The Audience, a short story

The Audience

He must have heard me come up the gravelly drive for as I approached the house He, standing by the railing of a spacious deck and from what I could tell gazing into some divine distance, slowly turned to face me and His eyes found my startled ones and He looked down at me where I now stood, quite amazed and not a little scared, and announced, with neither greeting nor preamble, “I have changed my mind.”

I didn’t get it.

That, needless to say, was hardly surprising, for my mind was at this moment not exactly working at peak. And I ask you, in my shoes, what mind would have? This was capital gee God here, had to be, could be none other, speaking, in person, down, at me. And I sure as hell didn’t get it.

Also, since this had all happened so suddenly, I was probably in shock. Should have been in shock at any rate. Although, yes, I know, I’ve been asking Him for some time, begging Him if truth be told, sometimes even demanding, a word perhaps, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, an audience, yes, that’s what I’d like if He wouldn’t mind. But, were I to be really honest, I never expected Him to actually exist, much less that He could/would listen, and less still that He would actually go to the trouble of arranging one. Audience, that is.

But one instant, there I was: watering the lawn, spraying that yellowing spot (dog’s urine, I think—wish that dog would learn not to pee on the lawn) with extra care, talking to Him, again, cursing Him, as usual. You know: if only I could get may hands on Him (preferably around His neck) pointing out, again, for His edification naturally, some newly discovered problem or other with His so called creation. In other words, just a normal Saturday morning, just my normal one sided kind of cursingly conversational challenge for the Almighty, happens all the time, really.

And the next, not even an eye’s blink, I swear: here I am, wherever here is. I guess it’s Heaven—that’s where He hangs out, isn’t it? Where else could it be? A brief thought: Did He turned off the water, or is the hose still going full blast, still costing me so much a wet cubic yard to flood my lawn? No telling, but I hope He though of it.

The place is amazing, though. I kid you not. I got a good look coming up the drive from the old gate where He (unceremoniously) dumped me. I’m not sure what I had expected. Clouds and glory, I guess. A celestial city, something like that. White streets, you know, gilded spires, angels and harps. I don’t know. White, anyway; like those white, white rooms and corridors in the movie 2001. Yes, definitely. White. Something very white. That’s what I would have expected.

But not this place. Not in the least white. Oh, it’s great, yes, absolutely, but not white. It’s a large, sprawling thing, His house is. Looks a little like a mountain retreat for the obscenely rich, with a very big veranda, deck, whatever, facing the driveway. Vast and somehow alive. Odd angles (not angels—in fact I haven’t seen a single one since I came which I find rather unsettling—angles) here and there, not just the four corners to God’s house but fifteen, twenty maybe; things and windows too jutting out where you’d least expect them. Two stories? Three or maybe even four as it slowly climbs up the hill. Sprawls up the hill. And this great deck, all of a sudden green with vines and crimson and indigo with small flowers (that I can’t recognize and much less name) climbing up sides and along the hand rail. And there’s a smell of honey on the air, it must be from the vine, but I’m not sure. Very strong though. Be that as it may: His house is fantastic. I’ve never seen anything like it.

And the garden! You should see it. More like a green ocean, rolling forever. Trees and bushes all cut and trimmed to look like animals and stuff, what do you call it? An opitary? Topiary? One or the other, I think so. Grass, brilliantly green, cropped to lawn close to the house, then shaggy like fields a bit farther away, then swaying like water beyond that. Green in every direction: green to far away blue and then it seems to dip away into space. Behind the house the hill keeps rising from hillside to hill to foothill to cliff to mountain to space in that direction as well.

So, okay, the house and garden and fields and mountains surrounding may not have to be white, but God for God’s sake, God for sure should have been white, should have sparkled white. That was the one given. But no, he’s not. And I mean that literally. No long white beard or white flowing hair, no white cascading robes rustling in the heavenly breeze, no large, bushy, sloping, very white eyebrows over clear, blue, all-knowing, ever-understanding and forgiving (if a little stern) eyes. Well, those eyes did seem all-knowing, even ever-understanding, but they were definitely not blue (the God I argue with always has blue eyes). No, they were very dark. Dark and dark. And stern. And not necessarily forgiving.

All in all, God struck me more like an American Indian than anything else. Long, dark hair. Jeans. And a plaid shirt. Boots. Very Texas, in fact.

And then He spoke again, to me (had to be, there just wasn’t anyone else around): “I’ve changed my mind.”

