A Short Story
James Ewing
Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas,
Ease after war, death after life doth greatly please.
Saint Peter looked at me over the top of his reading glasses. He pushed his ledger out of the way and leaned forward. I heard his stool rock from four legs onto two as he did. He scanned me up and down.
“The Rules are all right there.” He tapped his Bic pen on the front of the rostrum. The chewed up plastic top was jammed on the end and the pocket clip was curled backward from being messed with.
I pointed at his pen. “You know what happens if you stick one of those into an electri…?”
“Read!” He thundered.
There was a simple chiseled stone tablet mounted on the front of the Gatekeeper’s dais. It read:
The Rules
1 – The Management reserves the right to refuse service to anyone, at any time, for any reason.
2 – Please speak quietly and politely. You’re not pressed for time.
3 – Dress nice.
4 – The Management gets to pick the bird.
5 – The Management reserves the right to change The Rules at any time, for any reason.
“See, right in front of you. Number 4. Plain as the nose on your face.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I was just hopi….”
“Silence!”
A panel on the front of the dais opened and a balance scale slid out on tracks. I stepped back out of the way. Everything on the scale appeared to be made of gold and silver. It had silver platforms on both sides and, in between, a long, golden pointer indicated balance along an argent arc. The midpoint was marked by a single emerald, set in gold.
I whistled. “Sweet.”
Saint Peter rocked the stool back onto all fours. “You know how this works?”
“Yeah. Something about the weight of my soul compared to a bird’s feather.” I tried to remember the details. “If my soul is lighter than the feather I gain passage into Heaven. If not, I burn forever in Hell. Egyptian mythology, right?”
“And where do you think they got the idea?”
I shrugged.
“OK. Hop on up there.” Saint Pete pointed at the platform with his pen.
I climbed up and the scale descended. The pointer was pointing toward me.
Saint Peter whistled a sweet, trilling song. I heard a high frequency thrumming and a hummingbird, hardly bigger than a bumblebee, flashed into my field of view. Its plumage sparkled with reflections of green, red, and turquoise. The bird stopped in front of my face and hovered too close for me to focus on. It stared into one eye, darted left, and stared into the other. I felt like I was being measured.
Saint Peter held out his finger and the bird whizzed off and landed on it. It lowered its tiny head. He gently scratched the back of the bantam bird’s neck with his pen and I saw a small tuft of down break free and float lazily in the air. The bird turned to look at it. Saint Peter put his reading glasses back on and concentrated on the nearly invisible feather. He pursed his lips, puffed up his cheeks, and blew the feather away from the podium. It drifted down, more slowly than the lightest snowflake, and landed with a solid “thunk” on the opposite scale. I felt the platform beneath my feet shudder and, almost imperceptibly at first, begin to rise. I fixed my gaze on the pointer.
The indicator drifted upwards as I rose. It reached the top and inched past the emerald onto the feather’s side. Then stopped. I breathed a sigh of relief. Prematurely. The pointer started moving back. It slowed, then settled, pointing exactly at the gaudy gem.
Saint Peter took off his reading glasses and tossed them on top of the ledger. He leaned forward, stared briefly, and then rubbed his eyes. He shot one more look at the pointer. “Shit.” He stared directly at me. “It looks like we have a problem.”
“Not my fault.” I shrugged my shoulders. The pointer didn’t even quiver.
“I know it’s not your fault. Jesus Christ, what is it with you Westerners and this guilt and blame nonsense?” He rubbed his eyes again.
“Sorry.”
“Shut up!” Saint Peter leaned back and thought for a moment. “Listen,” he rocked his stool forward for a better view, “there might be a way out of this mess.”
“Like?”
“Would you consider doing Us a favor?”
“Sure. Wha….” But the image of the Pearly Gates was already dissolving in front of my eyes.
***
It was so cold. “Jesus.” I muttered.
“Hey! None of that in here.” A voice roared through a door off to my left.
I turned my head toward the voice. The doorway blackened as a misshapen shadow filled it. The Beast stepped though the entry.
“Gee.” I looked him over. “You’re short.” Lucifer didn’t even come up to my shoulders.
“And?”
“And nothing. I’m just surprised is all. You look much taller in the pictures.”
