*
“This is rich, Keech!” Molloy guffawed as he flipped through the news reports.
“Your highness,” Bensen announced, “I have yet another miracle to report!”
“You may speak,” Keech said, nodding.
Bensen flipped back to the first page of the memorandum and solemnly intoned, “Two FBI infiltrators have been caught, red-handed, attempting to interfere with our rally! I am instructing our lawyers to immediately begin proceedings against this corrupt administration! It seems, gentlemen, that God is with us!”
Bud Bean was flabbergasted, “Well somebody is! We certainly pulled that one out of a hat! When midnight hit and that green ring of light was nowhere to be seen, I was ready to turn state’s evidence! All hail Albert Keech!”
Laughing, the men cheered their leader, who, drunk now, did little but nod. When they finally stopped to catch their breath, an oddly somber wave settled in.
“Keech,” Molloy asked, honestly expecting an explanation, “How did you make the moon move?”
Keech waved his brandy glass in an arc, then pointed at his head, “Will power. I’ve got them so convinced, their little patchwork minds provided its own miracle. Like the visions at Fatima.”
Dissatisfied with the response, Mannon rose, “I don’t know, Keech. We all act like this is some kind of big fake, like Calico’s a tool and we’re pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes, getting away with murder, but after tonight, I’m starting to think that maybe we’re the tools, and Calico’s real.”
Keech’s face twisted hideously. Molloy ducked as Keech’s glass shattered against the wall near his head. It didn’t matter. It only missed because Keech wanted it to miss.
“You would all do well to remember,” he snarled, “That the only real thing here is me!”
Silent, sullen, they stared at him for a little while. Figuring they were all drunk and tired, they rose and, one by one, shuffled towards the private elevator that led out of the penthouse suite. The newly remodeled Paradise Regained was the largest hotel the church had purchased, and a perfect place for their victory party.
Holding back the rest of his rage, Keech watched them fade out of sight and out of mind. Fools. This was Keech’s plan, Keech’s idea, Keech’s structure, Keech’s strength. Just like the Company had been, just like they all had been. Even Michael, especially Michael. Mad little Calico with the cute little butt was a figure-head, nothing more. They’d see soon enough. Fools.
Some drops of brandy on the shattered pieces of glass picked up the light from the rising sun. He imagined he tasted them and told himself it was success. Then, a little sigh from the bedroom reminded him who else was there. Curious to see her, he walked to the bedroom and opened the door. This wasn’t his townhouse anymore. There was no promise of sanctuary.
She stood by the window, still wearing her moonbeam gown, which now glowed pink from the dawn. She hadn’t said a word since the rally.
As she turned to him, smiling, and asked if he was pleased with her, he felt himself harden. She struggled as he threw her down on the bed, but not a lot. He ripped off her moonbeams, groped at her breasts, spread her legs with his arms and plunged himself into her. He was huge now, impossibly big, bigger than even he could ever have imagined. She gave a little whimper at first, then stopped.
When Calico was a baby, they never asked her if she wanted to eat. They just put a spoon into her mouth again and again, as though what she wanted didn’t matter in the slightest. Here was that spoon again. She was hungry at first, and she moaned with pleasure, pulling him into her faster and harder, but after a while, she was full and didn’t want anymore, and she pounded and scratched at his back, but he didn’t stop, and she was afraid she would throw up, but he didn’t stop.
When her impish squeals of pleasure gave way to desperate cries of pain, he decided they just weren’t real. He just thought to himself, yes, I can go on forever; yes, I can fuck forever; yes I can live forever; yes, there is no difference between myself and God.
15. Aftershock
After he heard about the miracle, Hapax wouldn’t speak to anyone, even Beth, for three days. Finally, on the third afternoon, as he sat on his nice white bed, with his arms crossed over his lap and his head bent down towards his knees, Beth grabbed him, shook him and screamed “Hapax!” so loudly it hurt his ears.
He looked at her and screamed back, “All right! I don’t know why 30,000 people saw the moon move, or why half the people who watch the video-tape see it, too.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I mean I don’t know. I mean this is completely beyond me. Some things are, y’know? I mean, it’s a fucking miracle! God be praised! OK?”
“Could it have been faked ?” Beth asked, hoping he would say yes.
“I don’t see how. It was the moon for pity’s sake!” Hapax shrugged. He wrapped his hands around his knees and pulled them towards his chest for comfort.
She paced the perimeter of the bed.
“Isn’t there anything, anything at all in your book or your plan or somewhere in your head that could remotely account for this?”
Hapax picked his head up again and grinned.
“My book. You called it my book. You know, don’t you?” he asked, his face frozen in a funny, expectant grin.
She hemmed and hawed a bit, but ultimately decided to ignore the question, knowing full well he would read complicity into her silence. She stared out the window at the bars that crisscrossed her view of the grounds. There was so much to do and so little time.
“Can you tell me this, then,” she said, turning back to him, “Can you tell me what these people believe in? I mean, I kind of understand all this stuff about the structure of God and the language and the coming of the new Aeon, but what is it these people believe in, morally? Tens of millions of followers and not one can vocalize the basic principles of the movement beyond a vague sense of internal freedom.”
Sensing her fear, Hapax looked at her sadly, “I don’t know what they believe morally, or that they believe anything specifically, but I’ll bet that the movement encompasses both right to lifers and pro-choicers, both bigot and liberal. It does not pass judgment. At least, not yet.”
