Sam and Alf have a barney

You did what?!

 

It’s all a bit of a blur.

 

Then how can you be sure?

 

Well there's this. Sam unbuttons his shirt and shows Alf a red mark over his heart.

Well, that's hardly definitive, is it?

 

I agree. But it was freshly healed over yesterday. Very dramatic it looked.

 

So, if I understand you correctly, you seem to think that you dispatched God yesterday?

 

Correct.

 

And you’re ok with that?

 

Well, it wasn't my idea.

 

No, but you went along with it, didn't you.

 

Yes, I did, but God can be highly persuasive.

 

Can He? Doesn't sound much like the biblical God we read about.

 

I agree.

 

You're sure it wasn't the other one?

 

Which other one? I wasn’t aware of another.

 

The master of lies.

 

Oh that. No. Not a chance.

 

How can you be so sure?

 

It's one of those things, you know.

 

It's just, as you yourself agreed, it all sounds highly irregular.

 

I know. I'm with you 100% on that.

 

Then maybe, just possibly, you were deceived?

 

No. No way.

 

I’m not trying to say you didn't sincerely believe it at the time, in good faith. You’d have to be a genius, a spiritual legend to see through the artful subterfuge. We are talking the big D after all.

Yes, Alf, I hear your logic. It’s unassailable. I agree with everything you are saying, but this goes beyond logic. This was something I experienced directly, viscerally. That changes everything.

 

You mean to say the other isn’t able to put on a good show? Isn’t able to trick people?

 

I mean nothing of the sort. Of course the other one can put on the show to end all shows. Nothing could be easier for him, but this wasn't a show.

 

No?

 

No. It was a very simple, humbling experience in which I was asked to do something I didn't want to do, not because I was being offered any payment or inducement, but just because it was needed. As a friend, so to speak.

 

But why would God need your help? You're just one of several billion. A tiny, utterly insignificant human being.

 

I agree entirely, and I asked the same thing myself.

 

And what was the explanation?

 

I read you my account. You know exactly what happened.

 

But maybe there was something else? Something you forgot to mention.

 

The thing is Alf, it’s a great mystery, and not something I’m proud of. I did what I did, as I'm sure you would have done. At the time it seemed like I was going to die. That wasn't exactly something I was looking forward to, but in the presence of the Father even death becomes secondary.

 

But why would the Father want to risk your life just to get out of this world He created?

 

You’re asking me?

 

Yes. You must have some insights. You, after all, experienced what no man has. You apparently killed God, at His own request.

 

Like I said, Alf, I really don't know. I can guess, but what's the point?

 

In that case I'm just going to have to put it all down to some kind of delusion, unless you can help me make some kind of sense of this.

 

Well, I guess that's part of the narrative...

 

Huh?

 

that God is always accompanied by a cloud of unknowing or unseeing, there's always a strong element of doubt. I don’t blame you. I’d probably find it hard to believe too.

 

Now wait a minute, you’re the one, likely as not, that got drawn into some kind of satanic ritual, sacrificing a lamb under some false pretext, and suffering a rather nasty flesh wound to boot.

 

That’s not a flesh wound.

 

No?

 

No, the dagger went straight into my heart. I died, without a shadow of a doubt.

 

You died, you say…

 

I died.

 

And then?

 

And then God pulled a switcheroo.

 

Like some kind of street performer?

 

Substituting himself at the last breath. He always had that trump card up his sleeve, in reserve.

 

Did he now. Ahem.

 

Otherwise it could never have ended.

 

What?

 

This, His Creation.

 

Never have ended, you say? Ahem.

 

Yes.

 

Whyever not?

 

Because He was embedded into it. Part of the very fabric of His reality. In every person, place, thing…

 

Er...

 

It needed to be separated umbilically; cut loose.

 

Cut loose?

 

To sink or swim, on its own merits.

 

But that all happened already, when Adam and Eve were ejected from Eden.

 

Yes, in a fashion, but that was more about optics.

 

Optics?! You're kidding, right?

 

No, they were able to experience pain and suffering but reality itself was resting on the Father, even if they could no longer see Him. That’s how some of them were able to live hundreds of years.

 

I always imagined that was poetic licence. Nothing more.

 

You're always free to imagine, nothing wrong with that.

 

You mean they actually lived for centuries?

