by Jim Carrey
“That’s Bathsheba,” said Carrey. “She’s been radicalized.”
“Good for her,” said Hanks. “Wanna come have breakfast?”
Here was another major star, an actor of his caliber, and in other ways beyond him. Carrey had long marveled at Hanks’s mastery of the industry, his easy sashays down corridors of power. Had Tom Hanks sold his essence, too? If so, that was at once reassuring and disconcerting. On the one hand, it meant it was probably the right business play. On the other—who was the star here? Because with Cage involved, and Penn and Paltrow and Kelsey Grammer, and all the Daughters of Anomie (who could easily be Millennial actresses unknown to him despite massive Instagram followings), well, that suggested many harvested essences had been smooshed together, the film a headcheese of digital personas. And as Carrey had read no contracts, had essentially traded his spirit for the promise of a nap, well—true horror now fell over him, deepening as they walked to Hanks’s sprawling veranda—what if they’d given him a supporting role?
“Honey, we got guests,” yelled Hanks to his wife, Rita Wilson. “It’s Jimbo and Kelsey. And this one,” he pointed to Bathsheba, closed his eyes. “Bathsheba! Can we get you guys something? Coffee? Mimosas?”
“A cappuccino would be delightful,” said Kelsey Grammer.
“Mimosa,” said Bathsheba.
“Jim? Jim?”
“Coffee…,” said Carrey, absently. He wasn’t paying attention, was entranced by laughter coming from down the veranda. His heart raced; he felt rare nerves as he turned to see, sitting on a wrought-iron patio sofa, filming the orbs with a digital camera, a titan of his industry, eternal wunderkind, father of the modern blockbuster, and now, undeniably, a prophet of some kind—Steven Spielberg.
Spielberg looked up, face wild with joy, turning the camera on Carrey as he approached, whispering like he was narrating a film.
“And the Lord said, ‘I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping things, and the fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them…”
His camera went close on Carrey’s face as the star surveyed the armada.
They spanned the horizon now, a thousand ships, maybe more. As the optics zoomed, Carrey felt all existential panic subside. Where was he? He was where he’d always dreamed of being, before Steven Spielberg’s camera. Planted, fixed, affirmed, not just by its presence, but for how its aperture overrode the chaos of the world, fixed the scene, the moment. He imagined himself not as he was but as he appeared in Spielberg’s eye, and in this imagining felt possessed of definite form. “Enlivened.” That was the word. And there was another, just beyond it: “completed.” Reality and fantasy had converged, almost entirely, and here he was, in the viewfinder of the great secular mythmaker. Enlivened, yes. Completed. No need to search for words, to wow with comic genius. He’d prepared for this, in hours of late-night TV watching. He was ready.
“Genesis meets Revelation,” said Carrey, nodding to the gathered animals, the iridescent ships. “The beginning completes the end.”
“Beautiful,” said Spielberg, then, with a giddy chuckle, “And isn’t it also possible, Jim, that the end offers a new beginning?”
“I’ve never seen you so happy.”
“My dreams have come to life.”
“Is there any difference between life and dreams anymore?” asked Carrey. “Have you seen this Brando commercial?”
“Mucinex gave the grandkids fifty million,” Spielberg said ruefully. “We’ve been posthuman for a while, I guess. Doesn’t matter now. Come see.”
Carrey sat and peered through the lens, zoomed in close on the nearest ship. It was so perfectly formed. Spielberg panned along the craft. No joints, seams, or rivets. A slender miracle radiating light.
“It’s like a Brancusi.”
“I don’t know what Brancusi is,” said Carrey. “But I’m sure it’s very nice.”
“I’m just saying that they must value beauty to make such gorgeous machines.” He looked to his wife, Kate Capshaw, approaching with a tray of her famous challah bread. “Oh wow. Here it comes!”
