The GOD Box (17 page)

Lights off, and a voice from the operator got them all to sit down and be quiet. “We’re done.” He said stoically, “Please exit the room in silence.”
They all were at least capable of that – until they exited the room and the bickering started again. Gabe by then was frustrated, and unbelieving of the behavior of these biased, ignorant, adults with their exclusive ideas.

Wanting to make his opinion simple and clear, Gabe
moved to the table in the center of their upper room, where fifteen people couldn’t comprehend how to react. While still old and frail, he stood straighter than he did now, represented more power then, than he ever would again. Everyone looked at him because he was clearly going to say something profound. As if it were a Hollywood film, he slowly took his hand from his jaw where it had gone in the shock and disappointment. Pointedly, he jabbed the table with his index finger.

“No one will ever agree. That is the whole point
of starting over. No one knows what’s good for them, or for others, no one knows how to regulate the behavior of a nation. Everyone has tried, and that’s what’s got us in this mess. There will be no God. There will be no commandments…
if
there is a nature of right and wrong, they will find it. This is a re-creation. Not a replacement or a restoration. I will not be present if we do this again.”

Well, you can assume that started a riot.

___

Back in the present moment,
Gabe responded to Jonathan, “I’m sure you know as well as I do that that wouldn’t have worked once people had begun to protest. We knew that… that’s why we found other means.” And they did find other means, in the knowledge of only a few others… a backup, just in case things didn’t fly smoothly with the people, or with the war. Perhaps if the people could remember how it was, also, they would be careful not to repeat it. Nearly impossible though it was to find people without very many mental/ emotional disorders in their background, and without religion (same thing) along with that, they found a few people from a few nations who fit their criteria.

“What do you mean it wouldn’t have worked?! Of course it would have. The predictability of our conditioning was flawless.
Repeatedly tested and tried. Results from ten years helped us almost reach perfection of teaching, of expanding their minds to grasp the organization of freedom.”

“If only, if only! Let’s keep dancing in the cemetery of old ideas and hopes, shall we? The wondering if we actually know what we’re doing is starting to win. I’m concerned we invented a game that no one can ever win.
” Gabe stopped pacing and stared at the ground. Jonathan ignored all social cues to be sympathetic. He was enraged.

“Stop? Stop old man? Stop what we worked on our whole lives?”

Gabe wasn’t sure who was in charge of this situation. Gabe just wanted to peck at him. His comment played to everything he really desired, but was just too hopeless to accomplish. Gabe sighed, “Different tactics then! Maybe we don’t have to stop… just change our formula.”

Jonathan was bearing down on him. “No! It’s supposed to work! Do you not see progress?! One more time, and we’d have it. Better conditioning of those we leave behind.
We made a mistake last time and didn’t have the opportunity.”

“Where a
re we planning on getting, huh? Simple nature? Is that the perfection we are looking for? De-evolution to the bare minimum for mere survival? That was never the intent. Acceptance was the intent! We never know what to expect, anymore, so we have to keep changing our ideals to the circumstances given and hope for the best.”

Jonathan was ready to grab the old man and beat him.

“I’ll give it a few more days.” Gabe said to calm him then continued, “I’m old, I’m tired, and I wish I would have died before this ever started. I know a losing battle when I see one.”

“You’re vision of past, present, and fu
ture is gone. You can’t see shit!”

Dane came
from inside the house as Jonathan made his last comment. Gabe was so lost in thought, he hadn’t seen everyone re-enter the house.

Dane
looked from one to the next, not showing whatever amazement and horror he may have felt on his face. He said,

“I think you guys need a break from each other. Besides we have a few ideas which we think are appropriate to share with you.”

Gabe took the lead. Before Jonathan entered the house, Dane very kindly prompted him to take his medication. Jonathan refused on the grounds that he’d already taken too many that day. Dane said he’d wait until he was calmed down, then. Jonathan growled and stomped around. To attempt to get out his energy he lifted his hands in the air, tensely, as if he was mangling a large rabbit. Varieties of this behavior went on for ten or fifteen minutes outside, romping around like a distracted bear who wanted to eat his prey, but was committed to being vegetarian.

When the night came, all of the family and friends trickled in one by one, going to one of the back rooms, or grabbing a spot in the living room. The bench-couches were the prized sleeping places and Miek, now basically one with the family was arguing playfully with the sixteen year old for. They tried rock paper scissors always upping the number of games that made it a fair win.

Samson didn’t argue with the floor and fell asleep like he’d always been there; a stone still decoration. No one could move him now, either, so he got stepped on a few times, not waking up. Several groaned when they found out how many cushions he stole, too and tried to pull them out from underneath him, with several complaints of, “Samson… ahhh, Samson, get off.”

Gabe was sure he saw Samson smile.

Once they finally got Jonathan inside, there was much to talk about. Miek had given up the couch to the boy and was sitting at the table with the others. Samson appeared to be sound out on the floor, still.

“We want to strike
a deal with you.” Dane said frankly, “Maybe not so much a deal… but we wanted to tell you what’s happening so you at least can know and be involved. What we intend to do, we intend no matter what you think.”

Jonathan folded his arms
, and stood more broadly as if daring them to say more. Gabe thought,
wrong move, kids
. Maybe you like honesty, but that isn’t going to work right now. Nothing is going to win Jonathan over. As far as that’s concerned, very little would win
him
over either. Unless they were thinking of the thing he most desired, even in his weakness… then maybe he’d give them anything they wanted.

“We will continue to
help you do research, try to improve society through your knowledge, if you will agree to not come back to life again.” Dane said promptly.

Jonathan laughed dully, cynically. “No.”

