Lessons on Destroying the World

by Gant, Gene

  The malice in my eyes made Antonio wish I would go somewhere else, perhaps to a nice, dark crater on the far side of the moon. He followed my glower to the sofa, and the sight of Reverend Titus sobered him immediately.

  “Is that man dead?” he asked breathlessly.

  I nodded.

  “You killed him?” Despite his apprehension, a tone of reproof crept into Antonio’s voice.

  “Hell, yeah!” I snapped out the words and turned my ire on Antonio. “What was I supposed to do? That bastard put a bullet in my brain.”

  Ever the concerned friend, Antonio did a quick, visual survey of my head. “Are you okay, man? Where were you hit?—”

  I waved aside his worries. “The god-machine took care of it. The bullet didn’t hurt me, but I wasn’t about to just stand there and let that idiot pop me again.”

  “But, Micah, the Bible says—”

  “Don’t say jack to me about the Bible!” Rage sprayed out of me in a pulse of blue-white fire. Every hair on Antonio’s body stood on end, and his muscles went into horrendous spasms that propelled him violently into the wall. He slid to the floor, stunned, collapsing into a smoking heap. The arc of electricity scampered across the ceiling before spending itself in a loud explosion of the light fixture. Shards of glass rained to the floor.

  “I’m sorry, Antonio! I didn’t mean it!”

  Antonio was out scarcely three seconds before I healed the damage I’d done to his body and forced him back to consciousness. I must have subconsciously wanted the light fixture repaired, as it became whole again a second later. Antonio pushed himself into a sitting position, propped his back against the wall, and regarded me warily. There was a score of questions in his head, but he kept silent, afraid of setting me off again. That washed away my guilt and made me angry once more.

  “Antonio, it’s crazy to hold your tongue when you know I can read what’s in your mind if I want to.” I went to the leather recliner and sat.

  “Then what’s the point in asking questions?” he remarked. “Why don’t you just tell me what I want to know?”

  I gave him a vicious smile. “I’ll do you one better, Tony. That man is Vaughn Titus, pastor of a big church up in Saint Louis. I’ll let him tell you.”

  The energy I’d taken from Reverend Titus earlier flowed across the room, and he sat up with a loud gasp. He took in the unfamiliar surroundings, glanced at Antonio with abject confusion, and then spotted me.

  “You! Lying blasphemer!” Back again in that moment when he had been determined to aerate my brain, he lifted his hand and was startled to find that his gun wasn’t there.

  He wondered briefly what happened to the weapon before his rage boiled over again. Damn the gun. He prepared to launch himself forward, intent on choking the life out of me. Before he could follow through on that impulse, I telekinetically disconnected the nerves serving all body parts below his neck. He slid down onto the sofa like a man without bones.

  “What did you do to me?” the Reverend Titus demanded. He didn’t want or wait for an answer. The fact that he was suddenly paralyzed from the neck down didn’t disturb him at all. He was so caught up in his indignation that his brain never even reacted to what anyone else would have thought had been an act of magic. “The Lord is with me, blasphemer, and he will prevail. You will rot in hell, you devil. I would send you there myself if I could.”

  “Hold that thought, Reverend.” I turned slightly, taking in both Titus and Antonio with the same gesture. “I’ve got somebody I want you fellas to meet.”

  Only Titus was shocked when a shadow appeared in the air near him and quickly resolved itself into the slim figure of a man. The newcomer fell to the sofa with a tight grunt, his teeth coming together hard on his tongue. His face contorted, first with pain, then with confusion. A moment ago, he had been standing in a concourse of London’s Heathrow Airport, waiting for the announcement of the connecting flight that would carry him to his ultimate destination. Now he was… where?

  The man was forty, of medium height, clean-shaven, and darkly handsome, his black, closely trimmed hair going gray at the temples. He wore new Levi’s, brown suede cowboy boots, and a green T-shirt emblazoned across the front with “Beatlemania.” As was the case with Titus, catching sight of Antonio added to the man’s puzzlement. When he looked at me, his expression came close to embarrassment, as if he had met me before but couldn’t remember my name. Then he realized who I was. His face blackened with hatred.

