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Rotunda at the Jupiter Hilton

When January . . .
with its bitter frost
has pierced to the root the drought of dead December,
smothering Earth in forgetful snow . . .

When the dying winds of Christmas
whistle through the winter’s broken branches,
pricking the cold Square with black rain,
and the thick, dry roots of poplar trees
cry in agony for the ancient storms of April,
and children long to play in Rittenhouse Square . . .

Then, unnatural Heroes
from far off places, honored in sundry lands,
unearthly gods and earthly patriots,
conspire to walk the apocalyptic Earth
in search of ancient Argonauts,
wanted, dead or alive . . .
and, where, in the simple dead of winter . . .

The CEO of Earth

Benj. Franklin, printer, eldest of the Founding Fathers of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, heard the Good News directly from Zeus, the biggest Big Daddy of them all, that he, the biggest Big American of them all, ranked first among the free world’s famous dead, spirits the Olympians called Heroes, honored with a taste of life-after-death, had been elected by the Board of Directors of GOD . . .

And it came to pass . . . , presently, that Dr. Benj. Franklin, deceased, might of a summer’s day or a winter’s night be seen,masquerading in Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, USA, by any number of honest citizens, appearing to the populous to be, however, nothing more dangerous than an ordinary American businessman.

Simple Letter of Agreement

As Earth’s CEO-designate, he had learned from Zeus, the greatest of the Olympians and Chairman of the Board, that while living or dying on planet Earth, he would have to abide by certain Unalienable Rights.

That among these Are:

¶ Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness;

¶  that he will be Doomed to secrecy in practicing his Ancient Craft in 21^st century Philadelphia;

¶ that contingent to his taking on this bizarre assignment, he will present to the Executive Board—comprised of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades—a detailed, 4-year plan, showing how—using brains and talent that exist on planet Earth—he shall bring Homo sapiens sanely into the 21^st century;

¶  that he has determined the means to do this with minimal Disruption to the body politic in general and to the United States of America, in particular—that model of independence and free enterprise, the first sovereign nation in the financial world to incorporate itself as a multinational nation,namely, America, Inc., with European and Asian federal banks brokered as major shareholders, holding a major stake in the Nation’s economic, military, and political stability;

¶  that GOD give him the power and authority to execute, to thebest of his ability, whatever plan he conceives to bring the planet to its senses;

¶  that, contrary to habit, none of the twelve Olympians sitting on the original Board be permitted to interfere except one, and that to be named by him; finally,

¶  that the Board of Directors of GOD and its Chief Executive Officer, Zeus, understand that the Old Patriot not be expected even to consider the idea of sacrifice, nor to take on the stigma of the Cross, not even for the Hell of it, not for the briefest of noonday hangings on the Sabbath—nor on any other day—whether for the sake of short-term public relations or the real or even imagined long-term benefits to mankind, whether followed by resurrection or death, whether associated with excruciating pain or pleasure, unequivocally, under no circumstances under the Moon, whatsoever.

That was it. On these few terms, but not until the Executive Board had acquiesced and given the Founding Father its Word, had Benj. Franklin, Craftsman,taken on the task. Not that he did not trust in GOD—or in the Board—though, given its history of high jinks, that might be so. Simply, he did not understand why a rational people needed pain and death—especially if they happened to be his—to believe in anything. The way he figured it, Earth had suffered a sufficient number of deaths—and one or two fancy resurrections, to boot.

What it wanted NOW was life. World Without End, Amen!

That’d do it.

