The Dice Man

  (This last option fascinated me since I always find long-range options something of a drag: they tend to make me too patterned, even if it is the pattern of the Die.) But the Die, testing me, tumbled down a 'four' : that 'I work during the year on various writing projects.'

  Two subsequent dice decisions soon determined that I was to complete sometime during the year 'an autobiography of exactly 200,000 words' (so I've had this stupid thing barging in on my days most of the year) and that I worked on other Die-selected work when appropriate (namely when the Die and I felt like it).

  Of course writing is hardly a full-time job and I continued randomly seeing my friends, working sporadically with Dice Centers and dicegroups, occasionally lecturing, whimsically playing, occasional new roles, occasionally practicing my dice exercises, and generally leading a very enjoyable, repetitious, consistently inconsistent random sporadic unpredictable dicelife.

  Then, naturally, Chance intervened.

  Chapter Ninety-two

  RELIGION FOR OUR TIME presents [The camera pans from one figure to the next of the five people seated on the slightly raised stage in front of the fifty or so people in the audience.] Father John Wolfe, assistant professor of theology at Fordham University; Rabbi Eli Fishman', chairman of the Ecumenical Center for a More United Society; Dr. Eliot Dart, professor of psychology at Princeton University and noted atheist; and Dr. Lucius M. Rhinehart, psychiatrist and controversial founder of the Religion of the Die.

  `Welcome to another live, free, open, spontaneous and completely unrehearsed discussion in our series about Religion for Our Time. Our Subject today IS THE RELIGION OF THE DIE A COP-OUT? [Image of Mrs. Wippleton.] `Our moderator for today's program: Mrs. Sloan Wippleton, former screen and television actress, wife of noted financier and socialite Gregg Wippleton and mother of four lovely children. Mrs. Wippleton is also chairman of the First Presbyterian Church's Committee for Religious Tolerance. Mrs. Wippleton.'

  She bursts into a smile and speaks with enthusiasm.

  `Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We are fortunate today to have a very interesting subject for discussion and one I'm sure you've all wanted to learn more about: the Religion of the Die. We also have a very distinguished panel to discuss it. Dr. Rhinehart [image shifts briefly to Dr. Rhinehart, who, dressed totally in black with a heavy black turtleneck sweater and suit, looks vaguely ministerial. He chews on but does not smoke a large pipe throughout] is one of the most controversial figures of the last year. His papers and books on dice theory and therapy have scandalized the psychiatric world, and his readings from The Book of the Die have scandalized the religious world. He has earned from the American Association of Practicing Psychiatrists a Special Condemnation. Nevertheless, many individuals have rallied round Dr. Rhinehart and his religion, some of them not in mental hospitals. Last year Dr. Rhinehart and his followers began opening Dice Centers called Centers for Experiments in Totally Random Environments and thousands of people have gone through these centers, some reporting deeply religious experiences, but others suffering severe breakdowns. No matter how opinions differ, all agree that Dr. Rhinehart is a very controversial man.

  `Dr. Rhinehart, I'd like to open our discussion by asking you our central question for today, and then asking each of our other guests to comment on the same thing: "Is your religion of the Die a Cop-out?"

  `Sure,' says Dr. Rhinehart, chewing contentedly on his pipe, then he remains silent. Mrs. W. looks first expectant and then nervous.

  `How is it a cop-out?'

  `In three ways.'

  Again R. chews wordlessly on his pipe, serene and satisfied.

  `In what three ways?'

  R. lowers his head and the camera pans down to see him rubbing something between his hands and then drop onto the small table in front of him a die; it is a six. When the camera pans back up to his face the viewer sees R. looking directly out 'from the screen. With a benevolent glow, he holds his pipe steady and smokeless, looking at the viewer. Five seconds, ten seconds pass. Fifteen.

  `Dr. Rhinehart?' says a feminine voice off-screen. Image shifts to a serious Mrs. W. Then back to R. Then to Mrs. W., frowning, then to R., exhaling smokeless air from an open mouth. Then, uncertainly, appears the image of Father Wolfe, who looks as if he's concentrating on what he's going to say.

