The king's reward

When Elvis died, he found himself standing in front of the pearly gates. It was all fluffy clouds and light and you could hear the angels all around singing as one heavenly choir. The king couldn't believe his luck.

"Alright man, I made it," he exclaimed. He started to approach the gate, but suddenly out of nowhere a pulpit appeared with an older angelic figure hovering behind it. He had a flowing white bear, long white robes and a halo and wings.

"Welcome," he intoned, drily. "I am Gabriel. What is your name, my son?"

"My name? My name is Elvis Aaron Presley, sir."

"Hmmm...let's see, Presley, Presley...ah, here it is. Born on...Mmmm....died of drug overdose? Really now."

Elvis started to sweat. He hoped his..excesses weren't back to bite him in the ass.

"Well, I suppose it doesn't really make any difference. The lord is a big fan of yours, in any case." Gabriel said this definitely but indifferently.

Elvis breathed a sigh of relief.

"So...does that mean I can go in? Do I get my heavenly reward?"

"Hmm? Yes, yes. Go on," he said as the gate began to open.

Elvis smiled a trademark smile as he made his way through the gates.

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Heaven was not what he was expecting, however. The first thing he noticed was the extreme lack of other people. The next was how soft and squishy the ground was, like a slimy mud pile. The moment he walked through the gate it disappeared and he was surrounded on all sides by fluffy clouds below and bluer than blue skies above.While the heavenly music never abated, there didn't seem to be a single sound otherwise. Without anything better to do he started to walk.

After he'd been walking for awhile he thought he saw some shapes way of in the distance and the faint hum of voices. People! Elvis hurried forward, but no matter how much he ran, they never got any closer. When he finally stopped, panting, the figures began to recede further until they were completely gone.

"Dammit," Elvis said, trying to catch his breath. He noticed what terrible shape he was in still. "Figured they coulda made me younger."

When he had recovered enough, he decided to keep on moving and try and find those others. He hoped he found them soon, as the heavenly choir had never abated in all the time he was here and it was starting to get on his nerves.


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Finally, after what must have been hours Elvis collapsed onto the ground. The ground felt like a dirty wet sponge against his skin, but he didn't care. He was exhausted. He hadn't had to walk like or even use his body like this for years. He was a mess. Sweat was pouring down his face and back, his feet were full of blisters. he lay on his side looking off at the endless clouds and his breath came out as wheezy rasping. "What kinda Heaven is this anyhow?" he groaned frustratingly.

"It isn't."

Elvis yelped as he was shocked by the sudden voice behind him and rolled painfully onto his back to see who was speaking. The man had a thick heavy mustache, dark slicked back hair and beady little eyes. He wore army fatigues. Elvis recognized him at once.

"You're..Stalin!"

Josef Stalin smiled slightly.  It was fearsome.

"So you know me. Good. I was afraid people would not remember. But Stalin I am no longer. Call me Soso. This is what my mother called me. And you are?" His voice was thick and heavy, but clear.

"You don't know? Oh, I guess you were already dea....that is.."

"Dead? Yes, as are you, comrade."

"Yeah, I guess so." Elvis paused a minute so he could sit up. he was feeling a bit better and didn't want to lie with his belly flopping out. "What was that you were saying? This ain't heaven?"

"No." Soso moved to sit down besides him. "I don't know what it is, but it isn't Heaven. Tell me, did you work with people?"

"I was..a performer."

"Were you good to the people in your life?"

"I..." Elvis wanted to say yes, but knew it would be a lie. "No."

"I thought not." He sighed. "I was terrible to the people I loved. Terrible to the nation that trusted me. I craved power and destroyed all those who opposed me. Then I was trying so hard to keep what I had I lost sight of what really mattered. Does this sound familiar?"

Elvis couldn't speak, so he merely nodded.

"When you consider all the evil that I have done, even had I believed in a life after death I knew I wouldn't be going anyplace good."

"So, this is...Hell?"

