Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife (81 page)

At this last statement, Aimee colored beet-red. God treated her
to a raised eyebrow and then continued. “In fact, I was very tempted to destroy the whole planet: fire, pestilence, plagues of frogs, every volcano going off at once. The entire apocalyptic works. I was even toying with the idea of making the sun go nova, or at least dropping a large asteroid in the Pacific Ocean. About the only thing that stopped me is that I’m still inordinately fond of giraffes and rhinos—and also cats and whales, harp seals, dolphins, bears, and penguins—so I refrained. Why should they vanish without a trace just because you bipedal bastards are unable to behave yourselves? Oh yes, I know you built some very nice cathedrals, and I really liked Marilyn Monroe and fettuccine alfredo. But they were, in turn, canceled out by your concentration camps,
Queen for a Day
, and man-made neurotoxins. In some respects, I suppose I only have myself to blame. Right back at the beginning, I should have made the entire Earth fireproof. If you’d never discovered fire, your kind would have remained a bunch of monkeys standing up to peer over the tall grass. My only excuse is that I didn’t imagine you would be cunning enough to go from rubbing two sticks together to a thermonuclear weapons capability in little more than the flutter of a cosmic eyelash.”

God paused to pet the white Persian cat, who was growing restless. “Thus, right or wrong, I decided against wiping you all out, and resolved instead simply to wash my hands of the great majority of you. For some time now, I’ve been happily going about my business with no inclination to worry about the human race. Your prayers all went into the shredder and, for the first time in about fourteen thousand years, I was without a care. Then, unfortunately, a deputation of my peers and colleagues came to me to appeal to my better nature.”

God gestured to the Mystères on the big screen. “These good Voodoo people of the Island, plus also Wotan, Krishna, Isis, the White Goddess Sofia, Oogachaka, Crom, Head 58, the Lord Bacchus, Snireth-Ko the Dreamer, and even the Buddha—although he seemed a lot more preoccupied with his next earthly incarnation—all prevailed on my good graces to help them try to find a solution to the human problem. Wotan was talking about a final solution, but having decided once not to wipe you all out, I didn’t think it was good policy to go back on my word. Also, the old boy is a little addled from all the drinking in Valhalla and he couldn’t really grasp how decimating your numbers on the lifeside would hardly have helped what was really bothering them.”

Again God paused. He lifted the cat down from his shoulder and placed it on the ground beside him. It rubbed against his leg and then looked up at him. “You know we’re supposed to be at the meeting with Stephen Hawking? The one about trying to encourage dark matter to do something useful?”

God glanced down at the cat. “Professor Hawking has a very flexible appreciation of time. He won’t mind if I’m a little late. Besides, I still have a few more choice remarks to deliver.”

He looked back to the small multitude in the ruins of Heaven. “Since my friend here informs me that I’m late for my next meeting, I’ll give you all the
Reader’s Digest
version. In a nutshell, we gods are angry. Not being content with gratuitously overpopulating your life-side planet to the point where it will be almost completely uninhabitable by a week from Thursday, you are streaming into the Afterlife in such numbers that the infrastructure cannot possibly support you all. The Great Double Helix is currently groaning under the weight of all the extra pods and shorting out its primary circuits. That’s why we couldn’t allow Wotan to go ahead with his Day of Ragnarok extermination plan. The influx of the dead would be so massive it’d red-line the macroboard, the Helix would unravel, and that would be the Fat Lady’s aria for just about everything. We’d be left with another bloody singularity, then Big Bang II, and that is much too expensive a price for mankind’s inability to control its numbers. Do I make myself clear so far?”

Some of the nuns nodded. Others simply avoided God’s eyes.

“It was thus resolved that, as unpalatable as it might be, a deal would have to be struck with Yog-Sothoth the Unspeakable to begin to filter the human dead into a rented and previously underused section of his Black Dimension. Obviously it will not be too pleasant until those who first arrive make a few adaptations, but it will at least relieve the strain. And let’s face it; if you people will voluntarily elect to go to Gehenna, you’ll pretty much adapt to anything. The only stumbling block to this contingency plan was the energy drain created by the complex environments set up by some of you humans, and the quasi-divine status that was being claimed by some of the rulers of these environments. This directly challenged our own godhood and our ability to negotiate with Yog-Sothoth, who is a devious devil at the best of times. Without a negotiated settlement, the end result could be interdimensional territorial warfare, and all because of you damned irresponsible monkeys and your
ridiculous birth rate. And if I ask you what an interdimensional conflict means, don’t nod your heads like a flock of bloody silly sheep, because you absolutely don’t have a clue and never will have.”

He paused once more and gestured to Jim, Doc, and Semple. “Fortunately, some of the worst of these phony gods have now been neutralized. We have to thank Semple McPherson, Jim Morrison, and Doc Holliday for their help, albeit unwitting, in neutralizing Anubis, the phony Moses, Aimee McPherson, and the recently departed Trixie, and also alerting Lucifer and Kali to their greater responsibilities, and perhaps even convincing the aliens that they should start minding their own business and stop writing obscenities in the waving fields of grain. In other sectors, we have also arranged, via similar agents, the downfall of three fake Hitlers, one ersatz Haile Selassie, a faux Hammurabis, two Alexander the Greats, a completely implausible Ivan the Terrible, and a gang of very nasty Essenes.”

Jim shook his head in bewilderment. “So we’re actually secret agents of God, are we? Even though it was a secret from us as well and we didn’t have a clue what we were doing?”

