BY RENE P. CIRIA-CRUZ

We have stepped into another dimension of light and shadow, of order and chaos, of fate and uncertainty, into a twilight zone filled with anxiety and dread. Consider the following phenomena.

An American governor takes a hike in the Appalachian Trail but ends up in Buenos Aires. Spontaneous teleportation? How about this—within a week the King of Pop, the Queen of Pinups, the Earl of Sidekicks and the Prince of Infomercials are all summoned by their Maker. What gives? Or this—scientists in Sweden have discovered that a chimpanzee that kept throwing stones at visitors at the Furuvik Zoo had collected the missiles beforehand and actually planned the attacks. Strange?

Stranger still, the day after 15 percent of Americans surveyed said they no longer had a religion, Martha Stewart’s dog, Genghis Khan, was killed in a kennel explosion. Strangest of all, Rush Limbaugh has become the leader of the Republican Party.

I don’t know about you, but I think these are signs that the end is near. Consider, also, all the ominous books with “The End” in their titles—“The End of Wall Street,” “The End of Poverty,” “The End of the Beginning.” To top it all, an asteroid missed the Earth by barely 48,000 miles last March. I won’t even talk about the recession. These, I tell you, are signs that the day of reckoning is nigh.

Did you know that the Mayan Calendar predicted the world would end on December 12, 2012? During the winter solstice three years from now, at exactly 11:11 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time, the sun will align with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in 26,000 years and disrupt the energy that beams to Earth. The result? No one knows.

At times like this I like to consult an expert. Not God, because he’s hard to find. Satan, however, is always accessible. “I don’t care what you write about me, kid, so long as you spell my name right,” he says as I find him in his favorite nook at the Fox News cafeteria.

Mr. Satan, are The Four Jockeys of the End of Days about to gallop in? I ask. Should we be expecting pestilence, frogs and locusts and whatnot?

“Relax, everything eventually has a rational explanation.”

Wait a minute. That sounds suspiciously like the scientific method! It’s the foundation of secular humanism, which eventually produces moral relativism and the denial of the existence of God, the afterlife and moral absolutes. Get thee behind me, Satan!

“Hey, what did you expect? I lead people to evil, remember? Where shall I start?”

How does the Evil One explain why more Americans now say they don’t have a religion? It’s because of that science in school, isn’t it—Evolution and whatnot? I knew it—science breeds liberalism, then evil.

“Science? In U.S. public schools? You must be kidding. All the science kids get nowadays is from YouTube. Ever see those Rube Goldberg chain reaction experiments, or the Mentos-Sprite lava explosion?”

So why are more Americans staying away from religion then?

“Because they keep getting shot in churches, that’s why. Don’t you read the news? Every week some pastor or member of his flock gets blasted away by another member of the congregation, usually with a high-caliber weapon loved by all and defended by the NRA. People used to get shot at the post office, but ever since e-mail fewer people go postal. Now it’s in churches. I’d stay away, too, if I were human.”

Speaking of the Internet, I better Twitter that insight and add it to my Facebook.

“Go ahead, bare it all in your digital equivalent of narcissistic exhibitionism. Include it in the 3,500 random things about yourself. It’s your funeral.”

But Satan, how can Twittering and nonstop friending be signs of doom?

“Haven’t you heard that those whom God seeks to destroy he first turns into celebrities? In your minds you’re all celebrities now! Ha, ha, ha, ha! So you think people should know everything about you.”

Okay, but how about that chimp actually hatching a plan to stone zoo visitors, and even stockpile stones for that purpose? That’s also a sign of a topsy-turvy universe, right?

“Oh, fie, you mortal coil. You humans have so divorced yourselves from nature, you believe only you can think and feel pain, and that nature exists just to serve you. You don’t even want to believe that chimp is your cousin. Wait till it learns math, while your school kids don’t learn anything! You think ‘Planet of the Apes’ is just a movie? Think again. Charlton Heston is dead, and he can’t save you now, ha, ha, ha, ha!”

Oh, please, Satan, you’re scaring me.

“You wanna really be scared? How about that Kepler telescope the U.S. just launched to look for life in other Earth-like planets? It may prove that Earth isn’t so special after all, like the Bible says.”

Yikes! That’s more science than I can take, Satan! That would destroy everything I believe in, like Adam and Eve, Heaven, Hell, and you. No wonder that liberal Obama loves science, like stem cells. What shall we do?

“Get smarter. Stop reading books with “Dummies” in the title, like “Conservatism for Dummies.”

Oh, explain one last thing—Rush Limbaugh becoming the leader of the GOP.

“Listen, kid. Some things I can’t rationally explain. I don’t know it all, okay? I’m just the Prince of Darkness, not Newt Gingrich.”