Happy Holidays, Lunasong!
Title: Jesus Was Someone You Could Sit Down and Have a Beer With
Recipient: lunasong
Rating: PG
Pairings and Characters: Adam Young/Pepper, implied Crowley/Aziraphale, Marvin O. Bagman
Prompt: Rev. Marvin O. Bagman/What happened after he was possessed by Aziraphale on his 'Hour of Power' broadcast? Was it something he was able to spin into even greater glory or did it ruin his ministry?
Word Count: 2,583
Disclaimer: All copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. This work is not created for profit and constitutes fair use.
Summary: Alarmed by recent developments across the pond, Aziraphale implores Adam to allow people to remember That Saturday. Crowley’s mostly just in it for the wine.
Author’s Note: Written for go_exchange 2015. No presidential candidates were harmed during the writing of this story.
It wasn’t every day that Adam Young, age 36 and doing his level best not to turn into either of his fathers, received unannounced visits from a pair of supernatural entities who’d rather spectacularly failed as his self-appointed godfathers. It wasn’t all that uncommon, but ‘every day’ would be a significant overstatement. Yet there they were, Aziraphale still determinedly sporting a tartan jacket that neither Crowley nor Adam had been able to convince him to burn, standing on his front stoop with a Crowley still wearing sunglasses, even when he dunt need to. Aziraphale’s expression, however, looked decidedly agitated, and Crowley’s even more apathetic than usual, which Adam knew by now could only mean that he was secretly as worried about whatever was happening as Aziraphale was, but even after a quarter century of radio silence from both Above and Below at Adam’s behest, he dared not speak too openly about it. He had an image to maintain, after all.
‘Hi,’ said Adam, looking from one to the other. ‘What’s going on?’ He could easily have looked in their minds, but that would have taken the fun out of it, and it wasn’t like he had much else to do that day. Pepper wouldn’t be home until seven, and while he’d promised himself he’d finish two new chapters of Billy the Robot Space Pirate and His Trusty Dinosaur, Dinosaur before she got back, it seemed that conquering writers’ block was the one and only thing the Antichrist couldn’t naturally do.
Crowley groaned. ‘Oh, that’s nice. Forty-minute traffic jam on the M40 and he doesn’t even invite us in for tea.’
‘Adam,’ said Aziraphale, pointedly ignoring his companion, ‘we’re here to ask you an urgent favor. We need to you let people remember that day.’
Crowley shook his head. ‘You. Not we. And you owe me for petrol.’
‘Really, my dear, when have you ever bought petrol?’
‘Once in 1967, and last night when you wouldn’t let me sleep.’ Aziraphale huffed, but Adam, sensing that their argument could easily outlast its entertainment value, promptly stepped in.
‘I think you’d better come inside,’ he said, and they did, still glaring at each other. Once the two were seated at his kitchen table with wine glasses in hand, Adam said, as solemnly as he could manage, ‘You know I can’t let people remember. There’d be a whole global panic. I only let Pep remember because it wouldn’t have been right, her marrying me not knowing who I was. And I only let Wensley and Brian remember because I couldn’t very well have her remember it and not them. I’m not looking to make it some kind of habit.’
‘Not everyone,’ said Aziraphale hurriedly, ‘and more important, not everything. Only Americans, and not even all of them, just some, and they need remember only a tiny, scarcely significant detail.’
‘Oh?’ asked Adam. ‘So insignificant you came all the way up here to ask me about it, I suppose?’
‘Adam,’ said Aziraphale impatiently, ‘have you ever heard of the Reverend Marvin O. Bagman?’
Adam pursed his lips. The name rang a bell, or to be more accurate, it rang two bells. The first was the sort of innocuous bell that might be rung in any human’s head, signalling that he or she has come across a given subject before in some context meriting very little attention, such as headlines in unread newspapers or forced small talk among casual acquaintances. The second bell was one that existed only in the head of Adam Young, signalling to him that he had in the course of undoing an entire global crisis with a wave of his hand touched the life of this Reverend Marvin O. Bagman, in such a way that he could instantly recall if he wished, despite having hardly even registered it in his subconscious at the time. He squinted as he brought up the memory, and he couldn’t help chuckling as he replayed it in his mind.
