The End Of The Film

(Written ages ago, sometime in the late 20th century.)


When rising water and ecological chaos related to global warming caused the collapse of all major economies and civilization in general (who didn't see that one coming?) I packed what little food I had and drove my car as far into the mountains as it would go. It gave out in mid-evening, in a mountain pass where storm clouds were gathering and bolts of lightning were singeing the dry grasses.

Prepared to die, I left the car and ran out into the landscape, sprinting heedlessly across the fields. Seeing a small butte in the middle distance, I turned towards it, intent on gaining elevation so as to better attract lightning.

Reaching it, I struggled up, crawling part of the distance on my hands and knees. At the top, gasping, I lit a cigarette and surveyed the land below me, where the bolts had ignited blazes.

Feeling a moment of melodrama coming on, I cried out, “God, WHY?”

The sound was absorbed into the emptiness of the smoky sky. When I figured He had to have received my initial hail, I continued in a somewhat quieter voice. “It's not for myself that I worry, but – all those people who believed in You ... Like – REALLY believed in You. I mean, some of them got all freaky about it, handling snakes and wearing big funny hats and going to prayer group every night of the week (except Bingo Thursdays) and stuff...”

I trailed off as a particularly violent bolt of lightning immolated a nearby shrub in a pyrotechnic explosion of sparks and flame, and sat down on a projection of rock at the edge of the hill to watch the world burn.

The clouds had gotten heavier, roiling and perturbed beyond all reason, vacuous temperamental giants bent on destruction, bellowing incomprehensible meteorological threats like an abusive drunkard. I stared up at the sky for an indeterminate time, until a hand tapped my shoulder tentatively. I leapt to my feet, prepared to attack - the indomitable survival instinct kicking in at a fairly futile time - to confront an old man, dressed in a white robe, looking at me somewhat timidly from over a pair of spectacles with bent frames. His hair and beard were long and white, His eyes indescribably innocent and simultaneously impossibly wise. In short:

God.

“I do hope you're not planning to attack,” He ventured after a moment of silence, where we stood opposite each other, frozen in a tableau of indecision.

Somewhat embarrassed, I lowered my hands. “It's really not very nice to sneak up on people,” I chastised Him lamely.

“I did say hello several times, but I imagine you didn't hear Me over the thunder.” He coughed, and began to speak. “I'm-”

“God, right?” I interjected.

He looked startled, squinted through His glasses at me. “-sorry I couldn't get here sooner.” He finished. Another brief silence.

"You're God... Right?" I repeated.

“Uh... Well... In a manner of speaking... Yes.” He shifted His feet and admitted this last in an apologetic tone.

Another silence, this one becoming protracted as God ran an inventory of His nervous tics, accompanied by more foot-shuffling and punctuated with short coughs. At length, He seemed to steel Himself, cleared His throat, and said:

“Some weather we're having, isn't it?”

“Yes, rather. Global warming, and all that.”

“Yes. Look...” He took a deep breath. “I just wanted to explain.”

“Explain? About what?”

He gestured vaguely, long arthritic fingers moving in a fluttering fashion, as if to illustrate the gauzy diffuseness of His concept. “This and that... Abstract ephemera... Socioeconomic trends...”

“In short, Life, the Universe, and Everything?” I quipped.

“I'm sorry?” He gave me a blank stare, perhaps sensing something passing over His Almighty noggin.

“Never mind,” I said quickly. “I'm not sure what I expected You to look like, but I didn't expect anything quite so...”

“Stereotypical?” He offered.

“That's it exactly. I suppose it's probably a function of my subconscious mental images.”

“More or less... You were raised in a society that showed Me to you always in this form, and though this is not all I Am, you see only what you expect.”

Lightning struck close by, and I said, “I don't mean to second-guess or anything, and this is all terribly interesting; but the world is in quite a state right now. Couldn't You go give our Congressmen and legislators a talking-to, maybe pull some strings and get someone intelligent and rational in the White House? Get civilization back together? I mean, You're here now, and there must be a lot of... stuff for You to get started fixing.” Subtlety has never been one of my strong points.

God shook His head sadly. “I'm afraid it doesn't work like that.”

I stared at Him. “Well, how does it work? Do you have to inspect it and give us an estimate? Do you still take payment in virgins, or have you switched to MasterCard?”

He coughed, spluttered. “It's nothing like that. It's just...” A long pause as He prepared for the next words, which came out, quickly and in a mumbling tone of voice, His lips barely able to pass the words. “I'msorrybutthere'snothingIcando.”

I gaped. “Nothing?”

“One imbalance leads to another one, greater than the first... The road to destruction is long, and not steep, but there is no way save forward once started on the path.” God looked pensively over the fields below us, where the brush fires were twinkling and dancing merrily under the rain-heavy sky, sending up plumes of smoke to mix with the clouds above and darken the fading day.

“So, what's going to happen, then?”

