I dedicate this short story to my Granddaughter Amanda Marie Parisi, whom I love dearly.

This is the story of the Last Days on Earth, as we knew it. The last known Christian has been put to death. He had been found living in a lower level of an abandoned diamond mine in South Africa. He was ferreted out and brought to trial. He had professed Christ Jesus before he was killed. There was neither tumult nor clamor. He had been locked in a lethal chamber, the gas was admitted and in a few minutes he was dead. He was found lying forward on his face where he had fallen from his knees.
The NWO announced the capture and execution of the last Christian. ”The work of a thousand years is now at an end,” it declared in its exultant bulletin. The day of the announcement was a day of great rejoicing all over the earth. The NWO –as the International Government of the World was known to be evil personified  –declared a half-holiday for all worker slaves. Great effigies of Christ on the Cross-were burned at all the sub-capitals of the world. While the crosses flamed, the multitudes paraded and sang. It was the first time in a century that singing had been allowed. The great work of extermination was now over.
It was a strange world that witnessed this day of jubilation. The peoples of the whole earth had become slaves of a few masters. They had been herded into vast industrial centers, great mountains of stone and steel, banding round earth like mountain chains, rising like huge wrens on the face of the globe. But these men and women were not just ordinary slaves; they were creatures of the machinery of a mechanical life, inferiors of the machines they operated, and subsidiary attachments to the monsters of the New Age of Man without God. The fantasy of the philosopher had come true: machines had become superior to man. Men were not mere automatons; they were minor automatons, servants of a mechanical state.
            The Masters of the NWO were sons of the masters who had established the plan for this new state for many years. Their sires had done their work with brutal and consummate efficiency. All rebellious races had been exterminated. All people unsuited for slavery, primarily Latin’s and Celts, were segregated and slain. Only the stolid, unimaginative, automatic races, dominantly Nordic, were preserved.
            The days of ecstatic, passionate, beauty loving, liberty-seeking peoples had, as was early predicted, come to a close. The sluggish, frigid races had survived by the grace of the Masters.
            The founders of the world state had prepared carefully for centuries. It was a long and difficult work to concentrate control of all fuel, food, arms and transportation into the hands of just six men. It was a chemist who, by a masterstroke of strategy, finally perfected the consolidation. A gas that obliterated a thousand squar miles of forest in an hour destroyed all agriculture and horticulture on earth.  All fields, farmland, gardens, and woodlands from the great wheat lands of the Ukraine to the forest of South America and Canada were turned into a fine power that lay like mist along the earth for days and then dissipated. When the work was complete the earth was as bare almost as it had been when the primeval glaciers withdrew their icy crust and first left the earth bare and bald beneath the sun.  No fruit of flower or grain or vegetable showed itself. And none was allowed to show itself. The cultivation of any food growth was punishable by life imprisonment in the mines in the bowels of the earth. The cultivation of any decorative growth, flowers or tree or vine, was punishable by death.
            The few hundred thousand inhabitants of the world who had not been corralled into huge black industrial fortresses came across the dusty levels and valleys seeking admittance to these giant complexes. They were counted, given numbers and assigned residential vaults. At first, people stared at these sun-browned slaves from the outlands. They ill-matched the palled faces of the vault dwellers. Yet, soon they lost their sunlight and became white as their fellows and as characterless as the numbers on their backs. No one had names. Numbers and numbers knew individuals only. There were no families. When children were born they were taken and bred, by the NWO in central vaults maintained for the purpose of control. If a child however, displayed imagination or fire or spirit or brilliancy or any non-Nordic trait, they were destroyed. The multitudes, everybody except the masters and their large families and directing engineers, lived in steel chambers in enormous cabinets that were on the average of a thousand feet high. These cabinets were like great filling cases. Each chamber was the same size as each other, were fitted with the same steel furniture, had the same bare walls. The chamber only differed in numbers.
