I argue with god frequently, so you’ll understand my surprise when they responded. In person. In the flesh, more or less. The divine began as light. It was that barely-spring ‘golden hour’ (the morning one). The river route I used to take from Ypsi to Ann Arbor in grad school. Same time of day and opposite ends of the life pendulum. Nah, pendulum is wrong. Life is a fucking ski-jump. You can calmly slide or flail ambitiously, but you’re going down.
More than that, the ski jump is on fire. You started the ski route as naked, shrieking, wrinkled raisin infant, and you’ll be hurled off the ramp on knees that scream into some abyss or another. The name of the strain of marijuana I’m consuming is “Mothman” and I understand why now, finally and for true. It is a good name for a good strain.
The Huron river is on fire. Not like the Cuyahoga. Honeyed light for a little while and that barely-spring plant stubble on the banks. ‘She who shall not be named’ would have called it “morning’s ephemeral perfection” or some such shit that sounded perfect from her. I felt like a pretentious ass when I said the phrase, dictated it, like I was wearing someone else’s suit. That’s good, did you get that, Wadsworth?
“Never stopped recording, sir” Cool.
I got ‘our’ donuts. I got her Boston cream, that is gross, and my proper chocolate thing. Two coffees. Ate both confections alone. I’ll get to that second coffee. I’m going to die. Pretty soon. That’s certain and been so for a few months. Doctor re-confirmed what all already know. “We all” means me, myself, and I. Turns out I’m more of a dick now and really nobody wants to be with you when your approach to your ending is to crawl under the porch. It’s the growling and spitting and hissing that drives them off. And I’m not really mourning me so much as she. It’s avoidance of the acceptance of my own death. And I don’t care about stupid fucking words like closure or stupid fucking processes like coming to accept my own death. I do not care for those words and things and steps because I do not have to care. Dying confers certain privileges.
It’s stupid to mourn living people. And everybody I told that too just stopped. They stopped being a person in relation to me. I guess they felt relieved that I had just bull-rushed the last social line to shit on their goodwill. It’s on me. You don’t owe me shit, right? I’m especially dumb to mourn her because she’s also alive, and we do not really like each other. We already lost each other. There’s nothing more to be lost. And before we married she was pretty fucking clear about not ‘going down with the ship.’ Did not use the term “terminal illness” but I’m sure that’s the scenario we were talking about. Pretty sure. Stupid to fuss about it now.
Then Mothman went from fluttering wings on the breeze to a symphony, from that spine-tickle to medicated to proper fucked up.
Blazed as fuck. Emboldened, I spake thus: “God, you are a mother-fucker.” Not a scream or a curse. Nothing like that. Said it nice and casual.
That did it. That called some quiet thunder. My polite curse called the being out of the sunlight, that perfectly precious, lazy-gold light of morning. Light that hangs and drips like stained glass, that seems to shuffle slow like it wants to last longer. Out of that glow came god. They, the divine, drizzled out the old biodiesel’s vents and congealed into the form of an old man to say: Your mother is a lovely woman, and she has needs. I sat, stunned and amazed. Silent. They spoke again: You gonna Bogart that joint? Or share with ‘the almighty’? When I passed the thick thing: Good man.
We sit a while and watch the light. Smoke more of my medicine. The weed and the divine presence conspire to stretch the moment miles long, leagues wide. The river and time together stuck stutter, time glitches, but gracefully everywhere on Earth except (it seems) the cab of the old biodiesel pickup. It’s a couple of songs on the old and sentimental playlist before the awe diminishes enough for the mortal, me, to want to challenge the inscrutable old bastard beside me in the truck.
I cough and pass the joint back to god. “So all the times in my life” Some of which involved sporting events and their outcomes. “Okay. You did Buffalo dirty 4 super bowls in a row, but ok. Cry about it. I did cry about it. No you wept. Seriously. It’s a game dude. Wow. Let’s take the sincere portion then of the times I have prayed and begged for divine intervention, and that’s the first thing you say to your creation when you show up?
We had a vibe. The music is nice, little morose but nice. We’re beholding the majesty of the shit I made. We’re doing it together, and you wanna argue? God takes the second coffee. If you’re going to give attitude and break the vibe? This coffee is mine, and keep the weed coming.
God sits up in the seat and re-shuffles, flicks all speed-deck at the sacred frequency of 60hz to freeze their frame on the form of the mom from that show Jonah (and you) loved as kids. That one. She’s wearing the same early spring gear as he.
“Your visage will not win you sympathy, spirit. And what you want awe and thanks? For creating the disease that kills me? Oh by the way go on and smoke my stash.” Loaves and fishes. I’ll double the bounty. Actually, it looks like I botched you. Give me that weed, Jimmy Three-thumbs. Verily, god hand-rolls an-actually-perfect joint. Every time. Amen.
