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.