Marc Estrin

“Geheimniskoalition” the Vice-President translated.

Julius surveyed the wrinkled faces dotting the Office of Counter-Terrorism Operations, xanthotic raisins in a high-tech scone.

“I’m sorry. Shall we go round the circle and do introductions?” The Vice-President was always polite.

“Daryl Plunk, Korea desk, Birthright Foundation.”

“Gen. Plunk is part-time DOD, retired.”

“Carolyn Worthington, Earth Friends.” She looked the very model of the upright Quaker she was.

“You’re next,” the VP urged.

“Oh. Julius Marantz.”

“Organization?”

“Middlebury College, um Physics Department.”

“Edgar?”

“Edgar X. Thornbottom, Society of Jesus, World Council of Churches. Call me Thorn.”

“Thorn,” Julius nodded.

"As in crown of." 

Geko laughed.

Julius said "Um".

“Morton Plumpe, Thompson Kline and Plumpe.

“Our K Street representation.” Geko nodded collectively, at the Vice-Presidential savoir-faire. “And this is Cosma McMoon, our court stenographer.”

“Hi.”

Julius was wary. “Is this a court?”

“A court of appeal you might say,” the Vice-President clarified. “We’re appealing to you to consider what’s best for your country.”

“And the world,” Ms. Worthington added.

“And for you,” said Thorn. This last was offered as spiritual direction, not threat.

“We want you to give us the rights to…you know,” the Vice-President repeated.

“The Doodad.”

“Yes.”

“Why don't you just take it? You have…”

“Julius, this is America. We don’t just…”

“The overriding question is one of intellectual property rights,” Advocate Plumpe advised. “Don’t you agree?”

Julius had been led through the serpentine corridors of the Executive Office Building, down, down, down and around, to the once-domain of Ollie and Fawn, following conduits from State, Defense, and Intelligence to the Situation Room beyond all situations, the external Executive brain. 

As they walked past a mock-horror film poster touting The Return of Al Gore, not visible, of course, to blindfolded Julius,the Vice-President, his elbow in hand, had reflected on the general condition:

“It’s not just you, Julius. We are all of us blinded — by this world. We have lost our expectancy, our sense of clairvoyance, and night advances swiftly upon us.” It was soundbites such as this that gave the country confidence in the man a heartbeat away.

Beepers beeped buzzers, and locks fell away. Julius was seated in a chair and his blindfold removed. His eyes had adjusted quickly to the opulent dimness of a room packed with panels, winking at him like a hydra-headed trollop. 

“Julius, all of us here realize that we’re living in tough times. Don’t you agree?” The Vice-President placed a confidential hand on his shoulder. “Don’t you?”

Julius gave a non-commital grunt.

“And people are yearning for something different, an era of peace, love and unity. But their world is empty, Julius. It’s a world of memorials without memory. Ours is a time of brainless arrogance, where our cosmic tragedy is repackaged as entertainment.”

“What has the Doodad got to do with all this?” its inventor asked.

“Nothing. And everything,” the Vice-President said.

Thorn stepped up to bat.

“Julius, you are a religious man. You know we must strive to remake, by our own God-given powers, the world that our Father has made for us out of nothing and given us as our workshop.”

“You see the Doodad as remaking the world?”

“More like transforming it, Julius. Just look around. It’s survival of the sleaziest, wouldn’t you say? Hedonism R Us. Good God, six of the seven deadly sins are now virtues! Greed, avarice, and envy have become the keys to advancement. Gluttony, luxury, and pride are emblems of success. OK, sloth we don’t value — yet — but we’re on the way. Never has there been so little feeling of ‘the sacred’ as a genuine power. 

“God blesses and serves America. But where is the demand that Americans first of all serve God, or make any real sacrifice? Look at the garbage piling up in the streets. It’s God’s metaphor. He’s trying to get our attention.”

There was a pregnant pause. The others nodded, as if the conclusion were obvious.

“And?”

“And you can help Him.”

“I can help God?”

“He needs your help.”

“I’m just a physicist, Mr. Thorn.”

 “To call heaven's rich unfathomable mines (Mines, which support archangels in their state) Our own! To rise in science, as in bliss, Initiate in the secrets of the skies! Edward Young,” said Edgar X. Thornbottom.

“What he means,” the Vice-President explained, “is that we no longer live in the times of Galileo and Giordano Bruno. Religions no longer suppress revolt; they have long since become integrated into technological society.”

“What do you mean revolt?”

“Re-voltare. As in teshuvah, Hebrew for turning.” Thorn’s explication of text.

“Oh. I thought you meant I was revolting — uhm, rebelling.”

“No, no. Why would I say that?” Thornbottom continued. “I just meant in our materialist age of Kali-Yuga, now drawing to a close, people want — need — the magic and security of something that’s beyond them, something greater, something more, something guided, perhaps, by advanced beings, angels maybe, or emissaries from an extraterrestrial civilization. There needs to be a mass ascension to new realms of consciousness.”

“And that’s where you come in, or rather, your Doodad does,” the Vice-President clarified.

“Is this some sort of search for ET?”

