***
And I was but another happy and willing citizen of Rome. Hail, Caesar!
***
After my mom kicked me out of the house because of the bookmaking incident, I moved in with two of my friends who shared a condominium a few miles away. I missed seeing my mom all the time, but otherwise nothing much changed for me, except that I switched freeloading addresses and had nobody to make eggs or do my laundry.
Eventually, my friends got sick of supporting me, so I got a job at a place called the Price Club, which was basically a giant warehouse converted into a super grocery and department store, where people and families could buy anything en masse. If you needed cereal, for instance, you wouldn’t get a normal box, you’d get a box the size of a small safe. How people poured their cereal into an average size bowl, I still don’t know. If you wanted ketchup, you didn’t buy a normal bottle, you bought five or six giant bottles in one big old package—enough to start your own baseball stadium concession.
I worked in the television and electronics department. This was before the age of the personal computer and all the other high-tech junk, when an electronics department looked more like a garage sale, consisting of televisions weighing as much as a four-cylinder car; refrigerators, washers and dryers; clock radios, stereos you might put in your room and stereos you might put on your shoulder to annoy everyone.
Did I know anything about the televisions or stereos, or any electronic device for that matter? Only what I read in the little pamphlets provided by the manufacturers, most of which I couldn’t understand. And I read very little. I spent most of my time at the Price Club hiding in a cubbyhole behind the big screen television and refrigerator boxes, avoiding customers and recovering from hangovers.
***
But I shouldn’t disparage my days at the Price Club. This is where I met Charlie. And though he never knew it on the Old Earth, he saved my life and probably my soul. Charlie also worked in the electronics department, except he actually took his job seriously. Since he worked during the week and I worked mostly weekends, we didn’t run into each other an awful lot, until one day when I took a shift for a weekday guy who wanted to see Poison, Warrant, Ratt, or another lame hair band, somehow big enough to play on a Tuesday night at the Forum. This guy wanted to get there early to drink six or eight beers, chug a pint of whiskey, and smoke a bag of weed with his buddies so he would be good and plastered because that’s the only way anybody could stand one of these bands.
Anyway, the trade left me working with this Charlie guy, whom I had never talked to before but only saw as he was leaving or coming, and might have said “ay” or “what’s up?” or some other Neanderthal greeting considered cool at the time because you got to avoid actual communication. When I went into the break room to eat my hot dog, pizza, rolled-up cheese and meat burrito-looking thing, or whatever they gave me for free that day, he was reading a book titled The Late Great Planet Earth, by Hal Lindsey.
Hal Lindsey was this guy who used to be a big sinner like everyone else but found Jesus and turned his life around, becoming a great pastor, writer, and teacher of prophecy. He was one of the first to take a hard look at the books of the Bible and interpret their prophetic meaning within the context of current events.
Now I’d never heard of this book, but for some reason, I thought the title was interesting, so when we got back to our department I asked him about it. He seemed surprised and hesitated for a few seconds. “It’s about the end of the world,” he said.
“That’s what I thought—science fiction or something,” I said.
“No, it’s about the real end of the world.”
I laughed a little at that. This was well before there was a book a day written about 2012 and the Apocalypse. “How could it be about the real end of the world? Last I checked we’re still here,” I said.
“It’s about the future, the things that will happen shortly.”
“Like what? Like nuclear war or something?”
“Yeah, but there’s a lot more to it,” he said, and he began telling me about Israel and Russia, and the Antichrist, and the Mark of the Beast, and all kinds of crazy stuff I hadn’t heard before.
“Well, how does he know?” I said.
“It’s all in the Bible.”
Now being raised Catholic I didn’t know jack about the Bible. “Really?” I said. “I never knew that.”
“Well, it’s all there,” he said, and he went on to explain some of the prophecies along with their interpretations.
***
The Catholic Church didn’t much like their parishioners reading or owning Bibles. Instead they would provide selected passages here and there. They believed most people were too ignorant to understand the Bible, and that it might interfere with the message they were trying to sell.
***
We ended up talking for the rest of the shift, and though I didn’t know what he was saying half the time, I was pretty darn riveted. We became friends after that, at least at work—we didn’t exactly hang in the same circles.
And he was different. Nobody I knew talked like him; nobody I knew ever said practically anything worthwhile, except my mom and my father when he was alive, and maybe a teacher or an employer here and there. But I never had a real conversation with any of my friends until I met Charlie. He also got me reading the Bible and other books about Christianity, which got me interested in reading about history and politics and all kinds of stuff. I even ended up going to Charlie’s church a few times. And I believed everything he told me and everything I learned there. It made sense to me for some reason. But I didn’t become born-again or anything. I was nowhere close to giving up the trappings of the world. Come what may, I was going to have it my way. And so I did; and so it came.
