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Almost Sane,
But I’m Working on It
A tingling sensation overwhelms my left arm as I lift it up with my right hand and place it straight next to my body. I fell asleep on my arm again. I hate it when that happens. I roll over on my back and slowly open my eyes. I begin to sit up as my eyes adjust to the light. I look straight, expecting to see the glowing red lines of my digital clock, telling me that I’m late for school, but it’s not there. In fact, the entire wall is gone! I look around. “What the crap…” I whisper to myself. “Stay cool, there’s probably a video camera somewhere in here.” There is nothing but shiny white ground as far as my eyes could see. No, wait … they’re clouds. Clouds?
“Hello!” I scream. No response. I stand up and yell again. “Hey! Is anybody there?!” Still nothing. I stand up and take a look at myself. I'm fully intact; there are no missing appendages, no abnormal growths; everything seems to be in order, except my clothes are missing. I don’t recall anyone ever wanting to kidnap me. I must have had a lot of fun last night; I don’t remember how I got here. Maybe I’ve finally gone insane. I suppose it is about time, but I could have sworn it would be at least a couple more years.
“Well God damn it…what do I do now?” I ask myself. I hear an electric device power up somewhere behind me. A sharp pain suddenly consumes the back of my head. My body falls limp for a split second and I let out a quiet cough, too startled to scream.
“Watch your language!” A booming voice fills the atmosphere.
“What the fuck what that?!” I demand as I reach back behind my ear. I find a small electronic device graphed into my skin. “What is this?! What kind of sick joke is this?!”
“I am God.”
“Yeah right, get me out of here before I sue your ass. And where are my clothes You sick bastard! I bet you were taking pictures of me to jack off to later, weren’t you! Damn, I wouldn’t be surprised. And what is this crap behind my ear?”
“Like I said, I am God. You have chosen to ignore me throughout your life, now you still deny me even though I appear before you.”
“Well no shit, aren’t we all? Why don’t you prove it!”
“Very well.”
The clouds above me turn black and the hair on my arms and head become erect.
“…Oh crap. Just kidding!—”
What must have been the fattest lightning bolt ever comes from the clouds and slaps me on the head. I feel an unbearable burning sensation. I fall to my knees and grab what remains of my charred hair.
“Holy shit!” I scream as the electronic charging sound starts up again. “Oh no…” My body curls up and I grab my knees and grit my teeth to bear the pain.
“Are you satisfied now?” The voice booms in once again.
After a moment, I sit up, stunned. “Is this for real? Am I really dead?”
“Sorry Austin, this is the truth. You have died and now you must undergo judgment.”
“Yeah….of course…” I mumble, dazed and confused. I gather myself and stand up again. “Wasn’t that overdoing it a bit! I thought you were supposed to be nice!”
“Hey! You’re in my house now, and you must play by my rules! It seems as though you are a special case and need to be judged individually.”
“Wait a second, you’re God?! You exist!”
“No shit.” A jury bench emerges from beneath the clouds and is filled with random people in white robes and wings. Those must be angels.
“Whoa, hey now Mr. Perfect, how is it that you get to swear without getting your brains electrocuted?”
“I am God.”
“Of course, how could I forget. So anyway, how does this thing work? I thought I should be in hell by now then if I’m dead.”
“You are a special case.”
“Awwww, thanks. But why is that, your highness?”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. What would you rather I call you? My almighty super duper Lord?”
“You can be normal and call me Lord, Father, or just plain God is fine.”
“You know, you’ve got some kind of superiority complex if you ask me. Why can’t we treat you as an equal? I mean, I guess we aren’t, but still, it would be much nicer of you. Aren’t you supposed to be like, really nice anyways?”
“I love you all as a parent, and like a parent, I require respect.”
“Yeah, but it’s still not nice. If you’re so loving, why can’t you treat us as equals? That’s what my Dad does. Even for really complicated decisions, if I would ask him his reasoning, he would always tell me an answer, even if he knew I wouldn’t be able to understand it. Over time though, I would be able to understand more and more, until I could even respond to his reasoning and question him. Like that one time with my vegetables."
"Vegetables?"
"Yeah, of course when I was younger I complained when I had excess greens on my plate and I'd always ask why I had to eat them. My mom would just tell me that 'It's good for you! Eat it!' My dad, however, would be able to tell me the types of nutrients found in each particular vegetable and the effect it has on my health. I asked him if I could eat other foods instead. He would list other foods, usually other vegetables, which contained the same nutrients and we would come to an agreement where if I agreed to finish the current plate, we would get the agreed upon foods next time. That type of conversation with my Dad allowed me to appreciate reason and logic, which I hold as very important values. Why don’t you do the same?! Why don’t you share your reasons with us?!”
