Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart

by Steven Erikson

“Not at this time. Now, Samantha, would you like to see the latest fashions?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “It’s always struck me as presumptuous to think that our perception of reality constitutes all there is. Our senses are severely limited in their frequency-range of perception, and even the technology we have created to enhance our senses still only hints at all that’s out there. So when I hear some famous advocate of science blathering on about a mechanistic universe, I am dumbfounded at the presumption, and the arrogance implicit in their certainty. The truth is, they don’t know shit.”

  SAMANTHA AUGUST

  SARAH RIDDLE: Today as our guest we have Richard Fallow, Minister of the Holy Evangelical Church and now Minister of God’s Children, which in your press release two days ago you described as a pan-denominational alliance. First off, welcome.

  RICHARD FALLOW: Thank you, Sarah, and may I extend my greetings to all of your many viewers. We are in an age of great distress and now, more than ever before, we are facing the need to unite, as a species, as the rightful inheritors of God’s wonderful creation that is this Earth.

  RIDDLE: Indeed. In your announcement of a new Church of God’s Children, you made explicit the conviction that humans are unique in having been created in God’s image—

  FALLOW: As explicit as the Bible, Sarah.

  RIDDLE: Yes, thank you, but to continue my question. Having made it clear that you believe humanity has been created in God’s image, do you now envisage the unknown extraterrestrials as being essentially human as well? And if not—if they aren’t human, that is—then what do you consider their place in God’s universe?

  FALLOW: Now Sarah, you’ve seen the recordings from the Chinese astronauts, and we’ve all seen depictions of the Greys—we know what they look like and they certainly don’t look like us! Furthermore and to the point, we now know what those Greys were doing to humans. Can you even imagine the horror of being a prisoner at that base? Kept alive for the sole purpose of torture—can anyone—anyone at all—not see these Greys as pure evil?

  RIDDLE: The images were truly horrifying, sir, but I wasn’t speaking about the Greys. I was referring to our Benefactors, as they’ve come to be called.

  FALLOW (with an expansive wave): You’re not getting it, Sarah. Up there, out there, is nothing more than Satan’s playground. In space. Those other hellish planets, the ghastly aliens feeding on our spiritual blood—listen! God is testing us. God is showing us that we don’t belong out there. That if we leave our world, if we venture into that cold, lifeless expanse, if we set foot on alien planets and shake hands with alien species, we have willingly stepped into Satan’s realm. If we do so, if we do all that, we will surely be damned.

  RIDDLE: Accordingly, your stated manifest for the Church of God’s Children is a wholesale rejection of all that our Benefactors are offering us.

  FALLOW: Absolutely. They have arrived with a poisoned apple, Sarah. Everything we’ve been offered—this clean engine—do you know what the scientists are saying about it? It draws power from an unknown realm. Well, how hard is it to realize just where that power is coming from? Tainted, Sarah, all tainted. Now they’re talking about converting all our cars, using this EFFE engine—

  RIDDLE: It doesn’t pollute, doesn’t demand billions of gallons of oil—

  FALLOW: Oil which was put there for our use! And what about these other so-called gifts? Food to the starving, water to the thirsty, all very well. In fact, utterly wonderful. But we all know there’s a catch. We know it’s coming. We’re being baited, Sarah. Lured into temptation.

  RIDDLE: And the end of violence?

  FALLOW: The loss of free will, you mean. Look, God gave us free will for a reason. You cannot make a moral choice when choice is denied to you. God will judge you when your mortal flesh has passed. He will weigh the good that you have done with the sins you have committed, and His judgement is final and absolute. But now, look around. Killers can’t kill. Sinners can’t sin. If a killer can’t kill, how do you know he’s a killer? If a sinner can’t sin, what is there to judge?

  RIDDLE: Presumably God knows what’s in a man’s soul. Isn’t that a cornerstone of the very notion of sin? Sinful desires, sinful thoughts. Although, come to think of it, the idea of confession kind of implies that God can’t know of those sins unless a person confesses them out loud, which hardly—

  FALLOW: You’re confusing us with the Catholic church, Sarah. No, let’s not stray from this topic because it’s vitally important to understanding what has happened to us, what these so-called Benefactors have done.