  `Rabbi Fishman. Perhaps you'd like to lead off today,' says the off-screen feminine voice.

  Rabbi Fishman, short, dark and fortyish, directs his words intently first toward Mrs. W. and then to R. `Thank you, Mrs. Wippleton. I find everything Dr. Rhinehart has said this afternoon extremely interesting, but he seems to be missing the chief point: the religion of the Die is a resignation from the status of man: it is a worship of chance, and as such, a worship of that which has always been man's adversary. Man is above all else the great organizer, the great integrator, while a dicelife as I understand it, is a destroyer of integration and unity. It is a cop-out from human life, but not into the life of random nature as some of Dr. Rhinehart's critics have maintained. No. Nature, too, is an organizer and an integrator. But the religion of the Die represents in a way the worship of disintegration, dissolution and death. It is anti- I find it another sign of the sickness of our times.'

  [Camera pans smoothly back to Mrs. W.] `That's very interesting, Rabbi Fishman. You've certainly given us much food for thought. Dr. Rhinehart, would you like to comment?'

  'Sure.'

  R. stares again serenely out at the television audience, benignly chewing on his pipe. Five seconds, ten, twelve.

  `Father Wolfe.' says Mrs. W. in a high-pitched voice.

  `My turn?'

  [Image of round, red-faced blond-haired Father Wolfe, looking at first uncertainly off toward Mrs. W., then staring into the camera like a prosecuting attorney.]

  `Thank you. The religion of the Die is, no matter how Dr. Rhinehart may try to weasel out of it this afternoon, the worship of the Antichrist. There is a moral law, er, a moral order to the universe which God created, and the surrender of one's freewill to the decisions of dice is the most outrageous and complete crime against ah God that I can imagine. It is to surrender to sin without raising a fist. It is the act of a ah coward.

  `Cop-out is too mild a word. The religion of the Die is a crime, against ah God and against the dignity and grandeur of man created in ah God's image. Free will distinguishes man from ur God's other creatures. To surrender that gift may well be that sin against the Holy Spirit which is unforgivable. Dr. Rhinehart may be well educated, he may well be a medical doctor, but his so-called er religion of the Die is the most unh poisonous, unh obnoxious and satanic thing I have ever heard of ah.'

  `May I comment on that?' says R.'s voice from off-screen, and his image appears, wordless and relaxed, staring out, obviously not intending to speak a single further word. It is as if the channel had been switched every time his face appears on the screen.

  Five, seven, eight, ten seconds pass.

  `Dr: Dart,' says a subdued female voice.

  Dr. Dart appears, young, dynamic, handsome, cigarette smoking, nervous, intense, brilliant.

  'I find Dr. Rhinehart's performance today rather amusing, and perfectly consistent with the clinical picture I have formed of him through a reading of his work and through discussions with people who have known him. We can't understand the religion of the Die and the peculiar way it is a cop-out unless we can understand the pathology of its creator and of its followers. Basically, as Dr. Rhinehart himself has acknowledged, he is a schizoid. [The image on the screen becomes that of Dr. Rhinehart, benignly looking at the viewer, and remains through the next part of Dr. Dart's analysis.]

  Dr. Rhinehart's alienation and anomie apparently reached such a degree that he lost a single identity and became a multiple personality. The literature is full of case studies of this schizoid type, and he differs from the typical case only in the large number of personalities he is apparently able to adopt. The compulsive nature of this role playing is masked by the u
se of the dice and by the mumbo-jumbo religion of the Die created around it. The pathological pattern of alienation and anomie is common in our society, and the significant number of people influenced by the religion of the Die manifests the appeal of a verbal structure to mask and support the psychological disintegration which has taken place. [Image of Dr. Dart reappears.] 'The religion of the Die is not so much a cop-out as it is, like all religions, a comforter, a confirmation and, one might say, an elevation of the psychological debilities of the individual who embraces the religion. Passivity before the rigid God of Catholicism or Judaism is one form of cop-out, passivity before the flexible and unpredictable God of chance is another. Both can be understood only in terms of individual and group pathology.'