‘Nice one,’ he said to Aziraphale. ‘That Rapture stuff is pretty stupid. But if people want to believe it, then it’s not my place to stop them. I’m pretty sure that counts as messin’ people about.’
‘Adam,’ said Aziraphale, ‘that man is running for President of the United States, and he may win.’
Well, Adam thought, that explained why the name had rung both bells. He laughed as he recalled the headline, shared by one of Pepper’s friends from her term abroad: ‘Jesus Was Somebody You Could Sit Down and Have a Beer With, Bagman Tells Iowa Crowd.’ Then he choked on his wine.
‘I don’t think he’ll actually win,’ said Adam, once he had regained the ability to breathe. ‘Pepper made a bunch of American friends when she spent a term there, and none of them would go for that kind of stuff. It’s a generational thing. I reckon they’re smarter because they haven’t grown up bein’ messed about in the same way.’
‘See?’ said Crowley. ‘I told you, angel, you were worried for nothing.’ He shrugged, and his wine glass automatically refilled, but Adam could tell that Aziraphale was far from mollified.
‘But he’s got a base,’ Aziraphale countered. ‘An angry, implacable mob of a base that feeds on exactly the type of ignorant fear he’s peddling, and they’ve taken over his party. Even I thought him little more than comic relief unaware during my brief stay inside his head, but he wields incredible persuasive power over irrationally frightened people. You said it yourself, Crowley. Humans are more dangerous than any of us, and frightened people can do far more evil than any demon.’
‘Hey,’ said Crowley. ‘You’re extrapolating a lot there. All I said was that he’d pulled off the impressive feat of being even more dangerous than the other candidates.’
‘Who are the other candidates?’ asked Adam, and Aziraphale shook his head with disapproval.
‘Do the names Carmine Zuigiber and Raven Sable stir any recollections?’ he asked, and Adam groaned.
‘No,’ said Adam. ‘We beat them. I knew they’d come back, but I thought they’d be, you know, more abstract than that. Like what they really are.’ Back into the minds of men, Death had told him. The minds of the sort of men-and women, he could hear Pepper reminding him-who would vote to make Marvin O. Bagman Leader of the Free World. For a moment, he was genuinely tempted.
‘So you want me to arrange things,’ he said slowly, ‘so that the Americans who watched his programme that day, they all remember what you said when you took him over? So that way, they’d be less likely to vote for him?’
‘Well, yes,’ said Aziraphale. ‘That is, er, the short and the long, you might say.’
‘The long and short of it,’ Crowley corrected him. Adam noted with amusement that he had begun to slur his words.
‘Hmmm,’ said Adam. ‘It’s not that I wouldn’t like to, but I’m not sure it would even really help. He said you were the Devil speaking through him. People who support him would probably believe that, and take it as confirmation that the Devil walks among them, meaning they’re right to be scared, so they should bomb whoever they want and stop people from coming to America and not let people who don’t look like them have any rights. It wouldn’t do any good. And even if it did, those people would just vote for War or Famine instead, and how’s that supposed to be an improvement?’
‘Less country music, for a start,’ said Crowley, and Adam chuckled.
‘You wouldn’t have to let them remember that part,’ said Aziraphale. ‘You could, shall we say, edit it out.’
‘I could,’ said Adam, ‘but I don’t like manipulating people. They can see nothing or they can see everything, but I’m not going to just show them what I’d want them to see. That’s not right.’
‘What’d I say? Just enough of a bastard to be worth liking,’ said Crowley fondly, deep into his third glass of wine, as he placed a hand on Aziraphale’s arm. The angel glared at him, but made no movement to shake him off.