Gabe withheld any remark for the moment. As far as they knew, coming back to life had to do with the cave and people calling them out with the button combination. Gabe couldn’t even be sure if these kids knew it was a choice. Right now, they were making assumptions that there was some way, somehow, that only Jonathan and Gabe knew about.

Gabe spoke up, he was just about done with Jonathan anyway, “I’ll agree to that.”

Jonathan sent him a scathing look. His next words coursed through him and came out like vomit. “YOU ASSHOLE! Ready and willing to go to hell, are you?”

He leaped up out of his chair and landed on Gabe
, who wanted to fight back so badly, but just felt his muscles couldn’t work.
Too old.
Desperately he started hitting Jonathan at the ribs; the only place he could reach now that Jonathan’s hand was around his throat. He could hear the sounds of people trying to get Jonathan off, of chairs being thrown aside. Someone yelled for Samson. An elbow came between Gabe’s face and Jonathan’s as Samson put Jonathan in a headlock and squeezed until he let go of Gabe’s tender throat. He thought he saw and felt Jonathan lose consciousness briefly. The door was opened in sync with Samson’s dance-like movement as he picked Jonathan up and tossed him out into the grass. Jonathan was like an animal, impulsive, and carnal. Though not a strong human being, comparing with Gabe he might as well be a bear. And if Jonathan was a bear, Samson was some hybrid beast.

“Just don’t kill him, yah?” Dane said.
Dane was fed up with Jonathan.

“Yah.” Samso
n replied before the door slammed shut.

After Gabe was told to relax,
and could comprehend it, he didn’t know how long he lay there, crying. His brain switched back and felt the utter betrayal Jonathan felt. If the betrayal was the other way around, Gabe would be hateful, too. Gabe wondered if he agreed subconsciously, though, in spite of Jonathan.  Remembering how frightening Jonathan’s wicked face was and the pain Gabe was now in, helped him set his priorities straight. It was about time someone gave Jonathan a taste of his own medicine. Gabe was still crying from the shock, mostly. The pain was bad, too. May had a thin cloth that he was cleaning blood off of Gabe’s neck with; three distinct fingernail marks they said. Dane was watching Samson and Jonathan through the window, tensely.

Maybe Jonathan went for the throat to keep him from speaking for the next few days, instead of taking a fist to Gabe’s jaw. In the comfort of several blankets, Gabe quietly w
atched everything going on for three days. Pleased to have an excuse not to talk, he watched and listened as they made plans, as they taunted unknowingly with their own agendas, their own bitterness, their own life and death decisions they claimed he and Jonathan weren’t allowed to make. How hypocritical. Not as perfect, now, are you? Gabe thought. Now that they think they won the game they show themselves more honestly. No one really wanted happiness for others. No one could understand true success in that realm of things.

The first night, Gabe couldn’t sleep at all
. Secretly… as everything he thought was a secret now… he didn’t want to sleep. No, no, he wanted to die. But, if he could learn as much as he could before he died, he’d stay awake.

The next day they offered to take him around town. May seemed a little hesitant, looking repeatedly from his eyes to the bruise on his neck. Well, yeah, of course, what would they think to see something like that? It c
ould easily be blamed on Samson, or Dane. Regardless of whatever fear she felt by this, she hosted him through the city for an hour or two. The main market proved almost too busy to walk through, but it was not a deterrent to May who was used to it by now. She weaved in and out of people, losing Gabe a few times.

By size and by population, this was the biggest city
. If not for May’s narrative, Gabe wouldn’t have known what they were passing. A furniture store where they used only wood – a clothing store with hemp and leaf woven skirts, pants, and corset things – and chickens everywhere! In addition to all of this, there was the faint but distinct smell of pot.

May bought a few food items to take back with them and a few to eat now. Gabe was surprised at how much food was there from the farms and the irrigation, and how little,
overly-ripe, and expensive the natural grown fruit was. When the rush hour died down, May walked side by side with him through all the streets.

“So what exactly are you looking for?” May asked. Then, when he tried to respond with a raspy and painful voice, she quickly excused the question, and told him to stop talking. Gratefully, for the pain and for not having to give away information, he did stop.
Her question was valid, and she seemed a bit put out that he couldn’t explain, so now she just watched him closely.

He was looking for courthouses, for religious sanctuaries, for moral and immoral interactions.
In the bustle of the market he saw a little drug trade, which was expected, especially in the biggest city. On one of the side streets, there was a bigger building which May said was for physical illnesses. Gabe wondered if May had ever walked past that building in a debate while she was pregnant, holding her stomach. The thought irritated Gabe because he realized he was no longer separating what happened between one cloning to the next. Aborting may be a rare act now.

From what he could see in the streets of houses, there was co-
habituating, but typically it was young couples and he doubted that they stayed that way for long. What about property? Who owned the houses? Women had just as much right to them as men, it seemed. When they passed a small construction site, Gabe became very curious why so many women were working there. May explained that women built the home – like a coming of age thing, because they will most likely be the ones to live in it longest once they have children.

Returning to the cleared main street, Gabe saw no courthouses, no sanctuaries, only the market place. One thing was strikingly different, and that was the lack of attempted communicative technology. There was no playhouse to make up for television, there were no phone lines with aluminum cans, there was no central hub filled with papers with dumb remarks about everyone’s day, or messages to friends that could just as easily be spoken to.

This was a relief only because of technology’s addictive qualities, not because it was inherently bad. It just meant that, fortunately, habits were transforming. Maybe one more time starting over
would
do it. The level of “immorality” was decreasing, too, though, and that was inexplicably frustrating to him. It was this that he ruminated about for the next day, in what was now
suffocating
silence. Greater intent accompanied his watching and his listening now. Sometime soon he would learn something of import that would flip a switch in his head, and he would understand them.