¶  that to maintain its Annual growth rate in Learnings per Shire—what Wall Street has affectionately—but, I must say, inaccurately—spoken of in terms of Earnings per Share—that the Board has targeted for Earth, I shall accomplish these ends by the end of the fourth fiscal quarter of the twentieth century—that GOD’s Auditors and Certified Public Accountants may publish said results, in timely fashion, in the planet’s Centennial Report—thegalactic equivalent of a publicly traded company’s annual report, I understand—to be presented to such shareholders as the Titans and Old Testament Prophets at the Centennial Shareholders’ Meeting, in the Year of Our Lord 2016, by galactic Law coincident with the Fourth Olympiad of the 21^st century, at which time GOD’s Report and Recommendations will be debated and the fate of Earth decided; but in any event not later than the year 2020, Anno Domini, that year coincident with the Ides of March of the 21^st century.

To all of which I give my Signature—and my life—this, the17th day of January, Anno Domini, . . . etc., etc., etc. . . .

[Signed]

It was a thankless job.

Either he accepted it or the Executive Board might prevail upon Zeus—its biggest shareholder—to annihilate Mother Earth. Torch it. Liquidate it.Take it private. This annihilation—not unlike a hostile takeover on Wall St.—would break the link between Earth and its Heroes; it would end the vaunted AFTERLIFE,written about so fondly and effectively in the Good Book—and in good books everywhere. Lastly, Benj. Franklin knew, it would bring an end to Benj. Franklin. And to all Earth’s Heroes. Briefly, it would end the After World that the Heroes had come to enjoy. Annihilate it.

Earth’s Heroes and Holy Spirits—its pagan, patron Saints—would die eternally. They would die as surely, as completely, as profoundly,as Common Man and Unholy Spirits had always died. "Godfather," Benjamin said,after signing the Agreement, his fat fingers trembling, his thin voice scraping , his throat constricting, aware that his simple signature had legally transferred authority and responsibility for the planet from The Other to him, "Thy Will be done."

Zeus raised a brow at this archaism.

Zeus

Noble, touched with chivalry in his big-sleeved, nimbus-blown, Grecian gown, the Thunderer listened with courtesy to Benjamin’s defense of Man. He judged shrewdly, calculated precisely, combing his tanned fingers through his black, curly hair.He presided thoughtfully and fairly this day, not offending his Olympian brothers, who flanked him at a long conference table—not equal in stature but with much at stake—and much incensed by the latest news of the troubled, third planet from Sol.

Throughout the day, his gentle bass had rolled like thunder in the great-columned Rotunda of the Jupiter Hilton.

Occasionally, he leaned to whisper something to one of his brothers(not impolitely, but to point out something in one of the documents, some detail that he or Benjamin had brought fresh to the meeting, something that he had previously seen or given serious study to and that wanted emphasis). Besides, he understood well—from the time that Earth had first been fashioned—that his keen interest in the survival of the planet was rivaled only by theirs: Especially so since the coming of Man and his many wonderful myths about them and their fabulous exploits, stories they loved to hear told again and again, whatever their ludicrous level of insult, whatever their degree of discrepancy from fact.

He had convened this ad hoc Executive Tribunal on the premise that Poseidon and Hades—in their day-to-day operations—could bring earthshaking, tidal-wave Authority to Benjamin’s plan, which challenged the Titans and Old Testament Prophets—more directly, the Prophets, who wanted the planet liquidated,as before, as with Noah, violating the Covenant of the Ark, which, at a Biblical minimum,had promised the fire next time.

But this time, the Thunderer had planned a White Knight defense of theplanet—though nobody on the "neutral" Executive Board could confess tosuch a bias or publicly sanction any such pro-Earthly posture.

Once, while his brothers were debating a minor detail in the Agreement,the Thunderer tugged at the Big American’s sleeve and whispered to him—whom,on entering the Rotunda, he had taken great care to seat to his immediate right, no doubt anticipating just such a contingency. No doubt, too, his advice to his American protege was as sincere as Don’t let them see you sweat.

Or it was as cynical as Don’t sweat it. Whatever it was, the Big American began to sweat.

—Don’t sweat it—And yet, Zeus smiled a tad sheepishly, too . . . as if he were holding something back, as if he were holding a lot back . . . something touched on in the Philadelphia Project, or something that ought to have been; some Task the Founder might assign, some Force he might employ, some stiff alternative; or, if Ben were lucky, something bigger yet, touching on his White House fantasy.