‘Hmmm,’ said Adam thoughtfully. ‘The more I think about it, the more I really don’t think it’ll make any difference. But since you’re here and all, maybe we could test the waters.’ He winked at the television, which dutifully blinked to life. He hadn’t really had to wink, as it had taken him all of one hand gesture to change the entire world, but he found that doing so made Crowley and Aziraphale less nervous.
The television showed a debate stage barely large enough to contain 10 candidates. The Reverend Marvin O. Bagman was instantly recognisable, as was War, but for half a second Adam struggled to pick Famine out of the crowd of men in suits, all pushing for the same cuts to the same public services with the ultimate end of starving poor people. He winked again, and the focus narrowed to Reverend Bagman, who was gesticulating wildly.
‘Reverend Bagman,’ the moderator was saying, ‘the next question is from @ohforhellssake, on Twitter. In the course of your career as a televangelist, you are on record as predicting the end times. You were particularly adamant that the world would end on June 6, 2006, and later you tirelessly warned us that it would be May 21, 2011, and then December 21, 2012, but you have in fact been predicting the Apocalypse since the mid-1980s. Does it bother you that 30 years later, the world hasn’t ended yet?’
Reverend Marvin O. Bagman smiled, unperturbed. ‘Jane, I can only say that our Lord works in mysterious ways, and I don’t claim to understand the mysteries, but I do know that the End Times, they are a-comin’. It’s all right there in your Bible, and when they arrive, we’ve got to be ready for ’em. And if you vote for me, I pledge to make sure America is ready to face the horrors on their way. While all the True Believers fly away in the Rapture to be with our buddy Jesus, the rest of y’all will be left to contend with the unspeakable. War. Famine. Plague. Death-’
‘Stop, you’re embarrassing them,’ muttered Crowley sleepily, and Aziraphale elbowed him in the side.
‘-but I’m a forgivin’ man, and under my leadership I’ll do what I can to keep you safe, and even God willing bring y’all back on to the path of the righteous!’
Even to Adam’s all-comprehending mind, Bagman’s speech made no sense whatsoever, but the crowd roared with applause. ‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I wonder how they managed to make thirty-nine flavours of ice cream. Let’s see how it would turn out if they remembered your speech.’ Adam winked again, and the screen rewound itself.
‘Reverend Bagman,’ said the moderator, ‘the next question is from @hewalksamongus, on Twitter. Until 1990, you made your living as a televangelist, until you were fired after telling your viewers that the Rapture is a lie, which you claimed was due to the Devil speaking through you. How can you be sure you won’t suffer another bout of demonic possession?’
This time Bagman’s expression was grave, but he still kept his calm even as another candidate groaned in the background. ‘Really? I get asked about Syria and he gets asked about some TV stunt 25 years ago?’
‘Jane, I don’t mind telling you that went through dark times,’ said Marvin O. Bagman solemnly. ‘I slipped up, Jane, as I’ve detailed in my book, A True Buddy: How the Good Lord Jesus Never Gave Up on a Sinnin’ Man, just $17.99 at your local Barnes & Noble. After I lost my job, I don’t mind telling you that I sank deep into the evils of drink and wanton vice, but praise the good Lord, He never forgot His buddy Marvin. And when I hit rock bottom, He was there to pull me back out. He stayed with me all through rehab, and He held my hand as I emerged triumphant, and He guided my hand as he wrote my book-’
‘Strange how He failed to correct its many typographical errors,’ said Aziraphale contemptuously, and Crowley snored into his shoulder.
‘-and when I went on my signing tour, He was with me always, keepin’ my soul pure and my bank account full. So I can tell you, Jane, that I have truly been saved, and that if y’all vote for me, then Jesus will be with you always, ’cause Jesus is my buddy, and as President, I’ll be all y’all’s buddy. And when the Rapture comes and the True Believers all fly up in the air to meet our maker, all y’all Faithful will be saved, in a Heaven decorated in red, white, and blue. Thank you, and God bless America!’
