The Alpha and the Omega: An absurd philosophical tale about God, the end of the world, and what's on the other planets

by H. M. Charley Ada

  “Really?”

  “Yes, I do! We haven’t seen a drop of it since God came, not on Earth or on Limbo, and I miss it. I like it!” Her eyes were fanatical flames. “Why the fuck does it always have to be sunny here anyway?”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “Good, then I want it to rain! I want it to fucking pour. Now!” She pointed, and it did, spectacularly. “You know, I don’t think I’ve been caught out in the rain since I was a little kid. I always had an umbrella, or I’d duck under some cover and wait it out.”

  “Me too.” They held each other, and Zack felt the rain both with his skin and his mind. It came down with the rhythm of Lilly’s passion and in the shape of her thoughts, and Zack saw that she was the rain. Yes, she was the rain and also the fire, and he… he was nothing more than the empty wind, shiftlessly whipping back and forth across the earth, hopelessly trying to catch the rain and cradle the fire, only to be drowned and eaten.

  “Lilly, I love you.”

  “Yes.”

  That night, renourished, rebuilt, and relaxed, Zack dreamt that he was sitting at a sidewalk café table with his ex-girlfriend in Washington, D.C. It was a sunny day, and they were in Foggy Bottom, taking a break from touring the monuments and museums. A little bee with yellow and black stripes buzzed around them, and Zack’s ex flinched every time it came near her.

  “Don’t do that,” Zack said. “If you make sudden movements like that, it will get scared and attack you. Instead, just pretend it’s not there. That’s what I always do, and I never get stung.”

  “Don’t we want to just shoo it away? It’s gonna crawl in your food!”

  “Nah, I’m done. Besides, don’t you know that when a bee stings you, it dies? It doesn’t want to sting you anymore than you want to get stung.”

  “If it dies, then why does it sting?”

  “To protect the hive. Bees are social insects like ants –”

  “Oh no, not again! I think I’ve heard about the social insects from you like five times already.”

  “Did I tell you that they do a special dance in the hive that tells the others where the flowers are?”

  “YES!”

  “Ok, ok,” Zack said, noticing that the bee had now crawled into his empty soda bottle. Zack picked up the cap with his thumb and index finger and held it over the bottle. “Should I?”

  “YES.”

  Zack brought plastic to plastic and quickly sealed the bee in its tomb.

  “Thank you!” his ex said. “Now let’s get out of here.”

  They got up, and Zack tossed the bottle in the trash. For a second, he thought about releasing the bee, but then he thought about the other people at the café and the possibility that it could sting them. Then they walked away, but it continued to bother him. How long would it take the bee to die? he wondered. Would it still be struggling to escape when night fell and he and his ex were curled up safely in their hotel room?

  “Hey, do you think I should have unscrewed the cap before we left? That poor little bee.”

  “Zack, it’s just a stupid bug!”

  “Ugh.” Zack sat up in Lilly’s bed. Why did that little bee still bother him after all of this time? He puzzled briefly. Then there was a voice in his head.

  Zack, he has not told you everything. Zack, you were there that day. Do you remember? You were there that day.

  What? What day?

  Zack, there are other worlds out there. He has not told you. There are worlds where people live in true happiness and know all that there is to know. There are worlds out there where gods and people do not keep secrets from each other. There are worlds with fabulous, fantastic creatures that you could never imagine in your wildest dreams.

  There are worlds Zack, with ant and bee civilizations. There are worlds with living mountains that send armies of rock people to do battle. There are metal robot worlds, intelligent plant worlds, worlds with beings made of gas-clouds, and worlds where giant virus-like assemblages, neither living nor dead, wage constant unconscious war upon each other. There are even shadow worlds where two-dimensional phantasms dance and play on enormous cave walls in flickering candle light, unaware of the dimension of depth. And finally Zack, there are worlds, where corporations are people, and they compete against each other on the digital stock exchanges and shopping malls that cover the boundless virtual planes of the Lucidea and Serratoe galaxies.