I’ll not bore you with the particulars, but boy I ramble-ranted and accused. I began with the universe and worked my way down to the grain of sand. War. Famine. Man’s inhumanity to humans and so many other beings. Lead and microplastics and the shit we played with in the lab. But the whole thing, we both knew it, boiled down to this: “Why the fuck do I have to die? Like now?” You’re not going to ask me to cure you? I’m not going to beg. And I’m not going to cure you. I’m going to give you the reverse-Bailey. The “It’s a Terrible Life” treatment. Gonna do a drive-through montage of what you might-have-been, what an adjacent-Earth-you is doing right now.
And when I asked politely what the fuck god was talking about. Verily, the creator showed-and-told.
The Author speaks, at first not to me but my ‘ai’ the little digital assistant: Wadsworth, play the file I’m transmitting to you, project it on the dash. Wadsworth does as told, diligently, as he always does. But from the moment god wakes him until she cuts the volume the not-sentient being screams in terror in the divine presence (and occasionally proclaims itself unworthy). I set the phone on the dash, and mute-Wadsworth turns the windshield into an almost-holo with a title, my name: Jonah and an alpha-numeric thing after. It’s a picture of a grave.
“Thanks for showing me what I already know and smoking my stash and drinking my coffee. Also what’s that letter-number?” If you speak basic-hexadecimal, it’s kind of one of those ‘the multiverse has a sense of humor‘ moments. It’s a number that corresponds to your world and this iteration of you. “Holy shit.” I know, right?
So, here’s a very close adjacent world, and the light dancing on the windshield glows and grows, the holographic display does drip from the windshield-turned-movie-screen. Gouts, drips, drops and the flood of light prism-fantastic until it’s Borges scale model map of the world–to-scale copy laying hologram atop the whole Earth like an old elementary school transparency. God prepared to draw the lesson for the whole class, to delight and instruct.
*
There is the feeling of being stretched or twisted or stretch-twisted–flushed down a Rube-Goldberg toilet toll road between one Earth and it’s adjacent neighbor. There is a brain hemorrhage (a very minor one), and they’re flying over Ann Arbor in the ghost of a pickup truck–god and Jonah.
The ghost of the biodiesel pickup burns oil, and what the engine doesn’t burn drips–ephemeral drizzle on the town below. They go about their business, the students and the professors and the tech bros, while god gives the driver stoner-lazy and often incorrect directions.
They find him, the other Jonah bee lining it from campus to the Korean joint tucked away in a neighborhood that still has a ton of trees. There he is, Jonah(0x18BEB4FB). The ‘bad’ one. ‘Evil’ Jonah. He’s just one digit away from the iteration of Jonah floating in the cab above.
Look at that asshole. God’s giving Evil Jonah the finger from tree-top altitude as the Ghost truck follows. Look at him with his stupid asshole shuffle.
“He looks just like me. No seriously, he walks like me. That could’ve been me in grad school.”
Oh, you a proud Reagan man? “Ew, no.” Yeah, well his daddy was. Worked on SDI for Ronnie. “No shit.” Yeah, and Evil-You is a Rockhard Martian Lockhart Marvin, you mean. Don’t fucking correct me. Ok? Ok. I’m sorry. Give me more of your weed, just give. God proceeds to take the whole stash. She furiously rolls joints fatter than before.
Like I said, he ends up working for Lock-shart Fartin’ Witty, oh Lord. I thought so. He has about the same lifetime radiation exposure as you and smokes a pack a day the whole way through. Oh my, you’re gonna have a bad time doin’ that. Yeah, the warning label writing is just plastered on the wall. Same diagnosis as you, but a little more.
Truck flies impossibly fast past a post-doc and a stint at Lost Alamos, past a familiar wife and child. Jonah stomps on the brake. Desperate. His eyes want to linger in that time and place, that other man’s life so like his own in it’s good season. But the ghost-drive through the other man’s holo-movie continues like a hellish theme park ride as long as god wills. It’s like that attraction contraption ride at the Forge Family Old Timey Theme-Park–the one where you fake-drive an old timey model-x that’s welded to a little rail loop like a tethered horse.
Jonah still sits behind the wheel, but the divine presence sitting shotgun wills the car drive straight past the golden morning where other Jonah eats donuts by the Huron. Past that man’s sincere and desperate prayer. When god stops the ride they’re watching through a hospital window–the windshield of the pickup magnifying sight. The shattered little ‘ai’ amplifies the audio.
“Please don’t make me watch this. I’m fucking months away from this hell. I know this. Let me try to fuckin enjoy a lil’ bit more denial. Please…” Shut up and watch.
And when driver-Jonah finishes stomping on the dead-accelerator of the pickup, god passes him a long glass pipet–the tip smeared in golden-wax. God in the form of a beautiful woman is lighting a blow-torch as she speaks: I’m sorry that this will hurt, but it’s why we’re here. This is the substance of the sacred vision. She brings the torch danger close to the pipet. Chief this shit, big boy. There ya go. She pats him on the back as he coughs. Good boy. Eyes and ears. She kills the torch and points his face at the scene and cranks the volume.
