Beware of the boss men, which love to go in fancy clothes, and love salutations on the street, And the best seats in the house: they're rich, and thou are not. They can afford men with guns, and thou canst not.
Neon Matthew 12:38-39 (Unified Standard Edition)
- - -
Edward Young was a respectable young man in his mid-twenties, unmarried, but by his own choice due to the particular calling he held in service to his Lord and His Prophet. He had sandy blond hair and grey eyes, moderately tan skin, gorgeous teeth, and stood at 6'2".
He was the very embodiment of the ideal American male, having the build of an endurance athlete, and he was putting that body to the test along with his companion, Jon Kimball, as they jogged alongside an armored car - one among several in a motorcade.
It was Tuesday morning and Salt Lake City was on fire.
Not all of it, thankfully, as Temple Square had been locked down immediately following the end of the Lord's visitation to the U.N. headquarters. For surely it had been the Lord Himself, come again after 2,000 years of waiting.
Yes, the Second Coming, the greatest event of All Time, the thing billions of righteous Christians had waited for... had come and gone.
The world was still here.
There had been no Rapture, no Great Resurrection, just... Judgment.
This was not entirely unanticipated by the Mormons.
Now the great center of the city, surrounded in strong stone walls and great gates, was itself surrounded at every point by police cars and dutiful members of the National Guard, themselves Mormon - as was the majority of the populace of the state - guarding their most sacred of places from the civil unrest gripping the city.
Temple Square was a wonder of the world, at least it was to the thinking of the members of the Mormon faith, and at over 10 acres was a defining feature of Salt Lake City no matter what angle you viewed it from. It held beautiful buildings such as the Tabernacle (in which a great choir performed) and the Temple, a great and holy place central to the beliefs of the Mormons.
The suburbs and surrounding communities of Salt Lake City were almost 99.8% Mormon in population - the result of refugee settlers fleeing west from the ancient violence visited on them in 19th century America. Although, to be fair, the Mormons had given as well as they had got in Illinois and Missouri before they had been ordered to be exterminated like rats by the local governments. Of course, the average member of their church knew nothing about that particular narrative.
But Ed did.
Because Ed was a member of a secretive sect within the Mormon church that dealt with entirely the real earthly problems that threatened his religion.
Ed and Jon were "Danites", and they were the Enforcers of God's Will on Earth.
And they didn't exist.
Officially, at least.
After all, plausible deniability was critical to maintaining Good Order.
And right now, as they jogged along a motorcade of armored Cadillacs containing the leadership of their church, including the Twelve Apostles and the Prophet, they were very concerned with the demographics of Salt Lake City itself, which, unlike Orem or Provo or other nearby cities were NOT 99.8% Mormon, but a mere 49%.
In other words: they were outnumbered by the "gentiles" who had slowly immigrated over the last century to the big city and displaced its founding Mormons in greater and greater numbers.
Their own capital, overrun by the non-believer.
Ed didn't think he was a bigot, but the City Creek Center mall was smoldering from the numerous arsonist attempts to burn and loot it, and it was just across the street from Temple Square - he had strong feelings about the non-believers who were taking advantage of the unrest to loot and riot.
Once they reached the secure underground parking facilities below the city he walked through the great cavernous hallways, armed with his Colt M1911, along with the rest of the private militia and leadership they were escorting.
They were unable to use the original intended parking garages closest to the Temple, so had opted for Plan B.
Salt Lake City was a direct extension of Mormonism and Mormon thinking, which taught its members to always be prepared for catastrophe. They were even advised - exhorted, even - to keep two years worth of food and supplies in their own homes in case of some sort of cataclysmic event.
It wasn't so much that the Mormons, as a whole, were worried about the world ending, they were counting on it, actually, but that they wanted to secure their place in it once it happened.
The advent of nuclear weapons and the Cold War did nothing to quell this way of thinking, and great bomb shelters were hollowed out beneath the streets of Salt Lake City to hold its entire populace (and then some) in the event of what was once thought to be an inevitable war to be waged with nuclear weapons between the great superpowers.
But it never happened.
Still, the Mormons prepared. They expanded the official tunnels and bomb shelters beyond what the federal government had ever expected. Not that the federal government knew.
In short: they had been waiting for this very day.
"Stop," a guard said ahead of them, holding up his hand at the head of the group.
Ed withdrew his gun and braced the left side of the hallway while putting his hand on the nearest Apostle and motioning for him to fall back behind him. Other Danites were doing the same.
"Oi! Shitheads! Whatchoo doing down here, eh?" They all heard the rough looking man who had come around the corner. He was carrying a crowbar and he wasn't alone. They looked like a group of homeless that had been squatting in the tunnels, raiding some of the vending machines.
The lead guard didn't have his gun out, so all the indigent group saw was a bunch of older men in suits being escorted by younger men in suits. Lighting back towards Ed and his portion of the group was dim; they couldn't see him.
"You are illegally trespassing. Disperse now, go back upstairs," the lead guard commanded.
The group of four - no, five - all laughed together, and one pulled a gun out, shakily pointing it back at the old men who wisely said nothing, except in the back, where Ed could hear a softly spoken prayer asking for deliverance.
"You guys look like you know what's up! Yeah? So you tell me what a bunch of nice looking folks are doing slumming it down here, huh?"
The lead guard wasn't phased.
"Get out of the tunnels. This is Church property, and you're trespassing. Last warning."
Another member of the mini-mob, looking uncertain, tugged at the sleeve of the guy with the gun, saying "Drew, hey man, there's lots of 'em man, let's just get outta here, c'mon man."
