Dead & Godless

by Donald J. Amodeo

  “God's transcendence is no less relevant here. It means the difference between ‘God cannot be wrong’ and ‘God is not wrong,’ between ‘man cannot choose other than as God knows’ and ‘man does not choose other than as God knows.’ But poor wording aside, your puzzle deserves a deeper look.”

  Ransom bit into his churro, abruptly halting as a pack of children bolted past.

  “Tasty,” he grunted.

  They veered towards the game booths while a cover band performed John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Authority Song” on stage, playing to dozens of exhausted parents who were more than happy to sit down and take a listen.

  “The simple answer is that there is no paradox,” Ransom asserted. “That the Father knows the outcome of your choices doesn't mean that those choices weren't yours. The conflict is a contrived one.”

  “There’s nothing contrived about the notion that your god essentially dooms people before they're even born! For every soul that ends up damned, the lord chooses to create someone, knowing full well that the poor bastard is destined to spend eternity roasting in Hell. How is that not ridiculous?”

  “It’s only ridiculous if you didn’t have a choice.”

  “But god knew!” Corwin insisted. “He knew where the cards would fall. He shuffled the deck and he dealt you your hand.”

  “A card game is a bit of a crude example,” replied Ransom, his shrewd gaze scanning the big top.

  “I take it you’ve got a better one?”

  The answer sparkled in Ransom's eyes as he spied what he was looking for.

  “Have you ever played pachinko?”

  Nestled between goldfish catching and ring throwing was a game booth that went largely ignored. A sign above it read Pirate’s Treasure, the words seared into a broken strip of wood. The booth was manned by a gap-toothed fellow who clearly took his job seriously. He grinned at passersby, looking every bit the pirate with his eye patch and skull-and-crossbones bandana, a plastic cutlass strapped at his side.

  “Ahoy there, mateys! Only three tickets ta play!”

  “Three tickets!” squawked the parrot on his shoulder.

  There was no line, but the game did have one devoted fan. A boy in a pirate hat had been playing for some time, trying his luck in hopes of scoring enough points to win one of the many prizes displayed along the booth’s rear wall. Steadfast determination was etched on his face, and Corwin guessed that he wouldn't be quitting any time soon.

  “Tickets?” Ransom looked askance as he sauntered up. “Any chance you take cash?”

  “Ya gots ta have tickets ta play,” maintained the crusty pirate.

  "Three tickets!" his parrot repeated.

  With a magician's flourish, Ransom flipped his palm, pulling a folded one hundred dollar bill out of thin air.

  “But my friend here loves games, and he's terribly impatient.”

  “Well why din’cha say so?” Swiping the bill from his hand, the pirate squinted as he held it up to the light. “That thar be a mighty fine ticket!”

  He promptly snatched a pair of prizes off the wall.

  “Congratulations, me boy!”

  The man thrust a stuffed tiger and a purple squirt gun into the boy’s arms, then swiveled his shoulders and propelled him on his way.

  “Now shove off!”

  Corwin shot his attorney a sidelong glance.

  “Creating money out of thin air . . . Some might call that counterfeit.”

  “Strange,” said Ransom offhandedly. “That’s not what they call it when your banks do it.”

  “Save the lecture on monetary policy for the Federal Reserve.”

  “I thought I told you that I don’t represent the hopeless.”

  Handing over a white ball that had probably served as a billiards cue ball in the past, the pirate retired to his seat behind the ticket box. Corwin and Ransom had the pachinko board all to themselves.

  Like many of the carnival games, the board looked as though it had been constructed in a handyman's garage. A large wooden plank made up the backboard. It leaned like a pinball machine, rectangular and bordered with low walls. Numerous round pegs were staggered along its length, with slots at the bottom to catch the ball. Each was labeled with a point score, though the winning slots would have been obvious even without them. The coral blue waves of a tropical ocean colored the board. An unlucky player might end up in a slot that was home to shark fins or a black-flagged pirate galley, while those more fortunate would see their ball come to rest by the mermaids or on an uncharted island, next to palm trees and a heaping treasure chest.