“Challah!” boomed Tom Hanks, taking a piece of the warm bread from the tray. Spielberg pulled back for a two-shot as Hanks handed Carrey his coffee, then settled into the chair just beside his and, clearly playing to reclaim what must have been a deeply gratifying monopoly on the master’s lens, said—
“We’ve had darn good lives! We did darn good stuff! We’re all flying down over the Hudson River now. We’re coasting past the moon in a wounded craft, low on oxygen. But I’d rather be here, with you guys, with Kate’s warm challah bread, than in that bunker with Leo and Toby and those lingerie models.” He spoke with a lump in his throat. “Rather be here, tossing around a Nerf football. Frying up some burgers and hot dogs. Lighting sparklers. With Jimbo. And Kelsey. Steve, Kate, Bathsheba. Than running from this thing. Whatever it is. Wherever it’s from.” He fought back tears. “Just want to say that.”
“They’re beyond our knowing,” said Rita Wilson, rubbing his arm. “It’s okay.”
Spielberg’s camera lingered on them: portrait of a husband and a wife.
“I never expected humanity was really gonna matter very much,” said Carrey. The camera panned to him. “To look for any meaning in it is a ridiculous thing. The vastness just laughs at you. How’s it go? Matter makes up three percent of the universe. The rest is dark energy or dark matter or whatever? They don’t know. They were never gonna know. Things grow and die. Fungus on a tree. Lavender in a field. What’s the meaning of lavender in a field? I’m okay with the meaninglessness. I’m okay without meaning.”
“But we made our own meaning, didn’t we?” said Hanks. “We gave it to each other as a gift.”
“I see what you’re saying,” said Carrey, with a shrug.
Spielberg pulled back for a low-angle two-shot of the A-list stars, neither wanting to argue, each appreciating the other’s viewpoint.
“Why didn’t we all get together sooner?” said Hanks. “While there was time?”
“Ask TPG,” said Carrey.
“Who’s TPG?” asked Rita Wilson.
“TPG owns CAA,” said Kate Capshaw.
Spielberg panned down to the silver tray, where the crumbs of his wife’s challah bread danced ever more wildly as the spacecraft’s tones grew louder. Hanks turned toward the sea, eyes flaring with fright, watching as the ships moved. Then, with the others, he looked back to the table, where, amid the music, all the sweet bread crumbs had self-arranged into a perfect, vibrating geometric form, which awed them even before, in a gasp, Spielberg identified the pattern.
“It’s the Tree of Life.”
Then the bread crumbs scattered into disarray as the alien harmonics met interference from nearby speakers, a manic voice booming:
“CHECK ONE-TWO! CHECK! YO—YOU AIN’T GOT THE ANSWERS! YOU AIN’T GOT THE ANSWERS! EVERYBODY, LISTEN UP.”
The animals let out startled wails.
“I AM THE ALIENS’ EMISSARY TO ALL MANKIND!”
“Who is that?” said Jim.
“Kanye,” said Tom Hanks.
They all left the veranda, plodded up the sand alongside the paparazzi to find Kanye West standing on the sundeck of his sleek modern beach house, wearing a pair of silver-mirrored contact lenses and a titanium crown set with emeralds in the form of an Adidas logo. He preened and posed for the news drones, stretching his arms up toward the sky, as if to bless and welcome the alien fleet. Spielberg, Hanks, and Carrey drew little more interest than a group of passing llamas as, from inside the house—preceded by full camera crews from FOX, CNN, TMZ, and E!—came Kim Kardashian. Wearing a pearl tiara and a silver bustier with flying-saucer breast cups, she held a frightened child in her arms, caressing him as Kanye played to his iPhone camera, livestreaming to the billions f
or whom he was, by that late and raving hour, earth’s most viewed extraterrestrial news correspondent.
“You need not be afraid! They speak to me in supernatural verses! I am one with their jam!” said Kanye, tapping his titanium crown. “This is what’s happening!” He gestured to the frightened baby squirming in Kim Kardashian’s arms. “The alien angels hath laid with Kim. They filled her womb up with the Star Child!”
Kim Kardashian held the baby up for the cameras. He wore a gold lamé onesie from the Baby K child’s clothing line of which, at the age of one, he’d been elected CEO by a unanimous board vote. The company had just been sold to Qatari investors. The baby, now one and a half, was worth $700 million.
“Why were you chosen for this?” asked the CNN reporter.