  “Zack!” Lilly was up now too.

  “Lilly –”

  “Zack, I know.” He told me. He showed me one of those worlds, through the eyes of someone who lived there. Zack, it was unbelievable. I… I was Gretchnel. I had blue skin. I had… an alien body. The planet was, oh Zack, how can I describe it? It was a maze, a labyrinth, and it was constructed entirely out of stained-glass. It had stained-glass floors, stained-glass walls, stained-glass ceilings… stained-glass stairs. There were thousands of colors. They were beautiful, but they were not arranged into any pictures, and the maze had no signs or markings of any kind. Gretchnel’s people designed it that way so that it would be impossible to navigate.

  The maze covered the entire surface of the planet. The exits were spaced many miles apart, and only the priests knew where they were. Unless you were at one of these exits, it was impossible to see the sky. If you looked up, you would see only the stained-glass ceiling.

  The maze was deep, in some parts, hundreds of floors deep. The glass was special; it had a unique quality that allowed the light to pass through it without being diminished, so that the maze was as bright in the deepest level as it was at the highest. The passageways twisted and turned. They did not follow any rules. Some chambers were four feet high, others fifty. Some chambers were rectangular, others were curved like the inside of a whale. Some stairways were straight, others spiral. Some floors neatly stacked on top of each other, others zigzagged and slanted into each other.

  Lilly, that’s amazing. I wish I could have seen it.

  There’s more Zack. I learned so much in that short dream. I was there… I was Gretchnel. Her people Zack, they spend their entire lives wandering the maze in small groups. They carry few possessions, and perform whatever work is needed wherever they find themselves. Relationships are fleeting, and rarely do her people meet again once they part ways in the maze.

  Gretchnel’s race is very religious, and the maze forces them to live according to their ideals. For them, the maze symbolizes the ephemeral nature of existence because it is always sinking, ever so slowly, into the planet’s soft, watery earth. Her race continuously builds the maze upwards, and over the centuries, each floor eventually finds its watery grave. To visit the lower floors is to take one’s life into one’s hands, since one never knows when a flood might occur. But if one drowns, one accepts it as fate.

  Gretchnel’s people are actually very happy within the maze. Their race is very advanced – there is no disease, and accidents are rare. Everyone shares. Nobody fights over resources or possessions, and they spend most of their time simply talking to one another.

  Zack, in the dream, I was very old. I was in the very deepest parts of the maze, where it is completely silent, and the ceilings are very low. There were several inches of water on the floor. I had come to die in peace after living a very long life, and at that moment, I was thinking of my childhood. It had been very happy; I loved my parents very much. But when my sides turned bright red, a priest took me outside of the maze to see the other planets in the galaxy, and what I saw shocked me: wars, disease, greed, hate.

  There was one planet that particularly haunted me. It was a green planet. There were plants and trees everywhere, and lots of rain. Fog shrouded everything; you could barely see two feet in front of you. There was a living forest there. Trees with minds and faces, but they could not walk Zack. Just like the trees of Earth, their roots were tied to the dirt and rock. A race from another planet had put them there – for them, it was some kind of amusement park. They would visit the trees and talk to them, like humans at a pettin
g zoo. But then the economy on that race’s home planet crashed, and they fell into a deep economic depression. No one had the money to visit the forest anymore, and they abandoned it. But the trees could not survive on their own Zack. They needed special fertilizer. They were immobile and powerless to help themselves. Oh Zack, their wails! Their creaking, crunching, wooden wails in the black-green foggy night!

  When I heard them, they changed me deeply, forever. I became intensely more religious. At first, this surprised my parents, because they were somewhat liberal practitioners, at least compared to most of our race. However, they eventually came to accept it, and when I decided to leave the maze to spend my life helping the trees, they were very proud.

  I spent most of the rest of my life outside of the maze that I loved so much. I never married. I never received any awards or accolades from anyone, but still, it was not a wasted life. This was my last thought as the warm waters of death took me away. Then I woke up.

