The Alpha and the Omega: An absurd philosophical tale about God, the end of the world, and what's on the other planets

by H. M. Charley Ada

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” Father Kai said.

  “Just keep those pilgrims coming!” Klatu said with a smile.

  Klatu, Zack, and Lilly left for Klatu’s stone farmhouse south of the village, while Father Kai finished setting up. When they arrived, Tarta, Klatu’s wife, was waiting for them at the door, with the newborn in her arms. She was about forty years old, like Klatu, and together, the couple represented the oldest two Limbeans that Zack and Lilly had met thus far. Wow, Zack thought, in contemplation of this fact, Klatu must be pretty successful in the farming business.

  After Klatu made the introductions, they walked inside and sat down on the large hay-padded stone chairs in the center of the main room, and Zack and Lilly got a closer look at Klatan.

  “Oh he’s so cute!” Lilly said, as Zack watched diligently, trying to see if he could get a further read on her predilections for baby-making.

  “Thank you,” Tarta said, “would you like to hold him?”

  “Of course,” Lilly replied, carefully taking Klatan, despite his squirmy protestations. “Wow, he’s a very active baby!”

  “I know,” Tarta said. “Maybe he will be a soldier or a hunter.”

  “No, he will be a farmer like me!” Klatu said.

  When Klatan finally calmed down, Lilly passed him to Zack, who awkwardly tried to cradle him. Being such a cerebral person, he was never very good with babies or small children; he usually found it difficult to say and do the silly things necessary to entertain them. However, Zack felt a strange familiarity with Klatan, and when he held him, a very odd, prickling sensation arose in the back of his head and neck. For some reason, it felt as if someone had lit a cigar in the room, even though Zack knew that there were no tobacco products of any kind on Limbo. Then Zack felt as if he had eaten way too much food and needed to go collapse on a couch. It felt like the Dallas Cowboys… the Detroit Lions… and political arguments over Whiskey Sours. No, it couldn’t be, could it?

  Yes, God said, in his mind. Yes it is. God had never telepathed to Zack on Limbo before, but this was a special occasion. Zack was holding his former uncle, the conman, in his arms.

  “Lilly, it’s my Uncle Casey!” he burst out without thinking.

  “Huh?” Klatu said.

  “I mean, uh…” Zack fumbled for the words, “… it’s what my Uncle Casey said. Um… uh… someday I would like babies. I just needed to get older. Now I like them.”

  “Oh, I see,” Tarta said. She and Klatu nodded, and Lilly flashed Zack a knowing smile.

  “Well,” Klatu said to Zack, “why don’t you and I leave Klatan with the women while we go gather the cacti?”

  Lilly’s smile turned into a frown.

  “Sounds good,” Zack said, making a mental note to apologize to Lilly later.

  When Zack and Klatu reached the cactus patch, they found that they were not the only ones paying it a visit that day; there were also twelve golligans, and they were not at all as Zack had pictured them. He was expecting to see iguanas or Gila monsters, but these creatures were different. They had green scales, big bloodshot eyes, large yellow teeth, and on the tops of their heads – long, black, human-like hair. Some of them walked upright on their hind legs, while others got along on all fours. One wobbled back and forth awkwardly on two legs, toppling over every few steps, like a human toddler learning to walk. Each golligan was about six inches tall or long, depending on how it carried itself. Some of them were thin, while others had little pot bellies, and one, which seemed to be breathing very heavily, was fat all around.

  Six of the golligans were trying to build a pyramid at one of the cacti, in order to reach the higher, fresher part, while another six walked back and forth around them watching. All of them made little grunting noises as they worked. “Oog oog! Uk uk!” went the little cactus burglars.

  “Don’t they see us?” Zack asked.

  “No, golligans are very stupid,” Klatu said.

  “Really? They seem a little smarter than ordinary animals.”

  “In some ways maybe, but just look at them; there’s a full dozen, and not a single one has spotted us. If they were smart, one of them would keep a look-out.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Yes, yes. And just watch this! Oh boy Zack, you’re in for a treat. Baaaaseeeet! Baaaaseeeet! Here girl!”