“You’ll understand in time.”
“What kind of answer is that?! That’s something my mom would say. She would always be telling be things like ‘Hurry and eat your noodles or else they’ll grow and you won’t be able to finish them.’ They would be things which aren’t even true, but she would say them because it encourages the behavior she wants. But the thing is, I would ask her why she says that kind of lie instead of telling me the truth, but I was never able to get a straight answer.”
“All you do is complain, don’t you?”
“Why don’t you go cry to your mommy about it.”
“Don’t make me shock you again. We’re giving you a chance to be admitted into heaven, you should be grateful!”
“Yeah, okay. But can I get some clothes first? I feel kind of…well…naked.”
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before. You know I exist everywhere at every time.”
*cough* “Pervert”
“Well, aren’t you clever. Look, we’ve been trying to decide your admission into Heaven, but for some reason we can’t understand you, I think it has something to do with that free will thing; I knew I was making a mistake with that. So I ask you, why did you reject me while you were alive? Why did you wish to work to destroy my existence? What drove you to do such things? Describe to us, what has made you the way you are. Tell us your reasoning and we will decide if you deserve admittance into heaven.”
“Well…you’re asking a lot. I mean, lots of things contributed to make me who I am… er… who I was.”
“You can use present tense.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Describe the main events, then we will decide if you are truly evil, or just misunderstood.”
“Well, because you asked me why I didn’t like you while I was alive, I’ll begin with that. When I was young, my mom used to send me to church every week. This is before I can remember, so I have to go by what she tells me. According to her story, however, I started coming home and telling everyone that ‘God gave us this, we should be thankful.’ And ‘God gave us that, we should praise him’.”
“As you well should have.”
“Hey! Who’s telling the story here? Anyway, she said that it made her worry. As I look back on it, I’m very glad that my mom stopped taking me to church. It sounds like I was just a little kid being brainwashed by that stuff.”
“But why was your mother scared? It is only natural for a child to recognize his maker and caretaker.”
“Well, she is very open to different types of beliefs. Her mother had forced her to go to a temple when she was young and she hated it. When she grew up, she explored many different religions on her own and decided that the Christian religion would be the best for life in America. She felt that I was too weak minded, too young, or too easily brainwashed to go to church. Why did you have to make religion so illogical anyways?! Why couldn’t you have made it so that it was easy to believe? I mean, you make it so hard for some people like me, and then you give such a harsh punishment for being myself. That doesn’t seem fair to me.”
“Life’s not fair.”
“Well, I’m dead aren’t I? What now?”
“Death’s not fair.”
“Argh! Whatever! But that’s not the only event which gave me my belief, or rather, non belief in, well … you. I have a friend named James, you know who I’m talking about?”
“Of course.”
“Yes…of course. So he’s a really religious guy, as I’m sure you know. We would always argue over our beliefs. I couldn’t see his belief as logical, and he couldn’t consider my logic as plausible. For example, we were arguing about life needing a purpose. I saw it as more plausible that life didn’t have a purpose; that life didn’t need a purpose. I was fine entertaining the thought that things are all governed by natural and mathematical laws which determine what is going to happen. To me, things happen, they don’t need to happen for a reason. James, however, saw it illogical to think this way. He saw life with a meaning and purpose as more logical. We differ on many logical decisions such as this. I’ve also realized that such basic logical decisions determined ultimately if one were going to be able to accept a religion as true. To me however, my logic was based on evidence which could be seen in the current world. All his evidence came from the bible. I mean, that book is well written and all, but to have that as your only piece of evidence seems questionable to me. Plus, I’ve heard there are a lot of inconsistencies in it, I mean, I thought you were perfect? Did you even proof read it!?”
“I’d like to see you do better.”
“True. So you see, a lot of the logical connections needed for me to believe in you, I was lacking. I guess you could call me ‘defective’.”
“You can say that again.”
“Yeah, garbage in garbage out, Master."
"Lord."
"Whatever. Oh, and another event. You know about Christine right? What was the deal with that? She was the most devout religious person I’ve ever known. And she was killed in a car accident on her way to a religious retreat! Why did you let that happen? Or did you even care?! It seemed to me that you either didn't exist, or you were a sick bastard. What's the deal with that?!”
“You’ll understand in time.”
“Yea, I bet.”
“You must not hate what you don’t understand.”