Once again, as he concluded his speech, the crowd applauded wildly. Adam shook his head in disgust, and then he heard, not for the first time, echoes of the voices that had filled his head all those years ago. You can make it all better, Adam Young, they whispered. You can make a new world, where Marvin O. Bagman and his followers will never be a problem again.
Adam grabbed the table involuntarily, as if to hold himself to this Earth. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘No. I’m not going to change my mind.’ His head cleared slightly, and he sat up straight to address all meddling forces, occult and ethereal, external and internal. ‘It’s pretty scary, I’ll admit,’ he said loudly, ‘but I’d have to change a lot more than just one hour of American television if I wanted to make it better, and that’s not right, and in any case it’s not my place to decide what’s better.’ With that, the voices in his head fell silent, but Aziraphale looked less convinced.
‘But look at them,’ he said. ‘Look how they’re all mindlessly cheering. Doesn’t that alarm you?’
‘It’s prob’ly a heavily vetted audience,’ said Adam, as much to himself as to Aziraphale. ‘I don’t reckon they let anyone into those things who’d point out that nothing he’s saying makes sense.’
‘Yeah,’ said Crowley, opening his eyes. ‘That’s humans for you, angel. Some of them are so gullible we don’t even need to do anything to them; all anybody has to do is use the right code to hint that they might do something. And then some of them are so cunning you couldn’t pay them to be fooled. This lot aren’t a representative sample.’
‘That’s right,’ said a voice from behind them. Adam turned around and grinned hugely as Pepper threw her bags down on the ground and joined them at the table, pulling her chair around to be closer to his. ‘One of my patients is an expat and counts Bagman as a source of anxiety. She was better today, though. She swears his poll numbers are dropping.’
‘Oh, all right,’ said Aziraphale grumpily. ‘Point taken. But pass me back that bottle, Crowley, there’s a good chap.’
‘Me too,’ said Adam fervently, and Pepper laughed and grabbed a glass for herself. And if there had definitely not been full plates of comfort food in front of each of them, and there were now, Adam definitely wouldn’t have known anything about that. It wasn’t right to change the world, but there were other ways to make his people happy.
Happy Holidays, Lunasong, from your Secret Writer!
Recipient: lunasong
Rating: PG
Pairings and Characters: Adam Young/Pepper, implied Crowley/Aziraphale, Marvin O. Bagman
Prompt: Rev. Marvin O. Bagman/What happened after he was possessed by Aziraphale on his 'Hour of Power' broadcast? Was it something he was able to spin into even greater glory or did it ruin his ministry?
Word Count: 2,583
Disclaimer: All copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. This work is not created for profit and constitutes fair use.
Summary: Alarmed by recent developments across the pond, Aziraphale implores Adam to allow people to remember That Saturday. Crowley’s mostly just in it for the wine.
Author’s Note: Written for go_exchange 2015. No presidential candidates were harmed during the writing of this story.
It wasn’t every day that Adam Young, age 36 and doing his level best not to turn into either of his fathers, received unannounced visits from a pair of supernatural entities who’d rather spectacularly failed as his self-appointed godfathers. It wasn’t all that uncommon, but ‘every day’ would be a significant overstatement. Yet there they were, Aziraphale still determinedly sporting a tartan jacket that neither Crowley nor Adam had been able to convince him to burn, standing on his front stoop with a Crowley still wearing sunglasses, even when he dunt need to. Aziraphale’s expression, however, looked decidedly agitated, and Crowley’s even more apathetic than usual, which Adam knew by now could only mean that he was secretly as worried about whatever was happening as Aziraphale was, but even after a quarter century of radio silence from both Above and Below at Adam’s behest, he dared not speak too openly about it. He had an image to maintain, after all.
‘Hi,’ said Adam, looking from one to the other. ‘What’s going on?’ He could easily have looked in their minds, but that would have taken the fun out of it, and it wasn’t like he had much else to do that day. Pepper wouldn’t be home until seven, and while he’d promised himself he’d finish two new chapters of Billy the Robot Space Pirate and His Trusty Dinosaur, Dinosaur before she got back, it seemed that conquering writers’ block was the one and only thing the Antichrist couldn’t naturally do.
