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 Mysteres 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.”