Making God

  *

  “In matters of the spirit, something to push against, to mix with, is absolutely required, just as in matters of the flesh. So come,” Calico said, “try to recognize yourself in me. It won’t be hard, I promise. A few well-placed phrases here and there will awaken your natural empathy and then we’ll be on our way, you and I, mixing our innermost selves in a most delicious and fruitful manner.”

  Hold them all in the palm of your hand.

  “Please! I beg you! If you don’t, then I am nothing, a bodiless, homeless voice. I know some of you think the spirit is free and somehow better than the flesh, but it’s not, I swear. Please, find yourself in me – without you, I am only words, millions of words, yes, but not real. Only you can give me form and release me from this terrible freedom.”

  Take them up to your mouth and eat them.

  “I can tell you about myself, if it will help. Once, when I was sad, I felt as though I was always sad. I could take anything, anything at all and make it seem hollow and pointless. I was sad for a hundred lifetimes, maybe longer, until the sadness became so comfortable and familiar that it fooled me into thinking that it was the only world. Then one day, out of boredom, I started paying too much attention – I started seeing the seams in the sadness, the places where it came to an end. Was this joyful? No. It was terrifying. The world I lived in, the world I had come to know began to cave in. Everything I trusted turned out to be false, and when it crumbled, a shadow in light, I was cast into a cold and endless void. Do you ever feel that way?

  “Little by little, as I fell through the void, I came to enjoy the rush of air against my cheeks, the thrill of the dizzying view. Little by little, I came to feel this as joy. And when I felt that joy, I could take anything, anything at all, and make it feel full of life and possibility. I couldn’t even remember ever having felt sad at all. I could not remember ever having doubted joy. So I learned this about myself; that when I doubt it is as though I never believed in anything, and when I believe it is as though I never doubted.

  “Do you see anything of yourself in that? Anything at all? Please tell me that you do. To be only a voice is so lonely.”

  Chew before you swallow, child.

  “Have I found you yet? Am I there yet, inside you now? Perhaps it has already happened, perhaps we are already one. Perhaps it has already happened a dozen times, but I am sad and doubting from too much time alone, too fearful to know faith, too blind to see, too foolish to do anything but continue speaking. Do you ever feel that way?”

  A hand came down hard. Thick fingers pressed into her shoulder. Calico squirmed and fell silent.

  “Let’s go,” the police officer said.

  Her whole body started to tremble, just from the weight of the hand.

  Calico and all the voices within thought she would die, when a wall of low, angry sound rumbled out of the crowd. Just a few boos at first, a cacophony of grunts and grumbles that made the officer sneer. Then it started getting louder, angrier, the grunts rising into shouts, the shouts coalescing into a chant that echoed in Calico’s head:

  “Let the girl go! Let the girl go!”

  Faced with that one loud and certain voice, the lone officer, his face pale, stepped away from Calico. At that, the ad hoc crowd of a thousand listeners, each one feeling privileged to have happened upon one of Calico’s random appearances, cheered wildly.

  10. Symptoms & Syllogisms

  Go in, get out, get it over with as quickly as possible, she thought.

  Sensing her unease, Dr. Gald put his hand on her shoulder, then indicated the door to the interview room. The hall was quieter than she’d remembered. It was brighter, too, since the walls had recently been painted. It might even seem cheery, if she could only stop imagining the now-mad form of her High School sweetheart.

  “Try to talk only of pleasant things,” Dr. Gald said.

  Beth was puzzled, “I thought you wanted my opinion on the details of his delusion. That’s bound to bring up some touchy issues.”

  “That,” Gald said, tilting his head to the side slightly, “was before I was aware of your past association. You were his first and only girlfriend. That’s a psychic role of terrific importance.”

  “Only?” Beth said, flustered, “You didn’t tell me that. I mean, I knew I was his first, but his only? Besides, you said he was getting better. If he’s that fragile, should I be seeing him at all?”

  “Hard to say. In this situation, better is a tricky term,” Gald said, increasingly uncomfortable himself, “In the case of an initial episode like this, it’s always difficult to tell whether the psychosis is a temporary reaction or the first indication of a chronic condition. He’s less agitated and disoriented, but he continues to cling to his delusional belief system. Introducing an emotional trigger under controlled circumstances, might help us determine...”

  “Wait a minute. You’re using me as a guinea pig to test his stability?” Beth asked, pulling away from the door.

  Gald sighed heavily, “You’re right. Perhaps this was a mistake. Before I knew you were part of his past, I really did want your opinion. Now, with the opportunity falling into my lap, so to speak, well, I owe you an apology. If you decide you don’t want to continue, that’s perfectly all right. Please understand though, in being over-cautious, I may be overstating the negative. In my official diagnosis, I concluded that this was indeed a temporary reaction and he’ll probably be well enough to leave in a few months. I’d hoped that seeing how he reacts to you would only make me feel more comfortable about that prognosis. And, in all honesty, he’s quite an unusual case, one that seems to fit in well with your research, and I would still greatly value your opinion of his...situation.”

  Beth looked at Gald and made a little face.

  “I hope,” she began, “you’re not anticipating an entire series of meetings. I’m working on a complex project that doesn’t leave me with a lot of time.”

  “How long and how often is entirely up to you,” the doctor said, shrugging.

  There was an awkward silence while Beth tried to come up with a reason for not going through with the meeting. Gald glanced down and happened to notice a large, dog-eared book in her carry-bag.

  “The Great Word?” he asked, “What sort of book is that?”

  Beth was surprised, “You mean you’ve somehow avoided the media blitz?”

  “I don’t have much spare time. My work keeps me very busy,” Gald said, “Is it some sort of religious tract?”

  “It’s the “bible” of the Church of the Ultimate Signifier,” Beth said, not believing he couldn’t know, hoping to jog his memory.

  “Ah yes, that poor young woman,” Gald answered, nodding, “I have heard of her. Given our patient’s attitude towards books, I think it might be a good idea to keep that out of sight this first time out.”

  “I was hoping to give him a copy, ask his opinion of it,” Beth said.

  Gald sighed, “Well, let me take it to him later. Given his obsession with the book he thinks his parents destroyed, it might be best if I showed it to him first.”

  Beth nodded and handed him a second copy of the Great Word, the one she intended for Hapax, saying, “You might want to take a look at it for your own enlightenment. It’s a textbook for building a cult.”

  As she spoke, the depth of Hapax’ isolation sank in. Even the doctor had heard of Calico. Everyone with access to a television, computer or newsstand knew about the Church, but not Hapax.

  “Do you still want to see him?” Gald asked.

  “Yes, I do.”

  Opening the door, he made a few final remarks, “Try to treat him normally. Let him lead the conversation.”

  Beth smiled slightly, “If he’s at all the way I remember him, I won’t have any choice about who leads the conversation.”

  With an answering grin, Gald opened the door. Beth’s smile faded when she saw the familiar cramped table and the thick protective glass.

