The young boy, child as he was, loved to play with his toys, although he never heard of taking care of them. Toy cars were smashed into walls, doll limbs were torn off and broken, the rest of the toys were destroyed. They were the lucky ones.
Come nightfall, there was a baby's scream, but it was instantly cut short. The mother went to check her dear child, and her wits almost escaped her upon beholding what happened.
The baby's head was crushed, his limbs mutilated, a knife planted in his previously-beating heart. No one knew who did it.
The toys were found under the bed, covered in entrails and blood.
24 October 2009
The Magical Mister Machinery (or Deus Ex Machina)
The day Mister Machinery’s worker – whose name we will not be mentioning, and whose anonymity will be of no consequence to the events preceding and succeeding this most curious phenomenon, and to whom we will be assigning no fictitious name, so as not to ruin my credibility as a biographer – died (it was pneumonia, some said, for working too late at night, and for waking up too early to work in the morning), Mister Machinery’s glass eyes flashed electric blue, and he functioned, much to the shock and fear of the townspeople.
For so many years, the townspeople watched in delight as the worker failed at giving life to his naked silver creation – and if you asked him why he was creating such a figure, he would have said that he did not entirely know his motives, and that he was merely acting on impulse, and that a voice was telling him to work – for they were so sure that the robot would not work, and indeed, it was too ambitious to guarantee its functioning (although the worker was so sure it would function) for it was designed to mimic a true human being – and more. It was supposed to correct the “mistakes” of the human anatomy.
“Look at it!” said a man with all the airs and humility (or lack of humility) of a religious, honorable, and, ultimately, important person. “Look at it! It’s against God!”
“Very true, Dawkins!” said some of the lesser-important people in the crowd.
“A very wise man, he is!”
“That infernal work has to stop!”
Dawkins was much delighted with the responses he drew from his less-charismatic neighbors. He sneered at the worker, who took no notice of all the objections and rejections he incited, and instead focused on his robot (during this point, the robot was unnamed, just as creatures were not named until they were alive), improving every aspect of his creation, wondering why it did not work. It should have worked, he believed, for everything went according to plan. The verisimilitude was unmistakable: every articulation corresponded to the muscles and joints of a man, so that all motions – from the wrinkling of the nose to the expansion of its hydraulic diaphragm to the lengthening of its segmented penis – mimicked the motions of a true person. The robot was meant to be a person, or perhaps something beyond a person. It was, for all intents and purposes, an attempt to duplicate human behaviour, and that was why the townspeople were so sure it would never work. “Impossible,” they all said. A human life was so perfect that it could never be copied.
Still, nervous laughter and sighs of relief ensued whenever the worker tested his robot’s functionality – to no avail. Their hearts beat faster than normal whenever the robot was turned on. What if it worked? Would that not mean the obsolescence of human life? Dawkins said so, and they believed Dawkins, and that was why the worker’s failure was met with great delight, so gay and so insulting, so jubilant that it would have driven any man mad.
The townspeople said it was impossible to drive the worker mad. They said – and I make it a point that I did not say it, as I am merely a journalist who reports both sides of the story as he understands it – the worker was already mad. Even before the robot was conceptualized, the worker was already an object of derision and ridicule.
Another reason they rejected the worker: great tragedies struck the town since the worker began to labor on his silver man. They believed that all their misfortunes had something to do with the robot, which was why they were delighted at the “madman’s” failure; the worker was their sole source of comic relief, and they believed that they would be the ones made a laughingstock if the robot worked, as that would signify another tragedy. Dawkins made a show of it once, standing in the harsh rain before everyone else (if Dawkins did it, then they would do it!), smiling, telling them words of inspiration that the worker could have taken as words of derision, had he been there. Quoth he: “Look at it this way, people. Our crops may be infested by locust before we could harvest them. People may be dying of unexplained illnesses. We have no jobs and we have no money. One hurricane leaves, another one comes. Electricity is often cut. But look at it this way: we have no robot here; we may be dying mysteriously, but at least we can be sure that we will not be extinct. At least not now.”
The worker’s death was almost a cause of celebration among the people, for that meant the end of their anxieties, but they regretted the loss of their sole source of entertainment, and so they grumbled and mumbled about approaching hurricanes and bad omens and another mysterious death I somebody’s family. Dawkins, feeling important (naturally), stood in the open rain, wind blowing violently around him, and said, “People! Mourn the passing of our clown tomorrow,” to the laughter of the folks, who were beginning to exit their houses to stand in the rain with Dawkins. “Today, we must consign Mister Machinery to the dump!” The name he mentioned –which is the same name affixed to the main character of this short memoir – was met with great delight, and to be sure, Dawkins (who gave bows with the refined manners of a gentleman in all directions where he heard laughter) baptized Mister Machinery with that queer – but ultimately appropriate – name.
So they marched to the worker’s house, singing merrily, jubilance and festivities in their voices, which had to compete with the bitter rain to be audible. Dawkins congratulated himself for his charisma by leading the folks in a song that went, “Throw that tin can into the wastelands.”
They were so happy, wearing big smiles, that the very sudden change of reaction from happiness to one of mingled shock and curiosity was almost comical, although the people did not find it at all funny. Their “Mister Machinery” was alive, glass eyes glowing electric blue, silver eyelids sliding to cover and reveal them (in a manner so similar to the way a human being would blink), peering at its (or perhaps, more appropriately, since he has a penis and is called mister: his) jointed silver fingers. It was still naked, and it appeared to have awakened only very recently, for it inspected itself with utmost curiosity.
He looked at the people and smiled in the way a human being would smile. The people did not return his smile. Instead, they stepped back, as if obsolescence itself was staring them in the face with electric blue eyes. The robot extended a shining silver hand and directed it to Dawkins. “Greetings,” he said. He waited for Dawkins to take the hand. “I take it you are the leader of this town?”
Dawkins wanted to object (he was not, in any manner, be it political or religious, their leader, and he just enjoyed assuming the role of an important person), but the people – even the mayor, whose role in this story is not important until a certain point in the future – pushed him forward gently, therefore confirming that Dawkins was the town’s leader. He took the robot’s hand.
“Hullo,” he said. The robot smiled. “I’m – I’m Dawkins. What’s your name?”
“You may call me whatever you would like,” said the robot, smiling, his lips moving very much like the lips of a true human, for, upon closer inspection, his face is made up of fine lines, the fine lines being plates. Dawkins said they called him Mister Machinery (although he never mentioned it was intended as an insult), and the robot nodded. “Mister Machinery, it is, then.”
Dawkins wanted to let go of the hand, which was, surprisingly, warm, although it was, unsurprisingly, hard. The robot did not respond to the man’s attempt to break the bond, and instead, gripped tighter, making sure he did not harm Dawkins. Dawkins asked, “How did you come to life?”
“I had always been alive,” said Mister Machinery. “I had been here since time immemorial. I just waited.”
Dawkins looked behind him. The people were whispering among themselves, shaking their heads, foreheads wrinkled in lack of comprehension. Dawkins, understanding what the pantomime meant – for he, in his own light, was intelligent – asked, “You waited for what?”
“I waited to be asked,” said Mister Machinery, gazing skyward. The firmament was dark, enveloped with low-hanging nimbus clouds that sparked blue as his eyes. Mister Machinery made a grimace. “I was anxious to operate, but my kind has to be asked before we could operate. Now that I am asked, I can function; I can do my task.”
Dawkins, fearing the knowledge he might obtain upon inquiring Mister Machinery on his task, for he believed it had something to do with the annihilation of humanity, asked no further on this task and instead diverted the conversation to this question: “So… uh… do you want anything right now?”
Mister Machinery then let go of Dawkin’s hand, to the relief of the gentleman. “I want nothing more than rest right now, for I am to begin my task later tonight. It would not be over quickly, I’m afraid.” He turned his back on Dawkins and walked towards the house, perhaps to claim ownership of the worker’s property. “Goodbye, Dawkins. Nice meeting you and your friends.” He locked the house, leaving Dawkins standing there dumbfounded.
That night, Dawkins wanted to sleep, but his mind would not permit him. He was so sure their voices were loud enough to be heard by everyone who witnessed the earlier conversation. However, the people claimed they heard nothing. They went so far as saying that Dawkins and Mister Machinery did not even move their lips. It was a trivial detail, but it bothered him nonetheless, for it was most curious that they spoke, and no one had any idea of the conversation.
Dawkins climbed out of bed and sat by the window. The silhouettes of his neighbors were visible, framed in their own houses’ glass windows. Dawkins relaxed, knowing that he was not alone in his anxieties, that others were uncomfortable as him, if not more uncomfortable. Then, he stopped relaxing. Dawkins grew tense as windows were locked, curtains pulled together. A silhouette, glinting silver in the pale moonlight, walked the streets, footsteps heavy with the hollow noise of metal striking concrete. Dawkins checked to see if his own windows were locked, then drew the curtains together. He ran downstairs, making sure the door was locked. It was, and Dawkins rushed back to his room and curled like a fetus in his bed, sobbing. Cries filled the air, like wailing women – or banshee, perhaps – and carried off in the cold wind for a very long time. Dawkins cried even harder, as he imagined his neighbors suffering at the hands of the robot.
That night, nobody got much sleep, but nobody died (it was most unusual, because it used to be that someone died almost every night).
The next morning, the people saw Mister Machinery ( dressed in a white robe at this point, or perhaps since last night, although it had not been visible given the insufficient light coming from the moon; rest assured, intelligent reader: his clothing has no significance to the tale and it is merely a detail I find interesting) coming out of the forest, his body covered in twigs and leaves, and, more interestingly, dents and fractures, as if he had been fighting.
Everyone was wondering as to the physical state of the robot, but nobody – not even Dawkins, who was merely forced to communicate with the robot – was brave enough to ask, afraid of what they might discover, so they contented themselves upon watching as Mister Machinery walked towards his house.
That day, the sky was blue, and the sun came out of its hibernation after several years. The weather was warm and sunny, and people were happy. At night, however, humanlike sounds came from the forest, and the following morning, Mister Machinery was covered in even more damage. This went on for days. Well, days came and went, and Mister Machinery had won the trust of almost everyone in town, for they believed he was in some way connected to the misterious good fortune they experienced.
Since Mister Machinery began working, nobody died of unexplained illnesses anymore. The weather had been consistently fine, and the rains no longer threatened to destroy the grounds on which the townspeople stood. Jobs boomed, and the economy flourished, and the people thanked the heavens – and the late worker, it must be said – for giving them Mister Machinery.
Everyone liked him, except Dawkins, who was afraid that his importance was diminishing due to the attention given to Mister Machinery. He was utterly convinced that the robot was out and about to destroy them. “It’s the oldest trick in the book,” he said, although what book he was talking about, we may never know. Quoth he: “He’ll pretend he has some sort of connection to the good fortunes we have right now, but he hasn’t! Surely it’s just coincidence that he appeared at the same time the good Lord took mercy upon us and ended our trial! He’ll earn our trust, and that will make it easier for him to destroy us! Soon he’ll gain access to our homes, and while we sleep comfortably, he will come and kill us, and that will be the end of our happy lives!”
“Ease up, Dawkins. You know –”
“– since he came –”
“– yes, and good fortune, and –”
“We now have nice weather –”
“Nobody’s dying –”
“You have such a poker up your –”
Dawkins, shocked and in disbelief at how fast reputation could turn around, sneered and left, his hands covering his ears, shouting, “You’ll see! You will all see! When we all die, you will remember me, and you’ll regret not listening! You’ll all see!”
But the townspeople never saw. Instead, the town kept on improving, and Dawkins watched in resentment as Mister Machinery (who was now covered in dents, his articulations severely limited, one glass eye broken, and limp in one leg) became the warm center of life in the town.
