The GOD Box

by Melissa Horan

  She had no weapons on her… but who knows how good she could be with her fists?

  “Look, this isn’t a threat,” She began calm but firm, “I realize there may be nothing and everything going on in your brains at any given moment, and I do not envy you. But with as much knowledge as you have, with your disgusting hope to live forever in absolute control, with your pills as a veil to whatever reality you’ve convinced yourself of, with all the brilliance you claim to have, you have not learned to have relationships, and you have certainly not learned to be happy. Do not come into our world scrutinizing us and claiming you can teach any of us about that.”

  The past to Jonathan was a necessary evil, useful only to live in spite of. Gabe was the past, Jonathan was the future. That was the way their relationship worked. Only the comparison from the past could tell us about the future in Gabe’s mind. Jonathan didn’t think that way. The kids would fail. Gabe would fail. Then he’d figure out how to make it work.

  Chapter 5

  Jonathan stood defiantly and tripped over his chair. May remained planted in her spot. Jonathan looked close to pummeling her. There he went, yelling his same argument. You have no idea what you’re talking about… blah blah. Gabe sighed… defense was the first sign of an unaccepted truth. Poor fool. Gabe watched May’s reaction. Impressed with how she held her ground… looking him right in the eye. It was clear to both of the non-yelling ones who was winning… but, then, maybe Jonathan could see it too. Still, he was going to have a heart attack at this rate. Or an aneurism.

  When he was finished, May sat up on the table, straddled it casually, and commanded, “Okay, now will you please unload your pockets.”

  Watching them carefully unload and finishing the last of her own soup, nothing slipped her eye. She wanted to know what they were trying to hide. How could Gabe conceal the gun? He tried to hide it behind beef jerky. She saw he was trying to deceive her, but said nothing. Patting himself down, he made sure his pockets were empty. And they all were except one. Oh… He thought, with a sense of doom. He finally remembered the last item, which was in his back pocket. There was nothing left to cover it. It wasn’t very big. Just a little green book.

  …

  Just a little book… that was given to him as he ran down the street to his flat in Miami, collecting the last of his personal items as threats came from every TV he passed. America was finally fully involved in World War three. Bombs were now falling in New York, Chicago, and Denver. Miami wasn’t a target yet; people still moving, trying to be normal, but there were less people than usual. He remembered, all too clearly, crossing the street where a few tall buildings loomed with glass windows, some with distorted reflections, others with dark, but picture perfect, mirrors of him running and causing panic in the eyes of passersby. A man on the corner was yelling something and holding up little green books. Gabe normally avoided those kind of people, but today he didn’t have time. Running passed as fast as his chicken legs could go, a book was shoved at him. No trash cans were immediately available, so he put it in his pocket. And there it has been since.

  …

  Why hasn’t he gotten rid of it? Because it was too dangerous to pull out in anyone’s view. Any other time would have been better to have taken the risk than this time. But… he just forgot. The last several times, no one has watched them with such skepticism. He wasn’t thinking about it.

  The second he hesitated was enough to tip May off, but again, she didn’t say anything. Jonathan was preoccupied with twenty more things he still needed to unpack. Little green book in his fingertips, slipped out of the pocket and into the sack, nonchalant as he could do. Perhaps she would think it was a notebook, a little tempting notebook with lots of information about him and Jonathan, about the world before, about science and destroying life, creating it, and coming back to life. There was nothing like that for her to find, as a matter of fact it might make very little sense to her. Would she try to take it? Most likely… at some point.

  Gabe closed up his pack as he finished making sense of the lack of animals. Dane came in alone, with two pairs of pants. The others must have been up to something else. He seemed in a much better mood than in the jungle. When he got to May, Gabe watched closely. Dane patted May’s abdomen with his knuckles and brought up what he heard had happened when she told the other two boys to leave the room. He smiled at her and she returned the smile, explaining and shaking her head. “What would you have done, huh?” She asked.

  “I left them in your charge to begin with, I think that says enough.” Dane laughed and caught Gabe’s eye.

  It just took a few seconds for the dynamics and tension of the room to change. When May saw that Gabe was staring at them hopelessly, and then back at the pants, she realized he was waiting for her to leave. She put her hand on Dane’s shoulder and said seriously, “Well, I’ll just be right outside if you need me.”

  “Just come in if you hear me scream.”

  Gabe added, “But make sure you close your eyes, goodness knows what Jonathan looks like naked.”

  May laughed genuinely and Gabe lifted a corner of his mouth.

  Ugh. So uncomfortable. Nearly naked. Gabe wanted to cry… so did probably everyone who saw him. So skinny, so wrinkly, so many scars, he was always helpless when death came, by knife, by the remedy, by fire, by beating. Then and only then was he the victim, and what a piteous, lamentable sight he was with his feeble hunch in his old, worn out body. What was death? He thought. Sure, on one level, it was a chance of rebirth. Death was the realization of his deepest fears, a drifting, and a limbo. He’d seen no God nor Devil in death, only himself.