  “Filth!” There was only a hint of his Middle Eastern origin in his voice. This man was no more capable of lifting himself from the sofa than Titus was. Thus, in lieu of cutting my throat and gouging out my eyes, he rifled off a blistering stream of curses at me in his native tongue.

  When the vitriol petered out, I continued with the introductions. “Antonio, Reverend, this man is Ibrahim Sharab. He lives in Saudi Arabia, but I just pulled him out of an airport in London. He was on his way here. Ibrahim, you want to tell these fine gentlemen why you were coming to Memphis?”

  Ibrahim’s eyes narrowed with outrage as deep as the Reverend’s. “I don’t answer to you, you dog. You piece of filth! I will kill you. I will kill you in the name of Allah! In the name of all that is holy and right, I will not eat or sleep until you are a rotting, stinking corpse!”

  “Oh my, all this love and happiness.” I hooted, giving an exaggerated shudder.

  Antonio stepped next to me and grabbed my arm. “Micah, why do these men—?”

  “Ask them,” I replied, shrugging off his hand. “You’re a religious guy. You’re in church every Sunday. These men are people of faith too. Let them explain why they want to kill me.”

  Antonio moved forward, placing himself in front of me. The Christian in him was wounded by the hatred these two men had spouted in the name of God. As angry as I was, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.

  “Reverend Titus, my name is Antonio Reyes, and this guy behind me is my friend. I want to know why—”

  “You call this sinner your friend? This godless blasphemer? I would burn him alive this very moment if I could!” Titus screeched. “He held himself forth as the Savior.”

  “I never told anybody I was Jesus,” I interjected in a fairly reasonable tone, considering the circumstances.

  “Liar! You made people—good, Christian people—think you were the Lord Jesus Christ. But I was not fooled. The moment I saw your face I knew you for the liar that you are.” The Reverend’s head tilted to one side, his expression darkening. “I had time to read more about you on the flight here. You work against the will of God.”

  I could feel the suspicion that opened in Antonio’s mind like a seed sprouting. “What did he do against God?” he asked the Reverend.

  “He cured homosexuals of AIDS! He healed an abortionist of the cancer that was killing her! He fed thousands of starving heathens!” Titus fired off each outrage like a missile.

  Not to be outdone, Ibrahim weighed in. “He put himself before my people as a prophet. They fell on their knees and bowed to him! He set foot in Islam’s holiest of places, which are open only to true Muslims. He fed and comforted and protected the enemies of Allah!”

  “And who are the enemies of Allah?” I prompted.

  “Jews! Christians! Homosexuals! Loose women! The great Satan itself, America!”

  Reverend Titus snorted with disgust. “If Satan is anywhere, he is in the desert hole that Islam crawled out of.”

  Ibrahim tossed his head to the side and spat at the Reverend. “There is no God but Allah. And Muslims are the only true believers. You and everyone like you are already dead!”

  “You and everyone like you are damnable heathens. You’re a collection of cowardly, murdering devils, and the Lord Jesus will surely cast you aside in that great day he gloriously returns—”

  The two of them were just getting cranked up. Unfortunately for them, my temper was already high. It exploded again with another burst of lightning. Antonio gave a yell, dropped to hi
s knees, and covered his head with his arms, too late by several seconds to have avoided the strike had it been intended for him. The bolt leapt over him and blazed across the men on the sofa. They shuddered under the crackling barrage and blacked out, heads dropping to the side in sudden, blessed silence.

  Once the air stopped hissing and seething, Antonio raised his head fearfully. I started pacing like a caged animal. The hostility I felt continued to grow, and I struggled against an almost irresistible urge to lash out at this guy who, a few hours before, I had considered my only real friend in the world.

  “Antonio, there are, right now, five hundred thousand and twenty-three people in the world who want to kill me. All because I don’t fit their idea of God. And that number is growing fast. This is crazy, man. I’m not trying to be anybody’s god. I just want to help people. That’s mostly all I’ve done since I came back with this power, and this is what it gets me?”

