Faith was always a struggle for me, and disbelief was no different. Especially during trying times and stretches of depression, I’d frequent the agnostic/atheistic/questioning internet forums, in search of fellow commiserators. Certain takes were especially common, and one of the most common had to be the assertion that, from a psychological perspective, religious beliefs were indistinguishable from what medical science identified as delusional thinking. This was important, because, unlike religiosity, it was generally agreed that delusional thinking was in need of psychiatric treatment.
My feelings toward that argument were much the same as my attitude toward evolutionary psychology. I didn’t disagree with that conclusion; on paper, it was incontestable. Rather, what troubled me was the way it was presented, and where the emphasis was placed.
According to the International Diagnostic Manual of Mental Illness, a delusion was defined as “an often highly personal idea or belief system, not endorsed by one’s culture or subculture, that is maintained with conviction in spite of irrationality or evidence to the contrary.” Note the intervening clause there: “not endorsed by one’s culture or subculture.”
If I had known then what I knew now—if I knew that the Sun was just a star, and that the sky should have been filled with stars, but wasn’t, and had gone around telling that to everyone, I would have been deemed delusional not to mention heretical. This, despite the fact that, in the end, the truth would have been on my side. On the other end of the spectrum, an imaginative person could spout off their thoughts on life, death, meaning, and God and, in doing so, set in motion a grand ideological edifice that, through its mystique, would bind generations in subservience to its distortions of reality—or, at least, to its distortions of what non-believers believed reality to be.
This was the frightening truth that few dared acknowledge: the relativity of truth. Even if absolute truth existed, it would be impossible for us to know that absolute truth with absolute certainty. Even the knowledge of whether or not absolute truth existed was utterly beyond our reach. To that end, truth, like thought and logic, was, for all intents and purposes, relative. At best, we might be able to rig together a loose approximation of true truth. People all too easily forgot this lesson, and when that happened—when they let themselves forget—they’d inevitably get pulled along with the tide, fooled into believing they had knowledge, when, in fact, they absolutely didn’t. And, worst of all? None of us were exempt. Not even God.
All we could do is test and experiment, and make sure to rectify our mistakes as soon as they came to light. I do not believe it is our place to truly know whether or not we were in the right—and if there was a world where that knowledge could be ours, I doubt human beings would enjoy it very much. All we could do is rest in the knowledge that we are trying to be better than we were before, and hope that would be good enough. That is why loneliness is so deadly. It doesn’t matter whether isolation takes the form of mere solitude, or the haplessness and voicelessness that dissolves a person into nothing in the madness of crowds. Isolation closed off the mind, and led to blindness and myopia.
I should have been there for her. I should have been there… for all of them.
But I wasn’t.
As I was just about to learn, Pel was not taking things well—and that would be putting it mildly. I suppose that makes it apt—or, at least, poetic—that what I did learn, then and there, was just the tip of the iceberg.
Night was creeping in, and in more ways than one—though, from the view from our house, you’d have trouble noticing it. Standing out in the patio or looking through the living room windows, Elpeck appeared as resplendent as ever—dazzling and bright. But the sights of the night-life wouldn’t have shaken the sense of unease that hung in the air, and if you listened, you could hear the cries of sirens echoing across the bay.
Pel kept the house locked up tight. All the windows were closed; all the curtains were drawn. Even with her mask on, when she’d been outside, she could tell that there was something in the air, something that didn’t smell right.
Clasping the remote in hand, clad in her evening dress—the yellow one—Pel pointed at the TV console mounted on the slate radius of our rotunda living room and raised the volume. The commercials had ended. She leaned back into our spacious, dark leather couch.
I’d been attracted to Pel in part because of her rebellious streak. It reminded me of Dana—make of that what you will. But that same rebellious streak had taken a nosedive after her father had passed. With Mortimer dead, my wife had taken to listening to her mother much more often than she used to do.
Such as at that very moment.
