And which Enochite was going to believe some of the nonsense and try to prove themselves “whole” by killing her, the heretic?

  Without thinking too hard, she called Marius, the only person she knew who could get himself out of the kind of shit this call would get him into.

  “Fuck you are,” said Marius when Zhen said who she was. That was Marius all over. Never accept what you’re told.

  Zhen said, “This line’s not secure. Can I come to you?”

  There was a long pause on the line. A click, and Zhen thought Marius might have put the phone down. Another click.

  “You in bad trouble,” said Marius, and it wasn’t a question.

  “I need help.”

  “Come,” said Marius. “We’ll be in bad trouble together.”

  PART 3 the last good man in sodom

  extract from Name The Day survivalist forum

  sub-board: ntd/enoch

  ›› OneCorn is at Prepped To The Max status.

  Genesis chapter 19, loosely translated

  How do you know you’re living in the end times? Or to put it another way, how was the quality of life in Sodom the day before the Lord firebombed the shit out of it?

  So the Talmud says it was an evil place. It was a crime in Sodom to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Beggars were given marked coins that no shop would accept. Welp. In the USA right now there are places where it’s a crime to help homeless people. Plenty of stores don’t accept food stamps. So are we in it? Do we have enough sense to get ourselves out if we are?

  The day before the destruction, two migrants arrived in the city. Strange clothes, weird accents. No one wanted to help them. Except Lot, the last good man in Sodom. He’d seen his uncle Abraham welcoming strangers and he copied what he’d seen. Lot baked bread for the migrants and they ate it with oil and salt. They were hungry and ate quickly. He was sorry he didn’t have more to offer. In the tent of his uncle Abraham, guests might be greeted with roasted goat dripping with fat, fresh white cheese, fruits, and milk. But Abraham was an exceptionally wealthy man.

  No one else helped them. Everything went on just as it had been. In Sodom on that day, there were comfortable beds filled with clean dry straw and sheep in the outer enclosures. There were vats of wine brewing and potters spinning their wheels and metalworkers tooling precious bronze. There is always a future to imagine until it is gone.

  ›› FoxInTheHenHouse is at GoBagPrepped status.

  @OneCorn: Friend, you’re doing this in the wrong place. We rely on the teachings of Enoch here. This is better off in ntd/oldtestamentprophecy

  ›› OneCorn is at Prepped To The Max status.

  @FoxInTheHenHouse: That’s the trouble, isn’t it? Everyone has their lane. Stick to it. Never offer help to people in need of guidance or warm bread to hungry travelers.

  ›› OneCorn is at Prepped To The Max status.

  As the sun sank low on the horizon and the shadows lengthened in the streets of Sodom, a crowd gathered around Lot’s house. They’d seen strangers arrive. They didn’t want to help them. They wanted to rape them.

  I didn’t invent this. It’s in the Bible. Anyway you’ve read The Road. You know Ballard. You’ve seen Mad Max. You know why we want guns and ammo, and a solid door on our bunkers. When society collapses, destructive desires come to the surface.

  Outside Lot’s house, the men made little crooning noises, hisses and chutting. Come on, Lot, we all saw them. Just let us in. No one will know. Our cocks are thirsty for some strange.

  Lot tried to imagine what his uncle Abraham might do in this situation. Abraham had had a wisdom to him. And he’d welcomed guests.

  Lot called through the door: “They are my guests. That is sacred.”

  The mob called back: “We’re not going anywhere.”

  ›› GatheredHeart is at KeepOnCanning status.

  @OneCorn: I’m begging you, please leave us alone. There aren’t even that many regular posters here. We just want to keep faithful to the teachings of Enoch without this filth.

  Then Lot said: “I’ve got two daughters in here, they’re both virgins. They belong to me. Leave my guests alone, you can do what you want with the girls.”

  Well, that was what he came up with. To save his own neck, maybe. If you think no one ever gives up their teenage daughter now to gangs or mobs, you don’t know much about humanity.

  ›› OneCorn is at Prepped To The Max status.

  @GatheredHeart: I’ve got news for you. These are the teachings of Enoch. He believed in interpreting the ancient books in new ways, OK? So that’s what I’m doing.

  This is about pieces. It’s about Fox and Rabbit. Sodom is literally the first marked environment. People specialize and forget the basic skills of knowing the land. They shut themselves off and won’t invite strangers in. They believe fences not communities will keep them safe. Because in a city like Sodom you can be punished worse for being poor than for committing a murder.

  Lot’s wife and his daughters don’t get a name in the Bible because of course. So let’s call the wife Edo, and the daughters Moa and Amma. The two sisters held each other’s hands so tightly their bones might snap. Edo’s heart cracked and oozed wild grief.

  The migrants looked at each other. There was a confirmation in that look: this is what they had heard about this place, this was not a surprise.

  They stood up from the table.

  One of them smiled an uncanny, radiant smile.

  The other raised his hand.