God smiled. “It can hardly be news that I move in mysterious ways.”

Jim shrugged. “I can live with the idea of being a divine secret agent.”

“And you can be justifiably proud of yourself.” God indicated that a small round of applause might be in order, and most obliged, although Aimee didn’t join in.

Quite the reverse, in fact. Aimee still looked a lot like the betrayed inamorata. “So, my Lord. Now that you’ve conspired with my sibling and these two notorious drunks to destroy the Heaven I took so many pains to create in your honor, what am I supposed to do?”

“You can do whatever you want, Aimee. I’ve stabilized the place so it won’t decay any further. If you want, you can bring back the Bambis and bluebirds and start a nice secular little Afterlife theme park along the lines of Disneyland. Anything you like, just as long as it has absolutely nothing to do with religion.”

“But I’ve devoted the whole of my life to religion.”

“And you’ve done very nicely out of it, but now you’re at the end of that particular road. You will have to try something else. I repeat, though, no religion, or terrible things will happen to you. Remember
Ezekiel 25:17? I can still do that kind of stuff.” He turned away from Aimee. “Any more questions?”

Jim stretched his back. He suddenly felt very tired. “Does this mean our jobs are at an end? I mean me, Doc, and Semple?”

“Not only that, but, as I already said, you have the gratitude of the gods, and that’s no small thing.”

“So we can go where we like? No more secret missions?”

“You can go where you like, dear boy. Honky-tonking with Doc Holliday, or, if you’re looking for adventure, you might rejoin the Dionysian heroes, who I understand are planning a fresh assault on the Apollonians. Or, if total depravity is your craving, you could head out to Hatheg-Kla and howl and dance with the Great Ones. The choice is yours, although I did understand that you and Semple had started something.”

Doc had a much more simple and direct question. “But how do we get out of here?”

God laughed. “Now, that is a piece of cake.”

With an extended index finger, he described a circle on the ground and then took three paces back as a portal, rather like a giant manhole, opened in the earth. “With enough power to take you anywhere of your choosing, anyplace you are able to imagine.”

And with that, God picked up his cat and rose vertically into the air. He went straight up for about twenty feet and then moved horizontally across the lake toward the screen and, by some process of complex morphing, was absorbed into it. As God entered the picture, Hypodermic offered him a cheroot and, when God gratefully accepted it, also lit it for him. “Hawking?”

God nodded. “Hawking. Even he can’t be kept waiting forever.”

When the four very different gods walked away into the final fade, the background was suddenly visible. They were walking away down a road constructed from yellow brick.

“Sometimes I think Hawking’s smarter than any of us.”

“But he’s human.”

“Weird, isn’t it?”

As they diminished in size and their voices faded, the big screen sank slowly and majestically into the lake. A nun looked nervously at Doc. “Was that really God?”

Doc burst into wheezing laughter. “Sure thing, Sister. That was God, all right. No impostor could put on an act like that. The suit?
The cat? The accent? The whole bit? Oh yes, sweetheart, you have just met with the Almighty.”

Doc was already peering down into the portal, staring at the shimmer of rainbow colors that seemed to descend for infinity. He had assumed that Semple and Jim were right behind him and was surprised when he looked back to see them still some distance away, in what, from the tenseness of their body language, looked to be a confrontational discussion. Aimee stood a few paces off, staring at the two of them. Without hearing what was being said, Doc instantly grasped the dynamic of the situation. Semple was the object in a tug of war and obligation between Jim and her sister. Bearing in mind how the two sisters had once been one, Doc could see that the conflict was virtually inevitable. He was tempted to go and join them, but decided it was a less-than-wise move. He couldn’t recall ever being thanked for intervening in a domestic dispute. Doc was also aware, though, that time was pressing. Most of the nuns had already checked out, some so disconcerted by the way things had panned out that they’d ripped off their habits and were stepping off into the portal clad in nothing more than bras and panties, ensuring themselves a provocative entrance when they arrived at wherever they had selected to go.

Doc decided that all he could do was attempt from a distance to force a resolution to what looked uncomfortably like an emotional impasse. “Not wishing to interrupt you young people, but I think we ought to make up our minds where we’re going to go and go there. This thing isn’t going to stay open and energized forever.”

Jim turned in his direction and shouted, “Hold on there a minute, Doc.”

“We don’t have much more than a minute. We have to go while the portal’s still hot.”

Jim exchanged more words with Semple and then hurried to where Doc was standing. “There’s a problem.”

“Haven’t we had enough problems?”

“This one’s a little different. Semple wants to stay here.”

Although Doc had already guessed this was the situation, he still looked around at the ruins of Heaven in feigned mystification. “Why the fuck should anyone want to stay here? There isn’t even a bar.”

“While the shit was going down—before God showed up—her sister extracted a promise from her to stay and help her fix up the place.”

“That’s ridiculous. She can’t hold Semple to that. God already stabilized the basics, and Aimee knows she can’t rebuild her Heaven the way it was. God’s going to drop the wrath on her from a great height if she does.”

“Semple gave her word. She feels obligated to stick around until Aimee’s back on her feet.”

“Then you don’t have a problem, boy. You and I will head out to Hatheg-Kla, and she can join us when she’s discharged her supposed obligation.”

“I’m afraid it isn’t as easy as that.”

“The business of the two of them just being one?”

“How did you know?”

“It wasn’t hard to figure.”

“Semple says Aimee all but came unglued while she was away.”

“And she’s afraid to be ever separated again?”