And all prior history and logic felt to Jim Carrey like a garbled dream as Kanye explained, “In another dimension I’m a dodecahedron named Cake. And I was gonna kill the aliens, but I didn’t. So they honored me here. Told me I’m the Archangel and Kim’s the Star Mother. Gave us the Star Baby.”
“It’s very humbling to say the least,” said Kim Kardashian.
“How did they give you the baby?” asked the CNN reporter.
“They entwined our DNA,” said Kanye. “Synthetically.”
“How did they contact you?”
“They called me.”
“From where?”
“Palm Beach.”
“I thought they spoke to you through your crown?”
Then Kanye West, drawing upon his full powers as a freshly minted Archangel, commanded the flying saucers to disintegrate the CNN reporter in his place. When that didn’t happen, he burst into tears.
“These are higher intelligences,” said Spielberg. “They’ll either love us unconditionally or coldly annihilate us. One thing is sure. They don’t explain themselves; they don’t hold press conferences.”
A light drizzle began to fall.
The glow from the ships passing overhead brightened as all cell phones and televisions—any screen that streamed data—pulsed to life, all receiving the same broadcast.
It began with a title screen, A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO PLANETARY CANCELLATION, which dissolved to a live shot of a figure beyond ethnicity, beyond gender, a taupe-skinned study in pleasing aesthetics, guaranteed to evoke affinities across all cultures. Counter to Spielberg’s assurances, Tan Calvin would now explain himself.
“Earth has been one of our most beloved and longest-running programs,” said Calvin. “Eden was beautiful, but dull as dog shit. Doldrums! The program wasn’t working for us as viewers or for you as characters. We introduced conflict. When Cain bashed Abel’s head in, we knew we had something. Of all the spheres, our people tuned in to yours. The fall of Babel was so good we gave it a sequel, this time with twice the towers. Holy wars: of all the programs across all the galaxies, earth was the first to discover that oxymoron. And some would like to watch you atomize one another, but the ratings board, and certain professional codes, won’t allow that. And so I’m here. I have come to take you home, and in these remarks I shall inform you of the best practices for a planet in your situation.” The rain fell harder as Calvin continued, “I am putting out the wildfires in California to show you that, while mighty beyond imagining, I am kind. Take it as a token of good faith as we conclude this deeply gratifying programming experience.”
The spaceships froze above them, a great craft hovering just down the beach, others arrayed in a perfect grid, one every five square miles. And through the mist falling down off the hills, shooting down from every ship with triumphant blasts—blasts like angels’ trumpets—came pure beams of the same golden light Carrey had felt that morning but now so much stronger, filling the world as music played from the ships, the same healing frequency but now with definite harmonies, like Barber’s “Adagio” raised to a cosmic power healing all wounds in fast time. It soared as the rose-gold shafts thrust down from the spaceships; Tan Calvin imploring—
“Walk into the happy light. Be free, be cleansed. Freedom from concerns. From bills to pay. From grief and sickness. No bodies full of pain. No one to impress. No loss of any kind. Only cleansing light, forgiveness. This is our parting gift to you: eternal aching bliss.”
Kim Kardashian, Star Baby in her arms, left sobbing Kanye to be the first human assumed. She kicked off her high heels, jumped off the patio, and, remarkably fleet of foot, she dashed toward the light field, a dozen cameras following. She stepped inside the glow, fell to her knees, and began to moan. Then her moans turned joyous.
And she began to rapture…
“She’s going up ass first!” said Kelsey Grammer.
It was true, Kim’s early ascension was a bit wobbly. But then she learned to work the beam, floated heavenward like a true angel, pressing the Star Baby to her breast, spinning with ecstasy, followed by the cameras that broadcast the moment worldwide; #starmother, #starbaby, and #followthatstar began trending as Homo sapiens embraced its own demise. First went the lonely, the empty, the ill—also surprisingly large numbers of those who had seemed to be living perfect lives, but had, in fact, been secretly, totally miserable. Images spawned and multiplied, the rapturees’ faces suggesting that not only was this painless, it felt awesome. Within moments, worldwide, millions were rushing for the lights, crowding the Champs-Élysées, prison guards rapturing alongside inmates as orbs hovered over penitentiary yards, whole families ascending from the Rio favelas, disregarding all prior faiths to embrace Calvin as, if not quite a messiah, a reliable manufacturer of miracles.
