Procrastinating with Jesus’ Son
Jack, the Son of the Son of God, was too sober.
“C’mon, suck it in,” I told him soothingly. “That’s it, good boy...”
The bong gurgled. Jack tilted his head back, holding it in, then exhaled a smooth, fluffy cloud of smoke.
We were in the den of Jack’s suite in Slack Heaven. Jack was still in shock from having made thousands of protesters disappear in a flash of blinding light just by telling them to fuck off.
“Ok, now take another...”
My husband Bob was there with us, his skin and hair colorfully patched like a harlequin costume due to a recent tie-dyeing accident.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Bob asked.
“Why don’t you go check the Network,” I said. “See if anyone’s noticed any missing gods or theologians or, uh, pandas or whatever.”
“Can do! Love you!” he said, giving me a kiss and heading out to the hall.
“How many people was that?” Jack asked nervously once we were alone.
“Uh, I’m not sure, hundreds maybe?” I lied.
Jack groaned, shut his eyes and leaned his head back.
“And there’s nobody left?”
“Not that I can tell,” I said. “Have another hit.”
Jack took that hit, and then we sat in silence for a minute. I absent-mindedly fiddled with the golden apple that had been thrown at Jack during the riot.
“Thanks, dude,” Jack said. “I’ve needed that for awhile.”
“That’s what saints are for,” I said, which elicited the hoped-for smirk from him. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“It’s just never been that many people before,” he said.
“I remember you, uh, zapped away Satan,” I said. “I saw you get a bit sparky at Pan, and then Peter, and you lit up like a supernova at the Lake—but nobody disappeared those times.”
“It happened a few times during the years you were in purgatory,” Jack said. “It was tough to avoid the bad guys while staying off Peter’s radar. And then during the years I spent on the Other Side, and when I first got back, it was...more than a few times. But it was never more than a handful of people at a time, and never anyone who didn’t deserve it!”
“Do you know what happens to the people you, um, light up?” I asked, still struggling with the terminology.
“Saying zapped is fine,” Jack said, “and I have no idea.”
He groaned and slumped his head forward.
“So what triggers it?” I asked. “Is it just when you get angry? Or is it any intense emotion? Can you control it?”
“Don’t know, don’t know, don’t know,” Jack said. “Look, dude, I appreciate that you’re trying to help, but you’re in problem-solver mode, and right now I think I need to just sit with my thoughts a bit. Or at least, keep getting high and not have thoughts for a bit.”
“Completely understandable,” I said. “Want me to leave you alone for now?”
“If you wouldn’t mind,” he said.
“No worries,” I said. “I’m around if you need anything.”
I headed out, taking the golden apple with me.
When I got back to my suite, I found Bob standing in front of a pentacle drawn in chalk on our living room floor, flipping through revelations. Every time he swatted his hand through the air in front of him, the apparition in the pentacle changed.
“A tragic flying saucer crash left seven dead and thirteen wounded today,” reported a cyclops in a suit behind a desk. “The deceased are expected to make a full resurrection, but our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the injured—”
Swat.
“Thirty percent chance of death from above this morning,” said the Wicked Witch of the West, pointing at a map on the wall, “with clouds clearing and sunshine later—”
Swat.
“Mom,” said one zombie to another, “do you ever have that...not so fresh feeling?”
Swat.
“Citlalic passes the severed head of his enemy to Ahuatzi, Ahuatzi shoots, HE SCORES!”
Swat.
“I’m here on the red carpet with the entire cast of Lerna’s Eleven,” said a woman in a toga-inspired princess line dress. The lower half of a dragon’s body loomed behind her.
“Oooh, is she wearing Worth?” Bob asked himself, not noticing I had entered.
“Any news?” I asked.
“Oh!” Bob said, quickly swatting his hand down to turn off the altar. “Nope, just another day in Atlantis.”
I gave him a quick kiss.
“How’s Jack?” he asked.
“Still in shock,” I said, “but he’s pulling it together. He doesn’t seem to know what exactly happened, but he said it’s happened before.”