  “Pachinko is one of Japan’s great gambling pastimes,” said Ransom. “One look at the board should be enough to give you the gist of it.”

  “I drop the ball in from the top. It gets bounced around by the pegs as it rolls down, and I end up either rich or screwed, only it seems that my chances of getting screwed are disproportionately higher,” deduced Corwin. “I can definitely see the parallels to Christian theology.”

  “Perceptive as always,” Ransom droned. “Now imagine that the player is God and you are the ball. God starts the ball rolling with full and perfect knowledge of the outcome. Let’s also say that every peg on your journey represents a decision, and God knows which way you’ll bounce. He knows your final destination. The question is: has God forced you along your path?”

  “Yes,” answered Corwin. “In that scenario, your path and your fate—it was all predetermined. Moreover, god made the rules. Forces like gravity and momentum were implemented by him. The game was rigged from the start.”

  Ransom dropped the cue ball into play, watching as it clunked from one peg to the next on its bumpy descent.

  “Since the pegs are decisions, let’s replace gravity and momentum with, say, one’s environment and biological urges. I believe we already spoke on the roles of nurture and nature?”

  “Right. And your position was that those forces influence our decisions, but don’t totally determine them.”

  “If they do, then you don’t really have free will,” stated Ransom as the ball caromed into a slot encircled by sharks, “with or without God.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “And you do believe in free will, seeing as how you’ve already spoken about making choices and even appealed to the existence of goodness, a concept which is surely absurd otherwise.”

  “How do I put this?” considered Corwin. “I feel that free will exists. It's not something that I can prove, and maybe I'm wrong, but not believing in it would make life intolerable.”

  “How very religious of you,” replied Ransom. “Then let’s apply that same logic to the game.”

  Snatching up the ball, he placed it a second time at the top of the board.

  “Imagine now that the ball has free will. Forces such as gravity and momentum still play a role, but they can be defied. For every peg in its path, the ball ultimately decides which way it will bounce.”

  This time the downward journey made for an odd spectacle. It began with several predictable bounces, but upon reaching the leftmost peg, the ball rebelliously changed course, going on to cross the board in the complete opposite direction.

  “Would you still say that God has rigged the game?”

  “God still knows,” answered Corwin. “I wouldn’t want to gamble against him.”

  “And that makes you wiser than Lucifer, but the question remains: If one’s choices are more than the result of physical circumstance, then where is the conflict? Is it not possible for God to know one’s decisions without compelling them?”

  “Perhaps it’s possible. I don’t know!” Corwin knocked the ball from its slot beside the treasure, consigning it again to a watery grave. “Either way, that doesn’t absolve your god from dooming people. As you said, he starts the ball rolling, fully aware of how the game ends.”

  “And now we get to the real issue!” declared Ransom. “You see, your argument isn’t actually about what’s possible.”

  “
And what, according to you, is my argument about?”

  “It’s about what’s fair.”

  Pausing a moment to digest the angel’s words, Corwin found that he didn’t entirely disagree.

  “If you’re saying that I think god judging us is unfair, then sure I do! How can you defend a supposedly loving father who chooses to create souls that he knows will be damned? Any reasonable person would hold god responsible.”

  “I never said that he wasn’t.”

  “You’re doing that thing again, that thing where you agree with me and then flip my position upside-down!” huffed Corwin. “The point is that if god is responsible, then he has no right to pass judgment on us.”

  “Responsibility is a little more complex than that.”

  With a pealing flash, the carnival disappeared. Corwin heard the rapid scratch of pencils against paper and a teacher’s strict voice.

  “Ten minutes to go,” she announced.

  “I remember this place,” said Corwin, recognizing the yellow cinderblock walls and plywood desks.

  “Your old high school, Room 303, senior year,” said Ransom as he strode invisibly between the students. Hunched over their papers, they jotted formulas in a rush to beat the clock. “You elected to take an AP course in calculus, and while you managed to pass, this particular test wasn’t your finest hour.”

