Death, the Devil, and the Goldfish (27 page)

"Are you okay? You seem a little overly obsessed with this theory, and you're starting to look flushed. Do you want some water?"

He motioned for someone behind the camera to bring some water while the young anchorman's mind began to recognize defeat at the hands of the large man opposite him. Nailing him to the wall was obviously going to be a little more difficult than he'd expected. The anchorman smiled at Terrence, smiled at the camera and shuffled his papers.

"No thank you, I'm quite all right, let's move on, shall we?"

"I think that'd be for the best," said Terrence calmly.

He'd been avoiding and deflecting questions about his career-ruining theory for three years and had become exceedingly good at it.

"Very well," said the anchorman, "so I believe you have a new theory to share with us about the dead not dying event that has swept the world. We've been receiving thousands of miraculous reports all day, reports of people being shot in the head, dying, and then coming back without a scratch."

"Yes. I believe the wounds heals up once the soul returns to the body, as no one could survive a gunshot wound to the head under ordinary circumstances," offered Terrence.

"We have had some reports about animals. A young boy saw a bird get shot this morning by an old woman trying to dislodge her shotgun from the chimney. In this case, the bird didn't come back. In fact, we haven't had any reports of animals returning from the dead, just humans. Would you care to speculate?"

Terrence gave into gravity and shifted himself back to his right butt cheek.

"Well, now, we're getting into the subject of souls. It's widely believed that humans have a soul, and animals do not. When a human dies, his soul leaves the body. In today's cases, the soul is returning to the body. Animals have no soul to lose and so they do not return."

Terrence smiled through an increasingly red face and took a sip of water.

"I see," said the anchorman, nodding slowly as if he was truly interested. "And you have a theory that explains this highly unusual phenomenon?"

"I do," said Terrence.

The anchorman perched himself on the edge of his chair to indicate his deep desire and interest in the oncoming information.

"And so how did you come by your theory? On what do you base your findings?"

"Well, it is after all just a theory, but through past research and data, philosophical standards, and many unsubstantiated rumors, I do believe that I know exactly what's going on."

The anchorman quickly shuffled his papers.

"Well, I'm certainly on the edge of my seat," he said and offered a fake laugh at his own sad joke. "Won't you please go on?"

This was what Terrence had been waiting for: his chance to redeem himself in the eyes of academia everywhere, to move himself back onto the A-list of high-class, intellectually stimulating parties. Terrence took a deep breath that almost burst the buttons on his shirt.

"I believe that the Angel of Death has quit his job in order to facilitate the arrival of the Devil on Earth who is using a large conglomerate media-hyped creation to re-enter the world as we know it and start the Apocalypse. Although I also believe God, who I think may reside in the Piccadilly Circus area, has his own plans and is using the oncoming events as a means to better a certain group of people and bring them together so they can learn from each other and prevent the crisis which may or may not happen, though it could all rest in the hands of a prophetic goldfish, but I'm not sure about that last part of it all."

The silence that washed over the studio was one of dumbstruck confusion, surprise, and pity for this poor, obviously completely off his rocker gentleman who had just made a complete fool of himself on national television.

The anchorman, who was slowly coming to the realization that Terrence had just nailed himself to the wall and flushed his career farther down the toilet than anyone would have thought possible, tried to compose himself and say something constructive. Unfortunately, he didn't get the chance.

"Oh, there's another thing," said Terrence. "There's something to do with a penguin as well, but I haven't got that bit completely figured out just yet, though I believe he is involved in the master plan and quite possibly a tool of divine intervention."

Including the anchorman, sound person, lighting people, camera crew, producers, director, and assistants, there were around twenty-three people other than Terrence who were in the studio watching the live broadcast feed. With the exception of a lighting technician named Lawrence, who was born without a sense of humor, the entire room burst into a roar of laughter.

Terrence, who up until that point truly believed he'd made a valid theory, suddenly had horrible flashbacks to seven years ago when he'd first introduced the mango chutney-curried chicken-mayo-dried cranberry sandwich theory. The laughing, coupled with the personal embarrassment, all held a vaguely familiar feeling. He struggled out of his chair, heaved himself to his feet, and bolted for the door.

The young anchorman, who was still laughing and holding onto his stomach as if it might try to escape his body, was ecstatic with glee, having just discredited and embarrassed a once-prominent figure in his field with hardly any effort at all.

Celina stared at the video feed of the truck that rolled to a stop in one of the shipping yards.

"Celina!" Nigel snapped his fingers.

"They're offloading lemons," she said. "I don't believe it, they're actually going to use lemons, and there's that cat again."

The Devil sat on top of a crate observing the unloading process.

"Use lemons for what? And why is there a Santa Claus lying on that table? I suppose it makes sense with all the elves running around here, but still. You were explaining?"

Celina looked at Nigel, the man who just moments ago she'd suspected of being crazy. But everything sort of made sense. If elves could take over the building and figure out a way to jumpstart the Santa Claus Project, then why couldn't a cat be possessed by the Devil?

