Billy Graham in Heaven: A Sci-Fi Novel a La Vonnegut

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

The Four Lane into the Brain

Asheville, NC, 2028 A.D.

A pack of people gathered to watch Albert Einstein and Henry Kissinger debate. Black-haired, green-eyed Jake Cortez hovered at the side, paying intense attention. His khaki pants dragged on the ground. His pants were almost always too long, and he was short.

To preserve Vestern Civilization from the vast tank army of Russia, ve hat to be prepared to use tactical nuclear veapons, Kissinger announced with his thick German accent. Othervise, Europe vould haf been quickly overrun vith Soviet tanks and Communism poised to take the Vestern Hemisphere. Some of the crowd applauded respectfully.

Einstein looked either sleepy or ready to sneeze. He perked up and slowly ran his hands through his wild white hair. Henry, vith the invention of nuclear veapons, everything has changed except mankind’s vay of thinking. Others in the crowd cheered.

The gathering was in Pritchard Park in Asheville, North Carolina. It was a little triangular swath of green surrounded by three streets and six-story buildings — except down Patton Avenue where there was a straight shot to the Appalachian Mountains rising high in the west.

Kissinger chuckled in his Santa Claus way. Albert, you invented the nuclear monster and can’t be expected to know how to deal vith it too.

What if Russia responded with bigger nuclear weapons? asked a woman in the audience.

Kissinger scrunched his most withering look, burning over the top of his thick black glasses. Ve had to be brave enough to take that chance, he said. Othervise civilization and freedom might haf disappeared for thousands of years.

Mein Gott, muttered Einstein. Who iz this Kissinger character, Doctor Strangelove?

Some people chuckled. Jake smiled. He was proud of the intelligence of the crowd and excited by the spirit of the times. Many Ashevillians seemed ready to consider opposing viewpoints. They could jump between extremes such as pacifism and militarism, Republican and Democrat, or public and private with equanimity.

It reminded Jake of that strange time way back in 1990, during the first Gulf War, Bush Sr.’s war, not his son Bush Jr.’s second Gulf War. The country had an equally impressive mental agility between peace and war. Then the Gulf War bombs began dropping. America closed its mental doors on peace and fixated on war.

Jake’s revelry stopped when a short woman with a liter of Coke balanced on her head shuffled in front of the throng and somehow occupied the same space as Einstein. She was one of the many eccentric street people whose flagrant individualism helped make Asheville so interesting. With her bottle positioned just above Einstein’s unruly white hair splaying out in all directions, it looked like a nuclear missile blasting off.

Some of the crowd clapped. The other half yelled at the woman to move the heck on.

Honorable Mr. K, said Einstein from the body of the woman, if ve had used tactical atomics, I’d haf to conclude that Gott does play dice vith the universe.

The coke-bottle lady squinted in a self-absorbed way, ignoring the entire ruckus. Then she smiled, emerged from under Einstein’s hair, and strode quickly towards the mountains as if she’d remembered something important.

•

Two solid objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. On very close inspection you could tell that Einstein was not made of matter, but that the Coke lady was. Einstein and Kissinger were only images projecting from a round, black machine about a foot in diameter, with a colorful light pulsing back and forth in about a six-inch line. Jake switched off the machine’s power with a tiny remote in his hand and the two men vanished, apparently sucked into the machine. He picked up the box and walked away, satisfied with his first guerilla debate using the new technological rage, the Holographic Spectrometer — Spectrom for short.

Princeton philosophers and Georgia Tech scientists collaborated on inventing the Spectrom to make objective decisions about controversial issues. If renowned experts on each side of an issue clashed the viewer could theoretically come much closer to a scientific conclusion.

To make the machine they merely enhanced holographic technology already extant in the early 1990s and perfected by the late two-thousand-and-twenties. A primitive example was when R2D2 projected Princess Leia during the start of the first Star Wars movie. By 2028 techies combined mobile holograms with high-speed computers and voila! — the Spectrom.

