by Galen T. Pickett.
“This is tragic, sure. But jeeze! Can’t we agree we should be working toward healing and closure? By now, we all have plenty of experience with the aftermath of these idiots offering their ‘thoughts and prayers’. Zealots in our society are hell-bent on bringing us to the very brink of a fresh disaster. Does anyone remember Boston and what happened…”
Jeffrey’s stomach turned at the televised spectacle of another self-righteous politician telling him that his thoughts and prayers were not welcome, would bring down the sky upon them all. Hearing it from this grey-faced spokesman of the Association made him slightly dizzy.
He remembered the very last of those good old days. There were calls for thoughts-and-prayers issued left and right in the aftermath of these outrageous and yet somehow pedestrian acts of evil. The intention was often good, but with an undercurrent of cynical conviction that while people were praying and thinking they were not doing.
Does anyone remember Boston and what happened? He remembered. He remembered that he had been living in what used to be suburb of Boston, reeling in the wake of a truly horrific event. At the time his thoughts went out to the victims. And he prayed as well as he could.
That day he left his apartment and took the T to the Park Street station, and made his way on foot across the Common, through the gardens, past the shell until he came finally to the banks of the Charles. It was a bright day, not quite Summer.
He thought, of course it was not Summer. The school year was not yet done – except it is for all those people. Their school year is done. All their years are done.
It was the last truly sunny day he could remember. One minute, he was sitting on a bench facing the open water of the Charles. Before him were crews on their sculls and joggers and bikers and families strolling upon the path in the green. He was turning over the sadness he felt at all those lost, young lives. Under the sadness was an anger. His jaw was set. His knuckles were white in his curled fists in his lap. Something must be done, if only in the name of vengeance.
And then the slate of the river and the greenery of the park simply vanished along with the reassuring solidity of the bench, and the sunlight on his face. His vision was not of nothingness, however. A dull red light grew in the dark distance. Coming toward me? Am I moving toward it? He could not feel movement.
Closer now, he saw the dead red light was being emitted by a mound of scales and muscle piled and curled up on the pan of a gigantic balancing scale. And in the other pan was a mound of dust, with a trail of motes falling, falling from above. The two were nearly in balance, quavering. The sleeping creature was monumental. The pile of dust was a mountain. Onward the vision came, until his view entered the stream of falling dust. Slowly, and then with terrifying speed, he fell toward the pan. His impact blew a crater into the mountain, and the sensation of having a body in Boston glimmered again. The red light was now an angry blinding flash. He saw one mote and then another and another in that flash, each depicting a scene of grief and loss. The last and largest he saw depicted a lone man with bloodied weapon in hand, looking out onto a burned village screaming a supplication for revenge at the loss of his everything.
His impact had shifted the pans, and he saw in horror from the mountainside as the glow of the beast rose higher and higher as its pan rose, the dusty pan lowering. Those eyes looked directly at him, through him, and then were above him, looking down.
The vision ended. The river and park and bench and sunlight had returned with a booming. Jeffrey felt the sound from somewhere deeper and more destructive than the air could possibly support. The sound without sound became word. I AM HERE TO ANSWER YOUR THOUGHT, TO ANSWER YOUR PRAYER. He felt the basso rumble throughout his chest. It sounded like blood spilled and bone broken.
He remembered the impossibly huge … thing … rising from the Charles. The water streaming from the dull red scales recalled the endless trail of motes of his vision. He saw clubbed fists raised overhead as they swung downward in what had to be the slow-motion of a nightmare. But it was not. The impact a mere dozen yards from where he sat took the wind from him. He never put together those instants afterward, not in any coherent order. The next sensation he remembered was the feel of grit in his mouth and the taste of his own blood, and he could only raise himself halfway from the ground before the stabbing pain in his legs flopped him back down. He remembered matted hair, and a weirdly perfect semi-circle of pearly and crimson stones he only realized years afterward were someone’s teeth. Strewn left and right in the vanished path were figures that reminded him of rag dolls, but somehow impossibly large, person-sized. Some were broken in two. He could still hear the booming voice, clearly, a mile off in Dorchester as it was being pounded flat. I AM HERE. I WILL ANSWER YOUR PRAYER FOR DEATH.
Jeffrey knew that millions of witnesses that day survived the aftermath of those answered prayers. Millions of people heard in Spanish, or Dutch, or Farsi, in their own pure mother tongue the answer to the prayer in that soundless screaming voice. Thousands of livestreams recorded a voice coming out of the air speaking a language not heard in over five thousand years by a people long gone, lost to history in a vicious genocide, remembered only in the folklore of the victors who in their turn had been vanquished. At least that is what the anthropologists said. It seemed to Jeffrey it was the voice of their lost children and history and future. The beast from the balance had finally taken note of the prayers of regret and shame over the ancient massacre in Dorchester, too late to save the people, its own people. Not too late for revenge.
And then, it was gone. And so was Dorchester.
