The Crooked God Machine (31 page)

Camp followed Leda and I out of the room. I kept one hand on her shoulder, the other on the gun. I knew where to go now, because the hallways were the passageways of my brain and the plague machines above were the synapses firing off the walls, God’s voice the exploding cannon of my basal ganglia.

I found the abyss of the black room. Leda saw it and cried out, but I held fast to her and we didn’t fall.

“It can’t hurt you,” I said.

I stepped inside and the black room burst into a storm of light and fire. The white cloud spun out of the ceiling. Camp stumbled and went down on one knee before

“Stand on your feet and I will speak to you,” spoke the shifting figures within the cloud.

“I stand on my feet and I listen,” I said.

The figures stirred and rolling fire shot straight through Leda and me. An enormous, translucent fist shot through the storm cloud and hovered in front of us. The fist held a scroll, which it unrolled in front of us like a glowing wall. On the scroll was a code of glowing white text, flowing in a constant, indecipherable stream.

“What do you wish to access?” the voice spoke, cool and toneless. Behind the scroll the shifting figures still moved, coiling in and out of the cloud, flashing white, growing hooves and dog faces.

“The defenses,” Leda said, “we wish to access the defenses.”

“My apologies. That registry no longer exists.”

“Registry?” I said, “this is a computer?”

“We are the living creatures. We have been here with God since the beginning of time.” the voice said, “what do you wish to access?”

“You were right. It's gone. Someone's destroyed the defenses. Got rid of them.” Leda said.

“What do you wish to access?”

“We need to access the defenses,” I said, “the security defenses.”

“My apologies. That registry no longer exists.”

“Do you have history records?”

“My apologies. That registry no longer exists.”

The text continued to stream through the glowing scroll.

“If this is a computer, then it's been wiped,” Leda said.

Her words clawed themselves out of her lungs. She coughed them into her palm like sticky burrs. She stood against the wall on her tiptoes, trying to avoid the flames rolling through the floor. Her face was pale, her eyes reflecting back to me the fire and the storm brewing in the center of the room.

I gripped Leda's hand, our fingers sticky with blood. An insect crawled out of my shirt and splattered on the floor. From all sides the noise of insects and dead scraping teeth pressed into the walls.

“Who is God?” I asked.

“He is the creator of the universe. He is the alpha and the omega. The savior of the world, and the destroyer of evil,” the voice said.

“No,” I said, “I mean what is God? Where did he come from?”

“I do not understand the question.”

God's voice shuddered through the temple. The plague machines groaned with the weight of his shouting.

“There is no escape from the almighty God! You shall be punished for your transgressions and burn for all eternity in hell!”

“What do you wish to access?” the voice asked again.

“The defenses are gone. The history records are gone. Who’s been here before us?”

“Before humanity there was only God.”

“Yes, but where did God come from?”

“I do not understand the question. What do you wish to access?”

Above us the ceiling shook. Leda gripped her head as if to keep it from bursting.

“Forget the defenses,” Camp said, “we’re not going to last another minute once those plague machines come crashing through.”

“The plague machines!” I called out to the room, “we wish to access the plague machines.”

“Earlier in this conversation, I identified your language as 21st century Earth English. However, I am not familiar with the term plague machines. Did you mean the splicers? nano-machine factories?”

“What?” Leda asked.

“Let's take a guess,” I said, “Nano-machine factories.”

“Nano-machine factories register accessed. What is your input?”

“Disconnect them. Shut them down,” I said.

“Request confirmed.”

The chuk-chuk-chuk of the plagues machines above sputtered and died. After a moment's pause the plague machine's steel limbs collapsed. Some crashed through the temple ceiling, the walls. The voice of God, mid-sentence in a damning condemnation, ground to a stop. The temple shook with the thudding of insect shells and dead bodies falling to the ground. Leda held to the wall. I held onto her torn sleeves.

“Disconnection successful.”

The three of us walked out of the glowing room and it fell back into darkness. Out in the hallway the corpses shone with locust skins. Leda and I crawled over them to get to the stairs. Leda’s blood trailed behind her like balloon strings.