  “Micah, those people are confused,” Antonio said, an earnest look on his face. “You shouldn’t hold that against them. They don’t understand who you are or what you’re doing.”

  “What do you mean, they don’t understand? I’m doing what they should be doing, what every person ought to be doing, especially all of those so-called true believers. I’m looking out for my fellow man. Or at least I was. Now everybody can just kiss my skinny, narrow ass.”

  Antonio gently took my hand. “Mike, you don’t mean that.”

  “Don’t tell me what I mean!” Rage ripped through me and lightning flickered across the ceiling once more. Antonio ducked down, covering his head with his hands. Deep down, I didn’t want to hurt him, but if I stayed, I might very well wind up doing that very thing. I channeled my rage upward, causing thunder to blast through the sky, shaking the walls of the house. With that, I vanished, leaving Antonio to contend with the unconscious pair on his sofa.

  21

  I DIDN’T go far upon leaving Antonio’s. There was a newly renovated loft on South Main Street, twenty-two-hundred square feet of prime real estate with a fantastic view of the Mississippi River. It was one of three lofts—the other two were already sold and occupied—that topped a one-hundred-year-old brick building that had once been part of a six-story warehouse. The middle floors contained smaller condo units while the ground floor held a lobby, a spacious lounge, and a fitness center for residents. I spotted the place while beaming away from the Reyes home and decided to pop in for a closer look. The instant I materialized in that sprawling space, I decided it was going to be my home, at least for a while.

  After sending my consciousness on the prowl, I found the owner, an architect who had recently started her own homebuilding business, Marie Desmond Homes. Marie was in her east Memphis office, compiling a list of properties that were ready to be placed on the market. She planned to ask a mere $500,000 for the place I was standing in.

  I snatched all memory of the loft out of her head, took control of her mind, and used her fingers to delete the address and all related transactions from her computer. The copy of the deed she had in her files dissolved into a dusting of paper filaments that filled the bottom of the drawer like snow. For good measure, I also removed every trace of the loft from city and county property records.

  The utilities were already connected to the loft under Ms. Desmond’s name. It wouldn’t do to have her receive bills for a piece of property that, as far as she was now concerned, did not exist. So I magnetically erased the account from the Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division’s computer systems. I took the gas and electric meters and rearranged them into the first piece of furniture for my new domicile—a sixty-inch plasma TV with stereo speakers.

  There was a luxurious bathroom (we’re talking whirlpool tub, glass-walled shower, sauna, and a fireplace) enclosed in the southeast corner of the loft, and a second, more modest bath built into the middle of the east wall. The north and west walls were lined with windows, filling the place with light. French doors in the south wall opened onto a covered veranda. The floors were beige hardwood, highly polished, except for the kitchen and dining areas, where twelve-inch squares of black marble held sway.

  I lay down on that black marble and contemplated my existence.

  Let’s see. I could continue the altruism, a course that had, at present, more than ten thousand people converging on the little house in South Memphis that Mama had left me. They were despairing souls who would very likely tear the place apart in their determination to find me. I didn’t even want to think about the reporters, scientists, and government officials who would poke and prod and pick at me in their effort to understand what I’d become. That’s what happened to Willie Freeman after the FBI took him and his family into custody. The Feds still had doctors examining the man, determined to figure out how he’d come back to life. It was also very likely the Feds would try to turn me into a living weapon.

  Then there were the good folk who feared and hated me, who wanted to do what they believed was their god’s will and cut me out of existence. Their plans for my demise ran the gamut from the mundane to the ridiculous. Most favored bare hand strangulation, but there was a group of extremists hiding out in Mexico who intended to use a crude nuclear device crafted from stolen Russian technology. (I turned the bomb into a huge swarm of hornets, which didn’t exactly leave the terrorists feeling very good.)

  Now, on the other hand, I could forget about helping others and all the stupid complications that came with it and devote my power to Micah McGhee’s happiness.

