A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but on the 12th floor of the Acme Building, one man simply asserts that he has all of the answers to life's persistent questions… Pete Perkins, Presuppositionalist.
Third row down, fifth cubicle in, fingers tapping at the keyboard with an intensity not generally seen in Acme Data Entry, Pete Perkins' eyes were wide, headphones blaring with open-air presuppositional debate tactics, and when five o'clock finally came, he was the first one up and out. He left through the back door, into the alley, inhaling smoke from his fellow employees.
"Hey, Pete! Have a good night now!"
But he ignored them and their cancer sticks, for tonight there was simply no time! Tonight was a night like no other… tonight Pete had a date! No, not a date with Jesus. The other kind.
A Match Made in… ChristianMingle.com?
It had all started just one week previous….
Pete had been sitting in his apartment, Facebook sparring with his online atheist nemesis, Militant Mitch, when he'd become distracted by the ad in his feed for ChristianMingle.com.
Facebook alerted him that he had a new message.
"Come on, already!" Militant Mitch had IM'd him. "When are you going to finally provide your evidence that your skydaddy exists and collect your Nobel Prize?"
But Pete could not respond. He was far too mesmerized by the lovely, brown eyes of the woman in the ad.
Click here to meet Christian Singles in your area! the ad announced.
He always avoided worldly temptation whenever possible, but what would it hurt..? He'd been alone for so long… And after all, these were Christians! With one nervous click of the mouse, he found himself directed to a separate website, and there to fill out a personal profile of himself.
Hello. My name is Pete. I believe the world was created in six thousand years and is six days old…
It was a painstaking task. He'd had to pause, wiping the sweat from his brow as he quickly edited what he had just written. "…created in six days," he corrected himself. "…six thousand years old…"
Calm down, Pete. Calm down.
Finally, he got into the groove of it:
"I believe that evolution is a lie from Satan and must be abolished. I believe public schools are leading our kids straight to hell. I believe that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge! I believe…"
Yes, he felt himself really on a roll now. Better to switch to all caps so that people would know he was really serious:
"…THAT DAWKINS THAT HIGHPRIEST OF ATHEISM IS NOTHING MORE THAN A FOOL WHO WILL PAY FOR HIS CRIMES! ONE DAY JESUS WILL RETURN AND EVERY KNEE SHALL BOW AND CONFESS HIM AS LORD! I BELIEVE THAT HELL IS A REAL PLACE! I BELIEVE THAT THE CHURCH IS SLOWLY BACKSLIDING INTO PAGANISM! I BELIEVE THE POPE IS ONE OF SATAN'S PUPPETS…"
On and on he wrote, one large block of text which he would not diminish by dividing into measly paragraphs. Satisfied, he pressed ENTER.
We're sorry, you have exceeded the maximum length. Personal bio should be no more than 100 words.
"What? One hundred words!" He slammed his fist down on the table and checked his current word count:
7,678 words.
He looked outside his window. It was dark, he'd been writing for hours. Breathing hard with rage, he deleted everything, then pounded out: "PETE PERKINS. I AM A PRESUPPOSITIONALIST APOLOGIST, SOLDIER IN GOD'S ARMY, WILL FIGHT UNTIL LIBERALISM IS ABOLISHED AND CHRISTIANS CAN BE FREE TO WORSHIP. SEEKING WOMAN WHO…" He again paused. Um… "CAN ACCOUNT FOR KNOWLEDGE." He paused again. "WILL SEND MORE DETAILS ABOUT MY BELIEFS UPON REQUEST."
Enter!
Jenny
He received many responses, but many of them were from women much too old for him. One woman appeared to be around his age, but he didn't like her haircut. He feared that she may have been a dyke, infiltrating Christian websites to confuse people like him. Oh yes, he was well-versed in the ways of the Homosexual Agenda.
Finally, he received an email from a woman named Jenny.
"Hello, Pete," she wrote. "I'm Jenny Fillipi. I saw your profile. Looks like we live near each other! Would you like to meet for coffee sometime?"
Pete studied her profile for a long time. She was young. She was cute - not cute in a slutty way like the women he worked with. She had brown hair and dark eyes, and wore what appeared to be… a beret? Why wouldn't she have said something about her beliefs? How was he supposed to know what she was like?
He found that he could hardly think of anything else, especially while he was at work. When the supervisor wasn't around, he brought up her profile picture on his computer.
"YES," he found himself writing. "I WOULD LIKE TO MEET. FOR COFFEE." He breathed hard. "SOMETIME."
Send.
So that was how that night, only one week after he first even considered the notion of online dating, Pete Perkins came to be standing outside of a row home on the corner of 12th and Walnut, holding a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates.
"Hi, are you Pete?" the woman asked as she opened the door.
"Yes, hello!" he said quickly – much too quickly – handing her the flowers and the chocolates.
She was wearing a pair of jeans and a heavy, wool sweater. "Oh, that's so sweet! Thank you! Come on in!"
Pete took one step in, looked around while she left to put the flowers in some water. It was a rather secular looking home, he had to admit. There were lots of books and CDs lining shelves, though he was too far away to make out any titles. Pagan dream catchers hung from the ceiling. Candles burned on the window sills. He thought he saw what looked like the remains of an incense stick.
He did see - however -what looked like a Bible on one of the shelves, so that allowed him to relax a little.
"I have to say, I didn't really read your profile," she said, returning. "When I saw you lived nearby, I thought maybe it was a sign! I'm really into spirituality, you know?"
"Me…" He coughed. "Me too."
"You're not one of those… you know, fundamentalist types, are you?"
Pete swallowed. He stood up straight, arched back his shoulders and cleared his throat. "If it's considered fundamentalist to stand up for the Truth in a world that is sliding into liberalism, then yes!"
"Right, exactly! That's just the kind of thing they say!" Jenny laughed as she grabbed her coat. "C'mon! Do you like Chinese?"
Next: The Terror Begins!