However, since Mister Machinery was created with the human being in mind, his life also mimicked a true person’s life, with all those ups and downs, like an elevator that never stopped. The pinnacle of success was always next to the cliffs of downfall, and thus, one moment, Mister Machinery was held in high esteem, and another moment, the peop,e did not know what to think of him.
That other moment in question came during one town meeting. Mister Machinery was now considered a part of their population, and the mayor – an integral part in this story at this point, as I have promised earlier that he will be important at some future point, this present point being the past’s future point – decided to formally welcome him. So they were in the mayor’s office, everyone crowding around Mister Machinery and the mayor. Dawkins walked outside the crowd, unnoticed. The conversation began cheerfully enough, with the robot’s “father” being the object of discussion (or so the people believed), albeit being regarded now in a much different angle. “your father was a good man, Mister Machinery,” the mayor said when Mister Machinery asked him what the townspeople thought of his father.
“Balderdash, Mayor!” shouted Dawkins. “Don’t you remember when he was nohing more than a laughingstock?” Everyone parted, so that Dawkins managed to penetrate the crowd, speaking as he approached the mayor and Msiter Machinery. “Hypocrites, that’s what all of you are! Why hide the truth? Why lie, I ask!”
Nobody stirred. The folks did not know how to react. Dawkins grabbed Mister Machinery by the collar of his white robe (although it was not so white now, being covered in mud and leaves), and he screamed, “Well, I tell you now! Mister Machinery, your father was a madman and a fool!”
Now, no matter how little one knows of his parents, he would not want them to be cast in a bad light. Mister Machinery, driven by anger, ignored the limitations brought by his battered joints, and pushed Dawkins with all might. “You lie!” he screamed. Dawkins fell flat on his buttocks, the wind knocked out of him. Everyone gasped, coming to the aid of the sneering Dawkins. The people looked at Mister Machinery coldly, silence dominating the entire office.
Mister Machinery pushed off the people in his way, running for exit, limping badly. Dawkins shouted at the top of his voice while feigning pain at the same time, so that everyone, the robot included, could hear him, saying, “I told you so! He wants to kill us all!”
That night, and the following morning, and the days that succeeded, nobody saw Mister Machinery again, although the humanlike noises continued every evening in the forest, like cries of battling animals (as animals can sometimes make the same sounds people make), and the townspeople simply assumed that he was still around. Days turned into weeks, then months, and still no sign of Mister Machinery. Dawkins, however, was very much in belief that the robot will continue with his task nonetheless, and, self-importance mingled with curiosity creeping in his mind, he resolved that the obligation of capturing the robot, and perhaps destroying it, fell upon his hands. Dawkins took a torch (everyone in town had a torch, for, it must be remembered, before Mister Machinery, electricity was always cut off due to the horrible weather) and lighted it, and waited for the cries from the forest to begin.
The sounds came, and upon hearing them, the gentleman, torch in hand, dashed towards the dark outskirts of the town. Dawkins ran. He ran until his legs hurt, then he ran some more. He ran until he reached the forest, and having accomplished that, Dawkins hid beneath thick grasses and shrubs, careful so that his torch would not bring him into notice.
This is what Dawkins saw:
Mister Machinery ran around the forest, rolling on the forest floor, punching, kicking, screaming. His joints were jammed so much he had difficulty moving, and he had a more pronounced limp, but he took no notice; he fought passionately, his face of small plates contorted with hatred.
Dawkins stirred. It was confirmed. Surely, Mister Machinery was preparing to beat them into oblivion!
Now, stirring when stealthily observing something, especially a living creature, is one of the worst things one can do, if not the worst – birdwatchers and hunters can attest to this fact. By moving, Dawkins exposed his position as it changed the angle of his torch, making the light shine through. The humanlike sounds stopped.
Mister Machinery jumped backwards, his back hitting a tree, on which he leaned.
Dawkins’ head began to hurt. It hurt so much he had to touch it with his free hand, and he had to close his eyes. He heard a voice say, “Once this is all over, the misfortunes will befall you once more, and your extinction will be pushed through.”
A laughter, deep and rumbling, came forth. Then, the voice was gone, and so was the headache. When Dawkins opened his eyes, he saw Mister Machinery lying on the forest floor, battered and unconscious (Dawkins knew that the robot was not dead because he saw slivers of blue between the machine’s silver eyelids), his body a lump of twisted metal wrapped in a filthy cloth.
Dawkins ran towards the town, still clutching the torch that exposed his position. “Help!” He kept on screaming for help until he reached the populated part of the town. “Help! Wake up, people! Grab your torches! Grab your torches and your shotguns! Wake up! Wake up! Help!”
“What is it?” asked the people, rubbing their eyes, voices heavy with exasperation for being woken in the middle of the night (they had been used to the humanlike sounds from the forest, and had been able to sleep soundly despite the noise). “Why did you wake us up, Dawkins?”
Dawkins proceeded telling the people of the events that took place, from his resolution to capture Mister Machinery, to the demonic voice whispering evil words to him during a mysterious case of migraine. He told everything at length and in detail, with several exaggerations and alterations that brought forth his bravery. Now, as I have already related these events to the intelligent reader, it would be redundant to repeat his monologue in verbatim.
We leave Dawkins and the townspeople for the moment to focus on our tragic hero, who lies on the forest floor, tired from its battle with a creature Dawkins never saw. (Mister Machinery had seen it, however. It was a shapeless mass, and it was the same creature that plagued the town for years.) Mister Machinery was about to fall asleep when he realized the implications of the devil’s words to Dawkins, who could not see the wraith that spoke to him earlier. It was highly probable that the human would think those words came from the robot, giving Dawkins proof that Mister Machinery was after the obsolescence of the human race.
He decided to rise and appeal to Dawkins, so that he could explain everything before the man managed to warn the townspeople and incite a revolution.
It became warm, then hot. Mister Machinery jumped to his feet. It was too late. The forest was now engulfed in red flames that crackled red and yellow. The foliage was reduced to thick, billowing smoke that enveloped the starless sky. From outside, drowned only slightly by the sound of the fire, the angry mob shouted.
People carrying pitchforks and torches surrounded the margins of the woods, razing everything in sight.
“That’s right!” shouted Dawkins, watching over the townspeople. “Ensure that that infernal machine is burned down, or he will destroy us in our sleep!”
Mister Machinery ran around, searching for an exit, but there was none to be found. He tried touching the fire, but he doubted he would survive if he crossed it, as the flames were very thick already.
It was too late, Mister Machinery thought. He sat on a rock and sighed. Tears well up in his bottom eyelids, and as he blinked, those tears fell. His adam’s apple rose, then fell, sinking to the bottom of his neck in an imitation of a gulp. “Help,” he whispered.
From outside, Dawkins watched as the silhouette of a man – or a man’s replica, as the case may be – became thinner and thinner, until it was nothing more than a stick figure, then a sliver of black. It disappeared afterwards, its entirety consumed by flames.
It rained then. It was not the light sweet rain the town experienced since the activation of Mister Machinery. It was a heavy rain not unlike those that ensued during the hurricanes, when the town was still in its period of tragedies: heavy and frighteningly sudden. The winds howled like wolves on the cliffside during a full moon. The outpour was so strong that it extinguished the flames.
The people began leaving, running for shelter. Dawkins stayed for a while, waiting for the fire to die down, so that he could see the aftermath of the destruction. The end result was that the forest had been reduced to ashes, its denizens charred. Dawkins looked around, but there was no sign of the robot. He smiled, then he left.
I do not know what has become of Mister Machinery. Although I am his biographer, I do not know whether he survived the fire or not, and I apologize for my irresponsibility at keeping track of my subject’s life.
I can only imagine that he survived, for humanlike sounds still fill the air, and misfortunes are still quite rare in town, although they do come sometimes.
Some people say that they see blue orbs shifting in the darkness someimes, where the forest used to be, but they are unsure whether they imagined it or not, although, given the large number of people who reports such occurrence, it is highly probable that the event is not merely a deception of the mind.
For so many years, the townspeople watched in delight as the worker failed at giving life to his naked silver creation – and if you asked him why he was creating such a figure, he would have said that he did not entirely know his motives, and that he was merely acting on impulse, and that a voice was telling him to work – for they were so sure that the robot would not work, and indeed, it was too ambitious to guarantee its functioning (although the worker was so sure it would function) for it was designed to mimic a true human being – and more. It was supposed to correct the “mistakes” of the human anatomy.
“Look at it!” said a man with all the airs and humility (or lack of humility) of a religious, honorable, and, ultimately, important person. “Look at it! It’s against God!”
“Very true, Dawkins!” said some of the lesser-important people in the crowd.
“A very wise man, he is!”
“That infernal work has to stop!”
Dawkins was much delighted with the responses he drew from his less-charismatic neighbors. He sneered at the worker, who took no notice of all the objections and rejections he incited, and instead focused on his robot (during this point, the robot was unnamed, just as creatures were not named until they were alive), improving every aspect of his creation, wondering why it did not work. It should have worked, he believed, for everything went according to plan. The verisimilitude was unmistakable: every articulation corresponded to the muscles and joints of a man, so that all motions – from the wrinkling of the nose to the expansion of its hydraulic diaphragm to the lengthening of its segmented penis – mimicked the motions of a true person. The robot was meant to be a person, or perhaps something beyond a person. It was, for all intents and purposes, an attempt to duplicate human behaviour, and that was why the townspeople were so sure it would never work. “Impossible,” they all said. A human life was so perfect that it could never be copied.
Still, nervous laughter and sighs of relief ensued whenever the worker tested his robot’s functionality – to no avail. Their hearts beat faster than normal whenever the robot was turned on. What if it worked? Would that not mean the obsolescence of human life? Dawkins said so, and they believed Dawkins, and that was why the worker’s failure was met with great delight, so gay and so insulting, so jubilant that it would have driven any man mad.
The townspeople said it was impossible to drive the worker mad. They said – and I make it a point that I did not say it, as I am merely a journalist who reports both sides of the story as he understands it – the worker was already mad. Even before the robot was conceptualized, the worker was already an object of derision and ridicule.
Another reason they rejected the worker: great tragedies struck the town since the worker began to labor on his silver man. They believed that all their misfortunes had something to do with the robot, which was why they were delighted at the “madman’s” failure; the worker was their sole source of comic relief, and they believed that they would be the ones made a laughingstock if the robot worked, as that would signify another tragedy. Dawkins made a show of it once, standing in the harsh rain before everyone else (if Dawkins did it, then they would do it!), smiling, telling them words of inspiration that the worker could have taken as words of derision, had he been there. Quoth he: “Look at it this way, people. Our crops may be infested by locust before we could harvest them. People may be dying of unexplained illnesses. We have no jobs and we have no money. One hurricane leaves, another one comes. Electricity is often cut. But look at it this way: we have no robot here; we may be dying mysteriously, but at least we can be sure that we will not be extinct. At least not now.”
The worker’s death was almost a cause of celebration among the people, for that meant the end of their anxieties, but they regretted the loss of their sole source of entertainment, and so they grumbled and mumbled about approaching hurricanes and bad omens and another mysterious death I somebody’s family. Dawkins, feeling important (naturally), stood in the open rain, wind blowing violently around him, and said, “People! Mourn the passing of our clown tomorrow,” to the laughter of the folks, who were beginning to exit their houses to stand in the rain with Dawkins. “Today, we must consign Mister Machinery to the dump!” The name he mentioned –which is the same name affixed to the main character of this short memoir – was met with great delight, and to be sure, Dawkins (who gave bows with the refined manners of a gentleman in all directions where he heard laughter) baptized Mister Machinery with that queer – but ultimately appropriate – name.
So they marched to the worker’s house, singing merrily, jubilance and festivities in their voices, which had to compete with the bitter rain to be audible. Dawkins congratulated himself for his charisma by leading the folks in a song that went, “Throw that tin can into the wastelands.”
