What in God's Name: A Novel

by Simon Rich

  Sam—who was already wearing pants—scooped up his ruined machine and headed straight out the door. Laura, though, remained stubbornly on her couch. With Sam on the move, the Angels couldn’t afford to let Laura procrastinate. Luckily, they’d developed a contingency plan, designed to force her out of her apartment. First they increased the pressure to her radiator, causing it to click abrasively. When that didn’t get her to leave, they short-circuited her cable box, depriving her of television access. She stood up and cursed for a while, but ultimately sat back down. The Angels, growing desperate at this point, located the nearest infant—a three-month-old boy two floors above Laura’s apartment—and increased the gas pressure in his stomach. The baby started shrieking, at greater and greater volumes. Eventually, Laura couldn’t take it anymore. She threw on an overcoat, tossed her iPhone into her bag, and headed for the door.

  By the time she left her apartment, Sam was just a hundred feet from the Apple Store. If the Angels didn’t stall him, he’d be in and out by the time Laura arrived. They tried to delay him with a succession of “Don’t Walk” signs. But that ploy wasn’t buying them enough time. Eventually, they had no choice but to arrange a minor car accident between a taxicab and an elderly man’s Honda Civic. Neither driver was hurt, but their screaming match provided a useful diversion. By the time Sam was finished watching them, four minutes had passed—and Laura was entering the store.

  Sam was about to enter as well, when disaster struck.

  “Help…I need somebody…help…”

  A talented street performer had begun to play one of Sam’s favorite Beatles songs. The Angels watched in horror as Sam turned his back on the Apple Store and headed over to watch the guitarist. He tossed a single into the musician’s empty case and bobbed his head in time to the music.

  “It’s okay,” Craig whispered to Eliza. “It’s a short song.”

  The street performer finished “Help” and immediately transitioned into “Hey Jude.” Craig smacked his desk with annoyance.

  “Rain?” Eliza suggested.

  Craig hurriedly typed in a code, and the sky opened up with a roar. The musician packed up his gear and fled for the closest subway tunnel. Sam hustled into the Apple Store, grateful for some shelter from the storm.

  By the time he entered the shop, Laura was standing at the cash register. They didn’t initially notice each other, so the Angels made Sam sneeze, over and over, until Laura finally caught sight of him.

  “Oh my God…Sam?”

  “Laura? What are you doing here?”

  The two humans hugged. The Angels subtly dimmed the store’s lights and short-circuited the radio, shifting the station from classic rock to smooth jazz.

  “How’s Cliff?”

  “Oh, we broke up.”

  “Really? Wow, that’s…that’s too bad.”

  Craig maximized the window on his computer screen. Eliza’s face was so close to the monitor she could feel her hair sizzle with static electricity.

  “You look good,” Laura said.

  Sam blushed.

  “So do you!”

  The Angels high-fived.

  “It’s happening!” Craig cried. “It’s happening!”

  Eliza moved even closer to the screen.

  “Come on,” she whispered. “Ask her out.”

  “So,” Sam said to Laura. “What are you doing…”

  “Tonight!” Craig shouted at the screen. “What are you doing tonight!”

  Sam cleared his throat. “What are you doing…at the Apple Store?”

  The Angels cursed with frustration.

  “Well, my phone broke…so…here I am.”

  Eliza slapped the side of the computer monitor. “Ask him out! Don’t wait for him to do it! Just go! Go!”

  Laura shifted her weight from foot to foot.

  Sam feigned interest in a nearby iPad display.

  Eliza pulled at her hair. “Come on!”

  “Well, hey,” Sam said, eventually. “It was nice running into you.”

  “You too,” Laura said. “I guess…I’ll see ya?”

  “Yeah! Yeah. I’ll see ya.”

  The humans shook hands awkwardly and parted ways. Just before Laura left the store, she glanced over her shoulder at Sam. He turned around a second later—but by then she was already out the door.

  Craig leaned back in his office chair and covered his face with his hands.

