What's Up, God?
A Romance of the Apocalypse.
Gollancz, 1995; Indigo (Gollancz) paperback 1996
The Coming
Ia! Shub-Nigurrath! The Goat with a Thousand Young!
There I am, rattling about in the tube like a dry pea in a storm tossed pod,
reading Lovecraft's Haunter of the Dark and Other Tales, while all about me the
mid-day punters of the Piccadilly Line are deep in Uplift, devouring Saint Thomas
Aquinas Selected Writings or the Life and Miracles of Saint Francis of Assisi
or the Good Book itself, the Old and the New Testament, the Koran, Hadith, the
Jewish Siddur or Saint Benedict's Rules for Monasteries. Its Desperation Time.
The Ides of March. The Resurrection, itself, not an imitation, has been set for
April 30th, two weeks after Easter, and the Day of Judgement itself, we all have
been served notice, will be the 7th of May, 1999, at the crack of dawn, daylight
saving.
In fact, its set for 3:00 a.m. I know the precise time, playmates, because I
have a foot, or rather some keyboard fingers, on the inside, updating the databanks
on the Recording Angels' software, Hammersmith-Fulham Branch, London W6. It seems
that the Angels, quite wisely, don't want everyone wide awake, bright eyed and
bushy tailed and alert to make their defence, but will emulate old tried and
true methods. Get 'em when they're groggy, gargling and sneezing, before they
can realise what's hitting them. Whether they'll see the last sunrise or not
is a matter of organisation.
Myself, I am going to hell. I know, because, having access to the databank, I
hacked into my own file, deep in the mainframe, to check the balance to date
by the books. The spreadshit of my dissolute life. Religion: Nil. Family Values:
Nil. Compassion Factor: 4.5 (must lodge an appeal there, if one could lodge an
appeal, but its all up to the Final Day). Patriotism: Nil. Obedience Factor:
-12. Morality: 3.2.
Sayonara, Jerry Davis. The pit of the shaggoths looms. Ia! Ia! Yog Sothoth! No
wonder I am reading pulp on the tube. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see
them not. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where Man
rules now. I curl my lip, darting my varnished gaze at my fellow passengers on
the road to Golgotha (formerly Piccadilly) Circus. But they are too deeply immersed
in their devotions. Time is ticking away. The meter is running.
The Kingdom of God was proclaimed on Christmas Day, December 25th, 1998, a mere
three and a half months ago. How time flies when you're having fun. I was sitting
at home, with my lived in partner, Karen, who has, of course, since departed
in a headlong rush to distance herself from my damnation. We had eaten the Marks
and Spencers Free Range Turkey (Given Freedom of Access to the Outdoors) and
had settled in for the Queen's Speech, except that it was no longer the Queen's
Speech, but the King's, delivered by his Archangel, Gabriel. I had always been
curious as to what the Archangel Gabriel might look like, or how he might deal
with autocue, but I needn't have worried. He was as smooth as any extinct Tory
Minister telling us why the promised Land of Economic Utopia had vanished into
the dust of all our tomorrows. He was an imposing figure, without a doubt, seated
before a bare desk with the globe of the Earth revolving slowly behind him, demonstrably
addressing us from the Father Ship, his face a kind of deep mahoganny, with that
blurred physiognomy that appeared African at one moment, then possibly Arab,
then Mongolian-Chinese, then almost Nordic. A TV tariff man's nightmare, as they
jog and juggle the colour balance.
"Good afternoon. I am the Archangel Gabriel. God has come. All Life be praised."
We were told later the face spoke in their own language to every people on the
globe, at the same time, with matching lip movements. A miracle. But miracles
are mundane now. They can barely make the six o'clock news. So a mountain moved
a hundred miles in Sri Lanka to allow some tribe access to fertile fields. Ehh!
What's on Cable 16? More ranting evangelists, eyes bulging, collars torn, pouring
sweat, recruiting like there's no tomorrow. What's that you say? There really
is no tomorrow? Well, whadaya know...
