King of the Worlds (19 page)

“You still know very little about me,” Wendy said.

“That's true.”

“And I know so much about you.”

“Oh, I assure you there's plenty you don't know about me yet.”

“I love that ‘yet.' That's my favorite ‘yet.'”

He nibbled her earlobe.

“Ask me a question,” she said.

“What's your favorite color?”

“Scarlet. Now how about a
real
question?”

“Okay. Here's one. You said something in your message about making a killing in Green Smoothies? What's that all about?”

“Haven't I told you I own a kiosk at the mall?”

“You have not.”

“'Nalo Elixirs. We blend up leafy vegetables like spinach and kale with mangoes and bananas. No additives. Supremely simple yet powerful concoctions.”

“I'd love to try one someday.”

“Oh, you'll try them all in time. I have no doubt about that.”

“Okay, so
there's
another question I have for you.”

“What's that?”

“You keep saying that you always
knew
we'd be together someday and things to that effect.”

“Do you doubt it?”

“Well that's just it. I don't doubt that you feel that way
now
, seeing things in retrospect. And I can't really doubt that you've felt that way
at times
in the past because you documented it. Still, nobody ‘always' knows anything, right? I mean, not
really
. Don't you have to stumble around a bit in life before you figure out what you really want or what your true destiny is or whatever you want to call it?”

“All my stumbling was done by the time I saw you make out with Korelu in the mothership. Since then I've just been biding my time.
I knew you'd come.”

He remembered Ol' Blue Eyes:
I knew somewhere, sometime, somehow…

“Okay, but let's pause there for a second. When you say ‘knew,' what do you mean exactly? Because surely you couldn't
know
know, like literally?”

She smirked.

“Well, but surely you didn't know it in the way that you know you're in Ascension Forest right now?”

Her smirk grew even smugger.

“Or that
A
2
+
B
2
=
C
2
?”

“Sorry, Dylan. You're going to have to trust me on this one. I
knew
.”

“So, what, do you have a time machine, then?”

She smiled knowingly. “I have something much more powerful on my side than any time machine.”

“Psychic powers?”

She shook her head.

“A crystal ball?”

She shook her head some more.

“What, then?”

“The Holy Spirit.”

And it was like someone had just knocked the wind out of him.

Dylan had grown up in a marginally Catholic family and attended Catholic schools from first to twelfth grade. As a boy, he'd believed in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, believed that God intervened in earthly matters now and then, and that praying was a worthwhile way to spend one's time—his father modeled this by getting on his knees at his bedside every night without fail—but somewhere along the way those myths had stopped fitting the ever-expanding universe he found himself in. It, i.e. everything, was all too big and unruly to be encompassed by the story of a single primate nailed to a tree. For the love of God, there were at least 10
24
worlds out there! And if his faith had left any residue, it had been thoroughly scrubbed off by the demise of his acting career. It was true, perhaps, that his professional ruin had in some sense
caused
his apostasy, but not because Dylan was bitter or anything so simplistic and sour-grapish as that. Rather, the implosion of his career had made Dylan singularly aware of humanity's nakedness before the great sucking void of space. Success was no longer guaranteed for him, and even success, he saw from this new zoomed-out vantage point, amounts to nothing in the end; there is no Oscar that will survive the heat death of the universe.

“You're a believer?”

“I am.”

“Christian?”

“Mormon.”

“I guess I don't really know what that means,” Dylan confessed. Against the predominantly Catholic ethos of his hometown, the word “Mormon” had signified just two things: Utah and polygamy. Maybe crazy too, which fit. Wendy was definitely crazy—in fact, that seemed to be what he liked best about her.

“It means many things,” Wendy said. “You'll learn about all of them in time.”

“I didn't think there were any religious people left under the age of like fifty.”

“That's quite true as far as the monotheistic faiths are concerned,” Wendy said. “But Mormonism has been on the rise for decades.”

“And why should that be?” he asked. “I don't really keep abreast of Terran affairs.”

“Truth outs,” she declared. “As soon as humans began discovering primate life on Super Earths throughout the galaxy, it was pretty much game-over for the old religions. You get some hangers-on here and there, but they're kidding themselves and they know it. Those jealous creeds had been so thoroughly premised on the special status of the human race on Earth that their theologies just couldn't accommodate the new discoveries in any way that didn't stink of backpedaling BS. We Mormons, on the other hand, had been talking about Super Earths from the very beginning. We
expected
to find others like us out here. We also knew all along that the Earth was the most wicked of all worlds. From our point of view, history is unfolding exactly according to God's plan.”

“And what is that plan?” Dylan asked.

“Salvation through eternal progression.”

“Which means?”

“Which means that all of God's children on all of His many worlds will eventually be exalted to godhood themselves.”

“And you mean that literally too?”

“Most definitely I do.
As God now is, man may be
.”

“What happens when we become Gods?” he asked.

“Good question. First we have to be resurrected in immortal physical bodies of flesh and bone. And then, if we have lived up to all the ordinances and covenants, and if we are sealed in celestial marriage in the temple—which, don't worry, because I already know you and I will be—we shall be exalted to the Celestial Kingdom to be with God the Father and our Elder Brother Jesus Christ near the star Kolob. Then we will go on to birth innumerable spirit children and to organize matter into other Super Earths for them to live on.”

Dylan didn't even know where to begin. “You know the name of God's star?”

“We do. It came to Abraham in a vision. We haven't pinpointed which one it is yet, but some speculate that it may be Polaris.”

“That's f'ing nuts!” Dylan said. He couldn't help himself.

“Why?”

“Well isn't Jesus supposed to be, like, everywhere?”