“Propaganda.” He shook his head. “If you’re six-foot-one and look like Gabe they stick you in sales and marketing up there.” He gestured with his pitchfork. “Five-foot-nothing and a ‘doesn’t work well with others’ millennial review lands you down here for a few million years.” The Big Dragon looked dejected. “It’s just not fair.”
“Sorry.” I wasn’t. “Nice coat though.”
Beelzebub was sporting an ankle-length, black leather coat secured in the front with silver “x” clasps. The bottom flared out as he turned back and forth for my inspection. In certain light angles the coat took on a dark-red cast.
“Thanks.” He looked down approvingly. “It’s the one Snipes wore in Blade.”
“Good movie.”
“Appropriate, don’t you think?” The Deceiver gave a little shimmy. “I had to have it taken in.” He pulled at the lapels.
“So, you’re not an outca…?”
“Shhh.” He shook his head. “No secrets spoken aloud.” The Spoiler leaned in closer and gave me a conspiratorial wink. “It’s more like a Co-op.” He cast his gaze heavenward. “We save a bunch buying in bulk.
“Anyway, I understand we have a problem.” The Evil One pulled a rectangular shape from his pocket. He touched it and it glowed. “Pete sent this down to me.” He held the glowing block to my face. The screen showed an image of me on the scale.
“Cool phone.”
“Yeah.” He looked at it. “Droid MXV or something. We get to do the harsh-environment tests on the prototypes as part of The Deal.
“Back to the problem at hand.” He looked me in the eye. “This balance nonsense has only happened twice before.”
“Wh… ?”
“I’m getting to that.” He shook his head. “First time, uh, Rudy? Buddy? Something like that.”
“Buddha?”
“That’s the guy.” The Antichrist smiled broadly. “You know him?”
I shook my head.
“Not important. Anyway, he’s like you, just some guy off the street. He’s this lazy, kind-of-chubby kid. We asked him to keep an eye on the Tree.”
“The Tree of Life?”
“The same. The Gardener was on vacation.” He stopped his pacing. “So he’s sitting under the tree and he goes all Nirvana on us. Puts on saffron robes and heads for the hills to collect his followers.”
“What happened?”
“Loggers.”
“Bummer.”
“Yeah, we think the whole enlightenment thing was an allergic reaction to the pollen. Luckily, the Gardener had kept some seeds so he started a new one.”
“But that was a lon….”
“Twenty-five hundred years. These things take time.” The Serpent pointed his pitchfork up again. “Rudy’s running the yoga retreat down at the beach now. Has really shaped up too.”
“Buddha?”
“Exactly.” He held up his hand with two fingers extended. “Then Jesus.”
“I thought…?”
“Third Commandment.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“What a tipesh. Forty days in the desert? What was he trying to prove?”
“But the Bible…?”
“Yeah, whatever. I was filling in at Search and Rescue at the time. Couldn’t convince him to give up the fast.” He shook his head. “Ended up starving to death.”
“But?”
“Aw, the guys up in Marketing wanted to test a new idea.” He looked at the floor and kicked at something stuck to the stone. Then he looked up. “They sent him back.”
“Resurrected twice?”
“If you can believe that.” He smoothed the front of his coat. “Anyway the market penetration of this new idea was off the chart. Fifty thousand times what they expected.” He looked at me again. “You’ll see him walking around every now and then. Still has a smug look to him if you ask me.”
“The others?”
“What others?” The Devourer looked puzzled. “Oh, I see, the other ‘holy people’. They all skated in.” Once again he pointed to the ceiling. “Working the self-help circuit.”
“So you’re sending me back?”
“Not a chance. You ask too many questions.” A devilish red fire lit in his eyes. “We have other plans for you.”
“Wha…?”
“Quit interrupting.” He turned and walked toward the door. “Follow me.”
We walked through the door into a small room. Mammon stopped and turned suddenly. I came up short.
“Push ‘Eight’, would you?”
I turned and saw a line of dimly illuminated buttons next to the door. There were ten. The top one read “Reception”. I pressed the one second to the bottom. The doors slid closed and the little room jerked and started to descend.
“Eight?”
“Don’t worry about it. They’re all pretty much the same. The whole Divine Comedy thing was a marketing deal.” He looked absently around the elevator then seemed to find his train of thought parked in the front left corner.