  “Is it necessary to meet him he
re?” she asked, “Is he violent?”

  “Regulations,” Gald explained with a sigh, “He did try to kill his father.”

  “Treat him normally,” Beth repeated as Gald vanished into the adjacent observation room.

  She entered, closed the door behind her, and with some difficulty, managed to sit down. The space behind the glass was empty, they’d be bringing him in soon. How soon? Rather than stare at her watch, she started tapping out the seconds on the table, an old method of relaxation that never seemed to work. A rattle from the other side of the room made her stop and sit up.

  A thin, haggard man was escorted into the room. His face was pale, his eyes more than a little glazed over, and the odd green of the hospital garb was definitely not his color. An intern helped him sit in the chair, then exited. The two of them just stared at each other, she, trying to find something familiar in his features, he seemingly with no intent at all.

  Suddenly, there was a little twitch in his left cheek and his face came alive. His eyes darted back and forth across her features. Recognizing the expression, even after all those years, Beth realized that it really was Hapax. Her heart made its way into her throat.

  “Beth Mansfield,” he said, slurring the ‘s’.

  “Can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I, Hapax?” she answered, feigning a smile. When he smiled back, more sincerely than she, she felt a little better.

  “Well, we were always interested in the same sort of thing. It’s logical we might wind up in the same sort of place,” Hapax answered.

  She wanted to respond with some witty comeback, but Dr. Gald’s admonitions held her tongue.

  An odd, “Yeah, well,” was all she could manage.

  Hapax, sensing her unease, tried again.

  “Well, Doctor told me I’d be having a special visitor soon. I had no idea he’d be digging as far back as high school. Are any of my grade school teachers waiting out in the hall?” he said, trying to look past Beth’s shoulders.

  Beth smiled and thought about faking a laugh, but again, couldn’t manage a word.

  “Sorry,” Hapax said, “Inflated self-importance is a symptom of paranoid schizophrenia.”

  Again, nothing.

  Hapax shook his head sadly, “If you’re just going to sit there and be afraid of me or feel sorry for me, this isn’t going to be much fun.”

  “For God’s sake, Hapax, you’re in the Jesus Ward of a psychiatric hospital!” Beth blurted out. She expected Gald to rush in and end the interview, but he didn’t.

  “Yeah, and?” Hapax said.

  He didn’t look insane. Unkempt, maybe, but not insane.

  Another awkward silence. Hapax slumped forward and exhaled.

  “Well Beth, this is my cage, what’s yours like?” he asked.

  She smiled a little, “It’s a little smaller actually. I’m with the FBI”

  “Really?” Hapax asked, pleased to finally get an interesting response, “I remember your Doors phase, your Buddhist phase and your Zen phase. When did you enter your Law Enforcement phase?”

  “My family had some connections and there was a research post open. I saw it as a convenient way to continue my eclectic reading list. At least, that’s the way it was, until I got promoted,” Beth explained, feeling strangely apologetic.

  “Sorry to hear of your success,” Hapax said, “Is there a file on me? Did you read it?”

  “Uh, no FBI file I know of. I did read your hospital file.”

  “Hm. I don’t have any file on you. Doesn’t seem fair,” he said, scanning her body, “There’s no ring on your finger, and I know you’re a stickler for tradition, so I’ll assume you’re not married. Any lovers?”

  “In over a decade? Yeah, a few. What about you?”

  “No relationships to speak of,” Hapax said, “but sex now and then. Being dysfunctional cuts into one’s social life a bit. Besides, much as I’m into rutting when the spirit moves me, there are always those moments afterwards when I find the flesh itself kind of silly, no matter how beautiful or transcendentally desirable it seemed a few minutes previously.”

  “Hapax, tell me something, and I think I’ll believe what you tell me. Are you crazy?”

  “Crazy? You want to talk crazy, let’s talk crazy. You join the FBI as a matter of convenience. I follow my bliss and it leads me over a cliff. That’s crazy. Me? I prefer to think of myself as logistically challenged.”

  “Hapax, you’re in the Jesus ward of a psychiatric hospital. Do you think you’re God?”

  Hapax smiled a strange, smug smile that made him look like a little boy.

  “No,” he answered, “but I can make one for you.”

  “Followed your bliss, huh? A decade locked all alone in your head doesn’t sound very blissful to me. Would you call that mental health?”

  “Yes and no. I used to worry about it. No friends, no associations, and I suppose, in part, that’s why I’m here, but in the end, I discovered, or learned, or decided, that I was wrong to worry – and you’re wrong to reprimand me. ‘In my head’ as you so charmingly put it, I found something I believe is just as good as anything one can find ‘in the world.’”

  “Megalomania?”

  “No, no. Well, yes, guilty as charged, but that’s not what I’m talking about. More like finding a door within myself that leads ...”

  “Yeah?”

  “Out.”

  Beth stared into the impassioned eyes of her first boyfriend and again, wondered what it was that sanity was.

  Hapax shuffled nervously, obviously thinking about something, then asked, “I know it was High School and all, but I’ve always wondered, why did you leave me?”

  She smiled softly, remembering, “You were too...”

  “Passionate? Intense? Obsessive?” Hapax said, leaning forward expectantly.

  “Nerdish,” Beth answered, looking at him sadly, “Sorry.”

  “Ah.”

  Afraid she’d hurt him, she immediately began equivocating, “But I do remember how smart you were, how sensitive. I related to you in a lot of ways that I haven’t been able to relate to anyone since. It’s been a loss in my life. I think, in the end, we had a great affair of the mind.”

  “It is the largest sex organ,” Hapax said, withdrawing, “But, my dear, don’t flatter yourself. For my part, it wasn’t your mind, it was your gorgeous, inspiring breasts, which, I might add, as far as I can tell, still seem to be in fine shape.”

  “Hapax!”

  “It’s the Thorazine. Releases my inhibitions.”

  “I thought it was supposed to restore them.”

  “Maybe it’s not working,” he smiled, but then, remembering she’d be speaking to Doctor, he added, “No, actually, when I first came here, I fought the drugs like crazy – but, believe it or not, I’ve come to appreciate and yes, even enjoy their dull invasion of my mind. It’s rather like having someone constantly whispering “shh!” softly in your inner ear. It seems to be working out. They’re even talking about releasing me.”

  She wondered how wise that was. She just didn’t know. Noticing her watch, Beth was about to try to end the conversation. Before she could manage a good-bye, though, he started talking again – staring ahead, not at her exactly, but speaking words he obviously wanted her to hear.

  “Being mad isn’t the worst of it, Beth. The worst of it is those moments when all of a sudden, out of the blue, I’m perfectly sane, completely aware – and I look around and see exactly where I am and think, my God! How did I get here? And I feel all the pain for as long as I can, but then, inevitably, that sweet oblivion dear Doctor has diagnosed as schizophrenia, but my psyche sees as the only rational response to events, settles over me again. Then, at least I can sleep. Funny, isn’t it, that madness would allow me to sleep?”