A chill ran down Elvis' spine.

Soso chuckled.

"I don't believe so. I don't know. It seems to me this is a place to try and redeem yourself. Or to suffer privately forever. The ones I have encountered were all wicked shepherds of men of one kind or another. What worse hell can there be for ones like us but to be trapped forever with people like us?"

With that, Soso got up, dusted his backside and started to walk away. Within a few moments, he was gone.

Elvis watched him go. He realized he was right. What could be worse than to be utterly alone? He sighed to no one but himself and the heavenly choir. He hoped he could figure some things out in the time ahead.  

Intelligent Design

Dr. Will Rollins was a world famous atheist. He went from city to city proclaiming the virtues of a godless life and the triumphs of the pursuits of science. He wrote books, gave lectures and did interviews, all in the cause of a world without religion. And people listened. Not in huge amounts, but his well reasoned and thoughtful arguments caused many intelligent theists to have second thoughts at the very least. This is about a day in the life of  Dr.Rollins that changed his life forever.

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Rollins was in Atlanta preparing to give a speech denouncing the Baptist church and its open campaigning against a gay marriage bill when he heard a knock at the door.

"Who is it?" he said.


"May I come in?" The voice was female.



Rollins looked up, somewhat suspicious but convinced there was no danger. There had of course been the one incident in Dallas the year before when a crazed pro-lifer had tried to stick him with a butter knife, but since then he had carried a small can of mace with him just in case so he said "By all means."


The woman who then slipped into the room caused his eyes to widen. She was drop dead gorgeous. Supermodel tall and thin but curvy and voluptuous, slim and delicate features and fiery red hair and sparkling blue eyes.


"Hello Dr.Rollins. My name is Lucy. May I speak with you a moment?" Her voice was soft and velvety and almost a purr to it.


He composed himself for a second before responding.


"Certainly. What about?"

"I've come to ask you to stop." Lucy replied.


"Stop?" he said. "Stop what?"


"Stop lecturing. Stop writing. Stop telling people there isn't a god."


His face hardened. So, she was one of those crackpots after all.


"That I will never do, madam. People need to hear the truth and I am completely committed.to bringing it to them."


"Just give me a chance to say my piece," she said imploringly. "You always ask for a fair hearing from others, now I would like the same courtesy."


Rollins paused for a moment and sighed, before responding "Very well, but you must know I won't debate on this. I will hear what you have to say and then I must ask you to please leave."


Lucy smiled at him, a radiant smile full of bright pearly teeth.

"Thank you, Dr.Rollins. I'd like to tell you a story, if I could. Or maybe propose a scenario. What if there was a god out there?"


Rollins said nothing to this, but rolled his eyes and smirked slightly.


"What if there really was a god, and he really did create the universe, but he wasn't all powerful and all knowing? What if he was out there, but we operated on such a small scale that he wasn't at all able to detect our existence at all? Like a scientist can barely detect a single cell, much less know what or if it wants. Except that cell is our whole planet. What then?"


He chuckled slightly, then said "In that case, it would scarcely be different than not having any god at all."


"You're right of course. It would be no different from a godless universe. But what if there was a way for this god to interact with the world, or at least to 'detect' potential problems like a biologist detects a sick cell?"

"Then one would assume he would attempt to heal the sick cell, if at all possible."

"What if he determined sickness by how much people believed in him, by how many people had faith in him or some version of him?"

"I suppose we would have a sickness, and he would try to cure it."

"Let's continue, then, with the cell analogy. You are observing a cell and you notice the cell is sick. You don't know what the sickness is and but are convinced it will spread to the other cells rapidly. You have no method of tending to sick cell but you are certain with a minimal effort, you could destroy the cell. What do you do?"

"Well, in the increasingly hypothetical situation, I would probably destroy the cell."

"Of course!" She smiled broadly again. "Of course you would. I have a couple of final 'what ifs' for you doctor. What if you could somehow send an emissary into the cell to try and diagnose the problem at the subatomic level and see if you could fix it? What if that emissary came to you and gave you a warning? What then?"

