At a meeting of the United States archdiocese in Boston, Jim Balmer was giving a speech to the assembled archbishops that was being very well received. His speech was his usual stump speech but with a few alterations to make his campaign's anti-abortion stance the central thrust of his speech. The speech received an uproarious standing ovation when he was done from the over 150 assembled members of the US archdiocese, all of whom were excited to have a candidate who was unapologetic about agreeing with and advocating for their beliefs and priorities. The conference was being held in the conference room of the Hilton Hotel, which was where Jim was staying during his stay in the city. After walking off the stage and shaking hands on his way out, Jim returned to his room to touch base with his campaign team over the phone before he laid down and took a quick rest. His rest would have to wait, while he was on the phone with his campaign manager in Michigan somebody knocked on his door. The head of the archdiocese of Boston, archbishop Kevin O'Hanlon, had come to Jim's room to thank him for making an appearance at the conference and giving such a pleasing speech. He was welcomed into the room by Jim, who was eager to get a firm commitment from him on an endorsement from the entire archdiocese.

"Oh I wouldn't worry about that, after the speech that you gave down there receiving our endorsement is as good as a done deal."

"Thank you, I'm happy to hear that."

"We do wish that you would temper some of your rhetoric though, the comments about slavery from your campaign finance co-chair were particularly unfortunate."

"I know, but there are millions of people out there that are angry and scared that just want to hear anything that makes it sound like you're going to fight for them."

"Yes but if the rhetoric is too extreme you're going to start scaring people away, all I'm asking is that you instruct your campaign staff to be more responsible with their language so that they don't undermine our core goal, which is to secure an overwhelming victory so that we may enshrine our values into law."

"We're in agreement on that; I'll speak to my people, you have my word on that."

"Excellent, now, I'd like you to promise me that what we talk about next won't leave this room."

"Sure, you can trust me."

Bishop O'Hanlon removed a folded sheet of paper from the inside of his jacket and opened it up on the table.

"Have you seen any of these animals?" He asked, pushing the paper toward Jim.

Printed on the paper was a zodiac wheel consisting of two circles. Inside the small center circle were three symbols depicting a goose, a raven and a dragon, and outside of that in the larger circle were symbols of all of the other animals that Jim had learned about during his time with the raven.

"Yeah, I've seen those animals before, who hasn't?"

"I'm talking about animals that are...special."

"Special how?"

"These animals would look different, and they'd possess special powers."

"What kind of special powers?"

"You'd know if you met them; so have you, Jim?"

Jim didn't know what to say. Being a lifelong Christian he was deeply uncomfortable with lying to a bishop, but with everything that the raven had done for him it felt like an even bigger act of betrayal to say something to an outsider that could jeopardize everything that they've built.

"No, I haven't seen any animals like what you're describing."

"Let me show you something else," Bishop O'Hanlon said, regarding Jim with extreme circumspection.

He pulled another piece of paper out of his jacket and opened it up and placed it alongside the sheet of paper with the zodiac on it.

"Do you know what this is?" He asked Jim.

"No," Jim answered honestly.

Printed on this sheet of paper was a collection of inscrutable symbols arranged in a series of complex graphs and tables.

"Are you familiar with the Mayan calendar?"

"The one that said that the world was going to end in 2012?"

"It didn't say that specifically but yes, that's the one. It turns out that the Maya weren't the only ones with such a predictive device; the Native Americans, the Chinese, the ancient Greeks, the ancient Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, they all had them. We've managed to locate them though there are probably others out there that we haven't located, and by studying them and cross referencing them against each other we've managed to compile a calendar that is a combination of all of these calendars, that's what you're looking at, and what this calendar tells us is that the world is currently going through one of its great phases of transformation, which is when these animals, the guardians, appear and try to tip the scales with the goose trying to tip them in one direction and the raven trying to tip them in the other direction."

"What you're saying sounds completely crazy."

"That doesn't change the fact that it's true, I've seen the original documents and artifacts that are thousands of years old at the Vatican with my own eyes."

"How can you say all this when you're a bishop? What you're describing is paganism, heresy!"