They were so happy, wearing big smiles, that the very sudden change of reaction from happiness to one of mingled shock and curiosity was almost comical, although the people did not find it at all funny. Their “Mister Machinery” was alive, glass eyes glowing electric blue, silver eyelids sliding to cover and reveal them (in a manner so similar to the way a human being would blink), peering at its (or perhaps, more appropriately, since he has a penis and is called mister: his) jointed silver fingers. It was still naked, and it appeared to have awakened only very recently, for it inspected itself with utmost curiosity.
He looked at the people and smiled in the way a human being would smile. The people did not return his smile. Instead, they stepped back, as if obsolescence itself was staring them in the face with electric blue eyes. The robot extended a shining silver hand and directed it to Dawkins. “Greetings,” he said. He waited for Dawkins to take the hand. “I take it you are the leader of this town?”
Dawkins wanted to object (he was not, in any manner, be it political or religious, their leader, and he just enjoyed assuming the role of an important person), but the people – even the mayor, whose role in this story is not important until a certain point in the future – pushed him forward gently, therefore confirming that Dawkins was the town’s leader. He took the robot’s hand.
“Hullo,” he said. The robot smiled. “I’m – I’m Dawkins. What’s your name?”
“You may call me whatever you would like,” said the robot, smiling, his lips moving very much like the lips of a true human, for, upon closer inspection, his face is made up of fine lines, the fine lines being plates. Dawkins said they called him Mister Machinery (although he never mentioned it was intended as an insult), and the robot nodded. “Mister Machinery, it is, then.”
Dawkins wanted to let go of the hand, which was, surprisingly, warm, although it was, unsurprisingly, hard. The robot did not respond to the man’s attempt to break the bond, and instead, gripped tighter, making sure he did not harm Dawkins. Dawkins asked, “How did you come to life?”
“I had always been alive,” said Mister Machinery. “I had been here since time immemorial. I just waited.”
Dawkins looked behind him. The people were whispering among themselves, shaking their heads, foreheads wrinkled in lack of comprehension. Dawkins, understanding what the pantomime meant – for he, in his own light, was intelligent – asked, “You waited for what?”
“I waited to be asked,” said Mister Machinery, gazing skyward. The firmament was dark, enveloped with low-hanging nimbus clouds that sparked blue as his eyes. Mister Machinery made a grimace. “I was anxious to operate, but my kind has to be asked before we could operate. Now that I am asked, I can function; I can do my task.”
Dawkins, fearing the knowledge he might obtain upon inquiring Mister Machinery on his task, for he believed it had something to do with the annihilation of humanity, asked no further on this task and instead diverted the conversation to this question: “So… uh… do you want anything right now?”
Mister Machinery then let go of Dawkin’s hand, to the relief of the gentleman. “I want nothing more than rest right now, for I am to begin my task later tonight. It would not be over quickly, I’m afraid.” He turned his back on Dawkins and walked towards the house, perhaps to claim ownership of the worker’s property. “Goodbye, Dawkins. Nice meeting you and your friends.” He locked the house, leaving Dawkins standing there dumbfounded.
That night, Dawkins wanted to sleep, but his mind would not permit him. He was so sure their voices were loud enough to be heard by everyone who witnessed the earlier conversation. However, the people claimed they heard nothing. They went so far as saying that Dawkins and Mister Machinery did not even move their lips. It was a trivial detail, but it bothered him nonetheless, for it was most curious that they spoke, and no one had any idea of the conversation.
Dawkins climbed out of bed and sat by the window. The silhouettes of his neighbors were visible, framed in their own houses’ glass windows. Dawkins relaxed, knowing that he was not alone in his anxieties, that others were uncomfortable as him, if not more uncomfortable. Then, he stopped relaxing. Dawkins grew tense as windows were locked, curtains pulled together. A silhouette, glinting silver in the pale moonlight, walked the streets, footsteps heavy with the hollow noise of metal striking concrete. Dawkins checked to see if his own windows were locked, then drew the curtains together. He ran downstairs, making sure the door was locked. It was, and Dawkins rushed back to his room and curled like a fetus in his bed, sobbing. Cries filled the air, like wailing women – or banshee, perhaps – and carried off in the cold wind for a very long time. Dawkins cried even harder, as he imagined his neighbors suffering at the hands of the robot.
That night, nobody got much sleep, but nobody died (it was most unusual, because it used to be that someone died almost every night).
The next morning, the people saw Mister Machinery ( dressed in a white robe at this point, or perhaps since last night, although it had not been visible given the insufficient light coming from the moon; rest assured, intelligent reader: his clothing has no significance to the tale and it is merely a detail I find interesting) coming out of the forest, his body covered in twigs and leaves, and, more interestingly, dents and fractures, as if he had been fighting.
Everyone was wondering as to the physical state of the robot, but nobody – not even Dawkins, who was merely forced to communicate with the robot – was brave enough to ask, afraid of what they might discover, so they contented themselves upon watching as Mister Machinery walked towards his house.
That day, the sky was blue, and the sun came out of its hibernation after several years. The weather was warm and sunny, and people were happy. At night, however, humanlike sounds came from the forest, and the following morning, Mister Machinery was covered in even more damage. This went on for days. Well, days came and went, and Mister Machinery had won the trust of almost everyone in town, for they believed he was in some way connected to the misterious good fortune they experienced.
Since Mister Machinery began working, nobody died of unexplained illnesses anymore. The weather had been consistently fine, and the rains no longer threatened to destroy the grounds on which the townspeople stood. Jobs boomed, and the economy flourished, and the people thanked the heavens – and the late worker, it must be said – for giving them Mister Machinery.
Everyone liked him, except Dawkins, who was afraid that his importance was diminishing due to the attention given to Mister Machinery. He was utterly convinced that the robot was out and about to destroy them. “It’s the oldest trick in the book,” he said, although what book he was talking about, we may never know. Quoth he: “He’ll pretend he has some sort of connection to the good fortunes we have right now, but he hasn’t! Surely it’s just coincidence that he appeared at the same time the good Lord took mercy upon us and ended our trial! He’ll earn our trust, and that will make it easier for him to destroy us! Soon he’ll gain access to our homes, and while we sleep comfortably, he will come and kill us, and that will be the end of our happy lives!”
“Ease up, Dawkins. You know –”
“– since he came –”
“– yes, and good fortune, and –”
“We now have nice weather –”
“Nobody’s dying –”
“You have such a poker up your –”
Dawkins, shocked and in disbelief at how fast reputation could turn around, sneered and left, his hands covering his ears, shouting, “You’ll see! You will all see! When we all die, you will remember me, and you’ll regret not listening! You’ll all see!”
But the townspeople never saw. Instead, the town kept on improving, and Dawkins watched in resentment as Mister Machinery (who was now covered in dents, his articulations severely limited, one glass eye broken, and limp in one leg) became the warm center of life in the town.
However, since Mister Machinery was created with the human being in mind, his life also mimicked a true person’s life, with all those ups and downs, like an elevator that never stopped. The pinnacle of success was always next to the cliffs of downfall, and thus, one moment, Mister Machinery was held in high esteem, and another moment, the peop,e did not know what to think of him.
That other moment in question came during one town meeting. Mister Machinery was now considered a part of their population, and the mayor – an integral part in this story at this point, as I have promised earlier that he will be important at some future point, this present point being the past’s future point – decided to formally welcome him. So they were in the mayor’s office, everyone crowding around Mister Machinery and the mayor. Dawkins walked outside the crowd, unnoticed. The conversation began cheerfully enough, with the robot’s “father” being the object of discussion (or so the people believed), albeit being regarded now in a much different angle. “your father was a good man, Mister Machinery,” the mayor said when Mister Machinery asked him what the townspeople thought of his father.
“Balderdash, Mayor!” shouted Dawkins. “Don’t you remember when he was nohing more than a laughingstock?” Everyone parted, so that Dawkins managed to penetrate the crowd, speaking as he approached the mayor and Msiter Machinery. “Hypocrites, that’s what all of you are! Why hide the truth? Why lie, I ask!”
Nobody stirred. The folks did not know how to react. Dawkins grabbed Mister Machinery by the collar of his white robe (although it was not so white now, being covered in mud and leaves), and he screamed, “Well, I tell you now! Mister Machinery, your father was a madman and a fool!”
Now, no matter how little one knows of his parents, he would not want them to be cast in a bad light. Mister Machinery, driven by anger, ignored the limitations brought by his battered joints, and pushed Dawkins with all might. “You lie!” he screamed. Dawkins fell flat on his buttocks, the wind knocked out of him. Everyone gasped, coming to the aid of the sneering Dawkins. The people looked at Mister Machinery coldly, silence dominating the entire office.
Mister Machinery pushed off the people in his way, running for exit, limping badly. Dawkins shouted at the top of his voice while feigning pain at the same time, so that everyone, the robot included, could hear him, saying, “I told you so! He wants to kill us all!”
That night, and the following morning, and the days that succeeded, nobody saw Mister Machinery again, although the humanlike noises continued every evening in the forest, like cries of battling animals (as animals can sometimes make the same sounds people make), and the townspeople simply assumed that he was still around. Days turned into weeks, then months, and still no sign of Mister Machinery. Dawkins, however, was very much in belief that the robot will continue with his task nonetheless, and, self-importance mingled with curiosity creeping in his mind, he resolved that the obligation of capturing the robot, and perhaps destroying it, fell upon his hands. Dawkins took a torch (everyone in town had a torch, for, it must be remembered, before Mister Machinery, electricity was always cut off due to the horrible weather) and lighted it, and waited for the cries from the forest to begin.
The sounds came, and upon hearing them, the gentleman, torch in hand, dashed towards the dark outskirts of the town. Dawkins ran. He ran until his legs hurt, then he ran some more. He ran until he reached the forest, and having accomplished that, Dawkins hid beneath thick grasses and shrubs, careful so that his torch would not bring him into notice.
This is what Dawkins saw:
Mister Machinery ran around the forest, rolling on the forest floor, punching, kicking, screaming. His joints were jammed so much he had difficulty moving, and he had a more pronounced limp, but he took no notice; he fought passionately, his face of small plates contorted with hatred.
Dawkins stirred. It was confirmed. Surely, Mister Machinery was preparing to beat them into oblivion!
Now, stirring when stealthily observing something, especially a living creature, is one of the worst things one can do, if not the worst – birdwatchers and hunters can attest to this fact. By moving, Dawkins exposed his position as it changed the angle of his torch, making the light shine through. The humanlike sounds stopped.
Mister Machinery jumped backwards, his back hitting a tree, on which he leaned.
Dawkins’ head began to hurt. It hurt so much he had to touch it with his free hand, and he had to close his eyes. He heard a voice say, “Once this is all over, the misfortunes will befall you once more, and your extinction will be pushed through.”
A laughter, deep and rumbling, came forth. Then, the voice was gone, and so was the headache. When Dawkins opened his eyes, he saw Mister Machinery lying on the forest floor, battered and unconscious (Dawkins knew that the robot was not dead because he saw slivers of blue between the machine’s silver eyelids), his body a lump of twisted metal wrapped in a filthy cloth.
Dawkins ran towards the town, still clutching the torch that exposed his position. “Help!” He kept on screaming for help until he reached the populated part of the town. “Help! Wake up, people! Grab your torches! Grab your torches and your shotguns! Wake up! Wake up! Help!”
“What is it?” asked the people, rubbing their eyes, voices heavy with exasperation for being woken in the middle of the night (they had been used to the humanlike sounds from the forest, and had been able to sleep soundly despite the noise). “Why did you wake us up, Dawkins?”
Dawkins proceeded telling the people of the events that took place, from his resolution to capture Mister Machinery, to the demonic voice whispering evil words to him during a mysterious case of migraine. He told everything at length and in detail, with several exaggerations and alterations that brought forth his bravery. Now, as I have already related these events to the intelligent reader, it would be redundant to repeat his monologue in verbatim.
