Rock of Faith

Floating in the drafts and eddies of the New Age, Lucy had lately fetched up on a strange rock of faith: the Church of Mutual Assured Rapture, a fellowship born from the union of charismatic Christianity and the military-industrial complex.

It was a natural, even inevitable alliance, given the cultural logic of the sunbelt. You could look at this strange little sect as one more attempt to reconcile God with Caesar (or his modern equivalent, General Dynamics). Or you could just be cynical and write off the CMARs (as they called themselves) as apocalypse freaks.

Most of them, like Lucy, had indeed put in their time under the Freak flag; and it's true, they were very fond of apocalypse. Along with their testimony and pentecostalism the CMARs liked to screen old disaster pictures, from When Worlds Collide and On the Beach to Earthquake (in the original Sensurround™) and The Day After.