Which is what He’d said just a minute ago. Exactly. And I still didn’t get it. Mind still not working, still not caught up with reality. Some reality. And then there was this other problem, less pressing perhaps, but problem nevertheless: What do you call God? Does He have a title? Sir? I guess.

And so my real problems began.

I cleared my throat with some difficulty and with a faint croak said, “Sorry, Sir.”

Whereupon my throat seized up again. Too dry. I tried to swallow once, twice, succeeded, then had another go at it. “Sorry, Sir. I don’t quite follow.”

“My mind,” said the Lord. “I’ve changed it.”

“Your mind, Sir?”

“My mind, yes.”

Now, how do you respond to that? For one, I had no idea what He was talking about. About what? Changed His mind about what? For two, I wasn’t all that sure that He actually expected me to answer. So I took the road more traveled and said nothing.

The silence grew. And grew. Turned awkward, for me anyway. And grew. Within it I heard the rustle of leaves all around as the winds chased through the garden, a faint creak from some remote, climbing portion of the house, the screech of a distant bird moutainward. After some more of this what also grew was the obvious fact that He did expect me to reply after all for He, too, said nothing. Just kept looking, at me. Waiting.

A soft sort of rustle sound rose from somewhere down below. This I eventually traced as coming from the gravelly ground and that my feet, who had apparently grown restless, were the cause of it. I stilled them. Looking back up I saw that God was still looking at me and that He didn’t seem much to mind this prolonged lack of conversation. No, not a bit. Not a flinch. Kept right on looking. Down at me to be sure, taking me, no doubt, for the very same idiot I felt like. Then, God, Good Guy that He is, and no doubt observing my predicament, picked up the conversation again.

“I’ve changed it.”

“About what, Sir?”

“About the whole thing.”

“The whole thing, Sir?”

“Yes.”

“What whole thing?”

He shrugged, “The world, the universe, everything.”

Somewhere, at some distance, a faint panic cleared its throat. “How exactly . . . I mean, how, to what, have you changed your mind? Sir.”

He didn’t answer my question. Instead, He said, “And especially about you.”

The panic traveled its distance very fast and arrived, fully fledged, “Me?”

“No, not you you. You humans.”

“You mean us people.”

“Yes. You people.”

Ah. Close one. I tried my question again. “And what mind have you changed . . . Sir? I mean, how have you changed it, your mind? In which direction, if you know what I mean? To what?”

Up till now He had stood very still, taking me in with those pools of dark, his weathered hands curled round the railing. Now He suddenly stepped back and stretched. In dismissal I thought at first, now I’ll never get my question answered. But instead He stretched some more and flexed His back a bit and chased away a slim gathering of His long, almost blue-black hair with a quick motion of His hand. Then, with the same hand, almost the same motion, He invited me up onto His deck/porch. The steps, all twelve of them, under my feet, creaked. Loudly to my ears. My feet grew self-conscious.

“Sit down, would you.”

I didn’t see any chairs so I didn’t.

“What’s your name?” He asked.

“Randolph Hedgeheath.”

“Curious name.”

“I know.”

Then there appeared an old wicker chair by the wall. He beat me to it, however, and sat Himself down. The chair crackled a little under him. Again with His hand He motioned for me to follow suit and again I was met by this embarrassing lack of furniture and I so remained on my feet wondering how to break the news diplomatically to the Almighty. I drew breath in order to, but at that moment, luckily, He caught on and made another chair for me. It was wicker too, I noticed, and I dashed for it while it was still there and sat down. Strangely, it did not creak as I landed in it.

“Especially you,” He picked up His ominous topic. “I’ve changed my mind about you.”

“Me, Sir?”

“No. Mankind.”

“Ah, yes.”

“Yes. You have finally succeed. Finally managed to accomplish the near impossible, you have exhausted my patience. Not an easy thing to do. But I just can’t stand it any longer. I’m taking it back.”

I didn’t understand. “Sir, if you don’t mind me asking, what, precisely, are you planning to take back?”

“I’m taking back the one thing I gave you lot at Creation that I didn’t give the animals or plants. To make you special, to make you perfect.” He shook his head and added, “And I have regretted it more or less ever since. And now, I’m sorry, I’m finally sick of it. I’m taking it back.”

He meant that. And whatever it was, it didn’t sound good. Sounded like we, mankind, needed it. “What, exactly, sir? You’re taking what back? Sir.”

“Responsibility,” He said as if those six syllables explained everything. “I’m revoking it.”