“Must be nice to have super-secret Christ powers,” Bob said. “If I could do that, there’d be nobody left. Foosh!”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think Jack takes quite the delight in it that you would,” I said. “I just don’t get what everyone’s deal was. Jack bends over backwards to stay out of people’s way. If he’s not safe from protesters, none of us are.”
“They’re just scared, that’s all,” Bob said.
“What do they got to be scared of?” I asked. “I mean, if they knew he could zap people, they wouldn’t have showed up in the first place, so I doubt it’s that.”
Bob sat on the couch, opened the chest where we kept our stash, and began to assemble a bong.
“How much do you actually know about what Jack’s dad does?” Bob asked.
“Just what I learned in Sunday School,” I said. “Dude got crucified, went to hell, came back and now we can get into heaven. And since then I guess it’s been rinse and repeat? Jack just says his Dad busts up hells, but I’m not sure how he does it.”
“Nobody knows,” Bob said. “But I’ll tell you this much. The main Christian Heaven—the big one, the first one, not the little outposts they’ve established since then—that used to be capital-H Hell. The OG Satan was the big dog in Atlantis. Satan got first pass at any soul that broke the rules, and every soul broke a rule at some point.
“And then one day, Hell was Heaven! Just like that! The Shining City, Civ-town, all fluffy clouds and pearly gates. Everyone that was in there just disappeared, daemons and damned souls alike, and suddenly there’s this Jesus guy calling for a Council of the Gods to completely rewrite the rulebook.”
“But that was a good thing, right?” I asked.
“Yeah, at first,” Bob said. “I mean, it’s not like anyone was begging to get Satan back.”
“But I’ve met Satan!” I said. “It’s the only other time I’ve seen Jack banish anyone. It’s mentioned on my prayer card and everything.”
“You’ve met a Satan,” Bob explained. “There’s lots of them, but they’re all just echoes of the original. Just like all the other gods Jesus shattered.”
“No, wait, Jack told me the reason there’s lots of idols with the same name is that the universal translator just grabs the most appropriate name I know for whoever I’m talking to.”
“Yeah, I’m sure a dude who calls the gods ‘idols’ believes that,” Bob said. “But I was there, Leif. I didn’t spend my first few lives worshipping an Astarte, I worshipped the Astarte, and she was the same Astarte wherever you went. Now every other strip club has got their own. That’s not a quirk of translation, that’s fallout from spiritual conquest.”
“You’re saying Jesus splits them up intentionally?”
Bob shrugged. “It might just be how they keep themselves small enough to avoid the wrath of Christ.”
“The Jesus I know doesn’t have an ounce of wrath in him!” I objected. “He loves everyone, to a fault!”
“Jesus might love every soul,“ Bob said. “But he’s got a fair number of strong opinions on how souls are allowed to stack up into higher powers. And if the god you worship doesn’t toe the line, you might discover the afterlife you were hoping to get into is now just another Christian franchisee.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “The way you put it makes it sound way harsher than it really is. I mean, better Jesus than literal Satan, right?”
“I’m not disagreeing with you,” Bob said, “I’m just trying to get you to see it from their point of view. Gods and daemons may be epiphenomena of human souls, but they’re still only human.”
“That’s fair, I guess.”
“Anyway,” Bob said, “I’m pretty sure they were protesting here because they thought Jack would be sympathetic to their cause, or he’d at least feel guilty about things. Contrast with their other options. They’d be insane to go near the pearly gates, they’d just end up on Peter’s watch list. And not even Jack seems to know where the hell Jesus is. But Jack himself has a reputation as a pretty chill guy. He’s practically the god of chill at this point.”
“Well, we’ll see about that after today,” I said.
While we were talking, Bob had assembled a gigantic twisting maze of a bong out of interlocking plastic tubing winding through multiple bubbler chambers. He held a flame up to the bowl and twisted a knob that flipped a water-filled hourglass, which caused the entire apparatus to fill with smoke. Then he pulled a switch to open the carb and sucked it all in, hazing up the room with a single exhale. He didn’t cough, of course, because we were in Slack Heaven.