“So there’s something that we need you to do but the trick is we can’t tell you what it is.” He shook his head and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “There are some screwed up Rules in this place.” The Accuser squinted at me, sizing me up. “Pod Eight will be a good place for you to start.”
“Pod?”
“Terminology two-point-oh. Another gift from those bozos upstairs.”
“Okay.”
“Here’s the deal. If you can find your way out of Pod Eight you will ‘be deemed worthy’ – not my words – and off you’ll go.”
“That’s it?” I said as a bell chimed and the door opened.
“Not quite.” He pushed past me and stepped into the biggest space I had ever seen.
I followed the Fallen Angel out onto a platform overlooking a cavernous enclosure. It was a pleasant temperature and brightly lit. It was so enormous that, despite the lighting, the far end was invisible in the distance. The air smelled like sweat.
“I was expecting fire and brimstone.”
“Not any more. We always try and keep up with the times. Come up with punishments that mean something.” His eyes flared red again. “Ah,” he said staring into infinity, “there’s an open spot.”
***
We were standing in front of a television. “I see what you mean about punishments that matter.” In every direction I looked, for as far as I could see, people stood in front of televisions. Dancing.
My television sat on a small table beneath which was a little box and a “T” shaped unit. I looked closer.
“Xbox 360?” I glanced at the Adversary.
“With a Kinect.” He pointed his fork at the other device. “Made some modifications to the software but basically all you’ve got to do is figure out the game.” He pointed his pitchfork at the TV and it glowed to life. “Win the game and you’re out. And,” he indicated a cooler. “You might want to grab a bottle of water now. Next break’s not for two weeks.” He checked his watch.
“But what if I have to go to the bat…?”
“You won’t.” The Liar from the Beginning vanished in a puff of yellow smoke.
I turned toward the screen. “Clap,” came out of the speaker. “Clap, clap, clapclapclap.” The clapping repeated over an industrial dance beat soundtrack. The flashing screen read “Dance Central 200.0” with “Break It Down” underneath. An animated sandy-haired guy wearing tight pants, a gray shirt open to his waist, and large framed glasses appeared on the screen. He was pumping his arms up and down and kicking his legs to the beat of the music.
“Hey, that looks just like Bi….”
“Bill Gates,” said a voice behind me. I turned to see who was speaking. “That guy will do anything to stay in the spotlight.” He looked around his television at me. “Hi, I’m Larry.”
“Hi Larry. I’m….” No name came to mind.
“Don’t worry about it. It can be like that when you first check in.”
“You look familiar.”
“I get that a lot.”
“Japanese?”
“I wish.”
“Maybe TV then?”
“Don’t remember.” He shook his head. “Anyway to start the game you just wave your arms and the Kinect will see it. Just follow along on the screen.” A loud horn sounded in the distance. “Oh good. Break time.”
“But he said two weeks?”
“Time’s kind of funny down here.” He rushed over to the cooler and snatched out a bottle of water. The horn sounded again and across the space people scurried to get back to their places. The beat went on.
I waved my hand at the screen. There were a lot of “yo, yo, yo’s” as the animated characters back-slapped each other and said stuff like “awite”. The faux-Bill pimp-rolled out into the center of the screen. “Clap, clap, clapclapclap.”
The image of Bill spoke. “OK, what you do is follow along. If I step here,” he stepped and the floor underneath his foot lit up. “Then you do the same.” He stepped again. I followed. “Perfect.” He clapped his hands and so did all the other on-screen characters. “So we’re going to work through a set of moves.” The music got louder. “When we get through that we’ll try something harder.” Then louder still.
Bill stepped. I stepped. Bill pumped his arms. So did I. Bill shimmied his legs then swiveled his hips. I followed along. A buzzer sounded behind me. Larry said “Shit!” I heard something break. “Damn it.” A half-filled water bottle flew ten feet over my head. “He keeps changing the pattern.”
Up until then I hadn’t noticed there was a pattern. But Larry was right. I could follow along correctly for a while and then I’d miss a step. Bill would say something like “That’s awite. Nobody ever gets it the first time.” I’d been trying to follow along for what seemed like hours with no progress. “Let’s try again.” The dance would start back up. “Clap, clap, clapclapclap.” But the moves wouldn’t be the same.