Crowley groaned. ‘Oh, that’s nice. Forty-minute traffic jam on the M40 and he doesn’t even invite us in for tea.’
‘Adam,’ said Aziraphale, pointedly ignoring his companion, ‘we’re here to ask you an urgent favor. We need to you let people remember that day.’
Crowley shook his head. ‘You. Not we. And you owe me for petrol.’
‘Really, my dear, when have you ever bought petrol?’
‘Once in 1967, and last night when you wouldn’t let me sleep.’ Aziraphale huffed, but Adam, sensing that their argument could easily outlast its entertainment value, promptly stepped in.
‘I think you’d better come inside,’ he said, and they did, still glaring at each other. Once the two were seated at his kitchen table with wine glasses in hand, Adam said, as solemnly as he could manage, ‘You know I can’t let people remember. There’d be a whole global panic. I only let Pep remember because it wouldn’t have been right, her marrying me not knowing who I was. And I only let Wensley and Brian remember because I couldn’t very well have her remember it and not them. I’m not looking to make it some kind of habit.’
‘Not everyone,’ said Aziraphale hurriedly, ‘and more important, not everything. Only Americans, and not even all of them, just some, and they need remember only a tiny, scarcely significant detail.’
‘Oh?’ asked Adam. ‘So insignificant you came all the way up here to ask me about it, I suppose?’
‘Adam,’ said Aziraphale impatiently, ‘have you ever heard of the Reverend Marvin O. Bagman?’
Adam pursed his lips. The name rang a bell, or to be more accurate, it rang two bells. The first was the sort of innocuous bell that might be rung in any human’s head, signalling that he or she has come across a given subject before in some context meriting very little attention, such as headlines in unread newspapers or forced small talk among casual acquaintances. The second bell was one that existed only in the head of Adam Young, signalling to him that he had in the course of undoing an entire global crisis with a wave of his hand touched the life of this Reverend Marvin O. Bagman, in such a way that he could instantly recall if he wished, despite having hardly even registered it in his subconscious at the time. He squinted as he brought up the memory, and he couldn’t help chuckling as he replayed it in his mind.
‘Nice one,’ he said to Aziraphale. ‘That Rapture stuff is pretty stupid. But if people want to believe it, then it’s not my place to stop them. I’m pretty sure that counts as messin’ people about.’
‘Adam,’ said Aziraphale, ‘that man is running for President of the United States, and he may win.’
Well, Adam thought, that explained why the name had rung both bells. He laughed as he recalled the headline, shared by one of Pepper’s friends from her term abroad: ‘Jesus Was Somebody You Could Sit Down and Have a Beer With, Bagman Tells Iowa Crowd.’ Then he choked on his wine.
‘I don’t think he’ll actually win,’ said Adam, once he had regained the ability to breathe. ‘Pepper made a bunch of American friends when she spent a term there, and none of them would go for that kind of stuff. It’s a generational thing. I reckon they’re smarter because they haven’t grown up bein’ messed about in the same way.’
‘See?’ said Crowley. ‘I told you, angel, you were worried for nothing.’ He shrugged, and his wine glass automatically refilled, but Adam could tell that Aziraphale was far from mollified.
‘But he’s got a base,’ Aziraphale countered. ‘An angry, implacable mob of a base that feeds on exactly the type of ignorant fear he’s peddling, and they’ve taken over his party. Even I thought him little more than comic relief unaware during my brief stay inside his head, but he wields incredible persuasive power over irrationally frightened people. You said it yourself, Crowley. Humans are more dangerous than any of us, and frightened people can do far more evil than any demon.’
‘Hey,’ said Crowley. ‘You’re extrapolating a lot there. All I said was that he’d pulled off the impressive feat of being even more dangerous than the other candidates.’
‘Who are the other candidates?’ asked Adam, and Aziraphale shook his head with disapproval.
‘Do the names Carmine Zuigiber and Raven Sable stir any recollections?’ he asked, and Adam groaned.