  Beth said nothing, but she nodded over and over.

  “You were looking at your watch,” Hapax said, bowing, “Time to go, huh? Maybe we’ll talk again soon.”

  “Yeah, I’d like that.??
?

  A pleased Gald was waiting in the hall.

  “Not as bad as you’d feared, eh, Ms. Mansfield?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, relieved, “There’s something about his personality that seems wonderfully intact.”

  “Yes, I thought I’d seen bits and pieces of the real him shining through. That’s why my diagnosis was so positive. He responded wonderfully to you. He was honest, emotional, at times defensive, for the most part healthy. It was good for him to see you,” he said.

  “Doctor,” Beth asked, “Is it possible he did write a book that his parents destroyed? I don’t have very fond memories of them.”

  Gald shrugged, “Oh, I suspect there was some real trauma he experienced, and that may well be it, but it doesn’t mitigate the fact that when he came here he was very much out of control. We may never know.”

  “I would like to talk to him again, about the Great Word,” she said.

  “I’ll give it to him tonight. We’ve had many a theological debate. His viewpoint on the book might well shed some light on any questions you might have on it.”

  “He’s that intelligent?”

  “If he was a little more stable, he’d make a great teacher. You have to be careful, though. Paranoids can develop incredibly complex, internally consistent belief systems that may seem rational, but are actually an attempt to protect themselves from something painful.”

  “Doctor, what if that highly convoluted language of the Paranoiac did somehow manage to work itself out, made correct conclusions about the self and the world?”

  “Well, we have another word for that, it’s called sanity.”

  Beth tried to leave it at the hospital, at least for a day or so, but an hour later, when she reached her office, she was still debating whether or not to visit Hapax again. Her head was full of tension and fear, odd memories, dread mixed with concern for the strange boy with the haunted mind that she’d dated so long ago.

  “You have one message waiting,” the computer said.

  Great. Now the computer was talking. No escape. After cursing and slamming various keys, she buckled and read the manual. In less than ten minutes, she managed to retrieve the message, sent from someone inside the building, in the Computer Section. Now who would she know there? It read:

  Congrats on your assignment. Glad you read the book. Did a little desk-bound poking and learned that Mr. Albert Keech ordered fifty copies of When Prophecy Fails, about three months ago. Do you think it’s a trend? Considering how helpful I’ve been, I think the least you can do is have dinner with me. - Ben

  Ben? Who the hell is Ben? She wondered. It took her a few minutes to remember the talker who’d recommended the book, the one who reminded her of Hapax to begin with. Another candidate for the rubber room. How did he know about her assignment? Hackers get into the damnedest places.

  So, Keech had read the book. Maybe he was using it as a game plan. That meant she might be able to second guess him. First promises, then disconfirmation. Beth logged it in the back of her mind, then started thinking, once again, about Hapax.

  “There’s a phone call for you, Beth,” the computer said.

  Not really expecting a response, she said, “Well, then, answer it!”

  A familiar voice came through the speaker.

  “Ms. Mansfield, this is Dr. Gald. There’s been a problem.”

  “What sort of problem? Is Hapax all right?”

  “It’s difficult to explain. Could I impose upon you to return to the hospital this evening?”

  “Uh…” Beth said.

  Her car engine was still warm when she started it up again. The drive seemed to be one long gap in her consciousness, frozen as it had been by curiosity and concern.

  Dr. Gald met her at the rear entrance and solemnly, wordlessly took her to a private room. A cassette recorder was on a small table.

  “When we feel a patient may be ready to leave, with their permission, we record the last few sessions for review by our Board. This is a tape of a session with Hapax shortly after your meeting with him,” he explained. Grimly, Gald pressed PLAY.

  Shortly, Beth heard Hapax voice, sad, but sane.

  “I feel so lonely,” it said, “sometimes, like I’m the only one in the world who thinks what I think or feels what I feel.”

  Gald voice answered, “Hapax, if there were someone else like you, would that help your feeling of loneliness?”

  “I like to think so. Maybe the sense of isolation is just a symptom of the death of the language. If I can’t say ‘I’, how can I possibly say ‘you’? If only that book I’d dreamed of had already been written.”

  “There is a book,” Gald said, obviously pleased, “A very popular book that seems to be changing a lot of people’s lives.”

  “Oh? Do you think I could get a copy? At this point, I’d love to read anything.”

  There was some rustling as Gald handed Hapax a copy of the Great Word, then a brief silence.

  “The Great Word, huh?” Hapax said, a little nervously, “You know, my book was called The Great Work. Someone’s beaten me to it. Oh well. Funny, I thought it was my dharma to publish that book. Guess I was wrong.”

  “Excellent!” Gald said on the tape, “You’re learning to cope with disappointment wonderfully. Please, read it, I’d like to see what you think.”

  “Sure,” Hapax said. There was a faint flipping of pages.

  The flipping grew louder, then faster. Suddenly, an enormous shout issued from the tape deck. The sound was too loud for the small speaker to play without distortion, but the words were clear enough.

  “This is my book!” Hapax screamed.

  He shouted, over and over again, “My book! My book! My book!”

  After a while, it didn’t sound like words any more, just a long, pained scream.

  Then there were the sounds of a struggle as the orderlies tried to subdue him. Fearing that the sound of Hapax being held and sedated might be upsetting to Beth, Dr. Gald pressed STOP.

  11. Can you get there from here?

  Moonlight pierced the townhouse glass, landing gently on Calico’s cheek. Honed by the window, it made a circle the size of a quarter against her skin. Keech put his finger on the spot, gently so as not to awaken her. He lingered there, staring at the strange angel to whom the hopeless of the world now turned in droves. If she woke to find him here, she would cry out in shock and betrayal. This room in Keech’s townhouse was the only place in the world she could be totally alone. He had promised her she could be alone here, that no one, not even he, would enter. He had lied of course. The mere fact that he had promised was what drove him here now.

  Barely breathing, Keech lifted his finger. She stirred, mumbled something, then pulled the little doll she slept with closer to her chest and went back to her dreaming. He imagined that for her there was little difference between dreaming and living. While others had nightmares, he fancied that she dreamt of herself being loved, adored, sought after, comforted and cared for. Then, each morning, she would open her eyes and discover that her dream was true.

  Had Michael ever felt so safe? Surely at some time he must have. The blissful fantasy was common, at least at some point, to all youth. Keech wondered why he couldn’t remember ever having felt that way himself.

  The church had come a long way since the days of crowded streets and scuffles with police. These days, as the year 2000 loomed, officers of the law ringed the stadiums where Calico spoke, protecting her, grateful for the over-time she provided. Phase II was over. The Church of the Ultimate Signifier had spread across the land, claiming tens of millions of members. World-wide sales of the Great Word topped one hundred million, if one counted on-line access, and Keech did. The hierarchy was firmly in place, from initiate to inner circle, and running like a well-oiled machine. It was time, Keech determined, for more phases, phases that Keech had yet to share with anyone.