  Surely if there was a Hell, he deserved it, and since he never arrived there, unless Hell was nothingness, it was obvious to him there was nothing and would truly be even less of nothing if they didn’t clone themselves and wait around to return to their bodies. A tiny piece of their ‘soul’, as most faithful hopefuls would have it, was a collective of memories and neurons firing in their brains accordingly. Thus, they and their ‘souls’ linger.

  Gabe found it fascinating that no matter what nation they showed up in, they always had at least enough clothes to cover genitals and women’s breasts. Apparently it was so built in to society that each time they start over… while they are less and less capable of making suitable clothing, the next priority to food and shelter was any type of clothing. Of course it made sense to Gabe… he’d have found clothing before food… but even those without good capability to make clothes, still feel so uncomfortable being publicly naked.

  Jonathan still hadn’t changed. It wasn’t because he was afraid of nakedness. He probably would walk around naked if he wouldn’t be shunned. The refusal was all a need for control. Since Jonathan wasn’t changing his stance on what he would wear, Dane left with Gabe into town with Miek. May and Samson stayed with Jonathan.

  In town Dane simply let Gabe lead. If there was something he was looking for, it was admissible in Dane’s mind to let him search. Dane was in no hurry, ever, and certainly expected to learn something as well. Gabe periodically asked questions, which Dane was fine answering. Though Dane was certainly not cruel he couldn’t help but laugh at the way Gabe walked with his head down in embarrassment. Laughing, he said, “Gabe, they can see you even if you can’t see them. Besides I don’t know how much you can learn from the ground.”

  “Plenty!” He grumbled… then he sighed, “Just… let me get used to it.”

  Dane chuckled loudly again. Frequently Dane was being stopped by people who he hadn’t seen in a while, stopping to chat or flirt. Maybe Dane was used to this because he had an incredible skill to keep conversations short. A lot of girls did their darndest to flirt with him, but they weren’t getting much in return. Twice he stopped to give big, more meaningful hugs, once, even lifted the girl in the air, then when he kissed her on the crown of her head, Gabe assumed they were somehow related. The other seemed like she was an old friend, who hadn’t seen him for the full two years since h
e left. This was teaching Gabe. Males were definitely in a more typical role again. This might work… Gabe thought. He, himself, was not anti-feminist, but just preferred definitive lines of responsibility.

  The town wasn’t all that large, in a few days they could cover all of it, if needed. Throughout the day, people were walking around selling food, while Gabe watched the money exchanges and asked questions about the economy. He was grateful to see something totally opposite of the first time they were cloned: People with attempted braces, some others trying to imitate television, cell phones, printing… the awful thing was that no one knew how they were actually made. How long had it been since those things had been taken for granted and obsessed over… without understanding how it all worked. With no smart and smarter phones, they couldn’t be resourceful enough to manage to clothe themselves, hardly. It took this long for people to be okay simplifying. That amazed Gabe. You’d think once the second or third generation had come along, they would have figured it out. Guess they just didn’t know how… That didn’t make sense to Gabe. Not in all of his research. You figure out how to survive. But… they didn’t know how… they didn’t even seem to recognize that they didn’t know how. We chose smart people, educated, knowledgeable people and attempted to train them on survival techniques… didn’t we try?

  How could you blame them though… those things weren’t needed in the time they lived. Physical survival had a totally different meaning. And, communal survival… that was the more difficult thing, along with personal sanity.

  Anyways, they ended up at Dane’s house by the end of the trip. May and Jonathan were just entering the premises as well. Jonathan had finally changed. He seemed wildly forlorn.

  “She just sat there! She didn’t say a word to me, and just waited… for six hours!”

  “Worked, didn’t it?” She shrugged. Miek ran all the way across the room, rather dramatically and gave her a high five.

  Gabe sat, clutching their baskets to his bare chest and sat in a confused stupor of anger and loss.

  May sat next to Gabe and asked, “How was your trip to town?”

  “Maybe instead you should ask him how the dirt looked.” Dane said and laughed.

  Gabe became defensive and explained that he learned a lot more than they could have imagined. And that it was good news, too, so don’t go pissing him off unless you want to cease to exist. All of the kids laughed at him. They weren’t taking him seriously. The threat in their minds was humorous. Mostly this was irritating because he was starting to consider what it would mean to settle here – once they did all of their research and proved that things were okay. They seem to not be frightened of anything. Is that something to worry about? Gabe wondered.

  When they walked in to Dane’s house, they didn’t receive much of a greeting. Supposedly, Dane had given her a heads up that they were coming. The house was unbearably dark and Jonathan had decided to wait outside. Gabe would have, too, if he hadn’t been as concerned with their behavior and relationships as he was. Dane’s mother was also quite thin and quite a bit more petite than May. She was bossy and firm and all but ignored them.

  What Gabe wanted to know was if she was normally this snippy or if it was related to frustration with Dane.

  That night Dane’s mother fed them all. It wasn’t until she sat down at the dinner table that she relaxed and smiled. She was a woman in her forties with lots of work to do and four boys (plus company) to attend to. Nonetheless, Gabe thought that she was as accommodating as could be expected of such a busy woman. Their house was larger than most. Probably because of the large number of boys she had birthed had helped to build it. A boy that was older than Dane, with the same charming smile came in to hug them. The family seemed to have met May before, but didn’t know her really well.