            No one wanted revolt! The lives the slaves lived were mechanical almost into unconsciousness. It was an existence suited for their radical type. But had some freak appeared, some heroic soul with the love of liberty, he would be helpless. The masterstroke of the chemist had made revolt unachievable. It was the perfect servile state: no one wanted revolt besides it would have been impossible.
            Perfect slavery was assured in this manner: the only food obtainable was liquid, which was furnished through pipes, as was water, from a central reservoir. This liquid was of two types: a dark fluid, which had lubricating qualities and a lighter fluid, which had sustaining and energizing qualities.  Better life through chemistry as we use to say. The formulae for these two fluids were guarded with a secrecy that precluded even an attempt at discovery. The chemist who evolved the formulae was killed immediately after final testing had proved their efficacy for the common weal. (In their arrogance, they forthwith erected a statue in his memory.) The King of kings, that is the master of Masters, alone knew the formulae. Anyone who made the least query regarding them was slain. The NWO forbade curiosity with the same rigor that it forbade laughter. There was little need for prohibition in either case.
            When No. 579,241, say, arose at dawn he went to a metal sink riveted to the wall. Over the sink were three pipes. One was water, one was dark fluid and the third was light fluid. Before washing he took a glass of the darker one and after washing he took a glass of the lighter one. These two glasses were sufficient to provide him with sustenance until noontime. At noon, he took two more glasses. At night the same procedure followed. And so it went until he died. The slaves I imagine considered it a well balance diet.
            The two fluids were very like the oil and gasoline that were once used in automobiles. The airplans, which furnished the only transportation for the NWO used these two fluids for lubrication and fuel. When a driver left in the morning he took the same food he gave his engine. They both worked in pretty much the same way. Each industrial center was provided with a towering tank, which served as a filling station. Every morning would find a flock of airplanes buzzing around the top of the tank like flies over a dead fish. This is the only life they will ever know, unless . . .?
            If any section of the NWO Empire ever became the least stubborn, not to say rebellious, these antiquated and shutting off the liquid food supply from the central reservoir could quickly cure Christian weaknesses. The slaves would immediately be without fuel or lubricant. It was a simple system.
             Now it so happened, like all mundane achievements the NWO had imperfections. Even this kingdom of the anti-Christ, perfect as it was, had a weak point. And so like all things mundane and very prosaic, came to an end.
            The great capital of the NWO was NP No.1 in what was once known as the first Capital of the USA, New York. It is easier to say, for one thing, and for another it (even such as it is) leaves me with a more Catholic taste on my tongue. The weak point in the NWO was a small, thin-faced wiry man who lived in a vault in New York. His number was 2,123,911. We will call him Mr. White, for Catholic reasons. White was one of the last of the sun-browned country dwellers to come in after all vegetative life on the planet had been destroyed. He had come with a strange group of people from one of the outermost places. The examiners at the gate had hesitated to let him enter. He had a light in his eyes and it was well known that no genuine NWO slaves had a light their eyes. They thought at first that he might be a throwback to some destroyed race, but he had the proper credentials. They watch him carefully for some time. But the resemblance was only on the surface, for his brain was afire and his heart bled with passion for truth. White proved to be a good slave. He kept his head bowed. He made no human noise that might soften the metallic din of the center. Winter came and went. White was beyond suspicion. But with the coming of spring he cast surreptitious glance sunward. At night he would look out the ventilator at the stars. On rest day afternoon, he would go over the hills across the western river. His fellow slaves could not understand his trips. “Why would he go over there,” they would say to themselves, “when he could sit all day in the dark in his vault and stare at the floor?” But that was the extent of their inquiry. Thought was too much of an effort for them. Their sluggish minds would blankly return to the floor.
            White had a purpose going there to the hills across the western river. He liked the open air and the sunlight, though none of his fellows would believe it or why. Yet, he had his eyes out for something. One warm afternoon he found it in a distant valley, miles from men: a small patch of brown moist earth. He knelt down reverently by it, and made a sign of the Cross on himself, touching his forehead and breast and shoulders with his first two fingers of his right hand. After a long while on his knees, he arose and made the sign of the cross in the air over the plot, murmuring as he did so. Then with a glance at the airplanes that hummed overhead, he quickly took out a little sack from his breast and sprinkled its contents over the moist earth.