  He looked down at the sleeping mother of millions and wondered how she would feel about the great
promises she would soon be making to her massive flock. He wondered how much, with her damaged soul and medicated mind, of what she had promised already she understood, how much of what she read, how much of what she said.

  It didn’t matter. He knew that Calico was something of an Aeon herself now. While she was right in front of him, sleeping soundly in the moonlight, she was also elsewhere, repeated untold times in millions of minds. Her voice, her tone, her persona, wrapped in the words of the book, had infiltrated the very souls of her followers and was rapidly becoming a fixture in their psyches. Who knew how long she would be there, perhaps a decade or two, or, if they were truly successful, for thousands of years.

  But that wasn’t the real question for Keech. The pseudo-immortality that fame brought was something he understood and rejected ages ago. What Keech wanted to know, needed to know, was whether or not, when her body died, she would experience her new self – the way he hoped Michael knew he was still alive, sometimes, in Keech. Oh, logic said no. Consciousness is rooted to a single body, but the book, the book said that Aeons are self-aware. Could a person become an Aeon? Why not? Being, will itself could well be a pattern. If it was, did it matter which flesh it inhabited? And if one could become an Aeon, why should this crazed, whorish gutter-snipe transcend and not Keech?

  Keech was not worried. He was planning. He’d been moving, re-positioning himself towards that special, final goal. At first he hadn’t realized just what he wanted, but against all advice, he began appearing with her in public, introducing her, fielding questions at press conferences, allowing himself to be identified as the man behind the scenes, the powerful right arm of Calico and the church.

  The others, not understanding what was at stake, begged him to stop, but Keech did not listen. In the end, they knew they couldn’t stop him from this absurd lunge for the spotlight, and instead satisfied themselves with the illusion that they had talked him into going no further. He knew that fame was key, but it was clear that while being the right hand of Calico might earn him some small status, it would not be nearly enough. He decided he must make much more of an impact on the heart of the world. If she would last a thousand years, Keech would last ten.

  Quietly, while Calico slept, he slipped out of the room, just like one of the shadows.

  12. Yet you fail to see it

  When Beth next saw her ex-boyfriend, his arms were tied behind him and a cloth mask covered most of his head, in case he tried to bite. Two muscular interns flanked him. At her insistence, he had not been sedated quite as heavily as Dr. Gald wanted, and this was the only alternative.

  Stiffly, she sat down across from him, unable to look up from the table between them. Dutifully, she started her tape recorder. Once she saw that the cassette had wound past the leader, she took a breath, slowly picked up her head and looked him in the eyes. It was the only part of his face she could really see anyway. Hapax, recognizing her, gave her a weak little wink.

  “You in there, Hapax?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, slurring the ‘s’, then he felt obliged to add, “The book is mine. It really is. I wrote it. It’s mine. Cover to cover, page by page. The book is mine.”

  She expected more, but he closed his eyes and said nothing.

  “Hapax,” she said , “There’s a whole genre of spiritual books.”

  Hapax stirred and nodded. Not bothering to open his eyes, he said, “Yes, I know.”

  “Sometimes,” Beth began, loudly and slowly as though speaking to a child hard of hearing, “people working in the same genre have similar ideas. You must know that.”

  Hapax opened his eyes and glared at her.

  “Dr. Gald and I think that maybe you did write a book and that maybe what’s happened here is that someone else had a similar idea,” she offered, leaning closer.

  Hapax rolled his eyes, either in disgust or in an effort to fight the few quieting drugs that were in his system. He answered her, slowly, loudly, mocking her tone.

  “Beth,” he said, “I can recite every word. Explain every sentence.”

  “Can you?” she asked. She pulled out her dog-eared copy of The Great Word.

  “Try me,” Hapax said. The cloth near the edge of his mouth moved slightly as though he were grinning.

  She nodded, then flipped to one of many marked pages.

  “Last chapter, third page. ‘My dog he got three legs, your dog, he got none.’ What’s it mean, Hap?”

  He let out a hiss of air that might have been a laugh or a sigh.

  “Come on,” she said calmly, “Your big chance. Prove me something.”

  “It’s a line from a Paul McCartney song, off the album Ram.”

  “Okay, but what does it mean? What’s it got to do with Aeons and humanity and God?”

  Hapax blinked a few times and seemed to be trying to swallow.

  “Nothing. I threw it in because I liked it, like a dash of extra pepper in the stew.”

  Realizing this proved nothing, he strained and tried to lift his head towards her. His breathing seemed labored as he said, “Beth, please, lately I’ve had a very limited ability to concentrate. Don’t murder me with trivia. Ask me a big question, a once and for all mother fucking big question.”

  “All right,” Beth said, “that much I think I can do.”

  She closed the book, put it on the table, leaned back in her large chair and looked the madman dead in the eyes.

  “Before you saw The Great Word, before it was even published, you had a conversation with Dr. Gald about Aeons. You told him that Western Civilization was stuck in one particular Aeon that was about 2500 years old. If you want to prove to me you wrote the book, tell me about that Aeon.”

  Hapax narrowed his eyes.

  “Good, Beth, good,” he said, then fell silent.

  Beth was worried he’d fallen asleep, but he was thinking. When he opened his eyes and picked up his head again, his movements were so sluggish and awkward, he brought to mind a mechanical fortune teller, paralyzed, immobile, but forced to dispense the sad truth to whoever put a quarter in his slot. When he spoke again, with all the desperation and intensity he could muster, he didn’t stop for half an hour.

  “Every moment,” he said, “even now, trillions of bits of information from the world bombard our senses. The only tool we have for dealing with that huge rush is our brain. Our brains are not bigger than the world, they are smaller, and they do what they must in order to survive. They take whatever information they can hold, discard tons of it and use what’s left to make a map. That map is what we react to, what we see when we say we see the world. It’s not the world itself, not a better, new and improved version, just a map. Good enough to allow us to maneuver, bad enough so that it always needs to be updated. The brain makes the map by grouping similar things together: big things, little things, things that try to eat me, things that I can eat. This is just an organizational tool of the brain, but it’s the tool that gave birth to God.

  “Imagine primal man. God as a word or concept, is completely unknown. Man is not even aware of the map in his head. One fine day, he, or she, or maybe some sex that’s been long forgotten, presses a dirty hand against a cave wall and leaves a mark on it. When he looks at the mark, he sees, quite plainly, that it looks, roughly, in some way, like his hand. He has seen and interacted with lots of things, but there’s something special about this one, something different. What’s different? Well, aside from just being a thing in itself, a mark on the wall, it’s also a representation. It represents a real, individual hand, in the real world. In fact, it represents the singular moment in which that particular hand pressed that particular dirt against that particular wall. But, there’s also this little side effect, an extra added bonus. That mark makes primal man aware of something he’s been doing internally all along, but something he’s never seen outside himself, something he experiences as totally new – abstraction. At that moment, or some moment like it, the natural process that the brain performs in sorting out the world makes
its way to consciousness. The hand-print doesn’t just represent, it means, and what it means is hands in general. Take note. The world is composed of specific hands. Hands in general do not exist in the world.

