October 7, 2024.

God’s not dead, but He is very sick. He sends out an AM radio broadcast updating everyone on His condition, but by this point, we have all sort of figured it out for ourselves. The gossamer veil between Heaven and Earth had started to degrade a few months ago. Plague and famine spread across the lands, the animals left somehow, the crops turned black, fallen Seraphim, driven mad with some unknowable hunger, convened on Vatican City and started feasting on locuses of holy artifacts. I, myself, saw some wild shit crawling up the stairs of the Queens Plaza Station and went insane for about three weeks, but I’m better now.

“Hi guys,” God says, His voice crackling over the medium-wave AM band He chose for some reason. His voice lacks any identifiable accent or timbre, maybe a side effect of compression, but maybe He just sounds like that. “Hate to do this, I’m more a hands off sort of watchmaker guy, but I figured I should give you a heads-up. Been feeling pretty bad for a while now, and from what they’re telling me, it’s not going to get better. So uh… hi, and bye. This was fun, you guys were fun.”

Our makeshift bunker is silent except for the hiss of the radio for a while. I really have to pee, but I figure I should stick around to hear what else He has to say.

“Um. I really liked The Stooges, you were really doing something there. Didn’t read as much as I should have, but I liked the King James translation, that was fun. Movies… movies… you ever see Airport? 1970, Burt Lancaster picture. Exciting stuff. The Japanese got food right, but I guess you know that already. Oh, and jollof rice, jollof rice is great. Nailed it.

“Anyhow. Sorry about everything. I didn’t do things as good as I could have, I was just sort of making stuff up as I went. Er… what else. You could have done less war, I sort of told you guys not to murder right off the bat, but whatever. Oh, and, and, being gay is okay, all right? You can be gay or straight or bi or whatever. Just to clarify, I don’t really care about any of that.

“Okay. Anyway. I’ll try to get to a few more prayers before I’m, uh, done. Gone. Goodbye. Thanks. Sorry again.”

The transmission ends. Everyone else in the bunker is very excited by the broadcast, and start shouting at each other. I take the opportunity to sneak a tin of stewed peaches off the shared food shelf, take it to my bunk, and eat it in secret. Stewed peaches, I think to myself, are good.