Book of Jim: Agnostic Parables and Dick Jokes From Lucifer's Paradise

by Adam Spielman

“This breach is distorting the antiverse as well. Since it occurred my findings have been entirely anomalous. But I think I’ve found a way to patch it.”

  “Alright.”

  “Do you remember what I said about philosophy, Jim? The thoughts that can’t produce phenomena and the hyper-expansion of paradise? It turns out that all thought, phenomenally charged or not, travels through the vacuum at exactly the speed of light. I have observed in the antiverse for the first time the velocity of philosophy, and against all intuition the non-phenomenal traverses the plane at the same speed as the phenomenal. The difference is, the non-phenomenal – philosophy – is constantly changing direction, with such frequency and redundancy that it never gets to where it is going. All of this churning and digressing eventually feeds back on itself, and the resulting energy is proportional to the square of the value of the original asininity. And though each individual asininity is very small, the cumulative effect is what we observe as the hyper-expansion of the phenomenal sphere. I have discovered the Paradisial Constant!”

  Jim scratched his head. “Didn’t we go over this before?”

  “And here is the homerun kicker.” Einstein spurred the firmament with the heel of his boot. “The physical reason that philosophy cannot produce phenomena, is that non-phenomenal thoughts propagate entirely on waves. Without the particle-wave duality of phenomena, these philosophical waves cannot collapse. They can form nothing of substance.”

  Jim understood none of it. He said, “Is there any fish back there? Jesus said we should get some fish.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Fish?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anyway, I’ve examined what’s left of this firmament, and I believe I understand its function. Religious philosophy, like all philosophy, is based on several core asininities. While these asininities cannot produce phenomena, the waves carry a certain frequency. It is usually undetectable, but within a particular religion the same asininity is produced by a billion minds and the signal is strong enough to detect. The firmament is fitted to receive these signals, identify the religion of origin, and then filter out whatever phenomena that religion opposes. It’s simple and ingenious, and I may be able to improve upon it.”

  But it did not sound so simple to Jim. He said, “So what do you need me for?”

  “I’m coming to that, hillbilly.” Einstein pointed through the crack. “Some of these religious waves have seeped into my antiverse. Apparently, in the antiverse they can take form, and they’re goddamn crazier than you are. I have succeeded in collecting them and I’ve gathered them into the gravity well of a dark star. After I infuse them with super particles and charm quarks I intend to ignite the quasar and point the energy beam directly at this breach. And that’s where you come in.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “I need a distraction, Jim. I need you to distract every soul within the visual radius of the aberration. If a single pair of eyes looks up it will be a disaster.”

  “Well, wait a minute. That all sounds kind of awesome. Why can’t we watch?”

  And Einstein took Jim by the shirt and shook him. “Because! You goddamn crazy hillbilly. When your nut nuked a hole in the firmament you gave form to the madness of humankind! If it is observed before reentering the phenomenal sphere, the wave function will collapse and the heavens will be enslaved by the Immoveable Asininity!”

  “Are you telling me God is back there?”

  “Not God. The half-baked and ill-founded mutation dreamed up by the intellectually perverted. Now, take this walkie-talkie and contact me when the distraction is in play.”

  “You’re fucking with me.”

  “Do you know the difference between science and religion, Jim?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Results! Get me that distraction, and I’ll get us a firmament.”

  3

  So Jim sought out the one man he knew of that might supply such a distraction. He found the man in a cabin surrounded by autumnal woods. Jim explained to him that there was a crack in the firmament, and its mending required the stirring of the Christian fold.

  “I won’t do it,” Hitler said.

  “Oh come on.”

  “It’s a bad idea.”

  Hitler sat upon a lawn chair on the deck of the cabin. The deck overlooked a creek that whispered through oak and pine. On the table beside the chair there was a paperback novel, and the Fuhrer sipped on a pineapple pina colada.

  “I golf now,” Hitler said. “I tell jokes. I read books. I no longer incite calamity.”

  “Just do it one more time. That’s all I’m asking. Just one more.”

  “It’s too reckless. You couldn’t even get Jesus to do it.”

  “So you’re gonna bitch out just cause that’s what Jesus did?”

  “I am not a bitch.” Hitler sipped on his pineapple pina colada. He looked out upon the autumnal woods. “Though I must admit, all of this relaxing can get very tiresome. Sometimes I wonder if a little bit of calamity might do me some good.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  “So all I have to do is distract them? I don’t have to holocaust anybody?”

  “Nope. No holocaust.”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I’m rusty. I wouldn’t know what to say.”

  Jim made the guffaw. “Dude, you broke Europe. Like, a substantial number of the people that are up here, they’re up here because of you. A hundred million, two hundred. I don’t know exactly, but it’s a lot. And I know you don’t get any credit, but that was you, man. You did that.”

  Hitler nodded. He drank the last of his pina colada. He picked up the paperback and thumbed through its pages. “This is a terrible book,” he said.

  “So you’ll do it?” Jim said.

  Hitler stood and stretched his back and his legs. He said, “I will do it, but we must become homosexual partners.”

  “Uh, what?”