  RIDDLE: Very well, point taken. So in what aspects of your own life, sir, has your free will be denied to you by the end of violence?

  FALLOW: Excuse me?

  RIDDLE: Well, you seem to be saying that the non-violence has put an end to free will. So I’m wondering if you have a specific instance where your free will has been refused. Your freedom to act, I mean. After all, we’re speaking about violence and that’s a pretty specific mode of behavior. So, violent thoughts can go nowhere now, because they can’t lead to actual violence. But surely, free will isn’t just about violence, is it?

  FALLOW: Well of course not. Don’t put words in my mouth. I was talking about judgement—

  RIDDLE: So you’re saying that God needs the violence in order to make judgement upon us, not just individually but also collectively. But, well, can’t the violent thoughts be enough? For God to cast judgement upon us?

  FALLOW: No, it’s not enough and this is why, Sarah. When a violent thought has no outlet, no means of external expression, it also has no consequences—no, don’t interrupt me again. I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say that there is a consequence, to be found in God’s own judgement. And I would say yes, that’s true, but let’s be honest here—these days that warning has no teeth. No—I wish it were otherwise. Every Sunday I speak on this, at every congregation, at every workshop—but the truth is, we have strayed far, Sarah, far indeed.

  We no longer fear God and accordingly, we no longer fear that there will be eternal consequences to choices we make every day of our lives. No, now it’s down to gambling on what we can get away with.

  RIDDLE: An interesting notion, Minister. Could you not then argue that God just, well, had enough? Seeing us straying so far off the path, He has now sent to us the Benefactors? Perhaps indeed they are working on His behalf? Shutting down all the killing, the bullying, all the terrorizing. Shutting down our destruction of the environment in the name of greed. Stopping us in our tracks, in effect, right there on the path. We can’t take another step forward—we can only go back. Back to our foundations, our notions of who and what we are. Your thoughts?

  FALLOW: I wish I could believe that, Sarah. I truly do. And yes, many people do see these gifts as miracles. Addicts who no longer yearn, no longer suffer. Children no longer starving, or being abused. Criminals no longer thriving in their world of graft. It all seems so … righteous. And yet.

  RIDDLE: And yet?

  FALLOW: Look at those Greys, what they’ve done to us.

  RIDDLE: Well, yes, let’s look at that, then. We have seen what they did to the people they abducted. But now, with all the governments coming clean on what they knew, isn’t it also very clear that those Greys were determined to keep us down here on Earth, to keep us from ever expanding into even our own solar system, never mind other worlds in other systems? In fact, if the Greys were still around, they might be your biggest anonymous supporters to your God’s Children Church and it’s stay-at-home position, wouldn’t they?

  FALLOW: That’s a vile suggestion, Sarah. It’s beneath you.

  RIDDLE: I am simply pointing out that your new church’s aims and that of the Greys are in fact the same: namely, that we should stay here on Earth, no matter what new opportunities are presented to us. You call space Satan’s playground, and space exploration is doing the Devil’s work—did I quote you correctly there? It’s in the press release. And as for
the gifts of the Benefactors here on the ground, you call them temptations, poisoned fruit and therefore, sources of corruption. You call on people to reject the EFFE, to keep their cars and the combustion engines they use, to keep burning up our oil reserves—and I’m sure this is only coincidental, but your Evangelical Church is heavily invested in new oil exploration initiatives, including plans on expanding fracking—well, at least until fracking was denied us, as yet another example of our unmitigated violence on God’s very own earth—

  FALLOW: Now that’s quite enough! We have strayed very far from the draft of questions you provided me earlier—in fact, I feel I have been ambushed here, in a most unprofessional manner—