Charlie and I drifted apart after some time, and I would never see him again on the Old Earth. Instead of building a relationship of substance with a Christian, I wasted my days with my fellow miscreants, chasing money and girls, smoking weed, and watching endless hours of television.
***
Until one day when all that fine programming was interrupted by an important announcement: U.S. Marine and Army forces have launched their attack on Iraq in response to the invasion of Kuwait by the Iraqi Army led by dictator Saddam Hussein.
That was the first time in my life I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I don’t know if it was because my dad was a soldier and his dad was a soldier and his dad was a soldier, but I knew I wanted to be a soldier, and not only that, I wanted to fight in a war. The next day I went down to the recruiting office and signed up. Everyone thought I was crazy.
***
I didn’t believe them till three months later when I was still in boot camp, standing at attention with a shaved head being screamed at by a particularly vicious drill sergeant, the war long over.
***
Combat ground operations in the first Gulf War: 100 hours.
George Somerset’s impulsive stint in the Army: 3 years, 4 months, 17 days.
7
The day I read about ghosts was the same day I read about Guardian Angels and the lost city of Atlantis and I don’t remember what else. That’s how it is at the Hall of Knowledge. You’ll be reading about one thing, leading you to another thing, which will lead you to something else, and the next thing you know the place is closing for the night.
***
I found out that every kid on the planet had a Guardian Angel, but not his own. One of these magnificent creatures could handle about two or three hundred kids all by themselves. That’s how fast they are, but only because they are able to move in and out of the spiritual and physical realms like it’s nothing. They are about two feet taller than the average human, without an ounce of fat, and with big old wings like in all the pictures. I didn’t need to look up that part. They’re flying all over the place around here.
***
And I didn’t know archeologists on the Old Earth had already found the once fabled city of Atlant
is buried under the ocean using deep-ground radar and digital mapping, and they’d been excavating the site when the Antichrist shut the whole operation down because he didn’t want them finding anything incriminating about him.
Atlantis was one of the many ancient civilizations that tried to do things without God in their lives. As far as pagan civilizations go, they were actually quite successful. They had been given advanced technologies by aliens and demons and the like, which allowed them to flourish and live pretty great lives, for a while anyway. But, like all godless peoples, they were doomed. Why? Without God, sooner or later, greed and immorality overshadow other pursuits. Without God, bad people and knuckleheads eventually run everything into the ground.
***
What happened to Atlantis? It was already destroying itself from the inside when a big tsunami turned their great island into a giant fish tank prop.
***
I get carried away with anything having to do with history. I once taught history and spent half my life on the Old Earth reading books about history or watching it on television. It was one of few things on the Old Earth that offered me contentment. That’s probably why I spend so much time at the Hall of Knowledge. And I guess it’s a lot easier than thinking about my own history.
***
I was pretty surprised the first time I went to the Hall of Knowledge. Considering all the other futuristic junk in the New Kingdom, I was expecting more of a high-tech facility with voice-activated computers and such, all the information right at your fingertips and whatnot. But the place is actually pretty old school as far as libraries go. I mean don’t get me wrong, the building itself would put to shame any modern construction on the Old Earth. Still, the place is classic looking, made of a smooth gold and white marble that looks as if it was carved from a single stone. Out front, atop a football-field wide staircase, sit four Romanesque columns, each the size of a small New York apartment building. Inside, the ceilings have been painted by Michelangelo himself, depicting hundreds of epic historical scenes, which include the Crucifixion, Moses reading the Ten Commandments, and the Battle of Armageddon, to name a few. There are rows and rows of two-story wooden bookcases, too many to count, on them all the books of the world worth reading, and all the books of heaven, perfectly restored and categorized. These mountains of shelves are separated by a low wall of filing cabinets, not unlike cabinets in an Old Earth library. There are also a bunch of librarians to help you find the section or book you want, so you don’t have to spend all your time digging. And there are couches long as buses, big soft chairs, and huge desks with hard wooden chairs scattered about, where you can read comfortably or study and take notes if you’d rather.
***
All the libraries on the Old Earth were closed after the Antichrist took over. He didn’t want people reading certain things and asking a lot of dumb questions like: “Are you the Antichrist?” or “Why should we follow you when we know it will end badly for us?” No, he didn’t want anyone thinking logically about him, or anything really, so books were burned by the truckload.
***
God doesn’t worry about people reading anything or asking questions. He has nothing to hide. The truth is here for the taking. And you can’t help yourself anyway. You’ll read something, leading
you to questions about this or that, so you’ll look up something else, leading to more questions, until you know all kinds of things you never knew before, and all that extra knowledge leads to even more questions.
Like after reading about Atlantis, I began wondering about all those ancient societies and empires like the Samarians, the Mesopotamians, the Mayans, the Egyptians, the Romans and whatnot. I wanted to know why God, being all-seeing and all-knowing, would bother with these fallible cultures when He knew they were doomed to begin with.