  And Hitler put his hand on Jim’s shoulder. “My lips are going to finish what your dick has started.”

  Jim got it.

  4

  Einstein. Einstein, come in. Are you there?

  Jim! I am in orbit around the dark star. The apparatus is fully operational. Is the distraction in play?

  It’s ready, but it might take some time.

  After detonation, it will take two minutes for the charm quarks to reach the firmament. Not a single person can witness it. No observers! Our timing must be perfect!

  Do not detonate until I give the word. I repeat, Do not detonate.

  What is the distraction? Fireworks? A John Wayne movie?

  Uh, well, not exactly. Would that have worked?

  Anything that draws the eye. We only need a picosecond. What is in play?

  I went with Hitler.

  What?! You goddamn crazy hillbilly!

  5

  So Hitler came to the field of battle. He stood upon the shoulders of a smirking angel who floated above the blasted ground. A microphone descended from the sky. Hitler tapped it with a finger and the thud echoed through the sound system of paradise. There was the wang of feedback and he cleared his throat.

  He said, “What is the difference between a Jew and a hooker?”

  Jim thought, That sonofabitch, if he starts holocausting people I’m not golfing with him anymore. He lay on a hill at the edge of the blasted ground, with binoculars in one hand and Einstein’s walkie talkie in the other. And the voice of Hitler was clear through the sound system.

  “The difference is, I have only instigated the murder of two hookers. Get it? I am the Fuhrer. The joke is funny because it is not really a joke and it is inappropriate for me to tell it. Don’t worry, I have many more.”

  Throughout the blasted ground the heads began to turn. For though they loved the war, they really loved a spectacle. Muskets and shovels became leaning sticks and the Fuhrer had a small audience.


  “How many Jews does it take to change the lightbulb?” Hitler said. “Anybody? The answer is zero. It is zero because Jews now live in a terrible darkness, for which I am partly responsible, and they have lost the will to change the bulb. This guy gets it.”

  Jim followed the finger of Hitler, and he saw through the binoculars the oscillations of a papal cap. Then he heard upon the wind the hurrrr hurrrr hurrrr.

  And Hitler told many more jokes. The small audience became a fashionable one. There came the Anglicans and the Lutherans and several Orthodoxies, and there came the Methodists, the Baptists, the Mormons, the Evangelists, the Congregationalists and the Pentecostals. They wandered in with weapons low, and they were glad for the reprieve and they laughed together at the saviorless Jews.

  Then the Presbyterians came. They brought enough cake for everyone. And when the Catholics came, the din of war was no more. Hitler now stood at the pinnacle of all attention, high on the shoulders of the smirking angel.

  He said, “But I have not come before you today to tell jokes or do the holocaust. I am here to show you all my true colors. I am in my heart the artist who died in Vienna, and to prove it I am going to paint for you a masterpiece. I call it, The Prophet Mohammed Enjoys an Ice Cream Cone.”

  Then a second smirking angel brought to Hitler a canvas and a pallet and a brush. Hitler dipped the brush in the pallet and began to paint the likeness of the Islam prophet upon the canvas.

  “Oh shit,” Jim said.

  6

  Einstein! Now! Fire! Fire!

  What’s happening down there?

  Hitler is painting Mohammed! Eating an ice cream cone! I don’t know much about Islam, but you don’t fucking paint Mohammed. We gotta go now.

  Dammit, hillbilly. Elvis, you could have called up Elvis. Alright, we have detonation. Two minutes to arrival.

  Can you make it go faster?

  Charm quarks do not have a gas pedal.

  He’s starting with an outline. He’s outlining. Looks like a body. Those might be arms. There’s a head taking shape.

  One minute, forty seconds.

  I can definitely make out the ice cream cone.

  One minute, thirty seconds.

  You know, he’s pretty good. Like, he’s really got a knack for this. It’s kind of sad how good he is. I think this painting is really going to come together.

  One minute remaining to impact. Is the distraction complete? A single observer, Jim! A single eye looking up and the charm quarks will collapse, and you will all be slaves to the Immovable Asininity!

  Nobody’s turning away from this shit. He’s working on the eyes.

  Forty seconds.

  The eyes are brilliant. It’s like, they’re looking through me, man.

  Twenty seconds. Jim, if this works, there will be an immense burst of light followed by, well, followed by something. It will probably be disorienting.

  I’ll be damned. He finished. Mohammed is enjoying an ice cream cone. Oh shit. Einstein, there’s another crack! The jihad is coming!

  7

  Ka-fuckin-boom.

  8

  Jim! Jim, come in! Was there a flash? Are you disoriented? Damn you, hillbilly, what’s going on down there?

  I, I’m here. Yeah, I’m still here.

  Did it work?

  I don’t know. There was a huge burst of light. I don’t see the crack in the firmament anywhere. Something’s weird, though.

  What is it? Can they see each other? They should not be able to see each other.

  It’s, like, the opposite.

  The opposite?

  We can see everything. Inside and outside. It’s like we can look into each other’s thoughts. It’s hard to explain. But we can definitely see each other.

  A million pole dancers in paradise, and you give Hitler a paint brush. Do you see anything that is either immovable or asinine? I will roast your hillbilly hide on a spit if we created a god.

