The Teacher

The Teacher: Part III Day of Declaration, Chapter 46

CHAPTER 46

I WAS LED TO ROME WITH MY BACKPACK, a few possessions. With my furry and feathered friends tagging along to keep me company, getting there wasn't a problem. The rural areas were all but desolate. Because of their need to be close to feeding stations, the Disciples were all concentrated in the urban centers. With the deteriorating global warming-related weather conditions, flooding or constant drought, day after day temperatures over 100 degrees had become the norm. If you weren't a Disciple, outside the urban centers everything needed to survive was in short supply. The rebels had to sneak into the cities to scavenge for scraps like rats.

I waited on the outskirts of Rome until well after sunset before moving closer to the city center. The buildings appeared to be abandoned despite the fact that over three million Disciples lived in Rome. The streets were bare except for discarded, wrecked, old, gasoline-powered cars once used by mortals.

The Disciples had no need for transportation with the Cloud 10.0 Get There Now app, they could communicate using telepathy, and their food source was brewed in huge vats like Miller Lite and delivered to them via the Get There Now app like bottles of milk used to show up on doorsteps transported by horse-drawn milk wagons. With drones doing most of the work, the Disciples spent most of their time in vPod virtual reality entertainment centers.

The Disciples had gotten complacent about tracking down the Christian rebels though they knew them to be hiding in the Roman urban underground. Anyway, they had nothing to fear from the rebels—or so they thought. Both the defeat of the GLSF storm troopers in Canada, and the disaster during the Final Solution ceremony, were ordered kept top secret. Under penalty of banishment, death for a Disciple, anyone with any knowledge of those events had their memories of it wiped clean, so as far as the global Disciple community was concerned it was don't-worry-about-the-rebels business as usual.

On the other hand, rumors of what had happened in Canada and in Rome were spreading like a malicious Internet virus through the rebel clans giving everyone hope that perhaps the Creator hadn't abandoned them after all. The rebels in Rome, of course, knew exactly what had happened. Many had personally seen the ruins of the Colosseum and the magnificent rainbow ice sculpture memorial created by God rising right in the footprint of the original Colosseum. Sensing that their insurgency now had a chance to succeed, the Christian rebels from all over Italy were gathering in the old catacombs once used by the Romans as cemeteries and for a time by the Christians fleeing persecution during that period of ancient Roman history.

I'D JUST CROSSED THE VIA APPIA when I was grabbed by two men who covered my face with a sack and carried me down through a vine-camouflaged entrance to a passageway descending down narrow steps. Soon I could tell we were once again on a flat surface. The air had changed noticeably, cooler and carrying a heavy, musty scent. They sat me down and I overheard them talking about what to do with me.

They were speaking in broken English with different accents. Apparently the Christian rebels from all over Europe, Asia, and Africa who had gathered in Rome agreed to use English as their common language, just as the global business community decided to do in the Before Times. Finally, they took the sack off of my head.

Looking around I could see we were underground, but rather than earthen clay, the floor, ceiling, and walls were made of soft dark volcanic rock. The walls contained carved-out burial chambers. Some had recent dates while others went back all the way to the time of Christ. Then, it dawned on me...I was in the catacombs. While looking around, now in awe, someone came up from behind, tapped me on the shoulder, and began speaking to me in English with a thick Italian accent.