“Hi!” Lilly said, waving. Then she pounced on Zack’s brain. These are your parents?! You didn’t tell me you were bi-racial! I did kind of guess, but why didn’t you ever mention it?
I didn’t think it was relevant to anything.
“Ok, here we go,” Zack’s father said, thumbing through an infinite set of black VHS’s, which were of course the medium that he was most familiar with. “Stan… Stan…”
While they were waiting, Zack looked around the living room and kitchen, noticing for the first time how clean they were. The paint was new, the tiles were immaculate, and the wood on the inside of the doorways was flawless. This was not the same house that he collected his parents’ things from that day, so many years ago.
“Zack,” Lilly said, “Why don’t we just ask God about this? He knows we’re looking for the tapes. How do you think your dad is pulling them up? He hits the button, and God makes it work.”
“Not necessarily. Maybe God just created the technology.”
“Zack, he can hear us talking right now!”
“All right,” Zack said, “that’s it! Everyone use only telepathy now.”
“Zack,” Lilly said, “you’re not being rational.”
“Nope,” Zack’s father said, “it’s not here. There’s no record of Stan serving in Iraq.”
“I knew it,” Zack said. “This is bad. This is different from the other things. It’s a whitewash! It’s mind control!”
“Let’s just ask,” Lilly said, and before Zack could stop her, the question was on her lips. “God, we need to know something. Why doesn’t Zack’s friend Stan remember serving in Iraq?”
“Stan asked me if he could forget it,” God said, materializing. “It was his choice.”
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” Zack asked.
“I’ll show you,” God said, turning the TV on to a very special program. It was the sports bar from Stan’s video-game, except that this time, it was lit very darkly, and the only people in it were God and Stan. They sat alone at a table in the back, having a beer.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Stan said. ‘No matter how many amazing videogames I play, how many plates of ridiculously good food I eat, or how many new senses you show me, I will never forget. It doesn’t even matter that my war buddies are all alive and well here. I can’t forget the things that happened, they will always haunt me.’ Stan’s eyes grew watery. ‘God, when we walked into that room – ’
“I’m sorry,” God said, “but I’ll have to fast forward through this part. It’s too private.” The memory skipped forward.
‘I want to forget,’ Stan said, his voice cracking.
‘I can take the memories away if you wish,’ God said. ‘But you will never have them back, and you will not even know that they are gone.’
‘That’s what I want. Take them, please!’
The TV went black.
“How do we know that really happened?” Zack asked.
“Open up your hearts and minds to me, and I will show you.”
“No, I’m not falling for that trick again,” Zack said. “It’s just a drug. You’re doping everyone up one way or another and turning their minds to mush. You’re making them into zombies who sit on the couch all day watching TV and stuffing their faces, or who disappear into videogames forever!”
“Son,” Zack’s father said, “calm down. God’s love is not a drug.”
“Zack,” God said, “your friends and family are making their own choices, I’m not pushing anyone into doing anything.”
“It’s true Zack,” his father said. “It’s my choice what I want to do with my time here. What, is God supposed to force me to do whatever you think is best? Huh? You know better than God or something?”
“Maybe God shouldn’t have made all of the good drugs and videogames,” Zack said.
“Well then what should he have made?” Zack’s father asked. “That’s the problem with you Zack. Your whole life all you have is questions and criticisms. ‘Why are we having that for dinner again Mom?’ ‘Why did we come to Disney World in the hot summer with all the crowds Dad?’ ‘Hey, did you hear what that idiot bank CEO did?’ ‘The Vietnam War was wrong.’ ‘Boy that was a stupid commercial!’ But do you know how hard it is to actually do something yourself Zack?” He turned to the man in the white robe. “God, I know exactly how you feel right now.”
“Are you going to send me to my room, Dad?”
“No, I gave up trying to control you a long time ago. He’s your problem now God!”
Lilly jumped in. “It’s more than just the drugs or video-games. It’s a million other little things. For example, how did George W. Bush get into Heaven?”
Zack shot a sarcastic, icy look at his father.
“Lilly,” God said, “whatever policy mistakes you think the President might have made, his intentions and his heart were good.”
“I thought good intentions paved the way to hell,” she replied.
No one answered this.
“Zack, Lilly, what are you trying to prove?” God asked. “Do you want me to tell you that I do not really exist and that atheism was correct the whole time?”
“No,” Lilly said, “there’s more. Two days ago I saw my old neighbor, Mrs. Perez, with her second husband. But she was with her first husband for so much longer – he only died a few years ago. Why isn’t she with him instead? I can only imagine how he must feel!”
“Lilly,” God said, “I’m surprised that this one bothers you. A lot of marriages have broken up since I brought my kingdom here. Remember, it’s till death do us part.”
Zack’s dad laughed, but he was the only one.
“Anyway Lilly,” God continued, “Mr. Perez is doing just fine. He understood and was happy for them. I introduced him to someone else, and all four of them went to lunch the other day.”
“But –”
“What would you have me do? If she was with her first husband, you would be upset that she was not with her second.”