  Dr. Dart turns back to Mrs. Wippleton. Her image appears, serious and sincere.

  'What kind of nonsense is that about the rigid God of Judaism?' says Rabbi Fishman's voice from off-screen. 'I'm just reporting commonly accepted psychological theory,' Dart answers.

  'If anything is pathological,' says Rabbi Fishman darkly from the screen again, 'it's the sterile pseudo-objectivity of neurotic psychologists pretending to understand spiritual man.'

  'Gentlemen,' interposes Mrs. Wippleton with her best smile.

  `Catholicism is not the elevation of man's debilities [comes Father Wolfe's 'voice and then face] but of his spiritual grandeur. It is the insect minds of psychologists.'

  'Gentlemen'

  'Your defensiveness interests me,' says Dr. Dart.

  `Our subject today,' interposes a beaming Mrs. Wippleton, 'is the religion of the Die and I for one am anxious to hear what Dr. Rhinehart has to say about the charge that his religion is schizophrenic and pathological.'

  [The image of Dr. Rhinehart appears, glowing, friendly, relaxed: Five seconds. Six.] 'I don't understand your silence, Dr. Rhinehart,' says Mrs. Wippleton from off-screen. Not a flicker of change in R.

  `This is a typical symptom, Mrs. Wippleton,' says Dr. Dart's voice, 'of the schizophrenic in the catatonic state. Dr. Rhinehart is apparently capable of going in and out of such states almost at will, a most unusual ability. In a few minutes he may be talking so much you won't be able to shut him up.'

  Dr. Rhinehart removes the pipe from his mouth and exhales a lungful of fresh air.

  'But if I understand you correctly, Dr. Dart,' says Mrs. W., 'then you are saying that Dr. Rhinehart has a form of mental disease which would normally be institutionalized.'

  'No, not quite,' says an intense Dr. Dart. 'You see Dr. Rhinehart is a sort of schizophrenic manque, if I may coin aphrase. His religion has permitted him to do what most schizophrenics are incapable of doing: it justifies and unifies his splintered personality. Without his religion of the Die he would be a hopelessly babbling maniac. With it he can function - function as an integrated, schizophrenic manque of course, but function nevertheless.'

  'I find his silence this afternoon senseless, rude and a copout,' says Rabbi Fishman.

  'He is afraid to confront the unh American people with the enormity of his ur sin,' says Father Wolfe. 'He cannot answer Truth.'

  'Dr. Rhinehart, would you like to answer these charges?' asks Mrs. Wippleton.

  [The image of R. slowly removing his pipe, still looking at the viewer.] 'Yes,' he says.

  Silence of five seconds, ten. Fifteen.

  'But how?'

  Dr. Rhinehart is seen now for the second time leaning forward and rubbing his hands together and dropping a die upon the table next to the untouched cup of brown liquid. A close-up shot magnifies the result: a two. He reverts without a flicker of expression to his benevolent serenity flowing out to the viewers of the world.

  Rabbi Fishman begins speaking and his face appears on the screen.

  `This is the sort of imbecility which attracts thousands? It's beyond me. People starving to death in India, the suffering in Vietnam, our black brothers still with legitimate grievances, and this man, a doctor mind you, sits puffing on an unlit pipe and playing with dice. He's a Nero fiddling while Rome burns.'

  `He's ah ah worse, Rabbi,' says Father Wolfe. 'Nero rebuilt Rome afterward. This man knows only how to destroy.'

  Dr. Dart speaks: 'The alienated schizoid experiences both himself and others as objects and is unable to relate to others except in terms of his fantasy world.'

  `And we're not in his fantasy world?' asks Mrs. W.

  `We're there. He thinks he's manipulating us with his silence.'

  `How can we stop him?'

  `By being silent.'

  'Oh.'

  Rabbi Fishman speaks `Maybe we should talk about something else, Mrs. Wippleton. I hate to see your lovely program ruined by a loony.'

  [The image of Dr. Rhinehart appears and is left there, eyes and pipe leveled at the viewer through all of the next bit of the program.]