I had been absent-mindedly tossing the golden apple back and forth in my hands, and I suddenly realized I could juggle. I started bouncing the apple off my elbows, rolling it around the back of my hands and doing other little tricks. My Rapture™ model body was still surprising me, even after so many...decades? I honestly had no idea, but it didn’t matter, I was in heaven!
“Could you please just—put that down, please,” Bob said anxiously.
I hadn’t realized it was bothering him. I plucked the apple from the air.
“This was some kind of allusion to the Trojan War, right?” I asked, holding the apple up to examine it. “It’s got something written on it...”
“No, don’t—”
“Kallisti,” I read.
“Damn it, Leif,” Bob said. “Now that you’ve read it, you’ve got to do it.”
“Do what?” I asked. “What’s that mean?”
He seemed legitimately worried.
“It means ‘To the Prettiest One.’ You’ve got to give it to the most attractive god, and if any of them find out you have it, they’re all going to want it.”
“So?” I asked.
“So, there’s no right answer,” Bob said.
“Sure there is,” I said with a smile, offering him the apple.
“No!” Bob said, recoiling. “Gods damn it, Leif, I’m serious! Just put it down, and I’ll explain.”
“Okay,” I said, placing it on the coffee table and stepping away with my hands raised. Now I was anxious, too. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s Eris, the goddess of chaos, sort of,” Bob said. “She must not have been invited to the protest. She never shows up when she’s invited.”
“Ok, yeah, I’m remembering the story now,” I said. “Eris rolled an apple like this into a party on Olympus, and the gods made Paris pick who to give it to. Hera and Athena tried to bribe him, but he gave it to Venus because, duh, straight dude. So the other goddesses got pissed and started the Trojan War, right?”
“It would have been even worse if Paris had given it to anyone else,” Bob said. “Venus was the right answer. That’s the point, though. It’s the very act of casting judgment that unleashes the chaos.”
“So, we just track down this Eris and make her take it back then,” I said. “You were just talking about how scared shitless of the Christs all the gods are.”
“Eris...doesn’t actually exist,” Bob strained to explain. “Erisians don’t stick together, they stick apart. It’s like the opposite of worship. They unmake gods.”
“Damn, dude, what kind of assholes would want to do that?” I asked.
“Well, you know, some of them think it’s all just a bit of creative destruction, and next thing they know, they’ve fallen in with a really bad crowd,” Bob said, a little too defensively.
“Oh my god you were an Erisian, weren’t you!”
“I thought it was all a joke!” Bob pleaded. “Knock a few blowhards off their pedestals! Lighten things up when they get too serious! Throw a wrench in the bureaucracy! It was a very silly incarnation for me.”
“It’s ok,” I laughed. “I’m not judging. But what’s this about a bad crowd?”
“It’s Poe’s Law,” Bob said. “You think all this talk about immanentizing the eschaton is a satire of religion, but then it turns out half the people laughing were taking it seriously. I figured anarchy meant breaking the rules nobody follows anyway, like don’t do drugs, no buttsex, thou shall not kill, that sort of thing. But when they said they wanted to tear down the cornerstones of civilization, they meant our very ability to communicate, to trust, even to love! I did a lot of things I’m not proud of during that lifetime, and we ended up doing real damage to society.”
“What, did you, like, topple a democracy or something?” I asked.
“Ever hear of the Bronze Age Collapse?” Bob asked.
“Yikes,” I said.
“So, trust me when I say, that is a bad apple right there,” Bob warned. “If I were you, I’d hide it where nobody else can find it, and hope nobody finds out you have it.”
“Ok,” I said. “Best place I can think to put it is the back of the bedroom closet.”
“Don’t tell me!” Bob insisted.
“Ok! I’m going to go put this definitely not in the back of the bedroom closet,” I said, snatching the apple off the table and heading into the bedroom.
Time passed, presumably. Jack stayed hidden in his suite. I reassured the other residents of Slack Heaven that he was just sleeping off a particularly kickass party, hoping that was close enough to the truth to not be a lie. So much time passed that Bob’s skin returned to its natural color.
