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I had my third encounter with the Mormons of the Bridge.
For the second time running, two bubbly blonde girls intercepted me as I was hustling my exhausted ass back to my apartment. I wasn't paying attention, had earphones in, and assumed I was being asked for directions. I popped out a bud, made the mildly inconvenienced face one gives lost tourists, and was instead asked if I would like to find God and attend church on Sunday.
What I really, really wanted to be doing was lying in bed, dissociating, queueing up another dose of stimulants, and grinding my nose against my exam notes. But I wanted to be polite. So I told them the main thing God could help me with this weekend was exam prep.
The two of them looked at each other and communicated telepathically (as Mormons do), then informed me, with the cheerful assurance of customer service reps reading from a flowchart, that this was no problem at all. God wears many hats, and is a first-line service worker for the academically distressed.
I considered asking whether He might sit the exam for me, reconsidered on grounds of basic civility, and told them I'd be spending the weekend at the altar of an entirely different kind of book.
By this point the exchange had run unusually long. Normally I dispatch them inside fifteen seconds with a polite "thanks, but I'm not interested." It seems my willingness to engage past the standard cutoff registered as encouragement, because they then asked for my number, so they could send a friendly reminder once exams were behind me.
It pained me to decline such requests from reasonably attractive young women, particularly the taller one. But academics come first. I told them this. I didn't tell them that God has nothing if not time, because that would prompt them to argue that I'm the one with limited time under the sun, with the stakes being my immortal soul. However, I plan, eventually, to outlast Him from inside a Matrioshka Brain, at which point the sun has finite time under me. None of which I said aloud, on the grounds that what I was facing was, functionally, a sales pitch, and they'd been rather polite so far. Nor was a windy, windy bridge the best place for a debate about applied transhumanism.
They took non-disinterest as a green light and pressed further. They volunteered the address of their church and helpfully clarified that they belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Yeah. Couldn't have inferred that from physiognomy alone, let alone the badge. I'm genuinely impressed by how they mass-produce these people from a single template perfected somewhere in Utah: clean shaven, soberly dressed young men; clean skinned, soberly dressed young women, big honkers as standard issue. The willingness to press without quite tipping into overbearing serves them well in respectable sales careers and at the CIA. I'm less impressed by their theology, though I've seen worse from people far less well-groomed.
In fairness, the operation is well-oiled. The median LDS missionary baptizes 3 to 5 converts a year, which is more impressive than I'd thought.
Why do they keep approaching me? On 2/3 of these encounters I've been the only human on the bridge, so it was me or the seagulls, who are Anglican and not open to conversion. Maybe I look like a particularly lost lamb. Maybe I look like a lost lamb because I am undercaffeinated, in which case they are correctly identifying a state I'm authentically in and misattributing it to spiritual rather than circadian causes. In fact, becoming a Mormon would probably make the coffee-problem worse. Maybe a brown Indian man scores well on diversity-funnel metrics. I'm sorely tempted to attend one Sunday just to see what happens, which is, of course, exactly how they get you.
I told them I'd keep it in mind, and that I knew where to find them. Which I do.
I kept walking.
You sound slightly amenable to conversion, actually. If you could turn off the logical brain at-will, and saw some good incentives (a few buxom wives) I'd think you'd convert just for the big, beautiful benefits.
Slight amenable is generous, and I must note that the logical/empirical part of my brain does not switch off easy. Not even when I actively try. Maybe a proper night out with the lads might lead to a blackout and then waking up with at the aisle with a standard issue Mormon wife, but I'd probably run from the altar. I can't handle the divorce man, I ain't got much to lose.
And pretty sure the Scottish Mormons are... disapproving of polygamy. I don't think there's a DailyMail article about it, which is the minimum standard for reporting on the lurid and unusual. A single blonde wife? Who'll get mad if I drink coffee? Goddammit. Not quite sold. My immortal soul goes to the highest bidder.
Just need to start your own fundamentalist Mormon cult to get those extra Scottish wives. Lure those missionaries in and convince them coffee and polygamy and definitely no divorce are your newest revelations. You might need to write a newer new testament, but that seems within your ability.
Either they stop bothering you permanently lest they fall into heresy, or you have yourself the beginning of a very nice life. You did say that these women approached you freely.
Unfortunately, you will definitely be the subject of a DailyMail article if you can seduce these women, but alas, that is the price of success.
"Indian man changes his name to David Joseph Smith and claims new revelation! Local community aghast, new figures reveal cults on the rise..."
This plan worked out well for the FLDS for a number of decades, but the wheels have come off in the past 10 years.
He only needs to steer clear of making daughter-wives and human trafficking and he should be in the clear.
Also has to avoid the widespread welfare fraud the feds used to pursue a bunch of the FLDS.
If the FLDS hadn't abused it with their own stores and letting their families go hungry, it would have been perfectly legitimate. Nothing illegal about the plural wives claiming welfare otherwise.
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