Shaken by her encounter with the demon at the Gilman’s, Pel gave credence to Margaret’s recommendation to watch John Henrichy Tonight.
John Engelbert Henrichy was many things, but, if I had to pick one of them, I’d say he was my evil twin—not that we were related in any way, and thank the Angel for that. The man was poised and clean-shaven, and his hair always looked like it had just been steam-pressed into the perfect configuration. As for me, I had a chronic deficiency of poise, tended to be unshaven below the nose, and my hair was, at best, “acceptable”—and that was on a good day. But the anti-parallels went deeper still.
I wore glasses; he did not.
I wore light colors; he wore black or blue, and always as a blazer or a suit. We both talked to people for a living: me, one patient at a time; him, the number-one rated prime-time talk-show host. John had been born in the lap of luxury—great-grandson of the actress Evangeline Henrichy, with all the wealth and status that entailed. Meanwhile, I’d had the pleasure of growing up five blocks away from a strip club and about a mile from a Masterblue Beer manufacturing plant, between the place where the railroad passed by some warehouses, and a cluster of gated hospice facilities slathered in beige stucco that looked like dried tapioca pudding.
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Henrichy came into view, on desk, dressed as dapper as ever, in a black blazer and striped blue buttoned-up shirt underneath, though his most noticeable feature was his bright red bowtie, dotted in yellow.
Like I said, he was my evil twin.
Henrichy slapped the top of his desk. “There it is, folks! The masks have fallen off!”
Though Pel didn’t know it, Henrichy had started coughing earlier that day, and, even as she watched him, a Type One case of NFP-20 had only just begun to ravage his body. The make-up department had done an excellent job of covering up the unnatural pallor the Green Death had brought to Mr. Henrichy’s face.
Like my mother in law, John Henrichy valued money over the truth—not to mention over other people. He and people like him had no compunctions about misrepresenting the truth, fomenting fear and hateful rage in exchange for higher ratings, viewers, and asking prices on the stock market. Meanwhile, I was the kind of person who’d lay awake at night, staring up at the ceiling wondering why the Angel had allowed me to be born and then turn into a wyrm, but hadn’t felt it necessary to give me the courage and decency to come out and tell the truth to my friends and colleagues.
Henrichy coughed, but he hid it by letting out a snide, nasal laugh at just the right time.
“They don’t want us asking questions,” he said. “They’re trying to change this nation, and they’re not going to rest until we all bend the knee. Why is the military at odds with Chief Minister Gant? What’s going on that they aren’t telling us? Why are they trying to keep Gant in the dark? Why are they only now asking for churches to close and stop Convocation and Mass? Is it because, maybe, it isn’t okay to be openly Lassedile anymore? Why are we letting them get away with this? We have to stand up for who we are and what we believe in, otherwise we’ll find ourselves on the wrong end of anathema, and there won’t be anything left to save. How many times have I told you, once the military falls, that’s it—it’s game over. And now, it has. The God-haters have infiltrated the military, and have now deployed themselves to round up all of us faithful, red-blooded Trentons and do away with us. Just listen to the Gant; he tells it like it is.”
Above all else, what I loathed in Henrichy and in people like him wasn’t their opinions or ideologies, nor their religious beliefs or their background. No: I loathed their candorlessness. They didn’t say what they truly felt—not out loud, at any rate. At best, they reserved it for text messages on their consoles.
Communication and understanding was difficult enough already. Poisoning the well was inexcusable.
The screen cut to a press conference Gant had held several days before. Chief Minister Gant was an infamous rambler; speed bumps didn’t weren’t half as much run over as Gant ran into—and over—his own words. In this particular press conference, his rambling tendencies were on full display, though with a twist: his world-renowned word-salad was punctuated by ugly coughs at an irregular rhythm.