  Oh Lilly, how can we? How can we possibly do it? Can we really leave everyone we know? Can we really abandon Limbo and leave our work there unfinished?

  Zack, there are others that need our help too.

  Ok, that makes sense. Let’s think about it, we don’t have to decide anything immediately. For now, how about we try to get back to sleep?

  Sure.

  Zack wrapped his arm around Lilly and tried to fall back asleep, but this time his mind was restless. The thought of the other worlds was mind-blowing, and yet God had been so good to him. His parents were with God. Lucky was with God. Stan was with God. But Lilly… her foot was already halfway out the door. Even now, just moments after their intense psychic chatter, she was at rest, and her sentience was likely again in another world. Would he follow?

  “Zack! Wake up!” I saw another planet. It was a parallel Earth in another galaxy.

  “Parallel –”

  You dumbass! Lilly quickly put her hand over Zack’s mouth. Please, use your silent voice! That was close.

  Sorry. Let me try again. Parallel Earth??

  Yes. It was very similar to our Earth, but it was thirty-five years into the future, and God had never brought Heaven. Zack, we were there! Together! We were old and married.

  What?

  Yes! We had met when we were still in our thirties – in a lawsuit! I sued you!

  Really?

  Yes. Well, I sued your company, and you were the chief witness. We fought like cats and dogs for two years. We hated each other. We called each other names, we gave each other nasty looks, we pushed all of each other’s buttons. Then, on the first day of the trial, the parties settled the case on the courthouse steps, and we went our separate ways.

  We didn’t see each other for a while after that. Then, a full year later, we met at a friend’s party and went home together. We fell in love. There was a wedding. There were vacations. There were kids. There were dogs! Dogs Zack! The good kind. Golden retrievers. Our kids played with them in the backyard; then they grew up and had kids of their own.

  Really Lilly?

  There was only one thing wrong.

  What was it?

  The Country. Things were really bad Zack. We were on the verge of war. People were different. They were… changing.

  Really?

  It was strange and sinister. But at least we were old. We had lived most of our lives.

  Wow Lilly. I can’t believe God kept all of this from us.

  Zack, he told me how we can leave.

  What?

  He told me how we can leave Earth, for good. If we want to…

  They worked throughout the rest of the night building the ship. Although they could use their powers, it was not as easy as making cheese doodles. The ship had to be real so that it could function in space without God’s help, and the technology was far beyond anything Earth scientists had ever achieved. Nevertheless, Lilly woke up with all the knowledge that they needed, so the real work was in fooling God.

  “Hey Zack,” Lilly said, sprawled out on the floor of her now greatly expanded apartment among several large sheets of Heraclanium, “can you go back to the Library and get me some books on supra-avionics and advanced hypergolic fuel?” Not that we need them, wink, wink.

  “Of course. I’m so excited Lilly! A ship that can travel in water, air, and space! This will be so kick-ass!”

  “I know, I know. But remember that we can’t actually go to space. We’ll just get really close and then turn around.”

  “Oh right, of course.”

  When morning came, the ship was half-finished, and there was a knock at the door from an unexpected visitor, Stan.

  “Hey dude,” Zack said, “what brings you back from your videogame?”

  “Yo… I’ve actually been back for a little while now. I got injured – torn ACL. Had to end the season early.”

  “Wow, that really is a realistic game.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “And now you’re just hanging out? Taking a break before finding another game?”

  “Well actually, I’m tired of playing games. I’m looking for something real now. That’s kind of why I came here.”

  “Oh, interesting. Right now we’re taking a break from the real stuff.”

  “Is that what all this is?”

  “Yep,” said Lilly, “just a temporary distraction before we head back down to Limbo.”

  “Cool guys, looks like fun.”

  “Yeah, the ship’s gonna be killer,” Zack said. “It’s gonna have suicide doors.”

