The Great Rupture

Imagine my surprise!

I just learned that a term I've bandied around a bit was actually used in the Third Galaxy -- although with a somewhat different meaning than I would have thought!

What I refer to is the Rupture. I have used the term, it to describe a nagging fear that interstices which separate our world from the Third Galaxy, which is parallel to our own, would somehow "split" and the two realities sort of blend together, which obviously would be a nightmare.

But in the Third Galaxy, the Rupture referred to something else entirely. Before I try to explain, I need to remind you that up until about three centuries and a half after the birth of Holy Idaho, there were literally hundreds of small groups, sects and cults, all of them claiming to be Peelers. The Emperor Constipate of the Roaming Empire, who made the religion of the Peelers the state religion, demanded that the mess be cleaned up so that there would be a unified religion with a unified doctrine and a unified scripture suitable to a unified empire.

The result was that, after the collapse of the Roaming Empire, the Pooper of the Church of the Universe was pretty much the most powerful individual in the known world.

But everything has an end and by the time Ronald Rexona appeared on the scene the Pooper had very little power, that is except to stir up controversy such as when the Pooper Justadick bad mouthed the Masher religion and people were killed in riots in the Muddled East.

In modern times, instead of the single, universal church envisioned by the Emperor Constipate, there were, again, hundreds of sects, cults and splinter groups and this was no where more true than in the United State of Arrogance.

All kinds of nuts, wackos, charlatans and out right hustlers set up shop in the godbiz, concocted homemade theologies based on obscure texts in the Book of the Holy Idaho which no one had ever paid all that much attention to.

One of the nut-job ideas that gained a lot of traction among many Arrogant citizens was the Rupture. To understand this, you need to know that a number of passages and phrases in the Book of the Idaho had been taken out of context and cut and pasted into in a sort of screenplay of "How the World Will End -- Soon!".

A key point in this screenplay was the Rupture when the Idaho would sort of unzip the sky, reach down, scoop up his true believers and take them to live with him in the Colander-In-the-Sky. The Idaho would then zip the sky back together and all those he had scooped up would now get front-row seats, bottomless bags of hot, buttered popcorn and watch while the world down below turned to great big puddle of shit.

In order to be eligible to be scooped up when the sky "Ruptured" one had to have "Accepted the Holy Idaho as one's Personal Spud" -- it was very important to have done this before the Rupture.

It's true! People not only believed this brain fart of an idea, there was one enterprising fellow who sold 60 million books on the subject and got stinking rich! Heck, even Ronald Rexona believed it, or at least said that he did -- but then, Rexona also believed that the Great Potato had peronally selected him personally for the job of ridding the world of evildoers.