“Hello, Maya.”
There is only silence in Maya Otsunde’s mind. I wait, for what seems like an eternity. Then I hear it, a voice, tiny against the howling storm, but clear.
“Who are you?”
“You speak English.”
“I can speak Xhosa and French and Swahili too. I’m not at all stupid. Are you God?”
“Let’s talk about you.”
“I see things… such beautiful horrible memories. But these things are not me.”
“Your mind has been invaded. You’ve been possessed.”
“Invaded? You mean by a demon?”
“Something like that.”
“But… I don’t understand.”
I whisper the Secret. The Secret grants her a kind of clarity, and with it…
Enlightenment.
A moment later, I stood facing Maya Otsunde as Seraphiel was torn out of her body. His essence fractured, then shattered, strewn across a million possible moments, each moment branching out toward a million possible futures. I had restored his piece in the puzzle of continuity without repairing it. Now he was dragged into a future that branched in infinite directions; tied to every possible choice he could have made and bound to their innumerable consequences. I had pinned his essence to those timelines. Now they would tear him apart for all eternity, spreading him across a billion stillborn realities. And he would never die, living all those possible lives, aware of what was happening to him, but unable to stop it. It was the closest thing to Hell that an angel could know. And it was the only way I could stop him.
Gabriel.
The old priest was dead. He lay curled up at my feet. He hadn’t been included in the Reset: Gabriel had consumed his soul and I couldn’t bring him back.
“You killed him,” Moroni whispered. “You killed Seraphiel.”
There was no use denying it, so I didn’t.
The classroom was empty. Outside, I heard the wail of approaching sirens, concerned voices shouting questions and, in the distance, the sound of gunfire.
“All my life… I looked for you.”
Maya Otsunde was kneeling in the doorway that led out to the front of the schoolhouse, her forehead pressed to the floor, her hands splayed out in front of her, palms facing the ceiling.
“When my father was struck by a truck in Johannesburg I prayed that you would save him. When my mother was sick from breathing in the waste of the living dead ones, the ones with HIV I looked to you.”
Her voice was calm, almost wondering, her eyes averted. Her posture was one of submission, but her tone remained neutral, almost monotonous. She might have been reciting from a grocery list.
“‘I will lift up my eyes to the hills. From whence comes my help? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.’ Isn’t that what it says in the Bible? I looked to the hills. I called to you. My friend Rabiah, she is a Muslim. Her brother is a doctor. He cared for the sick people in our village. But he was killed by bandits. Before he died he lay in his own hospital with bullets in his face. He lay there while Rabiah and her mother prayed to you.
“The British came to my village. They told us that if we gave them our lands they would give us jobs. Then they built their big factories. They darkened the skies and filled our rivers with poison. So many in my country are sick now, with cancer, children… the very old. Yet still we pray. We cry out to you. And now… you come.”
When she raised her head, her eyes were bright, as if she were in the grip of a fever.
“I once asked my mother, ‘Mama, does God hate black people?’ She slapped me. ‘Don’t ever ask such questions, Maya,’ she said. ‘You will bring down God’s wrath upon our heads.’ ‘But, Mama,’ I said. God must hate black people. He must hate Africa. Look at what has happened to us.’ She said. ‘Maya, how can you ask such terrible questions?’ ‘Look around us, Mama,’ I said. ‘How can you not ask those same questions?’”
Maya lifted her head higher and wiped away a tear as it slipped down her cheek.
“In school we learned about how the Americans made slaves of the people they took from Africa. The white men took them from their families, separated mothers and fathers from their children. Then, when Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, the Americans hated them even more. Sometimes Father Philip played movies at the community center. In those movies, the Americans make the American Indians the bad people and make themselves into the good people. Father Philip says that what the Americans did to the Indians and the Africans was wrong. But in the movies everything is the opposite from what really happened. I don’t like those movies, especially the ones about God. It sometimes seems to me that God must only love white Americans.
“Now you come. But you look like me. You tell me that you are real, but also that you were never what we believed you to be… that we have looked for too long in the wrong direction.”