  “Suicide doors huh? That doesn’t sound much like you, Toyota man. You tryin’ to get yourself killed or something?”

  “Hmmm. Maybe.”

  “Haha. Hilarious,” he said, turning to Lilly. “Did he tell you about the Camry?”

  Lilly looked at them questioningly.

  “This guy! He used to tool around campus in his mom’s old Camry. That fuckin’ thing was so busted…”

  “Hey!” Zack said. “Don’t blow my cool!”

  “Phhhhhhhhhh!” Lilly said.

  Stan laughed. “Dude… she knows. It’s all right though, we can all change.”

  “Yeah seriously,” Zack said. “Come on, this thing’s gonna be able to go close to light speed.”

  “Baller.”

  “Yeah, I’m just sayin’,” Zack added.

  Lilly shook her head.

  “Aaaanyway,” Stan said, “I was wondering, can you tell me what Limbo’s like?”

  “Well,” said Zack, “it’s like a desert.”

  “Ha bro. Still workin’ on that sense of humor, huh?”

  “Oh God,” said Lilly.

  “It’s cool, we still love you.” Stan looked at Lilly again. “At least, I assume we both do.”

  Lilly smiled back, but then quickly looked away.

  “Anyway, so?”

  “Well dude,” said Zack, “Limbo’s definitely real. If you go there, you’re gonna see death up close and personal. You’re gonna have to fight, you might have to kill, and you’re probably going to get killed. With all the volunteers going down, there’s an actual war brewing there.”

  “That’s ok, I want that.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I want to serve; I want to sacrifice. I want to do something good.”

  “Well, as long as you’re prepared for it.”

  “I think I am. I feel it in my bones… I think I’ve always been a fighter at heart. I realized that when I was out there on the field in that game. It reminded me of college hockey… it reminded me of how I almost enlisted in the Army, you know, before you and my parents talked me out of it.”

  “Well, I’m not going to talk you out of it this time. I think you should go.”

  “Yeah, thanks. But what about the people there? What was it like trying to win their hearts and minds?”

  “Hmmm. Well, do you remember that Russian lit class we took together sophomore year?”

  “Yeah, total gut course.”

  “And do you rem
ember the Cliffs Notes?”

  “Of course.”

  “The professor, old… what’s his name…”

  “Frankenhauser, he was German.”

  “Yeah, go figure. Anyway, he was lecturing about Crime and Punishment –”

  “Which we hadn’t read!”

  “And you looked at me –”

  “And I said, ‘Hey Zack, does this sound familiar?’ ”

  “And we each pulled out our copy of the Cliffs Notes.”

  “Haha. He was reading directly from them! He even paused mid-sentence to stop and pretend that he was searching for his next words! But they were all right there in front of him! He read the entire thing verbatim!”

  Lilly chuckled.

  “And to top it off, we both got A+s!”

  “Of course bro, us and Frankenhauser were on the same page… so to speak.”

  “Haha. Ok, well you remember,” said Zack. “Good. He was pretending to teach, and we were pretending to learn. And even though the whole thing was a big sham, we still learned more about that book than if we had just stayed in the dorm playing videogames all day.”

  “Ok…”

  “Well, teaching the Limbeans is kind of like that.”

  “Huh…” Stan paused while he digested this.

  “Don’t overthink it,” Zack said, “you’ll see what I mean when you’re there.”

  “Ok, I think I understand. Thanks. I guess I’ll let you get back to your plane or spaceship, or whatever. You kids be careful! Catch you on Limbo?”

  “Definitely,” said Zack.

  “Yep,” said Lilly.

  “Cool, later guys.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  Do you feel a little bad Zack?

  Yeah, a little.

  But you want to go, right?

  I do. I want to be with you.

  Ok, good.

  I mean, aren’t you more convinced now than ever that we belong together?

  Huh?

  You know, from that dream. What did you call it? A parallel Earth? You said we were married. Doesn’t that prove that we’re meant to be together?