The GOD Box (8 page)

May tightened her eyebrows,
“But didn’t Talvo talk about that subject in “Origins”? He covered the history since the “beginning” of time, expressing that if we could understand where we came from we could find confidence in where we are going?” May’s finger quotations around “beginning” were undoubtedly a recent addition to her theses.

“Yes, but I think he was mostly referring to economics and social growth.”

“Sure, but perhaps it could be applied here.”

Dane nodded and considered. “I agree, though that seems like a lot of information to sift through.”

May nodded and before Gabe even realized it, she was watching him as if she’d been aware of him the whole time. She had a book in her hand and a finger in the place where she was. She looked back at Dane. She shrugged, frowned, and said sarcastically, “It’s not that much, just thousands of years we don’t have access to.” She paused, “Well…” she said practically, rethinking her statement. “We really only have two hundred years’ worth of human life and thought to work with ... And whatever these two know and want to tell us.”

“We’ll tell you. We’l
l tell you anything,” Jonathan started, so immediately ceasing one thought about the pills and beginning the other that they weren’t sure who he was talking to at first. Then, he looked at them, “as long as you don’t kill us.”

Gabe nodded
enthusiastically as though it was a brilliant deal he’d never thought of. He liked that.
Unexpected, friendly volunteering from Jonathan, too. Great
. “What’s that book you got there?” Gabe asked May. She looked at it and then showed the cover,

“The Purposeful Existence by
Orna Jesin.”

“Can I see it?”

May handed it to him carelessly.

“Is Orna a man or woman’s name?” Gabe asked. They said it was a woman’s and thought nothing more of it. That was a good sign, too.
To them, there was nothing odd about a woman writing a book.
Good.

Jonathan was being very charismatic and was going around asking for each of their names
… again. Samson was the really intimidating one.
Figures, and weird… how’d they get that name
? Gabe wondered. Miek was the skinny, bright one who was following him around yesterday. Samson’s arms were folded and he looked at Jonathan like he was waiting for him to actually prove himself. While Jonathan started talking, Gabe started skimming the little book to figure out what philosophical ideas they had progressed to.

Jonathan was, for the first time, representing his best self and was telling them as much as he could remember.

“Well, like we said, we lived in a nation called America. Most of our research comes from that society in particular though many of our colleagues were international.”

“Wait!” Miek
said, “Are we allowed to stop you if we need an explanation?” Before he finished the question he could have got his answer from the look on Jonathan’s face. Intentionally, though, he waited for verbal confirmation.

“If there’s vocabulary you don’t understand, yes, concepts, no.”

Okay, that was weird… but okay, Gabe thought.

“Alright, what does vo…ca…bulary mean?”

Jonathan exhaled loudly out of his nose… “Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously.”

“Words that are difficult to understand.”

“Great… and the one earlier… coll something?”

“Colleagues. People we work with. Can I move on?”

“Sure.
Only if you really want to.” Miek said as though he was talking to a four year old.

Jonathan ignored that and pressed forward, “It was a lot different than here. Our entertainment… or, our leisure activit
ies-“

“Great, you should probably def
ine any words over ten letters or more because we’re complete idiots.” Samson cooed in his rumble of a voice.

“I don’t know what you do and don’t know!”

“Your entertainment…” Dane insisted, now distracted from his conversation with May, was trying to get this show on the road.

“Our entertainment is what we call movies, or television, the internet. Which… are people acting… in a box…
”
nice, Jonathan
, thought Gabe… “and we could choose what we wanted to watch… but the people weren’t actually there… Or… we could get on the internet and communicate with someone thousands of miles away. We call it technology, or advancements in communication.

The look on Samson’s face clearly said, ‘wow, these guys are on crack’.

“Let’s pretend we understand.” Dane said kindly and made a hand gesture signaling for him to continue.

“We had cell phones which were plastic boxes we held to our ear and talked into to someone who was far away. We had cars which are like … horses… but… faster…
like a box people could fit into with wheels.” Poor Jonathan had no idea how little sense he made. Especially since they didn’t know what horses were… Gabe realized that they wouldn’t know what horses were…
shit
. That was the only word he could process for five minutes while he started absent-mindedly at the fire. That was his fault. They didn’t know what horses were. They didn’t have horses. They didn’t have any animals. Gabe needed to talk to Jonathan. Every other time, except the third time they had had some kind of plan… And for that one, they didn’t have a plan because they died before they could start over, so that world just continued.

Those things that you forget about in dire situations… yeah, these were them. Before the end of the
modern world they were working with this ‘remedy’ as they called it, or the disease as they referred to it to May and Dane earlier, was just water, but infused in it was a disease that started confusing human senses and diluted them until they died without even realizing. Jonathan had figured out how to not let it have effect on plants, but didn’t have time to figure it out for not effecting animals. That explanation alone didn’t cover it. Even the areas that they hadn’t injected these were failing because the ecosystem was drying up. Whatever animals there had been in the area were moving on to fresher pastures.
Right?
But all the while Gabe was recognizing these dire circumstances the other conversation continued as normal. They didn’t know any better.

“Anyway, I’m just telling you this to say that we could get whatever we wanted whenever we wanted
technologically, basically.” That didn’t connect to them, but they agreed no questions about concepts, so they didn’t ask questions. He continued, “Our government was… well… I guess I can say whatever I want, they’re not over our shoulders now. They screwed us all and damned us to Hell.”

“What’s Hell?”

