The Big Idea

A story idea came to me while thinking about the electrical nature of the brain and brainwaves. Brain activity is, of course, electrical in part and the overall activity of the brain produces waves that can be detected through the skin by an EEG (electroencephalogram). I wondered, “What if someone were naturally keenly sensitive to these mind patterns through the means of electrical conduction, so that if he or she were to touch someone, that would allow picking up the electrical conductivity through another person’s skin, which this person would somehow understand, in effect allowing mind reading?” But the problem with that is the EEG pattern is far to general to reflect specific thoughts. At best it could convey a mood. However, some brainwave patterns are associated with forms of consciousness other than normal wakefulness. So then I thought, “What if someone had the ability to emit a naturally powerful (but strange) electrical generation of their own brain to override som...

The term “Rapture” is often used by Christians, especially Evangelical Christians, to describe an event probably best described in I Corinthians 15:51-55 and I Thessalonians 4:13-17, where Jesus takes his believing church up to meet Him while they are still alive on Earth. Multiple possible times for the Rapture have been described by various Evangelicals, but most today believe that this will happen just before a seven-year period of judgment from God raining down on planet Earth, a period usually called the “Great Tribulation.” During the Tribulation, it’s widely believed that a person (some have interpreted it as an empire or kingdom rather than a person) called the “Beast” in Revelation 13 and elsewhere “the Antichrist” will rule over the doomed but defiant human realm. This standard scenario has been written about exhaustively by my fellow Christian writers, in fiction most famously in the Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins Left Behind series of books. I’ve heard the suggesti...