Having fired his third Press Secretary just last month, the Chief Minister had freed himself to do what he liked best: he grabbed ‘em by the pulpit—the bully pulpit—hosting his own press conferences in the reception hall of the Imperial Palace. Bald and maskless, Gant stood on a stage behind a mahogany lectern. He wore his usual black suit and slacks, along with a needlessly long red tie, with a gold curtain draped along the wall behind him. A bunch of blue folding chairs had been laid out in front of the platform.
Gant pointed at a reporter seated out of sight. The journalist had the misfortune of being a woman.
“You, lady,” he barked, “ask your question.” He shook his head and waved his arm. “No, not you, the one with the nice tits.”
Murmurs and camera flashes rippled through the assembled journalists as they made note of Gant’s latest breach of decorum.
“Chief Minister,” the reporter asked, off-screen, loudly and awkwardly clearing her throat. “What do you have to say about the recent cabinet staff turnover? There are also reports that the upper echelons of the military are alarmed at the spread of NFP-20, and are pushing for immediate action, to say nothing of what Prefectural or municipal authorities are attempting to do.”
The sound of coughs filled the room like rain.
“Do you have any comments?” she asked.
“You know,” Gant said, “to answer your question, these people… I have these people—and they’re horrible people, just horrible—I don’t know why I hired them—… they tell me… these people, they whine at me, Oh, Chief Minister, Chief Minister, you need to call in the army, you need to call in the navy, before it’s too late, because the people… the people, they’re not listening, they’re listening to you, but they’re not listening to us. And I ask them, why can’t you just use the nukes and they say, Chief Minister, Chief Minister, if you use the nukes—”
—Pausing, Gant bent forward as he pressed the button on the speaker in his ear.
His face scrunched up. “—Yeah? Don’t talk about the…” he rolled his eyes. “Shut the fuck up, Julie, I know what I’m doing. Tell Jerett to get his ass over here, now.”
Gant lifted his finger off the button and waved his hand dismissively. “Now, where was I?”
When national leaders speak openly about nuclear weapons, people tend to react accordingly, and that’s exactly what happened here. The room was abuzz with questions from terrified journalists.
Gant snapped at them. and told them to stop it.
“That’s enough of that.” He huffed. “Now… where was I?”
“The military, sir?” the reporter suggested.
“Yeah.” The Chief Minister nodded. “General Marteneiss and the others, they tell me things like this. You know why they tell me this? I know why they tell me this, but they think I don’t—they think they know better,” Gant turned to face the camera, “and it’s because they know you know better, you beautiful, beautiful people. They don’t like the people who support Gant. The deep state wants to strike against me, and stop me from helping us all win.” He stretched out his hands, as if he was at one of his campaign rallies “You know, they’re jealous, and they’re angry—and I don’t like saying that; I’m a very nice person; I’m the nicest person, but they push me, oh how they push me, and it’s because they want to be angry, because they’re in on it—them and the legiss-,” he paused, grimacing, “the legiss-lay-churr. They’re comin’ for you. They want to take away your rights. They want to take your freedom. That’s their plan, and they really want to do it, but I won’t let them.”
Clapping his hands together, Gant pursed his lips and reached toward the camera, as if to grope it.
“Trenton, don’t let them take your freedom,” he said. “Don’t let them take the Angel. Remember our faith—our precious faith—our big, beautiful God. So show your strength! Stay safe—but show your strength!”
Right as the feed cut back to Henrichy, Pel heard footsteps clapping down the hall to her left. She looked over her shoulder to see who it was.
Jules?
Our daughter rushed out, barefoot, with her console in hand. She was wearing a fresh pair of clothes—something light, to sleep in—but her hair was in shambles.
“Mom! Mom! T—”
But then she realized her mother was watching Henrichy.
Jules grimaced. “—Why are you watching Henrichy?”
Pel started to answer, but it proved to be unnecessary.
Raising her head to the ceiling, Jules groaned in frustration as she realized who was to blame.
Margaret.
Jules turned around, toward the hallway leading to the bedrooms. “Rayph! Get out here!”