One thing that I found interesting was the end reaction of those who survived. Pops wanted reverence, respect, fear and total control over the people He created. He figured that killing almost all of His followers, well, most of the half-ass followers anyway, would reignite these traits back into His people and they would again pay homage and worship Him the way He felt they should worship Him, which was all the time. The problem was that during the first few millennia of having his followers on earth Pops has this character flaw that if someone was doing something He didn’t like He’d just kill them. It kind of takes away from the original plan of letting you learn for yourselves. And instead of scaring people into believing in Him and obeying His commandments, He’d end up killing them all, which resulted in having to start all over again. I mean think about it, Noah was on the boat and really couldn’t do any preaching about following the Lord. He really didn’t have time to preach beforehand because of the intense schedule my old man had put on him to get the boat made. I guess to break it down to its simplest form you really won’t have to many followers if you keep killing them all when they stop thinking about you all the time. That’s just piss poor management in my opinion.
Which brings me to the reaction of those that survived Pop’s little flood, which befuddled the old man more than anything up to that point in the earths history. As I had said, Pops thought that with the mass murder of His followers that those who survived it would be filled with the fear of god and faithfully worship Him the rest of their lives. But with this great destructive flood, the people saw a different power responsible for this slaughter. I give you Drippy the rain god. Yeah, well, back in those days there was not a lot of creativeness involved in naming gods. They originally named the old man Gus, but He made them legally change His name.
The point is that they made up a non-existing god and gave credit to it for this great power and “evil cleansing” that took place. You know, I’ve never understood that whole “evil cleansing” notion, but never in the existence of wrathful genocide has the outcome equated to all the “evil” people being killed and all the “good” people being saved. I guess if you do survive something like that then you might think or yourself as saved, but this is not in the righteous sense, more of the literal sense. I can see how a misconstrued notion of goodness comes from surviving something like a great flood, but the fact of the matter is that Pops received no credit for his little flood other than Noah and his family.
The Drippy movement actually lasted about 20 years after the flood, but never really caught on anywhere. Most of the hard core followers lost their lives in a trial of faith. I guess I can’t really blame them. I mean you survive a big ass storm that shows up during the driest summer in years and wipes out over nine tenths of your population, it might go to your head, and it did, mostly to the people who believed they were saved for some special reason and couldn’t really figure out why. In an attempt to witness to others of the power of their new god, which they believed brought the great flood and saved them, they headed to the deep desert to be saved by Drippy and to be renewed in Drippy’s power to sprinkle. Yeah, most of them died of thirst before they even tried thinking that perhaps it challenging the existence on their god might not be the best way to get saved. It was the five minutes before Drippy’s last follower passed when the epiphany struck them that maybe they got the wrong god. Sometimes you live and learn, and once in a great while you learn while dying. The church of Drippy ended almost as fast as it began.
This does however impose a rather interesting problem. What happens to those who die worshiping a man made god? I guess limbo is a pretty good facsimile of what happens. These people exist in the afterlife waiting for their god to show up. I mean they seem to be ok, friends are there, or at least fellow worshipers, and some really nice potlucks take place, but overall they are left waiting, forever. There is the occasional escape. This happens when a follower in the afterlife ventures out with the idea that maybe they were never was their god and they stop believing. Thus the atheist freedom comes and they are free to make the universe as their own.
This never happens in actual deity circles because there is actual proof of their god’s existence once they die, meaning, then actually get to meet their god. This is a continual solidification that they were correct in their beliefs and thus the option to disbelieve will never surface. Sure there is recollection that there were some people that did not agree with you about your god while you were alive, but they are not there and are, according to your religious interpretation, in hell. Because they are in hell there is no need to worry about them, so no one ever does. It’s kind of a universal among all the gods. The irony is that there is no hell, Pops follows think that all of Zeus’s followers are in hell, but in truth they are in their heaven with their god Zeus, and vise versa.
So you may be wondering, “How did Pops dealt with His flood experience with all His god buddies?” Once the flood finally got underway, there did seem to be some interest from the other gods of how things were going. Pops knew that He would need to get the paper work done so it could be reviewed by the others, but He was able to put everyone on hold while He was waiting for the flood to finish up and for Noah and the family to arrive back on land. In talking to Holy about the whole ordeal, Pops kept the rain falling two weeks longer than He was suppose to, just so He had more time to get the paper work started. That is one thing I always liked about talking to Holy Ghost, the bloke could not lie even if his life depended on it.
Pops did ask Carl to take a few notes about the flood, hopping it could be used for His report, but…after seeing Carl’s meticulousness to the events and outcome He knew He would be stuck doing the paper work for this one all by Himself. Deity competition always motivates the gods to do what is necessary to look good in the eyes of all the other gods, even if that means reinventing written records to make yourself look good. Pop’s release of His flood report had almost all of the numbers fudged in some way or another. On paper it looked like a grand success. The report actually said His approval rating went up 99%, granted it main reason was because He murdered all those that didn’t believe/approve of Him, and it didn’t include all of the Drippy followers because they believed in a new god altogether. The numbers only accounted for those who survived, who believed in Him. The fact is that His approval rating dropped by 30 points, but apparently there are some things that are better kept from the gods.
The surprising thing is how many of the other gods took Pops report as legit and actually tried a flood of their own. You need proof, look at all the other civilizations that claim to have a flood story in their history. There are quite a few. All of these are a direct result of the old mans flood report. And in almost every case approval ratings dropped. The only one that really came out on top was Poseidon. Wiping out Atlantis made his conversion rate triple over night.
After the rain had finally stopped and the ark had nestled on dry land again, I was able to catch up with Noah and check how life on the boat treated him. Turns out that it helped him appreciate my old man a lot more. Apparently any god who was good enough to offer him and his family a few month fishing trip free of cost while getting him out of debt by destroying all of the banks, well then that god did deserve a little gratitude and reverence, even if He had killed a couple of forests in the process.
It also just so happened that as a result of spending a few months on a boat, Charlotte and all of Noah’s son’s wives were expecting. It appeared that Pops had actually, sort of gotten one convert from the whole fiasco and there were offspring on the way that would be learning about Him and His laws for following Him.
The flood did set Him back a bit and it took a few millennia to finally catch up with the Egyptians again. It probably would have taken less time but then again, Pops was kind of a slow learner. As a result of the flood, Pops held strong to the mindset that killing your people who don’t believe in you is the best way to get people to believe in you, and sadly that mindset stayed as a theme of His for quite a while.
After Noah had returned to dry land and started setting up a new city for his people, I decided to take my leave of Noah. He had plenty to do and I knew that if I hung around and tried to help, that inevitably Pops would show up when things went wrong and once again it would all be my fault. I was going to do my best to avoid becoming Pops scapegoat again. Noah knew me as Roy, a friend, and not the devil, and I was going to keep it that way. I wished them all the best, gave Noah a hug, and went on my way, not sure if I’d see any of them again. I did end up visiting a few years later, but… well, you’ll see what happened.
