Categories > Books > Harry Potter > The Rise and Fall of an Empire
By the Grace of the Almighty
The war between Light and Dark has raged for years, and every day territory is lost to the Dark Lord. Then a string of events turns the world on its ear most violently. I ask that every reader re...
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A/N: I would like to thank all my readers, and wish you a Happy New Year. Please be sure to read the author's note at the bottom.
Washington DC, the United States
1800 GMT (1:00 PM), 2 December 2001
The first of hundreds of funeral services carried out in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and almost the entire city of Washington, D.C. had turned out to honor the dead. In attendance were the President, the Vice-President, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and almost the entire Congress of the United States. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, delivered the first speech of the day, and he spoke with all the solemnity of his station as Chief Justice. He spoke of the need to stay the course and he asked the people to never let the enemies of freedom and peace who had committed the terrible attacks on the United States and the United Kingdom to have a moments rest. Priests, imams, and rabbis form all sorts of religions laid thousands of people who had died in the nuclear blast over New York to rest, and prayed for their souls. The cathedral, stuffed to the gills, saw one of the most harrowing times in the history of the United States and it would many more. The grave procession, broadcast live on all national television circuits, was interrupted right in the middle of the mass eulogy as it was delivered by the Cardinal Archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York, His Eminence Edward Michael Cardinal Egan, by protestors whose message will be paraphrased in part here. (Please note, the following opinions expressed ARE NOT, I repeat NOT the opinions of the author. I would never use such loathsome vile and reprehensible terms to refer to any one. So please do not send me hate mail.)
The group protesting at this most solemn of events was the Westboro Baptist Church, a radical hate group hailing from Kansas, and with a reputation for being incredibly virulent against those who do not agree with them. Throughout the entire service they were outside screaming about this was God's punishment for the United States because they harbor homosexuals, blacks, Jews, Roman Catholics and a multitude of other things. They stood outside the church with signs saying the most awful things, but the one that got the most attention was a sign saying 'Don't Worship the Dead, They Got What They Deserve!', and the media had a field day with the protestors and their sacrilegious statements. The leader of the WBC, Reverend Fred Phelps, and his family led a chant about how the terrorists would be 'praised eternally in Heaven for helping to destroy the fag enablers of the world', and no matter what was done to them, the 'dead from New York will burn forever in the Fires of Hell' and other nonsense like that. The hate rally ended when Maryland National Guard units forcefully broke up the rally and arrested Phelps and his family for child endangerment and public disturbance, as they had brought very young children along and was making quite a racket. The rest of the service was peaceful and dignified, as a decorous funeral should be and there were no further interruptions. Many people were moved to tears by the haunting strains of Amazing Grace being played on the bagpipes as they left the Basilica.
Clark AFB, Luzon, the Philippines
2200 GMT, 2 December 2001 (6:00 AM, 3 December 2001 Local)
Most of the world's military forces were still scrambling to get enough forces to cover their own interests, but the US Navy SEALs were ready all day, every day of the year. Even so, it had taken SEAL Team 1 nearly three days to get all of their paraphernalia and personnel to their FOB at Clark, and they did not even get any down time. They had been ordered to HALO drop into Taipei and act as an additional line of resistance around the capital of the Republic of China. The commandant of SEAL Team 1, Vice-Admiral Delilah Porter would stay behind at Clark to coordinate air strikes against the enemy with SEAL movements. Staying behind would be one of the bright spots of the assignment for her, not because she didn't want to fight, but because she would be with her husband, the hazel-eyed commanding officer of the 509th Bomb Wing, who has been mentioned numerous times before, Lieutenant General Jeremy Porter. She was also in charge of all United States forces in the whole of the South China Sea operational area, much to the Third US Army Rangers battalions dislike. She would be in control of the South China Seas area until the Coalition appointed a joint commander for all Coalition forces in the area. Moreover, that looked to be far off into the future that is at least if the Coalition could not become organized in the next few months.
