Dishonesty
"That's an odd name," her roommate commented when she introduced herself. Her roommate's own name was painfully plain, not even Elizabeth but just "Betty."
"It's from the bible. My mother picked it." Adalia laughed quickly. "It's actually a boy's name, it turns out. She didn't research it well."
"So, then you're Christian?" Betty had a short chain around her neck with a small, unornamented cross.
Adalia nodded. "Yeah." She'd gone to church her whole life, except for a gap when she had been very young, after her mother died and before her father remarried, and the few miscellaneous Sundays she'd missed over the years. She hadn't really thought much of it, and although she wasn't intending to at the time, when Sunday rolled around she'd decide to stay in bed.
"Oh, that's good," Betty said. She sounded a bit relieved. "My father was kind of worried, you know, there are a lot of wiccans in college these days."
Adalia didn't know much of anything about Wiccans, so she agreed and they shifted easily over to discussing how they'd divide up the room.
It was several months later that the issue of rapture first came up.
She'd never heard of it, and said as much.
Betty's eyes had nearly sparkled with the excitement of a chance tell her, and she immediately launched into an with gusto. The Rapture itself would be practically the opening act, Adalia gathered, as Betty continued to say that afterward, there would be the tribulation, with things like the rise of the antichrist, seas turning to blood, and a one-world government.
Adalia had laughed when she heard that last part and said jokingly, "Well, we're a long way off then."
Her roommate shook her head gravely and said in a serious undertone, "The U.N." But then she'd lightened up and added, "But neither of us have anything to worry about, because we'll be Raptured up before it all begins."
By then Adalia wasn't so sure of that. She'd been taking introductory philosophy and world history courses, college requirements, and learning about so many other views she'd never even thought of before. She'd gone to the local church twice, feeling adrift, only to feel more lost after hearing the sermons. The pastor there was completely different than the one in the church she'd gone since she was a baby, speaking about things like social responsibility and environmental stewardship. Not only were there all sorts of other religions and beliefs, but even the one she thought was her own turned out to be as strange and diverse as the rest. Christian was turning out not to be a single label, and she wasn't sure any longer it even applied to her.
She didn't share this with her roommate, who tended to dismiss large chunks of the college curriculum. They got along well because Adalia rarely had any strong feelings about the subjects Betty did, and she just agreed. If she mentioned something like that, Betty would simply respond with whatever she felt was the right thing, no explanation needed, which wasn't Adalia's problem at all.
"You should read..." her roommate would begin occasionally, and list one piece or another of apocalyptic Christian literature, usually followed by the twin recommendations that Adalia would love it and that it was virtually gospel in truth, modern-day prophesy of what was to come soon yet never did. The first few times, Adalia picked them up, but she never liked them. They were about something she felt no real connection to, dropping references to things Betty had probably grown up with but her own church had never so much as mentioned, and she felt some subtle unease reading them that she couldn't quite articulate. She usually stopped reading them at some point midway through and left them unfinished, only reaching the end of a book twice and both times leaving the sequel untouched.
They didn't feel relevant, either. Betty said things were supposed to get worse and worse until the end, but things were fine. Better than fine, even, improving. Israel had expanded peacefully and promptly switched from staple food crops to cash, only producing enough to feed themselves and the numerous states that petitioned for aid. Most of the remaining Muslim states were voluntarily suggesting entering into an extended union with Israel - a way to connect to their burgeoning economic power in a way other than using the formula on their own lands. Israel had responded well, eager to put the violence of the past behind. Their current system was to break between farming and livestock, with Israel exporting the animals' fodder and the Muslim states raising them. Despite international interest, they'd held off on growing anything suitable for biofuels, while other Middle East countries stepped up their oil production and used the funds to build new factories for ethanol production. Her mom's warning about destabilization hadn't come true, perhaps because after the first initial crops, the Israelis had been extremely careful to avoid damaging the Middle East economies.
Other economies hadn't faired so well, but Adalia's teachers largely treated that as a good thing, and it was an unqualified positive in her own life. The student cafeteria now had a bowl of passionfruit by the door for anyone to take - the orange sized fruits were now barely a dime each on the market, and many other fruits were even cheaper. Australian farmers were going under, unable to compete, which her biology teacher had described as a boon to the environment and passed out information on organizations purchasing the land for habitat reclamation.
"The earth," her teacher had elaborated, "is not something made for us to use up, and we're not going to get a new one when we're finished. This is all we're got, kids. For centuries, western civilization has pursued unsustainable farming practices, like Australia's insistence on growing crops that need more water than falls in that area, or the our own midwest apparently made up solely of idiots who don't think it matters that there won't be water there in twenty years, since Jesus will show up in ten."
Israel wasn't just improving Adalia's access to snacks. They were negotiating with the Catholic church to supply food for various charities, and bankrolling UN groups to help encourage the shift to subsistence farming among the less developed parts of the world. Rumors were going around that there were genetic engineering attempts too, creating plants that could manufacture everything from vaccines to spider silk. She felt a bit uneasy about the idea of eating altered plants, but found the idea itself exciting in a more remote, science-fictiony way.
And while it wasn't perfect for everybody, generally, Adalia thought those having trouble had earned it. Her teacher had been adamant that the Australian farmers had been hurting the environment, as had most of the developing countries. Plus, the demand for crops had been hurting the poor people of those countries too, her history teacher had said. They weren't making a profit, the big corporations who bought and sold to them were, and they'd be much better off now than sinking into poverty like they were before. And Russia, which was among those clamoring for the formula and, their economy already shaky after the currency shakeups and slide toward a dictatorship, was being damaged by the restructuring of the market, but wouldn't have had half so many problems if they didn't insist on spending what little money they did have on stockpiling even more weapons, her history teacher had said. It was stupid, anyway. The Cold War was over, everybody knew that.