The Board Room, a spacious Ionic Rotunda situated in the penthouse of GOD Inc.’s Galactic Headquarters, had been a perfect choice for its simplicity. It made everybody feel that he was doing something of great importance. Like the top of a many-tiered Greek wedding cake, it sat at the very pinnacle of the tallest and most impressive building on the planet Jupiter, home of Homer’s blind Olympians and setting of his fabled Mt. Olympus. But, unhappily, this al-fresco setting was about to turn murky.

Huge columns with golden capitals unearthly marble that ringed the Ionic Rotunda with light and music—dramatically loomed and cast grave Shadows where the Board convened. Not an auspicious sign, to say the least. Earlier, they had stalked the Thunderer back-and-forth across the Rotunda’s rust-and-gold floor. Like the hands of a dozen great clocks or the Shadows of the great stones at Stonehenge—or, more precisely, as if many days or many months had passed. Though Zeus hadn’t said anything about it, he hadn’t liked it. Briefly—only curiously, though—he wondered how profoundly deep into the Quantum Realms of Fickle Fate and Fat Chance they might have gone. Had they touched Ben? Had they ruined him?

This phenomenon had not escaped his older brothers. Hades had seen the Shadows,too; and he hadn’t liked them, either. They had begun to unnerve him. But when he had had enough, he nudged Poseidon and nodded "Take note" to Zeus.

At first, the Happy Thunderer ignored the Omen, the simplest sign that Fate and Chance could give that something wasn’t right with somebody.Cheerily, he continued to preside at the head of the Rotunda’s oyster-white table,which, while it had not been built round like King Arthur’s, had as great a masque of magical power and as infallible a gulp of spiritual authority as any—And,thought Zeus, as he traced his tanned fingers over the design that bordered it, It is a good Table of the Law; and ex cathedra, it will rival the best ecclesiastical chairs built by anybody anywhere.

Built to his exacting standard, it echoed to a muon the magical proportions of the Golden Rectangle. Like a giant computer chip, the gallium-arsenide(GaAs) circuits embedded in its surface—their pastel circuits etched into its luminous depth—were an engineering feat that rivaled Reason. Finally, like a medieval book, its border was illuminated with his proprietary black-and-gold Box Spiral;this convoluted design—a metaphor for his galactic mind—matched quark-for-quark the embroidery that decorated the broad cuffs and sturdy hooks of his resplendent Grecian gown.

Happy as Hell, he beamed with old-fashioned pride at the Printer,Founding Father, Rogue, whom he considered his No. 1 Pragmatist and Protege. After the theatrics of Benjamin’s defense of Man had passed—and the Rogue had hooked the Brothers on it—the Thunderer thought it fitting and proper to indulge ina wild thought . . . Anything to distract his protege from the delusions he had about the Oval Office. The way he figured it, the Philadelphia Project was one thing, and Benjamin’s hidden—now not-so-hidden—agenda, something else: an aberration, one he had to purge. Besides, he wanted to save Ben—his secular,American jewel—not for the Oval Office in Washington, but for the Holy Office in Rome.

Let’s get the fuck out of here, he thought.

Like a director of Mickey Mouse cartoons, he sketched—or imagined,which came to the same thing—everything in the Rotunda in saturated colors,eliminating all of their subtle half-tones, tracing all of their supple forms in hard lines—zapping the Rotunda and its principals. He did not obliterate them: he delivered them—one might say—elsewhere. Or, more precisely, he brought that Elsewhere to them. Either way, Ben and The Gang of Brothers emerged from the transfiguration like ordinary people—and not at all like Mickey Mouse cartoons.While the process had been taking place in his blazing brain, no one—not even Zeus,the Creator—could tell them from comic strips or scraps of film. They might just as well have been outtakes from a Hollywood movie or pentimenti from an old Venetian painting.

