The Norm/SCAB pair slowly made their way from store-front to store-front, more intent on enjoying the company of the other than actually shopping for Christmas merchandise. No one seemed to think that this combination was at all out of the ordinary. SR smiled. Perhaps, in this city at least, it wasn't. After his transformation, it seemed like the natural move for him-- to go to the Mecca of SCABS-- the city where they congregated in droves; where some of the best research was being conducted in efforts to discover the actual cause, and hopefully the cure for the disease; the city where SR had hoped, vainly, that SCABS would be more accepted by the general population.... SR had kept his promise to his father and approached God concerning the matter. A few days later, he called Kelly on a voice-only line and told him that he wouldn't be going to the prom with him if Kelly chose to take 'that bug' along. Of course that fractured their friendship, but SR figured it didn't matter much anyway, since he would be going to the State University in a few months while Kelly would be going across the country to major in computer science at MIT. Not that SR couldn't have attended MIT, had he wanted-- it had just seemed too inconvenient at the time. In his church, young men sometimes devoted two years of their life to preaching the Gospel to the world. Since his earliest years, SR had planned and dreamed of 'going on a mission.' After his graduation, he planned on attending one semester of college at the State University, then traveling wherever God wanted him to go to spread the good news. Again, more out of convenience than anything else, SR submitted one application to one institution, and got one letter of acceptance back from that same University. He would be rooming with his life-long and devout atheist friend, Chad Beasly. ...SR arose from the bench upon which he had been sitting and stretched, making sure he didn't open his mouth too wide during the subsequent yawn. It was nearing four o'clock in the afternoon, and his stomach was telling him it was time to get something to eat. He walked up to a nearby concessions stand and ordered a Reuben, watching the sun as it began to set.... Upon entering the relative freedom of college life-- his parents were nearly three hundred miles away-- SR and Chad had little difficulty forming a new clique of friends. This time, however, it included SCABS. That, of course, was mostly Chad's doing. SR certainly wasn't going to go out of his way to make SCAB friends, but found himself reluctant to shove them off when they so graciously tolerated him. Toleration was something SR was going to learn a lot about that semester. Unfortunately for Chad, SR considered it his personal vendetta to convert his long-suffering roommate to the 'right way.' SR wasn't sure how many nights he'd kept Chad up into the wee hours of the morning debating some aspect or another of his religion. Chad would get back by loudly playing Nine Inch Nails or having his computer randomly load holographic images of nude rabbit-morph SCABS when SR was trying to study. By mid-term, they had come to an unofficial truce-- Chad was missing too much sleep, and SR couldn't get any studying done. Eventually, though, SR began to let his hair down and more freely associate with his SCAB friends, and they with him. They all knew he belonged to that church, and even planned on spending a good chunk of his life preaching against the very things they stood for. Still, they were friends-- and for SR, friendship had very little to do with religion. Two of them in particular, Dianne Garrison and Alice Larson, nearly floored him one morning when they asked him if they could attend church with him the following Sunday. SR was fairly certain he knew how the congregation would react to the bobcat- and lemur-morphs, but knew these two were also intelligent enough to surmise these facts as well. As it was, he was more than happy to assist them in their 'sociological experiment.' The hour went about as expected-- all three of them uncomfortable under the eyes of the other worshipers. Afterward, some of the other members introduced themselves to the two newcomers, some of them shooting questioning glances in SR's direction. SR was amazed when Dianne asked to come again the next week. Things went similarly. Experiment concluded, the motivation and results of which SR would never understand, none of his friends ever asked to go to church with him again. Probably the biggest surprise of that semester, however, occurred only a few days before the end of it: It was SR's birthday and when he arrived home that evening, he found a note on the door instructing him to come to the building's third floor lounge as soon as possible. When he opened the door and turned on the lights, he was greeted with the stereotypical surprise birthday party. Except these weren't stereotypical people. The members of his clique-- and nearly every other SCAB on his hall-- greeted him with gifts and good cheer for the two years he would be spending in Germany-- the country where God was sending him on his mission. His favorite gift was a wall-sized, hand-drawn map of Germany on which each of these friends had written a short note to wish him well on his journey. SR still has that map. ...The night had set in, and SR was gazing skeptically at a wire-frame set of eight reindeer and sleigh that had been assembled in the center section of the walking streets. The power to the Christmas lights wrapped around the wires had just been turned on, and in the dusky light of the sunset, the display looked obtusely artificial. He passively