I concentrated harder, looking for the pattern. I tried to remember all the moves. Then I tried to anticipate them. Then I got it. The break horn sounded.
There was a sudden crash behind me. Larry had tipped his television onto the floor and was jumping up and down on the shattered screen. He kicked the pieces as hard as he could and fragments flew in all directions. “Shit, shit, shitshitshit.” Larry kicked again.
“Problem?”
Larry dashed up to me with murder in his eyes. Then he stopped and collected himself. “Sorry. This thing is getting to me.” Behind him, the scattered fragments of the screen gathered together. In front of my eyes the TV reassembled itself, the stand righted, and the TV hopped back onto the stand. I was amazed.
Larry looked suicidal. “All these years and I haven’t gotten past the first level.”
“Years?” I shook my head in sympathy. “I just figured something out.”
He looked at me in disbelief. “Yeah, right.”
“The pattern to learn isn’t the dance.”
“It isn’t?” He looked skeptical and took a step back.
“No. The pattern is the way the dance steps change when it restarts.”
“Really?”
Some other suffering souls from nearby had gathered around to hear better.
“Yeah. The first six times you screw up, the pattern only changes on the right foot.”
“Yeah?” My audience grew larger.
“Then the next six times, it’s the left.” There were about five-thousand people around me now. “The last six, it’s the hip swivel thing.”
“Huh? Six-six-six?”
“Yeah. The clues are in the funni…”
“Silence!” The Enemy of Righteousness burst from a cloud of green smoke. “No secrets spoken aloud! You know the Rules.
“All of you; be gone!” He bellowed and the multitude surrounding me vanished. The televisions vanished. We were standing alone. The space was silent and empty.
The Great Usurper sucked in his gut and puffed out his chest. He pointed his fork into the void around us. “Do you have any idea how much that stuff cost?” He stabbed the handle of his pitchfork into the ground. “You think we can just change the Number or something like that?”
I shrugged.
“Well, we can’t.” His shoulders drooped. “We’ve got rules too.” He jabbed his fork at me. “It would have been so much better if you would have just kept your mouth shut.”
He lowered the tines. “Anyway, good job. Nobody’s ever figured it out in less than two-hundred twenty before.”
“Minutes?”
“Years.”
I was stunned.
“Time’s kind of funny down here.”
“So it seems.”
“You are now Worthy!” The Slanderer shouted and slammed down the butt of his pitchfork. Sparks flew everywhere. I jumped back. “Sorry,” he said. “I had to make it official.”
“No problem. Maybe a little warning next time?”
“OK.” He leaned in toward me. “Time for the next step. This is the real deal so don’t screw it up.”
“What do I do?”
“Can’t help you there, pal. You’re on your own from here on out.”
My vision faded in a yellowish mist. The Awful Monster vanished from sight.
***
I was in another room. Blue-white spotlights shining down from above punctuated the darkness. A faint electrical hum filled the air. Centered within each brilliant circle of light was a desk and chair. In the chair closest to me sat Mr. Bill Gates. I walked over.
“Hi.”
“And the horse you rode in on.” He slammed something down on the desk.
“Problem?”
“You spend your whole life building something. You spend your whole life trying to do something good for people. And where does it get you?”
I shrugged.
“Right here.” He shook his finger at me in accusation. “That’s where.”
“It’s nicer than Pod 8.” I looked around. “Much quieter.”
“Ha!” Bill perked up. “You one of those dancing fools?”
I nodded.
“Lemme tell you, uh…?” He looked at me for an answer.
“Can’t remember.” My name still escaped me.
“Not a problem.” He shook his head. “Lemme tell you. If I had known that those guys were going to put me, me can you believe it, as one of those dancing avatars in that damned game I would have been pissed.” He was shaking the thing he had slammed onto the desk at me. “Pissed.”
“You didn’t know?”
“Nah, I was out of the loop by then.” He looked a bit disheartened. “I didn’t have a clue.” He took a deep breath and went on. “No, I was off using my billions to save the world, to help make hunger go away, cure diseases, spread knowledge to the huddled fucking masses.” He grabbed me by my shirt. “And you know what those, those, those ingrates did?”
I shook my head.
“They went and bought these.” He tossed an iPhone3 down onto his desk. “Think of the irony.”
