by Zaslow Crane
“Have you tried giving them “Matthew 24-36”?
I could tell that Sanchez was annoyed, but he recited part of the passge anyway: “But about that day or hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”…. “Is that the one you’re referring to? Of course! I gave that to them long ago. They can look up scripture as well as anyone. They seem to think that while Scripture is carved in stone, maybe they can wheedle or badger a good quote out of a live Bishop.”
“Okay. I see your point. However, despite the lack of real, hard data, I do feel that something is there, awaiting my best minds; awaiting the right person to unlock the last door.”
My answer didn’t satisfy the Cardinal, but I think it was obvious that I was trying; and I wasn’t blowing him off. He’d finally gone away again, if only partially satisfied; yet still fully angry with me.
He probably knows if and when I do figure this out, I must run it past the Pope’s lieutenants first!
Entertainment has again gone nostalgic of late. These things always seem to go in cycles…However, this time I may have noticed something relevant.
Just as a pendulum swings back and forth; back and forth, so was our penchant for seeking entertainment.
When we (as a culture) first got nostalgic, we went back a decade. For that was a safe distance, easily understood; grasped. Later, we went back even further. Pendulum swinging, even more broadly “daring” us to “keep up” with the swings and be entertained by the novelty of it.
We’ve recently broached the mid-20th century, the time of black and white images and variety shows.
We watch these long dead people in tacky, badly fitting clothing and unfortunate haircuts and feel so sophisticated; so superior. We watched acrobats, animal acts, song and dance acts, stand up comedians, and…jugglers. It was entertainment in its simplest, most undiluted form.
However, as I watched the archives with friends or colleagues, a thought began to nag at me. It sat there leering at me in my peripheral, daring me to refute it. Try as I may, I’ve been unable to do so.
My mind instead, goes back to that first thought, perhaps placed there by God, Himself, finally speaking to me: “What if He is just…out of souls?”
Of course, there is no way to know if this notion has any kernel of truth to it. The only way to ascertain for sure is to wait. And, waiting will be the most difficult thing, if I am correct.
You see, I began to imagine a God who was not entirely omnipotent. In much the same way that Arthur C. Clark supposed that any civilization sufficiently advanced above another would be perceived as possessing “magic.”
What if, I shuddered, God was an incredibly agile and adept juggler, really more like a plate spinner? What if He is like one of those guys on old variety shows, who used to stand flexible sticks vertically and spin real plates on them, always getting to a plate just before it slowed enough to fall and instead, re-spun it and kept it from crashing to the hard floor and shattering into a million pieces.
What if that’s exactly what He’s been doing since the beginning of time? And what if I might think of a plate as representing a billion souls?
If that were true…. At first it was a cakewalk. Yet, as more people began to exist, like popcorn suddenly exploding in a microbag and growing exponentially in size, so did the complexity-of-spinning chores.
Still easy, like the guy I watched on an ancient viddie called: Ed Sullivan last night. But now He had become a bit busy. More plates to spin.
Time goes on. More “popcorn” pops and more people burst upon the scene; more souls needing to be overseen and shepherded.
A billion…two…three…
Piece of cake. It’s obvious. He was so good at it; he did an expert job!
Thousands of years going by, with never a shattered plate.
Once we hit around seven billion, He was running around pretty quickly, I’d imagine, but obviously, still adept enough to stay ahead of entropy which must kill everything, eventually.
I was courting Blasphemy, I know, but the thought came unbidden into my mind, and it came from somewhere…Perhaps HE sent it to me….
What He does is delay that inevitability, and…I thought, much to his credit, delay that apocalyptic set of events, due to His caring, and skill.
But, and again I shuddered, in light of recent events, what if He was not, has never been truly omnipotent?What if He simply appeared so because…Well, what else could we think in light of such a mind? Such talent?…Such caring?
So, in the same way the juggler tries to keep, say, eight plates spinning, and succeeding, then attempts “nine.”
