If I were God I would use Google
Steve has our Shakespeare book and glass and lighter and needle and the little chunk of fun stuck on the needle. He sets the flame under it, and it catches on fire. He lets it burn for five seconds, then blows on it to encourage it to smoke. Then puts the glass on it and we wait.
“You’ve been creating all over the place,” Smith says. “All kinds of genres. Photo collage, found object, poems, blogging, our conversations, pbase, myspace…”
The smoke fills the glass, sinking down into itself in luscious curtains. He hands it to me.
“Yeah, I’ve been letting my hair down. I’ve come to some sort of realization recently. I’m not getting too intimidated by others thinking I’m too exuberant.” I lift up the glass and drink a cup of smoke.
He sighs. “You can’t please everybody no matter what you do. So you might as well be what you are and be appreciated or hated for what you are:
IT’S AN INTERESTING LIFE
I can be Steven B Smith
I can’t be Steven Smith
I can’t be Steve Smith
I can’t be Steve.
Smith can’t be Steven.
But if yr interested,
there are 327 million Smiths
there are 84 million Steve Smiths
there are 36 million Steven Smiths
and
there are 64 million Steven B. Smiths
I make # 2 on that.
The others – I don’t even make
the first page.
There are 1.6 million agents of chaos,
of which
I
am number one.
I’m gonna have a lotta minions.”
“You are?” I ask.
“Yep. For all the unpleasant stuff. I ain’t doin any of it.”
We both zone into some private hash dream.
Now Smith asks, “Does cyber pseudopod god monster want sunshine?”
I ignore him.
“In the old days, in the pre-cyber days, when I would ask a question like that? I would get answer.”
“Oh, I can’t answer you without consulting.” I type away.
“Nowadays my question gets inserted on screen. I get no answer…”
I say, “Your shirt’s floating again.”
Smith says, “Wait till later. It’ll become enigmatic. Then it’ll really be mysterious.”
“If I were god, I would use Google,” I comment lazily.
“There are 393 millions Gods on Google,” Smith says. “Wikipedia gets Number One.”
“Oh,” I say. “That means we should use Wikipedia as the number one authority on god.” And I think of this emerging mass consciousness. The global hive mind. We’ll all be connected, and as soon as it sees itself in the mirror, it’s a toad in water.
Steve browses some of the titles of God sites in Google. “God com… does God exist?
I think, “I’m realizing how banal God sounds.”
“I think if God created us, he’d better damn well take care of us,” he says.
“No – he just spreads his seed and leaves,” I say.
“That’s rather irresponsible for a God, isn’t it? I always like the trickster Gods.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because they play fair. I read a book of trickster myths. Coyote god does things like tell Mrs. Badger he’ll watch her kids, then he cooks and eats them while she’s gone. He’s always bringing his penis out — sometimes hundreds of feet of penis — at one point, he inhabited a woman’s skin to have sex with some other person. They’re always lying. Can’t be trusted. Gotta respect somebody like that.”
“Oh, are you a trickster god?” I ask.
“You have nothing to fear from me except ill health and the thought police.”
He thinks I’ve zoned out but I focus on him. He says, “Sometimes your test subject catches you when you’re turning out the lights. You have to adjust things. Change the controls…”
“What did you say?”
“Ope. Never mind. Right. Forget I said that.”
Then later, he says, “ah, so this is what the brains agreed upon.” He points around the room, at the videos on the shelves, the music collection, indicates in a wide sweep that the brains are allowing us to be in the south of France.
“Yes, this is what they agreed upon for their reality, you know?”
“And the thing is, it doesn’t have to BE like this. This is the agreed-upon local area construct.
What happens is strong mind people come through who DON’T believe all this. If they talk the right way, the can also convince some of the others not to believe in the local construct, and it will waver and change.
You just got to get enough people believing your reality and it’ll change. If you you get people not believing in the old reality, but change to believing in your reality, it can change. You can seed reality changes.”
“So this is all about visualizing peace, is that what you’re getting at?”
“Oh no. If you do it right, you could walk through walls,” he scoffs.
“You could walk through walls if you could get enough people together to believe you could walk through walls.”
I tell him, “So what I’m imagining now is this kinda 3D soulscape where everything depends on each soul’s perspective.”
“Yes,” he says. “And of course if radars could pick this up then little parasites could feed off it.”
“You know, we could buy a hookah, a jar with water and little tubes to cool the smoke.” We’ve just sucked some more smoke under the glass.
“Oh yeah,” I say. “These different type of products that are available, that’s good. That’s like, independent organized action.”
“This ain’t a one-way world any more, you know?”
“Oha, I know,” I say
“Once you could be just wise. Just one thing. All one thing. But nowadays you gotta be quick and wise, sneaky and wise, all those double things, maybe a couple and more… Otherwise they creep up on ya, if ya go one weird way for too long.”
He gets up, pulls and shakes his pants. “I’m gonna go loose my lizard…”
