• THE END AGAIN VIII
    by UC Poika



    I was walking in the mall that day oblivious of the crowd and deep in thought, wondering what it was all about. I had been depressed for days spending most of them in my room pondering the meaning of life. I was lonely but the last thing I wanted then was for someone to see me like that. I was a wreck. I knew I needed a little excitement but the last time I got on the computer all I found was that which was dull and uninteresting or too dangerous to consider doing. Excitement I decided was way over rated anyway. It lasted only a short time and was fun and interesting, and all, but only while it lasted. When it was over there was always a let down when I returned to my boring and uninteresting life, and life was not the same because the boredom was even harder to take. I was thinking that perhaps relationships were the answer but I knew no one interesting. That was actually not why I was there at the mall that day though for I was hoping not to find someone interesting because I always choked when I did.

    What about death? I thought. Maybe death was better. I was excited even just thinking about it. I could just cease to be and then I wouldn’t have to feel this way any longer. I wanted to see Grandma one more time, but no one else really held any promise for a visit. After I saw Grandma then I would get rid of my stuff so Mom wouldn’t have to. She hated to do anything for me that I could do for myself especially. Perhaps it would make her feel better then. She was so dull and ordinary just like Dad completely into their own boring things. It would be inconvenient for them and I didn’t want to put anybody out. Besides it would give me something to do while I figured out how I was going to do myself in.

    At that same instant however shots rang out in the rest area. I went out into the area to see what was going on. Just as I located a guy in the skylights with a rifle he shot me. I did not have any time to panic or anything. I was just suddenly aware of nothing. It was as if someone had turned off all of my senses at once and yet I could still think.

    “What happened? Am I dead? Neat!” I thought becoming aware I could see only darkness about me. It had not been dark before. I was sure of that. But to be honest I hadn’t really noticed for I had been mind bent by the sudden transition. Now it was very dark, however.

    As I stared out into the darkness I realized it probably went on forever, and I was not looking out into it but down into it. Curiously I had a feeling it had all happened before somewhere.
    After a while I realized that I could imagine that it was the infamous Deep I vaguely remembered having read about somewhere. It was like a deep abyss that went down forever and had always been there. Then I realized that it was not going to change except in my imagination. I don’t like this! I thought and panicked to think this was all there ever would be for me from now on. This was forever.

    Was I going crazy? Was crazy all that I could be from now on? No! There had to be a real world even here. I was surely dead but I still existed. I could think. What was the quote from that philosopher, Des Cartes? “I think therefore I am,” or something like that, but I wondered why it didn’t seem right to me. Then I realized that thinking did not make me exist and it could be better said, “I am therefore I think.” Secretly I had always believed that everything was actually no more than an illusion we couldn’t help ourselves, given the nature of our senses, but to believe, and that only thinkers and thoughts actually existed. I also realized that since I was dead and yet thought, it was not that thought that was the product of the brain’s functioning, but brain functioning was the product of thought. “Hmm!” I tried to say aloud but could not hear myself. “I’ve always known my thoughts were not my own.” I chose them in the same way I chose my words but they were all there before I was born to be found and I could not create even one of them. ‘Thoughts can be fascinating things, and thinking can be fun,’ I thought. ‘This might not be so bad after all.’

    Then I thought of something I had read in the Bible. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was empty and void. And darkness was upon the surface of the deep.” So I imagined a surface about where I could imagine seeing no further. Then I imagined the darkness was so thick below that surface that it was actually like water. Then true to what I knew of the Bible I divided the waters, those that were above from the waters that were below and called that surface the sky for the waters above the surface were a mist that got thinner and thinner until there was no water at all. And the water below the sky was thicker and thinker until it was like a huge sea. Then I realized that below where the sea was, the waters were solid and that dry land and sea could exist there. So that was what the Bible was talking about!

    I never put much stock in the Bible before and found it incredibly difficult to understand but then to understand it maybe one had to experience it first hand and that I thought I was doing. But did I want to recreate in my mind the world God created even if I could? The Bible was a horrible book. It was so bad I had almost believed what was written in it really was reality. But if I was right I now had the opportunity to be like God and create my own heaven and my own earth. “No offense, God, but I didn’t care much for what You made. Hope You don’t mind but I would just as well not think about that.”

    Then I felt something like a fear. I was going to recreate God’s creation to suit myself in my own mind. Would I miss out on something like one last visit with Grandma or something if I didn’t do exactly like God did? What was I saying I couldn’t anyway? I didn’t know enough about what God did to follow His pattern exactly. Besides He pretty much left the part out about how He created the Devil, and what not, which was a very important part I should think.
    No. I would just skip right to the creating of man. And so I imagined taking some dust and water and making a living breathing man that could think and had a mind of his own just like me.

    “Dude!” I said to him. “What’s happening?”

    He didn’t say anything. He just stood there breathing and looking at me.

    I tried. I really did try to imagine he could speak on his own, but I was not having much luck.
    If there were thoughts that could accomplish it I didn’t know how to access them except that I could ask God, and I didn’t want to do that.

    Then I realized he was blown away and that I was nothing to him other than a ghost. Just a voice coming from midair. It must have been quite an experience, I thought. Maybe I should have edited it out. I never thought of it at the time. And I don’t even know if it’s possible.
    So I created a body exactly like the one I had in life. But then I had a problem. What was my exact likeness gong to be like? Me? Someone else more real than I knew myself to be? If I made him just another character it would just be like a story I was writing in my imagination. That would get old fast probably, something like watching TV only you had to make up the story as it went along. No, he would have to be me in the story and the one I had already created would have to be someone else, someone more interesting I hoped.
    And I imagined it was so and went down to talk to the one I created out of dust and water.