"Well, I.." but he stopped there. He didn't quite know what to say to her ridiculous scenario and frankly had had enough of it. "Who are you, exactly?"

"I think you know who I am by now, doctor. Think about what I've said."

With that, she winked and exited the room.

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Rollins sat back in his chair to ruminate over the strange woman and her absurd situation. The whole thing was preposterous. He shook his head and went back to his speech.

Later that day, he gave his speech to a packed auditorium. He spoke eloquently and movingly. He received a standing ovation. Once he had left the stage, a blue laser-like beam enveloped Rollins, killing him instantly. The beam expanded, destroying the room, then Atlanta. Then the world.

The moral of the story? If god existed, he'd be a real bastard.


 

The grass is always greener

John was sitting in the cafe a full 30 minutes before Bob arrived. Bob never failed to be late; he always projected the image of the no nonsense, nose to the grindstone type who never had a spare second and would leave you in the lurch for a more important appointment that ended late. He was always doing that, and driving John crazy, and yet he would always come early anyway. He hated the idea of being late and always took pains to be on time, feeling it would be inconsiderate to leave someone waiting, even though Bob always did.

John already finished one coffee and was halfway through the second when Bob sailed in smoothly and confidently, looking every bit the successful executive he was. Though not clad in his usual hand tailored Italian suit (it was Saturday), he was draped in an expensive looking v-neck sweater with a  collared checker shirt and khakis that screamed business casual. John frowned slightly, looking down at his own slightly ratty jeans and threadbare Ramones t-shirt and feeling more uncomfortable. John was way in the back and in the corner, and decided to pretend he hadn't seen Bob yet. Let him find me himself, he thought.

John always hated their meetings. They seemed like nothing so much as an excuse for Bob to brag about how well he was doing and how much he made off each deal (he was a stockbroker) than a genuine attempt to catch up. Bob never asked John a direct question about how he was doing without referencing himself soon afterward.

John and Bob were high school friends. They were both big English nerds who read comic books in the back of math class and watched sci-fi til sunrise. They were inseparable. Then suddenly high school was over and University hit. Before he could blink, John was enrolled as a liberal arts major and Bob had gone to Business school. They kept in touch at first, but once John had dropped out to focus on his writing, they quickly lost touch.

When they got in touch a couple of years later, they had definitely drifted apart. Bob had become a young and fierce stockbroker, a real shark in a pinstripe suit. John, through hard work and perseverance, had managed to get a novel published to middling success by one of the smaller publishing houses and felt on top of the world as well. They arranged to meet on a weekly basis.

That was five years ago. Since then, John had been working  on and off (mostly off) on his second novel with no end in sight and worked selling dreary ties to bland older men who somehow still shopped at department stores. Bob, meanwhile, had steadily grown more and more wealthy and successful. John felt like a failure, and their meetings did nothing so much as reinforce that. It just fed his insecurities, the way Bob would always ask how the novel was going week to week and would feign sadness when (inevitably) he had nothing new to report. He always seemed so smug about the whole thing, as if he knew what the answer would be before he asked. They both had the same dreams of getting published when they were kids, but Bob had been condescending even then. He didn't believe for a second that it could really happen. When Bob found out about his book deal, the shock was evident on his face. He couldn't believe even then that I had any success.

John stopped short then. Maybe it wasn't all about how much better Bob was doing than John. Maybe it was also how much better John was doing than Bob. John, though he didn't have financial success, had followed his dream and succeeded. Bob had never done that, and in a way he supposed it bothered him as much as John's lack of financial success bothered him. They both hated to meet up with the other and see how the other half lived. He smiled as he realized, maybe for the first time, that he was content with his lot in life. It was then that Bob finally found him.

"There you are! I couldn't find you! This place is a zoo!"

"Sorry, I was lost in thought there for a minute."

"Well, don't you look like the cat that ate the canary!"