  Regardless, May had a knack for getting in deep political or philosophical decisions with everyone she met. At the dinner table she was arguing passionately to this older, blonder version of Dane, who was getting frustrated and just as passionate. They didn’t raise their voices, but they were ignoring everyone else at the table.

  Three teenage children also joined, including the girl Gabe saw Dane hug and kiss earlier. She looked nothing like the four boys, or their mother for that matter. She was just below Dane age-wise and they were very close. She pushed her way between Jonathan and Dane and forced a chair to fit at the already crowded table, then started rapidly into conversation with Dane as if he had never left.

  Before the conversation really kicked off among the group, and with his eyes now adjusted, he got a look around the room. There were just a few cupboards and the kitchen was spotless, despite the cooking she had just done, which Gabe discovered, with surprise, was partially Dane’s doing. Everywhere else looked like a tornado came through. Gabe imagined it must have been really hard to make things dirty when they had so few belongings. But, maybe they had more belongings then it seemed by his association with Dane, who basically had the clothes on his back, his water bottle, and food.

  Amidst the mess were dozens of books strew or stacked around the room.

  There was a front door and a back door, and the nicely carved table was the focal point of everything in the room. Gabe couldn’t quite identify the smell, but it hinted of moldy, musky pine, eggs, and dirt. Maybe to them it was kind of a homey smell?

  Gabe looked over to check on his partner, who was brooding, stuck in between Dane’s sister and Dane’s youngest brother. He looked like he was condemning everything from the conversation to the smell, which was normal, so Gabe continued to ignore him.

  The conversation became more group oriented when Dane began to list off all of the places he’s been and the work he and May had done. He made the list quickly, then turned the conversation back to them and asked how things had been for the last few years. His mother was apparently never intentionally rude when she spoke, but spoke as though she was always trying to find out a secret, with her sly smile and bold voice.

  “Dane, I think you’d really like that book over there.” She said, “I’ve finished it twice. I think it’s bogus, but I think it’s humorous bogus, if you know what I mean.”

  Dane laughed, “yeah, it looks like there’s been lot of research going on around here.”

  “I kind of like to pick it apart. Especially if you read it side by side with that one book you really like… um… origins something…”

  This was the small talk, apparently, in their family. It took an entire hour to get to gossip. Gabe really wanted to bring up a particular topic at the table related to this gossip… though wasn’t sure how appropriate it was. Dane’s father was nowhere to be seen and was never made mention of. Other names came up… one of them could have been Dane’s father, Gabe supposed. Men bringing support.

  May, who finally had cordially ended her debate, was sitting next to Gabe and she looked over and said quietly that he looked confused and asked if he would like an explanation for something. It wasn’t like him to withhold thoughts. He explained that he wasn’t sure if it was appropriate but that he wanted to know about families and why there was no Father around.

  After a few minutes for clarification on both ends, May finally understood that traditional family was, ideally, though rarely in practice, as Gabe ever saw, a lasting and supportive function. It had declined over time. Gabe then learned that marriage, as even a word, and if possible, less as an idea was not even recognized. While becoming for yourself… a self-sufficient human being was the goal, any philosopher or anthropologist would say that healthy family relationships were the only proper beginning. Psychologists made a living off of failed and misunderstood relationships. Obviously the failing of that organization was seen poorly because of how it was portrayed in the media throughout history, why so many people were lacking and went to counselors to have problems “fixed”.

  Though, people seemed to become complacent over the years… it was expected to be a failed organization… and so no surprise that the same set-up was stil
l not right; there was no good example. Still, Gabe thought, if the function now was working, and women didn’t feel oppressed…

  Gabe even learned that in May’s own family, her father was more of a friend to her. He lived on the other side of town and she would visit for fun. The rest of her siblings came from two fathers. Three from one, two from another. One, their mother would talk to in town when she saw him, and the other who had left town and they didn’t know where he was. May seemed both very unconcerned with the relationships, as if none of these things were important facts, but was also contemplative…

  Then she said this, “I’ve been working on a theory for a while now, and you just helped me explain a lot to myself. Thanks.” She didn’t smile, though, as he would have expected. She zoned out, lost in her thoughts.

  It also occurred to Gabe that Dane took an unconventional route. While leaving and sustaining yourself was expected, his curiosity and carefree attitude were exaggerations of his mother’s and an older brother’s who also had joined them. But, his mother seemed proud of his work and his research and was very curious for the details. Suddenly, it made sense why Dane was attached to May. She possessed most of his mother’s admirable qualities. Some of the younger siblings clearly took after his buoyancy, while others were more sterile. They laughed and teased and fought and argued and took sides… just like any average American family… right?

  Gabe looked down at his plate and saw eggs… wait, eggs? A chicken survived?

  Gabe was finally just figuring it all out. About time. He wasn’t as strong as he thought he was. He would slip; he was slipping already. He was the naked one; the one who forgot his clothes in this nightmare. Jonathan would last a few weeks longer at least and then he’d have to journey back to the cave for more medicine. He could make that happen easily enough by tempting them with knowledge… with seeing the future.