We leave Dawkins and the townspeople for the moment to focus on our tragic hero, who lies on the forest floor, tired from its battle with a creature Dawkins never saw. (Mister Machinery had seen it, however. It was a shapeless mass, and it was the same creature that plagued the town for years.) Mister Machinery was about to fall asleep when he realized the implications of the devil’s words to Dawkins, who could not see the wraith that spoke to him earlier. It was highly probable that the human would think those words came from the robot, giving Dawkins proof that Mister Machinery was after the obsolescence of the human race.
He decided to rise and appeal to Dawkins, so that he could explain everything before the man managed to warn the townspeople and incite a revolution.
It became warm, then hot. Mister Machinery jumped to his feet. It was too late. The forest was now engulfed in red flames that crackled red and yellow. The foliage was reduced to thick, billowing smoke that enveloped the starless sky. From outside, drowned only slightly by the sound of the fire, the angry mob shouted.
People carrying pitchforks and torches surrounded the margins of the woods, razing everything in sight.
“That’s right!” shouted Dawkins, watching over the townspeople. “Ensure that that infernal machine is burned down, or he will destroy us in our sleep!”
Mister Machinery ran around, searching for an exit, but there was none to be found. He tried touching the fire, but he doubted he would survive if he crossed it, as the flames were very thick already.
It was too late, Mister Machinery thought. He sat on a rock and sighed. Tears well up in his bottom eyelids, and as he blinked, those tears fell. His adam’s apple rose, then fell, sinking to the bottom of his neck in an imitation of a gulp. “Help,” he whispered.
From outside, Dawkins watched as the silhouette of a man – or a man’s replica, as the case may be – became thinner and thinner, until it was nothing more than a stick figure, then a sliver of black. It disappeared afterwards, its entirety consumed by flames.
It rained then. It was not the light sweet rain the town experienced since the activation of Mister Machinery. It was a heavy rain not unlike those that ensued during the hurricanes, when the town was still in its period of tragedies: heavy and frighteningly sudden. The winds howled like wolves on the cliffside during a full moon. The outpour was so strong that it extinguished the flames.
The people began leaving, running for shelter. Dawkins stayed for a while, waiting for the fire to die down, so that he could see the aftermath of the destruction. The end result was that the forest had been reduced to ashes, its denizens charred. Dawkins looked around, but there was no sign of the robot. He smiled, then he left.
I do not know what has become of Mister Machinery. Although I am his biographer, I do not know whether he survived the fire or not, and I apologize for my irresponsibility at keeping track of my subject’s life.
I can only imagine that he survived, for humanlike sounds still fill the air, and misfortunes are still quite rare in town, although they do come sometimes.
Some people say that they see blue orbs shifting in the darkness someimes, where the forest used to be, but they are unsure whether they imagined it or not, although, given the large number of people who reports such occurrence, it is highly probable that the event is not merely a deception of the mind.
28 September 2009
dear dad
Did anyone ever tell you how much I hated you?
Dear dad, your breath stinks and your teeth are rotten
You stink of alcohol and a mixture of scents.
Your head shows how much you've aged
With scalp visible due to alcohol's aid.
You curse and spit,
You whine and shit
You piss in the cupboard and you don't care for me one bit.
You wake up in the morning and tell that you love me,
I return from school and I see you drunk, unhappy.
You never work, yet you complain
How much our lives are in pain.
I never see you awake most of the days
On your sweet, sweet bed you often lay.
I wanted to hug you, wanted to kiss,
So I woke you up to tell you how much I missed
You, yet you simply cursed and grumbled
And told me to sleep, I believe that's what you mumbled.
Dear dad, I then decided
Your presence is no longer needed.
I've wiped my tears
And held my fears
And you are now nothing but a shadow
Of the past that mourns in sorrow.
Dear dad, did anyone tell you how much I hated you?
You used to be my model for God,
But you made me give up all I had.
Dear dad,
Consider yourself told.
Dear dad, your breath stinks and your teeth are rotten
You stink of alcohol and a mixture of scents.
Your head shows how much you've aged
With scalp visible due to alcohol's aid.
You curse and spit,
You whine and shit
You piss in the cupboard and you don't care for me one bit.
You wake up in the morning and tell that you love me,
I return from school and I see you drunk, unhappy.
You never work, yet you complain
How much our lives are in pain.
I never see you awake most of the days
On your sweet, sweet bed you often lay.
I wanted to hug you, wanted to kiss,
So I woke you up to tell you how much I missed
You, yet you simply cursed and grumbled
And told me to sleep, I believe that's what you mumbled.
Dear dad, I then decided
Your presence is no longer needed.
I've wiped my tears
And held my fears
And you are now nothing but a shadow
Of the past that mourns in sorrow.
Dear dad, did anyone tell you how much I hated you?
You used to be my model for God,
But you made me give up all I had.
Dear dad,
Consider yourself told.
08 September 2009
Rugby: A Walking Tour in a Third World Country
Urban Philippines can be beautiful at night, but only because the darkness conceals the filth visible in the morning. The streetlights do not work, saving one from the disgust of seeing mountains of garbage wrapped in plastic bags (most of which stay in the spot for days due to the absence of garbage collectors) and dead cats without any tracer of flesh -- all bones and skulls with empty sockets and carpets of short cat hair crawling with lice and flies. The disadvantage of darkness, of course, is that one cannot determine where the street dogs (covered in scabs and scabies, and anything but fur) excreted their feces.
Come mornings, the streets become mazes with floor paved with dog droppings and walls soaked in urine. At night (or at least, most nights), the obstacles in the maze move smooth and slow, appearing at large intervals that stretch on to forever. However, the moment daylight diffusesfrom the horizon and into the skies, people and vehicles -- the obstacles in the maze (in relation, of course, to a different person's point of view, as one would never see himself or herself as an obstacle) -- suddenly move at the speed of light. Public utility jeepneys, taxis, and buses race for passengers, the result of which involving fatalities, casualties and damage to properties. If a person is stupid enough to slow down while crossing the crossfire of vehicles, said person is to be included in the fatalities. At worst, that person is liable to be mowed down by a bus (the most dangerous of which being the "White Rabbits") and crushed under gigantic wheels, accompanied by the crunch-crunch-crunching sound of bones. Often, it's the animals that die, their fur sticking under their wheels, brains left to dry under the sun. The animals that are not yet dead, they are dying. They cross the streets. They whine. They look up to humans, eyes wet and shining. They beg.
Beggars sit on the hot, moist and cracked pavement, leaning on urine-soaked walls full of vandalism (penises and names of gangs), as well as messages such as "We catch you pissing, we cut your dick,"and "Post no bill."
Some beggars hold up their scarred, filthy hands. Some hold out cans, waiting for coins to clink against the tin. Others sleep, ignoring the pain of hunger and the flies on the pink wounds on their dust-brown skin. The crippled -- those without eyes or with missing or deformed limbs -- they are the ones who play instruments, do services, and the like. In short, those who are disabled are the only ones who actually work for their money.
The money is spent on food or on payment for syndicates (for most beggars are controlled by crimes). The children are the worst. They whine and curse and spit at you when you do not give them money, but they ask for more when you give them. When you can't give, they whine, and they curse, and they spit at you. They spend the money on junk food, computer rentals, cigarettes, or drugs.
The Metro Rail Transit zooms on its tracks, zooms past distant stations. Below, hidden in pink fences and plants that have stopped growing after growing for some time, two street boys are jumping, facing each other, moving in a circle, bracing for a fight. The fight is for the inhalant they bought with the few coins they accumulated in three days.
How they acquired the money is none of our business. They could have stolen it, or they could have begged. Maybe these are children who spit-shine shoes of jeepney passengers. There are a thousand ways to earn, and how these boys earned their money is not of importance, since we may have to find countless methods.
The drug in question is contact cement. The viscous fluid sits in a plastic bag marked "Rugby" (for "bagging," or inhaling fumes in a plastic) on a pot in their vicinity.
The children could not be older than fifteen, but to be sure, they are not younger than six. They could be ageed anywhere between eight and fourteen.
The smaller child (let us not name him, for if we are to name one, we have to name the other, and if we name them both, that would be doing a disservice to the other street children in the country who must be staging the same streetfights for drugs) spits, the spit shining white and bright. The other follows suit, his spit glistening green.
They smile. Silence around them. The streets are filled with noises of dying people and a dying country, but they do not mind. All they hear is the rhythm of the battle.
This is not a for-real fight, that is to say, the kind of fight you do when you're pissed off. They're just arguing over who gets to sniff more of the cement, measured in minutes by the digital clock in one of the commercial areas of the city. We will not name the city, for this story could happen just about anywhere.
And it happens. They jump at each other, roaring, snarling, their saliva sticky as the prize they are fighting for. A fist lands on a face. They trade blows, and the rhythm of the battle leans towards the drumming sounds of fists. They do not moan in pain. They curse, and they spit, and they growl, but they do not exclaim their pain.
They are boys raised by themselves, and they have to be strong, should they see their parents.
The taller kid grabs the other by the neck and slams him hard on the pavement. Blood stains the dust-covered floor. It does not matter. Their heads are full of scars, and their scalps are only held together by scar tissue. You can tell they have done this before.
They do not moan. They do not cry in pain, for the pain of hunger that has numbed them from other forms of pain continues to make its presence felt in their bodies. They do not care. They only want to kill that pain.
They tried to kill that pain a long time ago. Food did not work. It only left them even hungrier, craving for more. Water did not work. They drank until they were full, but it left them with an empty pain, and they had to drink some more, until they had to vomit all the water and bile that did not fit in their small tummies.
The smaller kid plants a foot on the taller one's tummy. The receiver recoils in pain, but gets back in time to retaliate. He punches the small kid. Punches. Punches. Punches. The smaller kid bangs his head on the pink fence, and his head becomes a net of wounds.
What worked for them was contact cement. They became dizzy, and they were not able to move for some time, but it numbed them of pain. That was when they resolved toalways buy contact cement,because they believed that by sniffing, they will eventually kill that monster in their tummies.
The taller kid continues punching. He asks, "Give up?"
It is a line often uttered in wrestling, which they watch in the market to learn new moves they can use against each other. The taller kid favors chokes, because he likes Kane, while the smaller kid likes Rey Mysterio, and so focuses on kicks.
The Rey Mysterio fan kicks his opponent's groin. The kid was brave, but he was not numb --not yet, for he hasn't had contact cement--and he kneels in pain. The smaller kid jumps, kickinghis friend in the face. The taller kid falls backward, clutching his nose, blood flowing between his fingers. His wounded face is wrinkled, bunched around his nose.
The taller kid falls. He falls against a rock.
The small kid screams, "YEAH!" He leans beside his opponent, and he asks, "Give up?"
The fallen boy opens his eyes, then he closes them again. He does not answer.
The small kid shakes his friend awake. "Brother? Brother?" His brother does not answer. The small kid shrugs, and he takes the plastic bag marked "RUGBY." He untangles the knot, and buries his nose in the opening. The plastic shrinks, then expands. Shrinks, then expands.
He looks at his brother. He had already played dead before. He is sure everything's fine. Tomorrow, they will beg for money so they can buy contact cement, and they will play wrestling, and the older borther will play dead again.
The young one wipes a tear. He has to be brave. He is a child raised by himself.
He has to believe.
He has to believe that tomorrow, the world is going to be better.
The world is going to be better, and his brother will wake up tomorrow.
