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The Church - a short story set in the near future

Terril park

Sponsor
Mary, this is so harsh! You know he's on a mission to find out who pays anonymous. Could you please remind him I'm yet to be paid a penny for
all my hard work making picket signs and attending protests on two continents.

I too want to find out who pays anonymous cause my cheque is still in the post and I don't know who to call!

I promise I'll wear a mask next time if that helps :)
 

Human Again

Silver Meritorious Patron
Is this the view of ARCoss from the shuttle?

nanopolis1.jpg
 

Mary

Patron with Honors
Thanks very much for your encouragement guys, much appreciated.:love11:

Almost Human, that is a really beautiful picture!

I did me a lot of good to vent some anger. But I warn you, encouraging me can only spell trouble with a capital “T”. :spitcoffee:


Mr McCabbage, this is for you:

The little man leaned back into his deeply cushioned leather executive chair staring at the ceiling. His eyes were hollow and dry from too many sleepless nights and the lines on his face and brow grew more ingrained with deeper crevices each passing day.

On his desk sat two packs of unfiltered cigarettes and a gold lighter engraved with his name and one of his favourite LRH quotes “Make money. Make more money. Make other people make money”. The heavy crystal ashtray contained two stubbed out cigarettes with another one lit and perched on it’s edge.

On the table behind him sat row upon row of stacks of trays. Each pile of three were clearly labeled with various abbreviated post titles and each tray labeled “In”, “Pending” and “Out”.

He stubbed out the cigarette he was smoking and lit another. He looked up and glared at his secretary who had her desk behind a glass partition. She was waiting on the printer to complete the required number of pages and was almost hopping from foot to foot with impatience.

She was always very careful to stay within a few seconds walking distance from Mr McCabbage and kept a constant watch for any indication that he might need something from her as she knew, from bitter experience, never to let him see her looking directly at him.

Then she noticed him glaring at her. OMG! The ashtray! I haven’t replaced his ashtray in at least 10 minutes! OMG! OMG! She dropped the papers she was holding, scattering them onto her desk with some of them falling onto the floor. She grabbed a clean crystal astray from one of her drawers and ran into his office to replace the old one.

“I’m so sorry, Sir.” She said placing the clean ashtray on the exact same spot that the old one was.

Mr McCabbage stubbed out his current cigarette into the clean ashtray and swiveled his chair to face the window. He watched as three RPFers were carefully sorting through a mountain of gravel, removing the larger pieces of stone and carrying them away in buckets. Each stone was measured with a ruler, as per his orders.

“You don’t care about me one little bit, do you?” He said in a quiet, calm voice.

“I do care about you Sir, you are extremely important, you are the spiritual leader of this group and I appreciate everything you do for us and for me personally, Sir.” She said, her face getting redder.

“Do you see all these trays behind me? These are all the hats I have to wear. I have to bear responsibility for everything and for every last c#*!#!!*&* of you f#*!#!!*’ er’s. And now you expect me to f#*!#!*&*’ ing well wear the hat of cleaning the f#*!#!!*&*’ing ashtrays!” His voice rising to a shrill shout while he persisted in looking out of the window.

“I’m really very sorry, Sir, it won’t happen again.” She said with a sick feeling gnawing at her stomach.

“Maybe you’ll learn what it means to take responsibility for wearing your hat when you’ve had the benefit of some rehabilitation and you can start right now by working with those DBs out there groveling around in the gravel.” He said in a quieter and more friendly tone.

“Please, no ... Sir, I recently got married and ...” She stammered.

“That was a joke, you stupid arsehole! You’re supposed to laugh when someone tells you a joke!” He said turning around to look at her directly.

“Oh, yes! You were joking, of course, oh yes, very funny that!” She uttered a strangled laugh. A huge wave of relief washed over her as she thought “Thank god, he didn’t mean to order me to the RPF.”

“You’re so literal and stupid, you still don’t get it – groveling in the gravel – you know, like a pun on words, grovel, gravel, get it now, do you? Thickhead!” Said Mr McCabagge.

“Oh yeah! I get it now. Pretty stupid of me Sir. Sorry, Sir. I’ll get back to my work then.” She said.

“No. You won’t. You will route yourself straight onto the RPF and your first task will be to sort through that pile of gravel, by yourself, without breaks until you are done. You’ll be groveling in the gravel.” He said, losing all interest in talking to his secretary and musing to himself, that was a funny joke, must remember that one.


Sighing heavily, he turned to reach for a blue folder in one the “In” trays. He set it squarely in front of him. He lit a cigarette and opened the cover.

It’s title read “Report and Evaluation on the work of Prof. Thomas Harding”. He skipped that and went through the folder looking for the newspaper report titled:

Psychologist Discovers Major Scientific Breakthrough”.

Sub-titles in bold read:

Prof. Thomas Harding of the University of Cambridge has today published a paper on a scientific and provable means to create “Out of Body” experiences and separate the consciousness or “soul” from the body. His experiments on test subjects using a specially developed combination of sleep paralysis techniques, brain wave technology utilising alpha and theta harmonic resonances have yielded spectacular results...”

Mr McCabbage picked up the phone and stabbed in a single digit. “I want to talk to you now! ... Yes, of course it is about that #*!#!!*&* ing idiotic Eval you did on that psych, you arsehole. ... And bring the lawyer’s with you. ... I’d don’t care that they’ve got a hill 10 on the French court case ... Are you deaf? I said, all of them!”

He returned to reading the contents of the folder. The swollen blue vein in the side of his forehead began to throb rhythmically.
 

Jakadak

Patron with Honors
I really enjoyed that story Mary. It was "Mc F$%$king" awesome. I had a very clear picture in my mind. Well done !!! :thumbsup:
 
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