I was just about to go knock on Jack’s door to check on him when I found him out on the back porch. He had set the aetherostat to midday. There were cotton ball clouds in a beautiful blue sky, and he was flying a kite over the Curtain of Light. Or at least, I assumed it was a kite—it was a kite string leading up out of sight.
“Oh, hey dude!” Jack said in greeting. “Check it out! It’s so high up there, a flying saucer had to swerve to avoid hitting it, swear to Grandpa. It was hilarious!”
“Nice!” I said. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m cool,” Jack said, as if there wasn’t any reason for him to be otherwise. “How’re you doing?”
“I’m good,” I said.
“Cool,” Jack said.
We sat for a bit and watched the kite string. We could have done that for eternity, but I wasn’t letting him off that easy. He didn’t seem to want to talk about the zapping incident, though, so I tried a different tack.
“When are you thinking of doing the next tour for new residents?” I asked. “There’s got to be quite the crowd waiting by this point.”
“Have Goatee Fred do it,” Jack said.
Goatee Fred was not some famous reborn glober, literary character, legendary reference or anything like that. He was just a guy named Fred who had a goatee. Really great dude, don’t get me wrong! But the other residents of Slack Heaven were basically just ordinary souls. They were certainly remarkably chill, and everyone had their own unique talents. I loved them all because Jack loved them all, and they were all pretty easy to love. But there wasn’t anyone you would have heard of. Everyone was on a first-name basis, but there were lots of Freds, hence “Goatee Fred.”
“But you love giving the tour,” I said.
“So does Goatee Fred,” said Jack. “He tags along for fun all the time, and he knows more trivia about this place than I do. It’s going to take me a long time to wind this string back up, anyway.”
A long time passed. The interval between new resident arrivals was getting shorter. The living logs couldn’t grow fast enough, and we had to start doubling people up in bedrooms. Everyone got along great, and sleep was relatively optional in Slack Heaven, so this wasn’t a problem. But it also wasn’t particularly slackful.
I found Jack on the holoporch, playing one of his favorite civilization builder hologames. The porch was looking out over a glittering city. The Great Pyramids of Giza, the Eiffel Tower and Cristo Redentor all featured prominently in the skyline. A foreman in a construction hat and orange vest was standing on the other side of the porch railing, pointing something out on a map for Jack.
“Granary, then workshop, then market,” Jack told the foreman. The foreman nodded, rolled up the map, walked away and then vanished.
“Hey dude,” I said, “How are you doing?”
“Kicking ass is how I’m doing,” Jack said. “I’ve got it on easy, and I’m already researching Computing while everyone else is still on Scientific Method! How are things on your end?”
“Could be better, honestly,” I said. “Hey, do you remember the day of that—the day you were in the office looking over our numbers, you mentioned something about setting a new soul search filter?”
While I was talking, a man in a lab coat appeared.
“Let’s go back to get Military Tactics,” Jack told the scientist. “We’ve got a few turns to kill.”
The scientist nodded and disappeared.
“Yeah, I remember that,” Jack said. “What about it?”
“Well,” I said, “we’re starting to run out of rooms, like you said we would...”
“Is anyone bitching about it?” Jack asked, glancing away from his game just long enough to give me a pointed look.
“No, not exactly,” I said.
A man in a camo uniform appeared.
“Then I don’t see what the problem is,” Jack said. “I’ll deal with it later. Skip!”
“But sir—” the soldier objected.
“I said skip!” Jack said, waving his hand. The soldier disappeared.
I pressed as gently as I could.
“Maybe you could at least put on some kind of first come, first served filter...”
“Says the guy I met first,” Jack snorted.
“Dude...you know that’s got nothing to do with it...”
A man appeared wearing what looked like a wise man costume from a Nativity scene.
“Greetings, Supreme Leader Jack of the Canadians! I, Emperor Qin Shi Huang of the French, wish for there to be trade between our peoples! I offer you wood for sheep!”
“Sure,” Jack said, waving the emperor away. “No, wait—I’ve got wood, I need sheep!” he protested, but the emperor was gone. Jack turned to me.
“Look, dude, I’m not going to turn away souls that deserve to be here for some arbitrary reason,” Jack said. “It wouldn’t be fair. Find room.”