Come mornings, the streets become mazes with floor paved with dog droppings and walls soaked in urine. At night (or at least, most nights), the obstacles in the maze move smooth and slow, appearing at large intervals that stretch on to forever. However, the moment daylight diffusesfrom the horizon and into the skies, people and vehicles -- the obstacles in the maze (in relation, of course, to a different person's point of view, as one would never see himself or herself as an obstacle) -- suddenly move at the speed of light. Public utility jeepneys, taxis, and buses race for passengers, the result of which involving fatalities, casualties and damage to properties. If a person is stupid enough to slow down while crossing the crossfire of vehicles, said person is to be included in the fatalities. At worst, that person is liable to be mowed down by a bus (the most dangerous of which being the "White Rabbits") and crushed under gigantic wheels, accompanied by the crunch-crunch-crunching sound of bones. Often, it's the animals that die, their fur sticking under their wheels, brains left to dry under the sun. The animals that are not yet dead, they are dying. They cross the streets. They whine. They look up to humans, eyes wet and shining. They beg.
Beggars sit on the hot, moist and cracked pavement, leaning on urine-soaked walls full of vandalism (penises and names of gangs), as well as messages such as "We catch you pissing, we cut your dick,"and "Post no bill."
Some beggars hold up their scarred, filthy hands. Some hold out cans, waiting for coins to clink against the tin. Others sleep, ignoring the pain of hunger and the flies on the pink wounds on their dust-brown skin. The crippled -- those without eyes or with missing or deformed limbs -- they are the ones who play instruments, do services, and the like. In short, those who are disabled are the only ones who actually work for their money.
The money is spent on food or on payment for syndicates (for most beggars are controlled by crimes). The children are the worst. They whine and curse and spit at you when you do not give them money, but they ask for more when you give them. When you can't give, they whine, and they curse, and they spit at you. They spend the money on junk food, computer rentals, cigarettes, or drugs.
The Metro Rail Transit zooms on its tracks, zooms past distant stations. Below, hidden in pink fences and plants that have stopped growing after growing for some time, two street boys are jumping, facing each other, moving in a circle, bracing for a fight. The fight is for the inhalant they bought with the few coins they accumulated in three days.
How they acquired the money is none of our business. They could have stolen it, or they could have begged. Maybe these are children who spit-shine shoes of jeepney passengers. There are a thousand ways to earn, and how these boys earned their money is not of importance, since we may have to find countless methods.
The drug in question is contact cement. The viscous fluid sits in a plastic bag marked "Rugby" (for "bagging," or inhaling fumes in a plastic) on a pot in their vicinity.
The children could not be older than fifteen, but to be sure, they are not younger than six. They could be ageed anywhere between eight and fourteen.
The smaller child (let us not name him, for if we are to name one, we have to name the other, and if we name them both, that would be doing a disservice to the other street children in the country who must be staging the same streetfights for drugs) spits, the spit shining white and bright. The other follows suit, his spit glistening green.
They smile. Silence around them. The streets are filled with noises of dying people and a dying country, but they do not mind. All they hear is the rhythm of the battle.
This is not a for-real fight, that is to say, the kind of fight you do when you're pissed off. They're just arguing over who gets to sniff more of the cement, measured in minutes by the digital clock in one of the commercial areas of the city. We will not name the city, for this story could happen just about anywhere.
And it happens. They jump at each other, roaring, snarling, their saliva sticky as the prize they are fighting for. A fist lands on a face. They trade blows, and the rhythm of the battle leans towards the drumming sounds of fists. They do not moan in pain. They curse, and they spit, and they growl, but they do not exclaim their pain.
They are boys raised by themselves, and they have to be strong, should they see their parents.
The taller kid grabs the other by the neck and slams him hard on the pavement. Blood stains the dust-covered floor. It does not matter. Their heads are full of scars, and their scalps are only held together by scar tissue. You can tell they have done this before.
They do not moan. They do not cry in pain, for the pain of hunger that has numbed them from other forms of pain continues to make its presence felt in their bodies. They do not care. They only want to kill that pain.
They tried to kill that pain a long time ago. Food did not work. It only left them even hungrier, craving for more. Water did not work. They drank until they were full, but it left them with an empty pain, and they had to drink some more, until they had to vomit all the water and bile that did not fit in their small tummies.
The smaller kid plants a foot on the taller one's tummy. The receiver recoils in pain, but gets back in time to retaliate. He punches the small kid. Punches. Punches. Punches. The smaller kid bangs his head on the pink fence, and his head becomes a net of wounds.
What worked for them was contact cement. They became dizzy, and they were not able to move for some time, but it numbed them of pain. That was when they resolved toalways buy contact cement,because they believed that by sniffing, they will eventually kill that monster in their tummies.
The taller kid continues punching. He asks, "Give up?"
It is a line often uttered in wrestling, which they watch in the market to learn new moves they can use against each other. The taller kid favors chokes, because he likes Kane, while the smaller kid likes Rey Mysterio, and so focuses on kicks.
The Rey Mysterio fan kicks his opponent's groin. The kid was brave, but he was not numb --not yet, for he hasn't had contact cement--and he kneels in pain. The smaller kid jumps, kickinghis friend in the face. The taller kid falls backward, clutching his nose, blood flowing between his fingers. His wounded face is wrinkled, bunched around his nose.
The taller kid falls. He falls against a rock.
The small kid screams, "YEAH!" He leans beside his opponent, and he asks, "Give up?"
The fallen boy opens his eyes, then he closes them again. He does not answer.
The small kid shakes his friend awake. "Brother? Brother?" His brother does not answer. The small kid shrugs, and he takes the plastic bag marked "RUGBY." He untangles the knot, and buries his nose in the opening. The plastic shrinks, then expands. Shrinks, then expands.
He looks at his brother. He had already played dead before. He is sure everything's fine. Tomorrow, they will beg for money so they can buy contact cement, and they will play wrestling, and the older borther will play dead again.
The young one wipes a tear. He has to be brave. He is a child raised by himself.
He has to believe.
He has to believe that tomorrow, the world is going to be better.
The world is going to be better, and his brother will wake up tomorrow.
02 August 2009
On God's Own Kingdom
Sorry if the story below, God's Own Kingdom, is a bit on the long side at ten pages. Or, in this case, a forever of scrolling down. I have loved the material so much, and it answered what I couldn't answer.
One day I woke up, and I couldn't feel God's presence. Then I woke up again another day and God was there.
I got confused, so I did this story. I loved this story. This one, I did not rush, or anything. The concept had always been there, in scratch papers, at the back pages of my notebooks, once on my hand,on my computer, on my friends' computers, then I finished it in my own computer, and added a picture, and deleted the picture, and read it, and I loved it.
This one's about you, visiting God.
This one's for you, God, whatever you may look like.
Maybe you even look like the YOU I imagined.
One day I woke up, and I couldn't feel God's presence. Then I woke up again another day and God was there.
I got confused, so I did this story. I loved this story. This one, I did not rush, or anything. The concept had always been there, in scratch papers, at the back pages of my notebooks, once on my hand,on my computer, on my friends' computers, then I finished it in my own computer, and added a picture, and deleted the picture, and read it, and I loved it.
This one's about you, visiting God.
This one's for you, God, whatever you may look like.
Maybe you even look like the YOU I imagined.
God's Own Kingdom
Video monitors line the walls, and each monitor shows a creature. No two monitors display the same living things, except, of course, when the living things interact. An example of an interaction would be, a Venus flytrap eating an insect.
The screens are grouped according to what kind of creature they display. The first group is PLANT, and in the monitors, you can see trees and shrubs and bushes. PLANT is then divided according to area, then age. The second group is ANIMAL. ANIMAL is subdivided into INSECTS, TWO-LEGGED, FOUR-LEGGED, and HUMAN, then according to country, then gender, then age. HUMAN has an additional subcategory. A gauge is set below each human screen. Death says it’s for measuring a human’s morality. HUMAN is also grouped according to morality. There are no gauges below the screens for plants and animals, because Death says they cannot commit sins.
Oh, and Death says welcome to God’s Own Kingdom. God is waiting to talk to you soon. Death says please make yourself comfortable and would you care for a drink of wine?
You don’t know how you’ve arrived here. What’s important is you are here now. Could be, it’s a car accident. Maybe you’re sleeping, and then you don’t wake up, and then you find yourself here. What’s important is that you’re here, which means Death has switched off your monitor. “Every time I switch off a monitor, it turns itself on, and it shows a newborn.”
The cries of a newborn wake you up, and you find yourself lying naked on the cracked asphalt of the road that leads to God’s Own Kingdom. It is the only road in the place. Behind you, a brick wall, and beyond you, a speck glowing neon green. Look around you, and all you’ll see are stars, and nebulae, and darkness. If you try walking off the road, well, you can’t. This is the road that leads to God’s Own Kingdom, and there’s nowhere to go but forward.
As you walk, listen. You might hear your mother’s lullabies. Your father’s laughter, if you have a father. You might hear your own laughs, and your cries, a staccato of footsteps—all the steps you have taken throughout your life. A juxtaposition of noises. Cries and laughter and screams and moans and then, silence. Then you hear the sound of your own heart, then the sound fades away, and you are in front of a derelict structure.
Now playing: Four thirty-three, by John Milton Cage, Jr.
The structure is a tall building with no windows. It is made of layers of hollow bricks, making it look like the kind of stacking tower kids play with. You know, the ones where you take bricks from the bottom and then place them back on top. That’s how the building looks like. A sign dangles at the top, glowing in neon green, saying, GOD’S OWN KINGDOM.
The only entrance to the building is a wooden door that looks like termites have eaten the insides of it. There is no doorknob. The door is open, and the lock is busted, but you press the doorbell anyway. No one answers. Maybe the doorbell is broken, so you knock on the door. No one answers, so you push the door open, and inside, there’s darkness. Just darkness, and silence, the way we think the insides of black holes are just darkness and silence. Then a light appears, a tongue of fire, and someone says, “Coming.”
A bearded man appears, holding a candle in one hand, and a rooster in the other. The candle is spurting with flames, while the rooster is sleeping, limp. The bearded man greets you, “I’m Saint Peter. What can I do for you?”
You don’t know.
“What’s your name?”
You tell him.
Saint Peter puts the cock down, between his legs. It rests there, and Peter takes a list clipped on his belt. He unfolds it, and you can see that the paper is crumpled, and full of ink blots and erasures, like a slob’s shopping list. Saint Peter holds the paper close to the candle, and he squints so hard his eyes are just slits. Then, he says, “Ah. Yes.” He tucks the slob’s shopping list back in the belt, and he sits on the doorway, giving just enough space for you to squeeze in. He produces a cigarette and holds it near the flame. He smiles, and you can see that his teeth are all rotten and crooked, swirls of blacks and browns. “Smoke?”
No, thank you.
Saint Peter puts the cigarette in his mouth, and he bends down, petting his cock. He says, “You don’t have an appointment with God, but he’s not busy anyway, so I’m sure he’ll see you.”
God?
“Sure,” he says, exhaling smoke. “This is God’s Own Kingdom.”
If it isn’t obvious to you, you should ask, “I’m dead? How did I die?”
“I don’t know,” Saint Peter says. “You’ll have to ask Death about that. You’ll find him inside. Later. No one’s supposed to enter during God’s sleeping time. Just a few more minutes to go, anyway.”
Saint Peter puts the cigarette back in his mouth, and he continues stroking the rooster sleeping between his legs. You say, “Your cock looks bad.”
Saint Peter chuckles, and he says, “Old age. Happens to everyone.” He shakes the cock’s head and says, “It might as well be dead. It never crowed since the Great War. Never even raised its head.”
Why don’t you bury it?
“No,” Peter says. “It’s been a part of me.” Saint Peter looks at his wristwatch and says, “Time. You coming in? I’ll come after I finish this,” he says, pointing to his cigarette.
“Are you sure he’ll have time for me?”