He paused. “Well, in a matter of about 12 minutes, the disturbances in the ecosystem and atmosphere are going to coincide with a massive earthquake that will simultaneously ignite the planet and sunder it into quite a lot of pieces, which will then go spinning off... Into the farthest realms of uncharted space.” He hesitated again, turning the phrase over to Himself, then repeated it in a striking impersonation of Richard Kiley. “I'll miss all the documentaries about the animals... I intended to record them, but I never did figure out how to work my VCR.”

“Why did you come to me, anyway?” I asked, feeling that we were straying from the point.

“Like I said, I wanted to explain... And you're really the only one who can understand.”

“That's flattering,” I said. “Although of little practical use, considering that we, or at least I, am about to be sent spinning into the farthest realms of uncharted space.”

God nodded. “You are a sharp one.”

“I could be rather pissed off about this, you know... I was just minding my own business, and now suddenly I'm going to be spinning off into uncharted space's farthest realms. Really, it's most inconvenient.” Now that we'd gotten to know each other a bit, I felt I could voice some criticisms.

“Well, you were going there anyway,” God defended Himself with a touch of asperity.

“Yes, but my previous vehicle had life support.”

I'm sure God had a witty comeback to that one. He had to, after all, He's God, right? However, in His infinite mercy and compassion, He decided to allow me to have the last word.

Right.

Another pause. “Nothing at all You can do, eh?”

“There was nothing I could do the moment the bite was taken out of the proverbial apple.”

“It was proverbial?”

“It was My lunch!”

“So, we've been doomed all along, then,” I prompt.

“It's a natural process... Inevitable, really,” God says. “The one obsession that takes hold over the desire for life itself, the single temptation too alluring to reject. It's a matter of probability. We were in the Garden for so long. I was vigilant, ever watchful. But sooner or later... A lapse in judgment, a miscalculation... It happens.”

“Then... Infallibility? The omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Trinity?”

God shook His head mutely.

“Salvation? The afterlife?”

He looked uncomfortable. “Well, you have to tell them something.”

A silence. “Well, what's next for You, then? I mean, where do You go from here?” I sit down again at the edge of the hill, gesture for God to sit down too. I check my watch. Six minutes left. An end-time interview with the Almighty. Barbara Walters, eat your heart out.

“I don't really know,” God admitted. “I usually start on creating another one immediately, but somehow I'm just not inspired. In fact, I feel almost depressed. It seems as if I've already done everything.”

“Do you find it difficult, then, keeping busy for all eternity?”

“There's the other thing...”

“What?” I asked.

“Well, I'm not really eternal... I mean certainly very long-lived. Everyone on my mother's side of the family is. But... I'm tired of it all. I think – I'm ready to be done with it.” He sighed, as if relieved to be unburdening Himself.

“What about your family?”

“**** them,” He said with evident satisfaction, the phrase rolling off His tongue with a ready familiarity which denoted frequent use. “I can't stand any of them, and they all cut Me off because of the line of work I went into. Maybe when I'm dead, they'll be sorry.”

How do you deal with a deity who has just confided His suicidal ideations to you? “I could see that,” I commented inanely. This put an end to the conversation, as the clouds finally began to overflow, sending fat drops of rain streaking downward to splatter with explosive force on the dry ground.

So there we sat, God and I, as the earth began to tremble and the minutes passed, silent in our own thoughts.

“God? Two minutes left.” I remarked.

“I'm sorry? Oh.” He said, continuing to muse. “You know, I graduated 37th in my class for Universal Deities... I wasn't a great student, but I tried. I made so many worlds, so many different creatures and places, striving for perfection in each one. And when I finished creating, I would see what I had done, and- and-”

“And?”

“And it would be Good... But it never lasted. I guess I always wanted to escape mediocrity, really be something... Make more than merely things of transient beauty. Leave My mark, so to speak.”

“Well, if it means anything, this, uh... world... is the most beautiful thing I've seen... in the, uh - world.”

“Thanks.”

I reflected upon what God had Said, and thinking of all the people I'd known, their insecurities and petty travails, their hopes and acts of kindness, their courage in the face of impossible situations, I realized that God had been right. I did understand.

“That bit about Your having created us in Your image? That was true, wasn't it?” I asked.

God looked at me, a tear in His eye. “Yes, that part was true... Sorry. I should have used a mix rather than starting from scratch.”

“Thirty seconds left. What's the plan... Are You going to take off, or are You going to stay for the festivities?”

God looked around. “I think I'll stay. You don't mind, do you?”

“Not at all.” The ground was shaking more violently. “It won't be long now. Any last words?”

“It feels good to let it go,” God said. “I'd like to thank you for your time... I'm sorry if your life wasn't what you'd hoped it would be.”

“It doesn't matter anymore,” I reply. “Oh - and God?”

“Yes?”

“Here's looking at You, kid.”