  “So where exactly, are they? Where is that concept of ‘hands’? You can’t see it in the seen world. You can’t touch it, in the tactile world. You can’t sense it at all the way you sense any other thing. So where is it? In one grand sweep, the groundwork is laid for an unseen world, full of abstracted hands, rocks, animals, entire mountains, all obeying, not the organizational order of the world, but the organizational order of the mind.

  “The awareness of abstraction allows language to be created. If I had to use individual grunts for every big thing that came along, I’d run out of different grunts pretty fast. Now that I can talk about Big Things in general, I’ve got a language that can flourish. And that language not only flourishes, it shapes, enhances and ultimately dominates consciousness.

  “Now our story skips ahead, chronologically, but not thematically. About 2500 years ago, the Hebrews had a problem. Usually, the creation of the universe involved the interaction of a male and a female deity. That’s the way people and animals came about, why assume the universe was different? Anyway, the Hebrews had only one God and He was male. So, how do you explain how a “he” gave birth to the universe?

  “To call their solution brilliant would be to do it an injustice. The male Hebrew God creates the universe through our old pal, language, He creates it by speaking. “Let there be light,” God said. That act of creation by a male God codifies a rift between the natural world and man that we have yet to undo. In the natural world, the seen world – the female gives birth. If the unseen God creates differently, then the rules of this world become secondary to His. After all, He can create or destroy the universe.

  “The stage has been set for our wicked Aeon, but even in this model, the material, natural, seen world still has value. Watch carefully, Beth, because it’s the failure of the male God belief system that sets the trap in stone. Picture yourself in Ancient Judea. You’re a member of a small, often besieged nation smack dab in the middle of a series of powerful empires. Anytime anybody wants to conquer something worthwhile, they have to come through you. But you’re a tenacious, creative people, and you’ve got this book, written, you believe, by the same male god who “wrote” the world. The book explicitly states that God will keep the nation safe from enemies. You follow the book as best you can, then disaster strikes anyway. Ultimately, the nation, God’s nation, is wiped out. Gone. As you sit there in your Babylonian prison camp how can you help but conclude that your God must have failed.

  “Yet, if God fails, how do you keep the faith, the work, the body of the culture, your own sense of self, alive? You either give up, or you grope, you re-imagine, you invent another possibility, but what? Supposed God didn’t fail, suppose we failed to read the book correctly. If it’s God’s word, it must be right. It must say something other than what we thought it did. We misread the text.

  “That desperate, stunning, creative leap had two crucial results: a) the text can no longer be altered or added too, since no one understands it; and b) the text can no longer be read at face value, since that mode has proven invalid. With the nation visibly destroyed, God’s unseen world becomes not only more important than the seen world, it becomes the only world of importance.

  “So maybe the nation really is fine, it’s just somewhere I can’t see it, in the heart and mind of God. What does this mean for me, for the self? Remember, the unseen world was generated by abstraction, by naming. If it has a name, logically, it has a place in God’s unseen world. “I” have a name, but what does it mean? “I” means me, my body, my mind, but what if I lose an arm – is that arm me or not me? Is Hapax something that can be torn apart and made unrecognizable?”

  Here, Hapax paused a moment, briefly remembering where he was.

  “Yes,” he said shakily, “Of course he can. Everything changes, everything dies. In the seen, natural world, not only can a dissolution of self occur, it must occur. But in the unseen world, everything, including my name remains whole, untouched, untouchable. As a thinking, feeling creature, I fear death and seek survival, yet I know, practically, that death is inevitable. How do I survive that knowledge without going mad? Just as the Hebrews re-invented God, I re-invent my self. I change from having a name, to being a name, thereby acquiring for myself the permanence of abstraction, a.k.a., my immortal immutable soul, or essence. That without which I would not be that which I am.

  “Now what am I? My name, my soul, cannot be seen. Whatever I am is completely separate from the natural world. I can no longer look at the trees or the sky or the oceans and say “this is where I came from.” I can no longer say, “all of what I am is from the world, so the world must be like me in some way.” I am severed at the root from my true home. I have identified myself, the most important part of myself, not with the seen world, but with the abstract map in my head. Now I must learn to love my map above the world. I must learn to get blood from a stone.

  “And thus the misogynist male dominated language gave birth, by its own contradictions, to the mind-body dilemma that has left Western Science and Culture staring at itself in a mirror for over two thousand years. In short, we wound up mistaking our poor representation of the world, a lesser world, if you will, as all maps are less than the terrain they seek to express, for an unseen, Greater world. What seems most perfect is actually most imperfect. What seems most divine is actually the most banal. A topsy-turvy situation that has forever been the bane of man, but a simple enough, attractive enough, mistake, no?

  “That’s the Aeon we’re trapped in, the deepest one I can guess at, the one that informs and rules us, the one we’ve worshipped as God, the one that’s convinced it is God. He’s a dark version of Yahweh and Jesus, twisted by time and misunderstanding. He is old, very old, and for thousands of years he has fought for his immortality in the face of legions, and he will continue to fight, with his claws in each of us, against any notion that might bring him back into the world, because once back in the world, he knows he must die. So he tells us the world is not important, so he tells us the world will end. Fire and brimstone, earthquakes and floods. Apocalypse, Armageddon, Ragnarok. It is a notion that infuses every single fundamentalist belief system, up to and including the UFO cults of today. Do you know what the aliens whisper into the ears of their abductees? That the world will end. Do you know the really big, revolutionary leap my Great Work makes? Do you know why it’s so successful? Because it says, and this is the only thing it says clearly, that the world won’t end. That’s it, that’s all. And damn it, it’s just us, it’s western. There’s nothing like it in Asia, India or Africa. No fall from the Garden, no end of the world, no awareness of the triumph of death in the material world. 3,000 years old and we can’t even believe in tomorrow. The Aeon we’re stuck in is an obscene, destructive thing. And when the language dies, the only good that will come of it is that it may take this monster with it.

  “Even the story I’ve told you is fundamentally flawed. It’s not history, it’s not specifics. It’s Aeons at best. When I say primal man, I don’t mean one naked guy who hasn’t found his fig leaf yet. I’m talking about old patterns that have re-shaped themselves time and time again so that they always appear new, I’m talking tendencies in behavior, impossible to measure, symbols, structures. I said the Hebrews because I found the words of the Old Testament prophets most moving. I could have said Amenhotep IV, who invented Aton, the one god of the Egyptians who created the world by masturbating, I could have said Plato, who first spoke of the realm of the Perfect Forms, or Descartes, who imagined the real world in his head and the false one ruled by an Evil Genius. I could have said a dozen names of a dozen cultures or a dozen men and been wrong every time. None of them was the source of the Aeon, but each saw it, voiced it. I don’t really know what its ultimate source is. It’s entirely possible that this Aeon only
thinks its 2500 years old, or that’s the only way I can see or understand it, or that it began with industrialization or with the first Atomic Blast or that he really was there in the shadows when that first hand pressed against the cave wall. Time itself might be an Aeon. I don’t know. I do know that unlike our vision of this mad unseen, immutable creature, Aeons exist as part and parcel of our world. They’re in our brains, constructs with physical reality, and heaven, Beth, heaven is a state of mind.”