Each Spectrom disk or spek contained the complete writings and recorded sayings of its specter. Images could interact with historical accuracy, even if they were from different times. Computers did the listening, found the response and manipulated the specters to look as if they were really talking. Students could play with live Lincoln-Douglas debates. Or they could see Thomas Jefferson argue with Alexander Hamilton, Billy Graham debate Nietzsche or Gandhi reason with Lenin. You could even update specter memories so dead experts could analyze current events.

•

After the debate Jake strutted into the downstairs café of Brave Books Bookstore, hoping to share his triumph and maybe get a few strokes. With his billowing, long-sleeve white shirt, he felt like one of the Three Musketeers. Yet his torso was so wiry that the extra fabric was too much. It combined with the too long pants to give a parachute effect rather than the graceful flow of medieval elegance.

The coffee shop was packed with people attending a gun show in the nearby Asheville Civic Center. They were buzzing about the possibility that laser pistols would soon be over-the-counter legal. The pistols made assault rifles quaint and were great for self defense. Recently a lunatic had shown the gun’s potential by slicing in half everyone in a crowded New York City Burger King in ten seconds flat. The killing was fairly clean. The laser beams fused arteries which prevented messy bleeding.

Disappointed, Jake left the café and walked a mile to his home, alone. The thrill of victory began to evaporate. This was one of Jake’s main traits: without warning he might change suddenly from an elated, heroic optimism — at one with all in a world full of meaning — to a depressed pessimism, an isolated buffoon in a silly universe.

Jake was fast falling into the bottomless void. I’m useless, he thought, not producing anything or helping anyone. If it wasn’t for my trust fund I’d be real dead, brain dead, or living on the street. I’ll probably grow old alone and die in private agony with no one there to administer last-morphine rites.

He felt like the end of a Bugs Bunny cartoon where the viewing circle gets smaller and smaller until last words appear: That’s all folks. The sun plunged down.

Avoid the void, Jake silently demanded. He pretended to grab the sides of the closing cartoon circle, pushed it back and stuck his head through.

You can’t close on me yet, Jake thought, tensing his jaw muscle. This changed his face from a perky harmless cute to the haunted desperation of a hungry wolf. I’ve got a date with Newt tomorrow! Newt Lazarus was Jake’s best male friend.

Jake rallied enough to take a chance and call the capricious Cathy Webber, his heart’s desire. Luckily her voice mail picked up. If Cathy herself answered, no telling what mood she’d be in. If it were bad, Jake might be sucked back into the darkest depths of the void.

This is 252-0084, Cathy said in her low honey tones. Please leave a message. Jake mumbled civilities and hung up. He felt better and picked up his ragged copy of Don Quixote. Soon the moon rose and his eyes closed. The book fell to the bed and he slid into sleep, finally escaping the void by express travel to the wondrous land of Nod.

•

Late the next afternoon Jake drove east on I-40 in a quiet electric Cutlass toward the nearby little town of Swannanoa. He whizzed by a holographic billboard showing Ronald McDonald holding up a hamburger that was projected just in front and above Jake’s car. The clown put the burger in his mouth. Closer still and Ronald held up his white-gloved hands and the words appeared: See Ma, no mess with McClean burgers.

Ketchup and cow juice contained by eatable plastic, Jake thought. Damn!

He exited near Billy Graham’s evangelical training center, The Cove. There the Swannanoa Valley was flat for about a mile before rising precipitously on both sides, soaring from 2,000 to 4,000 feet and more.

Jake looked at the restful entrance to The Cove. It was spring and dogwoods sprinkled the woods with sugar frosting. He turned left, drove over the freeway and after another left, pulled up in front of what appeared to be two, side-by-side convenience stores with Japanese curls on the roof edges.

One store was called Ye Olde Theology Shoppe. Its changeable sign was the kind that you could roll next to the highway. It said Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself! The parking lot was almost full.

The other store had a small wooden sign that announced The Atheology Outlet. Underneath was an even smaller sign with changeable letters. One Life to Live! it declared. Its parking lot was empty until Jake pulled in.

So this is what Newt’s bragging about, thought Jake. His anger rose. Newt’s project was absurd and so Jake felt absurd too. He winced from a void prick. Still he entered and saw a dusty-headed Newt drinking a tall-boy Budweiser while straightening a row of books by the cash register. They included Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell, The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung, and The Fall by Albert Camus. Two crushed beer cans teetered beside them. Other books were stacked willy nilly on the floor, and posters, bumper stickers and other humanistic propaganda were strewn about as if they’d just been unpacked.