Understanding the efficacy of his Will, Zeus had to be extremely careful about what he happened to think. It was one Hell of a burden, one attribute of his Olympian Role that he had mixed feelings about. Though from time to time it had been useful, he had spent more time undoing the dumb or thoughtless things he’d done than he’d spent doing them. Anyway, he hated interfering in the affairs of Man. It was easy, but it was Hell. Hell, think about it: if he thought about it,it happened.

Zap! Like that.

That’s where he made his biggest goofs.

Talk about a person with guarded thoughts! Sometimes, he’d wish he were as slow as people were—and had a chance to think things through before they’d happen. Then he’d become a dumb person and get bored with it.

Anyway, at the end of this happy transfiguration—which, he thought, had gone quite well—the Thunderer, naughty Olympian that he was,thought he’d give the American something to think about. He’d throw a scare into him about his dumb plan to steal the presidency. That’s what had brought on the Shadows in the first place. That horse shit. Jesus Christ, it had doubled his workload: Now he’d have to shadow Ben on Earth, as he did in Heaven, just to protect him—violating the non-interference clause in their Letter of Agreement. Things were that bad. That’s why he thought that in due time—say, after the question Who Gets the White House? had been stuffed to his satisfaction—he’d give Ben a soft job and make him Pope.

It’s one Hell of a lot safer, too, he thought. Not by much,but safer.

His thinking made it so.

That’s when he thought he’d punctuate this Mickey Mouse cartoon with the delivery of a blue-white thunderbolt. That’d end business at the Rotunda. As spontaneously as he thought it, a blue-white thunderbolt burst and crackled through the proceedings of the Executive Board . . .

. . . and it had changed, changed utterly: a terrible beauty is born.

The Big American had just finished the presentation of his plan to the three-man Executive Board, where it sat in Special Session in the Rotunda of the Jupiter Hilton, the Board Room of GOD Inc.’s Universal Headquarters. He had paused to adjust his bifocals. Looked down at his impeccable, yellow, legal pad of neat, handwritten notes—his calligraphy only modestly turned with a flourish. Looked back up at the Board and flashed a benign smile.

Except, they were gone.

Turned out he flashed an empty benign smile; a great sinking feeling sucked at his tummy. Oh, God! They’re gone. Thinking that he had lost it—that he had totally lost it this time—that he had offended the Board,violated its corporate and Olympian protocol, and, therefore, what it thought appropriatefor the dead—and fearing that the judgment of the Board could be perverse—he felt his heart pang and plummet. It dropped down through his bowels and sucked out his brains, muscle, and nerve. He began to sweat like a condemned hog at butchering time.After all, he had high hopes that they’d sanction his devious plan. Oh! He blinked. They were back. Had they gone? How dumb of him to be shitting his brains out. Dumb.He flashed a grin. Nobody’s going anywhere. Yet. He felt foolish abouthaving what he thought was a nervous lapse, an instance of psychological blindness.

The spectacular, Olympian sky and Aegean sea that surrounded the Rotunda—which spacious hall lay open on all sides to the bright, invigorating,Grecian light and air—had vanished.

Unaware that Zeus had sprung this surprising trip—this honor—on him, the Founder began his summation. " . . . to sum up, Gentlemen . . ." Aware that he had lost their attention, he paused, adjusted his bifocals, snapped the cuffs of his magenta, colonial coat (the pretty lace sleeves of his linen blouse peeking just past his embroidered cuffs), coughed once, lightly, into his lovely handkerchief to gain poise, and traced their grinning gazes about the chamber that he—by this time, highly disoriented—thought ought to be the Great Rotunda.

The Triumvirate waited in suspense for him to turn about.

Smack dead in the center of a great, neoclassical court, it sat. It commanded:a gigantic, marble statue of Benj. Franklin, the Legend.

"No!" he cried.

the Great Court echoed.