In Malibu the stars were mesmerized, watching in disbelief as Kim Kardashian hovered thirty yards between the ocean and the saucer. So many were eager to join her, to cast off the millstones of their invented selves. Some raced so fast into the lights that they missed the last piece of Calvin’s offer, didn’t see how his tongue flickered, lizard-like.
“To those who resist, to them shall be great suffering. Children gnawing at their mothers’ entrails. Bodies roasting over slow fires, then bodies eaten raw. Then hunger and cold, all shall know. Horrors not yet seen by man. Until he is no more.”
Looking up from the broadcast, Carrey saw Spielberg speaking on his phone.
“Ready the Amblin Twelve. We’ll be there in an hour.”
“What’s the Amblin Twelve?”
“A spacefaring escape pod, Jim,” said Spielberg, guiltily. “Beyond a certain point, toward the end, it was the only really fun thing for us billionaires to spend money on.”
“Can I come with you?”
“Sorry,” said Tom Hanks. “It’s a real compact module, and Oprah needs a seat for her emotional-support animal.”
“What about throwing around the Nerf ball? What about grilling hot dogs?”
“We’ll bring videos of those things. And treasure them,” said Hanks. “Anyway, it was great brunching with you, finally. Okay, we gotta skedaddle.”
“Let them go,” said Kelsey Grammer, consolingly, as the Spielbergs and Hankses traipsed down the beach. “Each must meet the end on their own terms.”
And, for both men, the sting of exclusion gave way to spinning wonder as other celebrities poured from all parts of the Colony, tearing for the light, decades of auditions and rejections filling all with a fear of failing to make the cut. Lindsay Lohan went up like a kite on an April breeze, crying “Yippee!” before colliding with Diana Ross. Then they grasped hands, steadying each other, maneuvering to accept Keanu Reeves. All linked arms, singing one last crowd-pleasing refrain of Ross’s 1970 hit “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand),” soaring up like skydivers in rewind.
But the greater ecstasy was Kelsey Grammer’s.
He walked into the beams with Bathsheba and felt, deep within him, that at last, with this svelte twentysomething commando, he’d found it, pure love. Holding hands, they swirled skyward, and words rose from within Ke
lsey, truths of love gifted to Juliet by Shakespeare, lines of such beauty that men had forgotten their genders entirely while speaking them at the Globe Theatre, lines that he’d longed to speak since Juilliard but had always been denied him by the strictures of his day.
“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,” he said as they daiseyed over the Pacific. “My love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both…are infinite.”
“That’s so beautiful,” said Bathsheba, tears filled with golden light.
“You really think so?” said Kelsey. “I thought I was pushing.”
And then they were Twizzlerized.
Maybe, thought Carrey, this was all Lanny Lonstein’s masterpiece.
Or maybe he was in a luxury nuthouse, pissing through a tube. Or maybe he was overdosed in a Vegas hotel, this nightmare but a final blabber of the dying cerebral cortex. The surrounding world offered no explanations, no proof or disproof. It was content, smugly so, to simply be. He recalled a Bible passage about when the stars would fall from the sky, later seeing on YouTube that, indeed, this would happen, the galaxies would spin so far away from one another that all would be cold and dark. What was wilder than that? Or bleaker? Oblivion was coming for them all, worse than any tsar’s army. Here, above him, were strong ships leaving port.
Why get fussy about the owners, the destination?
The light pulled him toward it.
The music called, too.
Carrey felt all inner beasts quieting as he dared his foot inside the light field’s outer edge, then passed his whole body through. This was real.
Only this.
The little children shooting up like bottle rockets.
The grief-heavy souls struggling up like week-old helium balloons.
All concern was fading now.
The smoldering hillsides, the distant city, sad shadows. The only place was here, the only time now, as he stood on the sand, awaiting his ration of the miraculous. A giddy tickle spread across his every cell as Cher and Dolly Parton whizzed by overhead, both singing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” A deep wanting to join them…