  A sleek white cat bounded toward them. She looked just like a housecat from Earth, except that she was about the size of a golden retriever.

  “Golligans Baset! Golligans! Huh? Where’s the golligans? Where are they? Come on Baset, find the golligans!”

  Baset pounded her front paws on the ground in excitement. She crouched low and darted her head back and forth across the grainy red landscape. Then she spotted them.

  “Go get ‘em Baset! Go get ‘em!” Klatu shouted, louder than before.

  With that final alarm, just as Baset took off, the golligans finally entered the present. “Ack! Ack! Ack!” they screamed, tumbling over each other in a mad rush for the small dark hole in the ground from which they had come.

  But Baset was an arrow, and in seconds, she was upon the last poor golligan in their disorderly little escape-line. It was the one that for some reason, just could not figure out that his nascent, unsophisticated body was not designed for walking upright.

  “Uja!” the golligans cried from their hole. “Uuuuujaaa!”

  Zack heard the anguish in their voices and knew that they were not as stupid as Klatu thought.

  “Ha!” Klatu said. “That’ll teach ‘em.”

  “I guess,” Zack said, averting his eyes from the slaughter.

  “Oh, don’t think me cruel Zack,” Klatu said, noticing his subtle discomfort. “You must realize,” he continued, wheeling the cart around so that they could get to work, “that this farm was not always successful. When my father ran it, it barely brought in enough money for us to survive. The competition is brutal. You have to defend the crop against insects, golligans, thieves, and competing farmers. You have to pray for good weather, and you have to bribe the Chieftain. My father never had that killer instinct; that’s why we were poor. But I and my sons, who will till this land after I have passed on, will not repeat those mistakes.”

  “But you’re a very generous person Klatu, especially to the Church.”

  “Yes, giving can have its rewards. But you must always distinguish between those that will return your generosity and those who will take it as a sign of weakness and an invitation for attack.”

  “Good point. You are a very wise man, Klatu.”

  “One does not live on Limbo for as long as I have without learning a thing or two. But there are still many things that escape me, especially when it comes to some of the advanced business practices of which you sometimes speak.”

  “Well Klatu, you can ask me more about those anytime you want. For me, that’s the easy stuff!”

  “Splendid. How about the Hawaiian stock market then? Can you tell me more about that one?”

  “Sure. Do you remember how I was saying that in Hawaii, the businesses are huge, and that some of them have hundreds or even thousands of employees?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, many of them are owned not just by one person or one family, but by a whole bunch of strangers – sometimes millions of them. We call them investors. Here’s how it works. If you want to own some of the business, you give some money to the people that run it, and they give you a small percentage of the ownership rights. We call that a stock. If you only have a little money, you can buy just a very tiny piece of the business. If you have more, then you can buy a bigger piece. Then, when the business earns profits, it pays you a percentage of them, based on how much stock you own.”

  “Ok, so far so good.”

  “Ok. Now, here’s the really interesting part. Investors sell their stocks to each other in a huge marketplace, and the prices are always changing based on how profitable people think the businesses will be in the future. So, if you’re smart
, and you can predict better than the other people what will happen in the future, you can make money by buying and selling the stocks.”

  “Ok, this I also understand, but what’s less clear to me is how one could ever know how profitable someone else’s business really is. What would stop the people who run the business from saying it was profitable, when it really wasn’t, just to get your money, or, on the other hand, saying it wasn’t, when it was, in order to avoid having to share the profits with you?”

  “Ah, that’s where people like Lilly come in. See, the King sets rules that the businesses have to follow, like, for example, that they have to report all kinds of information to the King and the Hawaiian citizens about how much money the business is making. And there are so many rules, that they fill up entire bookcases, and there is an entire profession of people dedicated to watching the businesses for the King, explaining the rules to the businesses, and arguing with each other about what the rules mean. We call them lawyers. And between you and me…” he looked over his shoulder to make sure they were alone, “… I think they make way too much money for what they do and that they intentionally write the rules to be more complicated than they need to be, so that they can make a fortune explaining and arguing about them.”