Ten times the size of life-and-death reality, it sat, regally robed in a magnificent throne-chair—thinking dead marble, squat in the center of a great Ionic court—the entire affair, as it were, designed as a tribute to the Great Citizen.

"Where are we?"

Thrilled, Poseidon and Hades applauded him like party-goers, their goodcheer echoing throughout the great hall as if they had reason to celebrate.

"Like it?"

He strained his rubbery neck. "Do I--No, I don’t know this one."

"It’s you!"

"Yes," he said, grimacing. "I know it’s me.  It’s the statue I don’t know. Where is it? Where are we?" He spun about in joy and confusion.

"Philadelphia," said Zeus.

"We’re in the Great Hall at the Franklin Institute,"said the Sea-god Poseidon, flooding the chamber with a wave of his cape. Even here, Ionic columns marched magnificently around an Olympian hall—and the Sea-god’s voice echoed like an ocean of tumultuous storms, beating about its dizzying circumference.

"I must go there."

"One if by land, two if by sea," Hades quipped, grinning until Zeus glared.

"No. This is wrong. I’ve lived there in this century . . . with Athena. I do remember. It’s—not this big. Zeus! This is your doing."

The triumvirate of Olympians laughed good-naturedly.

Ben laughed good-naturedly, too, but a tad nervously as he gazed up—and up—at the marble-throned Legend. There was a bone-tingling silence in the Great Court, like that infinitely awkward moment when everybody at a party waits,breathlessly, for the guest of honor to open that special gift that everybody expects himto be just perfectly thrilled with. But that nobody knows for sure. He stepped up to thebase of the magnificent statue. He paced in front of it. Stood in front of it."Oh, God," he groaned. He felt the clammy sweat of fear and trembling. The honor crushed him. The size of the statue dwarfed him. The legend outstripped him. It was bigger than life. It was bigger than death. Bigger, that’s all. He’d lived in modern Philadelphia. Raised a child there. Why hadn’t he ever seen it in quite this way before? Why was it just a statue then? Why?

"Death wasn’t big enough for me. But this—this is altogether different," he giggled. "This is absurd."

Hail to The Chief played in his brain by a fife-and-drum band as he imagined himself in a presidential blue, pin-striped, three-piece business suit and a distinguished homburg, playing politics at the Italian Market on 9th Street in South Philadelphia. Or zooming about Head House Square in Historic Philadelphia, mobbed by thousands of fans—and hundreds of heretics—a little in love with death.Then, finally, he imagined himself on the Red Phone: collar open, jacket off, cuffs of his shirtsleeves rolled up, hard at work in the Oval Office, talking to Old Man Gorbachev and Young Man Yeltsin at the Kremlin, straightening out the affairs of the Third and Fourth Estates of a planet gone bonkers.

"What does it mean?" he asked.

That’s when it hit him—Jesus Christ! That’s what they’ve done. And he began to worry. Really to worry.

Not happy that Benjamin—who had not breathed a word of his Great Ambition to anybody—wanted the presidency, the Oval Office of the United States, for himself—an assignment that he had been too old and sick to consider when the Nation and the Constitution were created but that now appeared to be his for the taking—that that hidden agenda lay at the very heart, at the very bottom, of his Presidential Project—Zeus, who had quite different plans, nonetheless wanted to let the Printer down—if he did, at all—with great care. Let him think his thoughts, he thought, attenuating them in the process. He’ll see that the Oval Office is no great shakes.

The magnificence of the statue overwhelmed him, but it had the effectof sobering him, too. He loved playing to crowds, but he hated the thought that they—his fellow citizens—had made a deity of him. Jesus Christ! They’ve made me a god. That’s what that statue means. Jesus Christ! The Great Optimist began to have grave doubts—not to say 2nd thoughts—about his plan to steal the presidency.

"If I win, they’ll crucify me. That’s what they’ll do."