“Right… so as you can see, you didn’t really give me much to work with. I don’t see how you can complain about me not believing in you! From that basis of non-believing came my motivation and my search for a possible purpose in life, which is the thing I think you have a problem with.”
“Could you explain that in more detail?”
“So you see, because I didn’t believe in your religions, it meant that I didn’t believe in an afterlife. Well, at least an afterlife as I am currently experiencing. I thought that the short time I had on Earth was all I was ever going to have. I didn’t want it to end.”
“So this made you angry?”
“Well, how would you feel if you knew you were going to die and be turned into nothingness? But some good did come from it. I valued my time very much because I felt I had so little of it. I tried to make sure I enjoyed every moment of it and I tried to make sure I did my best at everything I did, whether that was playing a game or studying for a test. I’m sure you have no idea how it might feel to have a limit on time, since you are pretty much the opposite, huh?”
“That’s like asking a mouse what it feels like to be playing poker with a horse.”
“You’re a strange guy, you know that?”
“Return to your story.”
“Well sorrrrry Mr. God. So you see, knowing that I only had a limited, short time to spend on Earth, I figured I could take either of two paths. One path was to have as much fun as I could, you know, do the drinking thing, the pot, the partying. But the other path was to plan for the future and try to make sense of this life by living as long as I could and experiencing as many things as I could in hopes of possibly making sense of the world through knowledge. I had chosen the second path, but I tried to have fun on the way as well, just in case I happen to have a sudden end, like right now. But you see, I’m very curious by nature. I want to know how things work, when, how, and if the human race will end. I want to know what is going to happen. I’ve thought long and hard about where I could have gotten this attribute from, but the only source I could think of was my inability to get things to work out my way. Like when I was playing with my Legos or building blocks, I would put the blocks a certain way, but the structure was too weak and it would fall down. Eventually I learned the rules and used them to make Lego and block buildings the way I wanted them. I found that through understanding I was able to get things done my way. I learned that through knowledge came the ability to conquer. Putting these two ideas together, the short time here, and the curiosity, I was naturally attracted to the aspect of nanotechnology, cryogenics, and, as you might put it, trying to ignore the possibility of an afterlife. As I’m sure you know, bio-nanotechnology offered me a possibility for an answer to my problem of only having a short time on Earth. It seems to have the potential to allow humans to live indefinitely through microscopic machines which are able to regenerate human tissues. Cryogenics offered me a possibility for revival if the nanotechnology did not advance enough in my own life time by preserving my body after death. Hey, that means I should be frozen right now then, huh? What if they revive me, then I believe in you, then I die again?”
“The original ruling will still stand.”
“Darn. Well, as you can piece together, I wanted technology to be available so that I could have the possibility of living longer than my genetically allotted time. Making that my life goal, I planned on going into research to uncover the information needed to pursue such a goal.”
“Very interesting. So what made you choose the path of long term planning rather than the short plan of having fun all the time?”
“Well, that’s kind of personal.”
“Do you forget who you’re talking to?”
“Yeah, yeah, sorry. So you see, as “desperate for sympathy” as this might sound, I’ve never been very good with the ladies, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Of course. I mean, I’ve never had a girlfriend, never been kissed, although that one time, my friend kind of trip-intentional kissed my earlobe when she was piss drunk at about four in the morning, but I don’t think that really counts. But the message here is that I’m just not really good in that area. Plus, I’m really picky, so that doesn’t help much either. My fear was that I would end up eighty years old, single, and living in an apartment where I would walk around all day in my underwear. If I hadn’t died just now, what would my life have been like when I am eighty?”
“Pretty much like how you described. Although you would have pee stains on your underwear.”
“Well damn…I guess I made the right decision then. It was this, the fact that I’m not too great with the ladies that attributed to my choice of path. The first path, having fun and ‘sinning’ all the time, was looking harder and harder for me to do, especially without the ability to woo the opposite sex. So I figure, if I can’t go the path of greatest pleasure, I could at least take my other path, the desire for knowledge. I will study as hard as I could and learn as much as I could. I figure that one path I know I can do is better than another path which I may never be able to get on.”
“Very good. We will need a few moments to calculate your result.”
“Oh, but I still have one more experience to tell you about. It isn’t really a value, but it was an experience which made me the way I am.”
“Very well, let’s hear it.”