  No, it’s nothing like that. I mean, it’s awesome. We’re all looking around right know and finding out that we pretty much think the same things. Like, we’re all scared shitless when it comes to spiders and the darkness, and music is a good way to fill up your time, and there’s something about a laughing baby that makes everybody feel warm inside. Even the stuff about the God and the unknown, we’re all just sort of confused and hopeful about it. It sounds crazy, but it just got real friendly down here.

  Results!

  9

  Then Jim found Lucy on a low-hanging cloud. She was all Lucy now, and there were bags under her eyes. Jim stood beside her in silence. Together they surveyed the peaceful throng of all religions.

  And the throng was peaceful, but it was also stirring. For the memory of the spectacle, which they called the miracle, was quick to fade. They began to argue about the details of the miracle, and it looked like they might form new factions and go to war for the oneness of humankind.

  And then it began to rain fish.

  “Are you doing that?” Jim said.

  “No,” Lucy said.

  Jim pulled out the walkie-talkie. “Einstein, it’s raining fish.”

  The walkie-talkie cackled. “Is that some kind of hillbilly riddle?”

  “No, it’s raining fish. Does that have anything to do with the charm quarks?”

  “Well, in theory, if enough super neutrinos from the antiverse run up against the charm quark barrier with sufficient simultaneity, any number of strange phenomena could be localized there. Fish rain is a bizarre, but possible, outcome.”

  And the fish fell and fell. Children played with the fish as swords. Some of the fish fell in water and were fished again. Disputes were settled by fish-throwing contests. Protestants and Catholics and Muslims made fish angels together. Then the hipsters, called Larry Goldstein and Gary Steinberg, began to collect and sell the fish. And there was also some fish juggling.

  Then a single note from a faraway horn dangled in the rain. Jim knew the cadence, for it was a French horn, and a rainbow came through the sky.

  And Lucy, who called herself the devil, who played herself an angel, watched the people and the fish. The bags beneath her eyes were the shadows of exasperation. Jim said to her,

  “You know what Jesus said to me?”

  But Lucy stopped him with her hand. “I don’t care,” she said. “I just need a drink.”

  XI

  1

  So Jim came to Small Town, Paradise. There were green yards and clean airs and split-level houses. There was a post office, a police station, a grocery store, five bars, and one set of well-kept stop lights. Autumn cooled the afternoons and summer warmed the evenings, and every evening there was a new episode of Financially Stable and Moderately Happy Family.

  Jim walked down the street through the split-level houses. He came to a particular house, for it was painted white and there was a garden and a fence. Though the lawn was already clipped to quarter-inch perfection, a stoical man mowed it. He marched in rigid lines over the square of grass until the grass had all been marched upon.

  Then the stoical man cut the engine of the mower, stored the mower in the garage, and entered the house. Jim waited five minutes and knocked on the door. The stoical man answered with beer in hand.

  “I was wondering when you’d come around,” the man said.

  Jim said, “Yeah.”

  “You’ve been in some of the papers, you know.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Well, I guess you better come in.”

  Jim followed the man to the room with the television. The man sat in the dominant recliner, and Jim upon the angled couch. Each waited for the other to speak. It took a while.

  “Your mother left me,” the man said.

  “That sucks.”

  “She’s a princess now. A Disney princess. You believe that?”

  “I do.”

  “Said I spend too much time mowing the lawn. One look at paradise and suddenly keeping the house isn’t her thing anymore. She wanted more. Th
ey always want more.”

  “There’s a lot to do in paradise.”

  The stoical man drank long from the sweating beer. “A man knows what he has and he makes it work. A man doesn’t go off chasing what he knows he’ll never catch. A man builds a house, pays the mortgage, and keeps his lawn. That’s what a man does.”

  “You have a mortgage?”

  “Why’d you come here?” the man said.

  “I’m not really sure.”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “It isn’t money.”

  “You in trouble with the law?”

  “The law? Are you serious?”

  “Well, someone has to take things seriously around here.”

  “I nuked a hole in the sky. With my dick. There was a war. Angels cried. I’m not worried about the law.”

  “Sounds like you ought to be.”

  The man’s posture upon the recliner was upright. His arm lay flat against the armrest and the ankle of his right foot was stable upon his left knee. He was sublime in his authority. And Jim thought, He’s the king of the room with the couch and the television.

  “You mind if I grab a beer?” Jim said.

  “Not till you tell me why you’re here.”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “Neither did your mother. You want a beer, you tell me what the fuck you’re doing here.”

  Jim stood up instead. “You’re not having any of it, are you? You’re still back in Tennessee. Does Uncle Zeke live seven houses down? Is there a Thursday meat raffle you get racist drunk at? I bet you still wake up at five-thirty and polish those ugly boots.”

  “I served my country in those boots. I love those boots. They remind me that I did something once and I keep them clean. I also built the room you’re standing in and I sowed the lawn you walked through to get here. And I know exactly why I did it. I did it because this is where I want to be and this is how I want to live.”

  “You’re fucking dead!”

  “You’re only dead when you run out of reasons. I got mine, where’s yours?”