Drew smirked, "Nahhh, nah man, looks like they've got nice stuff, watches and crap, right? Yeah! You! All of you, take off your watches, drop 'em on the ground, let's be quick about-"
A hole sprouted in his head as the leader of the guards had taken the moment to smoothly withdraw his holstered gun and fire a shot directly into the man's forehead. The shot reverberated painfully in the tunnels, ricocheting back and forth a dozen times as the thunderclap was reduced to sharp pings.
They ran, scurrying away like rats into the dim yellow lights of the tunnels.
A few of the elder members of the entourage looked queasy, but none voiced any complaints and the group moved on, switching tunnels and passing through increasingly more secure looking metal doors until they reached a set of large freight elevators.
Ed entered one of the elevators with his assigned charges, the 10th Apostle and thus one of the least old, but still well into his 60's. The door opened many levels up, in a secretive basement level of the Temple. The group moved upstairs, ascending level by level and passing priests and female workers dressed in ornate white robes.
They were met by a white-haired man with a clean-shaven face, who Ed knew to be the president of the Temple and thus in charge of greeting special guests. Unlike a church, none could enter this place unless they were an upstanding member of their church who paid their monetary tithes (10%) and abstained from the basest of sins such as substance abuse (including alcohol) and fornification.
It was meant to be "set aside" as a pure place where angels might dwell.
A place where God's work could be done.
The man led the group to the Holy of Holies.
The central-most chamber at the heart of the Temple was known as the "Celestial Room" because it was purified and sacred. An hours long elaborate ritual and ceremony was usually performed before members of the church could access the room, in which they might spend all of five or ten minutes in quiet reflection before being gently urged to move on and make way for people following behind.
To Ed's surprise all manner of ceremony was skipped save a single ritual, in which the president of the temple stepped through the thin white veil of cloth hung like a great curtain on one side of a spacious antechamber, sticking out his hand, and, one by one, pulled each member of the group through to the other side.
The majority of the guards were left outside, flanking all entrances to the Celestial Room, but the lead guard and Ed were motioned forward and through the veil, following behind the mortal men that they believed were the living servants of Jesus Christ.
The Celestial Room surpassed simple explanations of ornateness and beauty. The Mormons had done their best to achieve the pinnacle of architectural serenity in dedication to what they believed Heaven might actually look. Rich marbles, gold, finely clothed cushions, statues and more sat beneath a vaulted ceiling of ornate craftsmanship.
The Mormons collected nearly $7 billion dollars a year from their membership in tithes and donations: it was no wonder they had been able to build a room of such splendor.
Ed took a position by the door and the elder men all sat in the center of the room and began speaking, trying to make heads or tails of the situation they now found themselves in. The Prophet, a much older man than the rest, who inherited his position based on seniority, was silent.
It was an open secret that he was riddled with dementia and that his two advisors controlled the church and its 13 million members in his stead.
Ed was sworn to silence on anything he heard, and had been trusted in many such official meetings to guard but not listen, and the fact that he was standing here now attested to his loyalty.
The Apostles were arguing amidst themselves but not yelling. They retained a dignity as they tried to plot out the meaning of the Lord's intervention at the U.N. meeting, and what the "revocation of the Atonement" meant to the very doctrine underlying the basis of their church.
Not a one of them believed it was a hoax.
They argued about politics, about the Greater Good, all manner of topics - abortion, gay marriage, racism, all of it. They all wanted to know where they had gone wrong in losing the Lord's favor.
A light appeared in the air, hovering right above the table, and grew suddenly and without warning as an ethereal chorus could be heard filling the room. The light elsewhere around them seemed to dim, leaving them in awe of the light, in which a figure appeared.
He was white, both in skin and clothing, with shining blue eyes and red hair flowing down to his shoulders. Ed was seeing an angel.
Nine bursts of lights flooded the room and nine of the leaders of their church disappeared in flashes.
"PEACE," said the angel, "I AM WITH YOU."
The six remaining apostles - for the Prophet and his two assistants were gone - said nothing, but tears of joy flowed freely from their eyes as they listened.
"FEAR NOT, FOR YOU ARE HIS CHOSEN PEOPLE."
"YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO FULFILL A TASK OF GREAT AND TERRIBLE PURPOSE."
A shining mirror of light appeared in the center of the room, just behind the angel. It was rectangular in shape, like a door, but did not quite touch the floor. It shimmered and refracted white and blue light, but was without dimension. Ed could see from his angle that it simply had no thickness to it: an abstract geometry hovering in mystic power.
"YOU WILL GUARD THIS UNTIL THE END OF DAYS."
"Yes, His will be done. We will guard it for all time and eternity," one said, promising on behalf of his entire people.
"May we ask your name?" one asked in wonder and awe.
"NO."
"May we ask what has happened to our brethren?" another asked carefully, reverently.
"THEY HAVE BEEN TRANSLATED."
The tears of joy grew stronger, for every one of them believed that the men had been taken directly up to Heaven in the flesh, even as Enoch and Elijah were in the Bible.
"How will we know when the end of days has come?" their most senior member queried respectfully.
"ONE WILL COME BEARING THE SWORD AND THE KEY, AND YOU WILL LET THEM PASS."
They wondered at this, but before another question could be asked the light grew into a brilliant oval and swallowed up the heavenly visitor. A voice resounded throughout the room in a great echo:
"IT IS DONE."
Only the shimmering mirror of light remained.
- - -
Elsewhere, over an unremarkable patch of the Pacific ocean, approximately 4,226 feet up in the air, nine bursts of light deposited nine old men - six "Apostles", two "Advisors", and one "Prophet" - into the middle of the sky. Gravity asserted itself immediately and they fell together for 29.7 seconds, their hoarse screams unheard, until smashing into the choppy ocean surface at 109 miles per hour.
Their bodies disintegrated on impact.