So, what do I want? I want to eat the best foods in the world, I want to have the most beautiful women in the world, I want to live in the biggest mansion you’ve ever seen, and I want to have a bunch of servants catering to my every whim.
Nope, that’s just me, the numbskull. I’m thinking more like a human, so back to God. What would God do? Even if He wanted junk like that, He would be able to look into the future—and what would He see? He would see a fat, bored, unsatisfied king, tired of having everything He wants.
Now a lesser being, an immoral being, might be satisfied with an eternity of sloth and debauchery, but fortunately for us, God is a much more advanced and honorable being. So God would ask himself: “What is most important to me and who I am?”
So I ask. And the answer I decide must be my truth because that is the only answer I could possibly have. So who am I, and what is my truth? My truth is what is most important to me. My daughter is most important to me—my love for her. But I’m back in my shoes again. Still, love has to be the most important thing. So my truth is love. And I am my truth; therefore, I am love. How do I be and do love? How do I express love? I give love. But how do I give love? I give of myself.
And so I decide I will make a creature, another like myself, who can feel, give, even be love. So I begin to think up creatures to love and be love. I begin to imagine such creatures, so many different kinds. And I see their beauty and the love they can give and receive, and I see their wonderful futures in a perfect world.
But these creatures are missing something. They have love—what could they be missing? Of course, they are missing truth. But what is truth besides love? Love is my truth, but do they have truth if they only have my love? I chose my truth. If I really love them, they must choose their own truth. And so I imagine them with the ability to choose their truth.
Now what do I see in their future? I see horrors that were once unimaginable to me because they are not of my exact nature, and these creatures have the ability to choose their own nature. I see murder and rape and torture, all manner of mayhem, such death and destruction and ugliness that so sickens me, I can’t even think of creating anything with a choice for many, many years.
But after a time, I began to think back on some of the other creatures with choice I had imagined: the animals, so majestic and loving, and the angels who loved and protected the humans, and the humans who made families out of love and loved me for my gift.
I remember those humans’ futures, their good deeds, peacefulness, generosity, growth, compassion, love. And I especially remember all the children, with their laughter, their innocence, and their unconditional love.
I am in a pickle. Because I have so much love to give, and I have imagined these wonderful creatures with a choice, these angels and humans so much like myself—especially the humans who would be made in my image. But unless I act, none of them will ever exist, none of them will laugh, none of them will do great things, none of them will love. There will be no love and no truth.
So I begin to imagine them again. But every time I imagine them together, every time I see their futures together, no matter how I spin it, I see horror and death again. I see good people and even innocent children suffering beyond reason or belief.
I see this because bad people and dark angels will corrupt, and even the most seemingly insignificant, infinitesimal, act of corruption or sin will eventually snowball into grotesque suffering.
In some of the imagined scenarios, it takes eons; in some, millions of years; in some, thousands of years; and in some, merely centuries, but the ugliness always happens.
I realize that the bad creatures and the good creatures can’t live together. So I imagine them in separate worlds, and I see one beautiful world and one ugly world. But I see I am at square one again because I have placed them in dichotomic cocoons, and there is no truth in those antipodes.
It is then that I realize another great truth: that without the bad, without the evil, there can be no real goodness. There is no skirting this dilemma, no perfect answer, no perfect world.
I now know my gift of love is also a gift of great suffering, not only for the creatures, but also for me because I will have to let them suffer, when I would rather suffer for them. But I also know that, like me, the best of the good creatures will gladly suffer for the bad ones, and they will be even more beautiful for it. So I discover yet another great truth: there is more good than evil in suffering. It is better to create.
***
So I am left to choose the scenario. I don’t want to choose the one which lasts eons. Even though there is more good than evil in still suffering, I don’t want to prolong it. But I also don’t want to choose the one which lasts mere centuries because I want to give my gift to many, many creatures, and I want to include all the creatures I imagined. So I settle on millions of years.
***
I begin to create. I don’t leave anyone or anything out. I create the universe, and the stars, and all the planets where they will dwell. And I make heaven for the angels and Earth for the humans. I create microorganisms, plants, bugs, reptiles, dinosaurs, animals, mammals, even Cro-Magnons, and so many more. I create angels and humans, male and female.
Some of the creatures I imagined can’t live together all the time because they will eat or overwhelm each other, so I give them each their time on the Earth and their time in heaven, and I give many of the creatures souls so they can always exist because it would be cruel not to.
***
Now I am a just and moral God. And I know that like the other futures, the future of this scenario is doomed. So being a just and moral God, I can’t let it go on until the souls of the good people are corrupted by the souls of the evil and separated from me. Because the nature of evil is to eventually suck the goodness and the love from even the best of man and angel.
***
And this is what hell is. It is not simply a fiery pit of anguish and suffering; it is the result of separation from God. I did not create hell to punish everyone who separates from God. I did not create hell at all. The greed and jealousy, the debauchery and violence, the ugliness—it only grows stronger and more powerful as angels and humans evolve in its filth. Hell is the inevitability of the Godless and the wicked.