            “I shall bring God back to earth,” White told the silences beyond the western river. Then, he returned to his vault at the center.
           
            Spring grew into summer over the heaps of metal and flesh that were know as cities, over the bare rock and soil that was know as earth.  The people in New York noticed that the air had become warmer, and that was all they noticed. Some of them scarcely noticed that. But White knew and noticed. And now and then he returned from his visits across the river with a light on his face and said to himself, “be careful.” It was increasingly hard for him to conceal his joy at what was about to happen.          
            Autumn came. The patch of moist brown earth was white with golden wheat that rippled like water to the slightest wind. It was a small patch; no one had seen it on land; no one could see it from the air.
Note: Save your seeds in a safe place for the future time of re-planting for we may find ourselves in Mr. Whites place. Amen.
            One Rest-day White visited his plot early. When he returned at dusk he carried with him a small packet of thin white wafers. He had cut down the wheat, beaten some of it into flour, had mixed the flour and water, rolled the paste into flat strips, and had baked them quickly over a fire made out of the remaining wheat. White was jubilant that night.
            He spent most of his sleeping hours on his knees.
But the next day was a solemn day for him. It was it was the day on which, mentioned before, the day the NWO announced the capture and the execution of the last known Christian. White spent the half-holiday on his knees in his vault.
            All afternoon he could see in the streets far below him the steady stream of black garbed slaves, marching in slow step like the prisoners they were, endlessly marching, monotony their dismal paean of triumph. All afternoon the dark chant, varied only by silence or the endless shuffling of heavy feet, rose to his ears. And all afternoon he stayed on his knees. Now and then, he would look out and up to where above the black metal towers and roofs the sky still shone a lucent, unbesmirched blue. 
            Night came. White did not go to bed. He instead unpacked a box he had brought with him from the country. It held cloths, shoes, a few small tools. In the bottom of it, wrapped in an old coat, was a large case. He went over its contents careful. There were some robes, a shiny cup, two small bottles, a book, a slab of stone, some miscellaneous small boxes and metal pieces. He went over each carefully. He filled one of the bottles with water. The other was already filled with a dark red liquid. Then, he packed everything back carefully into the case and waited.
            The city was as still as if death had stolen in and possessed it. White sat patiently through the long night hours. The sky had a strange pallor, he thought, and there was a strange weight to the silence of the city. He did not know whether it forbade good or evil.
            Two hours before dawn, he took up his case and made his way to the street. The streets were deserted. Always they were deserted at this hour as the slaves slept. But in the deserted dark of this night there was an unaccountable expectancy. The great masses of metal towered blackly upward, massed themselves hugely upward, as if threatening the stars. White walked quickly, a solitary speck of motion along the floors of the caverns of the monstrous city.
            He reached the base of one giant structure that surpassed all the others by a thousand feet, a memorial tower to one of the first masters of the NWO.  He slipped into the only elevator and went hissing upward to the roof, a half-mile above the earth. He locked the elevator at the roof so that it could not be summoned from below. Then he set himself quickly to work. He changed his garments. In a few minutes, despite the dim starlight, he was done.
            “On top of the black tower of the devil in the kingdom of the anti-Christ,” he thought to himself, “after all those centuries of extermination, there stood a priest in amice and alb, maniple, chasuble, girdle and stole, heir in a noble line of Christ’s priests, clad in their symbols of chastity, charity, honor and Faith. The figure of Christ’s cross lay on his back. The anointment of Holy orders was on his soul. Before him was his altar, his case topped with altar stone and missal and chalice. On it laid the corporal with the wafer he had made from the wheat he had grown. By it stood the two cruets of water and wine. He waited until first there was a streak of light shown across the Eastern sky. Then he bowed down before his altar.  And said, ‘In nominee Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus sancti.’ Amen. The Mass had begun. He was keeping his promise to bring the Son of God back to earth.” 