Delilah Porter was a sensation in the Navy; she had appeared out of nowhere just over twenty years ago, and she was the first female SEAL, and the first female SEAL to make it up into the command echelon of the military. She stood at six foot two, had blood red hair and a face that could easily deceive you into thinking that she would pose no threat,m although the bottom left part of her face had horrible scarring. However, she was one of the deadliest people on the planet, and she could chew you up and spit you back out in seconds, and she would feel no guilt in letting you die if you betrayed her. Her bright emerald eyes shone with astuteness and understanding, but in their depths, you could also find hurt and trepidation, which when looked for a second time had disappeared. She could hit a fast-moving target 50 feet away dead center with a throwing knife, and was as precise a sharpshooter as any other human being alive was. She was unhurried to rage, but when aroused her anger dwarfed a volcano's fury and made it look like an angry butterfly. She dealt with the troops under her command as a mother lion would her cubs, with respect but also with the position of supreme authority behind her. She shared her husband's fears about discovery by the world they had forsaken, but unlike her husband, she did not fixate on the subject of it; she rightly claimed it to be detrimental to one's mental health. Although, coming from a woman with some slightly sociopathic tendencies, that doesn't mean a hell of alot.
The first thing she did when she arrived at Clark was to make sure that the Air Force had the C-130 transport planes for her SEALs ready to go wheels up at a moments notice. She knew that every minute one of the people under her authority had nothing to do mean there was more chance they would try to take French leave, and they might not come back to do their duty. The second thing she did was to check on the status of her husband, and she was relieved that he had not been in one of the bombers that had been shot down over Taiwan. In addition, the last thing she did before helping to unload the heavy equipment was to make sure that the USS Abraham Lincoln was going to make to the theatre in time for the covering maneuver. Without total air preeminence, doing a HALO parachute jump would just be sending good soldiers to their deaths for no reason. When she found out that, the Lincoln was in Pearl Harbor for repairs due to hitting a reef she started swearing a blue streak that went on for a couple of miles. She testily postponed the HALO jump, and her staff wisely avoided her for the rest of the morning, lest they get flambéed by the 'Dragon Lady' as they had begun to call her when she went like this. There was one unlucky Air Force sergeant however, who either could not read the caveat signs or did not care about them; either way he spent the rest of the day cowering in a bathroom stall hoping that she didn't come after him. He was found later by his superiors and almost laughed off the base due to his stupidity.
Cargo terminal C2, Domodedova International Airport, Moscow, Russia
0127 GMT (4:27 AM), 3 December 2001
The worst kinds of surprises are those that come unexpectedly, and leave a place in ruins when they leave. Civilizations since the beginning of time have experienced these nasty kinds of surprises; Greece had the Roman Empire; Rome had the barbarian hordes from the Baltic and Asia; the barbarians had the Normans and the Saxons; and now Russia would fight against her own demolishment from both without and within. Inside this freight terminal at Domodedova, there were six freight containers, each one packed with enough weapons to supply a small mobile infantry company. These had been left in the secured area of the terminal by Soviet hard-liners just over ten years ago, who were planning to come back some time in the future to continue the grand Soviet regime. Unfortunately, for them, most of the leaders of the plot were captured soon after Boris Yeltsin came into power and were serving life sentences at a gulag in northern Siberia. One of the strategic leaders of the plot however, had been able to deflect any suspicion from his person by claiming that he had just been following orders, and amazingly the Nuremberg defense actually worked for a change. Fortunately, for him at least, the Russian judges believed his story, allowed him to retain his rank of Colonel, and even allowed him to stay at his job as a missile commander and zampolit, a political officer. Now he is the Russian equivalent to the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the first in line to succeed the Presidency, and he could whisper any number of things into the ear of Vladimir Putin. This man's name is Anatoliy Gyrzlev and through him, the world would feel terror, sorrow, and grief.
Anatoliy Gryzlev was a cunning man, with a mind as sharp as razor and quick as lightning. He could see that the time would soon be ripe for him to overthrow the capitalist 'democracy', which had reduced a once great nation into an economically struggling, divided 'federation' of independent states, with no direction and no apparent future other than total collapse. He was meeting with the leaders of the Russian Mafia and some sympathetic military leaders to plan the overthrow of the so-called 'Commonwealth of Independent States' that all those in attendance hated so much. However, as I said Gyrzlev is a cunning man, he lived by the aphorism 'if you're not three steps ahead, you're two steps behind' and he did not trust any of the men he was meeting any more than they trusted him. He knew that for his plans to accomplish something, he would need to use these criminals and then eliminate them quickly, at before they did the same to him. He had lead these men here to furnish them with the weapons that would allow him create a situation in which he could 'legally' take over the Presidency. He knew that having a massive coup d'etat such as in the glorious October Revolution of 1917 would only cause the superpowers of the world to brand him as a traitor and make him anathema to political peace. He did not intend to join the Dark Lord's forces however; he was just in this to restore the glorious name of the Soviet Union and the spread of Communism throughout the world. The meeting went well, and within six months, the plans for the fall of the consumerist masters of the Russian workers would be in place and ready to start at any time.
