The Susquehanna Virus Box Set

by Steve McEllistrem

  “Devereaux is dead,” Curtik said.

  “Is he? He might have transferred his matrix out of his organic computer before he had his assistants destroy his robotic shell. He could be in another organic computer or a different robot, pretending to be less powerful than he is.”

  “Why would he do that?” Curtik asked.

  “That’s what I don’t get,” said Zora. “Maybe to manipulate us?” She turned to God. “Why would you do that?”

  God smiled. “Well, if I were Devereaux, I might do it to eradicate the certainty that plagues humanity.”

  “But religion often drives war,” Zora said. “Doesn’t the act of appearing now as God create the possibility of greater violence in the name of faith?”

  “Perhaps. But your assumption is wrong. Religion does not drive violence. Certitude drives violence: the kind of certitude that leads to fanaticism, to the unshakeable belief that we are right, that we know what’s best, and all others are mere pretenders or infidels or inferior. They are other. They are not like us. So our God or our social group or our philosophy permits and even encourages us to eradicate them.”

  Zora frowned. “So you want uncertainty?”

  “That’s why you chose us?” Curtik asked. “Because one of us believes and one of us doesn’t.”

  “That’s the opposite of every faith I’ve ever studied,” said Zora. “Every one of them claims to be the truth.”

  “Every one is the truth,” God said. “And every one is false.”

  “More Buddhist riddles?” Zora asked.

  “It’s not a game,” said God. “It’s the understanding that we live in a complicated universe. You humans strive to understand it because you’re smarter than almost every other creature on your planet. You have a hundred billion neurons in your brains. And those brains want order. They want something understandable. So they create patterns and stories and connections to make sense of it all. You want answers, but sometimes there aren’t any.”

  “So you are Devereaux?”

  God smiled again. “As I said before, I am God and Devereaux and Jeremiah and all who have gone before and all who will come after. I am the total collective consciousness of the universe and I am only one tiny, insignificant speck in the greater scheme of things, which I don’t pretend to understand.”

  “If you don’t understand it,” Curtik said, “how are we supposed to?”

  “You’re not supposed to understand it—not all of it, anyway. You think you are, but that is a human failing.”

  “So we’re just supposed to accept that we can’t know everything?” Curtik asked.

  “Is that so difficult?”

  “Not for me.”

  God turned to Zora. “And you?”

  Zora shrugged. “I never expected to know everything, but I thought God would, assuming there is a God.”

  “God is just a name humans have given me. One of many. It is the attributes they ascribe to me that have been portrayed incorrectly, not out of malice, but rather a desire for order and for encouragement that they are on the right path.”

  “But you’re real,” Curtik said. “I mean, you’re God. Why can’t you be more clear? Why can’t you make us do the right thing? Why do bad things happen? It can’t just be that we have free will. It has to be something more.”

  “You want me to force you to do good?”

  “Why not?”

  “What is good? Many things that are good for one person are bad for someone else. There is no universal goodness, at least not that I’ve been able to discern.” God looked off into the distance as if seeing something far beyond the horizon. Then he turned back to them and said, “As I mentioned before, I want you to be better. But if I force you to be better, then you haven’t really grown. You have to reach enlightenment on your own or it is not true enlightenment.”

  “How do we achieve that?”

  “There are many paths. You travel one now, each in your own way. I look forward to seeing your progress. I may not come this way again in your lifetimes for I have many places to visit and many people to study. But I wish you well.”

  “Wait,” said Zora, but God disappeared, followed by the garden, and Curtik found himself sitting next to Zora on her bed, his arm still around her. Even in the absence of God, he felt warmer than he had before and more at peace with who he was. He knew God had told the truth about Jeremiah too. He’d been dying. Curtik just hadn’t been able to see it.

  “I still think he’s Devereaux,” she said.

  “He did things Devereaux could never have done,” said Curtik, “miracles Devereaux could not have performed, like healing those analysts as if they’d never been shot at all.”

  “Maybe they weren’t. Maybe it was a mass hallucination. Think about it. We’re all connected via implant or interface. He could have sent the same imagery to all of us.”

  “You took off your interface. So did everyone else.”

  “I thought I did. Maybe he just made me believe it. Maybe it wasn’t real.”

  Curtik shook his head. “You could play that game forever.”

  “So you still believe he’s God?”

  “I do. You might be right. He might be Devereaux or some sort of super intelligence, but I think he’s God. What about you? Do you still disbelieve?”

  Zora nodded. “I admit it’s possible he’s God, but I don’t really think he is. I guess that’s what he was aiming for. Uncertainty.”

  “What do we do now?”

  Zora shrugged. “I guess we go to Devereaux’s lab and help his robots continue his work.”

  “But we’re not scientists. At least, I’m no scientist.”

  Zora smiled. “Do you really think we’re not going to get in trouble there? People have hated Devereaux for years. Some of them will come after us. We’ll have plenty of challenges. Problems will arise. And you and I will handle them.”

  “Action,” Curtik said.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Sweet.”

  The end.