There is about a minute missing between the last segment and this one. Fortunately one of the commenters supplies a different division of the movie that includes the missing minute and, better yet, has the characters' lips actually matching the sounds.
In the missing minute, Chloe tells her father why she is upset. Buck is engaged. Her father is sure that can't be true; if he were engaged, he would have told us. Chloe is angry, and who can blame her. Granted, she and Buck haven't made any formal commitment, but each has expressed an interest and encouraged it in the other. And now she finds the man she thought was interested in her has another woman who seems very possessive. Her natural reaction is jealousy. However, according to Fred Clark, in the book, at least, Chloe is not allowed to be jealous because Buck is not, after all engaged to her (or formally committed at all). Hence Chloe has no claim on him; only God has a claim on him. God demands abstinence until marriage; Chloe can demand nothing for herself until they are formally engaged. In the meantime, instead of being jealous, she is only allowed to be outraged that he is cohabiting out of marriage. Of course, that is really just jealousy in disguise. All of this seems awfully far-fetched to me, but then again, I am not an RTC and cannot claim to know how RTC's think.
Be that as it may, the movie mercifully skips it. Chloe is jealous, that is all. The phone rings again. This time Ray picks it up. He talks the way you talk on the phone if someone is standing right there who you don't want to hear the conversation. He also lies and says he doesn't know what the problem is. (I'll get to that later). He encourages Buck to come by without telling Chloe that is what he is doing. He tells Chloe he is taking a shower and going to bed and heads upstairs.
We now begin the clip Fred Clark links to, with its horrible lip syncing. Seeing the missing minute is useful because it explains what Buck is doing when he gets in the elevator. He is leaving the office in order to head over to the Steels. When I saw the segment in isolation, I thought he might be heading up to his apartment, where Ivy is. But instead of heading to the ground floor, the elevator heads up to the roof. Buck pushes buttons, trying to stop it, but in vain. At the top, two thugs greet him and escort him out onto the roof, where Carpathia is standing near the edge.
He starts by quizzing Buck to see what he remembers about the shooting. Buck vaguely answers that it was "a terrible thing that happened." He denies avoiding Nicolae, but stammers and can't give a very good explanation why he has been, well, avoiding him. Instead of pressing the matter, Carpathia then changes the subject. He announces that the UN is taking over the world media. (See many posts by Clark on the subject of how the hell they could possibly do that). Buck protests, says that a free press is the cornerstone of a free world, that without one there is no accountability. Carpathia argues that he is only taking control of the media to keep them from feeding people's natural desire for a scapegoat. And he brings up his old hobbyhorse, world peace. (And his lips maddeningly fail to match the sound).
"And if I refuse?" Buck says.
"I don't think you can," says Nicolae. "This is too important." He gestures to the landscape below. And here is where it makes a difference whether you are a Christian or not. According to Fred, this looks as though it is invoking Christ's temptation in the wilderness, with Satan offering Jesus everything if only he will worship him. To a heathen like me, he is simply pointing out how far down it is and making Buck an offer he can't refuse. Buck agrees, provided he can have complete freedom to cover any story he wants, and access. That is, as we know, exactly what Buck really wants -- access to the mysterious witnesses at the Wailing Wall so he can broadcast their message to the world. They shake on it. "Good choice," Carpathia says, and I think the threat is implied there as well.
I will say, though, that this scene and any other threat to the characters' lives runs into a little problem in a post-Rapture world. Normally, when the villain invites you to a meeting on the roof with his goons, makes you an offer, and gestures to the scene below when you ask what if you refuse, this is terrifying and quite effectively intimidating. No one expects you to be an open martyr on the spot (though you may accept and secretly work to undermine him from within). But the calculus is different in a post-Rapture world. After all, the world is going to end in a mere seven years. The will be, as Buck says at the end of the last movie, "the worst mankind has ever seen." There will be an endless succession of wars, famines, plagues, and who knows what else. And Buck, as a saved Christian, knows that if he is killed, he will go off to Heaven and spend those seven years cavorting with the RTC equivalent of his 72 virgins. His life is valuable only as a chance to evangelize. Still, old habits die hard, so I suppose we shouldn't blame Buck too much for wanting to stay alive.
Buck takes the elevator down to a vaguely ruined looking world (overturned chairs, posters of the missing and people burning candles to them, etc). He is greeted by his old boss, Steve Plank, who has nothing but praise for Carpathia. He knows Buck is going to Israel and says he (Plank) will be Buck's man on the ground. Buck wants to cover the peace treaty, but Plank says the Ben-Judah announcement will be most important, the biggest story of Buck's career. (Bigger than the entire Arab air force crashing over Israel? Bigger than the mass disappearances, including every child on earth? I don't think so). Besides, is there any reason for Buck to care what he covers? He just wants to get into Israel so he can find the Witnesses.
Buck then goes to the Steel's house. Chloe refused to talk to him. Buck refuses to leave until she does. Chloe goes up to ask her father to get rid of him. Rayford turns the shower on and says he can't, he's in the shower with soap in his eyes. In fact, he is standing fully clothed in the bathroom door. He lied! So she goes downstairs to confront Buck about his "financee" who she met at his apartment. Buck doesn't appear to know who this mysterious woman at his apartment is. So Chloe describes her, brunette (in the earlier movie, she was blond!), dressed in a bath towel and engagement ring. Buck, who is a bit slow on the uptake, realizes that she means Ivy and explains. They reconcile and hug. (No kissing. They are RTC's, after all).
Rayford's lying, though, first to Buck and then to Chloe, is a serious issue. It is a serious issue because in the book, the characters apparently think lying is a serious issue. Apparently, the book stresses on several occasions that lying is never justified, even to the Antichrist. And, in fact, just now Buck didn't lie to the Antichrist, although he was completely evasive. And, Fred is quick to point out, when Rayford begged Hattie for the job, he created a misleading impression, but took care not to say anything that is technically false. But here Rayford is, lying to Buck and Chloe to play matchmaker. St. Augustine apparently listed a taxonomy of lies from the most to the least sinful, but ultimately concluded that no lie is ever justified, even lies to prevent a murder or rape. Ah, but he never addressed lying to matchmake for your daughter.
Fred Clark's take is here.
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