Jackson, Mississippi, the United States
0331 GMT, 3 December 2001 (9:31 PM, 2 December 2001)
The domestic situation in the United States, and around the world for that matter, was one that would see many changes in a very sort amount of time. With most of the world's economy having been destroyed, the common person, from the greeters at Wal-Mart to the managers of local McDonalds had all been told that their pay was worth substantially less then it was before. Understandably, the general populace did not take this revelation very well nor did they want to try to make do with what they were getting. The first riot occurred outside a grocery store in Jackson, Mississippi, where people quickly found out that the prices on all items had raised to practically astronomical levels. The people as you can probably guess were more than a little unhappy with the new list prices on the necessities that they had to have. It started innocuously as most civil disobedience actions do, but as they crowd got larger the general mood of the mob changed from one of discontentment to one of unadulterated rage. The mob grew more and more unruly, and the breaking point came when somebody threw a brick into the stores front window. The mob surged forward and stormed the workers of the grocery, who barricaded the front of the store, but their efforts were for naught.
The anger over the high price of food quickly lost its focus and the mob turned into an all out riot, moving through Jackson destroying dozens of businesses and hundreds of homes. Next, the mob came across some unfortunate wizards who had thought that since the magical world revealed itself to the mundanes, they could now go freely about both worlds. Unfortunately, for both the wizards and the riotous people, the phrase 'mob mentality' is more than just a phrase; it had become the force that ruled them. The wizards were quickly recognized for what there were, dressed in their traditional robes, and holding wands all the while. The raging crowd quickly surrounded them, and though they fought back to the best of their magical ability, they were being pushed by the crowds towards a large hill. It had been said that in the 1880s that several lynching parties had taken place on this hill, and now it looked like it would be used again. The wizards were no stranger to capital punishment and had heard about the barbaric past of the Deep South, but they though that that time ended a long before this. The tried to resist as hard as they could but one by one, they fell unconscious after being struck in the head and the mob continued with its terrible deed. The next morning the twelve bodies were still hanging from the trees, but minus their hands, feet, eyes, ears and tongue. From here on out the domestic situation could only get worse, and it surely did as time went on.
Psych ward, Maximum-security medical facility, outside of Munich, Germany
0815 GMT (9:15 AM), 3 December 2001
The doctors and psychologist of the Federal Republic of Germany were utterly baffled by the Prisoner of War known as Ginny Weasley. The first time she had woken up it had taken three MPs, two orderlies and 1500 milligrams of Thorazine to get her under control again. Even then, she was not out completely; through the drug-induced slumber, the doctors could hear her muttering about midgets spanking men covered in Thousand Island dressing, and other bizarre situations. She also seemed to have multiple personality disorder because she persisted in having conversations with somebody named Tom. However, the most worrisome thing of all was the amount of anger she held within her mind; she took the words hyper-aggressive to an entirely new level. Moreover, all of her anger seemed to focus on one person, although the doctors had yet to discover who this person was, for she only referred to the person as 'Him'. Her dopamine levels were literally off the charts; in theory no person could have that much dopamine in them and live for very long. One thing they did know was that if she ever got out, the world would be in very big trouble, and she could cause massive amounts of destruction. The doctors were just glad that Bundeswehr issued them all several sidearms, because they would at least some protection from the nutcase known as Satan's playmate.
A/N: In this chapter, we begin to see the dark side of humanity, and I touch on several subjects that some people might find objectionable. I would like to say though that the Westboro Baptist Church, Fred Phelps, and the actions that I have portrayed them performing are true to life. These people go around the country to military funerals and claim that 9/11 and the battle deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan are God's punishment of America for harboring homosexuals. I would like to state categorically that I have absolutely no problems with homosexuals, or people of any race, creed or religion. When I started this story, I promised myself that I would go through all of the skeletons in humanities closet and let people see the true depth of human depravity. I do this not to depress you, but to let people know that there is another way, that we can make the world a better place, if we just stop pussy-footing around the past and tried to change our own prejudices. I thank you for you time and wish you good reading.