"We may not be comfortable with it but we have to accept it and do our best to insulate ourselves from the damage that would be done if people were to find out the truth about all of this, which is the danger that The Church of the Golden Goose poses."

"The Church of the Golden Goose is a small, obscure church based in Waco, Texas that is built around the myth of the goose that is in this picture, although, as I've just told you, it's not a myth."

"If this is only a small and obscure church then why are you worried about it?"

"Because he's learning too much. John Lafferty, the minister of The Church of the Golden Goose, keeps making discoveries that are drawing him closer and closer to the truth; eventually he is going to learn enough to present to people the irrefutable truth and when that happens it's going to be bad news for us."

"Just what is this truth that you're talking about?"

"Okay, have you ever wondered why it is that ancient civilizations all over the world developed in many similar ways despite never coming into contact with one another?"

"I've never wondered about that but now that you say it I guess that is kind of interesting."

"The answer is that these guardians appeared in those civilizations to guide their growth and development. The goat, which is the guardian of the green, together with the wolf, which is the guardian of the earth and death, taught them about agriculture, while the owl and the rooster, the guardians of knowledge and enlightenment respectively, taught them how to use what was around them to better their lives by building shelters and making better tools. These guardians were deified by the people they helped and became the inspiration for the ancient polytheistic religions, which we now categorize as myths."

"Then everything that we believe is a lie!"

"No, that's not true. Jesus was actually chosen by the goose to be its pilgrim. You see, the idea of monotheism had been around from long before the advent of monotheistic religions like ours. There was an Egyptian pharaoh, Akhenaton, who radically overhauled Egypt's belief system by placing the sun god Ra, who is in fact the rooster, above all of the other deities as the supreme deity. By putting forward Jesus Christ as the one true son of the one true god, the goose's hope was to solve the increasingly pernicious problem of the tyrant king, rulers who made the claim that they had been chosen to rule by the supreme deity and thus were not to have their actions as rulers questioned."

"What you're telling me is...it's amazing. Why have you come to me with this? What's all of this got to do with me?"

"You are on the cusp of being elected to lead the most powerful nation in the world, it's only logical that one of these beings would have sought you out."

"Suppose one of them had, what would you have wanted me to do?"

"We would want you to leverage their power in whatever way possible would increase your chances of victory and that you would continue to do so when in office to advance our agenda."

"Even if the goose wasn't the one that had sought me out? Even if the one that had sought me out was the raven, which, according to this diagram that you've showed me, is the force of evil?"

"The power of these beings is uncontestable, if we should find ourselves in the position of being aligned with the raven well then that's something that we just have to make the best of."

"But by accepting help from the raven we would be betraying the goose and by association Jesus as well!"

"We are not betraying Jesus, we are doing whatever it is in our power to do to ensure that his teachings endure through the vessel of the Catholic Church. There is a bigger picture here Jim of which we need to remain cognizant."

Jim wasn't interested in the bishop's bigger picture. He had already betrayed his faith by cheating on his wife and then allowing himself to be blackmailed by the raven which he knew to be an evil force into agreeing to run for office as part of advancing the raven's agenda. To simply continue to move forward when he knew that he was going against the being that had chosen Jesus Christ to be man's savior was unthinkable. Were he to go on he was certain that his soul would be beyond salvation and doomed to eternal damnation. But he wanted to be president and he believed that he could more good for country as president than any of the other candidates in the race, certainly he would make a better president than that crypto-communist David Groff, and he would never have the same opportunity to be elected president as he had now. If he wanted the presidency he had to seize it now or forget about it forever, and he wasn't prepared to forget about it, not when the country was in such peril and in desperate need of strong, values-centered leadership.

The forces at work as described to him by Bishop O'Hanlon were so far above their comprehension that is was really impossible for them to know what the right thing for them to do was. Why, for example, had the raven chosen him to run for office. He was a devout, God-fearing Christian who acted only in the service of his faith and wished to use the powers of the presidency to restore Christian values to the country, not an evil ambition. Whether it was the goose or the raven that should emerge victorious from all of this wasn't for Jim to decide, all he could do was to continue to do the best he could to bring about the change that he believed was in the best interest of his country, and as long as that was his guiding light there was really nothing else for him to do other than to keep following it.