wondered how much it would have cost the city to pay a few unemployed deer-morphs to stand there instead.... All-too-quickly-- certainly too quickly to have time to show his friends any real gratitude for the kindness they had affected him-- SR was driven home for the winter holiday. Shortly thereafter, he found himself wearing a black suit and trench coat, going from door to door and manning street displays on the other side of the world, attempting to speak a language that, at first, sounded to him more like the cookie monster's multiple failed attempts at dislodging an offending pastry from the back of his throat. To say that the experience was traumatic is putting it lightly. ...Ignoring the offensive, flashing display of failed human ingenuity in the center of the square, SR could hear a choir singing "Es ist ein Ros entsprungen" somewhere ahead of him in the distance. He smiled-- that was one of his favorite German Christmas carols. He began to walk vigorously in the direction of the music.... Mission life was rarely easy. Most people couldn't understand why a Christian religion was sending missionaries to a country that was already Christian-- never mind the fact that the Catholic and Protestant churches that could be found on every- other-block of the larger cities were almost always empty. Of course, SR's religion had more than just Christianity in mind when they sent out missionaries. ...The music, bouncing off the surrounding buildings, was almost deafening to SR's sensitive ears now. It had to be a choir of over two hundred members to achieve that kind of volume and tone! Just around the next corner... If nothing else, then one gets to know one's own religion when forced to preach it. Along with the nicer aspects come the things one would rather remained in the closet. ...The choir had just finished the carol when SR rounded the corner, a wide smile stretching the corners of his mouth. That smile vanished instantly, as if someone had slapped it off his face. Before him stood a gigantic Christmas tree with an equally huge 'Humans First' banner draping down from the top. In front of the tree was a huge choir-- nearly two hundred fifty members in size-- that was composed entirely of Normals. In front of them, a podium had been erected on top of a short stage. Around this entire arrangement stood a wall of policemen, again all Norms., there to protect the performers from any vicious-minded SCABS who might want to crash their party. They didn't have much to worry about, however, since the crowd that had gathered was composed almost entirely of Normals. SR had no doubt everyone present on the scene were members of the local-- and largest in the nation-- 'Humans First' chapter. This city being the Mecca for SCABS also made it attractive to this other breed of low-life. A short, stocky man approached the microphone, smiled broadly, then began to speak: "Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd like to thank you for coming to our little Christmas celebration this evening. There was and agreeable chatter. "As many of you are well aware, our movement has seen better times. With the demise of our late illustrious leader, Humans First chapters across the globe have become disjointed and misdirected. With the lack of a unified goal, some chapters have taken up political arms against their brothers. In the resulting battles, the only winners have been the disease of our society: SCABS. The crowd murmured in worry. "But friends, I didn't come here to tell you tales of impending doom. Rather, I am here to tell you that the dream lives on. "Thirty years ago, a mission to Mars brought back a disease that ravaged the earth: the Martian Flu. Oh, what a terrible thing that was! For a while, it seemed that all of humanity was cursed to walk the earth like the dumb animal. "But then, we began to understand what God was doing with this disease. With His almighty Hand, He was pointing out in a way that could not be any clearer those among us who were or desired to be sodomites, murderers, pedophiles, rapists, thieves, adulterers, fornicators, homosexuals, and just about every other kind of despicable, abominable creature that walks the face of our beautiful Earth! "With the key given so clearly, shall we not separate the wheat from the tares in this, the time of the harvest? "Yet in our workplaces, on our streets, in our busses and trains, and in the public schools where our children must be sent to learn, this blister on the foot of humankind is allowed to run free, spreading its virulent spores among our friends and neighbors, and among our lovely children. "But the dream lives on. "After the manner of that great martyr for human rights, Martin Luther King Junior, I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.' "I have a dream that on the sandy oil fields of Texas, my brother the oil worker will be to go to his table at night without fear that tomorrow he will be replaced by a mutated horse. "I have a dream that even the city of New York, a city frozen with the fear of violence and carnage, will be transformed into a warm savannah where the claws, the horns, and teeth of the jungle are not to be feared. "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation untainted by the foul judgment of malicious scaled and furred schoolteachers. "I have a dream that one day Man will have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. "I have a dream... The tyrant's rant continued for another fifteen minutes, but SR was too busy to hear it, three blocks away, vomiting the last of his Reuben sandwich into a trash can. The magic of Christmas Eve was over. It