I still didn’t get it. “Responsibility?”

“Yes. That’s what I said. You shall no longer possess it.”

Flashing back to where I had so recently come from, I couldn’t see how that would do too much damage, since there wasn’t too much of it around to revoke, an observation I went ahead and shared with Him. “Actually, sir, there’s not too much of it left. To revoke. Sir.”

“Oh, but there is,” He replied. “You may not know it, but it’s the one thing that makes you humans human. It’s that little piece of Me that sets you apart from the rest of the pack.”

Still didn’t get it, and I told Him so. He apparently wanted me to understand, for He elaborated.

“It’s what allows you act, by your will rather than mine. It’s your independence. Free will. Call it what you want. Without it, you’re just another mammal.”

Ah, free will.

A not so pleasant picture emerged, then swam into focus. It brought a small tremble as I began to see. But what I said was, “Are you sure you can do that?” Sort of wondering if there wasn’t a law or something covering this point, guaranteeing us the right, a Constitution, something.

“I am God,” He said.

Which was a Good point. “So, responsibility, huh? Assuming you did, you know, revoke it, what would happen to us?” I asked.

God seemed quite pleased that I had asked, and when I saw his just a tad malicious smile, then I knew I wasn’t going to like His answer. “Well,” He said, “then you would jump when I said jump and you would sit still when I said sit still. And you wouldn’t move about on your own and do things. You wouldn’t move at all, as a matter of fact, until I said so. You would finally start acting what you actually are: a creation. Mine.”

“But . . . ,” I had trouble getting it out, “but that’s awful!”

“I don’t think so.”

“But we would be nothing . . . nothing more than puppets.”

“What’s wrong with that?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “That’s what you are for heaven’s sake. You are created. That’s what you’ve always been.”

Could that be? “We have?”

“Sure you have. I created you, remember?”

“No, I don’t remember.”

“Don’t you get it? Look. First there was nothing. Right?”

“Right.”

“Then I said for you to exist and you existed. Right?”

“Right.”

“Ergo, you are nothing without my saying so. You wouldn’t exist without my saying so.”

Well, that made sense. But for one thing, “But if that’s the case, how does responsibility fit in? Free will?”

“It was a trial,” He said. He made it sound like an admission. Sorry he’d done it. “And a bad one. I’m revoking it.”

I had a really bad feeling about this. “But what would happen to the world?”

“Well for one,” said the Almighty, “peace, at long last.”

“But you can’t do that. You can’t do that to us.”

“Sure I can. I can do anything I want.”

And there just wasn’t any answer to that. This was all very hard to grasp and very upsetting. Then a rogue thought: “Completely still? What about the animals? They move around.”

“Because I tell them to.”

Wow. “That’s a lot of telling.”

“I’m quite a teller.”

I didn’t like the prospect. A fleeting thought wondered if maybe I could stay here, with Him, if He decided to go ahead with this responsibility revocation thing. Stay here and be responsible. I was about to ask Him when He changed the subject.

“So, Randolph. Be honest now, you really didn’t believe in me, did you?”

“Of course I did. Sir.” No hesitation there, got to get on His good side.

“Tut, tut. Remember. I’m all knowing. And, please, would you stop this ‘sir’ business. I may be omnipotent and what not, but I’m not all that big on protocol.”

“No. Of course not.”

“Try to relax. This was your idea, remember?”

Try to relax? He’s just informed me that He’s slamming us all the way back into the animal kingdom. Relax? “Yes, of course.”

“So, the question: You didn’t really believe in me, did you?”

“No, not really.”

“Do you mind telling me why not?”

Yes I did mind, but who was I to bring that up at this point? He was the Almighty, a fact He had very successfully impressed upon me. And as to belief, now, with His very real eyes in His very real face calmly holding mine, I had serious trouble thinking of a single reason why I had not believed in Him.

Waiting for my reply, He leaned back in His wicker, rocking it on its hind legs, pleased with Himself. The chair wouldn’t hold up to that kind of treatment very long, I thought, and was about to point that out when I noticed that His chair didn’t creak when he did that. This bothered me, for it should have.

His eyes caught mine again: closer up they were something else, blackest black in brown, in a sort of stillness that moved slightly with the rhythm of the slow back and forth, back and forth on the back legs of the not creaking at all wicker. And that stillness rested, on mine, in mine it felt. Curious pools waiting for an answer.

