The GOD Box (29 page)

“Did you think you could play God?” she seethed. He dropped his spoon and looked up.

“What
in hell are you talking about?”

May repeated her question.

“Why would I try to be someone, who I don’t… even… believe…
exists
?!”

“That’s exactly the irony I don’t think I’m misunderstanding. He’s believed to be all powerful, the giver of life, even, I suppose, the taker of life.” She lifted the book with her finger on a specific verse. “He created the world, he created a box, and said that if you do what he says, you are free of the box. You killed everyone, created life… almost manipulated it
even
by their memory, created standards you expect us to follow as if by nature and if we don’t, you start over again. YOU ARE TRYING TO BE GOD, AND YOU DON’T EVEN BELIEVE HE EXISTS!” She didn’t know why she was so furious.

***

Jonathan was absent.
She was ruthless. The man called Jonathan didn’t even recognize himself anymore. Just leave him alone. This was all wrong.
He stared through the wall on the opposite end of the room.

***

In amazement to all of them, after he opened his mouth once, then closed it, thinking better of what he was planning to say, or perhaps, not knowing what to say, he looked back down, riddled with sadness and emotions he didn’t know how to express.

“You think that his vision of right and wrong; his box, is wrong… that not having identified right and wrong socially is right when in and of itself, that is a contradiction! Who do you think you are? The smartest man on earth, worthy of worshi
p in every age because of your power which you gained because of your threats. You want freedom by total control, and yet you don’t have that control.” More enlightenment came in her mind, “You
can’t
have that control.. You want to give freedom when you are not experiencing any yourself. So I ask again, who do you think you are? God? You think you have power to set people free?”

“I know I’m not God, but have I
not sacrificed everything I could have done, died multiple times for benefit of mankind?!”

May paused. What was the difference between them then? Wa
s this why Jonathan was failing… because even God failed? No... What was the difference of a sinner? What was wrong, what was right?  Was the hope of God far too idyllic, and people really did just make him up to release their own accountability, to give an excuse for their imperfections? That wasn’t it either, though; she couldn’t explain why. It just didn’t feel right. With these thoughts, her confidence seemed to deflate.

“Something is wrong in your philosophy.”
She muttered distractedly and then sat back down next to Dane, who was thumbing frantically through the book. In Dane’s eyes, she could see something searching, some discovery. They were looking for the same thing. He just actually knew how to find it.

“I t
hink it was over here.” He said, trying to guide her eager hands away so he could find it. Jonathan, by default of his trying to explain God, had to eventually explain to them the word repentance. Change.

“You refuse to let them change. You refuse to let them learn!”

“How can they learn what’s best if there is no best?”

“But maybe there is!
”

“Well, there is, but it’s not what you think! It’s not…
right
… it’s just what’s best for
everyone
.”

“What
is
best for everyone?” Dane asked maturely.

Jonathan opened and shut his mouth, breathing heavily in and out several times.

“When people don’t judge and inhibit each other based on immature assumptions of right and wrong!”

“So you mean, we let people do things that are bad for them
because they don’t know that they might not want it?”

Jonathan looked back down at his soup. He left the table, walking to the couch where he sat,
arms folded, in silence, acting as if his mental capacity was depleted, and unresponsive. For the rest of the evening, he spoke to no one.

May was shaking. Her passion about this seemed unexplainable, except there was something she was finally learning from this book.

It would make sense that Jesus was infamous. He represented ultimate freedom, which was ultimately what everyone wanted. So was it a confusion of the word freedom? A faulty definition that utterly weakened the argument? Now Dane was pouring through the book and May had her head on the table as she considered all these things. She looked from the darkness behind her arms to Dane, “Did that make sense? Was it right? Or am I totally crazy?”

“I think it’s right, sort of, but I need some application.
I think there’s more to understand about it.”

“O
f course there is.” She waved tersely. She was frustrated at times that no matter how much she seemed to learn, there was always more. Janey came up next to them with tears in her eyes. May scared her with the yelling. But, even yet, the child put her hand on her mother’s back and rubbed back and forth, as May and done with Dane recently, and she said,

“It’s okay mommy. It’s okay.”

Mommy? What did that mean? May looked at Dane for an explanation. He shrugged.

“That’s how Jonathan refers to you when he talks to her. I think it’
s a nickname; a positive one.”

May then looked at Dane to give her last related thought for the night, “I think…” She paused, still making sure the thought
was valid, “People all see the same box, but they understand it differently, and then spend most of their lives trying to break walls down.”

May looked over at Jonathan, pinching her
face between her hands, so her breathing was very loud. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been so hard on him.
Never
can she tell how he will react. She felt a little guilty for attacking him... Maybe she was all wrong.

“What if…” she said , resigned, trying to rebuild his confidence, “you wrote a history of everything you’ve seen? Then we could really figure this all out.” May added. Jonathan didn’t react at all. He just stared into space.
It was like something imploded behind his eyes and he couldn’t register anything.  After a few minutes of waiting for a response, they gave it up.

Janey commanded their attention from that time until she fell asleep. May thought that maybe tonight sleep would come for her as well.
It seemed, though, that as soon as she recognized it, it failed her. Dane and Jonathan were going to leave in the morning.

She knew what she would be doing while they were gone. May suspected that the people who wandered out there, trying not to be seen were likely not even affiliated with Darian, but were just curious.
She was waging a kind of silent war against them.