In fact, the closest thing to a problem Israel's sudden bounty was for Adalia was that most of the teachers found it irritating. Her professors, she discovered, had a similar reaction to the basic idea of Israel's explanation as her mom had. Her biology teacher, overhearing one too many students refer to it as a fertilizer, had devoted half a class to brutally dissecting one of the articles on the subject, an interview with the chemist credited for the discovery.
"This is what is wrong with the media," her professor had opened, and proceeded to explain in great detail why anyone saying water wasn't an issue in Israel was not only a liar, but a dumb one. He'd then asked the class if anyone could summarize the three main points of what he'd said.
"That sand is nutrient-rich," one boy said simply.
"That the real problem is the heat and water evaporation - it dries so fast things like salt build up unless you're very careful," a girl volunteered.
"That you hate this chemist guy."
"I don't hate him," the professor had denied immediately. "I support Israel and I'm sure they have good reason to keep secrets. I hate the reporter who just swallowed this crap and asked for more." Some giggled. "Last point, anyone?"
"That they get their water from desalination plants running on oil. It's really expensive to 'soak the sand' even though they technically could, and also, it changes the ocean's salt content if you take it up too fast."
"Right. Now, bear in mind this isn't even the biggest problem with their story, just the most obvious. Personally, Israel seems to have figured out a way to hook plants up to nuclear reactors or something. If you look at how much they're shipping, there's no way their plants could do it on the amount of sunlight that falls in the area no matter how many tons of miracle-gro is getting dumped on the soil. Which would go a long way toward explaining why they're keeping mum about their 'formula', but Janet could no doubt explain the finer points of this better. Anyone interested should consider taking her botany course next semester.
"At any rate, the moral here is that much of the media consists of idiots and you shouldn't trust everything you read. With luck, when you finish your college education you'll be able to read critically enough to notice and work things out yourself. If not, well, you've just wasted a great deal of money. Moving on."
Adalia sometimes picked up the newspaper in the afternoon. The college had a subscription and there were several free bins around campus. She'd stopped watching the news, though, and had never listend to it on the radio, so it was her roommate who first told her what had happened.
"Russia nuked Israel!" she'd yelled excitedly, running up. "Mom just called me!"
Adalia dimly registered that Betty seemed pleased with this, but was too busy stammering in shock to think much of it.
"Isn't that wonderful?!" Betty had continued. She was glowing with happiness, her cheeks pink.
"That's horrible! Did anyone survive?"
"Huh? Oh. Oh. No, everyone's fine. God destroyed the bombs before they could hurt anybody! They all blew up in the air."
"But that's what nuclear missiles are supposed to do," Adalia stammered. "Are you sure?"
"No, like, way high up," Betty said, throwing her arms upward to punctuate. "And God blocked the radiation too!"
Adalia wasn't able to make sense of that, and couldn't imagine how it could be true. She wasn't sure what else might have happened that Betty had dropped, not considering it important, or gotten wrong. "Let me go turn on the TV."
They didn't have one in their room, so Adalia and Betty headed to the dorm floor's lounge. She turned it to CNN.
As it turned out, the people there didn't seem to have any more idea of what had happened than Betty. Not how many missiles had been launched, just that there were some, if any or all of them had been nuclear, just that it was possible, or what had happened to them, just that there had been some odd weather. Israel was claiming the number of missiles they'd seen on radar had been enough to take Russia's entire arsenal. Russia denied this, alternatively trying to underplay their attack and emphasize that they still had plenty of bombs to drop should anyone else decide to go with a preemptive strike. They were similarly adamant that none had been nuclear, which the CNN reporters seemed to find more plausible, despite Israel claims that they were finding nuclear material amid the wreckage. As to how many missiles, the general consensus seemed to be that both stories were unbelievable - while Russia's story seemed false, the idea they'd launched their whole arsenal at the country as Israel claimed was a still more impossible one. They switched channels and found more of the same.
Other students trickled in, and before long, the room was crowded with them, all looking to the television for answers it didn't have.
Adalia felt a weird, disconnected sort of unease. Nothing bad had actually happened, but the drastic, inexplicable nature of the attack scared her. It was like the rug being yanked out from under her feet - countries still went to war without any right. There wouldn't even be warning, a lead up where she would know they had some sort of reason to do this, the person in charge might just decide to do so when it made no sense at all. And if this had happened once, it could happen again - America just suddenly deciding to launch missiles at France, or Australia bombing America, inexplicably and with no warning at all. She hadn't ever thought of that happening in the real world today like it did in her history book.
As supper time approached, Adalia finally tore herself away.
"It's the sign of the End Times," Betty said perkily as they headed to the cafeteria.
"That was definitely a miracle," Adalia said, for what else could it be, "but why's it a sign? Just because it's a miracle?"
"Because it's part of the prophesy! Israel will be attacked and that's the signal for the Rapture, that's what the prophesy says. One of the books I read even said exactly this, that Russia would launch their whole force, and it'd get destroyed by hail, and then they'll find so much fissible material that it'll supply all their power for seven years. You should read it, it's -"
"Wait, wait," Adalia interrupted. "CNN and Fox said there hadn't been any nukes."
"Well, of course," Betty said, clearly feeling it went without saying. "They're the liberal media, of course they'd say that."