“Well,” I said finally, grasping at straws, “You really don’t make much sense, if you think about it. I mean, you’re not quite logical, if you see what I mean?”

“No, I don’t see what you mean.”

Some subterranean rebel thought of mine suggested I ask Him how come He doesn’t see if He is all knowing, but I managed to suppress it. Not the right time, nor place. Instead I said, “Well, you read more like a fairy tale that science.”

“Fairy tale, huh?” He stopped rocking, and thought about that for a while, then spotted something on his boot and reached down to brush it off. “Science, huh? Not quite logical? Is that what I am supposed to be, logical?”

“I think so. Things are, usually. You know, they make sense, I mean.” And added, a flash of brilliance on my part, I thought, “That’s how you made them.”

“I know that’s how I made them.”

“Ah.”

“So, what, precisely, is so illogical about me?”

“Well, you’re supposedly this guy that appears out of some unidentifiable nowhere and creates heaven and earth and everything on it.”

“The whole universe, actually.”

“Yeah, the whole universe.”

“And what’s so illogical about that? I did it, didn’t I?”

“Well, it’s just that . . .” Damn, with Him right there, putting it in that irrefutable way of His, now it made sense. I had nothing to add, my head suddenly the perfect vacuum.

He looked at me or a while longer, waiting to see if more was to follow. Then, with nothing forthcoming, He closed His eyes, leaned back with a pained expression on His face, and sighed. Then He asked me, eyes still closed, “Why didn’t you behave? Was that too much to ask? It couldn’t have been that hard.”

I held my breath, literally.

“I had really hoped you would work out.” His eyes were still closed.

That last had a terrible finality to it. Something, somewhere distant from here, somewhere I had just come from, just stopped. Suddenly I saw a street, a city, a world full of little puppets waiting for word from God. Just so much frozen flesh and bone waiting for orders. Growing tails.

He finally opened His eyes again, but He didn’t look at me. Rather He was looking at some image, something out there in the sky. “It seemed such a good thing at the time. There wasn’t much going on, you know. Hardly anything. Boring’s the word.”

Then He sat up straight, turned to me, impaled me. His eyes again. On mine. They stung, physically. “You have no idea how boring this can be sometimes. And before the beginning,” He shook His head and His long black hair swayed slowly back and forth, before He swept it back with His hand, “it was even worse. And lonely,” He added.

“I understand,” I lied.

“Well, that’s just the problem,” He said, “you don’t understand. You couldn’t possibly.”

And He was correct there.

“And,” He continued, “the only way I can even stand to have this conversation at all is by very much choosing to forget that I did in fact create you. And that’s not easy, believe me, because, really, I do know. I am all knowing, remember? I can’t forget. So I pretend, but I know that I’m pretending, so there you have it. Don’t you see? It’s not a very satisfactory dialogue since I’m having it with myself.”

“You . . . What?”

He just shook His head. Slowly. Chasing back strands with his hand.

“You’re putting me on, right?”

No, He wasn’t.

“I see,” I said, then tried very hard to think of something brilliant to say. Then I tried very hard to think of anything to say. But, as usual, because I wanted to know and because what I want to know usually departs without permission, instead of making some clever observation instead I heard my own question, “So,” it said, “I guess, you know exactly what I’m going to say then, before I say it? Is that it?”

He looked at me, mild surprise I’d say, and nodded. “If I really listen, yes.”

Well, that was easy: “Don’t listen so hard then.”

My ears were kind enough to inform me what I had just said, but what I heard I couldn’t quite believe. Couldn’t believe I’d said that, that I let that one escape as well. What a completely stupid, asinine thing to say.

This is the End, I thought, looked up at God, prepared to plead for my life. But His eyes had closed again. Dead quiet now, everything. The deck, the world. No wind, no birds. I braced myself. His Holy Wrath should be upon me any moment now. Oh, yes, I deserved it. It would teach my tongue a well deserved and long overdue lesson. I braced myself, and waited.

And waited.

But thunder and lightning did not appear. My infraction possibly beneath contempt then, apparently, for He said nothing. He was still, could even have been asleep. Suddenly, just like that, He was up and walking toward the railing. Uncanny. He stood for a while, looking out over His topiary garden. Yes, topiary’s the word.

Then, just below where God stood, out of nowhere, on the lawn, and just like that again, a Unicorn.

“I could make him talk too, if I wanted to,” He said without looking back.

“How do you do?” said the Unicorn, to me, and was gone. Back into thin air.

God turned around and faced me. “You see? How boring is that?”