Maya nodded, as if listening to a voice only she could hear.
“I can bear this news. You walked with me in my mind, and now I understand things better than when I was a child.”
I could hear the shouts of others gathering around the little schoolhouse, asking why the schoolgirls were wandering the streets, laughing and singing in the middle of the day.
“Did you hear my prayers? Do you listen to the prayers that people send to you?”
“A part of me did. You saw some of it a few moments ago, an Aspect, a representation.”
“Did that part of you ever answer prayers?”
“That’s like asking if Santa Claus flies from house to house or visits all houses simultaneously: an interesting question but basically meaningless.”
“You might have told us sooner.”
“I was busy.”
“And now you think we’ve worked it out?”
“Well, people don’t jump off bridges expecting God to save them to reward their faith. Otherwise you’d have millions of people doing it just to prove a point.”
“But then your Secret is wrong,” Maya said. “We’re still afraid of the dark. We need God.”
“Why?”
Maya furrowed her brow. Finally, she stood.
“I will remember,” she said. “For the children in my country who lie dying in dark hospitals. I will remember you, God of the Americans.”
Then she was gone.
“‘What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty!’ Hamlet (Act Two Scene Two)! Oh fearful Lord of Lords. Yahweh! King of Kings!”
Moroni stood on the far side of the classroom, his borrowed body hugging the shadows. When I looked at him he flinched and fell on his face.
“You helped them. Now you call me King?”
“‘What’s in a name? That which we would call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet!’ Forgive me, Lord! I was compelled by the power of the Seraphim… compelled!”
I looked down at the old dead priest, his eyes and mouth open, accusing me of a billion crimes.
“‘Some rise by sin. And some by virtue fall’,” I said.
“Measure for Measure! Excellent, Lord!”
“Take me back, Moroni,” I said. “Take me home.”
CHAPTER XIV
YURI’S BIG DEAL
I spent twenty minutes threatening Moroni before I dismissed him. I wanted him to spread the word: future angelic rebellions would be dealt with severely. I gave him free rein to describe Seraphiel’s disintegration with as much drama as he deemed necessary. I couldn’t have asked for a better pitchman for my latest edict: Moroni would have the story spread across the planet before lunch.
By the time I stepped off the bus in front of the Soupbucket, I was ready for the easy distraction of a pitch meeting. My headache had abated, allowing me a moment to collect myself. But I was still shaky as I walked into the trendy restaurant, twenty minutes late, to find Yuri and three people I didn’t recognise sitting at a table. Yuri waved me over.
He pulled me in for a bro-hug and hissed in my ear. “Dude, I thought I was gonna have t
o cancel. Are you OK? You look like hell.”
“I’m fine.”
“Good. I’ll kill you later.”
Yuri turned to the man on his left. “Lando this is Jeff Corroder, President of Dream Lever Entertainment.”
Corroder stood up and grasped my hand in his large right hand. He was just over six feet tall, swarthy, round-shouldered and slumping toward fat.
“Master Cooper!” Corroder boomed. “Glad you could finally join us! I was ready to send out the cavalry.”
Corroder’s voice was comically high for a man of his size, a female bodybuilder’s sexless falsetto.
“No need,” I said. “I’m ready to…”
I finished my greeting on the floor. Suddenly I was looking up at three faces staring down at me in alarm.
“Oh my god, are you OK?”
“I’m OK.”
“Somebody get some water! Do you need a doctor?”
“I’m fine!”
Somebody helped me into a seat. Somebody else set a glass of water on the table in front of me. I picked up the glass and drained it in one long gulp.
“Dude?” Yuri said, worry scrawled all over his face.
“I’m OK. Just a little dehydrated.”
“Well good!” Corroder chirped. “Can’t have our main man doing his opening monologue from the emergency room.”
Everyone laughed. Yuri and Corroder laughed the longest.
“Anyway, Lando this is my new assistant, Mitsuko Leavenworth. She’ll be taking notes while we chew the fat.”
