JOAN'S FLASHFORWARD
Chapter 13 AGON
Will went to answer the door: something Joan thought very brave under the circumstances. Indeed, for almost the first time in six years, Joan was once again finding herself frightened of an encounter with God. Not irritated, which happened a lot, but actually frightened. God would adhere to the promise she had made, that God would not use force against Will -- wouldn't He?
She tried to focus on a more immediate and harmless question: what form would God take this time? Not Little Girl God or Goth God; they would freak Will out. Even Cute Boy God or Cowgirl God, that forms he usually took with Joan's group, might not have enough gravitas to convince Will that they were God. Old Lady God? Maybe.
After a seeming eternity, Joan heard the front door open.
"Hello," Will said coldly. "Are you the Person my daughter told me to expect?"
"Yeah. Joan and I go back for years."
Joan blinked at the voice. Tough Guy God? Come to think of it, that might work. At least he would have the aura of strength that Will would expect. Joan relaxed a little.
"Joan?" Will called back for verification.
"Yeah, that's Him."
"Come in, then. I mean that only in the physical sense. I'm not inviting you into my life in the religious sense."
"Yeah, I realized that." Tough Guy God didn't sound upset or even frustrated. In fact, He sounded like He took what Will said as a fact and was just responding to it.
"Should I go?" asked Joan nervously as she stood in the doorframe of the kitchen. She could see her father and God enter the main living room.
"No. I want you here, Joan, to ensure that our Guest is telling me the same things that he tells you. Will you promise to speak up if you hear a discrepancy?"
Joan looked at Tough Guy God, who nodded. Will's cautious skepticism didn't seem to bother him.
"I promise."
"My first question is, why did you turn my family against me?"
"I didn't," said Tough Guy God. "They are not against you, and never were. You have a remarkably diverse family, chief, spiritually speaking. Each member of the family has a different ideal in life. You have a moral code which you have divorced from religion, a devotion to the Law. There's your wife, who usually agrees with you on an intellectual level but had an artistic intuition that led her to Me. A remarkably spiritual daughter with an instinct for doing the right thing. A son whose devotion to science and belief in scientific law is as intense as yours for justice. A son-in-law who sees everything in turns of art. Lily, a basically traditional religious believer. Grace, who shares your passion for justice but expresses it in a far different way."
"Grace isn't a member of the family," said Will, confused. "She and my son largely separated when they reached college age, even though Luke worked with her one summer."
"It's a bit different than that, Dad, but I think we need to save that for later," suggested Joan. Talking about a pair making love in shared dreams would open another can of worms. Maybe she would just admit that they met in dreams but wouldn't go into details, she thought. After all, she doubted her father wanted to hear about his son's erotic dreams. Joan felt a bit weird thinking about it herself.
"My point," said Tough Guy God, "is that your family have amazingly different worldviews, but stay together in love. It sounds simple, yet for centuries humans have failed to achieve that level of harmony. Their decision not to tell you about Me until they had evidence that would convince you was part of their coping strategy."
"He's right, Dad," said Joan. "I've WANTED to tell you for years, but never figured out how."
Will seemed to think about the question for a minute. "All right, let's drop that. I'll discuss it with my family later. There's a more important question I should have asked first, because thousands of lives depend on it. Why did the Flashforward occur?"
"Do you want a scientific explanation?" asked God.
"No. Frankly, it would probably be lost on me. I want a moral explanation. You're omniscient, so you must have foreseen it. You're omnipotent, so why couldn't you just say "Thou shalt not happen"?"
"Because I follow rules."
"Rules! A huge disaster and you talk of sticking to rules!" Will was getting frustrated.
"But don't you, Chief? I remember an incident that happened the first year you moved to Arcadia. Your department arrested a suspect and you were sure he was guilty, but you lacked legal proof. When a policeman tried to manufacture evidence, you penalized him, because you believed in playing by the rules. So you should understand why I would adhere to rules even when it creates suffering."
Will looked pained, and Joan could see that God had analyzed that situation properly. Joan kept her mouth shut, because this was between Will and God, but she was angry with God for taking a rigorously honest act of her father's career and turning it against her father in the debate.
It took a minute, but Will seemed to find a flaw in the argument. "It's not the same thing. I'm not all-powerful, and in fact that the purpose of the rules is to keep one man from getting too much power. I was faced with an unpleasant incident that had not been of my making, and had to choose the lesser of two evils. You're in a far different situation. I don't know what caused the Flashforward, but you knew the cause, and cause of the cause, and so on backward forever. Somewhere you could have intervened."
"If I intervened at the macro level at any other point, I will have broken my laws. But there was one possibility. The Uncertainty Principle."
"Luke tried to explain that to me once," observed Will, "but I don't remember."
"Luke described it to me recently," Joan said, finally deciding to try to calm down the conversation. "He said that at the very small scale, you can't predict what will happen, because rigid rules don't work at that level. Which means that YOU can break rules there."
"Yes, that's basically correct," said Tough Guy God.
"Then why didn't you avert disaster that way?" demanded Will.
"I did."
"But the Flashforwards—"
"You're assuming that the Flashforward was the worst that could happen. It wasn't. Humanity could have been wiped out.
"What?" yelled Joan, stunned.
"I can't explain this scientifically, because humanity has not discovered the principles yet. They will, in the next few months. But basically a disturbance is going to hit Earth this coming April, and it would be enough to destroy humanity. By intervening at the quantum level, I was able to deflect the blow, so to speak. I created a less probable and less serious disturbance, which spread back along a six-month period, and created what humans perceived as the Flashforward."
Joan was shocked, but she recovered ahead of her father; she was used to the concept of ripples. "It sounds like an old Jewish legend that Rabbi Polonsky told me once. A poor farmer gave shelter to the prophet Elijah and his apprentice. The next day Elijah cursed the farmer's cow, who died and left the farmer all the poorer. When the apprentice begged to know why, Elijah said that farmer's beloved wife had been destined to die. Elijah had saved her life by persuading God to accept the sacrifice of the cow instead."
"Myths do make it easier to explain things," said Tough Guy God.
"You could have made the disturbance impossible when you created the universe," pointed out Will. "You could have made up different rules!"
"Which would have created worse consequences," said God, "such as the failure of life to evolve at all. Though I'm afraid you'll have to accept my word for it."
"I don't HAVE to accept anything," said Will gruffly. After a moment though, he said, "Though I think you're being honest describing the situation."
That concession somehow lightened the atmosphere. Joan had an eerie feeling that the confrontation was over.
"I have to commend you, Chief," said God, getting up from the sofa. "You could have asked me about personal grievances, such as your unhappy childhood or the loss of your firstborn. But instead you focused on matters concerning all humanity, because humanity was more important. Perhaps we can talk again later on other subjects."
"Very well," said Will. "But let me re-iterate my position. Joan, you and the others are adults now, and I don't think God is tampering with your judgments. I can't dictate whom you befriend or what you for them. But I will not go on these missions."
"That's all right with Me," said God, heading toward the front door. "You're doing the right thing as it is."
TO BE CONTINUED
(Author's Note: I've come across the Prophet Elijah story twice, once in a collection of Hasidic legends, and the other, oddly enough, in the King Arthur novel ONCE AND FUTURE KING.)
(Author's Note: The lines where God says he always follows his own rules are from C.S. Lewis' VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER, one of the CHRONICLES OF NARNIA.)