Magnificent Vibration

by Rick Springfield

  “Holy shit!” is my gut reaction. “That is seriously fucked-up. So if I were to have . . . make love to you, it will kill half the world’s population?”

  Alice nods and dabs at her eyes with the sleeve of the sweatshirt I loaned her for our trip on the Loch. It looks enormous on her and has a cartoon of a pig with the legend, “Swine flu. Bacon’s revenge.” I’ve got to stop buying clothes with slogans on them. They are way too prescient.

  “She told me that the Earth has no alternatives left. We have passed the tipping point. Our breeding has run amuck and we’ve abused and laid waste to her. If this doesn’t happen, if we choose not to activate the virus, then everyone and everything will die.” It just keeps getting worse and worse as Alice speaks.

  “All life on Earth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why us?” is all I can ask.

  “She believes we’ll understand what’s at stake,” replies Alice. “And we have no family to be concerned with. That we are bonded. Maybe you’re meant to protect me.”

  “With these arms?” I try to make a joke, but I was never good with timing.

  She smiles despite our dire predicament.

  “Can God really want this?” she asks, and her face looks like some kid who’s been told there really is no Easter Bunny and is looking for the sad confirmation from her parents.

  “He’s kind of been leading the charge,” I answer.

  “My God,” responds the unluckiest woman in the world.

  “So where does Lexington fit into all of this?” I ask, like she would know.

  And no sooner have the words left my mouth than the aforementioned humongous human being walks into the kitchen where Alice and I are struggling to decide the fate of the world. He is sweating and looks distraught. He has something in his right hand. He raises the gun and points it at Alice’s face.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says as tears begin to form a shimmery film over his eyes. “I love you both, like a brother and sister—but this is wrong, what you plan to do.”

  I am on my feet. The wimpy protector.

  “Stop! Lexington, no! She isn’t going to make the virus active. It’s still our choice!”

  I proclaim this to the crazy giant as I make a move to try to place myself between the black hole of the barrel and the person I now love most in this world. Who knew I would ever choose to take a bullet for someone other than Murray?

  “Merikh told me you might say that,” answers our dear old friend L.V.

  “Merikh just wants everyone dead. That’s what he does for a living. He’s the Angel of Death!” I’m shooting from the hip.

  “No. You are the Angels of Death. You can’t be allowed to do this. Que Dios me perdone,” replies the now lethal Lexington Vargas holding his illegally obtained weapon.

  “Click,” says the cocking gun.

  “Shit,” says I.

  “Stop,” yells someone.

  There is a roaring explosion, and I actually see flames leap from the Lexington Vargas’s “persuader.” Someone screams in pain, but it isn’t me.

  God

  “It goes the way it goes,” thinks the Omnipotent Supreme Being. The OSB has His/Her fingers in many pies and is monitoring all of them. And there are 92 to the 17-trillionth-power moments all happening simultaneously around the universe. But this path the “Earth” is trying to take, as a living planet, is unique in the OSB’s experience, which is prodigious and fairly complete. It might just be the radical direction all the other worlds need to follow to ensure their survival. Certainly there can be no more episodes like the Vee-Nung, damn their stubborn shortsightedness and flabby, amphibian limbs. The OSB is watching very closely because every Father/Mother wants to see their children live long and prosper. “Oh, crap,” the OSB says to His/Her self, “I may have a little too much invested in this planet. I’m quoting Star Trek now?”

  Bobby

  All I can see is blood on the walls of the kitchen as ugly gray smoke and the smell of cordite hang in the air like a bad guest that won’t leave. Lexington Vargas has apparently fled. I anxiously turn to Alice to help her but she looks unharmed.

  “Are you shot?” I ask desperately, checking her for signs of a wound. She is, like me, in shock.

  “I . . . I don’t think so,” she says. “Are you?”

  I pat down my own body as though I’m looking for misplaced car keys or someone has just asked me if I have change for a dollar. No entry or exit wounds on me, either.