  `Oh thank you, Rabbi Fishman, that's thoughtful of you. But I do think we should try to analyze Dr. Rhineharts religion. It's what the sponsor paid for.'

  `Notice he has no tics.' Dr. D.

  'What's that mean?' Rabbi F.

  'He's not nervous.'

  `Oh.'

  'I'd like to answer your second question now, Mrs. Wippleton' [Father W.] 'Er, what's that?'

  'Your second question was going to be "Oh my goodness, perhaps we should discuss why the religion of the Die attracts some people."

  'Oh yes? . `May I give my answer now?, 'Oh yes do. Go ahead.'

  Father Wolfe's prosecuting-attorney voice snaps out from the same screen from which looks Dr. Rhinehart.

  `The devil has always attracted men through gaudy disguises ah, through bread and circuses ahh and through promises he cannot fulfil unh. I believe-'

  `Wouldn't it be interesting if he never came out of it?' interrupts Rabbi Fishman's voice.

  `I beg your pardon, I was speaking.'[Father Wolfe.]

  `Oh he'll come out of it says Dr. Dart. `The permanent catatonic looks more tense but less alert. Rhinehart's obviously just putting on an act'

  `How can people be interested in such a nut?' asked Rabbi Fishman.

  `I believe he's not always this way, is he?' asks Mrs. Wippleton.

  Father Wolfe says: `He talked to me quite pleasantly before we went on the air, but I wasn't fooled. I knew it was just ah un trick.'

  `Dr. Dart, perhaps you'd like to comment on -why the religion of the Die attracts followers,' says Mrs. W.

  `Look, he's exhaling again,' says Rabbi Fishman.

  `Ignore him,' says Dr. Dart, `we're playing his game.'

  Father Wolfe says: `Mrs. Wippleton, I must point out that you asked me to answer that question first and that I was rudely interrupted by Dr. Dart before I had finished.'

  [Silence. The image changes to Mrs. Wippleton, who is sitting wide-eyed and openmouthed looking to her right.]

  `Oh my God,' she says.

  `Jesus H. Christ,' comes one of the panelists' voices off screen.

  [A loud crash and two or three feminine screams from the audience.] `What the hell-is this?'

  `STOP THEM!' [Bang.] Mrs. Wippleton, still openmouthed, is seen standing up and fiddling with the microphone at her neck She tries a smile: `Will the members of the audience please-'

  'Ahhhhgggh a long scream.

  `Shut her up!'

  [The camera jerks a pan over the audience to locate two armed men, one white and one Negro, standing at the door behind the audience, one looking out, the other glaring at the audience. Then, for obscure reasons, the image of Dr. Rhinehart returns, removing his pipe, exhaling air, and returning it to his mouth to chew on it.]

  `Has Bobby got the elevators?'

  `Are we on?' [Bang, bamtwang.]

  `What if they got Bobby?'

  `Stay in your seats! Stay in your seats! Or we'll shoot!'

  'Are we on?'

  'Go ask Eric what's'

  Bambambambam.

  `LOOK OUT!'

  [More gunshots bang away and Rhinehart disappears and is replaced by an armed man falling (clutchi
ng his belly). Two men with pistols fire past the audience at something. One of them falls forward with a groan. The other stops shooting, but remains looking off intently.]

  'Are we on?' comes the masculine voice again.

  [Dr. Rhinehart's benign face is again the image on the home screen, but not centered, since the camera which happens to be on him and happens to be being transmitted has been deserted by the cameraman, who is sitting quietly now in the audience trying to look natural, which, since everyone else in the audience looks terrified, makes him stand out like a nude at a funeral.]

  `All right, Charlie, get your camera aimed over here; our boys in the control room will do the rest.'

  `Where's Malcolm? He was going to introduce Arturo.'

  'He's 'Oh. Yes.'

  `Ladies and gentlemen, Arturo X.'

  On the screen Dr. Rhinehart looks out as always.

  'Am I on?' says someone's voice.

  'Is he on?'

  Dr. Rhinehart exhales.

  `Where's Eric?'

  `What the hell's the matter with you guys in there?' shouts someone.