Authors: Andrei Codrescu
Messi@ (57 page)
Nostradamus looked baffled. “Is this the End of the World, or not? Is it over? I don't get it.”
Ovid and Mani laughed.
“Every bit of the material world, yes,” affirmed Ovid, “except for the parts that refuse to believe it, continuing to cling to meat space. Haven't you read the
Metamorphoses?
Why the hell did I write it?”
Mani patted the distraught seer on the back. “Prophets are always disappointed, dear Nostradamus. That's why new ones are always in the wings, updating the catastrophes.”
“I was given to understand that
everything
would cease,” lamented Nostradamus, mostly to himself.
A cross-bearing evangelist nodded in agreement.
Professor Li pointed to the cross and told Nostradamus: “That object is at the root of all your troubles.”
Nostradamus took offense. “How is that, Confucian heathen?”
“Look at the shape!” Professor Li traced the vertical arm from bottom to top, then from top to bottom. “Your prayers always go up, begging your God to descend into your world to help you. Your God is continually confined to the job of sending his messengers down; his gaze is always downward. He has no time to look up; he is prevented from evolving. You ought to pray down, free your God before he kills you all. Above everything, you should eliminate this symbol!”
Confucius rolled off a large sea turtle and also addressed the distraught prophet: “There is a flaw in your eschatology caused by the splitting of your God into three and of your goddess into two. These initial splits kept on causing more splits, until all your gods were in fragments, and now they rain on you haphazardly, looking to
you
for their survival. This is not the end of humans, but the last days of the gods.”
“Aha!” exclaimed Sylvia-Zack, overhearing. “That explains heavenly democracy and all that. Heavenly meltdown is more like it! Every human in this sorry world's going to be hosting their very own personal god in their very own personal body!”
“Of course!” Lama Cohen slapped her forehead. “It's all about real estate! The gods move into us, we move into the vacated heavens! They get our bodies, we get their cybermental apartments.”
“Alas, poor Yorick,” said Ovid, still moved by Nostradamus's plight.
“I see. You've been spending eternity reading your future fellow poets,” laughed Aristotle, who had spent eternity doing very much the same thing, though he didn't much care for postdeconstructionists.
The crowd began moving toward the door, drawn by something going on outside. The Minds gathered around the stage joined the flow and found themselves on the street. Felicity and Andrea were already there, surrounded by their faithful Shades. A naked woman painted gold was riding toward the group on a white horse. She held a bright sword in her hand.
“Joan!” cried Felicity. “You've come to save New Orleans!”
The rider reined in her horse in front of Sister Rodica, who lifted her arms toward her. Joan held out her free hand and helped the nun mount. Rodica put her arms around Joan's golden waist and lay her head on her shoulder. The Virgin of Orléans lifted her sword and the crowd parted for them. The couple rode down Orleans to the back of Saint Louis Cathedral and lifted above the spires into the night sky until they became a small gold coin. Watching them vanish, Andrea felt her heart break, as if an arrow had sliced the tenderest meat at its center.
Tesla held up a shiny blue rose he had created. A Christian with a metal sign that said
Everything Must Go
looked at him in dismay.
The breeze that had until now caressed the revelers strengthened, snapping banners over balconies, ruffling the maskers' fringes and feathers. The starry sky shone brightly between the luminiscent shimmers of silk, synthetics, street lights, pixilated phantoms. The wind grew in intensity. It snatched the metal sign from the evangelist's hands. The metal square rose into the air, twisted over the heads of the mob and out of sight. Next, the metal buckles of belts began snapping off and rising. Swords, knives, and concealed guns tore through the costumes of the revelers and headed up, sucked by the increasing velocity of the mysterious wind. People wearing metal shoe fastenings were thrown down by the wind. Some of them flew up with their attached metallic accoutrements. Inside the café, Christ's chain snapped and he fell into the arms of his owner. The sky became a dense mass of flying metal heading faster and faster over the Mississippi River.
Sylvia-Zack, holding a silver flask, looked at Tesla in wonder. Felicity, Andrea, Ben, and Joe cheered as the flask flew out of her hand.
“I'll be damned,” cried Felicity. “Tesla made a chlorophyll magnet, and it's working. He's disarming the world.”
It certainly looked that way.
“Everyone we love is here,” said Felicity.
“Not my parents,” said Andrea.
“Nor Miles,” added Felicity. “Or the major.”
“At least we now know who the True One is,” said Ben.
About the Author
Andrei Codrescu (
www.codrescu.com
) is the editor of
Exquisite Corpse: A Journal of Books & Ideas
(
www.corpse.org
). Born in Romania, Codrescu immigrated to the United States in 1966. His first collection of poetry,
License to Carry a Gun
(1970), won the Big Table Younger Poets Award, and his latest,
So Recently Rent a World: New and Selected Poems: 1968â2012
(2012), was a National Book Award finalist. He is the author of the novels
The Blood Countess
,
Messi@
,
Casanova in Bohemia
, and
Wakefield
. His other titles include
Zombification: Essays from NPR
;
The Disappearance of the Outside: A Manifesto for Escape
;
New Orleans, Mon Amour
;
The Hole in the Flag: A Romanian Exile's Story of Return and Revolution
;
Ay, Cuba!: A Socio-Erotic Journey
;
The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess
;
Whatever Gets You through the Night: A Story of Sheherezade and the Arabian Entertainments
;
The Poetry Lesson
; and
Bibliodeath: My Archives (With Life in Footnotes)
.
Codrescu is the recipient of an ACLU Freedom of Speech Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for poetry, and the Peabody Award for the movie
Road Scholar
. Until retiring in 2009, he was the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1999 by Andrei Codrescu
Cover design by Mauricio DÃaz
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1528-8
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
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