5. Alive? All at Once

Myrna had been in the top third of her class. That means she had the large brain. She was human, the boy only a shill with no memory of its past life. I wiped its little mind clean and gave it a memory of the suicidal human I had put him in that I put in place to attempt to keep him from being suicidal and that did not even help.

In his memory he had been a small boy when his family on a leisurely drive stopped to look at a big tree with a ring of high brush around it but with a path leading into it. The rest of the family was content just to take it in from the distance and remark on how big it was and discuss what kind of a tree it might be.

“This is really something. It is so cozy here!”

'Listen to my voice and I will make you my man on earth.'

“Yeah! Like a prophet or something! That is what it is like here. Surreal like from one of those novels other kids read about, lords and ladies and the like.”

I knew he had heard me.

'Well, I had better get back with the rest. I do not want them to accidentally leave me behind.'

When he was back in the car I said, 'Do you know what is involved in being my man on earth.'

What a neat thought his subconsciousness thought.

'No, I do not.'

'You will say what I want you to say and do what I want you to do. If you do not I will punish you.'

But the human I had put the boy into seldom did what I wanted and rarely said what I wanted him to. He had a happy life anyway with me looking out for him and bringing things to him that exceeded his expectations and just made things go well for him. He had no reason to be unhappy let alone suicidal.

But he met a human girl and humans are so much trouble sometimes they are, well, withes. He was smitten by her but she reacted to it as had it been something she did believing she had certain, dare I say, “powers,” over the opposite sex. When she found out she really did not have any such things over the human she shunned him completely and looked for a boy she had more “power” over. Then the rest is history. I took his memories for he became suicidal all over again. I did not put all that in the boy.

He had taken an English class at university. He found it difficult like the rest of his studies. But he loved the rowdy sexy nature of the leisure time in the dorms. He chose Emily Dickinson to write his final paper on simply because it looked so easy. It was just interpreting poems. How bad could that get? It got bad for him. He got only a C on the final.

As he was walking from the exam room a cute little brunette sped up to walk beside him. It was not unusual for girls to take a shine to him so he barely noticed.

“What did you think of the final?”

“It was hard for me but then I do not read much.”

“Who did you pick?”

“Pick?”

“Yes, to write the final on. Who did you pick?”

“Emily Dickinson. Who did you choose?”

“Herman Melville. I just love his writings.”

He laughed.

“What's wrong?”

“I never understood a word of the discussion of what he wrote let alone what he wrote. Did Ishmael ever get the whale or not?”

“Silly. It is not even really about that.”

“Uh. I guess I will never understand.”

She felt like a genius though she only got a B for the class because there is so much to look at with Melville when he writes. It would have taken a genius to do much better on her paper. But it was the beginning of a relationship I had not planned. I had to contain this human and fast to begin shaping the boy's mind for what I wanted to do with him. He was a great lover but thought Sudoku was mysticism of some kind. He got by as a Freshman but as a Sophomore he was adrift the briny sea looking for a huge fish. He actually thought whales were fish.

After the first semester he dropped out at his girlfriend's suggestion for she had suggested they get a little place of their own off campus and he could work construction or something and she could go on with her Mass Media work at school. She was hurting for money with the many books and equipment she had to buy for some of her classes. He was hurting for brains.

It worked but not well. She studied too much and he spent too much on beer and cars to repair which he was not much good at either. But she made it and they were even yet together. He went to her graduation in flannel and blue jeans. She went in a beautiful professional looking suit that emptied their bank accounts. But she reacted as had there been no difference between the two of them that was not the norm for male and female's about to go on to grad school and off to rock the world.

It was in grad school she began to grow up. He liked beer and sports. So one day she bought him a 36 pack, tied a red ribbon around it and got in the little car that ran like it needed a mechanic badly and drove away never to see him again. He had fulfilled his purpose. That's what shills do. He could not see why she never said, “Good-bye,” but other than that he was alright with it especially with the stray shill that I had just sort of move right in and stay. They both liked beer, her not sports so much.