“That is pretty funny,” I agreed.
“Funny, my ass.” He let go of my shirt and pushed me away. “They didn’t buy Windows PCs, they didn’t buy Windows phones, they didn’t even buy Zunes.” He picked up the iPhone and looked it over.
“So, what?” I asked. “Your punishment is to make phone calls for all eternity?”
“Nah,” he shook his head again. “I gotta figure out how to change the batteries.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it?” He reached across the desk and picked an iPod out of the pile. He tossed it to me. “Let’s see how you make out, Mr. Smartguy.”
I scanned the iPod and picked at it with my fingers and looked for a button, or slide, or switch that would open the back or slide out a tray. Anything that would give access to the inside. I found nothing. “Isn’t there a kit or something?”
“You would think.” He reached down and picked up a box. “I did a little, uh, research during a particularly unsettling time.” He opened the box and showed me what appeared to be bits of plastic and metal mixed with dirt.
I looked up at him. “And that is…?”
“iPod Touch.” He reached under the desk and pulled out some more boxes opening them one-by-one. “And an iPad, and an iPod nano, and an iPhone.”
“The iPhone’s got a battery.”
“Yeah, and that’s the only one the owner is allowed to open.” He pointed at a crack in the battery. “But see, it’s a dummy. Everything is filled with clay.”
“Clay?”
“To give it some heft.” He started covering the boxes back up. “Makes it feel like you’re actually getting something for four-hundred bucks.”
“But how do they work?”
“Don’t know. Right now I’m just trying to figure out how to open one without using a hammer.”
I picked up a nano from the desk and looked at it. I turned it over and hit the power button. The screen glowed to life. “This one works.” I turned the screen toward Bill.
“No it doesn’t. It’s filled with clay.”
I flipped it back and the screen was dark. I pushed the button but the screen remained unlit.
“Here try this one.” He tossed me another box.
“But it’s brand new.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He gave me a wry smile. “Just remember, it’s filled with clay.”
I pulled off the shrink-wrap plastic and opened the box. I pulled out the cardboard packing and found a lime-green nano, took it out, and pushed the button. Nothing. “Probably just needs to be charged.”
Bill pointed to a power-strip on the desk. “There’s a USB charger right there. Knock yourself out.”
I took the cable from the package and plugged it into the charger and the iPod. I waited. I figured fifteen or twenty minutes should be enough. I pulled out the Getting Started Guide and skimmed through it. Fifteen minutes later the nano’s screen was still dark. No charging indicator had appeared. I unplugged it and touched the screen. Dead.
Bill pointed at it with his screwdriver. “Seems like once you know what’s inside they just stop working.”
“But,” I was perplexed. “Then why do the batteries, which you say aren’t really batteries anyway, need replacing?”
Bill started laughing. “Because it says so in the manual.” He pointed at the user guide in my hand. “Page seventeen.”
I flipped to the page and scanned through the text. I stopped and looked at Bill, I was stupefied. “’Might’ need to be replaced?” I read it again to be sure. “They knew.”
“Yup,” He motioned for me to come close and he whispered. “I know what they do.”
I arched my eyebrows and he went on.
“Some poor schmo thinks their battery is getting weak so the thing stops working. They pack it up and send it in.” He paused to make sure I got the picture. “Apple gets it, puts it in another box.”
“And sends it back.” I finished for him. “The owner thinks the battery was replaced and so it starts working again.”
“Yup, if you think it’s fixed, it works like new.” Bill nodded and picked up the little green nano. He touched the screen and it glowed to life. He handed it to me. “Like magic.”
I scrolled through the menus. I turned it off. I turned it back on. I put the little device down on the table, picked up the hammer, and smashed it. Then I hit it again.
“Clay?” Bill asked.
“You got it.”
I studied the metal and plastic detritus jumbled in the tacky beige clay. I poked it around with my finger. “Not magic,” I said. Bill looked at me with a question forming on his lips. “Science.” I answered before he spoke. “It works by Noetics.”
“Huh?”
“Noetics, mind over matter.”
“Bullshit.”
“Got another theory?” I asked. Bill shook his head slightly, his eyes squinting. I picked up the shattered nano and held it in my right hand. I waved my left hand over my right and said “Abracadabra.”