As pale as a pale horse, he had the image of Death in his face. He even felt strange. Staggering back in fear at what he had learned, he found his chair blindly behind him and dropped into it like a corpse, flapping his handkerchief in the direction of the statue.

Hoarse from arguing his life-and-death case before the Board—the Triumvirate of Olympians who had consulted with him on the question of merging the sick planet with primal galactic dust—the American statesman learned that he had won precious time—a solar year—to form an exploratory Task Force to determine what could be done to turn the planet around, to restructure it, to reschedule its long-term debt—eventually, Hades groused, to return at least something in the way of centennial dividends or long-term capital gains to its Galactic Inc.shareholders.

The big American printer began to polish his gold-rimmed glasses. He meant business. A whole year? Philadelphia? The Brothers had mocked that he could do business or take pleasure there. Poseidon suggested he take it a minute at time. That that’s the way he makes his tidal visits to Cape May, New Jersey—that quaint Victorian resort town, oldest in the Nation. Cynically, Hades said that that’s way he jogs through San Francisco—along the San Andreas fault. 

That’s a sick joke, thought Ben.

Zeus, to the Contrary—happy in a World of his own making—scanned the palatial Ionic Court as proud as a Little League father: happy that he had dreamed up this surprise visit to The Franklin Institute as a surefire way of honoring—and anointing—Benj. Franklin, Printer.

Ben, though, had other thoughts. 

Don't Fuck Up

His brain reeling from the shock of the statue, the existential blahs descended on him: blahs with life, blahs with death, and blahs with immortality. He thought about the assignment; it dwarfed him. He wished that he—or somebody—could take it back. Take something back. Take it all back. Taking it back would be easier than taking it up. I’m not gonna do it, he thought.  Oh, Ben, Zeus grieved.  He knew that Ben knew too much.  He had gotten in too deep. He had traded his Death and his After Life for this thing.  Their Thing.  He had made it his thing.  La Cosa Nostra.  Our Thing.  He had learned too late that he had gotten in too deep.  Ultimately, these two great men, one immortal, the other not, stood together.  I gotta tell him: they gotta pass this cup of poison to somebody else.

. . . and turned him right around.

Ben blinked first.

"There’s something I gotta tell you, Godfather," he began, his voice low and scratchy, his fat bottom lip curling down to a pout. [But with the elan and timing of a big Hollywood star, Zeus grinned at him like a big galoot. And that cinched it]. "I’ll do it; I’m gonna do it; consider it done," said Ben, thinking he’d better do it, he’d better take part in this galactic farce—if that’s what his godfather wanted. He grinned. He grabbed the Olympian’s big, brawny hand between his two chubby hands and shook it vigorously.

"Don’t fuck up," said Zeus. He smothered Ben’s lion’s grip with his massive left paw—then, fondly, he rubbed the Founding Father’s balding pate. "That’s for Luck," he said, an edge of ambiguity in his tone.

"You—" Nervous, Ben chuckled. "—you believe in luck?  In that lucky stuff?"

"Hello!"  Zeus knocked twice on Ben's bald pate.  "That?  That’s science."

"That?"

"Ben, I touched you."

Ben chucked the great Father of the Heavens, who pretended to wince from the blow—everybody’s great, all-American buddy. He winked at Hades, Boss of the Underworld, robed in a red-clay original, specially woven by the Three Sister Fates—his cloak making him invisible for a few seconds at a time when he turned quickly.  He smiled at Poseidon, Captain of the High Seas, as fresh and as cool as the salt-sea wind and sparkling mist that blew through his loose aqua blouse, his foam-white cape, his navy tights, and his snowy boots—his designer sailor’s cap monogrammed with a navy trident. Though shaken by thoughts too terrible for mortals to think, he nonetheless felt honored—and humbled—that the Olympian brothers had worked long hours around the GOD Inc. boardroom table, had heard his petition—sometimes standing, sometimes pacing, sometimes seated just opposite—but never opposed to him and the time-honored American principles of glasnost and perestroika that he had expounded.