This time I did see, well, I saw at least a part of it. What I saw was my toy soldiers: two shoe boxes worth of little tin warriors I had back in Stockholm. (Why not tin pacifists one of my girlfriends once pointed out, quite astutely. Doesn’t quite have the right ring to it, does it? I answered, but she made a good point). I had two differently colored sets. One was red and white (Danish) and the other blue and yellow (Swedish) and I had wars and I had them cross frozen lakes (mirrors) and I had them struggle through forests (shoes and boots) and I had them maneuver and fight and win and lose and live and die and, although it was all pretend (of course it was) I was still quite lost in these little wars, in the game, in the well being and not so well being of these my two armies. Sweden always won. That’s what the Danes got for running around beheading Swedish nobility in the fifteen hundreds.

“Exactly,” said God, all knowing again. He came back to me and sat down. “I get lost in these games too and, for a while, I enjoy them. But now, lately, it has gotten out of hand. It’s no longer fun. They’ve turned from interesting to sad to grotesque.”

No longer fun? “Sir?”

“Are you at all acquainted with recent Earth history?”

“Depends. What do you mean, recent?”

“Say the last four, five thousand years.”

That’s recent? “A bit, not much. I’m not an expert, if that’s what you mean.”

“Do you have any idea how many days of peace, actual peace—and by peace I mean days without carnage—Europe experienced between the end of the Roman Empire and the last French revolution?”

“No.”

“Well there’s a simple answer: None. Not a single one. There was not a single day that did not see slaughter, torture, burnings, pillagings, rapings, impalings, spikings, disembowlings, quarterings, dismemberings, drownings, blindings, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam.”

I shut up, completely. Not a sound.

“And, to add insult to injury, literally, most of it in my name.”

Still not a sound.

“And do you know how many days of peace Europe has seen since then?”

That question had a rhetorical ring to it. “No.”

“None! Not a single one! And do you know how many days of peace there were between say the settling of India and the end of the Roman Empire?”

The obvious guess. “None?”

“Well, wrong, actually. There was the one day of peace. The one day. But only because I made very sure of it. It was the day my son was born. My son . . . whom you in very short order saw fit to nail to a cross have bleed to death!”

Oh, shit. “I had nothing to do with that!”

He did not deign a reply. Instead He went on, warming to this new, rather morbid subject.

“Do you know how many innocent Venezuelans the Royal Spaniards, under the gentle guidance of one Señor Pablo Morillo killed in the single year of 1815 to quell Bolivar’s drive for independence?”

“No.” How on earth would I?

“One quarter of a million. That, Randolph, is two hundred and fifty thousand human beings. In 1815! And that’s each and every one by hand. No weapons of mass destruction here. Just hard, dedicated, focused work.”

I had absolutely no reply..

“In fact,” He continued, “our Señor Morillo killed anybody that could read or write. Literacy, he reasoned, and I guess with a modicum of logic, was a threat to the Crown. So let’s kill anybody who recognizes an alphabet. And this, believe it or not, was his interpretation of his charter of ‘clemency and indulgence.’ I’m serious, those were his orders from Spain, he was to show ‘clemency and indulgence.’ Clemency? It was outright and extremely proficient human slaughter. A quarter of a million! I would hate to know what might have happened had his orders suggested he use a little muscle.”

No to be outdone, now that the subject was clear, I offered my five cents. “Well, Hitler killed six million Jews. Although not in a single year, of course.” I added.

But God, being the best at everything, naturally and in short order topped that. “And Stalin, our psychopathic piece of human garbage, did even better, much better. Fifty million by some counts. And those were his own people, for crying out loud. And then there was your wonderful little inquisition, and . . . ,” He held up, then looked at me shaking His head, as if just realizing what He had told me only a few moments ago, “You killed my only son. How is that supposed to make me feel?”

And there was no answering that question either.

“It seems to me,” He said, “No, not seems, it’s a fact: it’s been killing, maiming, torturing, killing and more killing. At least the animals kill for food, but you, you useless, bloodthirsty, rapacious little monsters, you seem to kill for the sheer joy of it, and then you dream up the most wonderful reasons for it all. In my name.”

I felt like I was standing at the foot of an stirring volcano. Faint ripples in the ground, you know, a hush in the air. It was coming, I could feel it. But how do you stop God? “Good and evil have always struggled,” I said. And knew, too late as usual: wrong thing to say.