“But it’s wrong!” Lilly shouted. “When she married her first husband, they didn’t plan for it to be this way. They thought they would be together forever, even in Heaven. But it didn’t happen, and there’s something very sad about that. There is an entire alternate future in which they are together in Heaven, but that future will never be!”
“Lilly, not all things can be. We make our choices and take as much happiness as we can, but there are logical limits that even I cannot surpass. What will it take to make you happy?” He was exasperated. “Would you have me make a square-shaped circle for you?”
“NO, but I would have you allow me to make a BABY for myself!”
The room suddenly got dead silent, and Zack looked at Lilly like she was the second apocalypse. “What?”
“You all heard me. This man –” she pointed at God, “– told me that I can never have a baby in Heaven. It’s my fucking body, but for some reason, he gets to decide.”
Zack’s parents quietly slipped out of the room.
“Lilly, I didn’t say you could never have one. I just said that the baby could not stay here. It has to earn its place in Heaven first, and it would have to do that somewhere else. If this were to happen, you could visit it there, or you could live there until the child made it to Heaven. The choice would be yours.”
“We can leave Heaven if we want to?” Zack asked. He was still in shock, but this conversation was too important to stay out of. “I thought your first rule was that we had to stay on Earth.”
“You can leave under certain conditions. If you want, I can show you right now. It was not my intention to do this so soon, but apparently it’s necessary.”
“Show us,” Zack and Lilly said simultaneously.
13
“For thousands of years, I have been sending the people who are not yet ready to enter my kingdom to the planet of Limbo, which lies in a distant solar system. It is a harsh desert world with no oceans and daytime temperatures that typical
ly exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The people live in small villages and cities around what few scattered water sources there are, in simple stone and clay buildings.
“The Limbeans are a violent, primitive people. They war constantly, have no concept of justice, and have very little religion, science, or art to speak of. Even worse, their culture places no emphasis on sharing or helping others. For example, a Limbean would never stop to help an injured person that he encountered on a road. And even if he did, the act would be so unbelievable, that the injured person would not accept the stranger’s help, and would try to fight him off.
“And it gets worse. When a baby is born handicapped, the Limbeans leave it in the desert to die. They have no concept of hospitals or schools, and it is understood that a king rules for no other purpose than his own benefit. If one does not like it, then one can raise his own army and challenge the king.”
“Survival of the fittest,” Zack said.
“Above all else,” God continued, “Limbeans are selfish.”
“Selfish? They sound inhuman!” Lilly remarked.
“No,” God replied, “they just represent a different side of humanity. And my children, it gets worse still.
“As a ritual, Limbean parents abandon each and every one of their children alone in the desert when they turn ten, in order to teach them personal responsibility. Girls find themselves a full three-day walk from the village, for boys, it is five. Only about half of these children ever make it back.
“And finally, perhaps most shocking of all, when Limbean children grow up, it is not uncommon for them to kill their parents and take their land. For this reason, parents walk a very fine line between giving their kids too much help in life, which would make them weak, and too little help, which would make them vengeful. Along the way, they constantly remind their children of all that they do for them, but also constantly gauge how much their children really appreciate it, in order to determine whether they will need to kill them before they get too strong. Such is the law of the desert.”
“Um, excuse me,” Zack said, “but why would we ever want to go there, let alone raise a baby there?”
“Well, perhaps you can make Limbo a better place. You have all of eternity to try. Just realize though that in Limbo you will not have any of the powers that you have here. You will feel pain, and the only thing you can do if things get too difficult is come back to Heaven.”
“What if we die on Limbo?” Zack asked.
“If that happens, you will automatically reappear in Heaven. However, although Limbo can deal you no permanent harm, you must both remember that this is no videogame. The people there are very real, and if you do wrong to them, you could lose your place in Heaven. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Lilly said.
“Yes,” Zack said, “but –”
“Good,” said God. He snapped his fingers, and they were standing on a plateau in a red desert wasteland. It looked like the surface of Mars. There were no clouds in the sky, and the sun was gigantic. It was unbearably hot, and Zack and Lilly could feel the sun burning their skin within seconds. “Here.” God gave them each a very light, white cloak for cover. “If you wish to go, I would send you to that village down there.” He pointed, and far off in the distance, Zack and Lilly could see a small patch of green dotted with little orange and red buildings. “I would arm you with the knowledge of the Limbean language, but oddly enough, the people who live in that village know some English words. Makaio taught them.”
“Who’s Makaio?” Lilly asked.
“You will learn more about him there,” God said with a smile. “He started a new religion, Makaism. Father Kai will tell you all about that.”
“Father Kai?” Zack asked.
“He is the current head of the Church. He is very spiritually advanced, so I revealed the existence of Limbo to him just a few days after I brought my kingdom to Earth. He wanted to help the rest of humanity get to Heaven quicker, so I sent him here. On Earth, he was a Buddhist.”
Zack and Lilly looked at each other.
“Now, as I was saying, the Limbeans generally do not accept help from anyone. However, some of them will, on occasion, make exceptions for religious people. That is why you must be a part of the Church in order to help them.”
“Um, who said that we want to help them?” Zack asked.