And, if He achieves this, thus emboldened, He attempts “ten.” By this time, he is running from one to the next simply trying to keep disaster from occurring; but an individual, if He is not truly omnipotent, regardless of how talented, has limits.
Perhaps for this Juggler, spinning nine plates was the most he could maintain; ten being just within his abilities but not for more than a few scant of His seconds.
And this was the thought that caused me to pant furiously and start sweating in the middle of the night when sleep wouldn’t come….
What if God has hit His limit? Are 10 billion souls more than he can oversee? What if all the plates are about to crash to the floor into a million pieces? Entropy will not be denied.
As a person trained in matters theological I considered:
What then? Pray for the Second Coming?
And what comes after…when the Juggler takes His bow?
Enemy Within
BY ZASLOW CRANE
B
ez, Chet and Chato hunched down in the protection of a gully. They were taking heavy fire and kept their heads low. Somewhere within shouting distance was Sarge, but then, he was always in shouting distance. Fuck, it seemed he was always shouting. He could be such a dick!
Bez looked in his heads up display. His tongue triggered the night scope function imbedded in his right, upper molar. It displayed on his viz’ screen over his face.
He tried to conclude where the fire was coming from. Judging by the pattern, there were two, maybe three gunners, tops.
Cap was still pinned down in a small stand of trees, maybe 30 meters and left, behind him.
As long as he stayed there, he was probably safe.
The new combat suits, or S O A’s, were more like a plasglas suit of armor, but the damn things weighed a ton! There were servos in the elbows and knees, hips and shoulders, so it was never difficult to run, or climb, or use their arms and legs in any normal function, fuck, in these suits, they were all fucking Swartzneggers, but then, there was the rain. Traction was a bitch!
The constant rain had turned the red Georgia dirt to mud. They were all sunk in to their ankles after only a few minutes. This was an ominous development. Their feet were leaden; mired and hard to move, even with the S O A’s servos.
All the advances in tek, in gear, in weapons, and they couldn’t do squat about a thunderstorm!
If the rain didn’t let up, they’d be mired for sure! Easy pickin’s for the more mobile and (they’d heard) quicker and lighter Gas Cartel’s troops.
More fireflies flew overheard; disturbingly close to his head.
Bez flinched involuntarily.
The Gas Cartel used incendiary bullets almost exclusively in situations like these, because in addition to occasionally finding unarmed crevasses in their armor, the fiery and unnerving flammable bullets could cause a lot of collateral damage.
The fireflies didn’t even light up until they were 30 or 40 meters out, and then, suddenly, they’d light up nearby, comin’ at you! Fast! It was freaky! That was another reason the Gas Cartel’s troops used incendiary rounds—the fear factor!
The PlasGlas suits could take three, maybe four direct hits in the same spot before degrading enough where the next hit might harm or even kill the wearer, but those little fires that didn’t go out. Those were the real problem.
&nb
sp; They fucked up the night vision; the hot cinders always seemed to get into the fabric gussets—the supposedly fireproof fabric gussets! And they’d burn them away! And there was more. If the fireflies burned away a part of a gusset, where two plates of armor met, water would get in. On a night like this, water getting into a suit o’ armor, or “S O A,” it would cause short circuits. Short circuits could kill you.
While triple-redundancy was the watchword on planning boards of the General Mills Armories, there frequently was still hell to pay in a situation like this. The GMA brass were not happy with failures of any sort!
The guys mired in mud fired back. The sound of the projectiles leaving their weapons was deafening; the groupings and scope of their firepower was astounding!
There was a lull in the exchange of death.
Bez I.M.’d the Cap. He told him to sit tight.
The three guys in the culvert had to figure out something so that they could regroup and get out of the mud or they were dead, or as good as, anyway. The mud sucked at them and made the simplest movements difficult.
Chato took out a cigarette and rubbed the non-filter end on his sleeve. It immediately ignited, he keyed off his full-face visor, raised it out of the way. He took a long, grateful drag.