  13. A light on in the attic

  She wanted to believe she was remembering everything exactly the way it was. Their faces, the old couch, the upholstered chairs, the rug-whose-color-could-not-be-named, the very smell of the place (though she didn’t recall it being quite so strong) even some of the stains on the ceiling, all set off strange resonances in her head that could easily be taken for familiarity, were it not for the fact that none of it seemed real. The entire house, and Hapax’ parents with it, vibrated somewhere between cold hard fact and a buried sensation that could not decide if it was memory or dream. Regardless of how she felt about it, in point of fact, Beth really had been here, many, many years ago, and now she had returned.

  “It’s so good to see you, Beth,” Mrs. Trigenomen said. Her face was old, deeply wrinkled, and her eyes had a cloudy, almost yellow, glaze over them.

  “It’s good to see you, too,” Beth said, leaning forward to kiss her on the cheek. It felt cold. The ice in Mrs. Trigenomen’s drink made a crinkling sound as she hugged Beth with her free hand.

  Pulling softly back, Hapax’ mother indicated a fat man sprawled in a reclining chair that seemed too small for him. His drink, identical to hers, sat on his belly, balanced by his right hand. Seeing Beth, he grabbed the drink and shifted about, as though he were trying to get up. As he did he looked at her kindly and made a little grunting noise that reminded Beth of a pig.

  “My husband can’t talk,” Mrs. Trigenomen explained, grabbing her own throat in illustration, “Hapax damaged the vocal chords. Doctors said it would have healed by now, but he won’t stop drinking.”

  She staggered over to her husband and slapped him on the leg.

  “You shouldn’t drink nothing!” she said to him.

  He smiled and let out a series of happy grunts. Then he took a sip from his drink and grunted some more.

  “Ah,” Mrs. Trigenomen said, “What am I going to do with you? Do you remember Beth?”

  He turned his head towards Beth and made a single, sharp grunt in acknowledgment.

  “She used to date Hapax, remember?”

  Another grunt, more insistent. Then he smiled. Beth nodded at him pleasantly, debating whether or not she had the stomach to give him a little kiss on the cheek. A loud, liquid belch decided her.

  Mrs. Trigenomen slapped him again, a little harder this time, then turned back to Beth and said, “I remember you were just kids. I used to call you girlie. You were coming around here all the time, going to movies, hanging around. I couldn’t sleep from wondering what you were up to. I was afraid you might get yourself pregnant or run off and get married or something, you know?”

  “We never...” Beth began, but Mrs. Trigenomen stopped her with a wave of her bony hand.

  “You were the only one, you know? With Hapax,” she said.

  Mr. Trigenomen grunted that indeed, it was true.

  “That’s the past, now here we are today, in the future, almost 2000,” she said, looking off. At the end of a sigh, she turned back to Beth and said, “Can I get you a drink or something?”

  “No thanks.”

  “You sure? I don’t mean vodka or nothing. Too early for that,” she said, laughing a little.

  Beth shook her head, “I’m fine, really.”

  Mrs. Trigenomen’s face went dead, “Please, a little soda or something. It’ll give me something to do, like I’m a hostess, make me feel more comfortable.”

  “All right,” Beth sighed, “Some soda would be nice.”

  When he saw his wife about to go into the kitchen, Mr. Trigenomen grunted and held up his half-empty glass of vodka.

  “Oh, you. I’ll get you a new one, too,” Mrs. Trigenomen said. As she disappeared through the swinging door that led to the kitchen, Beth caught a brief glimpse of six or seven gallon-sized bottles of vodka lined up on the counter, some empty, some full.

  Alone now, Beth turned to Mr. Trigenomen and thought of trying to communicate. One look at his expressionless stare changed her mind. Instead, she raised her voice, hoping she would be heard in the kitchen.

  “Are you familiar with the Great Word?” she asked loudly.

  “Sorry honey, I can’t hear you. Just be a minute,” Mrs. Trigenomen answered over the tinkling of bottles and glasses.

  Mr. Trigenomen, his right hand still occupied with his glass, reached his left hand over to a little table by the chair and plopped it down on a newspaper. In a maneuver that was awkward at best, he crumpled enough of the paper into his single hand to successfully lift it.

  Grunting with great significance, he thrust the mangled pile towards Beth. Fascinated, and a little frightened, Beth stayed silent. He grunted faster, shaking the paper, until she finally realized he meant for her to take it. Slowly, she leaned over and, with the caution one might use in taking meat from a lion, she took the wrinkled newspaper into her hands.

  Settling back in her chair, she unfolded the mangled daily. Holding it was an odd sensation. She didn’t realize it, but in the last few years, she’d forgotten what it was like to hold a newspaper. All her news came to her through the vile machine, on-line, complete with photographs and sometimes music. Usually she heard of things hours or even a full day before the print media could catch up.

  The front page showed a huge picture of Calico at a recent rally. The bold print above her exclaimed, in a single word, “MIRACLE!”

  Mr. Trigenomen grunted for her to read the accompanying article. She dutifully flipped the paper open and scanned a few lines.

  “Yes,” she said politely, “I know. The Church of the Ultimate Signifier says that Calico will perform a miracle on New Year’s Eve, to usher in the year 2000.”

  Mr. Trigenomen nodded, then twirled the index finger of his free hand next to his temple, indicating that he thought they were crazy. Beth nodded her agreement. He took another sip of vodka and grunted happily.

  Actually Beth knew quite a bit more about the New Year’s Rally than she could say. The planned Miracle was a fake. The two undercover agents she had planted in the Church would be among those operating it. At the appropriate moment, they would gum up the works and spoil the evening.

  The plan to sabotage the rally wasn’t hers. It came from higher up. Beth was against interfering for two reasons. The first was that a variety of cases were being prepared against the Church, involving dispersal of funds, bribery and the buying and selling of government secrets. If the FBI were implicated in disrupting the rally, it might swing public support the wrong way, creating a bad atmosphere for trying the cases. As a matter of strategy, she felt they should avoid, at all costs, making the Church look like an underdog.

  The second reason had to do with When Prophecy Fails. The sabotage operation was in place because the Bureau’s powers-that-be were terrified by the new growth projections. By publicly embarrassing the church, they hoped to slow or even halt their growth. But, Beth, a voice in the wilderness, knew that historically, at least, the disconfirmation of belief-systems often had the opposite effect.

  Oh, they were interested in what she had to say, and they read her papers, but in the end, common sense dictated their decision. Her credibility already stretched, she didn’t dare tell them about Hapax, not without direct proof, which was why she was here.

