GMT-7, Howard Reporting

Hi everyone, I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Howard Jameson, aka Howard the Unbeliever. I is, or I suppose was, a graduate student in mathematics at University of Wsahington, and The Author was my advisor. I agreed to assist The Author, whose real name was Professor James Arthur Crank, to document The Rapture. Frankly, I never thought I'd have to make good on that promise, but a promise is a promise. I've lost radio contact with Arthur, so now as per our agreement I will do my part. I do not expect to survive the DoomQuake, and if I do then I will almost certainly starve to death here on Baker Island, a remote spot of land at GMT-12 with little more than an airstrip. I now suspect that this is a fate better than most of the people left will meet. I am glad to have this fate, however, because with it comes a very important role: to record for the future, if there is one, the last few hours of the DoomQuake.

A part of our arrangement, Dr. Crank arranged for me to fly from Seattle to Hawaii via a major airline, and from there to Baker Island by a chartered flight if and when this event started. Perhaps "chartered" isn't the right word. The pilot for our trip to Baker Island is Jillian, an older woman with few relatives; she and all of her friends have long been believers in the rapture and made peace with it long ago. She agreed to fly with me to Baker Island as a final act, there to be the last human on Earth to be brought up by God.

Here is what I can tell you based on what we've already seen. The DoomQuake is a force caused by a shift underneath the Earth. We are not able to ascertain the nature of this shift, but it almost certainly isn't geological, as my understanding is that tectonic plates don't store enough energy to sustain an earthquake for this long, and that the resulting quake wouldn't move around the world in this fashion. Whatever is happening is some other phenomenon, similar to underground atomic tests, but on a much larger and more coordinated scale. The forces being unleashed are on the order of 9 or 10 on the Richter scale.

In addition, some force is causing human beings to fly into the air and disappear. There are other phenomena that have been observed, of gods and genies and angels and other mystical beings making appearances, but I haven't observed this myself, personally. There are, as you may have surmised, many things about this rapture that I do not understand and to which I have not attached meaning. I am at peace with that. It is not, as I see it, my place to try to make sense of all these things. It is my place to observe as diligently as I can and let others make sense of it later, if there is a later.

So, there we are. I am stationed at Baker Island right now, and it is about 1PM local time. I expect to monitor radio traffic and record my observations as best as I can. If the Internet holds up, I might even be able to blog it for those remaining people who can read this.