Poseidon and Hades packed their designer bags, slapped Ben on theshoulder and, with a temperate wave and a gentle nod, left the Great Court—unceremoniously leaving the Franklin Institute Museum, Philadelphia, USA, and the Rotunda at GOD’s Universal Headquarters at one and the same moment. Like that! Where these guys were—or weren’t—didn’t seem to matter.

"Yo," Ben joked.

"What."

"—the way you guys play with space and time!"

They were back at the Rotunda.

Zeus scrolled up his gold-leaf papers and stuffed them and his gold-encrusted scepter into his baggy, double-sack, lambskin bag."What’samatta?" he slurred, sounding like a native of South Philly.  "You got a problem? Or what?"

"I go to Athens! I don’t bring it to me!"

Zeus shrugged. "You’ll learn."

Ben had thought—since his death in April, 1790—that he understood just about everything about Eternity. Not just about Eternity: about Being, Nothingness, Immortality, Death. Ultimately, about Gods, goddamn it. He had been dealing with these phenomena for ages. He had written a major paper on GOD Inc., describing its real and imagined—or purported— successes, thereby setting the stage for the present coup. Written and published posthumously, it had earned him much respect and many friends among the dead. But today, to his chagrin, he learned that he didn’t understand the way they played with space and time.

" . . . it’s a piece of cake," Zeus explained, buffaloing Ben, who confessed he had never heard the expression. Zeus blinked. As if this made him doubt the very foundation of Ben’s being, he searched the American’s face and attire for a clue. "You’re pulling my leg."

Ben felt uncomfortable.

At a miserable loss about where he was—and about what was going on—he gave Zeus his best John Wayne look: shooting his eyebrows up while peeking askance as if at an enigma.

Frankly, Ben’s primary concern lay with saving his own worthy arse from annihilation. Hades be damned if he was going to give up Eternity. Not without a fight, he wouldn't. He hadn’t expected it to be this good. Or expected it at all. But now that he had tasted it, he’d be damned if he was going to give it up. Or make the same mistake the Other One did by having His Holy Hide crucified.

What if he lost?

If he lost, everybody looses. Everybody dies. Everything that had touched Earth dies: Love, Hate, Guilt, Everything. Earth dies. Baseball dies. Death dies.

What if he won? What’d happen then?

Zeus swung his gold-tasseled, double-sack lambskin bag up from his groin and over his big shoulders.

"Just don’t blow it," he said softly.

Déjà vu

. . . it’s a piece of cake, echoed in his brain.

He cast a boyish grin at Zeus. This trip to Earth was going to be something else.  He anticipated it with great pleasure.  He’d be traveling through space, time, mind . . .

His thinking became fragmented.

. . . whatever, he scoffed, moody, succombing to a depressive note.

Exhausted after an eventful day, he had lost his balance.  A old thought broke through and smacked him in the face.  There it stood!  He swiped at it.  He wondered if Zeus had blessed him with an elevated state of consciousness.  Had he been raised to a higher level of awareness?  He had difficulty distinguishing memory from desire, desire from thought, and what most exasperated him, he could not quite distinguish past from present.  These mental states had become a single blurred Reality.  He paused when a thought broke through if only to observe with great curiosity a memory of one of the afternoon’s more dramatic events play out before him . . . as if the Benjamin that played before him now were as real and as substantial as he. His memory had become indistinguishable from Reality.  When it appeared, he watched; when it talked, he listened . . . He touched his tummy to make sure that he was the original. His past had become present; his present, present and past. He had taken up the gauntlet hurled down by Zeus, careful not to pick up along the way the stigmata of the Stations of the Cross.  What didn’t he understand? That forces and stakes far greater than he and the Founding Fathers were at play.  Like a child with a new toy at Christmas, he watched the show, his Show and Tell, the rushes from that day’s shooting, one might say.