  “Wow,” Klatu said, “Hawaii truly is an extraordinary place!”

  “It is. Of course, all of this was in the days before Makaio, and before God made Hawaii the greatest possible island. Nowadays, there are no more businesses, stock markets, or lawyers.”

  “Oh yes, that’s right. Zack, that part still confuses me. You keep telling me stories about all the things that happened in Hawaii in your lifetime before God made it the greatest possible island. But Makaio was here a hundred years ago, long before you would have been born, and he said that Hawaii already was the greatest possible island. How can that be?”

  “Well, er…” Zack thought fast, “… time doesn’t move at the same rate in Hawaii as it does here on Limbo. A thousand days here could be just one day in Hawaii. So when Makaio came to Limbo, I was already all grown-up, and it was only a little while after Makaio’s visit that I decided to come down.”

  “Oh, ok. That makes sense,” Klatu said, nodding, but showing all across his face the symptoms of a mind buried deeply in thought.

  A little while later, the cart was full, and Zack and Klatu headed back toward the spot where Baset had her sport earlier. To Zack’s surprise, two golligans, who appeared to be upright walkers, were outside of their hole again, hunched over a quivering mass of yellow goo. Klatu did not notice.

  As they got closer, Zack saw that the mass was actually a third golligan, lying on the ground in several pieces. This no doubt, was the unfortunate soul that Baset had recently removed from Darwin’s game, and soft gurgles escaped from his tiny body as the two survivors tried pushing his legs into his torso, in a vain attempt to put him back together. Zack wished that he had the power to fix him, and for the first time in a very long time, he felt the soulful shiver of tears being conceived behind his face.

  That afternoon, the Makaio Day festival went off without a hitch. The revelers, potent with barley beer, sang, danced, and played games throughout the Great Hall and across the sands surrounding it, and the entire scene reminded Zack of the neighborhood Fourth of July parties that he grew up with. Sacat and his councilors relaxed their guarded countenances. Lasintheus made conversation with the poor. Lucky danced on a table. And Santar snuck some beer and screamed himself across every surface but the ceiling, terrorizing children and adults alike, while Sot stood guard at the northern end of the village, alone and standoffish.

  Then, as afternoon turned to dusk, the village Minstrel and his crude stringed instrument filled the desert airs with sorrowful Limbean folk-compositions, and Zack, Lilly, Lucky, and Father Kai sparingly interposed their special Makaio Day songs, which included Buddhist hymns of an agedly opulent Eastern language known only to Father Kai, retooled Christmas carols, and anything that they could think of relating to Hawaii or Heaven. At one point, Lilly sang the Eric Clapton hit, “Tears in Heaven,” explaining the meaning of the lyrics before she began, and substituting “Hawaii” for “Heaven” throughout, and for the second time in her and Zack’s history, every eye and ear on hand was in the palm of hers. Zack was struck by the strong quality and range of Lilly’s singing voice, which barely even needed the Minstrel’s back-up tones, and the entire effect was sad and beautiful, bringing many of the Limbean women to tears.

  In the evening, Sacat stood up to make a speech, but then collapsed from the beer. Everyone laughed, and Kosos and Sacat’s councilors carried him out, while Father Kai gave a few short prayers to the last of the sober celebrants. Meanwhile, Zack, Lilly, and Klatu talked business.

  “It’s called the corporate veil,” Lilly said. “As long as you set the corporation up properly and keep all of the accounts the right way, you’re not personally responsible if it hurts anyone. The business could injure people with its products, fail to deliver the services it promised, or whatever. But as long as it was just an accident, and you weren’t intentionally going out and hurting anyone, no one can take your personal money or the investors’ money; they can only take the corporation’s money.”

  “Fascinating,” Klatu said. “What a splendid little set of rules!”

  “Yes, you see legally, the corporation is a person. It has rights and responsibilities; it can sue and be sued.”

  “I’m sorry, you must forgive this old man and his folly, but did you say that the corporation is a person?”

  “Yes!” Lilly exclaimed.