  RIDDLE: Well, by ‘unprofessional’ I take it to mean, I’ve moved off-script, and you’re right, I did. I’m not sure I was planning to. I don’t think so. But let’s face it, most journalism these days is so rehearsed it’s almost meaningless. We all find ourselves just playing roles. I don’t know, something today just pulled me away from making this show little more than a PR piece on your new church. In the past, I suppose, you’d get me fired after one phone call. And who knows, maybe that will still happen. But I just had to call you out here, Minister Fallow. Your new Church exhorts its followers to side with the Greys—all that stay-on-earth stuff. The Greys wanted us down on the ground, chained to it, kept weak, kept useless. Somehow, I don’t think the Benefactors agree with that. I think they’re offering us an alternative. I don’t know what that is yet, but I admit to having some faith. Curious, isn’t it, Minister, that between us I’m the one espousing faith.

  Minister Fallow?

  (FALLOW has by this point left the stage)

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “We need to separate faith from religion. They are not at all the same thing. Faith is what arises from the spiritual core of your being. Religion is a social construct of organization, establishing specific doctrines to demonstrate a specific belief-system. I make this distinction to preface what I’m about to say about our collective hopes for the future: Faith is not the enemy. Loss of faith is the enemy.”

  SAMANTHA AUGUST

  Docket 19-06, Email Correspondence (Private and Confidential), between Cardinal Joakim Malleat (Rome) and Rabbi Ira Levy (New York City). Office of Public Communications, Vatican …

  My Dear Ira,

  I well recall the wink that followed the question, and while it initially amused me I have had time since to reconsider my rather flippant shrug. You well know how our meetings, as cherished as they are irregular, swiftly elevate discourse until on the one hand we engage in esoteric musing while on the other skirt closely the edge of what our respective responsibilities permit.

  That said, my friend, my shrug was at best evasive and at worst, disingenuous, although in the latter possibility I have in defense little more than some suspicions and suppositions, rather than actual facts. Or so it was at the time of our conversation.

  Once more, then, I skirt the edge of propriety, and while I cannot be specific to the extent that you might desire, I can at the very least say that our precedent in acknowledging the possibility of intelligent life on other worlds was clearly made with contact being a considered eventuality.

  I hope this serves to re-ignite our always-rewarding dialogue.

  Yours Faithfully,

  Joakim

  Joakim, old friend,

  You imagined my lag in writing to you as indicative of my taking offense at your wink and shrug? Far from it, I assure you. No, I took your evasion as necessary given your responsibility within the Vatican. To date, it has never occurred to me that you were being coy out of a need to cover up some hidden knowledge of the Catholic Church regarding those ghastly Greys (which I assume to be the issue you so deftly—shall we say—skirted in your last missive).

  A little knowledge may be a dangerous thing, but helplessness is far worse. We live in a world haunted by helplessness. Just to lift up one’s gaze, to truly look upon our brothers and sisters, our neighbors, our believers and non-believers, is to see the devastating effect of being trapped in a global system where hope is a fool’s dream and success more often than not drips blood. We have spoken of this, my friend, and we have shared the pain and thereby eased it somewhat. May that ever continue.

  I know the challenge of how to place these unknown extra-terrestrials in our respective doctrines has brought chaos to the rank and file, and I’m sure it is the same with you and your colleagues. It certainly is for my fellow rabbis! We are held at an impasse. We know they exist. We know they possess moral agency and, it must be recognized, demonstrable compassion. We had deemed these solely human traits, to the exclusion of most other life-forms on our planet (though I dare suggest that such traits are not as exclusively human as many would believe), and our greatest thinkers worldwide had vehemently argued that such characteristics were necessary pre-requisites to sentience and indeed, civilization (and how the Greys have rattled that motley crew!). So! Chaos again!

  Where do we see the hand of God? Nowhere or everywhere? We beseech the One who guides us, but who guides them?

  No answer is possible at the moment. Until we know more, our impasse remains.

  Personally, as you now know, I was never bothered one way or the other when it came to the possibility and indeed the likelihood of extra-terrestrial beings, of sentient creatures shaped by alien evolution on alien planets. The word ‘children,’ after all, is plural. Inclusivity and exclusivity plague our mortal concerns: is it not presumptuous to imagine that God shares those concerns?