  “I guess not,” I answer.

  I peer at the kitchen and see blood-spatter. I hear a scuffling noise and move cautiously into the area as though it were land-mined.

  Writhing there on the floor is Lexington Vargas, our would-be-assassin. He is moaning in pain, hands to his blood-covered face. I look for the revolver but see only pieces. A barrel here, half a handgrip there, metal fragments scattered across the counter and littering the ground around the struggling behemoth. I guess not everything “handmade with pride in Scotland” is the better buy.

  “I think the gun exploded,” I yell to Alice as I drop to my knees to help our potential murderer and friend.

  “Call an ambulance. Call the police.”

  “How?” asks Alice. It’s a fair question.

  “Isn’t it nine-one-one?” I shout as I grab a towel from the refrigerator handle and dab at L.V.’s face and hands as he blindly pushes me away, howling in pain. I tell him I’m trying to help.

  Alice runs to the phone and dials.

  “Nine-one-one just goes to a busy signal,” she yells back at me.

  “The emergency number is nine-nine-nine,” says someone other than Alice, me, or Lexington Vargas.

  Just when I thought Hansel and Gretel might be out of the woods, the Big Bad Wolf is standing inside the front door of Grandma’s house, offering up the local emergency number. Merikh now has a gun in his hand as well. I thought guns were really hard to get in the UK!!

  Alice dials and gives our address, never taking her eyes off Merikh. He isn’t doing anything threatening other than holding the weapon (which looks to be an exact copy of the one L.V. just tried to dispatch us with, and I think maybe this weird apparently supernatural being creates his firearms out of our imaginations) at his side, so I continue to administer to Lexington Vargas, who has what look like some seriously deep puncture wounds to his face and right hand. I see a bloody stump where one of his fingers used to be. He moans and utters Spanish phrases I don’t understand.

  “The situation had to play itself out. I am sorry,” Merikh says. “It is not possible for me to take a life.” He puts the gun inside his jacket and I assume the frigging thing just disappears again because I see no telltale bulge. He bends down near L.V. and me on the blood-speckled floor and hooks his long ebony mane behind his ears, which are perfect and just how I always imagined mine would look if I’d had them surgically repaired by the best plastics guy in Beverly Hills. But he does nothing to help.

  “The Angel of Death can’t take a life?” I say in as perplexed a tone as I can muster.

  “I am not this Angel of Death you think I am,” he answers.

  L.V. has stopped struggling and is now lying still. I check to make sure he has a pulse. It’s racing and blood continues to leak, deep, dark, and crimson, from the many ruptures in his skin.

  “But you killed everyone on that plane on the freeway,” I counter, still swabbing away.

  “I did not. I told you that. Most of them were already dead from a chemical leak that poisoned the atmosphere inside the cabin before the aircraft went down,” he counters my counter. “I was there to help them cross through. That is what I do as an Earth spirit. That is why I was in Japan for the tsunami event. I help those who die find their way. Many are confused and don’t realize they are dead. So I guide them to the next step.”

  Alice has joined us at L.V.’s side and is staring wide-eyed at Merikh.

  “Are you sent from God?” She sounds breathless.

  “I am fro
m the Earth,” answers Merikh.

  “Where do you guide them? The ones that die?” I ask.

  “That is not for me to say,” he replies.

  “Why are you here? Why did you follow us?” challenges Alice.

  “To help you. Though I could not help you with this. I cannot interfere in the natural way of things.” I trust the absolute honesty in his voice. It’s like he’s incapable of lying. “If you choose the path of initiating the virus, I will have many souls to guide on their way.”

  Alice stands with anger in her body. “How can I do what has been asked? My path, with God’s help, has always been to heal, not harm.”

  “Then you will all die. As will the Earth,” Merikh says with no judgment in his tone. “Humans have entered the time of unsustainable growth. Fifty years from now there will be total rampant disease, starvation, misery, and the end of all meaning to existence. The extinction of everything. The death of our world. The Earth is trying to save herself. Save life. You may choose to act or not to act. But non-action is still a choice, though it’s the less desirable of the two. By doing nothing, you choose the death of all living things. And of the planet herself.”

