The Beatles, dead and alive, together again in the Crane’s View supermarket. Brought to you courtesy of the Rat’s Potato, that friendly little planet just behind the Crab Nebula.
On finishing their own song, the Fab Four started playing the Zombies’ “She’s Not There,” another of my all-time favorites. It was a song in the McCabe Music Hall of Fame. But why were the Beatles doing a cover version of this one? None of them said anything—just moved from one tune right into the other. I sighed like a boy who’s fallen in love. I didn’t even have to die to know that this was heaven.
As they reached my favorite part of that eerie song, Barry leaned over and asked, “Would you like to talk about it now or wait till the music is over?”
“Now. If I stay any longer I’m never going to leave here.”
“Okay, let’s go back outside. As long as we remain here they’ll continue to play.”
The Beatles were playing only for us? I moaned, “Is that true?”
“Yes. They’re what you wanted, Mr. McCabe, so as long as you stick around here they’ll just keep playing your favorite songs.
“Help!” My head flooded with songs I loved – “For No One,” “Concrete and Clay,” “Walk Away Renee”... They would have played those too, I suppose. Just like I said—Heaven. “Come on, let’s get out of here.” On the way out I didn’t risk looking back over my shoulder. But for the first time in my life I understood why Lot’s wife wasn’t so stupid after all.
Out in the sunglare and heat of the parking lot things were quiet again. All the music was gone and I knew that meant they were gone too. If we’d walked back into the store it would only be a market again—cans of Campbell’s soup and frozen legs of lamb back where they belonged, having replaced my dream come true for a little while.
Two crummy green lawn chairs had appeared in the middle of the parking lot. On the seats were large Styrofoam cups. Somewhere nearby a person was cutting wood with a chainsaw. The sound and smell were on the air. A dog barked wildly– row-row-row—like it was going out of its mind. A car pulled into the lot. Someone whistled high and long. A woman’s voice said hello. The day was wide-awake and coming downstairs for breakfast.
Coffee was in the Styrofoam cups, perfectly sugared and boiling hot—exactly the way I liked it. None of this surprised me. Barry was turning out to be a dandy host. Sitting on the edge of the cheap metal chair, I stared across the lot at the parked ambulance. For a few moments my heart started doing its weird jumpy dance again. Blowing on the steaming drink, I took it in quick careful sips. “All right, story time. Tell me what’s going on.”
“You’re not very religious are you, Mr. McCabe?” “No, but I believe He’s there. I believe that wholeheartedly.” “Oh, He is, but not in the way you think. Would you like me to describe this situation in detail or would you prefer an abridged version?” He was grinning when he said it but I knew he was serious.
“Abridged, Barry. I’ve got Attention Deficit Disorder. I have a hard time sitting still very long.”
“All right. Then the best way for me to begin is to quote something to you from the Bible:
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made.
“That is a passage from Genesis, a word that literally means ‘a coming into existence.’ That first chapter of your Bible is where the creation of the universe is accounted for.”
“The universe? I thought Genesis only described the creation of life on earth.”
“Noooo, it is the origin of everything—every planet, every being, every cell. But mankind is predictably vain and sees things only in relation to itself. The most important thing in all this is that symbolic seventh day when God had finished His work and rested. That day is now coming to an end, Mr. McCabe. We’re getting very close to the time when He will wake again, so to speak, and reassert his authority.”
“Armageddon?” I asked the question in the same tone I once asked an emergency room doctor, “Am I dying?” after having been shot and feeling myself dropping steep into a coma.
This pleased Barry. Having just heard the most frightening word in the human vocabulary, he chuckled and took a long swallow of coffee. “No, it’s much more interesting than that. For a moment think of God as a bear.”
I looked up at two slivers of silvery airplanes moving in different directions across the cobalt blue sky drawing separate vapor trails behind them. “Did you say a bear?”
“Yes I did. Imagine God as a bear that, having created the heavens and the earth, went into hibernation for billions and billions of years. Time out of mind.”
The idea was so mind-boggling that for the moment all I could do was feebly repeat him. “Billions of years.”
“Right, but before He went to sleep He arranged to be awakened at a certain point.”
I blew up. “Get the hell out of here! You’re saying God-the-bear made all this and then went to sleep? But not before arranging a wake-up call? Who did He call, the front desk?”
Barry put his cup between his thighs and brushed off his hands. His till-that-moment-friendly voice turned red-hot sarcastic. “You can be snide and waste time or you can listen, Mr. McCabe. I would advise listening because it may end up saving your wife’s life.”
Go on.
“The brilliance of God’s plan was in its simplicity.” He stretched out both arms and opened them as if showing the size of a big fish he’d caught. “He created it all—the universe, you, me... everything, and then rested. But before He did, He arranged to be awakened by all of us, in concert. He gave us the knowledge and the resources as well as sufficient time to develop individually so that together we could build a device that would awaken God when it was time.”
“The whole universe works together to make a machine that will wake God up?”
“Overly simplified, yes. And He’s been remarkably benevolent about it, considering the differences between species. Every civilization has developed at its own speed. Some are eons further along than others are, but that makes no difference. When it comes to this, no matter where a culture may be on the evolutionary scale without every one of them working together, this world machine cannot be created. And that is the essential thing. It is the only thing.”
“It sounds like the Tower of Babel.”
Picking up the cup he began breaking off small pieces of the plastic around the rim and dropping them inside what was left. “That’s true, but on an empyrean scale.”
“Empyrean. What does that mean? Forget it, doesn’t matter. Barry, let’s get to the point: I know it’s egotistical but what does it all have to do with me? How come my life has turned into a Salvador Dali painting?”
“Every civilization in the cosmos has a specific task to perform in this undertaking. Think of us all as workers in a factory creating one single product. Many have already accomplished what they were supposed to do. Some of it took place billions of years ago, some five minutes ago. It is happening all the time—piece by piece the world machine is being assembled.”
“Why don’t you call it the God Machine?”
“Because worlds are assembling it, Mr. McCabe, not God. That is the whole point of the endeavor.”
“Why me? What does a cop in Crane’s View, New York, have to do with the World Machine?”
He abruptly looked away. “We don’t know.”
The next thing I knew, coffee was all over my hand and my fingers were stuck through my white plastic cup. “You don’t know?”
He sighed like an old man who’s just taken off too-tight shoes. It was a while before he spoke again. “We don’t know what needs to be done on Earth. We have only been able to figure out approximately who must do it.”