She got a job at the bookstore in the off season and had a very good time finding the job demanding but loads of fun that pretty well maxed her out. He continued to be what was affectionately called a grunt in the road construction. In season she would quit her job at the bookstore to travel with her husband who used to be the boy. Then she would get her old job back invariably every year during the off season. Hey it kept them with most everything they wanted and beer, that was what they wanted most of as often as they could find an excuse to bring one out. But they never got all that drunk. They even said, “We like beer not getting soused. Well, most of the time anyway.” So after about three kids all shills in Me, they decided to go to South Dakota and get married and take in a motorcycle rally. They loved motorcycles but the boy hated all the high maintenance. So they went in his brand new pickup.

They had become normal while his ex-girlfriend was elected to the senate. It was your fine everyday American human and shill story right down the line. No feelings hurt. Nobody ashamed. Everything Kosher.

I do not know why I did it. I guess I was just being lazy like when I was floating around the far side of the galaxy looking for a place to die. If you are looking for the purpose to it, do not do it. There really is not any. When shills die they go down to death and we ignore it. We do not even give them a shill to finish their life for them. That is why the religion that goes, “You are born, you die and that is it,” has the most members of any religion and if they are shills and not humans lazy and underestimating themselves they are absolutely right. When you get shills involved with religion you tend to find they talk about God as a buddy that does not drink and make wonderful parishioners willing to help do anything but hard to train to do anything that requires a lot of savvy.

It all sounds beautiful but even they get bored and the women especially resemble the witches of the past. They like controversy and tend to complicate their lives but I helped the boy and his wife all the way through because the boy heard my voice. Not many shills hear a God's voice. There really is not much you can write for them that would not happen anyway and it is rare when one needs containing unless it starts developing too many human ways. Then one has to contain them something like they would a human or a witch. If it was not for that they would make the happy healthy core of the societal members.

In America for example some evil human might sway a lot of them in an attempt to change something we care if it changes. Then we have to contain the witch as well as their shill constituents and build a constituency among the more stable ones. We always win even if we lose an election or trend to do drugs for example. We keep things going the way we want them and thanks to shills that is pretty much the way it goes. Sometimes we have to use a shill we make evil to get it done somewhere else. But when the humans die or the shills become aware they are just shills we make them human and change them to someone they do not know and nobody knows them but they will remember someday and then it is on to Godhood in heaven.

That is just the way shill life goes most of the time but in certain situations we use shills a lot. The president was once a shill and we brought him through. Now he cannot seem to quite make up his mind whether he wants to be human or a shill, just someone who will say most anything they want him to. His trouble is he thinks he already is human because he speaks his mind when he says what they want him to.

But the boy thought about the tree. He thought about the tree in the memory of his human receiver's mind. It spoke. And... for a moment there was something there he did not remember. Something spoke to him through it all. Trees do not talk. He remembered with a memory wiped clean and another added so differently and he saw. He saw me.

Now he had to come to heaven. I gave him the mind of a human. He would be of no use as a shill now.

“Yes. It is me not my brain. How did you see me after all this?”

“I-I am alive! I am alive?”

“You have seen me. What do you want? Do you want to live forevers endlessly?

“I see it all.”

I had opened his mind the mind of a human being and it all came to him.

“Of course I want it for as long as I can have it.”

“What about your wife?”

“She does not know.”

“She cannot. Do you love her?”

“I thought I knew what love meant. I did not. There are those all over the place to love now.”

“What of goodness?”

“Is it good to just die and leave her behind?”

“I will help her.”

“Take me now!”

“Not for a little while. Get in the pickup.”

I gave it a faulty brand new tire, one chance in millions.

He got in an put his seat belt on.

“Undo that.”

He understood.

He became someone he never knew could exist, but nobody knew him but God.

She was heartbroken. She started to pine away. I put a shill in her life. They went to the grave together.

Then one time. I was sitting on my throne. God was there. Me said to him, “Come out of your container.”

He stepped out. He saw me. I was crying.

“My God I am you. My God you are me.”

He was alive.

“Why?”

“It was too dry.”

He approached my throne but bowed only briefly then as he was upon me he reached out and we hugged. I will remember that hug a long time.