“Tell you what,” he says, “If you believe that God will have time for you, then he’ll have time for you. Simple as that. He used to have time for everyone, but the people didn’t pray to him, so he sulked in a corner until he fell asleep, and that was the only time people tried talking to him.”
He figures, if he doesn’t seek the people, the people will seek him, so God always sleeps on the seventh day.
Saint Peter exhales smoke and tells you to go ahead. You ask, “Aren’t you supposed to open some magical door with a golden key?” Saint Peter smiles, and he says, “Look at the door. The lock’s busted for when Science came in. Lunatic. He says he’ll kill God. He hasn’t found God yet, but he’ll be back soon, that’s for sure.”
Saint Peter tells you, “Go ahead. Go inside.” In God’s Own Kingdom, there are no Pearly Gates. There is no magical key. “Inside, there’s just me, and Death, and God, and the tenants. You may talk with the tenants, but you’ll just forget them the moment you part with them. You’ll be living with them soon”, Saint Peter says, and he tells you, “Go ahead. Inside.”
So you go inside, and inside, there’s darkness. Just darkness, with no stars to light your way. You see a door shining bright in front of you, and you walk towards it real slow, in case you might trip into something invisible. From outside, Saint Peter says, “Don’t worry about falling off. The lower you fall, the higher you fly.”
He says, “Just keep straight.”
Saint Peter says, The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
Says, In God’s Own Kingdom, if you believe that there are no tests, there won’t be tests.
He says, Run!
Run!
Run!
Run, until you reach the door, and his voice fades away. In God’s Own Kingdom, there’s a room where the walls are lined with video monitors. You are in a round room with a floor that shines under the light of a million or so fluorescent lamps. A hooded man sits on a swiveling chair in the center, spinning in place, looking at the screens, sometimes moving close to a wall, then back to the center. Death?
And the hooded man turns to look at you, and inside the hood is darkness. He says, “Aye, that I am. Death. To the Egyptians I was a jackal, and to the Greeks I was a god. To the Mexicans, I am a saint, and to God’s disciples, I am a villain.” He lifts the veil, and you see a skull coming out of the shadows of his hood, the way a rubber ball surfaces from the water. “I wasn’t always like this. I mean, I used to have a face. The people say I’m bad, because I take away the ones they love, so they turned me into a skeleton. Don’t they know what will happen if I don’t kill?”
You ask is that why he killed you?
No, Death says. “It was an accident, but what are accidents but incidents that happen under strange circumstances?” He shakes his head, and he says, “What’s important is that it had to happen. Do you see this baby?” He points to a screen, and you see a newborn girl still covered in blood, crying, surrounded by nurses dressed in coats and gloves and goggles and masks. “She took over your place. Whenever I switch off a monitor, someone dies, and someone takes over. She’s the one who took over your place. Sooner or later, she’ll have to die, and someone will take her place, so why let her suffer…” and Death pushes a button, and the screen is turned off. “There. One of the nurses will drop her, and her head will explode into blood and brains and bits of cartilaginous skull.”
What does God say about it?
“Nothing,” Death says, and he sips red wine from a stemmed glass clutched in his white bone fingers. He looks up and says, “I was here first. I’ll be here last. I am more powerful, but he has more believers. Result. Boy, I can tell you, after the Great War, he came out on top, and that angered me, and I refused to work, so that it threatened the balance of life. What God did, He employed me as the caretaker of souls, and I agreed, on the condition that he won’t comment on my work, and that’s the end of that. Just don’t tell him I told you about that.”
Death continues sipping his red wine. Silence, except for the humming of engines, the cries and laughter that sound like the noises down the road to God’s Own Kingdom. A man is having sex with another man on screen three million. Death says, “Sodomy.” A woman takes a necklace from a drawer on screen two hundred thousand five. “Theft,” Death says. “Bestiality on screen eighteen million and one. Murder. Idling. Anger.”
Is that part of your job?
Death says, “Of course, I’ll have to figure out who should die. Who deserves to die. Ah. Cancer patient on screen seventy-two.” He swivels in his chair. “Then, I’ll hand a list to Saint Peter, and he decides who gets to live in God’s Own Kingdom.”
So do I get to live here?
“Sure. They let you in. We don’t let in those who won’t get in. They don’t even find themselves on the road where you woke up.”
Where do they wake up?
“Under this road. How the road works, this is God’s Own Kingdom. Under the road is Hell’s Real Kitchen. Marriage on screen fifty-four. Between them, God’s Own Kingdom and Hell’s Real Kitchen, there’s a dimension, that’s the Waking World. If you find yourself in one place, you won’t be able to get to the other places.”
So when do I move in?
“Soon as you meet God. Vandalism on screen five.” Death drinks the rest of his wine and he puts the hood back in his head. He says, “Seventh floor. Take the elevator.”
You walk towards the end of the room, and you enter the elevator. Press seventh floor. Press close. Please enjoy your stay in God’s Own Kingdom.
The elevator doors begin closing. “Hey!” You call out, “Death.”
What is it?
“I thought Science wants to kill God?”
Death turns around, and he says, “Birth on screen thirty. Sure he does. Why do you ask?”
“How come there are televisions, and neon signs, and elevators in this place? Isn’t that supposed to be the work of Science?”
“Because Science is taking over this place,” Death says. “Science will be the new god. I’m not so sure for how long, but he’ll die. They all die,” and the elevator doors close.
The elevator gives a lurch, then it moves up, making a humming sound. The floor is made of linoleum, which has a fading design of black and white tiles. Above, a light bulb dangles by a string on the ceiling. The metal walls are rusted and dented and full of holes. Near a hole, you can see a message scrawled in black ink, “SCIENCE WAS HERE.”
The elevator stops moving, and the doors open. Darkness. Not even darkness. Oblivion. You step into the darkness, but the darkness does not engulf you, and you can see yourself in it. You feel sluggishness in every movement, as if you are wading in molasses, or some sort of film held together by osmotic pressure. And you call out, God?
Nobody answers.
In God’s Own Kingdom, maybe nobody’s allowed to see God, after all?
God?
Your voice echoes, and each echo echoes, until the whole room is filled with your voice. Echoes, of echoes, of echoes.
God?
A sound of rubber against tiles. “I am here.”
Where?
“What’s important is that I am here. Welcome to God’s Own Kingdom.” You know that feeling, like someone’s watching you? The way someone focuses on a specific body part, and you don’t know why, but you hold that body part, as if you’re trying to protect it.
George Orwell: “Big Brother is watching you.”
“You are joining us,” says God. “Would you care for a little talk? Maybe you have some questions in mind?”
Yes, you say, like, why are you in heaven? “I mean, I’m not real good, or anything.”
“Yes, my child,” says God. “You may think that you aren’t good, but who is, anyway?” God lets out a cough, a long, rasping sound from his throat that sounds like he’s dying, and he says, “It’s not a matter of morality. It’s a matter of what you believe.”
God says, “The Catholics go to God’s Own Kingdom or Hell’s Real Kitchen, depending on what they believe more. The Brahmans and the Buddhists return to the Waking World. The pagans go to Hades or Valhalla or wherever. The atheists, they go to nothingness.”
But you never really believed in God, you say. “I mean, I never really saw you, and I doubted you were…you know, real.”
God snorts. Maybe it’s a snort, or maybe it’s a chuckle. Maybe it’s somewhere in between. God says that is not important. He says, “You’ve tried talking to me once and you’ve seen what’s wrong with religion, and it disgusted you that you turned your back on my church. You may say you turned your back on me, but that never happened, did it?” In the darkness, you can hear the sound of crumpled paper. Paper that’s maybe ready to crumble. Like a long lost shopping list. He reads from the long lost shopping list. “Help me, Lord.” God says, “How about let’s you and I strike a deal?” He says, “I’ve turned my back on your followers, but I can’t turn my back on you.” Says, “I don’t want to be bound by your rules. I know what’s right, and what’s wrong, but please, still help me.”
Big Brother is smiling at you. You aren’t sure of it, but you can feel, in God’s Own Kingdom, Big Brother is smiling at you.
You do remember saying that, you say.
“Of course you do,” God says. “Everything that’s happening here is all taking place in the mind. I am embedded deep in your memory, for memory that springs from childhood lingers the longest. I am your childhood memory. I am the first step for you to remember everything. That is how powerful I am in your mind.”
How powerful are you?
“How do you imagine me?”
Perfect. Powerful and all-knowing and all-seeing.
“Then that is how powerful I am.” Because God is a manifestation of the imagination, like Zeus, and Jupiter, and Odin, and Allah. How you imagine God is how he appears. Perfect. Nothing is as perfect as it is in the imagination.
You ask, “So why did you let all those misfortunes happen?”
God chuckles, and this time it sounds like a chuckle, and he says, “I am not in control of your life. I am not in control of anyone’s life. I am merely here to take the blame for every misfortune that happens.”
Ambrose Bierce: “Bacchus: a convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.”
Whatever happens to you, God says, Get drunk, knock someone up, kill…
Get AIDS…
See an aborted fetus…
Get involved in a war…
Die...
God says it’s not his fault. I am not the reason why people die of breast cancer, He says. He says, I am not the reason why Hitler ignited war. I am not the reason why Elvis Presley died. “But go ahead. I’m here to take the blame.”
Take the blame, you say. “You are powerful. You are a god. Is that the best you can do?”
Again, the sound of rubber against tiles. God sighs. He emerges from the darkness the way Death’s skull emerges from his hood. The way a ball surfaces from water. God looks at you and he says, “Yes, actually.”
In God’s Own Kingdom, God looks at you with compound eyes, like a fly.
God has compound eyes. He has compound eyes, two large halves of a sphere resting on the sides of his head, split up into a million or so smaller milky white eyes with pupils in the centers. The eyes blink in unison, and they look in different directions, in all directions. God’s head is bald, and it shakes like a plate of Jell-O, and it’s so large it looks like it’s ready to explode. The head of someone with hydrocephalus. Water quivers from inside his head, and the skin on it is full of blue veins and throbbing arteries. The sutures of his head, you can see them, so wide apart that his brains are visible against the skin of his head. You can see the wrinkles of his brain against his forehead. God has long, flowing beard, the way the Greeks say that Zeus has long, flowing beard. He has giant bitch tits, the way we think of God’s tits as huge. God has giant muscles throbbing with arteries and twitching with every contraction, and his biceps are so huge he can’t even bend his arm to support his head that’s threatening to fall and explode any moment. Explode, the way Death describes how the baby’s head explode. His hands have holes, God, and his head has scars shaped like thorns, and his chest is full of scars from whiplashes.
God has no legs, and the sound of rubber against tiles, that’s God’s Own Wheelchair. God is sitting on a chrome wheelchair that’s too small for him. He’s huge. Huger than life, God. Because that’s how you imagine him. Only, he has no legs. You ask God, “What happened to your legs?”
“The Great War happened to my legs,” he says, and with every word, his head quivers. Waves come from the bottom of his head, going up, until they reach the top of his head, then they reflect each other, back to the bottom, until they disappear. “The battle of ideas between people of different religions. I have killed Odin, and Zeus, and the rest. All of them, except Time, who only watched the battle, and Death, who was immortal. I only won because I emerged with more believers, because I promised them eternal life, and it made Death weak because no one believed in him anymore.” He says he has to employ Death to prevent imbalance of life.
You ask God, “What about the rest of you?”
“This is how you imagined me, remember?” reminds God. “I am all-seeing, and all-knowing, and all-powerful.” The compound eyes, the water-filled head and the giant biceps. Omniscient, omnipotent. Omnipresent? “Omnipresent. Yes. Of course.” Omnipresent.
You ask him does he appear like this to other people?
“Sometimes I appear even worse,” and he goes back into the darkness.
You’re sorry, you say.
“It doesn’t matter. No. No, it doesn’t,” he says. “Here, let me get your key. You’ll just have to find your room, between floors two and six.” The sound of rubber against tiles, then, silence.