  “I don’t believe it. All that work…the car accident, the rainstorm, the salmonella—what the hell happened?”

  “They blew it,” Eliza whispered. “They fucking blew it.”

  She yanked the power cord out of the wall and sighed as the screen went black.

  Part II

  HEAVEN—SEVENTEEN DAYS UNTIL DOOMSDAY

  GOD LAUGHED.

  “An extension? Out of the question.”

  “Just an extra month!” Craig pleaded. “We’re so close. We arranged a Chance Encounter recently—there was definite chemistry between the humans. If we could just get them together one more time—”

  “They had a chance and they screwed it up,” God said. “Why don’t you just quit?”

  Craig sighed. For the first time in weeks, the question seemed valid.

  “Look,” God said. “I’d love to help you out. But I can’t just postpone the earth’s destruction. The date’s already on the calendar. If I change it now, it would be a scheduling nightmare.”

  “For who?”

  “Well, Raoul, for starters.”

  God turned on his TV, and his prophet popped onto the screen. He was standing by the Dumpster of an A&P, draped in foil and screaming at cars as they passed. His cardboard sign read: “The World Will End on Oct 3rd.”

  “He’s been telling everyone October third,” God explained. “I can’t just tell him to rewrite all his signs. It took him hours to draw them.”

  “Could you at least ask him?”

  God hesitated. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll ask.”

  He waved at the screen until he got Raoul’s attention.

  “Hey, buddy!” God shouted. “How’s it hanging?”

  Raoul shrugged. “Low and lazy.”

  God laughed for a while.

  “Listen, one of my Angels wants me to push back the destruction date. How hard would it be to change the date on your signs?”

  Raoul’s eyes widened. “On all of them?”

  “I’m not saying you have to!” God assured him. “I just wanted to know how hard it would be.”

  “Pretty damn hard,” Raoul replied tensely.

  “Forget it, then,” God said. “Sorry I interrupted! Keep up the good work.”

  Raoul picked up his sign and sprinted after a nearby SUV.

  God grinned apologetically at Craig. “Guess that answers that!”

  Craig peeked at God’s desk calendar. In the October 3 square, he’d written a memo to himself: “Don’t forget: destroy Earth (fire?)” In the October 4 square, he’d written, “Restaurant opens!” and drawn several smiley faces.

  “It’s so close,” Craig said. “It’s hard to believe.”

  “I know,” God said. “Just think: in eighteen days, we’ll be sitting at a corner table at Sola, eating delicious Asian fusion.”

  He leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head. “I can hardly wait.”

  Craig slunk down the hall, trying his best to avoid eye contact with Vince. He had almost made it to the elevators when the Archangel called out his name. Craig took a deep breath to steady himself and slowly turned around.

  “What do you want, Vince?”

  “I watched your CE on the Server. Pretty clever.”

  Craig nodded awkwardly, unsure if Vince was being sarcastic.

  “How’d you get that baby to start crying like that? Were you running a migraine program?”

  “Actually, it was just a simple gas code.”

  He recited it from memory, and Vince slowly repeated it back.

  “What about
those sneezes?” he asked. “How’d you cue them?”

  “I directed some gusts into the human’s nose hairs.”

  “Those must’ve been pretty narrow gusts.”

  “I used a wind current.”

  “Oh, right. Of course.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  “You know what I would’ve done?” Vince said. “I would’ve knocked Sam into a display case. Broken his legs or something. That way the female would have had no choice but to stay with him for a bit—you know, at least until the ambulance came. Also, it would’ve scored him a crazy amount of sympathy points. She’d definitely go visit him in the hospital, maybe even start pushing him around in his wheelchair. Sooner or later they’d start fucking.”

  Craig nodded. “That might’ve worked.”

  “It was just an idea,” Vince said, flicking his wrist to emphasize how little effort he’d spent on it. “I’ll see you around.”

  Craig smiled, slightly startled. Since when did Vince start “seeing him around”?