  He stopped at a desk beside the windows. A teenage Corwin was tapping his pencil anxiously, his brow furrowed in thought.

  “That’s right,” said Corwin. “I failed a calculus test, though I don’t see what this has to do with our debate.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself, Corwin. Are you sure that the responsibility for that failure lies with you? Perhaps we ought to blame the teacher who gave you the test, or perhaps Isaac Newton!”

  “I’d call that a bit of a stretch.”

  “Yet it’s true, isn’t it?” pressed Ransom. “If no one had introduced the world to calculus, you would never have had to study it, and thus would never have failed your test.”

  “Somehow I doubt that Newton foresaw my high school test results.”

  “Would it matter if he had? Intentional or not, actions have consequences. Newton deserves a share in the blame, as does God.”

  The classroom evaporated, returning them to the trodden grass, crowded booths and twanging guitars of the carnival big top. Ransom grabbed the pachinko ball off the board and spun it on the tip of his finger.

  “In the ultimate sense, the Father is responsible for everything. However, God’s ultimate responsibility does not erase man’s proximate responsibility, no more than Newton's part in the discovery of calculus erases the fact that you didn’t study enough for your test.”

  He yanked his hand out from under the ball and Corwin reflexively reached to catch it.

  “Direct fault still lies with you,” said Ransom as his client fumbled, the ball slipping through his fingers.

  Corwin bent to retrieve it from the grass.

  "Responsibility isn't simple. It's not purely either-or. On that I agree. But even if god doesn't force us to hang ourselves, you'd think he could have given us a little less rope. And isn't the penalty for losing this game too high?"

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The Last Things are yet to come.”

  “Then perhaps you can answer my second point, because it seems that there’s one critical choice that I don’t get to make.”

  “And what choice is that?”

  Corwin tossed the ball back to its startled owner, whose effort to catch it sent him toppling backwards in his chair.

  “Whether or not I want to play.”

  With a deep look, Ransom strolled from the booth.

  “To choose whether one comes into existence or not . . . Now there’s a real paradox!”

  He sniffed the air and his hawkish gaze sharpened.

  “Is that homemade apple cider?”

  At a busy stall on the other side of the concert’s seating area, a curly-haired woman was pulling drinks from a large oaken keg. Ransom growled hungrily. And faster than his client could say “evolution,” he was off, blazing a trail towards the keg with laser-like focus.

  “I'll give him this,” uttered Corwin. “He’s a man who knows what he wants.”

  He started after his attorney, but a haunting sense of unease brought him abruptly to a stop. Someone was watching him. A brisk, whispering gust blew back his hair as he peered out into the gloom. Fairgoers were coming and going, drawn to and from the big top as if swept along on lazy rivers. All seemed to be in perpetual motion. All except for one man.

  Beyond the threshold, where the tent’s glow bled to night, he stood unnaturally still, his dark, unblinking eyes pinning Corwin with a soulless stare. Corwin swallowed hard. He wanted to run or shout for Ransom, but he couldn't move, couldn't pull his gaze away. The man’s stare held him like a vice, and he remembered. Those eyes. He’d seen them once before—a reflection in a window on a bright autumn day.

  The stranger was tall and gaunt, with a bald head and wrinkled skin as pale as a corpse. His suit and tie were woven of purest pitch, as though light feared to fall upon him, and there was a falseness to his features. Corwin could feel it. The man was a lie, a mask, a monster in a meat suit.

  He radiated a silent malice, calm and assured. No one else existed. Not the crowds, nor even Ransom. He and Corwin alone were real. And he saw everything, knew everything, with eyes opened wide—too wide, as if he had no eyelids at all. A hideous smile creased his lips.

  Corwin momentarily lost sight of him as a family walked between them. And when they had passed, like a phantom, the dark-eyed stranger was gone.