Washington DC, the United States
1800 GMT (1:00 PM), 2 December 2001
The first of hundreds of funeral services carried out in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and almost the entire city of Washington, D.C. had turned out to honor the dead. In attendance were the President, the Vice-President, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and almost the entire Congress of the United States. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, delivered the first speech of the day, and he spoke with all the solemnity of his station as Chief Justice. He spoke of the need to stay the course and he asked the people to never let the enemies of freedom and peace who had committed the terrible attacks on the United States and the United Kingdom to have a moments rest. Priests, imams, and rabbis form all sorts of religions laid thousands of people who had died in the nuclear blast over New York to rest, and prayed for their souls. The cathedral, stuffed to the gills, saw one of the most harrowing times in the history of the United States and it would many more. The grave procession, broadcast live on all national television circuits, was interrupted right in the middle of the mass eulogy as it was delivered by the Cardinal Archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York, His Eminence Edward Michael Cardinal Egan, by protestors whose message will be paraphrased in part here. (Please note, the following opinions expressed ARE NOT, I repeat NOT the opinions of the author. I would never use such loathsome vile and reprehensible terms to refer to any one. So please do not send me hate mail.)
The group protesting at this most solemn of events was the Westboro Baptist Church, a radical hate group hailing from Kansas, and with a reputation for being incredibly virulent against those who do not agree with them. Throughout the entire service they were outside screaming about this was God's punishment for the United States because they harbor homosexuals, blacks, Jews, Roman Catholics and a multitude of other things. They stood outside the church with signs saying the most awful things, but the one that got the most attention was a sign saying 'Don't Worship the Dead, They Got What They Deserve!', and the media had a field day with the protestors and their sacrilegious statements. The leader of the WBC, Reverend Fred Phelps, and his family led a chant about how the terrorists would be 'praised eternally in Heaven for helping to destroy the fag enablers of the world', and no matter what was done to them, the 'dead from New York will burn forever in the Fires of Hell' and other nonsense like that. The hate rally ended when Maryland National Guard units forcefully broke up the rally and arrested Phelps and his family for child endangerment and public disturbance, as they had brought very young children along and was making quite a racket. The rest of the service was peaceful and dignified, as a decorous funeral should be and there were no further interruptions. Many people were moved to tears by the haunting strains of Amazing Grace being played on the bagpipes as they left the Basilica.
Clark AFB, Luzon, the Philippines
2200 GMT, 2 December 2001 (6:00 AM, 3 December 2001 Local)
Most of the world's military forces were still scrambling to get enough forces to cover their own interests, but the US Navy SEALs were ready all day, every day of the year. Even so, it had taken SEAL Team 1 nearly three days to get all of their paraphernalia and personnel to their FOB at Clark, and they did not even get any down time. They had been ordered to HALO drop into Taipei and act as an additional line of resistance around the capital of the Republic of China. The commandant of SEAL Team 1, Vice-Admiral Delilah Porter would stay behind at Clark to coordinate air strikes against the enemy with SEAL movements. Staying behind would be one of the bright spots of the assignment for her, not because she didn't want to fight, but because she would be with her husband, the hazel-eyed commanding officer of the 509th Bomb Wing, who has been mentioned numerous times before, Lieutenant General Jeremy Porter. She was also in charge of all United States forces in the whole of the South China Sea operational area, much to the Third US Army Rangers battalions dislike. She would be in control of the South China Seas area until the Coalition appointed a joint commander for all Coalition forces in the area. Moreover, that looked to be far off into the future that is at least if the Coalition could not become organized in the next few months.