“We want to help them,” Lilly said.
“I had a feeling,” God said, with a subdued chuckle. “Now, when you are down there, listen closely to Father Kai. You are the only three people from Heaven to have ever descended to Limbo, but eventually more will come. I am going to leave you now in your quarters in the Church. If you want to leave at any time, just telepath it to me, and you will be back in Heaven. Good luck!”
God snapped his fingers again, and Zack and Lilly found themselves in a dark, bare, orange-red, rock-clay room with a bright-red dirt floor. The room was smaller than a prison cell, and the only thing in it besides Zack and Lilly were two body-sized lumps of hay. “I hope those aren’t our beds,” Zack said.
“Hi! I see you’ve found your beds!” an excited voice cried out, announcing Father Kai’s abrupt entrance into the room. “You must be Zack and Lilly.” He wore a plain, white, loosely-flowing robe, and spoke quickly and enthusiastically. “God told me you were coming, and I am thrilled to have you! Right now, it’s just myself and a few villagers, but in time, with your help, there will be more.”
“I hope so,” Lilly said. “We’re happy to join you!”
“Yes, yes. Oh, there’s so much to tell you! Where to start? I know, why don’t I show you around? Come this way.”
They left the room and walked into a short, dark hallway.
“You must please excuse these meager conditions,” Father Kai said, turning left, “but the village is very poor, and we have to make do with what we can. On Earth, my work was so much easier. My village had plentiful food and shared everything with the monastery, but that was there, not here.”
They emerged into a larger, rectangular-shaped room, about the size of a grade-school classroom. It was also plain, except for one important feature: each of the two longer sides had three beautiful stained-glass windows. Their panels were colored with bright blues, greens, whites, and everything in between – and told a complex story of mounting ocean waves, frolicking fishes, and dolphins leaping over palm-covered isles. The windows’ breezy colors and images contrasted sharply with the severe reality of the fiery desert walls encasing them.
“Water is very important to the Limbeans,” Father Kai said. “They believe that Limbo and its moons, its sun, and the stars, all lie submerged in the middle of an infinite black ocean, and that in order to create humanity, God sealed Limbo in a giant glass sphere to keep the water out. They believe that God made holes in the sphere so that just the right amount of water would trickle in as rain, but that the Devil, who absolutely hates water, hid inside the sphere when God sealed it, and is constantly plugging up the holes to keep the rain out. God unplugs the holes, but the Devil is quick, and God cannot open the sphere to get him out because then too much water would flow in, and it would destroy all of the villages. Every Limbean believes this. However, only a few Limbeans, all of them living in this village, believe in Makaio.”
“Ah yes,” Zack said. “Who is Makaio?”
“He is the savior of our young religion, Makaism. He was born in this village sometime between seventy and one hundred years ago, during a great rainstorm.”
“That’s a wide range,” Lilly said.
“Well, the villagers do not keep written historical records, and I only just got here myself a little while ago. At any rate, when Makaio was born, in some cosmic mistake, or perhaps as the result of divine will, he could already speak in his own language and had a complete memory of his past life. The villagers who believe in Makaio say that he claimed to have lived on an island called Hawaii.
“Now, at this time, none of the Limbeans had any concept of a blue ocean w
ith islands and an open sky above. So Makaio described it to them, in words and in pictures. He crafted the stained-glass windows, and he told them about the fish and the dolphins, the palm trees and the coconuts, and the magnificent waterfalls endlessly pouring over black volcanic rock in the center of the lush tropical forest. He taught them some of the Hawaiian language, English, and he told them that Hawaii was not just an island, but that it was the greatest possible island that could ever exist. He said that God sent him from Hawaii to tell them that it was there, and that they could be reborn in it after death if they led good lives. He said that if they did not accept his message and continued to live in sin, they would be doomed to live multiple lives on Limbo, again and again, for all of eternity.”
“Interesting,” Zack said. “Is it true? I mean the part about Makaio being from Hawaii? It would have to be right, because how else would he know the name Hawaii?”
“Well, he could have made the name up,” Father Kai said.
“No he couldn’t have. The real Hawaii is just like you described it. It’s too much of a coincidence.”
“Hawaii is real!?”
“Of course,” Lilly said, “it’s in the middle of the Pacific. It’s a state.”
Father Kai stared blankly.
“In America.”
“Ohhhhhhh… ok. I did learn about America, briefly, after the resurrection. You’ll have to excuse my ignorance about the rest though! God must have forgotten to mention this, but I lived my natural life in a monastery in Southern Asia hundreds of years before the resurrection, and I never knew anything about America during that life. Still, I suppose it shouldn’t come as a total shock that Hawaii is real. Based on everything else I’ve learned about God and the world since the resurrection, it seems like most of Makaio’s basic message is true. But wow, still! Have either of you ever been to Hawaii?”
“Yes,” Zack said, “on family vacations.”
“Vacations?” Father Kai asked.
“Yes, my parents and I would hop on a plane once every few years and fly to Hawaii for a week to take a break from work and school.”
The Alpha and the Omega: An absurd philosophical tale about God, the end of the world, and what's on the other planets Page 9