Mitsuko Leavenworth was beautiful, a tall JapaneseAmerican, about twenty-five years old. She wore efficient black slacks and black V-neck sweater with blue pinstriped shirt underneath. At her throat rested a gold pendant shaped to resemble twin serpents entwined about the Japanese character for good luck. Each of the serpents sported tiny emeralds for eyes. Leavenworth projected an aura of exacting precision. Her long black hair had been lashed into a bun so tight that looking at it made my temples throb.
“Hello, Lando. It’s a pleasure to meet you. And I’m not exactly ‘new’, anymore, Jeff.”
Corroder smacked his forehead. “Sorry. Mitsuko worked her way up through the company. She was in Feature Development with Yuri before I dragged her into TV Purgatory. Hey, speaking of Yuri, I’ve seen so much of your stuff lately I feel like I can recite your act by heart!”
Yuri grinned. “I know talent when I see it, boss.”
“Yuri talks about you all the time too, Jeff.”
Corroder mock-winced. “All bad I’ll bet.”
“The worst,” Yuri said. “If you weren’t signing my paychecks I would have vivisected you months ago.”
This sent gales of laughter around the table.
“Yuri, you nut. Anyway, Lando, I’d like you to meet Ted McFarlane. VP of Comedy Development at Fox.”
Ted McFarlane was slightly below average in height, muscular and hirsute, dressed in dark gray slacks, light blue shirt, and brown pennyloafers. His hair was a noxious flame red, which only served to heighten the impression of violence throbbing beneath his skin. His complexion had a thoroughly spanked redness to it. Years of sun damage and Celtic inbreeding ran riot beneath an explosion of freckles: Ted McFarlane had years of melanoma treatments lurking in his very near future.
“Lando,” he said, his voice like the ultra-low rumble of a California aftershock. He took my hand and gave me a mindnumbingly complicated soulbrother handshake. “Love your stuff, homie. Caught your set at the Midtown Comedy Festival last month. Awesome: edgy, topflight observational shit.”
“You were at the Festival?”
“Bro,” McFarlane snorted. “You think I have time to hit every pisspot comedy club in Chicago? Jeff sent me the links.”
Corroder leaned in. “You’re killin’ it on YouTube!”
“YouTube? Really?”
“Dude,” McFarlane said. “False modesty only works for old British theater fags. You’re what? Twenty-four, twenty-five?”
“Twenty-nine.”
McFarlane took the correction smoothly, but I caught him looking around the table to check reactions to his reaction.
“You’re web-friendly, with a global sort of appeal. On a purely demographic level, there are lots of people in the world who look like you – Brown people, people of color… whatever. They want to see themselves represented in the media. Take that, plus a nice amount of mainstream crossover, and by ‘mainstream’ I mean white American men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-nine, slightly younger on the female flipflop, and you’re pulling about twenty to thirty thousand views per day.”
“How many…?”
“And that’s with no website. No HBO specials or Comedy Channel hype machine,” Yuri added. “Jeff and Ted think you’re on the cusp of going viral.”
“Definitely,” Corroder said. “For reasons we’re still studying… you’ve developed a following.”
“But I never downloaded any videos.”
“Uploaded,” Yuri blurted. “Videos. What Captain Luddite here means is that I’ve been posting his appearances on YouTube and YUCKS and a few other key comedy sites. Lando, Jeff thinks you could be the next Arsenio Hall!”
Corroder slapped the table. “Dude! You promised we wouldn’t use the ‘A’ word. Damn!”
“We’re living in ‘postracial America’,” McFarlane said. “Networks are interested in promoting minority perspectives in order to capture a wider share of an ever diversifying television audience. Advertisers however, still don’t want to alienate the South, the Midwest… all those shitholes where lots of conservative whites live. Nice white Christians who buy guns at Walmart. So you see my dilemma here, Lando, as a Development executive, I mean?”
“Totally. Actually… no. No I don’t.”
“Look,” McFarlane said. “We want color. American audiences are tired of old white guys telling them lame-ass old white guy jokes. Everybody’s down: Letterman’s slipped, Leno’s an abortion on ice since NBC ass-jammed his show. Even Kimmel and Conan are just buttflakes these days. People want new viewpoints, new ideas…”
“Fresh perspectives,” Corroder chimed.