Bez was incensed.
“Whathefuck, Vato? You crazy?! They had to see the flare of the headstrike! Put it out!”
“Fuuuuck!” Chato waved him away as a firefly went singing mere inches above their heads. “If they could do more than pin us down now, they would….We’ve probably got ten mins, maybe 20 until an airstrike comes down on us. They can’t do shit! Not for a while yet. I’m gonna enjoy my fucking cig!” Chato took another drag. He appreciated the enhanced nicotine rush.
Sarge was yelling something too, but he was drowned out by an extended volley.
They were supposed to stay off the mikes, and Sarge was “spozed” to I.M. them.
“Maybe he had a glitch. Maybe that’s why he was yelling!”
Bez ducked more incoming. He flinched a lot these days. He was a short-timer. And, somehow, he was out here instead of running the fucking mail stop for the last two months of his hitch!
Bez looked Sarge’s way and leaned into Chato’s ear,“He was yelling because that’s what he does! He’s fucking Sarge!”
These new suits o’ armor…This generational upgrade was probably great on paper, he thought, but in real life, maybe it wasn’t so good. He looked down at his scuffed and damaged sleeve. I kinda liked my old S O A. He thought petulantly. It couldn’t do as much as this, it was scuzzy, but I knew I could depend on it.
Bez looked around.Fuck! he thought, frustrated. He couldn’t see past his hand in this downpour! How’m’I supposed to shoot these fuckers?
“I don’t think I like bein’ one of the mark 1’s,” he told himself for about the eleventeenth time this trip. But, there was nothing he could do about it. Insubordination at General Mills was immediately punished with a bullet in the back of the head.
Being an “M 1” was the first run off the General Mills Armory lines; Their suits were the first ones after the prototypes. So far, they’d been good.
No, he corrected himself. They’d been better’n good, they’d been great, but he still just didn’t trust this piece of gear yet! It’s too new!
Chet laid his over/under on the berm and sighted on the bright flashes of the Gas Cartel’s snipers. He looked carefully for the muted muzzle flash.
The under was a rapid fire or slow burst “auto,” capable of firing 40 rounds a second in a straight line or in any of a half dozen pre-programmed patterns. It was great for clearing out unfriendlies when you couldn’t see them exactly, but you kinda had an idea of where they were hiding.
The over was basically a shotgun, but it was a shotgun on steroids. It was a small fucking cannon! It packed a wallop and could pierce many types of armor; personal or automotive. But he needed a clear shot first.
He carefully braced his shoulder against the plasglas stock. Even with the shock absorbing design, this thing’d rip your shoulder off if you weren’t careful!
There were always lots of guys recuperating a few miles back with dislocated shoulders! They’d taken their over for granted.
Chet couldn’t get a good enough bead on them, and the rain had decided to come down even harder, making it tougher to spot the enemy, and making their plight more immediate. “Fucking lovely…,” he muttered. “Jesus-fucking-Christ!”
Bez had an idea. “Guys!” He loud-whispered, as rain sluiced down his cheeks.
They all looked at him cautiously, keeping an eye out for fireflies.
“Which of us has been hit the fewest times?”
Everyone counted their own number of “hits” to moment-by-moment assess if their SOA was in danger of failing and allowing them to be killed, but no one had a true, dependable number, not after the fuck-up at the LZ!
So they all looked at each others’ chest-plating to assess each other. There was no way they could actually inspect their own armor while wearing it.
“Looks like Chato is the most careful, or most lucky….”
“Yeah almost no burn marks or divots….”
Chet reached out and stole Chato’s cigarette. Before Chato could protest, he took the last few drags, then it was down to the biodegradable filter. He flung in the general direction of the “gas boys,” over the top of the berm.
“Okay. So, what’s your idea?”
“Chet you stay here, and be ready, I’ll snake over to those bushes….” Bez pointed to some bushes a couple of meters away. There might have been better cover further off, but their night vision was useless in this torrent!