  And all the mob went blind.

  I think we can imagine the family standing there like: what the fuck.

  While the mob were coming to terms with their situation, the migrants said:

  “Lot, this is not a normal set of events and we are not ordinary strangers. Your uncle Abraham knows the Lord Almighty, the Lord of Hosts. We are the Sabaoth who ride out in that army, do you get it? We are the riders before the storm. The future is on the way, my friend, and we are its augurs. The city you live in has been judged and condemned. Something bad is coming and you do not want to be here when it arrives. Gather your family and get the fuck out.”

  ›› OneCorn is at Prepped To The Max status.

  In an amusing interlude, after all that, Lot ran to find his daughters’ boyfriends and told them the whole thing. He was trying to save something for his girls, I guess.

  But the fiancés were like: “You’re funny, man.”

  So that’s the answer to the question. You can literally be in a town where the Sabaoth just struck a mob blind and still not get it. They wouldn’t leave.

  ›› ArturoMegadog is at Shelf-Stable status.

  Come away now.

  ›› OneCorn is at Prepped To The Max status.

  This story belongs here, AM.

  When Lot got back, there was no time left. The migrants grabbed Lot, Edo, Moa, and Amma and teleported them outside the city. No kidding, that’s in the Bible. Either that or they dragged them all the way out. Transportation, in any case, had been arranged. The augurs’ job was to get them out.

  On the outskirts of the city, the migrants got very close to the faces of Lot and Edo.

  They said: “Flee for your fucking lives. Don’t look back. Don’t stop. Run into the hills. Now. Go. Don’t look back.”

  Lot said: “Look, I’m a city dweller, Homo urbanus, you feel me? We’re in the middle of the desert here. Can you not give us a ride to some city nearby like Tzoar?”

  ›› ArturoMegadog is at Shelf-Stable status.

  Tell me the truth. Are you drunk right now?

  ›› OneCorn is at Prepped To The Max status.

  Not very drunk.

  ›› ArturoMegadog is at Shelf-Stable status.

  Aha because they’re messaging Daggoo to ban you? Because you’ve done this a lot here? And I’m the mod on your most-used board so they’re asking my view.

  The messengers got so close to Lot that the heat from their eyes burned his skin. They said: “Just get out of our sight.”

  Potentially they also had some views about Lot having offered his daughters to the mob.

  The four travelers started to walk in the half-dark cool of the moments before sunrise. Each stone cast its long shadow, and the hillside seemed alive with bubbling black shapes, the very rocks chattering one to another. There was a squabbling feel to the air, wind aggravating wind, sand biting sand. The sound of sunrise was like the cawing of crows and their breath became thick in their throats. Something was coming. Something unnatural and obscene was happening. Something was falling from the sun in a screaming hurtling mass.

  ›› OneCorn is at Prepped To The Max status.

  I have a right to do this.

  ›› ArturoMegadog is at Shelf-Stable status.

  They have a right to get you banned. You may not like the lanes, but we have lanes.

  Amma and Moa interlaced their fingers. Amma would not allow Moa to stumble. Moa would not permit Amma to trip. Though the ground bucked like a donkey, they kept walking upward.

  Edo, their mother, walked behind them, with Lot at the back. Edo did not have a partner, that much was clear. She walked alone and her husband, who had offered their daughters to the rapists, was no husband to her. Amma and Moa had each other. Lot—in his mind at least—had Abraham to guide him. Edo had no one. It’s not possible to survive destruction alone. Edo looked back.

  ›› ArturoMegadog is at Shelf-Stable status.

  I just also want to point out that you’re going on this one-person mission to make a post about how no one survives alone. Seriously.

  The whole plain was on fire. Rocks of black and burning matter shot from the sky as when a man hurls a spear at a gazelle, the animal looks back for a moment and the sharp metal tip pierces its eye and in that instant it springs from life to death, just so was the Lord hurling the clods of rock and fire at each house, and where each rock landed the mud and clay and brick and straw broke into flame. People ran screaming between the burning buildings trying to escape, but the sure aim of the Lord caught each one.

  ›› OneCorn is at Prepped To The Max status.

  Can I just finish my thought? About why this is relevant to Enoch?

  ›› ArturoMegadog is at Shelf-Stable status.

  Honey. I’ll port the whole thing to a nice warm corner of ntd/strategic and you can carry on as long as you like.

  ›› OneCorn is at Prepped To The Max status.

  Fine. But it does belong here. But fine.

  Edo tasted stone and fire. She knew the fury of God and she saw God’s shame. If God wasn’t ashamed of having done this, he should have been.

  Her bones gave up their minerals into her blood and the water in her tissues leaped from her pores, and the potassium and sodium and magnesium in all the axons and dendrites of her brain poured forth, coating the inside of her skull with salt and licking her sinuses, crusting over at last the surface of her eyeballs with salt.

  extract from Name The Day survivalist forum

  sub-board: ntd/strategic

  ›› OneCorn is at Prepped To The Max status.