Some of the Boston survivors reported the vision of the balance, but no one had spoken about what had woken up the beast. Jeffrey could not escape the thought that it was his prayer. It was his thought that had at last blasted through the barrier and upset the balance.
Televised psychologists tried to reassure everyone that this was simply an expression of a concept of justice so deeply rooted in the structure of the human mind that it was universal. Even the psychologists fell silent, however, in the face of all the destruction. It was easier in the end to simply believe the simplest facts: all those thoughts and prayers were being stored up, counted, and weighed.
Jeffrey snapped back to the present moment.
“How many times? Again, and again, after that first disaster in Boston – in the wake of one disaster or outrageous act of evil or another – when are we going to learn a lesson? The beast with lighting in its fists in Jakarta? The winged serpent in London? Who knows what will be next? When will we just give it a rest? Do you really want these prayers answered? Do you? Does anyone know where the tripwire is? How much more we have left to go before the weight shifts, the pan lowers, and the needle moves in the direction of fire and brimstone. In which case, all hell is going to break loose. Again. And again. Don’t do it, people!”
Jeffrey turned the screen off. People? When do we get to be people again he would have asked aloud if he had any confidence that the answer was something other than the obvious truth: “never”.
Jeffrey grabbed a jacket and his cane. Just walk, he thought to himself. Don’t think. It was going to be a dreary, blustery walk, but the pain of it would keep his mind from where he wanted his thoughts to go. Just keep the feet moving, move, step, move, step, eyes down… The key was to reduce himself to automation, to simply be an object, a reflex-reaction machine in the world, taking stimuli and responding appropriately without any inner life at all. Not that it was an easy trick. No one could resign from the human race for any real length of time. God help me, if I could just understand, he thought before he caught himself. For an instant he again saw that mountain of dust, he saw his prayer strike and the light turn from reddish to stabbing white. And then it was gone.
“Excuse me,” the tall woman said as she and Jeffrey collided. Against his training and better judgement, Jeffrey looked up, and directly into the piercing blue eyes of the tall woman with cropped brown hair. She was wearing a t-shirt and jeans in the low-forties weather and had her arms wrapped around her waist. Her small sad smile radiated a calm and a peace that Jeffrey had not experienced in a long time. Not since before Boston. “I am new around here. Can you tell me where would be a good place to grab some coffee, maybe a sandwich? Everyone just seems to be a zombie today.”
Jeffrey tried not to consider that too carefully. The less engaged and more numb everyone was, the better chance they all had. But how could this person not know that?
“Uh. Mostly residential here,” said Jeffrey. Looking around, Jefferey despaired realizing he had wandered past a schoolyard. What am I thinking? Not today, not today… why did I have to wander by THIS place?! The schoolyard was empty. The flag was at half-mast. It would have been unusual to have seen it atop the staff. These things were happening so often now that their absence was often more notable than their occurrence.
The swings were driven by gusts in the yard, and the leaves were brown and brittle on the trees, but not for much longer. The dreary conclusion of a gray Autumn would normally have been enough to send Jeffrey over an inner edge. But today, the effect was just overwhelming. It can’t be wrong just to feel what I am feeling. The grief welled up inside him, but he just managed to rein it to a slow canter from its threatened gallop.
“I am sorry, today has just got me down,” he said then stopped. Looking up again at the shivering woman, he took off his jacket. Immediately he felt the icy bite of the wind. He almost fumbled his cane removing his arms from the sleeves, but he managed. He steeled himself for the shuffling walk home by tightening his grip.
“It is going to be a cold walk for you, could snow later. My place is just over there.” He gestured. “I can do without this,” he said as he offered the jacket. “I’m not in the mood for a walk anyway. Just keep going that way, a left at Hagia Place. ‘Bout a mile. Plenty of what you are looking for there.”
The tears were close. He was losing the cool detachment. The images of that other place of rampant hatred and violence suggested by the empty schoolyard were simply too much for him.
She noted his trembling, the tears at the edge of his eyes, and pulling the jacket over her shoulders, she reached out and held his forearm. “When I was tired and hungry and cold, you gave me your jacket from off your back. And when I asked, you showed me the way. I am Sophia, and your prayer and this last gesture of kindness have released me. You pray for understanding – accept my gift of wisdom.”
He felt a warmth flow from her grip through his shirtsleeves, conquering the gray chill of the day. The ache radiating down his legs melted. Jeffrey let his cane fall to the ground. And, to his surprise, the brown and falling leaves had been rekindled in green fire. It was Spring, a mature springtime with every good thing on every bough bursting, every delicate flower open to the brilliant sunshine of a lazy afternoon. The half-mast flag of his proud people had been replaced with the universal ensign of all proud and generous peoples, and it was playing in the gentle breeze atop the flagpole. The schoolyard was full of children, laughing, running. It was a garden in a riot of high Spring.
He gave his tears full rein, and the scene became a welter of dazzle and light, and his thoughts were full of gratitude and thanksgiving.
Sophia smiled and took his hand and said, “You are with Wisdom herself, now. And I will answer your prayers.”