  “Yeah,” he said, “I’ll see you around, Vince.”

  Eliza took a bottle of bourbon out of her desk drawer. They were pathetic, these humans, so cowardly and dumb. She took a swig of whiskey and idly scanned the globe.

  A teenage ballerina in Warsaw feigned an ankle injury, to get out of a frightening audition.

  A tourist in Paris canceled her dinner reservation, because she feared the wait staff would mock her French.

  A child in Florida refused to ride Space Mountain, even though he was well over the height limit.

  Eliza searched for Sam and Laura. They were both engrossed in their newly mended iPhones, scrolling robotically through a series of random tweets. Eliza wondered if they were thinking about each other, if they were conscious of how badly they had screwed up.

  She looked at her watch. It was only 3 p.m., but she was thinking about leaving the office. It wasn’t like anyone would notice.

  “Is that bourbon?” Craig asked, poking his head into her cubicle.

  Eliza offered him the bottle. “Want some?”

  He shook his head. It was the first time they’d spoken to each other since their Chance Encounter had ended in disaster. Their failure seemed to hang in the air. Its presence was so mortifying they couldn’t even look at each other.

  “What’d God say?” Eliza asked.

  “He wouldn’t give us an extension. He thinks we should just give up.”

  “Makes sense.”

  Craig surveyed the floor and saw that it was almost completely empty. Ever since God’s memo, Angels had started leaving work earlier and earlier. Some had already begun to clear out their desks; the cubicles were littered with half-filled cardboard boxes.

  “So,” Craig said. “What are you going to do next? You know, after the office closes?”

  Eliza shrugged. “I might get into shuffleboard,” she said. “That seems like a fun game.”

  Craig nodded. “I’ve walked by those courts. They look nice.”

  “What about you?”

  Craig thought for a second. “I guess I’ll help God with that restaurant,” he said. “Maybe it’s not such a bad idea? I mean, chic decor, reasonable prices—I could see it catching on.”

  “Yeah. Totally.”

  They didn’t speak for a couple of minutes. Eventually, their silence was interrupted by a beeping sound.

  Craig glanced at Eliza’s computer and forced a laugh.

  “Huh,” he said. “A Potential Miracle.”

  Eliza squinted at her screen. In Belgium an elderly woman and her grandson were scrambling up a hill, trying to catch the last bus home. The driver was approaching their stop, and if they didn’t flag him down in time, they’d be stranded.

  Craig and Eliza turned away from the screen, feigning nonchalance. Who cared about some random humans in Belgium? The entire world was about to explode. As the humans struggled onward, though, both Angels turned unconsciously toward the screen.

  “Come on,” Craig whispered under his breath. “Move it.”

  The elderly woman was almost at the top of the hill when she stopped to catch her breath. She clutched her grandson’s arm for support and squinted anxiously at the bus. It was already slowing for their stop.

  Craig and Eliza made eye contact—and immediately burst into action.

  “We gotta stall the driver,” Eliza said.

  “A crash is too risky.”

  “Can we cut out the engine?”

  Craig recited a code and Eliza typed it rapidly into the computer. The bus’s motor overheated, forcing the driver to stop. And by the time he could restart his vehicle, the grandmother and grandson had inched their way to the top of the hill. The driver spotted them in his rearview mirror and thrust his doors wide open.

  “Yes!” Eliza shouted.

  Craig pumped his fist. “Boo-yah!”

  The Angels looked down at their feet, embarrassed by their sudden outburst. After a few awkward seconds, Craig cleared his throat.

  “I don’t want to give up,” he confessed.

  Eliza beamed at him. “Me neither.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “Really.”

  Craig was so relieved he started to laugh.

  “Oh, that’s great!” he said. “That’s great!”

  He clapped his hands excitedly. “You stay right there! I’ll make the coffee.”

  He ran to the break room and brewed a ferociously strong pot. By the time he returned with it, Eliza was hunched over her keyboard.

