FIAT VOLUNTAS TUA ("Thy Will Be Done") - A Science-Fiction Saga By SimoTheFinlandized / Paul Palazzolo (2022 CE)

============================== FIAT VOLUNTAS TUA ("Thy Will Be Done") - A Science-Fiction Saga By SimoTheFinlandized / Paul Palazzolo (2022 CE) ============================== In the year 3781, mankind has emerged into a great scientific and technological golden-age, and now possesses nuclear-fusion energy, nanotechnology, genetic-engineering, and self-aware robots and computers, as well as faster-than-light warp-drive starships and a vast plethora of extrasolar space-colonies, including the emergence of a new animal-human hybrid race of sentient beings called "Furries" brought about by the advent of genetic-engineering. Two global superpowers, the Human-controlled "United Nations Space Command" and the Furry-controlled "Furrian Hegemony", controlled by their respective sentient races, have been embroiled in a cold war for nearly 150 years, covertly fighting over control over their mutual homeworld of Earth and its nearby colonies of Luna (the Moon) amd Mars. The now millenia-old and still-thriving Roman-Catholic Church (neutral in the geopolitical events unfolding) and its scientific-&-technological division, the Leibowitzian Order, has the holy mission of preserving the "Grand Vatican Archives" (the great and imposing Roman-Catholic owned-&-operated computerized archival database of all accumulated Human scientific and technological knowledge), which very recently has expanded to the preservation of all Human knowledge, upon the realization of rumors that both sides are assembling nuclear weapons in space, and that a nuclear weapon has been detonated, increasing both public and international tensions. ============================== At the central abbey of the Leibowitzian Order, based in the deserts of southern Utah, the current abbot, Dom Jeremiah Rigdon, recommends to the Papacy in Rome that the Roman- Catholic Church reactivates the "Quo Peregrinatur Grex Pastor Secum ("Whither wanders the flock, the shepherd is with them"), a contingency plan for the Roman- Catholic Church to survive in the case of a full-scale nuclear apocalypse which involves the use of FTL interstellar starships that the Church has had since the year 3756. A nuclear incident occurs in the Furrian Hegemony's city of Nirvasyl, located in Taiwan: an underground nuclear explosion has destroyed the city, and the United Nations Space Command counters by firing a "warning shot" over the South Pacific. Rumors swirl globally about whether the Furrian Hegemony's city's devastation was either deliberate or accidental. =============================== The Roman-Catholic Pope in Rome, Pope Claudius XIII, tells Rigdon to proceed with "Quo Peregrinatur", and to plan for space-borne departure from Earth within the next three days. He appoints fellow monk Brother Joshua as the mission leader, telling him that the space-borne mission is in fact an emergency contigency- plan for perpetuating the Roman- Catholic Church on extrasolar colony-planets in the event of an apocalyptic-scale nuclear war on Earth. The Order's 'Grand Vatican Archives' will also accompany the space-mission. Later that night, the United Nations Space Command launches a devastating nuclear assault against the Furrian-Hegemony's orbital space-platforms. The Furrian- Hegemony ultimately responds by using a nuclear weapon against the UNSC capital-city of Megapolis in the eastern seaboard of North America, which kills tens of millions of people. A ten-day cease-fire is issued by the World Court. Brother Joshua and a contingent of space- trained monks and priests depart on a top-secret chartered flight for Rome, hoping to leave Earth aboard their fleet of starships before the cease-fire ends. ================================== During the ten-day cease-fire, the abbey tries its best to offers food, water, shelter, medical care, and safety to refugees, both Human and Furry alike, who are fleeing the regions affected by nuclear fallout en-masse, which results in an intense moral battle-of-wills over the euthanasia of hopelessly irradiated refugees between the abbot and the head-doctor from a government emergency-response camp. The war resumes, and a large nuclear explosion occurs near the abbey in Salt Lake City. Abbot Rigdon tries to flee to safety, bringing with him the abbey's ciborium containing consecrated Eucharistic hosts to the abbey's underground fallout- shelter, but it is too late. He is hopelessly trapped by the falling walls of the abbey and finds himself lying under tons of rock, stone, and petrified bones as the abbey's ancient crypts disgorge their rotted and half-calcified contents. =================================== As he lies dying, being crushed to death under the abbey's fallen rubble, Rigdon is startled beyond belief to encounter a beautiful yet ragged-clothed feline Furrian maiden by the name of Miss Bast, a poor and impoverished foodservice worker who was on her way to deliver much- needed food supplies to the abbey before the nearby nuclear explosion occured. However, Bast has been badly injured by the explosion both physically in broken bones and in the flesh due to radiation burns, and appears to be on the verge of dying herself. As Rigdon tries to conditionally baptize Bast so that he could save her soul and give her viaticum, she refuses, and instead takes the ciborium out of his badly-scarred hands, administering the Eucharist to him. She states that she is, like the Virgin Mary, spiritually pure and exempt from original sin. Rigdon soon dies peacefully in spirit despite being in both incredible physically-broken and radioactive agony, having witnessed an apparent miracle from none other than the Virgin Mary. ==================================== After Dom Jeremiah Rigdon's rocky death, Joshua and the 'Quo Peregrinatur' crew of space-trained monks and priests are preparing to launch the starships as the nuclear explosions begin to reach and shake Rome to rubble. Joshua, the last monastic crew-member to board the starship, knocks the dirt from his sandals in a melancholic manner (a reference to Matthew 10:14, "If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet"), murmuring in saddnened bitterness the Latin phrase "Sic transit mundus" ("Thus passes the world" in English). As the ecclesiastical fleet of starships leave Earth's orbit to head to Alpha- Centauri via FTL warp-jump to re- establish the Roman-Catholic Church elsewhere beyond Earth, the monks look on from the starship's windows in intense psycho-emotional agony and pain as they see their beloved once-verdant homeworld flicker in unimaginably bright lights on the surface in speckled dots due to catatonic gigaton-grade nuclear weapons exploding, killing by radioactive fire many untold billions of Humans and Furries, leveling once- great cities into mere steel skeletal arrangements, and effectively eradicating all complex multicellular life on the planet, leaving the planet lifeless and cratered in glowing green flames within all but two hours. As the Ecclesiastical Fleet neared the moon, the FTL warp-jump was engaged, and soon in a matter of three hours, the emissaries of the Roman-Catholic Church made its way to Proxima Centauri B, having left the Earth to be forever forgotten in hindsight, now that dust was all that was left there. "Sic Transit Mundus" indeed. ====================================== When word spread across the various extrasolar colonies of both mankind and furkind that Earth was no more, the two races, finally seeing themselves as both sons and daughters of the same Adam and Eve instead of angels- versus-demons and vice-versa, mutually agreed to lay down their differences and selfish vices upon the grave sadness that Mother Earth had died by their hatred's hands, all of them agreeing to never fight again over petty hatred by basis of race or species, now knowing the true penalty for their actions. Evening came and morning followed, the eighth day was at hand, and with it, a new Heaven and Earth came to be. =======================================