Thunder Monastery (Heavenly Realm) - Of late, due to the recent economic collapse, sinking of Sinkapoor, catastrophic earthquakes hitting Mati and severe SNSD infestation, trillions of prayers were being delivered up to heaven by the underpaid and disgruntled cherubs. The last straw came when the Jade Emperor decided to call for a pay cut of all immortals and celestial beings due to the mounting budget deficit.
This is because the economic situation in the Heavenly Realm seemed to mirror that of the mortal realm, as the Lama Brothers collapsed overnight and plunged the divine economy into a recession, causing the Heavenly notes currency to depreciate by nearly 4000% and several major religions to declare bankruptcy. The Jade Holdings had to be bailed out of bankruptcy by the Buddha Association as it had lost nearly 99.9% of its total assets. This disastrous move has certainly lived up to its name as the lower-caste heavenly beings decided to go on strike, throwing the Heavenly Realm into a state of chaos, mayhem and lunacy.
The cherubs, who used to be chubby with rosy complexion and infectious cheer, became thin, gaunt and moody as they were being overworked by their senior immortals who included their mountain of undone domestic chores and other assorted errands into the little cherubs’ list of never-ending workload.
Despite the mountainous piles of complaints filed by these little guys to the Ministry of Divine Labour, their work environment seemed to have taken a 360° turn for the worse as many were being forced to become practice targets for gods who are seeking to hone their hopelessly rusted skills, while others were being kidnapped and subjected to demented experiments by the Eastern Star Immortal (CEO of Celestial Pharmaceutical Ltd) or being forced to become guinea pigs for Immortal SSW’s failed products. The labour environment proved to have become a bleak climate of hopeless slavery as the Cherub Action Party (CAP) was underfunded and could not make a case against other established senior deities.
Besides the poor work environment, the cherubs were also subjected to heavy stress as they have to live in constant 24-hour fear of being sacked from their jobs. Due to their lack of heavenly powers, the cherubs are ranked at the lowest rung of the celestial hierarchy and were given only lowly-paid manual jobs.
Being paid at an impossibly low wage rate of $1.10 per millennium, the cherubs were literally starving to death and living in perpetual poverty in the light of sky-rocketing inflation and rising cost of living. They are commanded to work nonstop for 24 hours with no leave, work incentive or benefits. Somehow their working conditions bear some similarity to that set by SME (Sado-Masochism Entertainment).
Fed up with the poor working conditions and environment, the unhappy cherubs held an underworld meeting and came to the decision of having a strike after witnessing half of their brethren dropping dead out of sheer exhaustion or committing suicide due to depression. The dead bodies were simply incinerated at the Eight-Trigrams Power Station to generate electricity for the Heavenly Realm’s consumption.
During the cherubs’ strike, no prayers were delivered to the gods, leaving the mortals on the Mortal Realm and Freaktopia completely clueless and leading them to speculate wild guesses on why their fervent prayers for rich family members not dying of accidents remain unanswered or the reason for not winning TOTO despite the extravagant offerings made to the gods.
Besides undelivered and unanswered prayers and requests for curses, the gods now need to manually handle their mundane domestic chores themselves. Explosions from failed cooking attempts are a common occurrence during the period of the strike. Furthermore, several buddhas were admitted to the Heavenly University Hospital for fractured hips as there is no cherub to hold them while they go to the bathrooms.
Several elderly Enlightened Ones were hospitalised for Acute Stiff Back Syndrome (ASBS) as they spent too much time meditating on their lotus seats without the hourly massage advised by the heavenly healers. One Buddha fell into an irrecoverable coma as he meditated too deeply without any cherub to club him to consciousness when he crossed the line into mental oblivion.
After suffering for 3 hours without any cherub to holler at, dissect or abuse, the gods are beginning to suffer from extremely bad temper and are on the verge of committing divine homicide. The God of Wind simply carried out its job by fanning the flames, while the God of Fire continues to add fuel to fire. It seems like the Heaven is now a boiling pot of celestial temper with temperatures running so high that it will put the legendary True Samadhi Fire to shame.
The Jade Emperor, together with other major divinities, made an appeal to the Cherub’s Action Party to begin multi-way negotiations. The CAP called for more funding, larger premises with gold taps and a small army of National Cadet Corpse as security guards. A Jade Holdings spokesperson said “Jade Holdings is planning to consult its mortal cheaporella counterpart, SME, on ways of how to fleece the CAP and its ignorant cherubs in order to save more budget”.
-reported by Duck Medium
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