  Perhaps, in the end, our Benefactors will put our petty divisiveness into proper perspective.

  Unless, of course, they’re utterly godless.

  Affectionately yours

  Ira

  My Dear Ira,

  We had suspicions, but little more than that, and what we did have gave us great cause to fear for humanity. Needless to say, the discussions of the matter that took place here were ones to which I was not privy. Above my security clearance, you might say.

  And like you, my time these days is consumed by the challenge of devising formal statements to our brethren, sufficient to give them some measure of peace. But it remains curious, does it not, that even secrecy itself has begun to lose its luster? Silence and denial are such pernicious traits, don’t you think?

  Oh, I hear you laughing, my dear friend. Shall the Vatican finally come clean? On all matters no matter how volatile the truths revealed? Are you jostling to lay out the Kabbalah? No, I thought not.

  Can you feel it? This siege we are under? When we speak on behalf of our faiths, how much is enough, how much is too much? The hand we grasp in guiding can easily pull free from our grip at the utterance of one truth too many.

  It remains my belief that the believers will prove more resilient than the non-believers (and isn’t it curious now how we set aside the clash of faiths as merely nominally relevant in the face of that deeper division? To believe in a higher power, or not? This is where the dialogue belongs). A universe opened wide to us challenges our sense of place within it, but if we are to have purpose, then we must have cause, and that cause must be, at its heart, just.

  Secularists will surely struggle with what awaits us. Insignificance is a bitter pill to swallow. Like you, my dear friend, I am heartened by this sense of morality and compassion. And yet, at the same time, I am made fearful by this prohibition of violence—does that shock you? We have seen an end to war and yet we live! How is this possible? What wounds do we now bear with this new knowledge of what is possible in the absence of threat and coercion? Can we ever go back?

  There is talk here of a Synod. But I dream of an inter-faith colloquium. All the faiths, brought together to discuss the ramifications of all that has befallen us, and all that is still to come.

  Astonishingly, this no longer seems so impossible.

  Yours Faithfully,

  Joakim

  Joakim, old friend,

  You astonish me! All your
words, all your thoughts on the matter, yet still you choose to dance round the one subject that you must be burning to broach. Inclusivity and exclusivity. Yes, well, how does a Jew answer that one? The Chosen People is not a casual term, after all.

  Am I being blasphemous in posing the notion that ‘chosen’ is singular only in the specific? That many peoples can therefore be ‘chosen’? That to be Chosen is to acknowledge the continuity of cultural history, of blood-lines, in such a manner as to elevate the very essence of self-identity? To be a Chosen People is as much a responsibility as it is a privilege—but isn’t it interesting how questions of interpretation ultimately pale in the face of the Big Question?

  Are we still with God? Is God still with us?

  For too long in our collective history, our notions of faith have been contracting, in the proliferation of schism, sectarianism, an endless process of division and subdivision, all bound to the interpretive sphere of what God wants from us. And where has that left us? Woefully unprepared to even so much as consider a fundamental expansion of faith. Trapped in our language of tenets, proscriptions and prescriptions that define the very essence of debate in our exclusively human sphere, we never once gave serious consideration to what might happen should that sphere cease to be exclusively human.

  What comes of this? Yet more fractionalization, as the world shrinks to a navel? Tempests in the tea-cup, with the table’s length now stretching into infinity.

  Ah, old friend, what future sorrows now await us?

  Affectionately yours

  Ira

  My Dear Ira,

  I admit that the divisiveness occurring in the United States prior to the ET intervention (can we call it that? Is this not a most firm hand, crashing down to shake human-ity’s crowded table?) was leading me to despair. And I well recall your notes of alarm sounded on behalf of Jews resident in your country, not to mention all other minorities, be they of a particular skin color or religion (or gender!) in the wake of your country’s last two elections. We seemed to be headed into troubled times, my friend.