‘No,’ said Adam. ‘We beat them. I knew they’d come back, but I thought they’d be, you know, more abstract than that. Like what they really are.’ Back into the minds of men, Death had told him. The minds of the sort of men-and women, he could hear Pepper reminding him-who would vote to make Marvin O. Bagman Leader of the Free World. For a moment, he was genuinely tempted.
‘So you want me to arrange things,’ he said slowly, ‘so that the Americans who watched his programme that day, they all remember what you said when you took him over? So that way, they’d be less likely to vote for him?’
‘Well, yes,’ said Aziraphale. ‘That is, er, the short and the long, you might say.’
‘The long and short of it,’ Crowley corrected him. Adam noted with amusement that he had begun to slur his words.
‘Hmmm,’ said Adam. ‘It’s not that I wouldn’t like to, but I’m not sure it would even really help. He said you were the Devil speaking through him. People who support him would probably believe that, and take it as confirmation that the Devil walks among them, meaning they’re right to be scared, so they should bomb whoever they want and stop people from coming to America and not let people who don’t look like them have any rights. It wouldn’t do any good. And even if it did, those people would just vote for War or Famine instead, and how’s that supposed to be an improvement?’
‘Less country music, for a start,’ said Crowley, and Adam chuckled.
‘You wouldn’t have to let them remember that part,’ said Aziraphale. ‘You could, shall we say, edit it out.’
‘I could,’ said Adam, ‘but I don’t like manipulating people. They can see nothing or they can see everything, but I’m not going to just show them what I’d want them to see. That’s not right.’
‘What’d I say? Just enough of a bastard to be worth liking,’ said Crowley fondly, deep into his third glass of wine, as he placed a hand on Aziraphale’s arm. The angel glared at him, but made no movement to shake him off.
‘Hmmm,’ said Adam thoughtfully. ‘The more I think about it, the more I really don’t think it’ll make any difference. But since you’re here and all, maybe we could test the waters.’ He winked at the television, which dutifully blinked to life. He hadn’t really had to wink, as it had taken him all of one hand gesture to change the entire world, but he found that doing so made Crowley and Aziraphale less nervous.
The television showed a debate stage barely large enough to contain 10 candidates. The Reverend Marvin O. Bagman was instantly recognisable, as was War, but for half a second Adam struggled to pick Famine out of the crowd of men in suits, all pushing for the same cuts to the same public services with the ultimate end of starving poor people. He winked again, and the focus narrowed to Reverend Bagman, who was gesticulating wildly.
‘Reverend Bagman,’ the moderator was saying, ‘the next question is from @ohforhellssake, on Twitter. In the course of your career as a televangelist, you are on record as predicting the end times. You were particularly adamant that the world would end on June 6, 2006, and later you tirelessly warned us that it would be May 21, 2011, and then December 21, 2012, but you have in fact been predicting the Apocalypse since the mid-1980s. Does it bother you that 30 years later, the world hasn’t ended yet?’
Reverend Marvin O. Bagman smiled, unperturbed. ‘Jane, I can only say that our Lord works in mysterious ways, and I don’t claim to understand the mysteries, but I do know that the End Times, they are a-comin’. It’s all right there in your Bible, and when they arrive, we’ve got to be ready for ’em. And if you vote for me, I pledge to make sure America is ready to face the horrors on their way. While all the True Believers fly away in the Rapture to be with our buddy Jesus, the rest of y’all will be left to contend with the unspeakable. War. Famine. Plague. Death-’
‘Stop, you’re embarrassing them,’ muttered Crowley sleepily, and Aziraphale elbowed him in the side.
‘-but I’m a forgivin’ man, and under my leadership I’ll do what I can to keep you safe, and even God willing bring y’all back on to the path of the righteous!’
Even to Adam’s all-comprehending mind, Bagman’s speech made no sense whatsoever, but the crowd roared with applause. ‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I wonder how they managed to make thirty-nine flavours of ice cream. Let’s see how it would turn out if they remembered your speech.’ Adam winked again, and the screen rewound itself.