was time to go home. It wasn't the first time that he'd heard such beautiful words so spitefully misconstrued. And especially not this Saint For Tolerance's words. In modern times, 'human rights' had taken on an entirely different meaning than its authors had intended. SR did his best to clean the foul taste from his mouth, then started his journey to the apartment complex across the street from the church at 45 Gnade Street. It stung to see people miss the mark so badly... "The Human Firsters' tactics are wrong, but their message is essentially right: SCABS have lost their humanity, and therefore need to be controlled." SR explained to his junior-companion, "In any case, though, it's pretty pointless to approach one on the street-- after all, you can't save them!" Paul LaMont nodded his head solemnly. Earlier that day, when approaching people on the little pedestrian section of Bad Nauheim's Dieselstrasse, SR had made four new contacts while Paul was having an extended conversation with a goat-morph of some sort. SR certainly wasn't annoyed that Paul had spent so much time talking with the SCAB (four new appointments in only two hours' time was a rarity for this Protestant town), but because SR would be going back to America in just two months, he wanted to be sure to pass along as much wisdom as possible to the new-comer. And wasting time with SCABS didn't normally make for a very productive day. Paul responded, "I was just practicing my German. I'm still not too comfortable talking to someone when it really counts." SR nodded. Paul looked up. "Hey SR, have you ever had the Flu?" SR answered almost mechanically-- it was a question he'd been asked well over a thousand times by people with whom he'd had conversations during appointments, on the street, on the phone, or wherever else the subject of SCABS discrimination came up: "No, but I have no doubts as to what would happen if I actually contracted it." Then more personally, "Have you?" Paul looked down at his scuffed black shoes. "Yeah. When I was fourteen, our whole family got it. My dad came out as a little girl." SR frowned. "I'm sorry to hear that." No more words were necessary-- both of them knew what his/her fate would be. Paul shrugged. "Aah, don't worry about it. I'm over it." The Strassenbahn they were riding came to the stop they were looking for, so the two young men exited and began walking to the location of their next appointment: Gunther Blase's apartment in the basement of a house at 16 Friedhof Weg. As they had before, SR and Paul chose to take the longer route through the adjacent cemetery because it was both shorter and provided a much needed break from the usual corridors of three-story stone buildings that made up a large portion of modern Bad Nauheim. About half-way through the neatly-aligned rows of gravestones, Paul stopped and pointed at one. "Hey SR, check it out!" SR looked at the object of Paul's interest. It was a shoe-box sized stone box with a small marble marker at the head. The inscription was, "Kam ein Voegelein geflogen, setzt sich nieder auf mein' Fuss. Friede sei Dir, Voegelein." Paul smirked. "I thought they didn't bury SCABS in this cemetery." "Depends on how much money you have." "What's it say?" SR shot a slightly annoyed glance at Paul. Paul had been in Germany for only three months, and was having trouble mastering the language. Still, SR was beginning to find it tedious to have to translate everything for his partner. "It says something like, 'Came a little bird flying, and sat down on my foot. Peace to you, little bird.' The first part comes from a German Volkslied. They sing it all the time at the old folks' home we'll be visiting next week. The rest is just some sentimental SCABS crap." SR snapped his fingers. "Oh yeah! Don't let me forget to introduce you to Heimo Gustavsohn next week-- he's the president of the local Humans First chapter, and lives in the neighborhood of that home." Paul nodded, and the two black-clad missionaries continued their way toward Gunther Blase's apartment. Gunther was an interesting character: SR and Paul had stumbled across him as he was remodeling a house on the other side of town. They asked if they could speak with him about Jesus. He responded that Jesus was a carpenter and that if the two missionaries knew anything about Jesus, then they ought to come up and lend a hand with the woodworking. Gunther nearly fell off the roof when the two, still clad in their black suits, actually did. It didn't take long for SR to become as impressed with this man as he initially was with the missionaries' boldness. He was about thirty-five and a widower. His wife, Sara, had contracted SCABS little over a year previously. She became a full- dragonfly-morph and lost any humanness she had ever had. One August morning, Gunther had accidentally left the door to her cage open, and she flew out the bedroom window, never to be seen again. Most people who had relatives who had become SCABS immediately closed their ears and minds to anything else the missionaries had to say after hearing about the church's strict doctrine pertaining to the sufferers of that disease. Gunther, on the other hand, kept listening, and seriously considered the points that SR and Paul had taught him. SR found his conversations with Gunther to be among the most mentally stimulating he'd had on his entire mission. Paul always liked the discussions, as well, because Gunther spoke flawless English, and insisted on holding their discourses in that language. It had been nearly three months since the three had first met, and on this particular evening, SR planned to ask Gunther to join