Bill leaned in with a look of expectation. “Just kidding,” I opened my hand and showed him the wreckage. “Take this.” I dumped the shards into his hand. He looked at them intently and closed his fingers around them.
“You know you’re insane,” he studied me closely. “Completely nuts.”
“Bill, then just humor me.” I fixed him with my eyes. “’Cause if I’m really crazy I might just bite you.” I suddenly lunged forward an inch.
“Stop that, you lunatic.”
“Then humor me.”
“OK, what?”
“1997,” I pulled up a chair and sat down. “Tell me.”
He looked puzzled, then started talking. “Big year, bad year. The new version of Windows was late. There was a new version of Office but it really needed the new Windows.” He went quiet as he thought.
“And…,” I prompted.
“There was anti-trust legal action in the U.S. and Europe.”
“For killing and eating your competitors.”
He rolled his eyes. “Whatever. It’s just business.”
“And?”
He looked at the pile of devices on his table. “And there was Apple.” He looked at me like somebody just told him his dog died. “They were about to go under,” he explained. “They were almost bankrupt, out of operating cash. And if Apple had gone under the Feds would have broken up Microsoft as a company.” He looked like he was going to cry. “Microsoft needed Apple to stay Microsoft.”
“So you bailed them out, right?”
“Not really a bailout. Microsoft bought a hundred and fifty million in stock.” He smiled. “Really good investment too. We made billions.”
“So you intended Apple to remain your competitor.”
“Yeah.”
“And what did you get?”
“Competition.” He looked at me. “But that was Steve Jobs. He had just come back to the company.”
“But you got what you hoped, right? A good investment, competition, the Feds off your back?”
“All that and more.” Bill looked thoroughly depressed.
“Where had Steve Jobs been?”
“He started some other computer company: NeXT. Apple bought his company and Steve came back.”
“Uh, huh.” I scooted my chair closer to the table. “Then you invested your millions and what happened.”
“iMacs, iBooks, iPods, iPhones, iPads.” He pointed to the heap of iStuff on the table. “I tell you, the guy is a magician.”
“Noetics.”
“Bullshit.” Bill picked up a screwdriver and brandished it at me. “This is high-tech, not some New Age crap some self-help guru from Palm Springs is preaching so he can get laid.” The veins on his temples bulged.
“Okay, okay.” I held up my hands in surrender. “Then let’s use its other name.”
Bill lowered the screwdriver. “What’s that?”
“Physics.”
“You are nuts.”
“Give me a second here.”
Bill shook his head but said, “Okay.”
“So what are you made of?”
“Nothing now. I’m dead.”
“I stand corrected.” I paused. “Let me rephrase the question. When you were alive, what were you made of?”
Bill’s eyes lit up and he droned out a monotone answer. “I was made of cells. And the cells were made of molecules and the molecules were made of atoms. And, oh look, atoms are mostly not there so I was mostly empty space.” He pointed the screwdriver at me. “How’s that Mr. New-Age Mumbo-Jumbo?”
“Not bad at a first approximation.” I said. “And the atoms?”
“Elementary particles, protons, neutrons, electrons.” He shook his head. “You going somewhere with this?”
“You bet.” It was my turn to smile. “Electrons are fundamental particles but protons and neutrons can be further broken down.”
“Right,” Bill said. “Quarks.”
“Not bad for a software guy.” I shot back. “And these electrons and quarks what’s special about them?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Dunno?”
“They, my friend, are not really there at all.” I snatched the screwdriver away and pointed it back at him. “Sometimes it looks like it really is a particle, but then when you look closely it can be more like a wave traveling through space. Then when you look again it’s not really there at all and then POOF!” Bill jumped. “It shows up someplace else. At the end of the day it’s not really a thing. It’s just an idea, a concept, a probability.”
“But, whatever it is,” Bill took the bait, “it knows how to make these things: protons and neutrons.” His eyes went wide as he latched onto the idea. “And those things know how to make atoms and the atoms know how to build molecules and the molecules; cells, and the cells knew how to make me.” He stood up and paced the length of the table twice. “It’s all just information.”
“If you say so, you’re the software guy.”
He sat back down. I looked at him. “One last question. You say you were the product of these particles and atoms and molecules and cells, right?”