Once upon a time, I used to be a valued member of society. A rotten society,
mind you, but who can pick and choose... After the hopes of the late eighties,
and the Depression of the early nineties, we settled down to take things as they
came. Me, I was beginning to make some progress, as a Funny Man. What used to
be called Stand Up. Before we all fell down. I stood in front of glazed audiences
at the Comedy Shop in Leicester Square, desperately foaming at the mouth as I
was introduced by a compere wearing the interior decor of the Lloyds Tower. "Ladies
and gentlemen, the Funniest and Filthiest Man in London...!" And there I
was, falling out of my dustbin. Occasionally it got a cackle. I tell a lie, there
were good moments. And then Channel Four, and the Cables. Actual dosh. Now I
had to fake the torn pants and grotty raincoat, rather than just turn up as I
was. Warming up the crowd:
"Suck my dick!"
Well, those days are over. Flaccidity beckons, on a cosmic scale. Is There Sex
After Death is no longer just a silly conceit, but a question of eternal consequence.
I asked my Recording Angel, Hoppy, about it.
"What is sex?" he asked.
Sometimes these people, if they are people, are clearly disconnected from the
scene. On the other hand this may have been Hoppy's peculiar sense of humour,
the giggly empathy that made him take me on as his Data Accessor, when I sat
before him after cooling my heels for three hours in the waiting room of the
newly created Office of Moral Records (Ofmor), Hammersmith & Fulham District.
January 3, Day Ten after the Manifesta-tion. He clucking his tongue over a concertina
print-out which turned out to be my dossier, his red hair and the rather stunted
off-white wings sticking out of his white gown at the shoulder blades giving
him the air of a giant misplaced chicken.
"Oh dear, Brother Davis. This really doesn't look at all good. We have some
proper catching up to do."
"So what's the problem, Doc?" I could afford to be flippant at that
point. It was all so new, so sudden, so un-real. The Manifestation. The Days
of Miracles. The Fall of the Governments. The Dispensation. The Recording. The
people crowding into the anterooms, each clutching the mimeographed Summons,
murmuring, complaining, resigned in silence, many praying to their respective
Gods. The Lord, Jehovah, Allah, Mumu. And the click click click of the red haired
Recorder on the expropriated Council keyboards.
"We have been a very naughty boy, haven't we, Gerald? Cursing, swearing,
taking the Lord's Name in vain, coveting your neighbour's house, fornication,
frivolity, making graven images."
"Its my mother who sent you, right?" Some jokes have too much frost
on them. "You forgot my neighbour's ox," I told him, "and his
cattle, and his kine. Particularly his kine."
He looked at me with that pained expression, and then the giggles came. His wings
shook and flapped together, little flecks of feathers flying free.
"Ooh, you are naughty," he said, "but I like you. I'm going to
make you an offer you can't refuse, hee hee. It says here you graduated in Computer
Studies at Enfield Poly-technic, before chucking it all in to tell dirty jokes
in public. Do you want a proper job? It will give you Points, I can guarantee
that. And boy, do you need Points. Hee hee hee." His shoulder feathers shook
again.
Well, it was not my type of humour. But my type of humour was dead. Mine was
one of two hundred and twenty four categories of livelihood listed by the Board
of Records as Negative Equity in the race to The Balance. Anti-Social Activity,
along with armaments manufacture, member of parliament, banking and financial
services, managerial practice, military personnel, writers, publishers, literary
agents, bailiffs, cinema and television services if not for Instructional Purpose,
prison warders, insurance personnel, advertising, prostitution, professional
crime, living off inheritance and unearned income, landlords, perjurers and the
press. The list went on and on. It was not intended, the Angels proclaimed, in
one of their earliest interviews, to ban or stop people from practising their
crafts, but was of a strictly advisory nature given that the Day of Judgement
was fixed.
Naturally it was the weaker professions that succumbed, doors closing, clientele
disappearing, shoes and toothbrushes thrown out in the street. The arms industry
continued producing, seeing as there was no harm in it, after the Neutralisation,
when all the world's armies suddenly became impotent, their weapons, from handguns
to interballistic missiles, ceasing to function, refusing to fire, becoming mere
lumps of steel. Still, they could be used as clubs, and were, in war zones from
Bolivia to Bosnia, before the choirs of Angels came to turn the perpetrators
to stone - only temporarily, but it must have been a nasty jar. Aggression stopped
pretty quickly after that, barring the usual amateur psychopaths, who are never
far from our thoughts...
