Apocalypse Blues

Apocalypse Blues

Mark A Davis

225

"I just want to point out something," said Grandpa Anarchy, world's oldest hero.  "Everyone always talks about how bad things are getting.  Everyone says the world's going to hell in a handbasket.  It's human nature to think things were better in the past, but more than that, people seem to want the end of the world to be just around the corner.  Lemme tell ya, paranoia about the future ain't anything new.  Every generation thinks they're living in the end times.

"My mentor the Gentleman Brawler fell victim to exactly that sort of thinking.  He was convinced by a local pastor that the end of the world was coming.  He fixated on May 1915.  I was just a kid at the time so I believed him -- but then May 1915 rolled around and the end of the world didn't manifest itself.  Oh, sure, Professor Harold Charleston Attaway tried to unleash his Infernal Doomsday Engine, which he claimed would collapse the planet from the north and south poles, but we stopped him, just like we always do.

"Point is, my mentor was wrong.  Ever since, I've become something of an expert on failed Armageddon predictions, and let me tell you, there have been a lot of them.  If there's one thing I've learned, it's that predicting the end of the world is wired into the human psyche.  It's a hobby with some folks.  Every day, someone is predicting the end of everything.

"If you go back to 66 AD, a guy named Simon bar Gioria of Judea predicted the end times and minted coins based on that declaration.  That's how we know.  Three different people predicted the return of Christ in 500 AD.  When that failed to happen, one of them revised his prediction for the year 800 AD.  Of course, lots of people expected the end to come in 1000 AD, including the Pope.  Failing that, many revised their target date to 1033 AD -- a thousand years after the death of Jesus.  Another Pope predicted the end of the world 666 years after the rise of Islam.  Are you sensing a pattern?

"More recently John Wesley, founder of the Methodists, predicted the end in 1836.  Many thought the Crimean War in 1853-1856 was the Battle of Armageddon.   Joseph Morris, a Mormon convert, predicted the end in 1862.  Margaret Rowen, Seventh Day Adventist, predicted the end in 1925.  The Jehovah's Witnesses predicted 1941, and later 1975.  A UFO cult called the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays predicted 1954.  The Branch Davidians?  1959.  Indian astrologers predicted the end in 1962 during a planetary alignment.  Charles Manson?  1969.  Pat Robertson?  1982.  Of course, everybody and their brother predicted the end in the year 2000 -- Isaac Newton, Edgar Cayce, Sun Myung Moon, Ed Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, the list goes on.  Let's not forget the Mayan apocalypse of 2012, or Grigori Rasputin's prediction for 2013.  That one, by the way, he tried to orchestrate himself."

"Grandfather Anarchy, " said the Princess of Purple Prose, "we have only ten minutes of oxygen inside this sphere.  That now is the perfect time for a lecture, I do not think.  In any case, I am trying to concentrate, and the fate of the universe lies in the balance...."

Grandpa Anarchy was dressed in his usual rumpled gray suit with the silver anarchy symbol stitched over the left breast.  The Princess of Purple Prose wore a Victorian-era gown of dark purple.  She had a silver tiara at her temple, upon which was set a quill pen studded with amethysts.  They were floating inside the princess's impenetrable lavender bubble.

"I just wanted to establish," said Grandpa, "that I've been fighting crime more than a hundred years, and I've seen nearly everything there is to see, but I ain't never seen this.  Death Medal threatens to destroy the world every other Tuesday, and he always manages to screw it up.  How was I supposed to know he'd eventually get it right?"

  Grandpa stared out at the starless void around them.  "So if your fancy schmancy powers of Dramatic Climax Pivot  can write us out of this predicament," he added, "I'll be seriously impressed...."

FINI