“But—”
“DUDE.”
For just a brief moment, Jack’s eyes flashed white.
I gasped. My heart was racing. I was scared.
“Whatever dude,” I frowned, mustering what little courage I had. “Finish your game, I’ll talk to you later.”
I walked away.
There was no way Jack would hurt me, was there? He had faced literal annihilation for me. He loved me.
I ran back to my suite.
When Bob saw me, he ran over and gave me a kiss.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, reading my expression.
“I’m really worried about Jack,” I said.
I told Bob what had happened. He did his best to calm me down, and we talked through it. Jack was dealing with some shit, obviously, and just needed space. He was our friend, we loved him, and we’d do what we could to keep the place running while he sorted his shit out.
I tried to lay down and get some sleep, but for the first time in heaven, I couldn’t. My mind just kept walking through all the times I’d seen Jack light up. I had never before understood what a dangerous dude he really was.
I went out for a walk, trying to stay smiling and friendly despite my inner turmoil. Hello, Smart Janet. Looking good there, Lucky Matt. What’s up, Tall Sindhu?
Jack ran up to me, grinning.
“Dude, come here!” he said excitedly. “You’ve got to see this revelation I just received!”
There was an open public altar right there. Jack gave a quick bow of his head, then Zeus and Hera appeared—the Zeus and Hera that had been in the crowd Jack zapped away. Zeus was wearing a red and yellow hawaiian shirt and beach shorts, and Hera was in a sparkling gold one-piece bathing suit. Both of them were wearing golden headbands across their foreheads. They had their arms around each other, and Hera was absolutely fawning over Zeus.
“Jack!” Zeus said. “Just wanted to pray to say thank you! Ever since our last visit with you, life’s just been getting better! Hera and I got counseling and worked things out. We realized we’ve just been so overworked, we forgot how much we really love each other. And now we’re heading off to the Fields for our second honeymoon, can you believe it? I also decided I need a change, so I’m giving up the real estate business and getting into charity work. Ever heard of effective altruism? Ahh, I’ll tell you all about it next time I see you. Anyway, I started off by giving Mount Olympus to the Azmerians—”
“A Mount Olympus,” Hera clarified.
“Just the one, yeah,” Zeus conceded, “but it’s a big, beautiful one! Apollo’s taking over the rest, gonna be just like his old man some day. All the kids say hi! Everyone’s doing fantastic! I still have no idea what you did to us that day, but it worked out great! Be sure to stop by next time you’re in the neighborhood, and if you ever need anything, you just give me a prayer and I’m there for you. Can’t thank you enough!”
They waved, and the revelation ended.
“Dude, that’s fantastic!” I said.
“Right? Go zappy zappy!” Jack celebrated, shooting finger guns for emphasis. “And hey, I want to apologize for being such a douche to you earlier. I’ve just been really stressed out about what happened. But it sounds like everything’s gonna be alright!”
“No worries, dude,” I said. “I think it threw all of us off our game.”
“You were absolutely right,” Jack continued. “First come, first served is totally fair. I’m going to go get it plugged into the soul search now. But when I’m done, wanna get high and grab some bacon?”
“Sure!” I said.
Jack gave me a big hug.
“Thanks for your support, dude,” Jack said, squeezing me tight. “I was really worried there for awhile.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said.
Later, after we’d gotten bacon and had ourselves a nice drift down the lazy river, I decided to make another go at napping. Sleep wasn’t strictly necessary in heaven, but it did help clear things up in the old noggin.
Before I crawled into bed, I double-checked the closet to confirm the golden apple was still there. I held it up to the light and took a good look at it.
Kallisti.
Then I went total hacky sack on it. Off the back of my heel, over my shoulder, left knee, forehead, right ankle. I caught it on the tip of my pinky and balanced it there. I could’ve kept it balanced there as long as I wanted. But I let it drop and gave it one more kick. It landed perfectly in the corner of the closet, for me to deal with later.
Next: Hot Dogs with Jesus’ Son
Doing Drugs with Jesus’ Son is always free.