    “Hey, Guy!” I said. “What are you thinking about?”

    “You,” he said.

    It was a success!

    “Who the hell are you?” he continued.

    “Me?” I said caught off guard and not willing to reveal what I was, quite yet. Besides I didn’t know quite yet who exactly I was anyway in this context.

    “Yeah,” he said. “What is going on?”

    “What do you mean?”

    “First I’m here all by myself and some voice says to me, ’Dude, what’s happening?’ like I’d know. Now you appear out of nowhere and start asking me what I’m thinking. I don’t understand what the hell is going on here.”

    “Well,” I said hesitantly. “I am the creator of all of this, and you.”

    “Really?” he said, obviously doubting me.

    “Yeah, really. You see I died and yet I exist because I found I could still think even though I was dead. And to make a long story short I wound up creating you in my thoughts to have someone to talk to.”

    “Sure,” he said. “Anything you say.”

    “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

    “Aren’t you?”

    “No, I don’t think so. Not yet anyway.”

    “You’re just as real as I am, how am I supposed to believe you made me in your thoughts?”

    “Oh,” I said realizing he probably had a problem believing that when my created self likeness, which was very nearly like him, had said it and not me.

    “This is my Son,” I said as a mere voice again. “You can believe him.”

    “Jesus! That is really spooky when that happens. How’d you do that?”

    “I didn’t. Our creator did.”

    “Now you’re created in your own thoughts too, is that it?” he said.

    “Just like you, except I am our creator’s exact likeness. I only say what he would have me say. Instead of choosing my own words and thoughts he chooses them for me.”

    “What about me? Does he choose what I say too?”

    “He tries to choose what you say on a basis of what he thinks you would say at any given moment. Who he thinks you are, has as much to do with what he has you say, as who he is, has to do exclusively with what I say.”

    “Supposing that’s true. What do you want with me?”

    “I just wanted to talk to you,” I said.

    “Okay,” he said. “You did, so what happens to me now?”

    I didn’t want to tell him, he was starting to bore me and that I was thinking about moving on to someone or something else to entertain myself instead of him.

    “You going to kill me off?” he asked accusingly.

    This was not at all like writing a story. I should have picked his attitude more carefully if I was going to have to put up with him until he died.

    “Is this the best you could do for me, a five minute conversation with my creator? Big deal!” he said clearly angry.

    “You’re right,” I said, feeling guilty for my superficiality and lack of foresight. “That would be a bad deal. Don’t worry, you will live a while longer yet.”

    He perked up right away after hearing that, but what he wanted to live for I didn’t understand. He had laid a guilt trip on me though and treated me just like a lot of people did in my life before. I made him. I could destroy him or just change what I was doing and he would never know what happened to him. He couldn’t really think after all. I had to write both parts but here he was a guy I didn’t even like demanding I let him live and, I presumed, I was going to have to keep him company for the rest of his life.

    “I tell you what,” I said. “I’ll give you a wife to keep you company.”

    “Do I have a say in what she’s like?”

    “What do you mean?” I said. “Don’t you think I can pick you out a good wife?”

    “Excuse me?” he said. “You going to tell me what and who I like from now on. What if I don’t like her?”

    “I can see to it you do.”

    “No you can’t. I don’t have to like anyone I don’t want to.”

    “Well, if you don’t like her, I’ll find you someone else.”

    “What if I’m gay? Would you find me a gay guy to be with?”

    “You’re not though.”

    “How do you know? You don’t know that!”

    “Yes I do. Because if you were gay I would just leave you and you’d never know what happened to you.”

    “You would?”

    “Yup!” I said.

    He was silent a moment then he said. “You’re like God, but you’re not God.”

    “You got it.”

    “You are going to put up with a lot less than God, aren’t you?”

    I hated to admit it for one of my greatest complaints against God was that He was not open minded enough. And now I found the truth amongst the thoughts and words I chose that I was even more closed minded than God was. To make matters worse I suspected I had accidentally created a homosexual as my first creation and I was grieved I had made him. But what was I to do? I didn’t want to spend forever putting up with a homosexual. And I didn’t want to do him in either. What was I going to do?

    I decided to create a flood and do him in like God had the people before the flood in the Bible and start over by creating someone I could deal with, someone with only limited free will, which meant of course I would never be able to create someone with a real free will even in my imagination and would always know that any feelings they had for me would be less genuine than my feelings for others. I was doomed to living in my imagination forever and knew one day I would be bored and uninterested again just like I had been when I wasted what God had for me, mostly by rejecting it to a large extent.

    “O God!” I cried out. “I don’t want to be dead anymore!” and this time I could hear myself. In fact it was the sound of my own voice that woke me up.

    “Jesus Christo!” a Mexican looking nurse shrieked when I yelled and opened my eyes. “He’s alive! Let’s get him to Emergency right away!”

    I believed her. I was alive again! It may all be an illusion created by God and believed by us, but it was better than being a god in Sheol, or was that hell? I didn’t know and it didn’t matter. All I knew was that I was glad to be alive and could accept anything from God after what I’d been through. Therefore it was little surprise that when they wheeled me away on a gurney I smiled, thanking God I was back to the ending again.

    THE END