He nodded his head. “Yeah?”
“But now you’re dead?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why are you still here?”
Bill opened his mouth once then closed it. Then opened it again. No words came out. He stood up then sat back down. Then stood up again. He looked at me. “I’m here because I think I am.”
“’Think’?” I asked. “Seems to imply some uncertainty.”
“I’m here because I know I am.”
I started to say something but Bill held up his hands. “Wait,” he said. “That means that even though I know I’m here now and I knew I was there when I was alive there really isn’t any way to tell the difference.
“When I started Microsoft I knew it was going to succeed because that was what I intended. Every day, I would work for that. Then when I bought into Apple, I got the competition I had intended but Steve Jobs got the money to do what he intended.” Bill stopped for breath.
“But why did Steve come back to Apple?”
Bill thought for a second. “He came back because everybody knew that he was Apple.” He looked at me with incredulity. “They believed in him. Then they believed in his products.” He sat back down. “They believed.”
A bright light started seeping between the fingers of Bill’s still clenched fist. It filled the space surrounding the desk with a green glow then quickly faded. Bill opened his hand and sitting on his palm was a now completely intact, lime green, iPod nano. He touched the screen and the display lit up. It said “Genius”. Bill turned it over in his hand and squeezed two opposite corners. There was a faint click and the back separated. He pulled it off. Inside were wires, a small circuit board, and a tiny battery.
“Noetics,” I said.
“But that doesn’t explain something.” Bill fixed me with his gaze.
“What’s that?”
“When I started my philanthropy I wanted to go out and make a difference. I truly knew I could help people by fighting hunger and disease.”
“OK.”
“But even after spending billions, all the problems were still there. We didn’t even make a dent.”
“I think you know why.”
He nodded. “Our intention was to do all of these things for people. But we never asked them what they wanted. We never found out what their intentions for themselves were.” He stood up and resumed pacing. “Their intentions could have even been at cross-purposes to ours. A stalemate.”
He started getting excited. “In fact, I bet that there is just one intention that works, one thought that is guaranteed to do what its intenders hope.”
“What’s that?”
“To be happy with exactly what you have.”
The spotlight clicked off. The electrical humming grew loud and then cut off. The darkness faded and Bill Gates and I stood facing Saint Peter at the entrance to Paradise. In the distance Steve Jobs was waving to Bill. Bill turned to me.
“Thanks,” Bill reached out and shook my hand. “I don’t think I could have ever found the answer on my own.”
“You would have. You just have to look for the patterns.” He released my hand. “Sometimes it takes a while.”
Bill clipped the nano to his sleeve and put in the ear-buds. He waved and walked through the Pearly Gates. I swore I saw him throw a little hip swivel as he vanished into the clouds.
“Thanks.” I turned toward the voice and Saint Peter was looking at me over the dais. Next to the podium Satan stood with his pitchfork in hand. They were both smiling. “He’s a good guy,” Saint Peter went on. “It would have been tough if he hadn’t figured it out.”
“So now what?” I looked from one to the other. “We doing the bird thing again.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Saint Peter rocked his stool forward. “But there is one more thing we need you to do.”
I was dispirited. “Now what?”
The Devil looked at me and his eyes glowed like embers. He pointed his fork at me and beams of white light flowed from the tines. He smiled. “We need you to live.”
***
It was so cold. A light, brighter than I had ever seen before, washed over my eyes. People yelled. Somebody wailed in despair. A weeping man sat in a chair with his head in his hands. From everywhere a torrent of sounds and sights and feelings accosted me. It was more than I could bear. I opened my mouth and started crying.
The feeling in room changed abruptly. The yelling stopped. I was placed down on something soft and warm. Something covered me. The covering was pulled away from my face and a gauzy scene filled my eyes. Unrecognized shapes and colors; unknown feelings and sounds. It was all so different and all so new.
“Mrs. Charles,” a strong voice said. “We don’t know what happened. There was no heartbeat at first, nothing. And then the little guy just came to life. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
I heard and felt a softer voice. “Thank you, Doctor,” it said. “It’s a miracle.”
“What do we call him?” Another voice.
Then I heard/felt the soft voice speak again. “Just what we decided. His name is Adrian.”
Yes, I thought. Now I remember.