  “Oh no no,” Klatu said, shaking his head back and forth. “Now that’s too much. You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you! Having a bit of fun with old man Klatu?”

  “Come on,” Lilly said, “you’re only a few years older than us.”

  “You flatter me,” Klatu said, “but don’t insult my intelligence. What do you mean with this ‘the corporation is a person’ lark?”

  “Haha. Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Zack asked.

  “It’s only for certain legal purposes,” Lilly said. “It’s what we lawyers call a legal-fiction. But sometimes the fiction becomes a reality. Business people and lawyers wind these corporations up, and once they let them go, they can take on lives of their own.”

  “Oh my! What a place Hawaii is. I should very much like to see it someday.”

  “I think you will,” said Zack, “I think you will.”

  “In the meantime,” Klatu said, “do you think it would be possible to institute some of these corporate laws here in the village?”

  “I’m not sure,” Lilly said. “You need to establish a lot of other more basic laws first. You need a constitution, a democratic government, and an independent court system with judges and juries – and I don’t know that Sacat would ever go for any of that.”

  “Constitution?” Klatu asked. “Judges?”

  “A constitution,” Lilly said, “is an agreement between the villagers about how to set up the government and create laws, and judges, are the ones that decide who is right whenever there’s a disagreement about what the constitution or the laws mean. Here, I think Sacat is all of the above.”

  “Ok,” Klatu said, “it is late, and I have had far too much drink to understand even half of that. So I think we had better leave it there for now, and that I had better get back to Tarta, before she kills me for leaving her alone with Klatan for so long.”

  “We understand,” Lilly said.

  “Yes, you do not want to piss off a Limbean wife!” Klatu added, winking at Zack.

  “Aloha!” Zack and Lilly said together, laughing.

  “Yes, aloha indeed!” Klatu replied, leaving them.

  Once he was gone, Lilly asked Zack to dance to the now more aboriginal sounds saturating the hall, with their primal, feverish beats, and he reluctantly agreed.

  “Oh wow Zack, you’re really terrible. Usually when guys say they can’t dance, it’s just cause
they don’t want to, or they’re trying to lower expectations or something. But you really suck!”

  “Hey! Come on, give me a break!”

  “No I mean you really suck. Wow. Like seriously, how could you be so bad? How is it even possible?”

  “I don’t know; dancing just doesn’t make sense to me. It’s not logical.”

  “Or you’re just a dork.”

  “Ok… ok. I think I see what’s happening here. Someone’s had a little bit too much to drink, and I think we better cut her off before it loosens her tongue any further!”

  “No way. I can outdrink you any day! You just get yourself… wait… oh my God…”

  “What?”

  “Is that Lucky dancing with Debbie Parsons?”

  “Heh! I believe it is!”

  “Ewwww. Tell him to stay away from her, she’s trouble.”

  “Lilly, Lucky’s his own person now, I can’t tell him what to do.”

  “Just warn him, that’s all. Oh my God Zack, they’re practically grinding each other.”

  “So? Let ‘em have their fun.”

  “I don’t think that’s exactly the image that we want to leave the villagers with.”

  “Lilly, they don’t care. Let it go.”

  “Fine,” she said, falsely.

  Not to be deterred, Zack tried to distract her with more attempted dancing, but she soon tired of his spastic undulations and set him down at an empty table to rest while she sought out Father Kai to discuss the cleanup. That was when Kosos, who had been stalking Zack for some time, finally saw her chance.

  “Drink,” she said, entreating him with her signature smile, and all the guile that it held behind it, as she sat down and thrust a red-clay cup into his hand.

  “No thank you, I think I’ve had enough,” he said, releasing the cup and drawing his hand away.

  “I bid you, drink. You’re a man, show me!” She gently grabbed his wrist and pushed it back toward the cup, caressing his skin ever so slightly as she let go.

  Zack took an infinitesimally small sip.

  Kosos looked away, licked her lips, and then turned back to Zack. “I know that you come and go freely between here and Hawaii. I see how you disappear in your quarters for hours, even in the middle of the day.”