"I know, I can't help it. I just thought up the next chapter in my book. Sit down and I'll tell you about it."

Bob sat down, latte in hand.

"It starts with two old friends in a cafe.."

One Man's Worth

Once upon a time there was a man who invented a time machine. The details and science behind it are unimportant (and hard to explain) so we will abandon them here. He was a idealistic young man, still at an age where he truly believed with conviction he could really change the world. And now, he felt, he had the means to do so. He realized he could go anywhere and do anything, or maybe that should be stop anything from happening. So he figured, why start small? Why not do something really big and kill Hitler? That would probably save a lot of heartache. So he climbed into his machine (it was the kind you climbed into), pushed the 'activate' button on the remote (it had a remote too) and was off.

The machine suddenly just appeared in 1915 in Austria, where Adolf was still a young boy. He had pictures of Hitler from his younger days stored on his phone. He also had a gun he was ready to use when he spotted him. As luck would have it, mere moments after he landed, he saw the young boy coming up the road, evidently alone and on his way home.

This is perfect, he thought. Grabbing his gun, he hurried up to the top of a nearby hill in order to take him by surprise before he had a chance to run.  As soon as he was near enough, he jumped out and grabbed the boy, who started to yell until he saw the gun. Then he froze, completely immobile, eyes wide with fear. The man started to pull the trigger, when suddenly a voice behind him said dryly, "I wouldn't if I were you."

He froze. The voice sounded very familiar. Almost like...

He turned around and was face to face with himself. Well, not quite himself. This him was a little older, a little grayer, But it was definitely him. After he got over the momentary surprise, he said "Why not?"

"I tried it. It didn't change anything," his doppelganger replied.

"What do you mean? Like things got worse? Or Stalin or somebody started World War 2 instead?"

"No, I mean, it didn't change anything. Hitler was out of the equation,  but Herman Goering took his place in history. The Nazis still existed, the holocaust still happened, World War 2 still went on. In fact, they even lasted a few months longer that time around. But everything stayed the same, more or less. The world was still almost exactly the same in our time. It made no difference."

"Ok, well, why not kill Goering too?"

"I did. Once I realized Hitler wasn't the catalyst, I went back and killed Goering too. Instead, Goebbels took over. So I killed him, too. Every time I went back, history would record a new and different leader, but the end result was the same. I spent years going back killing every Nazi I could find, and you know what happened? In the 30's Germany went Communist and their leader, Franz something-or-other, started a war of expansion anyway. The players kept changing, but the game was the same."

The man was stunned by what the older him was saying. How could he believe that it didn't make any difference? That he couldn't change the past really at all?

"So,  what you're really saying is the whole thing is predetermined. I can't affect the outcome?"

"No," the older man said, quietly. "That's what I thought at first, too. What's the point of doing anything, if you can't change some pre-made outcome? I was despondent for awhile. But then it hit me: that's not the point at all. What it really means is any one man is not a point on which history turns. Rather, he represents an idea that people want to believe in. You have to change the whole society's mind if you want to stop the horror they cause. Look at the boy trembling in front of you. Do you really think killing him will stop anything? He never became anybody and so what did he learn? That there's a whole world out there ready to kill you and it will if it gets the chance. He learns you have to strike when you are strong to crush the weak so they can never strike at you. look at him!"

The man turned to look at the boy. He was shaking so hard his hands were blurred slightly. He was crying in silent terror and his pants had a large wet stain on the front. He let him go and felt ashamed of himself. The boy, still shaking, ran off.

The older man nodded. "You did a wise thing, just now. I'm glad I could talk some sense into you."

"Me too." He paused, unsure of himself, then said, "I still want to make a difference, but what can I do that will make an impact?"

"We talk to people. We show them a future in which their twisted ideals have already failed. We show them a better way."

"Wow." The younger man considered this, then said "When did you finally figure that out?"

The older man smiled. "oh, about 15 minutes ago."

The End.