“It makes me feel like a chatty school girl to talk about mindless drama such as this, but this event really did affect the kind of person I am today. It all started in the spring time of senior year. This story revolves around the six of us, me, two of my guy friends, and three girls. All three of the girls are in love with guy number one, although they all denied it for fear of making the other girls angry. The ‘senior prom’ was coming around and of course my friend had his first pick. So everything works out, they both like each other and perfection had been reached. One of the other girls asked my other friend, but they didn’t like each other like that, so it was pretty cool. So then we have me and that other girl. It seemed perfect, no? We both needed dates, and her friends said she didn’t have anyone in mind to ask. So I get to know her a little better and yes, I was fairly attracted to her. So I asked her and everything was supposed to be cool, until strange forces started to kick in. Ever since I asked her, she would start being, well…very impolite. For example, a group of friends and I were hanging out and two of them left to go get food. There was an awkward silence. So I’m like “Sooooo….anything new with you guys?” So I thought that it was an alright way to start a new conversation. But the response I received was, ‘You know, you don’t have to say something just because nobody else is talking.’ I was kind of stunned. She had never acted like that before. I was just acting normally. It was as if I had insulted her somehow. I didn’t understand the problem, perhaps it was some woman thing. So at the time I just kept quiet. I later asked one of her friends about it and she had no clue why she was being, what I like to call now, a bitch.”
“Come now, don’t call her a bitch, she obviously liked you too.”
“Really? That’s a funny way of showing it. I’ll never understand these females…”
“Well, keep trying for the females because we don’t allow fags in heaven.”
“What did you just say?! Did you just call homosexuals fags?!”
“What? You didn’t know I hate fags?”
“Well, I heard rumors…but I never expected…”
“Well, now you know.”
“Alright...well, back to my story. Incidents like this happened over and over again, and each time I didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t understand what was happening; she was so nice in the past. So as prom approached, it only got worse and worse. I didn’t even want to go with her the day of prom, but I figured it would be too mean to ditch her then.”
“You know you still liked her.”
“Well, I suppose I did, but she was sure testing me. She would get mad at other people and take out her frustration on me. I mean ON me, not with me. Then she sat at a different table and almost ignored me the entire time, except when wanting my jacket of course; it was on a boat and was pretty cold. Alright, so I was pissed. This was when I first learned to stand up for myself. I asked her what her problem was, after the prom had past. She told me that she was annoyed about how submissive I was and the fact that I didn’t confront her when she first pissed me off. It didn’t make sense to me, but I tried to change. However, things kept getting worse and worse. It seemed that my friends had to act as marriage counselors for us, and we weren't even going out! I confronted her time and time again and complained about her treatment towards me. This was about the time I could start articulating my argument. The previous arguments we’ve had, she had basically dominated with her statements, which I let pass because I still wasn’t good at argument and I tried not to offend her. So I gradually learned how to disprove her points and reinforce my points. I would tell her with the most probable, logical steps that she was wrong. I was able to stand up for myself. Eventually she must have either given up or recognized the error of her ways. She told me that she liked me and that was the reason she was mean to me. She was trying to change me to be like how she wanted. Okay, so I guess her plan worked. I wasn’t submissive anymore, only problem was that I was pissed. I didn’t like her methods and I didn’t like her. She was simply “that bitch” to me. She would keep telling me that she would change. And I gave her multiple chances, each time she couldn’t separate from her old self. So I just got tired of it. This is where I learned how to avoid my “drama” problems entirely. I just didn’t handle it anymore. I told her that we aren’t friends anymore because the way she is treating me causes me more discomfort than it counteracts in “friendship-ness”, although I’m sure I didn’t use those words exactly. So from that, I learned that I have to stick up for myself and that nobody else will do so for me. That event also taught me how to speak my thoughts and to voice my opinion.”
“Wow, you really do suck with the ladies.”
“Yea, rub salt on my wounds why don’t you.”
“Well, you have described in enough detail how you have become the person you have become. Now we will decide your fate.”
“It’s that simple huh? I guess I’ll just have a look around while I wait.” I stand up and test the buoyancy of the ground with my heel. Kind of soft and fluffy. I crouch down and lick the floor.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” God wonders out loud.
“Come on, don’t you know by now? I’m just curious about how it tastes. It’s not like I’m going to get sick and die by licking the floor now.”
“You’re a strange kid.”
The floor tastes like sweaty pillow, which is strange because I would think that it would taste more like marshmallows. My eyes open once again and I’m peering through my eye lashes through the small crack between my eyelids downward into my pillow.
It was just a dream? How stupid of me, it must have been a dream; there’s no such thing as a second chance.
Posted by Austin Day on 6/21/04; 9:11:17 PM
from the dept.
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