Jake and Newt exchanged surly howdy-dos. Have some bubbly, offered Newt while pulling a beer out of the cooler at his side. His face was swarthy and crimson, an almost healthy combination of deep sun tan and liver-rot red. His slightly bloodshot, navy-blue eyes burned out of the swarthiness, split by a good two inches of ramrod straight nose. A thick red, blond and grey mustache heightened the macho impression.

No way José, said Jake while self-righteously looking at other Budweiser empties in the trash. What you need is to go to detox and rehab and stop selling this silly stuff.

Newt was taken aback, but not much. He grasped half of his lower lip with his teeth, too tired from four hours of hauling sheet rock that morning to respond quickly. It was obvious to him that Jake was depressed, but Jake’s anguish was the problem of a man of leisure.

"Nothing silly about selling 5,000 `In God We Distrust’ bumper stickers to American Atheist magazine," Newt chuckled half-heartedly. He put his long, blue-jeaned legs gracefully on the counter, leaned back in his chair and slid his strong, thickly-veined arms behind his head.

And you say you respect religion, preached Jake. I think you’re mainly an alcohol-powered chaos.

Wrong, drawled Newt. I respect Greta, who believes in God. Besides, I ain’t putting anyone out of work or working anyone to death. This pampering people who aren’t interested in earth life needs to stop. As that bumper sticker over there says, `To Hell with Heaven.’

Greta was Newt’s semi-fundamentalist Christian wife and the owner of Ye Olde Theology Shoppe.

Look at my masterpiece, Newt commanded, pointing dramatically at a hologram bumper sticker of Billy Graham. Graham was smiling while holding a Bible up and out toward the viewer. Now walk by it as if you were driving by on the freeway.

Jake did. Graham’s Bible disappeared and he pointed straight out from the sticker in 3-D. A red-white-and-blue top hat appeared on his head, and a white goatee on his chin. His tasteful brown suit changed into gaudy red-white-and-blue stripes. I WANT YOU, Graham said. He’d become Uncle Sam, jauntily recruiting soldiers.

Great! said Jake. You’ve still got a bit of wit, but it’s also grumpy-old bitterness. Newt was 62 and Jake 65 in 2028.

Go on and make fun of sincere people, Jake continued. You might win the Nobel Prize for Cynicism if the DTs don’t get you first.

Jake paced forth and back with his hands jammed into his pockets, causing his pants to drag even more on the floor. He tripped.

And that outside sign, `One Life to Live,’ Jake said, recovering his balance. Why reinforce the view that there’s no mystery in death. Besides, the phrase is copyrighted by a soap opera I think.

I’m not half as mean as the Christians who’re constantly threatening Hell, Newt replied. He spewed open another Bud. You know what happened last week in Lancaster, Tennessee. Christians ran off a pagan commune. Inquisition burnings are next, I’m telling you.

Unbeknownst to Jake, Newt had a Spectrom rigged in his store for customers wanting to take part in the Monkey Trial debate of Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan.

Newt knew Jake loved Michelle Pfeiffer and bought bootleg speks of her from his porn connections. He flipped a button beneath the counter and Pfeiffer as Catwoman appeared. Newt grinned and said: Cat baby, go say hello to my friend Jake. Instantly the computer scanned the room for other life forms and ordered Catwoman toward Jake. Slinking in her shiny black-leather tights, she looked as if she were about to devour Jake sexually — or maybe literally.

Get lost, Jake said, though he didn’t move as she approached. A vein began to throb insistently on the left side of his forehead.

So you’re the magnificent gentleman Newt has been telling me about, purred Catwoman, lifting her slender arms to give Jake a hug — or slash his throat.

Newt pressed another button. Catwoman changed to Pfeiffer herself in one of the precariously low-cut Victorian dresses she wore in Dangerous Liaisons. A wardrobe malfunction occurred causing her left breast to spill out. She daintily restored it to its sequestering cup.

