“Godspeed.”
To the sound of that word the mayor broke the bottle on the ship’s hull.
The captain let his imagination run loose.
“Suppose in the future we could travel at Godspeed? Suppose we’d be able to locate the Good Lord himself and use his power to travel not just to the New World but to the stars?”
“Enslave the Lord to harness his omnipotence?”
“If you will, lord mayor. Imagine how we’d further our knowledge of the world we inhabit. Imagine the giant leaps we would take. We could eradicate disease. Grow food for the poor. Make walk the crippled.”
“Rely on faith to advance science. Yours is a grand dream, captain.”
It was also heresy.
So they burnt the captain at the stake.
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300 stories 
Buahaha, this one is great!
Nice one, quite clever.
Nice I like it.
I’m going to play devils advocate here and ask a pointless question, take it however you like because it is besides the point … If the god is omnipotent and everywhere then would godspeed not be zero because he/she/it would have no need to travel?
Valid point to which I have no answer. Let’s just defend myself with the fact that in Citizen Kane no-one was in the room to hear Charles Foster Kane whisper Rosebud either, yet that didn’t stop me from enjoying the movie 😉
This made me think of Lewis’s That Hideous Strength (and anything that reminds me of Lewis is quite wonderful). Excellent work here!
Haven’t read it, but any comparison to Lewis is fine by me 😉
Greatness. A delightful story.
Now that was a surprise ending! Bravo!
I love the sarcastic “matter-of-fact” way you wrote this lol as always, love your writing!
I know this happened in reality, but it really seemed a shame to burn the captain at the stake because he wanted to use God and faith to aid science. Your story was well crafted as always, but this twist was a little too different for me.
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