            Fr. White voice was quivering. You can see the heroic figure in the twilight of the world saying Mass in the citadel of the anti-Christ? Can you hear the Christe eleison as he cries it to the breaking skies of dawn? Can you catch the murmur of the Credo as the winds carry it to the ends of the earth? Can you just see him turning with shinning face as he gives his Dominus vobiscum to the empty cathedral of the morning?
            “It was magnificent!” “And while he is making the sign of the Cross over the wafer of bread, the powers of the anti-Christ are gathering. The enemy has spotted him.
            “An early plane spied him as he bent over his altar in the first light of day. The warning has awakened the city and below grows a tumult of the multitudes. The clangor of the alarms, and the rumble of the moving people rise to the top of the tower. But the priest does not hear anything but the words of consecration. His soul is on the Mass. The morbid slaves below awakening from the sluggish sleep are electrified by cries of ‘A priest! A priest!’
            “Millions who would not ordinarily lift a hand to save a friend or give a sign of affection, these apathetic slaves of the anti-Christ, are transformed by this discovery of the Mass being said. Stolid, stupid peoples insensible even in pain need –as ever –only mention of a priest and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass to drive them into unimaginable rage.
            “The mobs surge about the base of the tower. There is no access to the upper levels save by the lone elevator. Their blasphemies rise in raucous uproar. Their frenzy would hurl over the structure itself if it could . . . The while the priest is reverently at his Mass.
            “Veni sanctificator omnipotens, aeterne Deus. ‘Come Thou Who makest holy, almighty and eternal God . . .’ He is beseeching the blessing of the Holy Ghost.”
            The Mass goes forward.
“The Master of the NWO has summoned the marshal of his soldiers. ‘Stop the Mass immediately!’ he commanded.
            “The marshal reports that planes are speeding towards the tower. “The top is to small for them to land on. It is a difficult shot for them . . . he explained.”
            “The Master is furious at this report. ‘Bomb the tower. Destroy it. Demolish it. Do whatever, but stop the Mass!’” “His face was black with anger.” “From his own tower he could see the silhouetted figure bending over his small altar. He tears his flesh in his rage.”
            “Two, three, four planes are circling above the tower. One drops a huge shell. It misses and goes hurtling down to the street. It crashes in the heart of the insane mob, annihilating a black square of them, shattering the steel walls, shaking the structures for a mile around. Another bomb falls. Another misses. And again, there is slaughter and destruction below . . .”
            “But now the priest bows low over the altar. Qui pridie quam pateretur . . . He begins the words of consecration, the words that shall change the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus.”
            “He approaches Christ’s own words at the Last Supper.
            “One plane is now low over the roof of the tower, so low that the crew can make out the figure of the Cross on the priest’s chasuble. A bomb is made
ready.”
            “And now the priest comes to the words that shall bring Christ down to earth again. His head almost touches the altar: Hoc est enim corpus menum.”
            The bomb did not drop. No, no, there was a moment of awful silence.        
Then a burst of light beside which is day itself, is like dusk. Then a trumpet peal was heard. A single peal that  –shook the universe. The sun blew up like a bursting bubble. The stars and planets vanished like sparks. The entire burst the universe asunder. And the unspeakably luminous new day, through the vault of the sky ribbed with lightning came Christ as He had come after the Resurrection pure and shinning.
It was the end of the world. Amen.
            “The kingdom of the anti-Christ disappeared like the ashes in a whirlwind. And hastening up out of their tombs and resting places came the souls of the Just, happy, hearty and wholesome to greet their glorious King and real Master.”
            Fr. White who was just a number on earth found himself a hero in heaven.
           
So my friend, the last Christian on earth, was a Roman Catholic priest.

Laus tibi Christi. Pray for all priest to be alter-Christi’s. Amen and alleluia.