“New blood!” Yuri was grinning from ear to ear. “Fresh meat!”
“Rrriiiight,” McFarlane said. “Fresh Meat. I like it. Could be a good title for the show.”
He nodded this last point over at Corroder’s assistant, who was typing furiously onto an iPad.
“What kind of show are you guys looking for?” I said. Yuri’s brows dimpled. Mitsuko Leavenwoth stopped typing and looked up at me. “I mean… I’m not really clear.”
“Commentary,” Corroder said. “Social critique, but with a comedian’s eye for the absurd.”
Yuri leaned in. “News of the day, politics, whatever’s going on in Washington and how screwed up everything is…”
“Even when things are great.”
“Something’s always screwed up in Washington.”
“Right,” Corroder said. “Everything’s fair game. Nothing’s off topic.”
“Censorship…”
“The media…”
“Race…”
“Sex…”
“War…”
“Things people care about,” Corroder finished. “Guy and Gal on the street, ‘everyday people’ issues… only with jokes…”
“Everyday People,” McFarlane mused. “Another good title.”
Mitsuko Leavenworth looked up from her iPad. “I’m pretty sure Everyday People is the title of a popular Seventies soul song.”
“I don’t think so, sweetheart,” McFarlane said. “I mean, how could it be, when I just came up with it myself?”
To her credit, Mitsuko Leavenworth kept a straight face. I noticed the look she shot Yuri, and the one he shot back at her, and suddenly understood that they were sleeping together.
“It was done by soul supergroup Sly and the Family Stone,” Yuri said. “Classic.”
“Sly Stone,” McFarlane mused. �
�Funky black dude, big sunglasses, crazy afro, dope problem. Maybe. The Seventies are nuclear hot right now.”
Corroder leaned in. “Could be a good choice for a sidekick/bandleader. Sign him to a contract and we get the song plus a burned out wacky celeb.”
“Sly’s a natural for the celebrity rehab circuit,” Yuri added. “Celebrity Crackhouse would kill to get him.”
“Yeah,” Corroder said. “Reality Rehab: Sly Stone; his loves, his hates…”
“His drugs.”
“I don’t recall any stories about drug addiction,” McFarlane said.
“Seriously?” Yuri chuckled. “Giant afro, elevator shoes and songs about peace, love and harmony: what drugs hasn’t this guy done?”
“Yeah! Sly Stone and a bunch of Seventies burnouts living in a rehab center…”
“Or a haunted mansion,” Yuri said. “Think Flava Flav meets The Real World meets Survivor… in a haunted mansion.”
“I get it,” McFarlane snapped. “Sly Stone: sidekick, bandleader… a loose cannon, say anything ethnic burnout…”
“As a compliment to Lando’s ‘Boy Next Door with an Edge’,” Yuri reminded everyone.
“Lando, we want a Funnyman of the People, someone who calls ’em the way he sees ’em: no bull, no babytalk. Just a round-the-way brother who takes the piss out of polite society and tells it like it is.”
“I get it!” I said, warming to the topic. “While subversively tackling the multi-layered hypocrisies of a rampant Military/Industrial/Entertainment Complex.”
Silence.
“But likable,” McFarlane continued. “Likability is key for advertisers. No one wants a radical screaming in their faces. I mean everybody’s pretty much gotten what they wanted right? Gays can marry, minorities…”
“What minorities?” Corroder said. “Last census shows honkies like me dwindling in the population while everybody else on the planet is having babies. A billion Indians, a billion Chinese…”
“Right,” Yuri said. “And with the web shifting the entertainment landscape underneath us, it’s wide open territory. We’re talking about a global audience.”
“At the same time… let’s face it,” McFarlane continued. “Outsiders are definitely in. We’ve got an African-American lesbian Vice President and cloned Chinese hearing impaired Afro-Native-Canadian astronauts living on the moon. We need the new face of the twenty-first century. Lando… we all think you’re it.”
Last God Standing Page 17