Beth nodded. He was right.
“That’s how I planned it. See, the language doesn’t die easy. It just grows more and more complex, more fractured, until we reach a point like today, where anyone who seems to make a little bit of sense, not too much mind you, is instantly worshipped as a leader, a hero, and in some cases a messiah. It’s much easier to fall to your knees in front of someone and say, “Please! Take care of me!” than it is to actually listen to what they have to say,” Hapax said, staring sadly at the white walls of his room.
Beth eyed Hapax, the man with the plan that had already changed the world, and grew angry.
“What was this all about, Hapax? What did you want your book to do, make you an object of worship? Were you hoping to become an Aeon?”
He turned to her sheepishly, “People can’t become Aeons, Beth, any more than a brick can become a house. As for being an object of worship, do I look like a messiah? Evoking intense emotion from a large number of people is a very, very dangerous thing to do. People will kill you for that. Me, I was more than content to sit in the background and collect checks.”
“And hire some charismatic actor to “play” messiah?”
“Something like that. Not a trained actor, though. Someone special. Someone who almost understood. Someone it would have been difficult to find. Someone just like Calico.”
“And the miracle?”
“Like I said, God be praised.”
“Have you seen the video?”
“Nope, Doctor won’t let me. To tell you the truth, I think he’s right.”
“Well,” she smiled, “that’s a risk we’ll have to take. I brought a copy.”
She stepped briefly into the hall and shortly returned with a television set on a cart. Hapax felt
a wicked sense of freedom as he recognized it.
“That’s from the Rec Room,” he said as she plugged it in, “Won’t the others miss it?”
Beth shook her head. “They barely noticed it was gone.”
She pulled a cassette from her carry-bag and popped it into the machine.
“Does Doctor know the book is mine?” Hapax asked.
“He’s already working on your release,” she said, trying to find the “On” button. Noticing the trouble she was having, Hapax hopped off the bed, walked up to the machine and pressed a small button on it. A red light, above the word POWER, came on.
Beth turned to him, “You have no idea how big the church has gotten. We’ve got to be very careful how we proceed. If Keech gets word of who you are, you’ll be in great danger.”
“As opposed to the peace and safety I’ve experienced here?” Hapax said.
Without batting an eye, Beth answered, “Yes.”
Hapax shook his head, “You don’t understand. I don’t care who Keech thinks he is, he’s a man riding the back of a tiger. He might think he can steer, but...”
“He’s crazy, Hapax,” she said.
“Who isn’t?” he shrugged.
“For starters, let’s just watch the tape, okay? I think it’s about time you saw exactly what Hapax hath wrought.”
Hapax nodded and pressed PLAY. The television came to life, showing a clear image of the stadium.
“I recorded this off-line through the Bureau. It’s a live feed from the network HDTV cameras. They tell me you can’t get a better image,” she explained, “If it was there and it’s visible, it should be on this tape.”
Hapax wasn’t listening anymore. Instead, he was staring at the screen, at the packed stadium, at the thousands of awed followers. His heart started palpitating, his hands began to shake. He laughed. This expectant, enthralled mass of humanity had all read his book. All of them. A few tears rolled down the side of his cheeks. It had worked, it had worked, it had worked! The Great Work was a success! Beaten, broken and bleeding, Hapax Trigenomen had fallen into the Promised Land, if only for a moment. Dizzy, he slowly stepped back towards his bed. Beth helped him sit down.
“I’m not crazy,” he said, watching the crowds, “At least I’m not just crazy.”
Before she realized what she was doing, Beth leaned closer and stroked the hair near his temple. His eyes remained glued to the set as Calico read his words.
“She’s perfect,” he said, still smiling, “Familiar, too. She looks like a bag lady in my neighborhood. Someone I used to watch from the window.”
“She is a bag lady from your neighborhood,” Beth said, “I think that’s how she found the book.”
“Hey wait a minute, that last bit wasn’t from the book. What are they, editing me?” Hapax said, brow furrowing.
Beth hushed him, “The miracle’s coming up.”
There was a loud sound from the speakers, a combination of thousands of gasps and shrieks, howls of joy, tears and screams. The camera wobbled as the cameraman loosened the tripod. The image spun and shook, then all at once they were staring at the full-orbed moon. The cries continued on the sound-track, louder, more impassioned. The camera zoomed back to show the moon and the tip of the stadium. There was a buzz of technical conversation, but all the while in the background, pandemonium.
Hapax furrowed his brow. It was nothing, just the moon, but everyone was so excited. Why? It was nothing he had planned on, nothing he had thought of. Personal miracles were always a possibility when the individual ego met with the Aeons, but this was just bizarre.
“What do you see, Beth?”
“It doesn’t matter. What do you see?”
“Nothing. Just the moon. Unless...”
“Unless what?”
“Nothing. It’s ridiculous.”
“This is all ridiculous.”
“For a moment, I thought I could convince myself that I saw it move. Maybe you only see it when you believe it.”
“Mass hallucination?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.”
“Couldn’t it be some sort of large scale variation of the same principle in Prophecy. They all see it because they need to, because they have too much emotion invested in believing?”
“Maybe, or maybe it’s like Nietzsche said, the abyss also stares back. If my book works, if it does open an internal road to the Aeons, maybe this is their doing.”
Making God Page 8
