Excerpt: The Palatine Prophet Advent – Volume One; Pages 4 - 6

A frozen image of the larger universe looks like a double-exposed photograph hanging in a gallery. A crack in the blue sky of fluffy white clouds reveals heaven, and the crack’s edges peel back like scrolls. In the image’s fuzzy foreground, dirty brown and glass buildings of the city tower over their valley’s earth-walkers suspended in mid-step while white, sparkly streaks from angels in mystical flight link heaven to the blue sky as they dart among the clouds at the speed of light. Glowing Jesus watches everything from his golden throne, wearing a flaxen cord around his waist and a purple sash over one shoulder. His skin glows so brightly that his features are hidden. Unlike earthly clouds of moisture, those beneath his throne appear solid, and a rainbow-like emerald arch frames his throne.

In many ways, angels look like people—arms, legs, heads—different shapes, heights, and widths. Some have big eyes; some have small ones. All carry large, shiny swords slung by golden cords over their shoulders. None show fat like people show it, but you might see a little if you glimpsed it beneath their loose-fitting white robes. If the smallest physical particles are quarks and antiquarks and such move around to shape electrons, atoms, and us at the speed of light, then angels pass among quarks like we cross large city streets on green.

On this day, angels extolled the Lord’s judgment of American elites and acolytes and the advent of his Palatine Prophet by singing,

You alone are perfect in judgment, O God, and deserving of praise.
Worthy is the Lamb who was slain and rose with power to sit upon his throne to judge men.

Jacob Johnson’s birth excited the angels in ways not seen since they sang about the birth of Christ. The coming of the Palatine Prophet pointed to the precipice of the end, beyond which lay a new heaven and a new earth.

The birthing room bed sat across from a Jacuzzi with a big sign on it proclaiming “PDUSC ONLY!” next to a more modern bed in the PDUSC section. Fresh linen in a bassinet near Olivia’s birthing bed shone in the light of the heat lamp above, proving conclusively that hospital people still loved babies.

The enlarged birthing room contained the PDUSC section that stood apart, gleaming and new but dusty. The “commoner” section looked worn and old but clean. The sections were separated by one of those grooves in the floor that screens slide along to create fake walls, and just such a screen scrunched up against the pale pink wall.