‘Reverend Bagman,’ said the moderator, ‘the next question is from @hewalksamongus, on Twitter. Until 1990, you made your living as a televangelist, until you were fired after telling your viewers that the Rapture is a lie, which you claimed was due to the Devil speaking through you. How can you be sure you won’t suffer another bout of demonic possession?’
This time Bagman’s expression was grave, but he still kept his calm even as another candidate groaned in the background. ‘Really? I get asked about Syria and he gets asked about some TV stunt 25 years ago?’
‘Jane, I don’t mind telling you that went through dark times,’ said Marvin O. Bagman solemnly. ‘I slipped up, Jane, as I’ve detailed in my book, A True Buddy: How the Good Lord Jesus Never Gave Up on a Sinnin’ Man, just $17.99 at your local Barnes & Noble. After I lost my job, I don’t mind telling you that I sank deep into the evils of drink and wanton vice, but praise the good Lord, He never forgot His buddy Marvin. And when I hit rock bottom, He was there to pull me back out. He stayed with me all through rehab, and He held my hand as I emerged triumphant, and He guided my hand as he wrote my book-’
‘Strange how He failed to correct its many typographical errors,’ said Aziraphale contemptuously, and Crowley snored into his shoulder.
‘-and when I went on my signing tour, He was with me always, keepin’ my soul pure and my bank account full. So I can tell you, Jane, that I have truly been saved, and that if y’all vote for me, then Jesus will be with you always, ’cause Jesus is my buddy, and as President, I’ll be all y’all’s buddy. And when the Rapture comes and the True Believers all fly up in the air to meet our maker, all y’all Faithful will be saved, in a Heaven decorated in red, white, and blue. Thank you, and God bless America!’
Once again, as he concluded his speech, the crowd applauded wildly. Adam shook his head in disgust, and then he heard, not for the first time, echoes of the voices that had filled his head all those years ago. You can make it all better, Adam Young, they whispered. You can make a new world, where Marvin O. Bagman and his followers will never be a problem again.
Adam grabbed the table involuntarily, as if to hold himself to this Earth. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘No. I’m not going to change my mind.’ His head cleared slightly, and he sat up straight to address all meddling forces, occult and ethereal, external and internal. ‘It’s pretty scary, I’ll admit,’ he said loudly, ‘but I’d have to change a lot more than just one hour of American television if I wanted to make it better, and that’s not right, and in any case it’s not my place to decide what’s better.’ With that, the voices in his head fell silent, but Aziraphale looked less convinced.
‘But look at them,’ he said. ‘Look how they’re all mindlessly cheering. Doesn’t that alarm you?’
‘It’s prob’ly a heavily vetted audience,’ said Adam, as much to himself as to Aziraphale. ‘I don’t reckon they let anyone into those things who’d point out that nothing he’s saying makes sense.’
‘Yeah,’ said Crowley, opening his eyes. ‘That’s humans for you, angel. Some of them are so gullible we don’t even need to do anything to them; all anybody has to do is use the right code to hint that they might do something. And then some of them are so cunning you couldn’t pay them to be fooled. This lot aren’t a representative sample.’
‘That’s right,’ said a voice from behind them. Adam turned around and grinned hugely as Pepper threw her bags down on the ground and joined them at the table, pulling her chair around to be closer to his. ‘One of my patients is an expat and counts Bagman as a source of anxiety. She was better today, though. She swears his poll numbers are dropping.’
‘Oh, all right,’ said Aziraphale grumpily. ‘Point taken. But pass me back that bottle, Crowley, there’s a good chap.’
‘Me too,’ said Adam fervently, and Pepper laughed and grabbed a glass for herself. And if there had definitely not been full plates of comfort food in front of each of them, and there were now, Adam definitely wouldn’t have known anything about that. It wasn’t right to change the world, but there were other ways to make his people happy.
Happy Holidays, Lunasong, from your Secret Writer!