Delilah Porter was a sensation in the Navy; she had appeared out of nowhere just over twenty years ago, and she was the first female SEAL, and the first female SEAL to make it up into the command echelon of the military. She stood at six foot two, had blood red hair and a face that could easily deceive you into thinking that she would pose no threat,m although the bottom left part of her face had horrible scarring. However, she was one of the deadliest people on the planet, and she could chew you up and spit you back out in seconds, and she would feel no guilt in letting you die if you betrayed her. Her bright emerald eyes shone with astuteness and understanding, but in their depths, you could also find hurt and trepidation, which when looked for a second time had disappeared. She could hit a fast-moving target 50 feet away dead center with a throwing knife, and was as precise a sharpshooter as any other human being alive was. She was unhurried to rage, but when aroused her anger dwarfed a volcano's fury and made it look like an angry butterfly. She dealt with the troops under her command as a mother lion would her cubs, with respect but also with the position of supreme authority behind her. She shared her husband's fears about discovery by the world they had forsaken, but unlike her husband, she did not fixate on the subject of it; she rightly claimed it to be detrimental to one's mental health. Although, coming from a woman with some slightly sociopathic tendencies, that doesn't mean a hell of alot.
The first thing she did when she arrived at Clark was to make sure that the Air Force had the C-130 transport planes for her SEALs ready to go wheels up at a moments notice. She knew that every minute one of the people under her authority had nothing to do mean there was more chance they would try to take French leave, and they might not come back to do their duty. The second thing she did was to check on the status of her husband, and she was relieved that he had not been in one of the bombers that had been shot down over Taiwan. In addition, the last thing she did before helping to unload the heavy equipment was to make sure that the USS Abraham Lincoln was going to make to the theatre in time for the covering maneuver. Without total air preeminence, doing a HALO parachute jump would just be sending good soldiers to their deaths for no reason. When she found out that, the Lincoln was in Pearl Harbor for repairs due to hitting a reef she started swearing a blue streak that went on for a couple of miles. She testily postponed the HALO jump, and her staff wisely avoided her for the rest of the morning, lest they get flambéed by the 'Dragon Lady' as they had begun to call her when she went like this. There was one unlucky Air Force sergeant however, who either could not read the caveat signs or did not care about them; either way he spent the rest of the day cowering in a bathroom stall hoping that she didn't come after him. He was found later by his superiors and almost laughed off the base due to his stupidity.
Cargo terminal C2, Domodedova International Airport, Moscow, Russia
0127 GMT (4:27 AM), 3 December 2001
The worst kinds of surprises are those that come unexpectedly, and leave a place in ruins when they leave. Civilizations since the beginning of time have experienced these nasty kinds of surprises; Greece had the Roman Empire; Rome had the barbarian hordes from the Baltic and Asia; the barbarians had the Normans and the Saxons; and now Russia would fight against her own demolishment from both without and within. Inside this freight terminal at Domodedova, there were six freight containers, each one packed with enough weapons to supply a small mobile infantry company. These had been left in the secured area of the terminal by Soviet hard-liners just over ten years ago, who were planning to come back some time in the future to continue the grand Soviet regime. Unfortunately, for them, most of the leaders of the plot were captured soon after Boris Yeltsin came into power and were serving life sentences at a gulag in northern Siberia. One of the strategic leaders of the plot however, had been able to deflect any suspicion from his person by claiming that he had just been following orders, and amazingly the Nuremberg defense actually worked for a change. Fortunately, for him at least, the Russian judges believed his story, allowed him to retain his rank of Colonel, and even allowed him to stay at his job as a missile commander and zampolit, a political officer. Now he is the Russian equivalent to the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the first in line to succeed the Presidency, and he could whisper any number of things into the ear of Vladimir Putin. This man's name is Anatoliy Gyrzlev and through him, the world would feel terror, sorrow, and grief.
Anatoliy Gryzlev was a cunning man, with a mind as sharp as razor and quick as lightning. He could see that the time would soon be ripe for him to overthrow the capitalist 'democracy', which had reduced a once great nation into an economically struggling, divided 'federation' of independent states, with no direction and no apparent future other than total collapse. He was meeting with the leaders of the Russian Mafia and some sympathetic military leaders to plan the overthrow of the so-called 'Commonwealth of Independent States' that all those in attendance hated so much. However, as I said Gyrzlev is a cunning man, he lived by the aphorism 'if you're not three steps ahead, you're two steps behind' and he did not trust any of the men he was meeting any more than they trusted him. He knew that for his plans to accomplish something, he would need to use these criminals and then eliminate them quickly, at before they did the same to him. He had lead these men here to furnish them with the weapons that would allow him create a situation in which he could 'legally' take over the Presidency. He knew that having a massive coup d'etat such as in the glorious October Revolution of 1917 would only cause the superpowers of the world to brand him as a traitor and make him anathema to political peace. He did not intend to join the Dark Lord's forces however; he was just in this to restore the glorious name of the Soviet Union and the spread of Communism throughout the world. The meeting went well, and within six months, the plans for the fall of the consumerist masters of the Russian workers would be in place and ready to start at any time.