the church. Paul rang the doorbell, and Gunther was almost immediately at the door. He greeted them, then chided them for being two minutes late. For the most part, the course of the conversation went just as it always had over the previous weeks: They 'quatsched' a little bit, talking about the weather, the work, and the other more frivolous aspects of life, then Paul and SR answered some of the questions Gunther had regarding the passages of scripture that SR had asked him to read at their last appointment. Finally, as the conversation drew to a close, SR felt the time was right, and popped the fatal question: "Well, Gunther, we've talked for several weeks now about God's plan for us, and about the other aspects of this church. I'm certain that you know the doctrine very well. Will you make a covenant with Christ by joining His church?" Gunther sat as he always had-- hands on knees, leaning slightly forward in attentiveness. He nodded slowly as he digested SR's words. A few minutes later, he stood and walked to the window, resting his arms on the sill. At last he spoke: "You know, the things you've told me have made a lot of sense, to me. Logically, I can't see anything wrong with any of it." He looked directly at SR. "But how can I know it is true?" SR paused for a moment, then responded, "Have you prayed about it? If you'd like, we could..." Gunther was shaking his head slowly from side to side. "I tried that," he said, turning back to the window. Another pause, then Paul spoke, "And?" "I don't know." Gunther looked as if he were fighting some kind of inner battle, "I mean, how do you know?" SR considered his response. "Well, to me, it's sort of a feeling I have-- I just sort of know it's true. When I prayed about it, I feel that God told me through my feelings that it was true." Gunther looked back at SR. "But how do you know that you didn't just need to feel that way at the time? How can you be certain that that answer came from God, and not just yourself?" He returned his gaze to the window. Paul was about to respond, but SR put a hand on his arm to let him know that Gunther wasn't done yet. "I mean, it's like this city-- the teachers tell us that it was at the edge of the Roman empire; I mean, the Romans built this place, and built a wall and a temple, and prayed to their stone gods. But in the end, their empire crumbled. Sometimes I find another piece of their wall when I'm digging the basement to a house." He looked at SR again. "I'm sure they felt like their prayers were being answered, but they lived, and now they are dead, and their gods didn't have a thing to say about it." SR thought long to try to come up with a response. Before he could say anything, though, Gunther was shaking his head, looking at the carpeting in front of the window, and speaking again. "Oh, never mind. I suppose that isn't the real problem, anyway." SR and Paul waited patiently for Gunther to open up. Eventually, he looked back up, out the window and spoke. "You know, I'm never going to be anything but a poor carpenter." SR was quick with a response. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Gunther chucked to himself, shaking his head and returning his gaze to the ground. "What good is a used up world, and how could it be worth having?" SR was taken aback. "What?" Gunther looked up. "It's a song. Sting. 'All This Time.'" He looked back to the ground. "Oh." SR paused. He was about to speak when Gunther visibly made a decision, and turned to fully face the pair of missionaries. "Why don't you ever talk about what sucks in heaven?" SR was even more surprised. "WHAT?" "You know-- you have talked about all the good things, but if this is a real place, then I want to know what isn't good about it!" SR was stammering. Paul jumped to his rescue. "I guess we don't talk about what sucks in heaven because we don't think that anything sucks in heaven. I mean, the place is literally perfect! I has everything you'd ever want, and then some..." Gunther was looking at the carpet again. Under his breath, he muttered, "Not one thing." After years of contemplation, Gunther raised his head to look straight into SR's eyes. Gunther's were glistening with tears. "I guess what it comes down to, is I would rather spend an eternity burning in hell with my Sara, than a minute in your heaven without her." SR was too stunned to carry any part in the rest of the short conversation. If his religion had been Catholicism, then what Gunther had done could roughly be equated to walking into the Mainz Cathedral during High Mass, going up to the statue of the Mother of God there, outlining her lips in bright red lipstick, and planting a big, fat, juicy one on her. After saying their good-bys, SR remained standing on the porch for several minutes, facing the closed door, mouth slightly agape. Of all the times he'd been spat upon, screamed at, chased, threatened, beaten, and humiliated on his mission, nothing came close to the defeated feeling he felt as Gunther closed the door. Eventually, he regained control of himself and dumbly walked off the steps, his companion casting worried glances in his direction as they made their way back to the Strassenbahn Haltestelle. About half-way through the cemetery, he stopped and turned, stealing one last look at Gunther's front door. He could hear music: Sting's 'All This Time.' SR envied Gunther-- Gunther was the bravest man in the world. That was the beginning of the end. Copyright © 1998 by SR Foxley. All rights reserved. Please contact the author if you have questions regarding the publication of this document.
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