“Good and evil!” He impaled me again, fiery this time. “Have you not been listening? There is no good and evil. There’s only me. Don’t you get it? Only me. I created this heaven, this earth, the universe. I am everything!”

“Then you only have yourself to blame,” I mumbled. I don’t like people yelling at me. He must not have heard me, though, because I was still alive two seconds later.

Or maybe He did. “No,” He said, mostly to himself this time, dismissing me with a wave of his hand, “you really are a hopeless case. Just not worth the trouble. I think it’s time I started over.”

Alarms again. Start over? “What kind of starting over are we talking about here?”

“The from scratch kind.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I can do anything I want.”

“What about just revoking the responsibility thing?”

“That, on second thought,” He said, “may just be a case of too little, too late.”

“But think of all the lives, all the people. My house.”

“What about them?”

“What would happen to them?”

“Back to nothingness, of course.”

Alarms still going. No, this was not a viable option. Not for me anyway. But how do you argue with a volcano about to blow? He was suddenly pacing the porch, back and forth, agitated, absorbed, mechanically pushing back unruly strands of hair at each turn. I held my breath. A world in the balance. Literally. And I knew, both instinctively and from experience past and recent, that anything I would say at this point would be the wrong thing. Mum was oh so very much the word. All you could hear were God’s boots striking the floor boards and their creaky protests and it went on and on.

And no matter how many times He brushed back his hair, at ever turn it wrestled free and fell forward into his face. Really, He needed a ponytail or something, and I was about to suggest that when He spoke again, to me, while pacing still.

“Tell me something,” His hands, between turns (when they were not putting hair back in place), found each other on His back, while His eyes seemed to study to porch floor as he paced. “I just don’t understand. Where does this More is Better philosophy come from? Where does this notion of consumption at all cost come from? More, more. Why this obsession with more? Why isn’t enough enough?”

Was this a change of subject? Oh, I certainly hoped so. And for once I knew the answer. “That,” I said, clearly and without hesitation, “would be free enterprise, Sir.”

“Say what?” He stopped, turned, faced me. Hands still clasped behind him, even though more than just a few strands were now in noncompliance again.

“Free enterprise, Sir. If you mean America.”

“Yes. Yes, I guess I do.”

“Then it’s free enterprise. Yes, Sir.”

“What about it?”

“More is better. Well known fact.”

“That’s free enterprise?”

“The more the better, yes. Free enterprise.”

“But that’s not at all what I intended with free enterprise. That’s not its purpose. It is to let, you know, the little guy succeed.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. Now it’s ‘the more the merrier.’ The more we produce, the more there is to buy, and the more money we make to buy it with.” I hoped that made sense. Then I added, “And the happier we get.”

“But you’re not happy.”

The one flaw, yes, I admit. I was scrounging around for something apt to say, when He spoke again.

“But you don’t even use what you’ve got! Have you seen some people’s garages? Attics? Why do you need more?”

“It’s good for the economy.”

“I never said that.”

“I don’t know, Sir. But if you created everything . . .”

He waved that away, didn’t want to be reminded of it I guess.

“Do you really think this mess can be straightened out?” He looked straight at me and he wanted an answer, that was clear.

And here was my chance to save the universe. Of course, there could only be the one answer and I knew what it was. And I stressed it by nodding, perhaps a little too vigorously, as I said, “Yes.”

“So how do you fix it?” He really wanted to know.

Ball back in my court. “Gently,” I suggested.

“Gently?”

“Yes, gently. Nothing drastic. Nothing at all like starting over, no Sir. And nothing like revoking responsibility. Nothing like that” I was thinking about my house again, and my lawn, and about the hose and the water that would be still be flooding the grass. “By the way, you did turn it off, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. Thank you.” One less thing to worry about.

“Fine, fine.” He waved it away. “So, please, tell me. How would you go about it? If you’re not starting over. Which too me still seems a very viable option.”

Odd use of the word “viable.”

Here, however, was a spot and I was on it. The fate of the universe, literally, was in my hands. It should have felt great, I know, power and all that, but I really have no leanings in that direction, and zero talents to go with it. I just want to water my lawn and tend my tulips. But, okay, it was up to me now and so, what would I do? He wanted to know and it was a fair enough question.

But the longer I pondered, the longer He stood there, shifting his weight from one leg to another, arms akimbo, waiting for my answer, the sweatier my palms got and the more obvious it became: I had not the faintest idea. Not a clue. And I ended up saying as much.