  Alice drops to her knees and I catch her plaintive prayer, “Dear God, help me.” I hear distant sirens. They sound alien, but the meaning of their strident wail is unmistakable. The police are on their way.

  “I think we better come up with a story,” I suggest to Alice, since I’m pretty sure that Merikh won’t be here when the local constabulary arrive.

  I walk into the living room to see if there’s anything out of place that we might need to explain when the police arrive and I catch sight of the photograph of the couple that lived their lives in this house before we brought this craziness to it. It’s the one I found earlier and placed on the side table not six hours ago. I recognize the man in the framed shot. It is the one who said, “Call me ‘Skipper.’ ”

  Ronan

  He is glad to have been with his “girl” one final time, as brief as it was. He wishes he could take her memory with him, but he knows once he crosses the barrier, she will no longer be in his mind. His Bonnie Bradana is for those who remain on Earth. He runs a hand along her bow and bids her good-bye. So close to the heart of his life was she. And as far as the one previously known as Ronan Bon Young can tell, she most certainly has a soul. He walks away and casts a last look back as he calls out in his native tongue, Soraidh gu bràth.

  Farewell forever.

  Merikh takes his hand to lead him home.

  Bobby

  Of course Merikh’s stunning presence is markedly absent when the police and the paramedics arrive. Alice and I, with only a toehold in reality, tell them the story we’ve concocted on the fly. The gun was found on the premises while we were housecleaning, and it accidentally discharged as our companion was inspecting it. No one is accused of attempted homicide, but Lexington Vargas is pretty seriously fucked-up. The paramedics are fairly sure he’s lost the sight in his left eye, and he’ll need surgery to remove the metal fragments that are buried deep in his face and hands. Guns are not toys, we are told. Really?

  “You should be very careful if you find a weapon. Call the police and do not handle the firearm,” are the words of wisdom from what look like sixteen-year-old dudes masquerading as grown-up cops while Lexington Vargas is wheeled away on a gurney and Alice and I contemplate the fate of half the world. Truly, youth is wasted on the young.

  We both apologize for the inconvenience. And thanks for the great advice on guns. We’ll visit our friend tomorrow in the local sanatorium; by the way, what are the visiting hours? Here’s my credit-card information, just put it on my tab, and no we don’t need an AIDS test even though copious amounts of bodily fluids are spattered all around, thanks a lot. Don’t forget to wear a condom when you finally get laid, see you all tomorrow, and take good care of our friend the attempted hitman. Bye! Cheerio andràsta!

  After the medics and the constables leave, I mop up the blood that could have been Alice’s but for . . . what? A twist of fate? An act of God? A plain old “shit happens”? I am as close to a spiritual awakening as I have ever been and as far from it at the same time. What was it Alice said? “Dear God, help me.”

  She is sitting on the couch that, judging by the amount of wheat-colored fur still lodged deep in the corners, was also the regular haunt of Toby and Jacoby, the two little Cairn terriers who lived out their span of years here. I sit beside her and take her elegant hands in mine. I can see the edge of her tattoo peeking out from the low neck of my borrowed sweatshirt. Our minds are reeling.

  Something comes to me that I read somewhere, a long, long time ago:

  “What about the pain and sorrow?” asks the student.

  The Master answers, “Stay with it. The wound is the place where the light enters.”

  And I have no choice but to stay with it.

  “How can we do this terrible thing?” Alice finally asks.

  “How can we not?” I answer, and believe me, Woody has no say in this conversation. I know I have portrayed myself as a dick-driven idiot through most of this narrative but my soul has been screaming for recognition. And it’s time I gave my soul a voice.

  “Alice,” I begin, “I will go with whatever you decide. I love you more than I love my own life, and more than anyone else’s, so whatever you choose is okay with me. If I can help you to make a choice then all you have to do is ask. If you choose not to choose, then, as Merikh said, you’ve made a choice anyway.”

