  James Rowland is a New Zealand-based, British-born writer. His work has previously appeared at Aurealis, Black Dandy and Compelling Science Fiction. When he’s not moonlighting as a writer of magical, strange or futuristic stories, he works as an intellectual property lawyer. Besides writing, his hobbies are reading, stand-up comedy, travel, photography, and the sport of kings, cricket. You can find more of his work at his website https://jamesrowlandwriter.wordpress.com.

  P. L. Ruppel is a writer and science librarian who lives in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. She works on biomedical database indexes for the federal government. She is a Michigan native who still can’t work out why anyone considers forty degrees Fahrenheit “cold.”

  Melvin Sims lives on a fourth floor walkup in southern Indiana where he is able to gaze out nightly at the giant cross erected across the street, adjacent to an idyllic park where children play and dogs are walked. He lives alone, visited only by the bible bearing folks who would save his soul, given the chance, but seldom accept an offer to join him for a bong hit.

  Canadian fiction writer, playwright, and poet, J.J. Steinfeld lives on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published 19 books, including Would You Hide Me?, Misshapenness, Identity Dreams and Memory Sounds, Madhouses in Heaven, Castles in Hell, An Unauthorized Biography of Being, Absurdity, Woe Is Me, Glory Be, and A Visit to the Kafka Café. His short stories and poems have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies internationally, and over 50 of his one-act plays and a handful of full-length plays have been performed in Canada and the United States.

  Mikal Trimm has sold over 50 short stories and 100 poems to numerous venues including Postscripts, Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. He lives in a small town outside Austin, TX, where the weather is pleasantly miserable.

  D. S. Ullery has been published in multiple magazines and anthologies., including Journals of Horror:Found Fiction; Paying the Ferryman; Final Masquerade; and Creature Stew. He is an Affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association and lives in West Palm Beach, FL with a black cat named Jason, who was born on Friday the 13th.

  Patrick Winters is a graduate of Illinois College in Jacksonville, IL, where he earned a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing. He has been published in the likes of Sanitarium Magazine, Deadman’s Tome, Trysts of Fate, and other such titles.

  A full list of his previous publications may be found at his author’s site, if you are so inclined to know: http://wintersauthor.azurewebsites.net/Publications/List.

  Jim Wright is a retired US Navy Chief Warrant Officer and freelance writer. He lives in Florida where he watches American politics in a perpetual state of amused disgust. He’s been called the Tool of Satan, but he prefers the title: Satan’s Designated Driver. He is the mind behind Stonekettle Station (www.stonekettle.com). You can email him at jim@stonekettle.com. You can follow him on Twitter @stonekettle or you can join the boisterous bunch he hosts on Facebook at Facebook/Stonekettle. Remember to bring brownies and mind the white cat, he bites. Hard.

  Jane Yolen has published almost 380 books and has her eyes on the big 4-0-0. Along the way she’s won 2 Nebulas, 3 World Fantasy Awards, The Skylark Award, and a Caldecott Medal for her book OWL MOON. At age 80, she is in a band. She was the first woman to give the Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, a lecture series that began in the1920’s and included talks by both John Buchan and J.R.R. Tolkien among others. She is a SFWA Grand Master, SFPA Grand Master, and a Grand Master of World Fantasy.

  You want a minor apocalypse? One of her awards set her good coat on fire.

  Thanks Debora, Becky, and Ben, and all who helped.

  It’s been a hoot.

  Bob B

  If you are still reading?

  You

>   are my hero.