“Nope, that’s a concept, not vocabulary, I’m moving on. Not that the organization was awful. Any decent person could have figured it out, but society was poisonous. We were in a massive war, and we were china’s puppet, we were in so much damn debt. People just couldn’t figure it out…”

Gabe wasn’t sure where this was going and why Jonathan moved from technology to government.
Gabe’s mind was still on the animal theory. Gabe was a man who always had questions, and always had about five answers… wouldn’t animals have migrated this direction? The image of the map they used to have (before they lost it) popped up in his memory.

When they started this project, it was with the anticipation that Jonathan’s formula in the remedy would work, but as the war pressed closer and closer, without a viable prospect for not affecting animals, they had to come up with a backup. In the area they were clearing, they went to great trouble to build an animal preserve
with its own water source. They couldn’t save every animal. Certain predators would void the whole attempt. So they mostly saved some domestic animals; cows, sheep, chickens, goats, ducks, just a few bulls and buffalo… animals that could be used… a few snakes, bugs and small critters to help preserve nature. Then, inside the lab there was a freezer somewhere that was preserving DNA of all other kinds of animals that
when
they decided to keep the society, they could bring more.

Each time they put the remedy into a water source
during the clonings, they did so with caution; that they only put in enough disease to cover the city so that it would never reach this Eden, hopefully sparing a few wild animals as well. They couldn’t save every single animal.

On the syringe they used, t
here were five measuring marks – not the typical measures – a half of a mark would spread the disease five miles in three days. They tried to draw the animals out of the city, though. Yet, after so many times, would they just leave the area? No, that was part of the problem with last time. While they were being attacked, the remedy was smashed in Gabe’s hand next to the well. In three days, the disease would travel a good fifty miles. Oh, hell.

He heard Jonathan’s last comment and vaguely connected it with something he was staring at in the book.
Gabe spoke up drearily, “They’ve got that far.” He held up the book which had those answers, then went back to staring at the fire.

Starting over so many times was not in the plan.
Special effort had to be made to keep it away from animals, from zoos…

Jonathan plunged on, “
… they said, boohoo, morality is gone. But who friggin’ cared? They were missing the whole point. We were more intelligent than that now. Love everyone, and stop punishing them because they are different. Don’t just tolerate, encourage, right?”

“Right!” Dane said, clearly ready to move on to a new subject. 
But Jonathan kept going. They didn’t groan, they had more politeness than that, but they made silent looks at each other, which Jonathan didn’t see, to compensate for the lack of expressing their frustration verbally.

Sometimes it was a shame what a passionate fool he was, Gabe thought.
More often than not, it is utterly shameful. But, what could be done? Gabe saw no reason at present to stop it. This was all the more beneficial for Gabe anyhow. Number one, because he could clearly identify what wasn’t helping, and could adjust when he re-explained everything later. Number two, they could see Gabe as he was: intelligent and quiet.
And why was Jonathan talking about this stuff anyway? None of that was his area of specialty.
He didn’t care
.
Whatever.
Gabe went back to the book.

This was all
not very curious what he was reading about. It was all about discovery and knowledge through observation of nature; its cohesiveness, and that human behaviors should exist in, more or less, a similar pattern. Religionists called it an excuse for lack of will, believing that was exactly what we were fighting… to become more that we naturally were.  Gabe never quite understood that logic; nature was a good thing, human nature was a bad thing…? Sometimes but not always? Whatever. That’s why religion was not part of the curriculum he and Jonathan created for the new world…(s).
Nonsensical and caused so many frickin’ wars.

As he kept reading he remembered how irritating philosophy was. So many potential roads that sounded nice, but they never told you how to get there, or could tell you what there was, or if we should get there, or if we wanted to get there, or if we should want to get there, and whether or not there was a
ny hypothetical disillusionment about being there. Why would you be okay with never having answers?
That’s just about the entire dilemma they now faced. And it contradicted. He hated that.

Jonathan had arrived at a breathless and directionless point of his panic attack of a rant and was looking at Gabe, who gave
him a face that clearly said, you’re on your own, big boy. Maybe the kids had sort of followed it? But they looked emotionally and mentally harassed.

Dane had a pathetic look of hopelessness and fear that this could never work and what was humanity, ever, really? Shear panic crossed their eyes. May look
ed like she was trying to find logical order in how Jonathan was thinking and piecing things together the way he was, which made her expression contorted and drunk looking. This approach was wise and probably would have the best results, although her knowledge of Jonathan was too minimal, Gabe thought.

Gabe f
inally felt more in control than ever, even though none were looking at him. He asked calmly, and as though he’d heard and seen nothing peculiar, “Do you have more books I can read? I feel like that would be helpful.”

“We do have one little one.” They said. The rest they had left at home.
How far was that?
Gabe wondered… was it too soon to make the advance by asking the question?
Probably.
They would want a game plan first. Loose he and Jonathan on their sleepy town? Real food, aka anything other than fruit was sounding great, however. He thought longingly about the beef jerky in his pockets. Certainly by now Jonathan had given into the temptation and scarfed some unseen.

Gabe was handed the next little book and then he passed the first one onto Jonathan, who loved to read and would be preoccupied for the next little while. They say to be really intelligent you have to be able to take something complex and simplify it for a child… well…maybe Jonathan was the exception. Gabe would be the first to admit Jonathan was brilliant, though also the first to remind that it took a lot of patience before said brilliance was visible.