Crickle Crackle Pop: Neo-Exodus

In the southern stretch of Florida, along a coastline reshaped by ambition and steel, rose a vast city called Neo-Florida. It was loud, industrious, sunlit, and restless — a place that believed in harvest, industry, and destiny.

The people of Neo-Florida often spoke about bees.

They admired how bees overproduced honey, how they stored what they needed in one section of the hive and allowed the overflow to be taken without harming the colony. They admired the strange harmony: protection in exchange for surplus. Shelter in exchange for sweetness. Strength in exchange for trust.

And so they began to see themselves that way.

Neo-Florida grew crops in abundance. They built weapons — not for conquest, but with the conviction that they were guardians. They believed they were shielding Israel from threats, and ensuring food reached civilians in Gaza and the people of Ukraine during war. Their leaders taught that if bees could thrive under a careful keeper, then a city could thrive under God.

They stored their planned provisions carefully in separated reserves — grain silos marked for winter, food shipments designated for allies, protected vaults for emergency supply. And then there was always the overflow. The extra harvest. The portion they said belonged to Him.

Not because He needed food.

But because giving was covenant.

They imagined the Christian God not as distant, but as their divine guardian — a protector who would smite their enemies, fortify their borders, and preserve their homes. In return, they would offer obedience, gratitude, and surplus.

In Neo-Florida, sermons compared it to a hive.

“If we withhold everything,” pastors would warn, “we rot. But if we store wisely and share rightly, we flourish.”

For a time, they did flourish.

Their farms yielded heavily. Their factories were efficient. Their military engineers believed they were instruments of protection, not aggression. Many citizens truly believed they were part of something symbiotic — humans serving God’s justice, God preserving their survival.

But not all things in Neo-Florida aligned with Heaven.

Privately, under the ownership of James Higglebum, stood the only human cloning center in the state. At the time, there were no Florida laws prohibiting human cloning — whether for biomedical research or to produce children. Similar legal gaps existed in Georgia, and in Hawaii. Federally, cloning was not explicitly legalized, but it was not directly prohibited either.

Some states had complete bans — Arkansas, Indiana, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, Virginia.

Others allowed research but banned reproductive cloning — California, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, Rhode Island. Arizona and Michigan restricted public funding.

Neo-Florida’s cloning facility operated in that gray space.

But cloning was not part of God’s plan for them.

The people told themselves they were innovators. That they were advancing humanity. That they were still the hive, still aligned. But Heaven does not measure prosperity by production.

In quiet moments — when hurricanes brushed the coast, when crops failed unexpectedly, when weapons contracts brought unease — some began to wonder:

Were they truly in symbiosis?

Or were they confusing abundance with approval?

God’s relationship with Neo-Florida was not transactional like honey for shelter. It was covenantal. Protection was never purchased by surplus. Favor was never secured by overflow. He was not a landlord. He was not an eldritch guardian demanding tribute.

He desires justice.

He desires mercy.

He desires humility.

The bees flourish because they follow their design. They gather, they store, they defend, they pollinate — each action woven into the ecosystem’s balance.

Neo-Florida had strength. It had resources. It had influence.

The question was not whether they could produce.

The question was whether they would align.

Because like bees, humans can choose.

And God, unlike a beekeeper, does not need the honey.

This led to them worrying that God was revoking his promise due to the human cloning, however, it wasn't that as they still held up their end of the bargain.