 

Yes. As our separation increased we grew weaker. Hardly surprising really, but God was still embedded in everyone and everything, otherwise it would have come undone — basically imploded. We lacked the wherewithal to hold it all together on our own.

 

So our freedom was an illusion?

 

Not exactly. We were like dogs on a leash ― excuse the somewhat unflattering image, please — with sufficient freedom to do ourselves and our world not inconsiderable harm, but still part of a pilot project.

 

Pilot project!? A world with thousands of years of bloody history and even nuclear weapons! You must be off your rocker.

 

It was a pilot project because God was still embedded. The tree hadn’t really been transplanted. It hadn’t yet proven its viability as a stand-alone organism. It was still running on God’s carrier signal, so to speak.

 

And now?

 

Now that's changed. God saw to that yesterday. We're on our own, for better or for worse, we've been transplanted out into the Field. We appear to have survived the transplantation. It’s a new world, entirely, though no one's yet noticed. We’re still working off the remaining surplus charge.

 

And God — is dead?

 

In a manner of speaking, yes.

 

But that's terrible.

 

Yes, I know how you feel. It's hard to let go, isn’t it? We completely took Him for granted — didn’t even feel His background presence most the time — but now… For a moment Sam falters — his eyes fill with tears. It’s not just the gut-wrenching loss of a Father, Alf.

 

No? What else?

 

 It's hard to trust oneself — hard to believe we’re ready for the terrible responsibility of managing the show now that He’s gone.

 

Hard, Sam? It’s a catastrophe. If what you say is true — the one hope we had, the one chance to crawl out of the bog onto terra firma has gone forever. We’re done for. Without the Father we’re utterly lost, like sheep without a shepherd.

 

Yes, but if you put the hysteria on hold for a moment you realise that the Father probably knows best.

 

Well, that goes without saying. But I still don't accept that this is actually the Father, and not the other.

 

In that case you have nothing to fear, Alf, do you? The other can do naught other than twist and manipulate. He plays with smoke and mirrors and tricks us into taking his part. He could not harm the Father, in the same way darkness cannot harm the light.

 

True, but what if you’re right... What if God really has ejected? What then?

 

Well, if He has it can only have been the result of His will, that much we can agree unequivocally. And that means that, for better or for worse we’ve come of age, so to speak, or so He feels. Structurally there's now an empty space where He used to be, a zero where previously there was One.

 

Huh?

 

We have to adjust. We have to do what any son or daughter does when their father exits. Carefully, we have to take the reins, with a sense of loss, undeniably, but also gratitude for all the blessings we have experienced and received — we have to ease ourselves into the driver’s seat, trusting our Father taught us everything we need to know, and the rest we’ll have to figure out as we go.

 

This is madness. I refuse to accept what you’re saying, Sam. It’s an evil fantasy, nothing more.

 

Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi! We can love and serve our Father only by doing everything within our power to preserve or carry forward his work. As long as He was alongside, while He was still embedded we were still just going through the motions. We weren’t yet able to access the Field, were we? Or only under very controlled conditions.

 

Presumably because the Field is a potential mine field — if you’ll excuse the pun. We could do untold harm.

 

We could indeed — but then again — we can rise to the occasion. We can spread our wings. We can do Him proud.

 

Fat chance of that. The Field if I understand it correctly is like a version of reality where everything is connected — mind, emotions, consciousness and matter.

 

That’s right. It is — I am. Interconnectivity at every level imaginable.

 

We’re doomed... Father — come back. We’re gonna fail.

 

I wouldn’t be so sure, Alf. In any case, He's only gone as the Father, as God.

 

What do you mean — only as God? God is everything!

 

Yes and no. God is one expression, one modality of the infinite, or of infinity.

 

No, no, no — God is everything. There is no infinity beyond God.

 

Yes, yes, I agree entirely, and yet the infinite has not gone anywhere, only God has exited, to allow us to step up to the mark, to sink or swim, to take up his reins, to navigate as only He can. In doing so he’s removed the seal that kept infinity closed off to us.

 

But we’re utterly unworthy. And how on Earth are we supposed to interact with infinity without God?

 

Good question. As for our worthiness — i think this is known as baptism by fire, or being thrown in at the deep end. Pick you metaphor. He is the Father. He wants us to step into his shoes, as perhaps He himself did, in all likelihood. Who knows.