  She says nothing.

  “You never told me if I was immune to this virus, so if these are my last days, then I’m happy with that as long as I’m with you,” I say from the deepest place in my soul.

  Alice stands and extends her hand, I take it, and she leads me into her bedroom. I still don’t know if I will die or not. And I am okay with not knowing.

  She will go out into the world, the emissary of global catastrophe and savior of the planet. God help us.

  THANKS TO:

  My wife, Barbara, for putting up with me sitting in the shade working on my laptop during our Christmas vacation in Australia when she wanted to go and do stuff.

  My editor and good friend Stacy Creamer, who encouraged me from the very beginning of our relationship to write novels, and to the team at Touchstone: Susan Moldow, David Falk, Brian Belfiglio, Sophie Vershbow, Meredith Vilarello, Cherlynne Li, and webmaster Jim Bullotta, for being, in the words of Horatio Cotton, “fully awesome.”

  To everyone who spent their hard-earned cash buying this book—I hope you think it was worth it—and to those who stole it (like I used to when I was a kid)—I hope you think it was worth it. :)

  TOUCHSTONE READING GROUP GUIDE

  Magnificent Vibration

  Imagine finding a toll-free number that would connect you to God. Would you use it? What would you say? Horatio “Bobby” Cotton is at his breaking point when he finds 1-800-Call God scribbled inside the front cover of a self-help book he’s just stolen from a bookstore. At thirty-two, he’s at a dead end: stuck in a miserable job and recently divorced, having lost his wife, his house, and his beloved dog in one fell swoop. He’s considering suicide but figures he’ll screw that up, too. So why not call up the big guy?

  But God has attitude—and a wacky sense of humor, and Bobby finds himself on an unexpected journey for answers to questions both big and small. A wholly original story that is at once hilarious, tragic, affecting, irreverent, and deeply thought provoking, Magnificent Vibration is a wild ride you will never forget.

  For Discussion

  1. At the beginning of the book, Bobby thinks, "The scorching intersection of sex and religion will remain a potent one for me—a mash-up that will drive me to my inevitable destiny in the years ahead.” Discuss specific moments where sex and religion intersect in his life and how you think they affect the outcome.

  2. How do you think “magnificent vibration” relates to this story and to the mysterious self-hel
p book? Why do you think Springfield used the same title for both?

  3. Though mostly told through Bobby’s eyes, the novel shifts point of view and is not broken into chapters. How did this affect your reading experience? Would it have been different if the book told only Bobby’s story, without the perspectives of the OSB or Ronan Young?

  4. Bobby, Lexington, and Alice are all led to copies of Magnificent Vibration, but only Bobby and Lexington find God’s phone number in theirs. Why do you think Alice’s book didn’t have the phone number in it?

  5. How have the women in Bobby’s life shaped his character? Are there any women who haven’t let him down or betrayed him in some way? How does Alice fit into the picture?

  6. Even though God asks to be called “Arthur,” it’s never clear whether God is male or female. Do you think God has gender or is a sexless being?

  7. To the OSB, the people of Earth are “destructive, ignorant, negligent masses.” Do you think this is a fair assessment?

  8. Why do you think Bobby saw the Loch Ness Monster instead of the Earth spirit? Do you think Bobby was meant to know his destiny?

  9. Bobby, Alice, and Lexington are together on this complicated and mysterious journey throughout much of the book, but in the end, the focus is on Bobby and Alice. What do you think Lexington’s role was?

  10. Merikh explains that by giving Bobby and Alice the virus, “‘The Earth is trying to save herself. Save life.’” Do you think Alice and Bobby make the right decision? Is the choice easier for one of them?

  11. Though the OSB admits, “‘I may move a few chess pieces now and then,’” God still insists that people have free will. How does this fit with your beliefs about God, fate, destiny, or an ultimate purpose?