Everytime the “gas boys” shot a firefly at them, the droplets all lit up! That temporarily scorched the LqD readouts in their nightvision, making them go from that weird green to almost white and fuzzy! That was scary—to be blinded! Even for a few seconds. Guys died in a few seconds! Everyone feared being blinded!
Bez continued, “When I get there…” he pointed to Chato. “You reboot your camo program and stand up—just for a second. That’ll make your suit flicker white before it goes back to this shit-brown-camo color.
Chato wasn’t buying it.
“Fuck you man’o—Fuck you!”
“Listen…This’ll work…”
“You want me to be their target? No way,man’o!” Chato was so distressed by this idea, he’d actually raised his weapon as if to ward off an attack!
Bez tried to soothe Chato’s fear and his fear of being perceived as expendable. Hell, they were all expendable! How do I explain that to someone as excitable as Chato? Deep down, he knew. They all knew…
“Look. Don’t be hinky. We won’t let you segue, bro. We’ll be layin’ down a shitload of ordnance as soon as we see their little chickenshit muzzle flashes!”
“Oh man,” Chato was unconvinced…
“Okay, you go over there.” He gestured to the bushes. “I’ll stand up. What do you say, Vato?” Bez gestured to his scorched chest plates. He knew he’d been hit quite a few times.
“I’ll do it, vato, if you won’t. I just figured that you would have the best chance to survive, but, fuckit babes, I’ll do it
He looked around the small group to make his point.
He paused leaning in, to finish his thoughts: “You know why? ‘Cause this is the best chance that we got; this idea that I had…I can’t think of anything better. Can you? Or you?”
He looked around at his comrades.
Chato shook his head…“No man’o, I’ll do it. Just be ready, see?”
Bez grinned. His grin was mud flecked and huge. It was a “Bez Trademark Grin,” but while he doubted that they could see his face at all through the spattered visor, he knew that they were all probably seeing it in their imaginations.
“Just gimme five, babes, I’ll be ready!” He scampered off hoping not to see any Gassies on the way.
It took more than five, but Bez finally got in
to position.
He I.M.’d Chet and Chato, and ignored Sarge. Sarge was obviously having problems. Prob’ly from the explosions at the LZ, earlier that day.
He heard some sporadic cover fire from their left. Large bore booming shots. “That must be Sarge,” he thought. “He must figure that we got something goin’ on….”
He I.M’d: “Time to Mambo, vatos!”
In seconds, the almost invisible Chato had lit up and stood up! Before he even got fully erect he was hit with a small, tight volley of incendiary slugs, they made a hell of a racket but they didn’t pierce his “skin.”
Chato dove back down, his heart pounding in his ears! He gasped at how close he’d come to being cheesed -as in “Swiss.”
At the same time from both sides of him Bez and Chet opened up with killer volleys aimed at the bright spots that the muzzle discharges left in the dark, musty air.
Bez had a weapon similar to Chet’s, but he had no under. Instead, he had a full auto capable rifle with real time addressable patterns he could call up while holding his finger on the “fire” button on the plasglas stock.
He pictured the rounds screaming away from him at the speed of sound, 40 of ‘em per second in dancing patterns.
They sped away and made spirals or zig zags cutting up everything in their path.
Soon it was quiet. The rain kept up, but aside from that, it was still…creepy.
The sudden silence was shocking, surreal.
From far off they heard sobbing. One of the gas soldiers, no doubt.
Chato I.M.’d Chet and Bez: “Mira! In case you were wondering: Yeah I’m okay—and No I ain’t never doin’ that ever again! Nunca, Baby!”
Bez checked his vitals in his heads up. His own pulse was dangerously high. After being so high he’d crash, so he’d need a stim in an hour or so. If they didn’t find a place to sleep soon, he’d be wasted later.
Shit.
By then they’d be “Back At Base.” He hoped. He damn well better be B.A.B.! Shit!
Bez was point. He didn’t figure his vitals were going to go back down to normal in the next few minutes.