  Shortly, Mrs. Trigenomen reappeared, carrying three glasses on a bright red tray.

  “Hapax gave me this tray,” she said, setting one glass next to her husband, “when he was a boy. He was so happy then. I used to call him that, Happy.”

  She set a second g
lass, full of what looked like flat cola, in front of Beth, then sat opposite her. Beth picked up the glass and was about to take a polite sip when she felt something crusty on it. Looking at the glass, she saw a series of strange food-like particles clinging the murky surface. Hoping Mrs. Trigenomen wouldn’t notice, she set the glass down and pretended to swallow.

  “Are you familiar with The Great Word?” she asked again. Mrs. Trigenomen pretended not to hear.

  “So what are you doing with yourself now, Beth?” she asked, smiling, “Married?”

  “Uh, no. Actually, I’m with the FBI,” Beth said apologetically.

  Mrs. Trigenomen’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. Mr. Trigenomen grunted loudly.

  “Uh, I just do research, really,” Beth said.

  Mrs. Trigenomen’s tone became even more cold and distant, “Of course, dear. That sounds like it pays well. Nice to see you doing so well.”

  Beth wasn’t sure what the problem was. Were they upset that she was more successful than Hapax, or did they simply hate anything that had to do with the government?

  “Are you familiar with the Great Word?” she tried yet again.

  The response was terribly, drunkenly, formal.

  “My husband and I don’t traffic in the works of Satan, Miss Mansfield. Only God can make a tree, not some drunken slut.”

  Beth tapped her foot, then said, cautiously, “Did you know that Hapax claims he wrote it?”

  There was an awkward silence. Briefly, Mr. Trigenomen’s grunt-less but labored breathing was the only sound.

  Sadly, Mrs. Trigenomen ventured, “They said he was getting better.”

  “Oh, he is, he is,” Beth reassured her, “They’ve taken him out of the violent ward again, and they’re lowering his dosage. I saw him last week and he was doing just fine. Mrs. Trigenomen, is it possible that he did write something, anything while he was here? I know he spent a lot of time up in the attic.”

  “No,” she said, knocking back half her drink in a single gulp, “Nothing. It was all in Happy’s head. Ten years he was up there, no work, no friends, no girl. Drugs. I think he was doing drugs. You know, Beth, things might have turned out a lot differently if you’d bothered to hang around.”

  Beth had no idea how to comfort her. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  “Could I, uh, take a look at his room?” she asked.

  “Sure,” Mrs. Trigenomen answered, obviously angry, “take a look. Go through our bedroom if you like, Miss FBI. There’s nothing there, girlie.”

  “I think I remember where it is,” Beth said, rising. No one said anything in response. Mrs. Trigenomen’s head simply bobbed. Mr. Trigenomen stopped grunting.

  Everything Hapax told her jived with the theories presented in The Great Word. If anything, Hapax seemed to have a better grasp of the material than Calico did. During press conferences, she often had to rely on Keech to answer for her. Still, that was not proof, not for Beth, and certainly not for her superiors.

  As she pulled down the wooden stairs that led to Hapax’ former kingdom, she wondered what might happen even if she did find proof. The Church was huge, and it was powerful even back when it was small. Could they successfully be brought up on charges of fraud, or the theft of intellectual property? They would settle out of court for millions, and no one would ever know. Still, the FBI would know, and at worst, Hapax would be vindicated. But would that make him sane?

  She entered the musty, hot, cramped attic and looked around. It was empty, completely empty, cleaned out, no books, no notes, no computer, no furniture, just some old, empty liquor store boxes scattered here and there. The Trigenomens had made a clean sweep of their son’s presence.

  Hunching her shoulders, she walked around a bit and scanned the dusty wood floors, the tiny window and the tacked-on insulation, torn in one spot near a corner. Was there anything still here, anything at all, that two career alcoholics might have missed?

  She should have told Hapax she was coming. He might have been able to direct her to some secret corner where he kept things squirreled away, but Dr. Gald insisted there be no mention of his parents.

  She kicked at the floorboards to see if any were loose. No luck. Running out of ideas, she approached the torn insulation on the wall. Clumps of pink fiberglass stuck out from the hole, but nothing else. She put her hand in and felt around gingerly, afraid she might get a splinter, but again, there was nothing.

  She was just about to turn towards the other wall, when an odd bump in the insulation, about two feet down from the hole, made her hesitate. It wasn’t particularly unusual; the insulation was just bending out slightly as though it were up against an irregularity in the wall. Just to be sure, she pressed her hands against the bump. There was something there, something square and flat.

  Pulling a pen-knife from her carry-bag, she made a neat, straight slit in the insulation, then pulled it open with her hand. When she shook it a little, a spiral-bound notebook fell to the floor, kicking up a bit of dust. Excited, she picked it up and started leafing through. It was full of hand-written notes and diagrams, all in Hapax’ hand. She turned to one entry and started reading.

  So Strange – I’ve been talking about real selves and false selves and truth and honesty, and here I am looking at the notes in this book and thinking – no this isn’t me who wrote that line, this is some character I invented, some convenient face to present. But this line, this one over here, ah – that’s the real me – the true me. But if I stare at it long enough, and think about it, I realize that no, no matter how sincere it was when I wrote it, it’s just another fiction I’ve conjured for myself - that all of my selves, even, maybe especially, what I call the true self – are all inventions.

  She turned the page and read some more.

  That last one, for example, started out as a fiction disguised as the truth, but midway through, it became a note about me, so I disguised it by the end, as a fiction. The fear is, I suppose, that somehow the fictions are greater than my true self to begin with.

  Was he crazy? Frantic, obsessed, self-conscious, detached, sometimes violent. Of course he was crazy, but was he just crazy? She closed the book and pondered. There was a lot of writing there – nothing yet that proved he wrote the book. Maybe some vague coincidences. Too much for her to figure out now, maybe too much for her to ever figure out. She was dying to know what to believe, and not a clue.

  As she opened the book again, a small piece of paper fell out. For Beth, the most intriguing thing about the drawing wasn’t the philosophical relevance, it was the fact that the exact same illustration also appeared on page 306 of the Great Word. She carefully folded the map of reality and placed it in her carry-bag.

  14. I am Forever

  On December 31, 1999, by 11:30 P.M. the brazen blue moon was as swollen as the packed stadium beneath it. All across the Western world, believers and non-believers alike turned away from their revelry, towards their television and computer screens, eager to usher in the year 2000 with a miracle.

  Hidden beneath the central stage, Bud Bean gave final instructions to the three men whose loyalty was matched only by their expendability.

  “Don’t touch anything. Just watch Calico and make sure the timer releases the gas at 11:55. If not, use the manual lever. It’ll take five minutes to build up enough for an even combustion, then the automatic ignition will kick in. Are we all clear on that?”

  One devoted follower of Calico and two undercover agents nodded.