Yes folks, the Kingdom of Heaven! One day we're all minding our own business,
getting up in the morning, scratching our groin, mourning our ravaged puss in
the mirror, groaning at the drivel on the breakfast news, preparing to face another
day of dolour contemplating the Decline of Civilisation when, presto! Its the
Actual Fall! A delirious newsreader - I remember the time exactly, it was ten
forty-five a.m. and I was dragging myself, foot by foot, hand after hand, to
my toilette, in an express ambition to exit the house in the direction of the
Channel Four studio before fifteen hours GMT - when this man came on in a newsflash,
interrupting the Pets Hour Phone In ("Oh Brian, my cat doesn't want to come
out from under the bed. Its been four weeks already and he just snarls and spits..." How
perfectly understandable), with an incoherent gabbled spiel:
"Reports are coming in from various parts of the country, and from many
sources abroad, about giant spaceships which seem to be hovering over government
buildings, army barracks, police headquarters, town halls, churches, cathedrals,
mosques, synagogues, temples and other places of worship. This is not a hoax.
I repeat, we have had several thousand sightings pouring in over the last half
hour..."
So move over, Orson Welles. Don't these people have the merest spark of originality?
I expect better for my hundred quid's TV and radio licence, not that I paid it,
as I shelled out ten punt for one of those gadgets that jams the Licence Dodgers'
van. And not that my TV was in situ, as it was out for repair at Old Rentals.
But the wireless rapped on, making no sense whatever, babbling about the lack
of blips on radar screens. They must think they'll get all the unemployed to
rush out into the streets so they can be shovelled up for Gummer's Workfare Centers.
Or is it another Irish stunt? Since they finally managed to dispatch the entire
Cabinet and half of Downing Street in '97 anything's possible with those clowns.
Bequeathing us the fuhrership of John Selwyn Gummer, Gummo to us hard worked
hacks. We were right down to the N team. And then we plummeted to Z. Now even
that's gone, hallelujah! Can you imagine, pining for that lot?...
I speeded up, to arrive at Channel Four at twelvish. A crowd in the reception,
glued to the screens. There they all were, big, beautiful round things, looking
like gargantuan cream biscuits, looming over Big Ben, the White House, Eiffel
Tower, L'Etoile, Kremlin et al. Eat your heart out, Inoshiro Honda.
"Its a fake, a coup d'etat by Gummo!" But the voices of reason were
growing weaker. The inside buzz was: Its for real. Somebody recalled an old Arthur
C. Clarke story, "Childhood's End", in which the invaders hover for
fifty years, before coming out to reveal their physical resemblance to the human
image of the devil, complete with pointed tail and horns. But these space invaders
were in a much greater hurry. Reports coming in that all attempts to intercept
the vessels had been complete failures. Missiles had been fired by several defence
forces, bursting like harmless firecrackers against their impervious hulls. Then
the Head of the Channel came bubbling up from the basement, his jug ears and
youthful complexion glowing, his Jagger lips sucking at his obligatory cigar.
"The government's just announced a cut-in," he gabbled in his ersatz
cockney glottal, "we're going over to Emergency Broadcast in exactly fifteen
minutes. Quayle and Gummer are going to speak jointly. The Pope's also expected.
Apart from that, I don't know any more than you do."
"What about Sesame Street?" wailed a bedraggled scheduler. But she
was hauled off and administered a nostrum. When the fifteen minutes were up we
were on tenterhooks, shifting from one leg to another like massed football fans
dying to pee. On a split screen, the cherub cheeks of President Quayle and the
pimples of our own P.M. clipped into focus for a brief instant, then were as
abruptly replaced by a view of a serene, floating blue and green globe: The Earth,
from outer space, and a deep, resonant and mellifluous voice welling up on sound:
"God bless you, all my children. For though I have tarried, I have arrived.
For I am alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord. Yehi shem
adonai mevorach le'olam va'ed. Allahu akbar, bismillah el rahim, el hanin..."
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