Like the Ancient Mariner’s Wedding Guest, he could not choose but hear.

"Earthlings love crucifixions," he found himself saying, surprised at his blunt mockery. "But, gentlemen," he lectured the Executive Board, "they don’t make anybody behave any better."

Crushed under the metaphorical weight of the magnificent statue, tears in his twitching green eyes, he studied the blurry paper. This was it. This was the document that stated the terms. What he told GOD Inc. he needed to get the job done, whatever job it was.  Looking over his ghost’s shoulder, he scanned it—as he had scanned it—focusing on a detail or two that had seemed paramount to him:

What people wanted more desperately than anything else—and as President of the United States, what he was prepared to give them (if only the Board of GOD Inc. would sanction it), was what the Great Books had promised long ago: immortality.  Read my lips, he’d tell Americans. No new deaths or taxes. That’d be his campaign pledge. That’d be the party plank he’d walk—if anybody had to walk one—straight down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.

Life makes you free, goddamn it, not death, Ben calculated.  Death makes you dead, that’s what. It buries you underground—like a dirty potato with dust in your eyes—unless you’re a Hero or something—in which case you’ll probably get it in the neck anyway.

Ben rubbed his tender neck.

"That non-interference clause is a classic," Zeus had said—sweating, mopping his brow, Ben smiled and nodded in agreement.  "Tell us, Benjamin. You said, and we agreed, that none of the Olympians, save one . . . "

Ben began to sweat.

Zeus winked at his brothers, who, though they were behaving quite smugly about it, busying themselves about the court, were certainly as curious as he. They didn’t have a clue.

" . . . could interfere in the affairs of . . .  Oh, tell us," he cajoled.

Belligerently, Ben cleared his throat.  "As CEO-designate of Earth . . .," he began.  His eyes swept about the big boardroom table and challenged the entire Board before locking his gaze on—and firing his volley at—Zeus. " . . . I want your daughter." Though he said it quietly, the Great Hall echoed it as a command. Briefly, it startled him. But he went on. "I . . . agh," he cleared his throat, ". . . I want the services and the talents of Athena . . . for an entire uninterrupted year. One year in Philadelphia. That’s the only Task Force I want," he said.

Zeus raised a father’s skeptical brow. But, quickly, that changed to a rascal’s grin.

"That’s it?"

"That’s it."

"She’ll do it. If she doesn’t do it, I want to hear about it—What her problem is, goddamn it."

Ben felt as if the responsibility for a dead decaying body had been lifted from his shoulders. Recently, he had entertained Athena—or she had entertained him—at a GOD Inc. convention here at the Jupiter Hilton. They had talked; they had even found time to be intimate. Briefly, they had revived an old passion, stealing away to this very boardroom and re-igniting their love . . . ignoring the circumstance of their last departure. They had lived together years before in Washington, D.C., when Ben had printed some money for Nixon’s CREEP, the Committee to Reelect the President.  They had been serious lovers, then. Thirty years later, they had lost nothing: not a pulse of their original passion. They had ducked out of that convention—and escaped to this Rotunda—and balled like tigers on this very table, as if they had to jam thirty years into thirty minutes.

Thinking about it, Ben felt charged. He felt like a bull about to begin life on Earth with her.

Exeunt

"So long, kid. Get a good night’s sleep," Zeus advised.  He grabbed Ben’s hand and squeezed it between his two massive paws and gave "the kid" a grand, fatherly hand-shaking.  Impulsively, then, he assaulted him—wrapped his big arms around him like a bear and gave him a big bear hug. "I tell you, this is heavy."  He choked up. Ben choked up, too. 

"I just hope to Christ—," he blurted.  "Don’t fuck up.  Do not do what that Other One did!  Just . . . "  He swiped his knuckles across his eyes.  "Just—Don't . . . "  He couldn't finish. 

Two thousand wasted years had broken him. 

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Copyright (c) Domenic Corsaro, 1998-2007