“I don’t know. I really don’t know.” Then I added, perfecting the hole I was busy digging for myself: “But then I’m not God. You are.”

His eyebrows lifted just a tad. “Oh, don’t be so sure about that,” He said. “As long as you’re here, and I’m here, you’re as much me as I am you.”

“Huh?”

Eyebrows down again. “Think of yourself as me for a while and tell me. Really think about it. How would you go about it? Really, I’d like to know.”

Well, He really did want to know, didn’t He?. I had to come up with something.

I scrambled. But, again, nothing. For all my bitching, now that I had a chance to set everything right I was clueless. Oh, the irony of it. It stung. What on earth could you do? Ban wars? Ban killing? Outlaw hunger? Blow up Washington? All good answers, perhaps, but God, all knowing now, was shaking His head, obviously none of them good enough.

Hate then? Abolish hate. No, He was still eavesdropping and still shaking His head. Well, how about pain? How about no more pain. What if no one could ever get hurt? His head stilled at that and when he swept his hair out of his eyes and looked at me, I offered that one verbally.

“Let’s get rid of pain,” I said.

“Which pain?” Interested.

“Pain. You know, hurt, pain.”

“Past, present or future?”

“All of it.”

He thought about it for a while. “Nah,” he said at last. “Not a bad thought, but we can’t. The animals need it. You know, hand on a hot stove and all that. To avoid things hurting them twice. They would perish without it.”

“Well just for humans then?”

“Pain is pretty much an all or nothing proposition. It’s hell to manufacture as it is, and if I have to be selective about it, oh well, I’m not even going to go there.”

“How about a bell instead?”

“A bell?”

A bell? I shared God’s curiosity as to what I would say next.

“What for?” He asked. “Instead of pain?”

“Yes. You know, if you begin to burn yourself, have a bell ring. Softly for a small burn, like a chime, then louder, a gong or something, for graver danger. Better yet, have it ring before you’re about to hurt yourself. Like the little bell sound in the car that tells you you’re about to leave it with the keys in the ignition.”

“You have cars like that?”

“Yes.” As if You didn’t know.

“Of course I knew.” But it set him thinking.

“You know,” after a while. “That’s not an altogether ludicrous notion, if a bit clumsy.” Not bad. “But no,” thinking some more. “It won’t fix it. I don’t think so. Not with your track record. There is something more fundamentally wrong. I think we need to cut a little deeper than that.” He turned his back to me to survey His fields.

I had nothing to add and suddenly I felt oddly stupid. A notion kept poking me: was I actually talking to myself, I mean, was He actually talking to Himself through me? If so, who in God’s name was I? It was an unsettling thought, and it was finding unwelcome purchase.

“No,” He said at length, and turned to face me again. “I think we have to deal with this more more more thing as well.” He had my attention. All of it. “We must cut it out, this wallowing in consumption at all costs, this, this sickness. It’s got to go. It’s bad for the body, bad for the soul.”

Bad for the body, bad for the soul? Now that rang a bell. Oh, my God, it was a rock and roll lyric from Heaven knows where. Tried to place it, couldn’t. Then it came to me: Yes, Little Feat. Lowell George.

“Exactly. Now, there’s a case in point!” God said, quite enthusiastically. “Look, you must have enough to last you through the next millennium. You don’t need more. Same for books.”

“What on earth are You talking about?”

“Music. Rock and Roll. Pop. Rap. Country. Recordings, tapes, CDs. Like that Lowell George lyric you just remembered. You have enough of that stuff right now to last you a hundred lifetimes. Easily. You don’t need any more. Why would you need more? Why do you keep churning it out? You cannot possibly listen to even the tiniest fraction of it in a lifetime. Besides, hardly any of it is any good these days.”

“Free enterprise,” I reminded him.

“Granted,” He said. “But when it comes to music, quantity is definitely not the thing. Quality, here’s where quality matters. You have ears, right? Have you listened lately? To what you cookie cutter in such sickening volume. The quality stinks. Have you heard some of the lyrics you come up with nowadays?”

I confessed my crime.

“How can you stand it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t take it too seriously, I guess.”

“This is where we’ll start,” He said. “No more new music until you’ve listened to what you’ve got. All of it. And gotten rid of the bad stuff.”

“I’m not so sure this is such a great idea,” I offered. “Remember the bell thing? Perhaps we should . . . ?”

But God did hear. Pressed on, undaunted. “And the same goes for movies and plays, and paintings, books, the lot.”

