THE DEEDS OF MERCY
The End of...An End Days story
iv
“So what are my options?” Nestor says as soon as Al leaves.
“You options?” Moe asks. “What do you mean, your options?”
“I mean, what does he expect me to do? I don’t want to make any rash decisions.”
“Rash decisions?” Sid smiles as he gathers the cards together. “As soon as it’s a question of free will, general decision, or simple reason, or if a choice of action arises—which is basically what this is—the last thing anyone can accuse anyone else of, is being rash. No one’s going to judge you, Nestor. Besides, everything was all ready decided long before you got here. Pre-ordained, if you will.”
“Pre-ordained? And what’s that mean, unless you mean that whatever decision I come up with, won’t be my own?”
“Of course it will!” Moe says quickly, stepping forward and looking at Sid angrily. “Your will is your will. It will always be your own, just as it is everyone else’s. We can’t tell you what you should, or shouldn’t do. That’s the thing about free will, or freedom of choice—whatever you want to call it—you make the decisions that affect your future.”
“But I don’t have a future,” Nestor pointed out.
“That’s not true either,” Sid says. Nestor looks at him for an explanation and Moe rolls his eyes again as he looks to BJ for support. BJ smiles, shakes his head, and relights his joint.
“Don’t look to me for any help. You two started it,” BJ laughs.
“The future isn’t something that’s tangible,” Moe says before Sid can say anything. “It’s not something that can be grasped by the mortal mind either, because it’s both elusive and visionary, at the same time.”
“Your mind hasn’t made the transition yet; you’re still thinking the way you did while you were in your mortal body—” Sid interrupts.
“What he means is, it’s too soon for you to make any rash decisions,” Moe adds. “It takes some getting used to, but the idea is this: for every man—you can say being, entity, or soul if you want, whatever fits—but the idea is for every soul to reach Nirvana.”
“It’s the sum of a person’s actions during his previous states of existence—his previous lives—that decides the Fate of his soul’s future existence,” Sid pipes up.
“Your problem is that you still think of yourself as alive,” Moe explains. “You still think of yourself as being mortal, when you’re not. You’re now a part of the Spirit world—a big part. And important, too. Like I said, it takes a little getting used to. You’re not Nestor Farras anymore. That’s the name and personality that was you as your mortal self. But you weren’t chosen for this because of your mortal existence, you were chosen for your Karmic blueprint.”
“My Karmic blueprint?”
“If you do this, you’ll achieve Nirvana: it’s perfect bliss and a final release from the karmic state. You could say it’s another name for the extinction of individuality,” Moe concludes.
“Are these two for real?” Nestor asks, turning to look at BJ.
“Why do you think I smoke this shit?” BJ says, and flicks the roach end of his joint out of the window. He smiles. “Sid here, he thinks too fuckin’ much. They both do,” BJ adds, looking at Moe. “Look, what it all comes down to is this,” he says, stepping forward. “The world, as you know it—this fuckin’ existence we have right here, right now—has been going on for as long as fuckin’ time has been around. I’m guessing no one told you that part yet, did they? But there’s something else everyone tends to forget, and that’s that we were all created with one fuckin’ thing in mind, and that’s amusement.”
“Amusement?”
“Yes. God—our Father who art in Heaven—the fuckin’ Creator of us all, or, as I call Him, Dad, the penultimate Being; the propylaeum through which—”
“The what?” Nestor said with the beginnings of a stutter.
“Propylaeum?” BJ says with a smile. “It’s the entranceway to a temple—even though you don’t have them any more. Pretty cool, eh? It’s another word for a fuckin’ door. I don’t get to use it much in general conversation anymore, so I try to slip it in and use it whenever I can. I’ll try to dumb it down for you.”
“Thanks. I think,” Nestor says slowly.
“Now, where was I?”
“You were saying how we were created for God’s amusement,” Moe says carefully.
“Right. I wandered. First, He created Heaven—the Big fuckin’ Bang, and all that shit. The world—life as you knew it—all of that stuff, came later. The thing people forget—or perhaps they never knew it—is that He was once One Being—” and BJ holds both his fists out in front of him, tight against each other. “But He got bored with that, so He made Himself split in half, like a cell, so that there were two of Him. Two halves of the same whole; left and right; black and white; good and evil. The Yin and the Yang.” Now he held his fists apart. “And then He split again, and again, and again,” and as he explained, he flipped the fingers of both hands, one at a time. “That’s where you get all the fuckin’ angels, and seraphim, and what-not; you know, the Cherubim, Thrones, Powers, Virtues—the nine Orders? You have heard of them, haven’t you? No? Well, it doesn’t fuckin’ matter. Anyway, with that initial split, with those two cells, came the concept of Good and Evil—the Yin and fuckin’ Yang of it all—because like Al said, you can’t have the one, without the other, can you? With all the splits that followed after that, with Dad and His brother—that’s what we like to call him—splitting and then re-splitting, the ones that split off from the one side were Angels, and the ones that split off from the other side, were Demons. And there are exactly the same number of Angels, as there are Demons.”