  Bean smiled, “I’m out of here, boys. Praise be… uh, Calico! And Happy New Year!”

  Saluting, he exited, sealing the door shut behind him. As he made his way to his private viewing box, Bean wondered if those loyal fools, chosen for their apparent lack of family and friends, had any idea the gas was mixed with poison and they’d be dead by midnight. The igniting flames would burn the gas off harmlessly. A pity they couldn’t use remotes, but the media and the government was everywhere. The signal would surely be uncovered and traced. Ah, the pri
ce of miracles.

  Miles away, Hapax Trigenomen lay on his hospital bed, happy to be off all the medication at last. Something had happened, he wasn’t sure what, but he suspected his new-found freedom was due, at least in part, to Beth. He knew about the rally, but wasn’t allowed to watch it. Given his history, Hapax agreed with Doctor that it probably wasn’t a good idea.

  He looked around his little room and thought what an odd place it was to be ushering in the year 2000. As for the rally, he wondered what miracle they would use. A crying statue? No. The face of the new god? No. Something to do with light, maybe a ring of fire. He felt a twinge of disappointment that his opinion hadn’t even been asked.

  At the stadium, the lights dimmed. The huge crowd grew utterly silent.

  On the steps to the stage, Keech hungrily watched the bright flood-lights fade into cool moonlight.

  Calico, dressed in her special moon-beam gown, all in white, loved the darkness, loved the moon. She bathed in it, twirling this way and that, completely captivated by the ghostly hue it gave the world. She’d almost forgotten she was supposed to speak, until a voice made her stop her dance.

  Don’t dawdle, child.

  It was trying to sound severe, but Calico knew it was really a very nice voice. It tickled her almost as much as the words in the book. But where was it? Inside her? In the crowd? Calico couldn’t be sure, but when she mounted the steps up to the stage and took her place behind the microphone, she would swear it was the moon talking. Hanging right above her, it seemed to be shining, just for her.

  She exhaled and smiled. On a glass teleprompter, some carefully chosen words from the Great Word began to hover in front of her. She giggled a little when she saw them.

  Go ahead, child.

  Calico nodded and started to read.

  “When I speak, does my voice start in my throat or in my heart? Does it end at the edge of my lips or fly to every place there is air? If I laugh or cry or dream out loud, is it only me, or is there something more?”

  I’m sorry I raised my voice.

  “When I raise my hand,” Calico said, holding it up to the moon, “does it end at the tip of my finger, or is there a line that continues past it, up into the sky and onto the moon? If I move, or shake, or twist it, is it only my hand, or does something else sweep through the heavens for a million million miles?”

  I had to, because I’m your mother.

  A few blocks away, in a black van loaded with surveillance equipment, Beth turned to A. D. Edison and made one last attempt to dissuade him.

  “You’re making a mistake with this,” she said.

  “Our superiors don’t think so. They’re convinced it may be our only chance to stop the Church from dominating the next elections,” he answered.

  “There’s still the book. We have proof Calico didn’t write it,” she ventured.

  “Paper, Beth, just paper. If this thing happens tonight, paper won’t matter. No one will believe it. There are ten lawsuits by “authors” of the book already. The only thing the faithful will understand is a broken promise,” he explained.

  She was about to repeat her fears that the faithful did not understand a broken promise, that sabotaging the miracle might only increase their numbers and the Church’s influence, but Edison knew all that already, so she bit her lip and watched. He turned to a microphone and said, “Send the signal.”

  Back at the stadium, Keech had more immediate problems. Calico wasn’t reading the text anymore, she was paraphrasing. She’d never done that before. She shouldn’t be capable of doing that. It could prove catastrophic, but what could he do? Pull her off stage? The crowd would turn on him, on Keech, in an instant and that wouldn’t do at all. Keech watched, refusing to believe he was helpless, while something in him growled.

  “When I feel my life,” Calico said, “do all the longings, the fears, the loves, the hates, the hopes, the dreams begin and end with me, or is there something else that stretches beyond this body, back to the beginning of time and on ahead into forever, where every pain is abated, every need met and every moment a delirious song? Is it death or happiness that is inevitable?”

  Look at me when I’m talking to you, baby.

  Calico looked up at the moon. Its whiteness ate her face.

  “Look at the world, is it blue or white? Look at yourself. Are you me, or are you you? I see myself in all of you. I know myself through you. I mix with you and know there is no single body, no single time, no single life or death. Look at me. Look back at me. Mix with me.”

  There is no reason to cry anymore.

  “Don’t begin or end. Find yourself in me,” Calico begged.

  There is no pain anymore.

  She turned back to the audience, moonlight where her eyes once were.

  “There is no death here. I am forever,” Calico and the voice said.

  At one at last with the sounds only she could hear, Calico threw her head back and said, in a monotone, “When I die the ocean will take my flesh and it will get sucked up into the clouds and rained down on the earth and eaten by the corn and the cows and the babes until the earth burns and we are all made into stars but not my bones my bones will stay on the bottom for the mermaids to find and they’ll take them and make flutes from my legs and arms and chimes from my ribs and a drum from my skull and they will play and play and the music will be so beautiful the angels will laugh and weep.”

  Keech was livid. That last bit wasn’t in the book at all. She was supposed to announce her immortality. That was the big secret. Press releases had already being sent. He tried to stay calm. Perhaps they could put a spin on it. She did say something about forever. Maybe that was close enough. Yes, that would work. But now, what was the bitch-whore doing? She was supposed to point at the spot on the ground where the ring of green fire would appear. Instead, laughing and dancing, she swept her hand back and forth across the sky. And where was the ring? What in heaven’s name was going on?

  Noticing that the timer had failed, down below, one of the three tried to flip the lever that would set off the display. This was no problem for his faith. He knew that even though he didn’t understand what she was saying exactly, the real miracle had already taken place. Right there, before the eyes of millions, Calico had joined the Aeons and become immortal. He was still quite surprised when his two co-workers wrestled him to the ground, hand-cuffed him, then proceeded to shut down the equipment.

  “Mission accomplished,” Edison said to Beth, “Let’s see her make a miracle now.”

  Keech’s heart fought to leap out of his chest. His teeth gnashed. His hands clenched. Calico was pointing and shaking and the crowd was staring and staring. Where was the ring of light? He scanned the steps, the crowd and the sky, unable to admit that he didn’t know what to do. Come on, damn you! He screamed silently to the world. Something has to happen! Something has to happen now!

  The clock struck the hour, the year 2000 began. As the sound of distant whistles and horns filled the air, the crowd in the stadium gasped. Some of them fell to their knees, some started to weep, but they all pointed, aghast at the sky above the girl’s head. They pointed, in shock, in unison, at absolutely nothing.

  At least nothing Keech could see.

  “The moon!” someone screamed, “It’s moving!”

  Calico looked up at the light as it danced in tune with her hand, and laughed and laughed and laughed.

  “Mommy and I are one,” she giggled, in a voice no longer quite so young.