  “I was thinking,” Craig said. “If we break their iPhones again, it wouldn’t be hard to arrange a second Chance Encounter. All we’d have to do this time is…”

  He noticed that the blood had drained from Eliza’s face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Eliza clicked her mouse a few times, zooming in on Laura’s tiny bathroom sink. A pair of toothbrushes rested behind the faucet—both of them recently used.

  “He’s at her house,” she whispered.

  “Who? Sam?”

  “No,” Eliza muttered. “Cliff.”

  EARTH—FIFTEEN DAYS UNTIL DOOMSDAY

  “I’m going to start a revolution,” Cliff said. “The mainstream galleries are trying to ignore me, but I’m going to have the last laugh.”

  Laura nodded absently. Cliff had been telling her about his revolution for several years.

  “Sure, I could play by their rules,” he went on. “Sell a bunch of paintings, make ten million dollars. It would be the easiest thing in the world. But where would the victory in that be?”

  “Well, you’d have ten million dollars.”

  Cliff scoffed. “That’s so like you.”

  Laura flushed. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, kissing her on the forehead. “You can’t help it. It’s your whole middle-class upbringing. You’ve been taught to buy into so much bullshit.”

  Laura averted her eyes. She always got embarrassed when Cliff brought up class. She wasn’t entirely sure about his background, but she knew he was from a poor family. His father had been some kind of baker—pastries, she’d heard him say one time. He’d mentioned once that he didn’t have any student loans, which meant he’d somehow earned himself a full Ivy League scholarship. That alone was more than anything she’d ever accomplished.

  “My point,” Cliff said, “is that the bourgeoisie is frightened of my work. And with good reason. It has the potential to turn their fragile little world upside down.”

  Laura wondered what it would feel like to be as confident as Cliff. She never felt lazier than when he rambled on about his projects. He was currently working on five abstract paintings, a performance art piece, two separate operas, and a screenplay based on Finnegans Wake. He hadn’t technically started writing the screenplay, but he was in the “final planning stages,” which Laura thought was still somewhat impressive.

  She looked over and noticed that Cliff was still talking—something
about Borges now. Laura sighed. She didn’t particularly like him. Still, after so many months of isolation, it was a relief to hear another human voice, even one as loud as his. When he called her out of the blue, she pressed “ignore.” But as the week went on, her loneliness mounted and she eventually called him back.

  “We’ve just become a nation of consumers,” Cliff was saying. “They should call it the United States of Halliburton. In the Almighty Dollar We Trust.”

  Laura thought about her bizarre run-in with Sam. It was such a crazy coincidence; she had just been thinking about him, and then—boom—there he was.

  “What do you think?” Cliff asked.

  Laura hesitated. She hadn’t been paying attention.

  “I think you’re right,” she said.

  Cliff kissed her passionately. “You’re the only one on this planet who gets me,” he said. “It’s a real miracle we found each other.”

  Eliza stared at the screen with dismay.

  “How did this happen?”

  “It’s a nightmare,” Craig agreed. “I’ve researched this guy extensively; he sucks.”

  The Angels watched with disgust as Cliff slid his hand down Laura’s nude back.

  “I’m sorry for ranting,” he told her. “It’s just, when I think about my art, I get so fired up. It’s like a flame inside my heart that won’t stop burning.”

  “Ugh!” Eliza said. “Does that line ever work?”

  “I checked his Sexual History,” Craig said. “It works seventy-seven percent of the time.”

  “What? Seriously?”

  Craig nodded glumly. “His success rate is even higher when he tries it on women under twenty.”

  Eliza shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”

  Craig opened the Server and pulled up some of Cliff’s recent sexual conquests. He’d used the “art” line—or variations on it—on thirteen different females in the past six months. All but three had responded with sexual contact of some kind.

  “How could women fall for that?” Eliza moaned. “It’s so obviously bullshit!”

  Craig scrolled through his research file. “He’s also had success with ‘I would die for my films’ and ‘Have you ever read Spinoza?’”