  OK, I’m going to tell you my best survival secret. It’s in the story I just told but I guess the links aren’t obvious to anyone but me so I’m going to spell it out.

  You know what the theme of Genesis is? Men—mostly brothers—who hate each other. Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, Abraham and Lot. You know why they hate each other? Every single time: one is a farmer and one is a hunter-gatherer. This was the teaching of Enoch, OK? That Genesis is about the stupidest thing human beings ever did. We ended our own world. We captured and domesticated ourselves.

  ›› ArturoMegadog is at Shelf-Stable status.

  Huh. OK I guess that was relevant.

  Breaking it down:

  CAIN: farmer

  ABEL: wandered with sheep

  JACOB: stayed home

  ESAU: went out hunting

  ISAAC: stayed home

  ISHMAEL: sent to wander

  JOSEPH: daddy’s boy

  BROTHERS: sold him to wandering Ishmaelites

  LOT: lived in Sodom

  ABRAHAM: wandered the desert

  ›› DanSatDan is at One Tin O’Beans status.

  @OneCorn: Look, sorry about before. I get that you’re like… a big deal on /strategic. But seriously. How does this help me survive a human extinction event?

  Same basic pattern again and again. They’re not brothers, they’re two groups of people. One group is settled, one group wanders. One lives basically a nomadic life, supplementing hunting with sheepherding. The other stays home and grows crops and farms livestock. The hunters hate the farmers and the farmers hate the hunters. The hunters think the farmers are weak and wily. The farmers think the hunters are brutish. They try to kill each other.

  That book is about a war. The first great war. The war that lasted five thousand years and ended the world as all human beings had known it before. When the farmers won, they created a new future and we’re living in it.

  ›› IsmiIsmi is at Diggin’ a Root Cellar status.

  Also. Elephant in the room. This is a story that’s used to justify millennia of homophobia. This needed a CW.

  ›› OneCorn is at Prepped To The Max status.

  Okay. I understand the concern about homophobia. My point here is that the “sin of Sodom” wasn’t “men having consensual sex with other men.” Men having consensual sex with other men is a) great and b) tbh Genesis doesn’t seem to have a view on it so anyone who reads homophobia into it brought it there themselves, probably from Leviticus which you’ll notice I’m not defending. The problem with Sodom was that they’d forgotten the skills of creating a robust society.

  PM: ArturoMegadog → OneCorn

  Have you considered trying to sound less like you think you’re the smartest one here?

  Genesis, in particular, is a record of what it was like to survive the last ice age and to move from hunting and gathering to agriculture. Genesis is the last book we have of stories passed down by people who survived our most recent extinction events. It’ll tell you shit about canning and rifle maintenance. It’ll tell you what kind of society and what sort of values we’re gonna need to survive.

  PM: OneCorn → ArturoMegadog

  But I am the smartest one here. Apart from you, OK.

  PM: OneCorn → ArturoMegadog

  I think I should take a break from NTD though. They got under my skin today.

  So it’s about: welcoming strangers, caring for the members of society who have nothing. Not thinking just about your own needs.

  The problem with Sodom was that it was a city, and cities were, at least on a survival level, a really stupid idea. In some ways they’re great: new food, music and art, new perspectives, making babies outside your narrow genetic group. But cities did then what they do now: they made people richer but more divided from each other, increasingly specialized and disconnected from the natural world. Cities couldn’t sustain themselves.

  PM: ArturoMegadog → OneCorn

  Noooo. Don’t leave me here with this bunch of idiots.

  The people who wrote Genesis were deeply troubled. They saw that the skills of living well by walking the land and learning how to hunt and what to gather were disappearing. They saw the future we live in coming. The story of Sodom is a story of terror. These cities: don’t trust them. They will all come crashing down.

  PM: OneCorn → ArturoMegadog

  Hah! OK, I’ll set an alert if you do a post.

  martha

  1. guinea pig castle

  Conversions, as Martha Einkorn knew well, happen in many ways. Sometimes it occurs to you day by day, hour by hour, like the sun slowly rising inside your mind that something needs to change. Sometimes there is a sudden insight, as natural as falling in love, a striking realization that, ah, I’ve been wrong all this time. Sometimes these two things happen at once. That is what had happened to Martha several years before she met Lai Zhen.

  It was in that part of Martha’s life when she was numb most of the time. Working hard with Lenk on Fantail. Long hours, early starts, and late nights. That time when she thought she could fulfill all her social needs via various online message boards and by keeping a couple of pet guinea pigs in a luxury three-level wooden guinea pig castle with twelve separate hiding places, which took up most of the floor space in her second living room. She watched the simple furry potatoes snuffling for treats, eating from their carefully tended grass boxes, hiding under blankets, and she thought: You see, it doesn’t take much to make a being happy. One companion, some animal comforts. Someone to clean up your shit and bring you treats.