Turn it off! demanded Jake, scanning the door fearfully. If Cathy saw me with porn speks she’d never marry me. You don’t want to ruin my one chance for happiness do you?

Then Jake spied Newt’s spek holder. What else do you have there?

Oh, Marilyn Monroe, Jane Fonda and all five of Charlie’s Angels, gloated Newt.

Let’s stick to good ole humanoids, begged Jake. Cathy doesn’t mind so much if I ogle a woman in person but she really gets angry at my ogling artificial ones.

What you need is to join the All or Nothing Dating Service, said Newt laughing, and stop chasing that frigid Cathy. They have about a fifty percent serious relationship rate. He turned off the Spectrom and Pfeiffer vanished.

Never ever, Jake insisted. It’s just another holographic face of old timey pornography. Don’t even try to change the subject with sex. Alcoholics Anonymous and you is the issue.

I’m serious Jake. I can get you All or Nothing speks for cheap. My friend owns the Asheville franchise. It’s helped lots of baby boomers get beyond their shallow attachments to legally-binding contracts.

Not everyone is as sex obsessed as you, Jake replied. But down deep in his subconscious a little bell tinkled. There might be something to it, whispered his id to his ego. Enough of sex and drugs, Jake muttered out loud.

What about them Hawks? Newt obligingly asked. The Atlanta Hawks finally made the NBA finals. Jake had followed them for forty years from the great Pistol Pete to the Indomitable Dominique, but to no avail. The Hawks had never even been close to a title. You think they have a chance?

Oh yeah! said Jake. We’re just discovering the brilliance of Mendacious Malloy. He’s Magic, Air and Bird all in one compact package! Gimme one of those tall boys! Jake said. We used to call ‘em silos at Chapel Hill.

You know, said Newt, the game comes on soon. We could pay $40 at the Civic Center to see it played on their arena Spectrom at a real b-ball court, or we maybe could go to the bar. He grabbed Jake’s shoulder and squeezed, kneading the bones and muscles like an old-fashioned doctor. Jake winced and then surrendered to the rough intimacy.

Let’s bar it! said Newt. He closed the shop and the two left.

•

Jake was right though. Spectroms had enlarged the market for pornography. You could rent bootleg speks of all the actors who played nude scenes in movies. Frolic with Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt as they act out your commands in your own bedroom. Or you could get legal speks of new actors, filmed even more realistically in Spectervision. Scientists claimed that the images might soon have actual weight by concentrating a positively-charged, gaseous mass of protons into the negatively-charged, electromagnetic boundaries of the hologram. The prostitute industry —which was legal in 2028 — sued because they might get displaced by these STD-free, 3-D fantasies.

On the other hand, some matinee idols were suing the bootleg companies. They contended that unauthorized spek sex was a violation of their constitutional rights to privacy. Others were as pleased as paparazzi to get the renewed exposure just so long as they got a slice of the cash action.

•

Dateline: Milky Way, Eternity

Newt was definitely wrong about one thing. Heaven had not gone to Hell. It existed, but in a way neither he nor anyone else could have predicted.

For instance, one fine day in Heaven Nietzsche said to Billy Graham, God is dead.

How can you even think that? asked Graham. He’d been in Heaven only a few days and wasn’t expecting religious controversy, much less from this infamous blasphemer. I know he exists because I prayed to him just this morning, he said.

That may or may not be true, maintained Nietzsche, but have you actually seen him?

No. I just got here. We’re in Heaven aren’t we? Where God lives?

Nietzsche quaffed a deep draught from a pint glass of stout. There you go again, he said, beer froth bubbling on his incredibly thick mustache. You preachers are like my pastor father, always using crumbs of sketchy evidence to create worlds of belief.

Friedrich, if you’d only accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior you’d have no more doubts. And he’d alleviate your suffering so much you’d take back your other awful cliché: ‘If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger.’ Graham sipped thoughtfully from a pony bottle of pilsner that seemed to have suddenly appeared next to him.

Reverend, you can’t tempt me to surrender to that simpering, cheek-turning, ego-phobic, mount-sermonizer.

Just wanted to see if I could do anything for your obviously wounded self-esteem, said Graham. "You have to accept the meek in yourself to achieve the God perspective that is the effortless