“Leda?” Camp called.

She didn’t respond. She crawled beneath the toppled pillars at the entrance and out into the open air.

Camp and I followed her outside. As I went I pulled the locust stingers out of my skin.

We found Leda crouched underneath an immobile plague machine.

“It’s over,” she said, her voice like gravel “if we can’t access the defenses there’s nothing left for us to do.”

***

That night we slept in the desert among the battered hulls of the plague machines. In a dream Teddy came down from heaven on a static wave to speak to me.

“You're going to throw away your chance at salvation, all because of a woman?” Teddy asked me, “Your father taught you better than that.”

“I know what happens to the people who search for salvation,” I said, “The same thing that happens to everyone else.”

“Why didn't you marry a nice girl like Chicory?”

“This isn't about Leda.”

“Of course it is. She was never nothing more than a symbol of the unattainable.”

“I didn't ask God for much. I only wanted the noise to stop.”

“You want to know what I think?” Teddy said, “you clearly have mother issues.”

He opened his hands and showed me faded photographs of my house. He flicked his hands, and then they turned into photographs of Momma and Sissy. They sat in front of the television with swollen limbs and emaciated bodies.The hot wire spiders inside of them still shone an angry red.

“And don't forget about sweet Jeanine,” Teddy said, “remember her? The girl you abandoned? The girl that loved you?”

He produced another photograph. This one of Jeanine, stripped of clothing and head shaved, curled up on the floor of a dank cell. On her head was tattooed the number six.

“What were you and your merry band of rebels planning to do again? Prevent the apocalypse? Kill God? Your family's already dead, son. There's no home for you anymore. If you think about it, destroying you would be a blessing.”

“Earth,” I said, “the computer said we were speaking 21st century Earth English. What is Earth English?”

“I don't know. It's nothing but words to you now. If God dies, you and the rest of humanity will be floating through this black universe all alone. There's no going back to what you once were.”

“Is that what you think we want?” I asked, “to go back? The further we go back, the darker it gets. I’ve seen the pictograms. I’ve seen the pictures of the plague machines fighting the monsters and the machines being thrown down from space.”

“You have no idea.”

“Why are you even speaking to me? It’s over now. There’s nothing left we can do. God’s going to keep on living and we’re going to end up washed up on the beach.”

Teddy said nothing.

“Unless I’m wrong,” I said, “maybe you know something I don’t. That there’s still a chance.”

Teddy said nothing.

“It’s the pictograms. The machines fighting the monsters. It’s proof that God wasn’t always in control, isn’t it? That’s why you’re talking to me. Trying to scare me away. His own creations rebelled against him, and they can do it again”

“Oh, Charles,” Teddy said, “You should’ve listened to me when I was sticking my fingers down your mother’s throat. Dragging her across your bedroom floor. It would’ve ended up so much better for you.”

The wind blew through the desert and Teddy floated away on a beam of the black moon.

***

When I awoke I found Leda still awake, sitting on the ground, muttering glossolalia under her breath. The sort of panicked, heavy hopeless mutterings I’d heard from people on their way to hell: could’ve saved her gone tomorrow I used to call her little sunshine keys on the table we didn’t know who was she tell me where I’m supposed to be.

When I approached her she didn’t look at me, only quieted down and shifted her legs underneath her and pulled her tattered dress around her shoulders like a coat.

“I know what to do,” I said.

“There’s nothing left to do,” she said.

“Teddy came down to speak to me,” I said, “or maybe I was speaking to me. I don’t know. But I know now it’s not too late.”

For a long time Leda wouldn’t meet my eyes. She resembled a bird perched on the end of the plague machine’s gray arm. All of her bones splayed out and heaved.

“We can still kill God,” I said.

She looked at me. Blood flecked her eyes.

“Charles,” she said, “it’s over.”

I reached out my hand to stroke her hair, but she grabbed my hand before I could touch her. I lowered it back to my side.

“If we turned the plague machines off, we can turn them back on. Isn’t that right?”