  Hm.

  I weighed these options, giving each full and serious consideration, a process lasting exactly sixteen seconds. I am not ashamed at all to declare that the happiness of Micah McGhee won out. Truth be told, the decision had been made when I beamed out of Antonio’s house, but let it at least be said that Celeste McGhee’s little, big-headed boy thought things over before letting the rest of the world kiss his butt.

  There were mounds of discarded building material, left over from the renovation of the loft, piled in two tank-like bins behind the building. Energy swirled around the bins and the trash and, seconds later, they became the contemporary furnishings that appeared suddenly throughout the loft. Next I took money from the bank accounts of Reverend Titus, his church, and his followers. The bundle of cash made a floor-shaking thud when it landed on the floor behind my new platform bed. There wouldn’t be any pesky monthly bills to contend with, but I still needed pocket change, and that seventy-five thousand bucks (in small bills, conveniently) would carry me for a while.

  Finally, it wasn’t practical for me to go forth as myself any longer. I chose to indulge some of the fantasies I’d harbored since puberty. The orb’s power formed a shimmering blue cocoon around my body, massaging my skin with a tingling warmth that made me wonderfully drowsy. My jeans grew uncomfortably tight before loosening as their molecules were reworked by the sculpting energies. The rest of the transformation was lost in the stupor I lapsed into. I came to minutes later, feeling very happy with myself. The person who had lain down on that black marble floor was substantially different from the one who got up.

  As I stood there, the world seemed somehow off-kilter, and it took a moment for me to realize that this was due to my increased height. I had topped out at six three, which gives you a slightly different perspective than when you view things from five three. The white denim jeans were now pleated, loose-fitting, white cotton slacks, and the old Nikes had become white leather sandals. Shirtless, I looked down at a torso rippling with sculpted muscles. I palmed my crotch and discovered a much longed-for addition down there. It brought a foolish grin to my face. Again I experienced an odd sense of displacement.

  Whose body is this? The arms flexed when I told them to, which was a good sign. I took air molecules and stirred them into a white, sleeveless jersey with denim buttons. To accent the outfit, I pulled dust motes out of the air and fashioned a necklace of triangular ivory chunks linked together on a platinum chain. It was something I’d seen a rapp
er wear, gaudy but expensive, and I decided I was worth it.

  I grabbed a handful of twenties from the stash behind my bed, stuffed them into my wallet, and strolled out of my new home. On closing the door, I remembered the keys were still in Marie Desmond’s office. While I didn’t need them, I beamed the keys into my pocket. That would keep Marie from running across them and wondering what the hell they were for.

  After riding the elevator down, I debouched into the lobby. It was a wide, bright space of lime-green walls and white parquetry floors. I passed through the lobby and onto the street, then hung a right.

  It was a few minutes after seven, and the sunlight, though coming low out of the western sky, was still plentiful. A baseball game was scheduled for seven thirty, and the street was thick with cars edging their way north toward Redbird Stadium. Pedestrian traffic was much lighter, perhaps fifty people, most of whom were just ambling along on an evening stroll. I wanted to gauge the reaction to my new look, so I had the orb feed me the thoughts of those in the immediate vicinity.

  My tall body weighed in at two hundred pounds, covered with skin as tan as a Brazil nut. The jersey showed off my muscular arms, and with the buttons undone to my navel, bulging pecs and rolling abs were also on display. My dingy, crooked teeth were now perfectly aligned and toothpaste-ad white. The only feature I’d kept was my pale-green eyes.

  As I trotted across the street, heads turned. A nineteen-year-old blonde girl, seated behind the wheel of her daddy’s SUV, followed me with her eyes and thought, Damn. A woman of forty, walking down the street with her husband, ran a fantasy in her head about me that made me blush. Her husband looked at me with envy. A young, rapper-type African American guy, intimidated by my size, reassured himself that no matter how strong I was, a gunman could still take me down with a single bullet. Just in the few seconds it took to cross the street, sixteen people reacted to my appearance with jealousy or desire.