This was the future I always saw, the future I dreaded—this hell that is always created when the souls of the evil are left unchecked. The demonic cajole, parley, and fight until they box all the souls into a cavernous, fiery, dark hole of pain and madness without relief. This was the future I had to accept in order to create.
But I realize that at some point I will have to step in and stop this future, so the good aren’t sucked into the world of the evil, because that would be unjust, and it would destroy the futures of the good as well.
***
I also realize I am in an even bigger pickle because I will have to suspend free will to stop hell from occurring too soon for everyone, and this would be an untruth. But that’s when I realize yet another great truth: justice is also truth. It would not be justice to let the good be destroyed with the bad. I am the only one strong enough to provide this justice.
***
Some days later, I decided to walk back to the Hall of Knowledge to thank James the librarian. It was another perfect day in paradise. I felt closer to God than I ever had before. By trying to understand God, I was stronger somehow. I looked up at the sky directly into the light of the sun for a long time. I did not squint or even blink, and my new eyes did not hurt at all, while the whole of the sky became an intense bright light.
That’s when I felt His presence. He was telling me something—that paradise wasn’t the end, that I was still changing, that I could be better. It made me smile, and I thought about all I had learned already.
And while I walked, lost in thought, I found myself trying to think like Him again, but something was different, and I began to fill His big shoes, it seemed, for the first time. And that’s when a voice enveloped me. It said thi
s:
Because I am stronger, I must do one more thing. This will be the greatest truth and my greatest gift. I am scared of this truth because I will suffer more than anyone, and I must watch my own Son suffer. But this is something I have to do. I will send the Christ.
8
There were still nearly six billion people left on the planet after the Rapture, but I might as well have been alone. Sophie and Renee were gone. Gerry, Geoff, Gina and my mother were gone. My father had been dead a long time. And any friends worth having were gone.
***
After it happened I stared for a long time at the spot where Sophie last stood. I heard the screams and the explosions and crashing vehicles, but I could not move. I heard the sound of a large plane getting closer, and I wished it would land on top of me, crushing my sorry body as flat as those poor souls in the earthquake. I pictured my white tennis shoes sticking out from the wreckage like the ruby red slippers of the Wicked Witch of the East.
***
It was not to be. But the plane came close, and it hit with such force it knocked me off my feet. Then a huge explosion of fire rolled across the suburbs like napalm in the jungle. I heard the frightening sound of ripping metal, and screams so horrible I heard them for days. It was enough to snap me out of my self-loathing, and I ran to do something completely out of character, which was to see if I could help.
***
The rest of that day is still a blur. There were people on fire that could be put out and people who died while I stood by helpless. There were body parts in bushes and trees and body parts I pulled from underneath debris, thinking incorrectly they were attached to someone. There were people screaming and people crying. There were dead people and living people, and I felt like neither.
***
The fire trucks and the ambulances and the police cars came, and they took the wounded and the dead away. Nobody talked about the missing people; nobody talked much at all.
***
When there was nothing left to do, I went to Renee’s house, though I knew in my heart she was gone, too. I had to be near where they once were. When I opened the door, Sophie’s dog Wiley, a light brown Dachshund, greeted me excitedly as he never had before.
The dog must have sensed something amiss and was just happy for familiar company. I picked up the dog and took him to Sophie’s room, now a museum of a young girl’s dreams for the Old Earth. I sat on Sophie’s bed, cradling Wiley as if he were my little girl, crying for myself and all I’d destroyed.
***
Adolf Hitler had a Dachshund. I saw the little guy in some home movies of the dictator at his mountain residence in Berchtesgaden. I remember feeling sorry for that dog. In the film the dog is seen wagging his tail, jumping all over the place, licking the Fuhrer like any other master, and not the inhuman, diabolical, mass-murderer of men, women and children he was.
***
I did not turn on the television that evening but heard the strange loud humming noises outside. I was too grieved to care what it was. However, the next morning, when I turned on the news, over and over again they showed the pictures of the early evening sky filled with hundreds of large triangular craft. Even through the television, I could hear the loud humming of the colorful space ships clearly as if they were still right outside my house.
Then the president held a press conference to tell the world that one of the alien cultures we were in contact with had betrayed us and kidnapped millions of people.
The whole thing was a big setup, which had begun many months before the Rapture when the resident showed up on television with a couple of real live ETs and proceeded to disclose a relationship between the U.S. government and creatures from outer space going back to the 1930s.
Now there are about 800 different species of ETs of all colors, shapes and sizes. But, wisely, the president chose a species that was fairly humanoid-looking. Their skin was ashen, their eyes dark and cat-like, but otherwise they didn’t make you want to throw up or anything.
He went on to say how great and friendly and cooperative and helpful these things supposedly were, and how the government had kept it a secret because they didn’t want to alarm everyone and freak out religious people. And how they meant us no harm, and how they just wanted to give us all these great new technologies so life on Earth would be wonderful for everyone, and a bunch of other nonsense.