That other man writhes in pain. The other Jonah from an Earth with a different hex designation in a different universe ‘next door’ in the garden. He prays, desperate and sincere. I will not disrespect the plea to something divine by repeating it whole. Suffice to say, it’s grimy. Snotty sobs. “I’ll be your humble servant.” You know that prayer (or maybe you don’t).
“What, we watch might as well be me die? Like I get to taste it twice?” God shrugs “And what was that ‘reverse-Bailey’ bullshit? This guy wasn’t that bad. He’s a fuckin’ Reagan man but he’s not the devil. You though? God. You are a mother fucker.
We’ve established that. You’re a motherfucker. Are you done? I work in mysterious ways. The montage hasn’t even started yet. You’re barely through the prologue, baby boy. Now you make a choice. You have to “press start” to advance to the game proper. No. I don’t want to.
The divine feigns surprise at Jonah’s flat refusal. Have a bit more hash and hear me out, and god passes glass coated with an even greater glob of wax and lights the blow torch. You decide his fate. You cursed me, and allegedly that’s a smite-able offense. You think you could do better than me? Hic Rhodus, hic salta. What does that even mean? It means do the fuckin’ thing, chop chop. Decide your/his fate.
“Do I get to live if I do this?”
Yeah, no. No two-for-ones. You’re not pulling a zero-sum victory out of my morality shibboleth, nerd. You or him. One of you lives. The other dies.
When Jonah broods too long, god continues: You already think you’re better than “Reagan Man.” What cause he’s a hawk and you’re a drone strike dove? You both worked for Rock Hard Marvin. It’s Lockhart Marvin. See? You know the place. What, the bombs Reagan man made killed people and the shit you made, what did it do? It served a system bigger than me. Nice cop out. I’ll bet the bombs you made respected the dignity of all people, especially civilians in their casualty radius.
“Then what’s in it for..” If you finish the phrase: “what’s in it for me” I will show you the Old fucking Testament. Right here. Right now.
Jonah surrenders, admonished. He’s stoned witless, so far past witless he finds them again and makes a compassionate choice: “he lives. Let the man begging for his life live.” And that’s the right choice? Yes, because fuck your shibboleth.
At that, god smiles, and it’s the top of the best hill on the best roller coaster ever. It’s the half-sliver-second where you’re really flying; god blesses the dying man, for a moment.
The engine roars and the ride rolls on through the montage. Reagan man lives at terrible speed. Tempo accelerates again and by the time other-Jonah ‘finds Jesus’ and later public intellectual prominence, everybody in the frame is hummingbird fast and helium speaking.
Then there’s the political movement. Very cross-wrapped-around-the-flag. And there’s Jonah, other Jonah, Evil Jonah. We’re sticking with that moniker. There’s evil Jonah at its fringe and moving fast from its periphery toward it’s center. There’s Evil Jonah at an inauguration for a president who ran a campaign standing on the bible and will anoint himself a dictator when he loses four later and refuses to exit the nations political bowels or be flushed into history.
Stoned passenger Jonah, the one watching his alternate-evil-twin, stomps on the brakes he knows won’t slow the ghost of the car still accelerating. The old truck groans and shimmies and tests the worn safety belts mightily at the very end of Evil Jonah’s life and the end of days on his Earth. Things come to a close, as they so often do, in a converted ICBM silo some no-place in North America.
Film is paused. Look what he did with his life. Look who you saved. Evil Jonah’s face is distorted, rage-contorted, screaming at the husk of a human being in a medical harness. The emptied human that most certainly can’t hear him anymore is one of eight tied by medusa-wired butcher-brain-interfaces to some computational monstrosity.
Look what he built.
Jonah is defiant: “I didn’t do this.” No but your brother did. Behold the “Expert System.” Sounds clean. Neat. Sci-fi right? Marketing language. Exactly. I’ve seen human-machine circuits done with dignity. Non-invasive. Consensual. Not this– God waves a disgusted gesture at the body-horror un-life cyborg baby-hive-mind before her, the one in the bowels of the bunker-silo-tomb. —This reduction of the human to an instrument. Congratulations. You saved the man that made this. This is a special no-no. This is the red line that damned this whole world.
Jonah protests, rends garments trying to rip the seatbelt free. He fights with the car door that won’t budge–tries to shoulder it with his sickly chicken-wing and shoulder. He begs god for a do-over, for the chance to make it right.
“Please, I’ll still die. We both go. Both of us are assholes. You’re absolutely right. Just take me back.” No Mulligans. “No. You’re god. You’re great. You’re the author.” The greatest heap of wax on the pipet yet, and there’s the smell of brimstone on god’s blow-torch. There’s a knife smile not quite divine. “Wait.” God does not wait. A small ball of flame, wings retracted, wreathed in glowing eyes. That’s the figure in the passenger’s seat. One more rip, big boy.
Either the blowtorch or the being’s body lights the hash. Jonah’s is smoke choke shiver-coughing when god presses play. Can’t find his voice to beg. He’s still trying to wheeze “please” when he passes out.
*
END EPITAPH 2
MORE TO COME