“Now
that's
nuts. Think about it. Catholics held that Jesus ascended into heaven, right?”

Her use of the past tense wasn't lost on him, and though he hadn't counted himself a Catholic in many years, he nonetheless flinched a little.

“True,” he said, remembering his Apostles' Creed:
On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of
the Father
…

“Okay, then where did He go after that? Did He just dissolve into some spirit realm?”

It was a good question, one he'd never thought to ask before despite having recited that creed practically every week of his childhood. “I guess I did sort of believe that,” he said, “when I believed any of it.”

“That's one big difference between Mormonism and the old Christian religions. Ours is a fundamentally
scientific
faith. That's why it's so durable. Even God the Father is subject to the laws of physics. He has a physical being of flesh and bone and He lives
out there
—yes, literally. Everything in the Mormon view of things, even God, has a natural explanation. When our faith and science don't seem to square with each other, it's because science hasn't progressed enough yet. It will. People used to say we were off our rockers when we talked about all the other inhabited Earths out there. They don't say that anymore.”

“Okay, so all of this is quite fascinating, it really is, but it's a lot to swallow. If we could go back to my original question for a second…”

“Sure.”

“So you say the Holy Spirit told you that I would come for
you someday?”

“The Holy Spirit is a revelator, and His continuing revelations are every bit as real,
more
real, than any knowledge one might gain from any hypothetical time machine.”

“And the revelation came to you in a dream, or…?”

“Sometimes revelations
do
come in dreams, that's true, but this one came rather as a still, small voice. It distilled upon me as the dew from heaven while I watched you fuck Korelu in that R-rated movie I wasn't technically supposed to be watching.”

“R-rated movies are forbidden, are they?”

“As are a number of other things.”

“Such as?”

“Coffee and tea, alcohol, gambling, pornography, sex outside of marriage. A very grievous sin, that last.”

“Which explains why you wouldn't sleep with me on Moku Nui?”

“In part, yes. I meant what I said, though, about mutual masturbation being a deeper sort of penetration.”

Dylan held up an index finger. “I don't want to split hairs, but it would surprise me if coffee is forbidden and mutual masturbation outside of marriage is not.”

“Please remember, Dylan, that I am a person, okay, not perfect, nor any more automatically in tune with the tenets of my faith than the Catholics you knew as a kid were automatically in tune with theirs. My father's a professor of Mormon theology at BYU, so I'm more in tune with the intellectual side of the religion than most Mormons are. Nevertheless, some of what I'm saying is Mormon doctrine and some of it, inevitably, is just me. So that's my first excuse. But there's this too: I really
do
know that we're going to be together for all eternity, so I don't feel guilty of any major sin in that regard.”

“You're so certain.”

“I am.”

“Because God knows everything and he revealed some of it
to you?”

“That's right.”

“So you don't believe in free will then, I take it?”

“To the contrary. God the Father cast Lucifer out of heaven precisely for trying to abrogate the free agency of humankind. Free will is therefore very important to Mormons. It's true that you were foreordained for something in your pre-Earth life by the Grand Council of Heaven, but our earthly life is full of trials and we all are ultimately responsible for our own destinies.”

Dylan knew he was having a post-Earth life. He had not been aware that he'd ever had a
pre
-Earth one.

“But you just said that God knows everything. Doesn't that mean that we can't do other than what He already knows we will do?”

“That old brainteaser. Has it ever occurred to you, Dylan, that maybe there's something wrong with our human conception of time? That maybe words like ‘before' and ‘after' don't actually
mean
anything in the context of eternity? Even Einstein was onto that.”

Dylan nodded slowly and let it sink in. Because what a refreshing goddamned thought that was! He leant over and kissed her, and they went at it
lengua-a-lengua
for a spell, though a certain degree of modesty seemed appropriate following that discussion.

“I guess you'll have to go soon?” she said.

“Yes.” It was dusk already. Erin would begin to wonder.

“Can we meet again next Sunday?”

“I wouldn't miss it for the worlds,” he said. “I may be able to sneak down to Oahu again if you prefer?”

“I think I'd prefer to meet here actually. This forest is so…enchanted.”

“Isn't it, though?” he said, taking pride in his adopted homeworld.

“I know of nothing like it anywhere.”

They made out for a few more minutes. Then they stood up, left the moss, put their shoes back on, and hiked back to their androcab.

“I hope you enjoyed your time in Ascension Forest,” Sinatra greeted them.

“We certainly did,” Wendy replied.

“I am very glad to hear it. Shall I drive you back to the teleport now?”

“Yes, thank you,” Dylan said.

“Is there anyone else you'd like for me to be?”

“Shall we let it be itself for a bit?” Dylan suggested.

But Wendy had her own ideas: “Can you do the Mormon Tabernacle Choir?”

“I have many of their recordings available,” the driver said, “though I'm afraid I'm capable of morphing into only one singer at a time. I could change at intervals of twenty seconds. Will that do?”

“That'll do fine,” Wendy said.

“Wonderful. Which piece would you like to hear?”

“‘If You Could Hie to Kolob'?”

“But of course.”

And now their shape-shifting chauffeur morphed into a bespectacled bald man in a suit and tie, a young brunette in a blue dress, a chubby blonde…each sang with a host of heavenly voices:

If you could hie to Kolob
In the twinkling of an eye,
And then continue onward
With that same speed to fly,
Do you think that you could ever,
Through all eternity,
Find out the generation
Where Gods began to be?

It was choral music, heavy on harmony, the sort of thing Dylan associated with Christmas time and universities. At first he didn't think he was going to like it, that he would merely endure it out of respect for Wendy's esoteric belief system—