Ever Since The Rapture
by Sean Vivier
Ever since the Rapture, we have all become far kinder to one another. I haven't seen a trace of judgment for petty differences. Not one gay slur. No Muslim has been beaten in a long while. My trans friends are walking without fear. And I haven't been slut-shamed once. It's a real Paradise on Earth.
Ever since the Rapture, we've worked together to overcome the Tribulations as we never have before. Humanity had already proven selfless and calm in emergencies, and this only changed in scale. And now we had no one to tell us that we deserved our suffering. It wasn't because we accepted gay people or because we didn't pull ourselves by the bootstraps or because I was a whore. It was a fact of life, and we had the right and the means to overcome it.
Someone might pull me across the molten ground to safe purchase. Or I might carry someone who can't swim the floods. Or we might all keep lookout for fiery rain for the others. We all looked after the community, and the community looked after us. We had no need for division or exclusion.
Ever since the Rapture, sure, there are still problems. We're still fallible humans, after all. We still lose our tempers sometimes. There's been disputes about who has the right to what. I've broken some hearts when I gave some guys the wrong idea about how serious I wanted things.
But we move forward. We grow. We make sure to do better and we don't look to outdated traditions to answer our problems in the present.
All in all, it's been much better without the world's most rabid Christians.
Ever since the Rapture, I wish I could say it continued that way. I wish I had a chance to tell you that human nature overcame its worst faults in the crucible of the Tribulation. But stress fractures, and constant danger makes us see danger even where there is none. At least, that's how I think it happened.
Because in times of trouble, there are still those left who will turn to a higher power for comfort. We had plenty of Buddhists and Jews and Hindus and Muslims in the caravan of survivors. Not everybody was an angry atheist like me. We even had some of those folks who offer a vague idea of Something Out There Bigger Than Us, but no real details.