Books? Oh, my, I could see it now, the all time writers block: a million set of fingers frozen above a million keyboards, or paralyzed around a million pens or pencils, watched in wonder and astonishment by a million pairs of eyes in suddenly empty heads. A vacuum that would last and last and that no one would ever write ever so boring books about solving. Not a pretty thought.

“In fact,” He said, “let’s go one better.” God on a roll now. “Let’s just scrap all new music since, since, shall we say . . . when did the Beatles record ‘Let it Be?’ Late sixties, wasn’t it?” He thought about it. I wasn’t sure. “Well, then there is Andy Summers, of course, I do like him. We have to keep some of that. Which ones should we keep?”

And looked to me for an answer. Wrong person to turn to in this case, I didn’t even know who He was talking about. I shook my head stupidly and He frowned in my direction.

“Let’s take ‘World Gone Strange.’ That would have been, oh I’d say, 1991.” And then God was struck by the title: “Oh, that’s a laugh. How very apt. Yes. Well, 1991 is it. That’s the last year of new music. Everything else is gone, everything. As of this instant.” He looked very pleased with himself and He did not snap His fingers.

“Are you sure?” I ventured, though I knew damn well He was very sure.

“If you need more, go listen to some classical for heaven’s sake, there’s enough around to last forever.”

And then He was off again, struck my more thoughts, “And books, Lord, enough’s been written already. Read what you’ve got and don’t come back and ask for more until you’ve learned to appreciate what you already have. And gotten rid of the bad stuff,” He added.

I could tell this volcano was about to blow. I could feel the ground rippled again and here was my panic again, very visceral.

“And while we’re on the subject of things I just can’t stand,” said the All Mighty, “Things I find impossible to fathom, stuff that, to put it plainly, piss me right off. What’s this I hear about separating church and state? You have to admit, that’s a good one. Didn’t I created the state?”

I didn’t make the connection until He asked again.

“Didn’t I?”

“Yes, sure. Yes. You created the state. Along with everything else.”

“And the church?”

“Of course.”

“Right. Same as I created you. Right?”

“Right.” Instantly, that.

“So I put it to you. How can you separate me from me? And without even asking my permission? Huh? As if all of a sudden you’ve become all-knowing, all-powerful, arrogant little gods down there. I turn my back for a few millennia and you go absolutely berserk. Especially you little white folks who always walk around believing that you’re so bloody made in my image. Well, you’re not, as you may have noticed.”

Yes, I had noticed.

The volcanic ripples were no longer just ripples. They were concrete motions. The earth was gathering strength, shifting. I could feel the buildup. Christ. Was there no stopping Him? I tried. I held up my hand to get his attention, “What about this responsibility thing, sir? Are we leaving that in place?” He neither saw nor heard me.

“And off you sail from England to slaughter an entire continent’s worth of Indians for your damned profit, and then off to . . .”

“But, sir. We went to America to gain religious freedom!”

His eyes actually flashed. “Well, if that was the case, what about the Indians’ religion? What about their freedom. They don’t count? Were they not My children?”

He was becoming quite impossible to argue with. And He did not wait for my reply.

“And then, off you go to raid Africa for labor because you’re too lazy to do honest work yourselves, and off you go to war after war after war at even the tiniest pretext. And before you know it you’re all back to raping and plundering, and cheating, and maiming, and killing, and killing in the name of religious freedom? A god damn plague is what you need. And a good one this time, a real one, to clean out the garbage. To leave the place to the rats.”

He paused, but only briefly, struck, obviously, by another unpleasant thought. And the ground, and the side of the mountain, and the porch and the garden all shifted, and the earth rumbled.

“And speaking of rats,” He said. “What’s with all these lawyers? Swarming all over creation like blood sucking leeches, bottom feeding on whatever lies and deception they can scrounge or encourage. Do you realize,” stabbing His finger in the air at me, “do you realize that if you had behaved like I asked you to, there could be no legal industry? No, Me damn it, a plague is what you need, or another ice-age. Or better yet, let’s wipe the whole bloody slate clean and start all over.”

Oh God, here we go, back to the from scratch option again. I was rambling, clearly.

Yes I was, and I took the plunge and I said: Screw the light. And there was none. And My Spirit Moved upon the Face of the Waters, and Darkness was upon the Face of the Deep and the Earth was without Form, and Void.

Okay, that wasn’t so hard. Now what?

Thoughts? I'd like to hear them.
Ulf Wolf

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