“No, Julius, for mass ascension.”

A whiff of burning sulfur. Yet from those flames no light, but rather darkness visible.

“You want to use the Doodad for mass ascension?”

“Look,” said Carolyn Worthington, “the population is exploding, and there is a huge ozone hole. Do you see how those fit together?”

“No.”

“Find a hole and fill it?”

“You mean you want to fill the ozone hole with excess population?”

A group silence of affirmative.

“Some of us do,” said Ms. Worthington.

“You want me to use the Doodad to shoot people up to fill the ozone hole? Live people?”

“Protein molecules absorb the ultraviolet,” Gen. Plunk informed him.

“Wouldn’t the people get a little…sunburned?”

“By the time they need SPF 40, they’ll have expired.”

“And after they are burned to a crisp?”

“The molecular cloud will do nicely,” the General informed him. “Or so I’m told.”

The whiff had grown from smell to stench. Four humans stared at Julius. Another stared at her stenographic screen. Julius’s breathing was shallow and fast.

“I see,” he said.

“You’ll surely agree there’s a population problem.” Plumpe asserted.

Julius nodded.

“Population pollution problem,” Carolyn added.

His nodding continued.

“Well then?” the Vice-President asked.

There was a long pause in the room. Julius looked around.

“Who is to choose the victims?”

“Mortals,” said Thornbottom. “We are all mortal. Some must watch, while some must sleep…”

“GEKO will make the selections,” Gen. Plunk explained. Naturally, those selections will be weighted against America’s enemies. I assume you’d have no objection to that?”

Julius was silent.

“Enemies both foreign and domestic.”

“I see.”

“Julius,” Thornbottom advised, “this cannot be an easy life. We all have a tough time keeping our minds open and deep, keeping our sense of beauty, our ability to see it in places remote and strange; we have a tough time keeping open the many intricate paths in a great open, windy world; but this, as I see it, is the human condition; and in this condition we can help, because we can love one another. We must free our souls from the everyday, and open it to the influxus mentium superiorum.”

“Let me see if I understand this,” Julius said. “You want to use the Doodad to lift your enemies up into the sky.”

“Our enemies, Julius?”

“Um, our enemies.”

“And to turn people to God,” the Vice-President added, “which would make for a better world. Don’t you agree?”

“Why will this turn people to God?”

His interlocutor was truly astonished. “Julius, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand that this is The Rapture. Long awaited, long expected great reward. Who will get the credit? God.”

“But that would be a lie, a hoax!”

Plumpe shook his head. “None of the higher religions include lying

among the mortal sins. There is no simple commandment: Thou shalt not lie.”

The Vice-President stood up from his chair, and began pacing the room, his hands clasped, Beethoven-like, behind him. 

“Whatever may be meant by moral landscape, Julius, at the moment, the best of our natures is drowning in the worst. Have you noticed how many people are simply nuts? This simple action will inject moral ballast to right the listing ship.”

“To stabilize the world.” 

“To ease the population.”

“To harmonize with friends.”

“This is not a question of old teachings in new forms, but of total reformulation in light of present experience.”

“Bird of prey to bird of prayer.”

“Per aspera ad astra.”

“Julius, millions of children are starving to death each month,” Carolyn Worthington said. “There are now 117 wars being fought across the planet, and massive breakdowns of social and political structures. Can it get worse? Can it not only get better? The Rapture — real or fabricated — corresponds to our most fundamental cravings. We’ll be making a new Truth.”

Morton Plumpe gently placed paper on clipboard, and handed it to Julius, along with an antique Parker ’51, Plumpe’s personal treasure.

“Julius, this is a letter of permission. It will enable us to use the Doodad to bring order to the world. Your world. Your children’s world.”

Julius sat there paralyzed. He had no children. Four pairs of eyes bore down upon him. The Vice-President offered his penultimate gambit, well-rehearsed. 

“My friend, after the Declaration of Independence was signed, John Page wrote to Thomas Jefferson: ‘We know the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?’" 

Julius didn’t know whether he was supposed to answer the question.

“Much has changed since that fateful time, Julius. But Jefferson would still recognize the monumental themes of the day, America’s grand story of courage, and its simple dream of dignity. We are not this story’s author, yet His purpose is achieved in our duty, and our duty is fulfilled in His service. Never tiring, never yielding, we can renew that purpose today, to make our country more just and generous, to affirm the dignity of our lives. The work continues. The story goes on. And an angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm. God bless you, Julius Marantz, and God bless America.”

Plump proffered the Parker once again, and Julius took it. The room held its breath. When no signature was forthcoming, the Vice-President was forced to use the last of his resources.

“Julius, you are a scholar. Consider, then, the Lord Chancellor of the Realm, Sir Thomas More, who steadfastly rejected each petition of the King of England; who therefore was beheaded and his head lodged upon a pole on London Bridge. Would you care to reflect on this?”

The Uncertainty Principle itself was not as uncertain. But he took the Parker and engraved the paper with his own name: Julius Marantz.

Salvator mundi? Diabolus providebitor? Or simple homo ignavus et stupidus?

The Thomas More bit was stricken from the record.