“And how many is that?” Nestor asked.
“The number is infinite; there can’t be a finite number when you’re dealing with God. This is all very basic, you understand? You wanted me to dumb it down, remember?”
“Very basic,” Moe says slowly.
“Hey, it’s for me to explain, not you. He doesn’t seem to understand where the fuck you’re coming from—or Sid, anyway.”
“To be quite honest, I don’t understand where any of this is coming from,” Nestor says with a slow shake of his head as he sits on the bed again. “And I certainly don’t understand where it’s going. How’s this going to help me decide what I’m supposed to do?”
“Are you asking me to tell you what you should do?” BJ says.
“I guess I’m asking any one of you to make sense.”
“You can’t expect to make sense out of this because you’re not thinking it through properly,” Moe says softly.
“And how am I supposed to think this through?”
“For one thing, you’re not supposed to be thinking about your wife and children, and how they’re going to react to the new you if you do decide to accept Al’s offer. They’re not the issue here. No one person is the issue, or at stake, or any other way you want to look at it. You’re not supposed to look at it as the future of the human fuckin’ race, or the greatest mass killing in the history of Mankind. This is simply the end of another cycle. This is what everyone’s been waiting for, both here and back there; it’s the ‘End of the World’ scenario that’s plagued humanity since the beginning. The Last fuckin’ Judgment. You can’t deny the world its Final Solution. You have to remind yourself you’re not the instrument of change; you’re simply the catalyst through which the change will come.”
“And if I don’t do it?”
“Mankind will suffer a slow and inexorable death, all the same. The planet will be unable to sustain future life,” Sid says slowly, taking up the train of thought without hesitation. “More people will die than will with BJ’s Second Coming. Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes; typhoons, cyclones, volcanic eruptions—full global warming causing more flooding, more hurricanes, more typhoons, and cyclones—an endless cycle of destruction with cities slipping into the sea because the polar caps will become unstable until, finally, there’s a temperature inversion and a new Ice Age will descend on the world.”
“But they won’t blame me?”
“No,” Moe says with a smile. “They won’t fuckin’ blame you. They won’t even remember you. You’ll just be one more dead politician. But you won’t achieve Nirvana either—and neither will we—but when you go back to complete your life cycle, you’ll have to start over; you’ll suffer and die along with the rest of the people.”
“Go back? What do you mean, go back? You mean, I’ll have to go back and live another life?”
“Of course. We’ve all done it hundreds of times,” Moe smiles. “We’re simply waiting for our last run.”
“I guess I was right about Al, then. ‘Their credulity increases his impudence: and his impudence overpowers their credulity.’ How can you say there’s such a thing as free will for me, if I never stood a chance in the first place?”
“Not if you want to do the right thing,” Sid says slowly.
“And we want to get this right,” Moe echoes.
“But is it the right thing?”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s the right choice or not; it’s your choice,” Moe smiles.
“You can always say no,” Sid laughs.
“But you’ll never see your wife and kids again,” Moe adds.
“Who I wouldn’t know, even if I did?”
“True. But they’d know you,” Sid nods. “They’ll never forget you, no matter what decision you make.”
“They’ll love me? Unconditionally?”
“Without reservation, I believe is the expression,” Moe says.
“Look, even the most able of prognosticators can’t always prove their prophecies right—only time will tell you what happens next. You’re both so concerned that he says yes, but you won’t tell him your reasons,” BJ says softly.
“What reasons?”
“The Last Judgment. It’s like the qualifying round at fuckin’ Pebble Beach for them. Nobody can reach true Nirvana until the final hole is played.”
“What about you?” Nestor asks.
“Me? I’m fine with the way things are. This is way better than my last gig; that one didn’t end so fuckin’ well, remember?”
And something comes to mind from somewhere out on the periphery—it’s a voice Nestor hears, a quote, probably a misquote he thinks—‘Faith consists of believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe. It is not enough that a thing be possible for it to be believed.’
He listens to the sound of music coming from somewhere in the distance—he doesn’t know where, and realized he doesn’t much care. He looks out at the brilliance of a brand new day, wondering when that happened. Well, what is there not for him to believe? He looks up at the TV screen and sees his body with all it tubes and IV drips.
“How long do I have to make up my mind? I mean, if Time means nothing, don’t I have all the time in the world to make up my mind?”
“A fuckin’ eternity as far as that goes,” BJ grins.
“Oh, by the way?”
“By the way?” Sid smiles.
“What was I that they’d have TV cameras watching me as I died?’
“Can’t you guess?” Moe laughs.
“Well, I know I was a politician.”
