In my dream, I was living in a medieval-like village in the forest, in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. The village had survived, as there was a river that went around the village which the zombies couldn't pass. I knew that this wasn't going to last, and I tried to warn the fellow villagers. In my mind, climate change would dry the river out, granting the zombies access to the village. However, I was certain that nobody besides me knew of climate change, and I decided against telling them. There was nothing they could do anyways, as it was the middle of a zombie apocalypse.
At one point, I was observing the riverbed from a cliff, and I saw that the river had begun drying out. The mad hatter from Alice in Wonderland came running to me. He informed me that the zombies had started traversing the river, and it was only a matter of time before they would reach the village.
Back in the village, I packed my things, and invited a bunch of women to follow me out of the forest. Since it was a very outdated place, so were the politics, and it was unheard of to the people of the village for a woman to make decisions and lead people. I did not want to deal with having men question my authority, which is why I only invited women.
I led the women into the forest through a gate. They were of all ages and all ethnicities. I had somehow found a gun and a flashlight among my things, which I used to find the way through particularly dark and dangerous parts of the forest. I killed multiple zombies, as well as people who I decided could be of danger to our group. During the hike, multiple of the women in my group disappeared.
At some point, the forest we had been traversing turned into a hotel. We had to cross various rooms and hallways, and it felt more like a labyrinth dimension than a hotel. None of the rooms had windows. There weren't really any zombies here - just humans cowering in the corners, visibly depressed. I stopped shooting at everyone we came across.
We finally found a door leading to a staircase, which would lead to the outside. The staircase was bathed in natural light, but as soon as we stepped foot outside the door, two middle-aged Asian women appeared in our way. They told us to go back, as we wouldn't want to leave this place without having talked to God first. Supposedly, we could find him if we turned back, and if we did, we would be free of all suffering.
"Just take care not to insult him", said one of the women. She gave me a strange look. I had the feeling that she had done just that, and that she was still trapped in this place because of it.
I went back into the hotel with my group, and we had to go all the way back to the forest. We found a clearing in the forest, and the first thing I noticed was a strange, guttural humming that was reverbarating from everywhere. The second thing was that everything appeared a sickly yellow, like when a Saharan air layer covers the sky. The third thing was the corpse of Christ himself.
It was gigantic, and desiccated, nailed to a cross. In proportion to the rest of the body, the arms were unnaturally elongated, stretching over several hundred meters. While I could hear the humming coming from everywhere, I was convinced that it was originating from the corpse.
I kept walking. I noticed that a bit further ahead, numerous people were on the ground, on their knees, praying to something. They were not praying to Christ, but to someone that was pretending to be God. He was even bigger than the corpse. He was round and weirdly bloated. He had a face, but it wasn't his face - it had been stitched onto his head, like a permanent mask, smiling in an offputting grimace.
I instinctively fell to my knees, like the people around me. It felt wrong, but I started praying to this God, and he was taking it all in. After a while, he started talking to us. It felt like mockery. "So, like, is there anything you wish for? Anything I should change about religion?" Some people raised their hands. He picked a slightly overweight man in his late twenties.
"Can you legalize sex before marriage?", he asked.
"Oh, uh, sure." Really? It was that easy? I raised my hand, and he picked me next.
"Can you say 'trans rights'?", I asked. "Oh, haha, well- the funny thing is, you see-", he answered with a grin, and a patronizing glimmer in his eyes, as if he knew more than me, "I can't do that. Changing your body like that accounts as an act of creation, and only I am allowed to participate in that."
As if to piss me off even more, he winked at me. "So, sorry, no trans rights."
I wanted to object to that, using that one quote about turning wheat into bread and grapes into wine. Aren't those acts of creation to?, I wanted to ask. People participate in acts of creation all the time. Every single day, we reinvent ourselves. Why draw the line at being transgender? That's ridiculous and arbitrary, is what I wanted to say. But he was no longer listening.
I realized something there. If this supposed God made me feel so very wrong, if it was not willing to listen to my pleas - was it ever really God to begin with? I decided that it must be a phony, and even if it was God, it was not my God.
The woman that had warned me against insulting him came to my mind. I wondered if my silent blasphemy counted as an insult. He didn't seem to have noticed it, but I somehow knew that I wasn't going to leave this place. I felt at peace.
Paris is the capital of France.
Tokyo is the capital of Japan.