Free Enemy of Gideon by Melissa McGovern Taylor Page B

have the answers?”
    “Let’s start with Genesis.”
    He explains the nature of God as omnipresent, unchanging, and eternal, unlike any person or thing I have ever heard of. He answers my questions about Adam and Eve, the mysterious serpent, angels and the angel once called Lucifer. I ask about Noah and the size of the ark. He answers each of my questions with patience and clarity, unlike those I have questioned about the origins of man before. He describes the history of the book, tracing back long before Gideon’s founding.
    “How many Bibles are there?” I ask.
    “There’s only one Bible, but many translations and many printings.”
    “So how many copies exist?”
    He frowns, stroking the cover of the book like a newborn pup. “Not as many as there were before the war. You wouldn’t believe how many books there used to be. We have some in my village that survived.” His eyes gleam as if he sees them in front of him. “We have stacks and stacks, a whole room full.”
    I lean forward, eager to share in the knowledge which makes him so vivacious. “What happened to the books and the Bibles?”
    “Before the war began, over a hundred years ago, this land was part of a great nation,” he says. “The people could worship God freely without any persecution. The nation claimed to be the home of the free, but soon fewer and fewer people chose to believe in the one true God. They removed all traces of God from schools and laws. They became wicked, slaughtering the innocent, worshipping idols and the Devil. The people turned away from God, and so He turned away from them.”
    He goes on to tell me of how the country’s credit system collapsed. People lost their jobs and homes, and food became less available. The country claimed to be ‘indivisible,’ but the states divided over how the country should be ruled. Some states wanted to rule themselves, while others wanted to unite and form new countries. Then the worst happened: the nation’s most powerful enemies struck. Soldiers invaded cities and bombed states, killing billions. The enemies took control over the nation, and they hated the Bible.
    “They destroyed every Bible they could find and anything that had any connection to God,” he says, searching my eyes as if for a glimpse of what he speaks off. “Refugees of our nation were forced into slave labor or driven out of the land. The city-state of Gideon exists because Ulysses Arbela Gideon made a deal to purchase the land from the enemies. He was a traitor to our nation.”
    His words repel me. Ulysses Arbela Gideon, a traitor?
    “That doesn’t make any sense,” I say. “Gideon discovered this land, and he used his fortune to build the city from the ground up.”
    “That’s what they taught you in school, but that’s not the truth.”
    “Gideon is not the city of human perfection,” I say, each word coming out like a sigh of relief.
    He shakes his head. “There’s no such thing as human perfection.”
    “My mom works for next to nothing at a job she hates. How is that perfect? Only the privileged get to pick what they want to do, and more credits go to citizens who work less.”  My face burns. “It’s unfair!”
    “Ulysses Gideon hated the Bible. He said the world would be better off without it. He blamed it for all of the wars and all of the imperfections in the outside world. He swore he could build a society untouched by it, a perfect society. Instead, he built a society of prisoners on a foundation of lies.”
    A shrill beep and a flashing light from Arkin’s wristband startle us. The dark stillness returns, but Arkin rises from his seat and thrusts his Bible back into his coat.
    “What was that?”
    “We have to go,” he whispers. “A CE officer is within sixty yards of here.”
    I stand and stuff the list of questions into my coat pocket as he blows out each candle. I blow out the candles nearest me and follow him to the door and up the outside staircase. 
    “We’ll have to