“So, there’s nothing we can do?”
“Please,” God says. “I’m going to die anyway. What we do is we stay in God’s Own Kingdom. And we sit. And we wait.” God’s hand emerges from the darkness, old man hands full of veins and white hair and bony knuckles. “Hold out your hand,” he says. You hold out your hand, and he makes like he drops the key, only, nothing drops.
“There is no key.”
“Exactly,” God says. “Science busted all the locks here. Just pick a room.” He goes back to the darkness. “Take the elevator, and choose any room you want. Doesn’t matter what you choose, since they’re all the same anyway. And there are no windows, so forget that ambiance thing.”
You turn towards the elevator and walk, and again, there’s this feeling like you’re wading through a film held by pressure. You enter the lift, and you press a button. Choose any floor you want, close the doors.
Big Brother is still watching you, you can feel, so you call out, Science… Will he be back?
“Oh, he’ll be back.”
And what will become of you?
“We can’t tell, but for now, we stay at God’s Own Kingdom. And we sit. And we wait.” And the doors close.
Thank you. Have a nice day. Please enjoy your stay. In God’s Own Kingdom, while waiting, please try to enjoy your stay.
The screens are grouped according to what kind of creature they display. The first group is PLANT, and in the monitors, you can see trees and shrubs and bushes. PLANT is then divided according to area, then age. The second group is ANIMAL. ANIMAL is subdivided into INSECTS, TWO-LEGGED, FOUR-LEGGED, and HUMAN, then according to country, then gender, then age. HUMAN has an additional subcategory. A gauge is set below each human screen. Death says it’s for measuring a human’s morality. HUMAN is also grouped according to morality. There are no gauges below the screens for plants and animals, because Death says they cannot commit sins.
Oh, and Death says welcome to God’s Own Kingdom. God is waiting to talk to you soon. Death says please make yourself comfortable and would you care for a drink of wine?
You don’t know how you’ve arrived here. What’s important is you are here now. Could be, it’s a car accident. Maybe you’re sleeping, and then you don’t wake up, and then you find yourself here. What’s important is that you’re here, which means Death has switched off your monitor. “Every time I switch off a monitor, it turns itself on, and it shows a newborn.”
The cries of a newborn wake you up, and you find yourself lying naked on the cracked asphalt of the road that leads to God’s Own Kingdom. It is the only road in the place. Behind you, a brick wall, and beyond you, a speck glowing neon green. Look around you, and all you’ll see are stars, and nebulae, and darkness. If you try walking off the road, well, you can’t. This is the road that leads to God’s Own Kingdom, and there’s nowhere to go but forward.
As you walk, listen. You might hear your mother’s lullabies. Your father’s laughter, if you have a father. You might hear your own laughs, and your cries, a staccato of footsteps—all the steps you have taken throughout your life. A juxtaposition of noises. Cries and laughter and screams and moans and then, silence. Then you hear the sound of your own heart, then the sound fades away, and you are in front of a derelict structure.
Now playing: Four thirty-three, by John Milton Cage, Jr.
The structure is a tall building with no windows. It is made of layers of hollow bricks, making it look like the kind of stacking tower kids play with. You know, the ones where you take bricks from the bottom and then place them back on top. That’s how the building looks like. A sign dangles at the top, glowing in neon green, saying, GOD’S OWN KINGDOM.
The only entrance to the building is a wooden door that looks like termites have eaten the insides of it. There is no doorknob. The door is open, and the lock is busted, but you press the doorbell anyway. No one answers. Maybe the doorbell is broken, so you knock on the door. No one answers, so you push the door open, and inside, there’s darkness. Just darkness, and silence, the way we think the insides of black holes are just darkness and silence. Then a light appears, a tongue of fire, and someone says, “Coming.”
A bearded man appears, holding a candle in one hand, and a rooster in the other. The candle is spurting with flames, while the rooster is sleeping, limp. The bearded man greets you, “I’m Saint Peter. What can I do for you?”
You don’t know.
“What’s your name?”
You tell him.
Saint Peter puts the cock down, between his legs. It rests there, and Peter takes a list clipped on his belt. He unfolds it, and you can see that the paper is crumpled, and full of ink blots and erasures, like a slob’s shopping list. Saint Peter holds the paper close to the candle, and he squints so hard his eyes are just slits. Then, he says, “Ah. Yes.” He tucks the slob’s shopping list back in the belt, and he sits on the doorway, giving just enough space for you to squeeze in. He produces a cigarette and holds it near the flame. He smiles, and you can see that his teeth are all rotten and crooked, swirls of blacks and browns. “Smoke?”
No, thank you.
Saint Peter puts the cigarette in his mouth, and he bends down, petting his cock. He says, “You don’t have an appointment with God, but he’s not busy anyway, so I’m sure he’ll see you.”
God?
“Sure,” he says, exhaling smoke. “This is God’s Own Kingdom.”
If it isn’t obvious to you, you should ask, “I’m dead? How did I die?”
“I don’t know,” Saint Peter says. “You’ll have to ask Death about that. You’ll find him inside. Later. No one’s supposed to enter during God’s sleeping time. Just a few more minutes to go, anyway.”
Saint Peter puts the cigarette back in his mouth, and he continues stroking the rooster sleeping between his legs. You say, “Your cock looks bad.”
Saint Peter chuckles, and he says, “Old age. Happens to everyone.” He shakes the cock’s head and says, “It might as well be dead. It never crowed since the Great War. Never even raised its head.”
Why don’t you bury it?
“No,” Peter says. “It’s been a part of me.” Saint Peter looks at his wristwatch and says, “Time. You coming in? I’ll come after I finish this,” he says, pointing to his cigarette.
“Are you sure he’ll have time for me?”
“Tell you what,” he says, “If you believe that God will have time for you, then he’ll have time for you. Simple as that. He used to have time for everyone, but the people didn’t pray to him, so he sulked in a corner until he fell asleep, and that was the only time people tried talking to him.”
He figures, if he doesn’t seek the people, the people will seek him, so God always sleeps on the seventh day.
Saint Peter exhales smoke and tells you to go ahead. You ask, “Aren’t you supposed to open some magical door with a golden key?” Saint Peter smiles, and he says, “Look at the door. The lock’s busted for when Science came in. Lunatic. He says he’ll kill God. He hasn’t found God yet, but he’ll be back soon, that’s for sure.”
Saint Peter tells you, “Go ahead. Go inside.” In God’s Own Kingdom, there are no Pearly Gates. There is no magical key. “Inside, there’s just me, and Death, and God, and the tenants. You may talk with the tenants, but you’ll just forget them the moment you part with them. You’ll be living with them soon”, Saint Peter says, and he tells you, “Go ahead. Inside.”
So you go inside, and inside, there’s darkness. Just darkness, with no stars to light your way. You see a door shining bright in front of you, and you walk towards it real slow, in case you might trip into something invisible. From outside, Saint Peter says, “Don’t worry about falling off. The lower you fall, the higher you fly.”
He says, “Just keep straight.”
Saint Peter says, The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
Says, In God’s Own Kingdom, if you believe that there are no tests, there won’t be tests.
He says, Run!
Run!
Run!
Run, until you reach the door, and his voice fades away. In God’s Own Kingdom, there’s a room where the walls are lined with video monitors. You are in a round room with a floor that shines under the light of a million or so fluorescent lamps. A hooded man sits on a swiveling chair in the center, spinning in place, looking at the screens, sometimes moving close to a wall, then back to the center. Death?
And the hooded man turns to look at you, and inside the hood is darkness. He says, “Aye, that I am. Death. To the Egyptians I was a jackal, and to the Greeks I was a god. To the Mexicans, I am a saint, and to God’s disciples, I am a villain.” He lifts the veil, and you see a skull coming out of the shadows of his hood, the way a rubber ball surfaces from the water. “I wasn’t always like this. I mean, I used to have a face. The people say I’m bad, because I take away the ones they love, so they turned me into a skeleton. Don’t they know what will happen if I don’t kill?”
You ask is that why he killed you?
No, Death says. “It was an accident, but what are accidents but incidents that happen under strange circumstances?” He shakes his head, and he says, “What’s important is that it had to happen. Do you see this baby?” He points to a screen, and you see a newborn girl still covered in blood, crying, surrounded by nurses dressed in coats and gloves and goggles and masks. “She took over your place. Whenever I switch off a monitor, someone dies, and someone takes over. She’s the one who took over your place. Sooner or later, she’ll have to die, and someone will take her place, so why let her suffer…” and Death pushes a button, and the screen is turned off. “There. One of the nurses will drop her, and her head will explode into blood and brains and bits of cartilaginous skull.”
What does God say about it?
“Nothing,” Death says, and he sips red wine from a stemmed glass clutched in his white bone fingers. He looks up and says, “I was here first. I’ll be here last. I am more powerful, but he has more believers. Result. Boy, I can tell you, after the Great War, he came out on top, and that angered me, and I refused to work, so that it threatened the balance of life. What God did, He employed me as the caretaker of souls, and I agreed, on the condition that he won’t comment on my work, and that’s the end of that. Just don’t tell him I told you about that.”
Death continues sipping his red wine. Silence, except for the humming of engines, the cries and laughter that sound like the noises down the road to God’s Own Kingdom. A man is having sex with another man on screen three million. Death says, “Sodomy.” A woman takes a necklace from a drawer on screen two hundred thousand five. “Theft,” Death says. “Bestiality on screen eighteen million and one. Murder. Idling. Anger.”
Is that part of your job?
Death says, “Of course, I’ll have to figure out who should die. Who deserves to die. Ah. Cancer patient on screen seventy-two.” He swivels in his chair. “Then, I’ll hand a list to Saint Peter, and he decides who gets to live in God’s Own Kingdom.”
So do I get to live here?
“Sure. They let you in. We don’t let in those who won’t get in. They don’t even find themselves on the road where you woke up.”
Where do they wake up?
“Under this road. How the road works, this is God’s Own Kingdom. Under the road is Hell’s Real Kitchen. Marriage on screen fifty-four. Between them, God’s Own Kingdom and Hell’s Real Kitchen, there’s a dimension, that’s the Waking World. If you find yourself in one place, you won’t be able to get to the other places.”
So when do I move in?
“Soon as you meet God. Vandalism on screen five.” Death drinks the rest of his wine and he puts the hood back in his head. He says, “Seventh floor. Take the elevator.”
You walk towards the end of the room, and you enter the elevator. Press seventh floor. Press close. Please enjoy your stay in God’s Own Kingdom.
The elevator doors begin closing. “Hey!” You call out, “Death.”
What is it?
“I thought Science wants to kill God?”
Death turns around, and he says, “Birth on screen thirty. Sure he does. Why do you ask?”
“How come there are televisions, and neon signs, and elevators in this place? Isn’t that supposed to be the work of Science?”
“Because Science is taking over this place,” Death says. “Science will be the new god. I’m not so sure for how long, but he’ll die. They all die,” and the elevator doors close.
The elevator gives a lurch, then it moves up, making a humming sound. The floor is made of linoleum, which has a fading design of black and white tiles. Above, a light bulb dangles by a string on the ceiling. The metal walls are rusted and dented and full of holes. Near a hole, you can see a message scrawled in black ink, “SCIENCE WAS HERE.”
The elevator stops moving, and the doors open. Darkness. Not even darkness. Oblivion. You step into the darkness, but the darkness does not engulf you, and you can see yourself in it. You feel sluggishness in every movement, as if you are wading in molasses, or some sort of film held together by osmotic pressure. And you call out, God?
Nobody answers.
In God’s Own Kingdom, maybe nobody’s allowed to see God, after all?
God?
Your voice echoes, and each echo echoes, until the whole room is filled with your voice. Echoes, of echoes, of echoes.
God?
A sound of rubber against tiles. “I am here.”