But now the president was saying that with the help of the “good” aliens, the government wouldn’t rest until all the missing people were returned safely. This was complete baloney, of course, because they were all in heaven. It was all part of the Illuminati plan to prevent the Rapture from converting a bunch of people into Christians. Still, lots of people bought it, mostly because it was easier to face than the reality of being left behind.
***
Since so many politicians, including the vice president, the secretary of state, and most of the senate were destroyed during the nuclear assassination the year before, this president had been in office less than a year and was a relatively unknown congressman from the state of New Mexico named Whitey Newton.
And it was no coincidence his district included the city of Roswell, the notorious birthplace of government conspiracy regarding UFOs. Whitey Newton had been cavorting with aliens since the 1980s. Those aliens had been in the area since the 1930s, long before rumors of a crashed flying saucer and recovered bodies began to surface around the Roswell Military Base. Newton was working for the CIA when he was sent to Roswell by the Illuminati to coordinate policy between the U.S. government and the visitors from outer space.
***
The Roswell Incident, as the purported crash was known, was easily covered up at the time, but the conspiracy theories never went away. I found out the real story of Roswell at the Hall of Knowledge.
***
In 1947, a cowboy happened upon the wreckage of an alien spacecraft once manned by a species known to ufologists as the Grays because of their unique coloring, roughly the shade of dolphin skin. The Grays were four feet tall with huge heads and giant black eyes. For years they had been allowed by the government to operate their genetic experiments on humans and animals in exchange for advanced weapons information.
The wreckage the cowboy discovered was that of a small saucer, which had been snatching various bovines for dissection when a bull that was not properly hypnotized got loose on board and began kicking and butting the crap out of the Grays inside the tiny spaceship.
The pilot tried to keep the thing airborne, while the other Grays, the bewildered bull, broken instruments, and pliant alien metal flew about the ship. He managed to get the saucer level, but he couldn’t avoid the crash altogether. The ship skidded across the desert floor, bouncing off sand, brush, cacti, and any number of desert varmints. All the while, their big heads banged about the cabin as the bull knocked them around, until the saucer broke in half, and the little Grays were thrown hundreds of feet.
Now it was those big alien heads that saved the pilot and scientist Grays for the moment, but the other two crewmen died before they hit the sand from all the bouncing around and the butting and kicking of the bull and whatnot. Somehow the bull survived and sniffed his way back to his herd.
The cowboy never saw the injured and dead aliens, but dutifully reported the wreckage to the local authorities, who informed the nearby Army base commander. The base commander was not privy to the government/alien relationship, and as soon as he returned from the crash site, he eagerly told the local press that wreckage of a flying disk had been found. He thought he’d made the discovery of the century. The only discovery he’d made was that talking about flying saucers earned one an ass-chewing and a sure demotion.
And while the base commander was having the riot act read to him by a four-star general, a special operations unit guided by the Illuminati was already busy sealing off the area and creating the infamous weather balloon cover story. This fantasy of a veteran Army officer mistaking a weather balloon for a flying sauc
er would be like a ship captain mistaking a battleship for a floating tin can. Yet everyone, including the press and local law enforcement, happily swallowed the ridiculous yarn.
***
The hand of Illuminati was everywhere, and there was no need for elaborate or even intelligent cover stories: balloons, kites, lightning, swamp gas, stars, airplane lights and blimps all worked surprisingly well on the tiny human brains.
***
Once the crash site was sealed off, the Illuminati-controlled special operations unit, along with a select group of grunts from the Army base, began to search through and gather the debris. What these soldiers didn’t know was that they would later be sworn to secrecy with threats of immediate and great bodily damage, as well as future harm to their loved ones.
One of the grunts, a young Baptist from Oklahoma, Gordon Allen Smilko, would suffer a worse fate. Private Smilko was the unlucky soldier who happened upon the two live Grays lying in agony a mere fifteen feet apart. At first he thought he was looking at two children, but as he came closer it quickly became clear to him that they were no humans. Still, Smilko wasn’t afraid—partially because of his strong faith and partially because the special operations guys were fairly close by and seemed to know what they were doing.
The injured Grays, who could adequately understand and mimic almost any language, called for help. When the private reached the scientist Gray, a purple liquid seeped from his mouth as he gurgled over and over again the phrase that would also be the alien’s last words: “The big cow is waking up.”
Figuring the alien in front of him was finished, Smilko hurried over to the other Gray, who was obviously in a lot of pain. That one, the pilot, was asking for his foot, which was lying just out of his reach and covered in purple blood. Hesitantly, the sickened grunt edged the severed foot closer to the creature with the butt of his rifle. Then he fired off a shot to alert the other searchers.
The Gray pilot abruptly snatched his severed foot and secured it under his armpit. Satisfied that help was on the way, he began to converse with the private. “Are you in charge?” asked the alien, who was wincing and groaning and difficult to understand, what with his foot being gone and all.
What the Hand: A Novel About the End of the World and Beyond Page 8