May came out of her thoughts
when Dane touched her face almost imperceptibly, if not for the warmth. They were both so tired. She could feel the weight of sleepiness in his fingers.

“I’m so tired of thinking.” He said
darkly, but then gave a smile. Those peaceful, deep brown eyes looked into hers for confirmation, and connection. “I can tell you’re about to fall asleep, and that means you probably won’t be awake to say goodbye in the morning.” Then he kissed her lips once simply, gently as before, yet with sincere intent.

They locked e
yes for a moment. There was much soberness in the connection. Very deeply and resolutely they were thinking, and feeling something consequential, ominous, and yet stable. In the same tone of sobriety, but on what felt like a different subject, Dane said,

“I
think we should start something new – er… old. I need to take some time to ask Jonathan how it works first, while I’m with him.”

“
Are you talking about marriage?”

“Yes. I agree with your theory for the need for relationships, for lasting ones, and I even think it’s natural to want it… but ironically not so natural to make it happen.”

She thought about teasing him a little bit, but he didn’t seem in the mood. There was nothing lighthearted or even giddy about his this.

May
felt like she couldn’t do enough at this moment to help him. She kissed him - so slowly, it was as though she were trying to draw all of his breath from him. The way he surrendered to her was like a confession. Something told May that he needed more affirmation in this moment, so she said,

“
I would love to be with you always.”

“Good. I love you, too.” Dane said seriously, studying her face, as if he could see the future in it. He breathed heavily, still sad and deep in thought. When he finally broke the gaze, he didn’t let go of her face.

Dane said they should get some sleep. His hand didn’t move, but his focus drifted away.

“Can I help?”

“No.” He said and didn’t elaborate. Now it was his hand that drifted, and his eyes returned.

May didn’t even move to the floor, she put her head in her arms on the table. Dane
put his arm around her shoulders, hand on hand, fingers in her hair, and put his head against the back of her neck and slept as well as he was able.

___

Jonathan saw them that way in the morning. He scowled. It was like a foreign world to him and he didn’t know how to respond. And he didn’t like it. So tender he couldn’t find a way to scoff at it, and yet so tender the only appropriate response a lonely man like him could muster, was ridicule.

Suddenly, a
little annoying thought came to mind, which was aggravating. Normally he so sufficiently ignores them; they usually just don’t exist. The thought was this: at least Dane isn’t lonely. First step to solve a problem was recognizing it. The second was to forget you ever had it, and never admit you recognized it. Jonathan made an attempt to go back to sleep, which was psychotic.

Two hours. That’s all he
had gotten; two hours. Something to moan all day about. Making a few calculations about the hours and the distance they traveled to get here he tried to determine the time it would take to get to back to his lab. At least a full day if they made no stops, and they were bound to make a few. It would be quicker to just make a straight shot from here to there.

After about fifteen minutes
of these thoughts, Jonathan decided that if he didn’t wake Dane up, Dane might have died like that and been all too blissfully happy about it in his dreams. With a flick on the back of the shoulder, Dane jolted awake. Pissing someone off so early in the morning meant that so far it was a successful day.

___

Dane glared venomously and put his head back down, muttering angrily under his breath. When he brought his head up again, he drew his hands to May’s arms and squeezed them gently. He saw Jonathan rummaging for something and with tired eyes got up to go help.

“Whatcha lookin for?” He ru
mbled groggily. Rubbing crustiness from his eyes he thumped over to the chest Jonathan was in. The room was empty except for Janine who was cleaning after the breakfast everyone ate before chores. Dane acknowledged her briefly then turned back to Jonathan for an explanation. By so doing, he was next commanded to draw a map and tell Jonathan where Gabe’s stuff is because he needed a weapon that Gabe had.

Dane knew better than to argue, so he begrudgingly submitted and found paper to start drawing.
Dane drew the map, but left out everything else on it. Jonathan had just enough information to get to the cave. One eye stayed on Jonathan, loathing everything about him, and anxiously awaiting his finding the “gun”.

Whatever that was, Dane did not want him to have it.

What were they in such a hurry for anyway?
Dane wondered.

As Dane predicted, he left in the morning without the slightest conscious recognition from May.
But, he left her a note and a small ‘gift’, which she found when she awoke.

***

Wrapped in a small cloth next to his note was the metal instrument they found in Gabe’s basket. May pulled out the note from underneath, rubbed her tired eyes and read:

May, this is called a gun, it is a weapon. I had to
pry it from Jonathan’s hands and convince him we wouldn’t need it, but I feel better if you have it just in case (for my sake and yours). We ‘fired’ it this morning (I’m surprised you didn’t wake up) so that I knew what it did. Preferably you never have to use it because it will seriously injure whoever the bullet hits. And this technology is too advanced for them… us… We have the egg thing and syringes.

             
Dane (and Jonathan)

May put it down drearily, not awake enough to read anything more than the words on the page
, or make acceptable cognitive judgments. She lifted herself slightly from the table to see out the window Whether the attempted bicycles were still there. Yup. They wouldn’t be back for a week, likely, while they were on foot. She plopped back onto the table and put her head down. This grogginess was unbearable. No wonder in Jonathan’s time people made medication to help you sleep. Once or twice she had been tempted to take one of the pills. Only the thought that Jonathan would be ‘hell’ to deal with if he ran out too soon kept her from taking them for herself.