Where?
“What’s important is that I am here. Welcome to God’s Own Kingdom.” You know that feeling, like someone’s watching you? The way someone focuses on a specific body part, and you don’t know why, but you hold that body part, as if you’re trying to protect it.
George Orwell: “Big Brother is watching you.”
“You are joining us,” says God. “Would you care for a little talk? Maybe you have some questions in mind?”
Yes, you say, like, why are you in heaven? “I mean, I’m not real good, or anything.”
“Yes, my child,” says God. “You may think that you aren’t good, but who is, anyway?” God lets out a cough, a long, rasping sound from his throat that sounds like he’s dying, and he says, “It’s not a matter of morality. It’s a matter of what you believe.”
God says, “The Catholics go to God’s Own Kingdom or Hell’s Real Kitchen, depending on what they believe more. The Brahmans and the Buddhists return to the Waking World. The pagans go to Hades or Valhalla or wherever. The atheists, they go to nothingness.”
But you never really believed in God, you say. “I mean, I never really saw you, and I doubted you were…you know, real.”
God snorts. Maybe it’s a snort, or maybe it’s a chuckle. Maybe it’s somewhere in between. God says that is not important. He says, “You’ve tried talking to me once and you’ve seen what’s wrong with religion, and it disgusted you that you turned your back on my church. You may say you turned your back on me, but that never happened, did it?” In the darkness, you can hear the sound of crumpled paper. Paper that’s maybe ready to crumble. Like a long lost shopping list. He reads from the long lost shopping list. “Help me, Lord.” God says, “How about let’s you and I strike a deal?” He says, “I’ve turned my back on your followers, but I can’t turn my back on you.” Says, “I don’t want to be bound by your rules. I know what’s right, and what’s wrong, but please, still help me.”
Big Brother is smiling at you. You aren’t sure of it, but you can feel, in God’s Own Kingdom, Big Brother is smiling at you.
You do remember saying that, you say.
“Of course you do,” God says. “Everything that’s happening here is all taking place in the mind. I am embedded deep in your memory, for memory that springs from childhood lingers the longest. I am your childhood memory. I am the first step for you to remember everything. That is how powerful I am in your mind.”
How powerful are you?
“How do you imagine me?”
Perfect. Powerful and all-knowing and all-seeing.
“Then that is how powerful I am.” Because God is a manifestation of the imagination, like Zeus, and Jupiter, and Odin, and Allah. How you imagine God is how he appears. Perfect. Nothing is as perfect as it is in the imagination.
You ask, “So why did you let all those misfortunes happen?”
God chuckles, and this time it sounds like a chuckle, and he says, “I am not in control of your life. I am not in control of anyone’s life. I am merely here to take the blame for every misfortune that happens.”
Ambrose Bierce: “Bacchus: a convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.”
Whatever happens to you, God says, Get drunk, knock someone up, kill…
Get AIDS…
See an aborted fetus…
Get involved in a war…
Die...
God says it’s not his fault. I am not the reason why people die of breast cancer, He says. He says, I am not the reason why Hitler ignited war. I am not the reason why Elvis Presley died. “But go ahead. I’m here to take the blame.”
Take the blame, you say. “You are powerful. You are a god. Is that the best you can do?”
Again, the sound of rubber against tiles. God sighs. He emerges from the darkness the way Death’s skull emerges from his hood. The way a ball surfaces from water. God looks at you and he says, “Yes, actually.”
In God’s Own Kingdom, God looks at you with compound eyes, like a fly.
God has compound eyes. He has compound eyes, two large halves of a sphere resting on the sides of his head, split up into a million or so smaller milky white eyes with pupils in the centers. The eyes blink in unison, and they look in different directions, in all directions. God’s head is bald, and it shakes like a plate of Jell-O, and it’s so large it looks like it’s ready to explode. The head of someone with hydrocephalus. Water quivers from inside his head, and the skin on it is full of blue veins and throbbing arteries. The sutures of his head, you can see them, so wide apart that his brains are visible against the skin of his head. You can see the wrinkles of his brain against his forehead. God has long, flowing beard, the way the Greeks say that Zeus has long, flowing beard. He has giant bitch tits, the way we think of God’s tits as huge. God has giant muscles throbbing with arteries and twitching with every contraction, and his biceps are so huge he can’t even bend his arm to support his head that’s threatening to fall and explode any moment. Explode, the way Death describes how the baby’s head explode. His hands have holes, God, and his head has scars shaped like thorns, and his chest is full of scars from whiplashes.
God has no legs, and the sound of rubber against tiles, that’s God’s Own Wheelchair. God is sitting on a chrome wheelchair that’s too small for him. He’s huge. Huger than life, God. Because that’s how you imagine him. Only, he has no legs. You ask God, “What happened to your legs?”
“The Great War happened to my legs,” he says, and with every word, his head quivers. Waves come from the bottom of his head, going up, until they reach the top of his head, then they reflect each other, back to the bottom, until they disappear. “The battle of ideas between people of different religions. I have killed Odin, and Zeus, and the rest. All of them, except Time, who only watched the battle, and Death, who was immortal. I only won because I emerged with more believers, because I promised them eternal life, and it made Death weak because no one believed in him anymore.” He says he has to employ Death to prevent imbalance of life.
You ask God, “What about the rest of you?”
“This is how you imagined me, remember?” reminds God. “I am all-seeing, and all-knowing, and all-powerful.” The compound eyes, the water-filled head and the giant biceps. Omniscient, omnipotent. Omnipresent? “Omnipresent. Yes. Of course.” Omnipresent.
You ask him does he appear like this to other people?
“Sometimes I appear even worse,” and he goes back into the darkness.
You’re sorry, you say.
“It doesn’t matter. No. No, it doesn’t,” he says. “Here, let me get your key. You’ll just have to find your room, between floors two and six.” The sound of rubber against tiles, then, silence.
“So, there’s nothing we can do?”
“Please,” God says. “I’m going to die anyway. What we do is we stay in God’s Own Kingdom. And we sit. And we wait.” God’s hand emerges from the darkness, old man hands full of veins and white hair and bony knuckles. “Hold out your hand,” he says. You hold out your hand, and he makes like he drops the key, only, nothing drops.
“There is no key.”
“Exactly,” God says. “Science busted all the locks here. Just pick a room.” He goes back to the darkness. “Take the elevator, and choose any room you want. Doesn’t matter what you choose, since they’re all the same anyway. And there are no windows, so forget that ambiance thing.”
You turn towards the elevator and walk, and again, there’s this feeling like you’re wading through a film held by pressure. You enter the lift, and you press a button. Choose any floor you want, close the doors.
Big Brother is still watching you, you can feel, so you call out, Science… Will he be back?
“Oh, he’ll be back.”
And what will become of you?
“We can’t tell, but for now, we stay at God’s Own Kingdom. And we sit. And we wait.” And the doors close.
Thank you. Have a nice day. Please enjoy your stay. In God’s Own Kingdom, while waiting, please try to enjoy your stay.
19 July 2009
Shit Sessions
Inhale. Close your eyes. Don't breathe out while you listen. Don't worry. This too, shall pass.
Now listen.
My clammy hands were, for the first time, not clammy. I kept inhaling sweat, and sweat kept falling into my eyes, making all those eye muscles contract because of the sting. The orbicularis oculi and levator palpabrae. The, there was a rumble deep down in my guts, a rumbling and a bubbling, and I knew, this wasn't because of the heat anymore.
Now, I was in a formation, and it would have hurt my dignity, asking to be pulled out. It would have hurt even more if I didn't ask, so I made a salute, and asked to be pulled out, only, they didn't allow me, on account of the formation about to end soon.
Long story short, more sweat dropped into my eyes.
After the formation, I ran as fast as a man on the verge of shitting could run, and dammit. Someone else beat me to it. I knocked on the door of the men's restroom, but it was locked. The lights inside were on, and the door was locked. Someone beat me to it.
If you'd care to know, CMSHS has only one fucken toilet bowl. The other one was closed, oh, a million years ago, when they found brown soup in there and the brown soup almost flooded the floors, because they couldn't flush it.
I went to my classroom to leave my bag, because I haven't heard of anyone shitting with a backpack. So I went to my room, and I kept dripping sweat on the floor, and I returned to the restroom. I wished I'd seen the last guy who went in. I mean, REALLY!
The toilet bowl, there's no brown soup in the water. The water's clean, but the rest of the bowl isn't. It's coated with shit, and I mean, coated, like, the shit a baby would shit: fibrous, brownish, yellowish, stinking real bad I swallowed spit and my spit tasted like vomit.
On the walls, there were swirls. The kind of art a kid would make with his fingers. You can tell the swirls were made by fingers, because each swirl is a distorted fingerprint. Each distorted fingerprint, it rubbed the butt of mister whoever and wiped some swirly brown painting on the walls.
On the floor, a pair of underwear. Socks. Both of them soggy and coated yellowish, coated brown, coated with shit.
The water container has water that looks like mud, only the smell diffuses and it doesn't smell anything like mud.
The shit's piling up in my guts. If you'd care to know, the utility people, they left the mop in the restroom. No brooms.
When this sorta thing happens to you, close your eyes. Inhale. Do not breathe out. Reach out for the mop and lock the door. With the mop, sweep off the shit, and sit on the cold porcelain crawling with shit and germs.
Tell yourself, this too shall pass.
Because that's what I did.
It hasn't passed yet. The moment's frozen in time. To be sure, this too, shall pass.
Now listen.
My clammy hands were, for the first time, not clammy. I kept inhaling sweat, and sweat kept falling into my eyes, making all those eye muscles contract because of the sting. The orbicularis oculi and levator palpabrae. The, there was a rumble deep down in my guts, a rumbling and a bubbling, and I knew, this wasn't because of the heat anymore.
Now, I was in a formation, and it would have hurt my dignity, asking to be pulled out. It would have hurt even more if I didn't ask, so I made a salute, and asked to be pulled out, only, they didn't allow me, on account of the formation about to end soon.
Long story short, more sweat dropped into my eyes.
After the formation, I ran as fast as a man on the verge of shitting could run, and dammit. Someone else beat me to it. I knocked on the door of the men's restroom, but it was locked. The lights inside were on, and the door was locked. Someone beat me to it.
If you'd care to know, CMSHS has only one fucken toilet bowl. The other one was closed, oh, a million years ago, when they found brown soup in there and the brown soup almost flooded the floors, because they couldn't flush it.
I went to my classroom to leave my bag, because I haven't heard of anyone shitting with a backpack. So I went to my room, and I kept dripping sweat on the floor, and I returned to the restroom. I wished I'd seen the last guy who went in. I mean, REALLY!
The toilet bowl, there's no brown soup in the water. The water's clean, but the rest of the bowl isn't. It's coated with shit, and I mean, coated, like, the shit a baby would shit: fibrous, brownish, yellowish, stinking real bad I swallowed spit and my spit tasted like vomit.
On the walls, there were swirls. The kind of art a kid would make with his fingers. You can tell the swirls were made by fingers, because each swirl is a distorted fingerprint. Each distorted fingerprint, it rubbed the butt of mister whoever and wiped some swirly brown painting on the walls.
On the floor, a pair of underwear. Socks. Both of them soggy and coated yellowish, coated brown, coated with shit.
The water container has water that looks like mud, only the smell diffuses and it doesn't smell anything like mud.
The shit's piling up in my guts. If you'd care to know, the utility people, they left the mop in the restroom. No brooms.
When this sorta thing happens to you, close your eyes. Inhale. Do not breathe out. Reach out for the mop and lock the door. With the mop, sweep off the shit, and sit on the cold porcelain crawling with shit and germs.
Tell yourself, this too shall pass.
Because that's what I did.
It hasn't passed yet. The moment's frozen in time. To be sure, this too, shall pass.
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