I also couldn’t understand why God, who could see the whole future, would create a society with enough horrible people to destroy themselves or other nations, or why He would bother to make an angel who would eventually rebel and attempt to corrupt the whole world.
Even on the Old Earth, I believed God had a plan, and I somehow knew it to be true. But that didn’t mean I didn’t have questions. I could have just written it all off as free will, but that would have been too simple an explanation. People needed faith on the Old Earth, but here I had the Hall of Knowledge at my disposal, so I began to dig for answers.
Why couldn’t Satan just be a bad angel with free will who rebelled and didn’t help corrupt the rest of the world so badly that God had to intervene and toss a bunch of people into hell? And why was there a hell at all? I mean isn’t an eternity of burning overkill for certain misbehaviors and rejection of God? Couldn’t they just be given a hundred years of hard labor or something?
Now some answers are easy to find, but some—some are a bit more complicated. You can’t just walk up and pull a big book off a shelf titled The Answer to All Your Questions. I mean you have books on aliens, ghosts, the Napoleonic Wars, the joys of sailing, and everything else you can think of. The “what” is the easy part; the “why” is a whole different animal. So after several hours spent banging my head against the wall, I decided to break down and ask one of the librarians.
The closest librarian was a black man standing on a ladder thirty feet in the air. He had an armful of books, so I waited while he replaced them carefully on the great shelves. When he finished he looked down at me and smiled wide as one of the thick books he’d just replaced.
Librarians on the Old Earth hardly ever smiled. I think it was part of their training or in their contracts to be as intimidating as possible, just so you wouldn’t bother them about stupid stuff.
“Can I help you, sir?” he said.
“I was just wondering if you could help me find something.”
“Of course, sir, that’s why I’m here,” he added rather gleefully, shooting down the ladder as if it were a greased pole.
“That was pretty slick.”
“Lots of practice—the new bodies don’t hurt, either. So what can I help you with?”
“Well, I have some questions,” I said, feeling a little awkward about the whole thing.
“Questions—everybody has questions. What kind of questions?” he asked.
I hesitated. “I don’t know, like about Satan and hell, and other things.”
“Big things.” He was being playful. “‘Did he who made the Lamb make thee?’”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re not the first to ask these questions,” he said.
“I’m not?”
“No…hardly. People have been asking those questions since they could form sentences. That was William Blake.”
“So I should get his book?”
He chuckled. “It’s from a poem.”
“So, I should get the poem?” I said.
“Follow me,” he said, and he led me to one of the many study tables where he sat me down and took the seat across from me. “What’s your name?”
“I’m George, and you?”
“James—James Franklin, born 1927 on the Old Earth.”
“You’re quite a bit older than I am.”
“None the wiser, but I might know a book for you. It’s called To Kill a Mockingbird.”
“I’ve seen that movie. I think we read that book, too, in junior high or something.” Now I was remembering. “It’s about a lawyer in the South?”
“Yes, he defends a ‘brother’ falsely accused of raping a white woman,” James said.
“That’s the book with the answers?” I didn’t see any connection.
“That’s the book with the key,” he said.
“Where do I find it?”
“I could show you, but I don’t think it would help,” James said, and he leaned in. “You have to know what you’re looking for.”
“What am I looking for?”
“A needle in a haystack—or, in this case, a diamond in a barrel of diamonds. It’s something the
lawyer, Atticus Finch, says to his daughter.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘You can’t understand someone until you consider things from his point of view, until you get into his skin and walk around.’ ”
I pondered what those words might have to do with my questions. “I think I get it—like those bumper stickers: What would Jesus do?”
“I’m not exactly sure what that is, but I think you’re on the right track,” James said.
“I wonder—so I need to put myself in His shoes. I don’t know—I don’t believe I can come close to thinking like Him,” I said.
“Well, you might be surprised.”
“I doubt it. In fact, I’m probably one of the least qualified up here.”
“You wouldn’t be here if He wasn’t already inside you.”
“I sure didn’t get any of His common sense.”
He laughed. “Maybe not, but you have His DNA, and common sense you can actually learn.”
“I don’t know.”
“I do—just give it a shot.”
“I guess I could,” I said.
“Of course you can. You have all the time in the world.”
***
So I found myself a comfortable chair and took the librarian’s advice. I asked my questions and tried to answer them wearing God’s big shoes. I thought about nothing else all day. I left the library in the early evening thinking about it. I walked home to my shack thinking about it. I lay in bed thinking about it. I woke thinking about it. I thought about it for days and days, and after some time, I began to get the answers. Now, maybe I wasn’t wearing His shoes, but perhaps I managed to pull on a pair of His slippers.
***
I’m this all-powerful being; I can do anything I want. I can create the most complex thing imaginable with just my will. I can give and take life. I created heaven and the universe. I can do and have anything I want, and I can look into the future and see all the results.
What the Hand: A Novel About the End of the World and Beyond Page 7