Chapter 7

AN ARMADILLO IS TO A TYRANNOSAURUS REX AS THE MOST POWERFUL PERSON OR CREATURE OR ENTITY OF ANY KIND EVER TO HAVE WALKED UPON THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH IS TO GOD

President Junior was ambivalent about the end of the world. Of course he was looking forward to the Apocalypse and the Rapture and his triumphant entry into eternal bliss along with the rest of the righteous and the saved. But, if truth be told (and what are we here for if not to speak the truth, friend?) in his quiet, solitary moments – for instance in the gauzy minutes after consummating an act of love with his “Dilly-in-Chief”, as he fondly called the First Lady – he could not pretend to himself or to God that there were not some things about this world that he would miss.

Of course the President realized that once you were actually in the Big Place, something probably happened to your memory, maybe some kind of heavenly amnesia, to ease the transition. Besides, things up there were probably so bright and blissful that no memory could even begin to compete. He went back to the tyrannosaurus rex analogy, which had served him so well over the years: it was like your best earthly memories were chipmunks or crayfish or maybe armadillos – imagine that the biggest creature you’d ever seen was an armadillo – to you, that was the most powerful creature you could imagine. And then you saw a t-rex. Forget about it.

Or imagine that you were some dirt poor peasant living in a hovel in a desert somewhere in Iraz, and one morning you were awakened by the great whooshing and chopping of a majestic helicopter bearing The Great Seal of The Most Powerful Nation The World Has Ever Known, and then minutes later you were standing two feet away from the President, actually shaking hands with the most powerful person or creature or entity of any kind ever to have walked upon the surface of the earth, and what’s more, he brought the good news that from now on and forever more you would be living in Freedom with all of the blessings that Democracy and a Market Economy could bestow.

The President thought that maybe that was what it would be like for him when he finally shook hands with God on the day of Reckoning.

Armadillo -- t-rex. Peasant -- President. President -- God. Those were what you could call analogies, and they helped to make things clear.



Next chapter:

AS YET UNTITLED, in which something astounding happens. Twice.