  14

  A Savior to Some

  “You look like you’ve see a ghost,” said Ransom, handing his client a cup of piping hot apple cider.

  “And if I have?”

  “It’s certainly possible,” Ransom shrugged. “Some would say that you’re haunting this carnival as we speak.”

  Corwin forced a smile, but didn’t laugh. The memory was too fresh, his nerves frayed and raw.

  “What if it wasn’t a ghost? What if it was . . . something else?”

  The angel’s gaze thinned as he surveyed the crowd.

  “If there was a presence here, it’s gone now. I’m not sensing anything unusual.”

  “No disturbances in the Force?”

  “Fear not, young padawan.” Ransom turned for the yawning flaps of the tent. “Let’s get some fresh air.”

  Upon finding a bench, he sat himself down and reached for his trusty flask, topping off the cider with a generous pour. He extended it to Corwin, who eyed its brushed metal finish uncertainly. A little something to take the edge off was tempting, but he decided against it.

  “I’d hate to see what would happen if you ever ran out of liquor,” remarked Corwin as his attorney sipped the cider, judged it half a jigger short of the golden ratio, and set immediately to remedying the situation.

  “There’s a man with the right idea!” declared a scruffy fellow who happened by. “I would drink to your health, good sir, but I seem to have run dry.”

  He wasn’t talking about cider, of which he had a mostly full cup. From his jacket appeared a leather-wrapped flask, held upside-down, one last whiskey teardrop falling sadly from its lip.

  “Well don’t let that stop you!” Ransom offered his own flask in an act of angelic charity, but as the man leaned near, he yanked it back. “But be warned, this stuff packs quite a punch! Just one sip, and you’re liable to wake up with the kind of hangover that makes a man rethink his life.”

  Far from dissuaded, their newfound friend only smiled all the wider.

  “Sounds like my kind of poison!”

  While Ransom spiked the man’s cider, another passerby took notice, stopping some feet away. Thirsty eyes panned slowly from his plastic cup to the bourbon, then back again.

  Unable to resist, Ransom raised his voice.

  “Step right up! Fre
e drinks all around!”

  It didn't take long for a small, boisterous crowd to gather, the circle of drunks toasting Ransom, each other, the night, and just about anything that came to mind. Corwin sat back and watched the proceedings with a mixture of admiration and chagrin.

  “Jesus may have fed five thousand, but with that bottomless flask of yours, you could make a true believer out of every alcoholic on the planet.”

  Ransom fished his cigarette case from his breast pocket.

  “Don’t forget that I’ve also got an endless supply of smokes.”

  At his side, a man gawped in slack-jawed amazement.

  “There is a God!”

  The angel eyed Corwin. “Now why can’t you be more like our friend here?”

  Ten minutes later and the party had died down. A snoring vagabond slumped on the bench between them. Half a dozen others lay curled up on the ground, passed out like a troop of jolly narcoleptics.

  “Can't say I didn't warn them,” Ransom intoned.

  Across the grassy lane, a handful of children raced up the drawbridge of Lucky’s Castle, disappearing beneath the white teeth and scarlet lips of a clown’s gaping maw. Part fun house and part obstacle course, the castle zigzagged up four stories, complete with a climbing net, a mirror maze, rotating tunnel rooms and even a teetering rope bridge tethered with bungee cords. The last was suspended between twin guard towers that rose from either end of the castle walls.

  Plexiglas windows gave a glimpse of the hectic romp. Some children dashed through the rooms, playfully shoving their friends, intent on being first to reach the top. Others tackled the course at a more measured pace. One rung at a time, they grappled up the slope of the climbing net, making steady progress while hastier children thrashed, arms and legs entangled in the ropes.

  “What if we’re both wrong?” supposed Corwin. “About humans having free will, I mean.”

  “Determinism has a comforting ring to it,” said Ransom. “It must be nice to look upon all the depraved deeds of mankind and be able to say ‘they cannot help but act as they do,’ though it must be a nuisance as well.”

  “How can it be both?”