"Okay, Nigel, I'll level with you."

"Glad to hear it," said Nigel and sat down, occasionally glancing at the monitors.

He hadn't told Celina that, aside from his suspicions about the cat, he also recognized the two individuals helping the elves unload the lemons. Big Ernie and Itch were not people who were forgotten easily, especially since it had only been this morning when he'd been hung upside down off the side of a building by the two criminals. Things like that tended to stick in a person's mind.

"It happened just over six years ago," began Celina. "Do you know who Neville Bartholomew Snell Jr III is?"

Nigel remembered the name, as for a while he'd been all over the news for one reason or another, but mostly he was known for his extravagant spending and equally extravagant purchases.

"Isn't he the guy who bought a herd of African rhinos, shipped them to his Australian mansion, and had them stampede through his neighbor’s property because his neighbor's dog wouldn't stop barking?"

Celina also remembered that particular event. The neighbor had tried to hire a solicitor to sue Neville Bartholomew Snell Jr III, but not one dared take the case, as there were rumours that Neville had suddenly purchased a large family of ravenous leopards.

"That's the guy. Six years ago, he decided that buying large amounts of ridiculous things was no way to make his mark on the Earth, and like all ridiculously rich people he wanted to be remembered for something more profound after he died than stampeding a herd of rhinos through his neighbor's property. As far as I remember, once, when he travelled from one country to another, he read an article in an in-flight magazine, which he rarely did, as he believed that, much like the rest of the world, in-flight magazines are one of the most boring pieces of reading material the world has ever seen. Anyway, there was an article in there about artificial intelligence and the recent advances in the field."

Nigel's mind was working at hyper speed, and he had already guessed what was coming.

Celina continued." Neville always said that the happiest time of his life was when he was a child on Christmas morning and he would run downstairs early to see the piles of gifts waiting for him under the tree. His biggest disappointment in life was when he found out that Santa Claus didn't exist. That made the magic of the moment completely vanish, and ever since that moment, he'd lost interest in Christmas altogether."

Nigel read between the lines.

"So he decided to use AI to simulate that magic. To make the myth real, in a sense?"

"In a way, yes," said Celina. "The scheme wasn't without any sort of financial gain. Anyone with an average income or below would never be able to afford the services of the Santa Claus Project. Neville's plan was to sell this service to rich people for their children who wanted to keep the magic alive in their lives for as long as they wanted. He'd even envisioned people purchasing the service for an entire lifetime, so that essentially one person could go through their entire life believing that Santa Claus really existed because they had seen him on several occasions, and not just Santa, but his sleigh, reindeers, and elves, too."

"It's rather sick, really, isn't it?" said Nigel.

Celina pondered the whole thing for a moment.

"I could never decide if it was a horrific money-making scheme or an actual good-hearted attempt at preserving a warm fuzzy feeling, you know, a perfect feeling forever."

Nigel flashed back to his perfect moment, his apparent telekinetic power, and the disaster in a mini-skirt who destroyed it all.

"I don't think that perfect moments are meant to last forever," said Nigel sadly.

Celina looked at Nigel with a hint of compassion.

"Someone really did a number on you, didn't they?"

Nigel was a little surprised at how transparent he had been and shook it off for the moment.

"So the elves are all robots?"

"Yes."

"And the Santa Claus lying on the table is also a robot?"

"Yes, but we haven't charged his power cells yet, which is why they're using lemons."

"Because lemons can be used to create electricity?" asked Nigel.

"You paid attention in school! You get a gold star," said Celina. "Yes, a single lemon can generate just under one volt of electricity."

"Okay, but why not just plug Santa into a wall socket? And why are the elves rebelling? And what's the Devil, presuming there really is a Devil and that he has in fact possessed that cat, doing here?"

At that moment, there was a knock at the door that made both Celina and Nigel jump like a little girl who had just discovered a spider crawling over her leg. Nigel made a low shushing sound to indicate they should all remain quiet.

Eggnog, who had been tapping his foot happily to the music playing in his head, had no idea what a shushing sound meant and shouted out, "Who is it?"

The voice behind the door was a little muffled, as it was coming from behind a door, but the words were unmistakable and made Nigel wish that he'd never got out of bed this morning.

"It's the Angel of Death, open up!"

Down on the warehouse floor, Big Ernie unloaded the last of the lemons out of the truck. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and glanced a fearful glance at the cat who was still staring at him.

Big Ernie had definitely decided that he didn't like this cat in the slightest, Devil or not. Big Ernie, despite his size and natural strength, had always had a childhood fear of the boogeyman. That was the same irrational fear that all children had, the feeling that there was a creature hiding under the bed, but this fear had stuck with Big Ernie for a long time, and even now he would still sometimes check under the bed and in the closet. The cat, who would occasionally lick his paw and clean behind his ears, inspired the exact same childhood fear in Big Ernie. And he didn't like it.