Jackson, Mississippi, the United States
0331 GMT, 3 December 2001 (9:31 PM, 2 December 2001)
The domestic situation in the United States, and around the world for that matter, was one that would see many changes in a very sort amount of time. With most of the world's economy having been destroyed, the common person, from the greeters at Wal-Mart to the managers of local McDonalds had all been told that their pay was worth substantially less then it was before. Understandably, the general populace did not take this revelation very well nor did they want to try to make do with what they were getting. The first riot occurred outside a grocery store in Jackson, Mississippi, where people quickly found out that the prices on all items had raised to practically astronomical levels. The people as you can probably guess were more than a little unhappy with the new list prices on the necessities that they had to have. It started innocuously as most civil disobedience actions do, but as they crowd got larger the general mood of the mob changed from one of discontentment to one of unadulterated rage. The mob grew more and more unruly, and the breaking point came when somebody threw a brick into the stores front window. The mob surged forward and stormed the workers of the grocery, who barricaded the front of the store, but their efforts were for naught.
The anger over the high price of food quickly lost its focus and the mob turned into an all out riot, moving through Jackson destroying dozens of businesses and hundreds of homes. Next, the mob came across some unfortunate wizards who had thought that since the magical world revealed itself to the mundanes, they could now go freely about both worlds. Unfortunately, for both the wizards and the riotous people, the phrase 'mob mentality' is more than just a phrase; it had become the force that ruled them. The wizards were quickly recognized for what there were, dressed in their traditional robes, and holding wands all the while. The raging crowd quickly surrounded them, and though they fought back to the best of their magical ability, they were being pushed by the crowds towards a large hill. It had been said that in the 1880s that several lynching parties had taken place on this hill, and now it looked like it would be used again. The wizards were no stranger to capital punishment and had heard about the barbaric past of the Deep South, but they though that that time ended a long before this. The tried to resist as hard as they could but one by one, they fell unconscious after being struck in the head and the mob continued with its terrible deed. The next morning the twelve bodies were still hanging from the trees, but minus their hands, feet, eyes, ears and tongue. From here on out the domestic situation could only get worse, and it surely did as time went on.
Psych ward, Maximum-security medical facility, outside of Munich, Germany
0815 GMT (9:15 AM), 3 December 2001
The doctors and psychologist of the Federal Republic of Germany were utterly baffled by the Prisoner of War known as Ginny Weasley. The first time she had woken up it had taken three MPs, two orderlies and 1500 milligrams of Thorazine to get her under control again. Even then, she was not out completely; through the drug-induced slumber, the doctors could hear her muttering about midgets spanking men covered in Thousand Island dressing, and other bizarre situations. She also seemed to have multiple personality disorder because she persisted in having conversations with somebody named Tom. However, the most worrisome thing of all was the amount of anger she held within her mind; she took the words hyper-aggressive to an entirely new level. Moreover, all of her anger seemed to focus on one person, although the doctors had yet to discover who this person was, for she only referred to the person as 'Him'. Her dopamine levels were literally off the charts; in theory no person could have that much dopamine in them and live for very long. One thing they did know was that if she ever got out, the world would be in very big trouble, and she could cause massive amounts of destruction. The doctors were just glad that Bundeswehr issued them all several sidearms, because they would at least some protection from the nutcase known as Satan's playmate.
A/N: In this chapter, we begin to see the dark side of humanity, and I touch on several subjects that some people might find objectionable. I would like to say though that the Westboro Baptist Church, Fred Phelps, and the actions that I have portrayed them performing are true to life. These people go around the country to military funerals and claim that 9/11 and the battle deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan are God's punishment of America for harboring homosexuals. I would like to state categorically that I have absolutely no problems with homosexuals, or people of any race, creed or religion. When I started this story, I promised myself that I would go through all of the skeletons in humanities closet and let people see the true depth of human depravity. I do this not to depress you, but to let people know that there is another way, that we can make the world a better place, if we just stop pussy-footing around the past and tried to change our own prejudices. I thank you for you time and wish you good reading.
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