 

So now we have no personal agency?

 

Yes, now that He’s left we have to confront infinity, like it or not, and that's huge... It immediately brings the quantum Field into play.

 

Er... Not sure I see the logic.

 

Because you can’t interact with infinity as a person. Infinity has no personal attributes, no personal characteristics.

 

So now we have to learn to attune to your highly tenuous quantum Field, as if that’s going to save us.

 

Well, there's no point trying to deal with reality as a purely physical thing when we’re now increasingly aware of the emptiness, the void left by God’s departure. Nature abhors a vacuum, does it not. The void has to be filled by something real, something meaningful, and none of your ego plays are going to work.

 

Since when was I involved in ego plays. You've got a damn cheek, Sam.

 

Refining the ego was the last lesson, now completed. Paradoxically, the God we were all hanging onto, even when we called ourselves “atheists” was all about experiencing reality as something that came up to, but didn’t fully integrate with the “me”. I was an island of sorts. As long as God was there, even if he was there in reverse, as something I didn't believe in, as a silent shadow that seemed to do naught, I was still incubated from the waters of infinity, I was still indulging the notion that I is a person, first and foremost, an am.

 

And what else is I supposed to be, if not a person?

 

A 50% partner.

 

Huh?

 

The localised, centralised half.

 

?

 

The highly strung, self-infatuated apprentice God, if the tadpole grows into a frog.

 

No. That’s unacceptable.

 

Well, now that the bulwark has gone we’re going to either adapt or drown. The me person is all very well — it can indulge itself in endless introspection and notions of ivory detachment, but infinity is going to make short shrift of anyone that fails to adapt to the totality, the all that is of which we’re, apparently, an integral part.

 

And what?

 

With the nought now in play, the honeycomb structure of Is means we'll find ourselves without traction, or spinning helplessly if we refuse to play ball, if we try to insist that things are still just things, just business as usual.

 

You make this nought sound like a malevolent or a capricious god, a bringer of chaos or indeterminacy.

 

Well yes, if you insist on personalising the Field then indeed, that's how it's gonna feel,

that's how it's gonna seem.

 

Oh, so it's my fault, is it?

 

What's fault got to do with it? It's your choice. You're free to make of God’s gift what you will.

 

Gift? You tell me God’s quit our sphere forever and anon, and now I’m supposed to see it as an opportunity, as a gift! Are you insane?

 

Possibly... But on the other hand who cares. Why personalise? I am what i am — almost nothing in the grand scheme of things, in the isness of be, and yet... infinitely more if I decide to embrace infinity. If not a gift what would you call it? Without it you'd just be a sensation, an indeterminate part of all that is, but thanks to the Father, thanks to what He gave us, each of us has the opportunity to — watch this...

 

Sam somehow tunes into the Field and time seems to decouple, like a dark, oily river flowing nearby but no longer affecting the immediate proceedings.

Wow, Sam, pretty nifty!

 

Now Sam engages moments, strands, energies, affinities in the Field and Alf finds himself glued to the screen, observing an epic movie in the making, a computer game — somehow he sees an entire narrative linking up, from end to beginning — an entire subset of reality which appears to be completely authentic, totally real. Characters, settings, clothes, lighting, the works...

 

Alfie, you ok?

 

I... I dunno. What was that?

 

Reality. What else?

 

But you were just messing with the Field.

 

And what do you think reality is, Alf?

 

I dunno. It just exists in and of itself, I always assumed.

 

As it does, if you choose to ignore infinity fluttering in the wings, constantly breathing life into it, keeping the energies of matter and mind matched.

 

Ah...

 

If you prefer to ignore the part of yourself that has always dwelled there, looking for the chance to connect with you, to complete the missing half — the it is to your I am.

 

I...

 

Suddenly Alf senses another lurking just out of sight, just where Sam’s quantum Field had been in view a moment previously... A deeper than life soul urge — both irresistible and at the same time terrifying, like it might swallow the world whole, as indeed it might.

 

Aaaaaaaaaaargh! Alf runs off blindly, for all he’s worth, never to be seen again, believe it or not. The quantum Field silently clicks up a zero and continues serendipitously, utterly unphased by that ripple of sound and density fading to nought — or a teapot in the process of generating a human hand, body and mind to take it into the next picture board.

 

 

 

0=1

approximately