I grabbed her shoulders. This time, she didn’t push me away. I felt the heat stirring in me, the little monster in the stomach, poking a flame straight through my chest. I knew if I opened my mouth the flame would spill out, but I couldn’t stop.

“There’s a way to kill God, and He knows it. Why else would he have sent his army after us? Because we’re powerful and he’s terrified.”

Leda trembled, and then slow and hesitant, she smiled.

“I’ll wake up Camp,” I said, “then let’s go back into the temple.”

In the early hours the three of us went back down into the temple and into the dark room that burst into life, the hidden computer.

“Stand on your feet and I will speak to you,” the computer boomed in its mad crushed voice.

“I stand on my feet and I listen,” I said in response.

We turned the plague machines back on. We told them to make it cold.

Chapter Thirteen

The machines froze the city. I watched as the sky split open in a white and black and white triptych of cold grain, and the sleet and the snow fell down upon the gray metal buildings. I watched the city turn into a sheet of ice as Leda held me and the tatters of her clothes wound around my neck and my wrists and bound me so that I thought I was choking, that my arms and legs and nose would soon fall away. Only to later realize when she moved away from me and the tattered bindings unwound themselves from my limbs that she wasn't binding me, the cold was. And for a long time none of us spoke, or moved. I kept expecting another prophet to come lurching out of the city on his dog legs, wheeling a undead army behind him.

But no one came.

We entered the capitol city. Single file, equally spaced apart, our guns at our sides. The streets lay empty, and in the white haze, unrecognizable from the inside of a womb or a glacier. The buildings loomed up like frozen statues, their doors and windows stoic, a rictus, taxidermist’s dream. It didn’t seem like the same place that had once held Slim Sarah’s celebration parade. There were no guards or people or monsters outside, no streamers and corpse painted smeared infants. No prophets preaching the end times or hell shuttles or moony-eyed girls with skewed lipstick asking for cigarettes.

Leda was the first to ask, “Where is everyone?”

When we passed the prophet headquarters the televisions flickered. God appeared on the television bulbous and mutating.

“Heretics!”

I reached for my gun and wheeled around. Several other heretics did the same. I found myself looking for guards or monsters or prophets, or any shape that would loom out of the white haze.

The televisions shut off. A few seconds later the. A snap. A groan. The sound of the city shutting down.

“The machines,” I said, “they must’ve shut off the power.”

“So we’re just going to be able to walk to the castle?” Wires asked, “this wasn’t the sort of reception I was expecting.”

I glanced over at Leda, who was holding her gun in one hand. She pressed her other hand against her lacerated arm. I gasped. Only then did I realize I’d been holding my breath.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I must’ve torn it,” she said, “reaching for my gun.”

Her blood dripped onto the frozen ground. I reached for her hand. She pulled away.

“I’m fine,” she said, rasping, squeezing her arm, “I’m fine.”

We ascended the mountain toward God’s castle. Up high the air grew thin, and the castle shimmered like a water illusion. Its turrets became animal limbs. Its windows melted into teeth.

On the side of the mountain we found a prophet preaching the end of the days as he dangled a butcher knife over his hog-tied son. The prophet's son lay in the dirt with a red apple in his mouth.

“Repent for the end is near!” the prophet said, and outstretched his arms. The butcher knife in his hand reflected the grainy sky above.

“Hey,” I said to the prophet, “Hey, can you tell us where everyone’s gone?”

“God is no longer speaking to us, my child,” the prophet said, “our spheres have gone blank so that even the prophets can no longer hear his voice. God demands sacrifice. He demands justice.”

As the group filed past him, no-one else spoke. When I approached him he grabbed my shoulder and pulled me toward him. “You look like the gentle sort, not like all these other ruffians and mad men. What do you hope to accomplish by going up this mountain?”

“Take your hand off me please,” I said.

“We have good reason to be afraid,” the prophet said, “the end times are approaching! Can’t you hear it?”

In the city below I heard only the noise of the plague machines.

“Take your hand off me. Please,” I said.