Ask and Ye Shall Receive
So this beam of LED light appeared to me in the room and then a guy stood there, in the middle of it, tongue off to the side, using his index finger on an iPhone. He had bifocals perched on his nose. He tapped the screen and the LED light disappeared. He was wearing faded, blue mechanic coveralls and a gold chain around his neck. I couldn’t pin-point his age. He seemed older, but then he seemed ancient, all at once.
He stood there, looking at me. Smiling, he said, “Well, here I am. What do you want to know?”
I asked him about the LED, and he told me it was an upgrade from the usual pillar of fire.
We regarded each other and I said, presumptively, “So you’re God.”
“Roger that,” he said.
“How many questions do I get to ask you?” He told me one. I told him I should get three. He reminded me he was not a genie.
“Fair enough,” I said, “but then I get to ask follow-ups.”
After some perfunctory haggling, he agreed.
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s my question. How do you decide who to ‘bless.’ I mean, the whole process seems very sketchy to me.”
“I do rock, paper, scissors with Jesus.” God the Comedian.
After a brief stare-down and then an eye-roll from me, he relented.
“Okay, okay, fine. You ever read ‘seek and ye shall find? Knock, and it shall be opened unto you?”
I made one of those rolling hand motions to let him know I got the reference and to get the fuck on with it.
“Okay so it’s like that. People ask, I consider it, then I toss off a blessing or I don’t, depending on my mood.”
“Your mood?” I ask.
“Sure,” he said.
“So you’re saying that some days, your mood is inclined to go ahead and let some innocent kid die, despite his mother’s ‘seeking’ and ‘knocking.’”
“Sure,” he said. His phone made a noise and he held up a finger, indicating I should wait. He looked at the screen, squinted, tongue out, then smiled and said, “Yessss!”
“What?” I asked.
“I got Mewtwo.”
“Pokemon Go?”
“Yeah.”
“Can we get back to my question?”
“Sure.” He put his phone away and raised his eyebrows expectantly.
“And some days,” I continued, “some low-life asshole prays for something, and he gets it.”
“Sure,” he said, nodding. He peered at me. “You going somewhere with this?”
I dropped my chin while keeping my eyes on him, giving him a minute to let the old neurons bump together.
“Oh,” he said. “So you’re saying that I should toss blessings to some people and not to others based on, what, how ‘good’ they are? What, like their behavior?”
“It kind of indicates that concept in the holy books and such.”
“Yeah, I didn’t write those.”
“Okay, well then, it kind of stands to reason, doesn’t it?”
“What does?”
“Good things happening to good people, bad things happening to bad people?”
“Kind of derivative, don’t you think?”
“How so?”
“Well, what am I, a rom-com movie starring Matthew McConaughey? No, the guy doesn’t always get the girl, no the kid isn’t always spared from leukemia. No, it’s not always ‘happily ever after.’ Jeez, do I have to spell it out for you? I-am-mysterious. That’s my schtick, my deal. If I was so predictable, then everyone would figure the game out and then where would we be?”
I kind of felt like I was talking to an evil genius, only instead of genius, he was like a B-average high-school kid.
“Where would we be? Well, for starters, things would make sense. We’d know which way was the right way. We’d believe in you, across the board, you know? I mean, it would all have meaning.”
“Uh huh, uh huh…I see where you’re going with this. Yeah. I see what you mean.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’ll check with the investors and get back to you.”
“The investors?”
“Sure. Look, I’m really just a figurehead. I mean, I’ve got some pull, but for the most part, it’s up to them.”
“Who are they? Why are they invested in who gets what and why?”
‘You know, I’m not really sure. It’s all sort of gobbledygook to me. When there were a few hundred people on the earth, you know, I could handle the load. When the population boomed, I had to incorporate just to handle the workload. Gradually, I just phased myself out. For all I know, they actually DO play rock, paper, scissors to decide. Who knows? Bottom line and all that.”
“Okay, so now I’m just really confused.”
“Well, you know, you asked your question, and I’ve gotta get back. So do you want some parting wisdom or something? Some kind of starter-motto to start your own religion or anything? Because I’ve got a lot of those.”
“Okay, I mean, sure. Lay something on me. Rattle my cage.”
“Okay, uh, well let’s see. ‘You are what you eat.’ No, that’s dumb. Okay, here’s one. ‘If you let people in on the highway of life, the highway of life will let people into you.’”
I stared at him and he nodded his head and raised his eyebrows. “You see the layers, there?” he said.
“Yeah, I do. Thanks. And God?”
“Yeah.”
“If I want to talk to you again, can you, you know, come back down?”
He scrunched up his face and looked at me apologetically.
“I’m afraid this is it for you, kid. Sorry. See, the doctor’s going to put you on a medication today and that’s gonna be the last of the visions and whatnot. But you’ll remember this conversation, and you’ll maintain to your dying day it was real and it was me. Nothing wrong with that. No one will believe you, but you know what you saw, right? And listen, don’t try that—“ he pointed at my arm—“again, okay? You’ve got a lot of good stuff heading your way. You don’t wanna miss them.”
He pulled out his phone and used his index finger and then the LED light shot down from the ceiling again. He gave me a little half salute and then he was gone.
I stared at the ceiling. I looked down at my bandaged wrists. I kind of wished I’d asked him something different, like “what does it all mean?” or “why is there suffering in the world?” But I had a feeling he would have been just as obtuse as with my first question.
The door opened and the nurse with the short, cropped dark hair came in with a clipboard and a smile. She had a tiny paper cup and she jiggled it from side to side.
“Are you ready to feel better?” she asked.
I wanted to tell her I already did, because of God. Then I remembered where I was. The restraints. The locks. The bars on the windows. No shoelaces or sharp objects.
I nodded and said,“Sure. Let the healing begin.”
