On Bay Street, just north of Queen, sits a modest three storey brick building, sandwiched between a glass and brick monstrosity that houses banks and indeterminate financial institutions of indeterminate national origin and legality, and a glass and marble monstrosity that was the home to, among other things, companies that imported and exported you don’t want to ask what. You really don’t want to ask. It was a blink or you’ll miss it kind of building, the kind of building you have to walk past three or four times to realize it was there, even when you had the street address and were looking specifically for it.
Joshua Shapiro was on his third pass down Bay Street when he spotted the building and walked in.
Inside the big wooden double doors was a pandemonium (more than a riot, less than an apocalypse) of motion: people in suits were rushing hither, people in lab coats clutching clipboards to their chests were rushing thither, a man in a smart business suit with three eyes who was holding a shiny brown briefcase in his left claw was rushing yon. Seriously. A sign on the wall with an arrow pointing to a hallway read “yon” in Fleurvian. Not that Joshua had the time to take in the sign, even if he had spoken the alien language, for a woman, no taller than four feet, with bright yellow hair and a tattoo of a snake running down the right side of her face, ran into him. “Bloody bureaucracy!” she was muttering. “Might as well import my dragon’s eggs from one of the company’s that import and export you don’t want to ask wha – HEY! Watch where you’re going, why doncha?”
“S…sorry?” Joshua apologized. But the woman was already out the doors. To be honest, the young Rabbi had never experienced anything quite like this at Yeshiva, and was more than a little verklemte.
Towards the rear of the huge room was a large raised desk, with people crowding around asking questions and making demands. To the left was a set of doors; to the right, a bank of elevators. Joshua wondered if he had stumbled into a police station by accident, but, no: on the wall behind the desk was an image of an eagle morphing into a sheep with a rocket in its talon and Blackberries in its paws, various plants that only somebody who smoked them would recognize draped around the chimera. Above the image were banners that flowed from green to blue to orange to red. This was the coat of arms of the Transdimensional Authority, the organization that was responsible for ensuring that travel between universes was safe. Knowing that he was in the right place, Joshua made his way to the back of the line; with Passover coming up in a couple of weeks, he could use the time contemplating the importance of the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt.
Two hours later, Joshua was still at the back of the line (and was no further in deciding just how many plagues the Egyptians had been smitten with at the Red Sea). Although he was six foot two, he was not what you would call imposing; other people had muscled their way past him to get to the front desk. Realizing that he could spend the entire day there and be no closer to his goal, Joshua stopped a young man with a harried expression and hard eyes and said, “Excuse me…”
“What‽” the man interrobanged. “Do I look like I work here‽”
Joshua eyed the man up and down. He was wearing grey slacks, a white shirt and a purple vest on one breast of which had been sewn the eagleep image that was on the wall, the uniform of the Tranasdimensional Authority. “Yes,” Joshua said. “Yes, you do.”
The man sighed like he was trying to reverse the rotation of a hurricane with his breath. “Fiiiiiine!” he said. “What do you want?”
“I want to ask God a question,” Joshua told him.
The man rolled his eyes. “Follow me,” he said, and plowed into the crowd. Joshua scurried after him.
“Holy roller comin’ through!” the man shouted as he approached the desk, Joshua scrambling to keep up. “Make way, please! Make way! Holy man with a mission, here! Make way!”
Thus it was that, vaguely embarrassed, Joshua made it to the front desk.
“How may I help you?” one of the people behind the desk asked. She was a pleasant looking woman, a little plump. Perky. Joshua wondered if the pearls she wore over her purple vest were regulation.
Before Joshua could respond, the man who led him to the desk said, “Man wants to ask God a question.”
“Does he have an appointment?” the woman cheeped. Yep. Definitely perky.
The man waved a hand in Joshua’s general direction. “Does he look like he has an appointment?” he groused.
The woman behind the desk turned towards Joshua. “Sir, do you have an appointment?” she asked.
“I, uhh, no. Sorry,” Joshua apologized
The woman wrote something down on a piece of paper and handed it to Joshua. “Go to room 326. They’ll take care of you.”
“Thank you. I -“
“NEEEEEEXT!” the woman harshly shrieked, dispelling the whole perky thing she had had going. Joshua turned to thank the man who had led him to the desk, but he had disappeared. In this place, he thought, it’s possible that that’s not a metaphor! He made his way to the elevators.
The bank contained four elevators, two on either side of a button in the wall. Unlike any elevator button Joshua had ever seen, which have an arrow pointing up or down, this elevator button had arrows pointing in four directions. He looked at the wall but could find no other buttons. In the vacuum of his uncertainty, a small man in a business suit with a yellow Transdimensional Authority vest brushed past him and pressed the button, which took on a multicoloured aura. A few seconds later, the door on the far left opened. Joshua moved towards it, but the man huffily informed him, “Excuse me, but I called the elevator, so it’s mine. Get your own!” he disappeared through the door, which immediately closed.
Joshua pressed the button to get his own. A couple of seconds later, the door of the elevator in front of him opened and he stepped in.
The elevator was not large: maybe four people could fit into if they were slim. Like, supermodel slim. There was a standard issue mirror in the rear of the elevator, with a bar across it to steady oneself on. Curiously, two straps hung from the ceiling. As the door closed, Joshua wondered what they were for.
“Destination?” a pleasant woman’s voice asked. Pleasantly.
“God?” Joshua uncertainly offered.
“That is not a recognized universe,” the elevator woman responded. “Destination?”
After a moment, Joshua looked at the piece of paper that he had been handed. “Umm, Earth Prime 4-0-7-4-6-4…dash Delta?”
“Thank you.”
The elevator lurched and Joshua found himself falling upwards. Desperate for stability, he clutched at the straps in the ceiling, eventually gRabbing hold of one with both hands. He rested his feet on the bar and was still. In order to grab the strap, Joshua had to let go of the piece of paper he had been given; it floated around his head like an eccentric flat white moon.
Several minutes passed in indignity.
Eventually, the elevator woman said, “Arriving at destination.” Before Joshua could process what this meant, gravity returned to the elevator and his feet fell to the floor, wrenching his arms almost out of their sockets before he let go of the strap and dropped unsteadily to his feet.
The elevator door opened on a skinny hallway with identical wooden doors on either side. The hallway was lit by harsh naked bulbs overhead. It extended as far as Joshua could see and, as far as he could see, there wasn’t a single human being there. “We have arrived at your destination,” the elevator woman prompted. After the strange trip, Joshua was thoroughly fed up with her pleasantness. It was all the same to her, wasn’t it? He imagined she would say, “The artichokes have beaten back the Mongol hordes,” with the same amount of pleasantness as she would say, “Would you like poison with your morning coffee? It’s very good poison. I made it myself.” No, this was uncharitable. The voice was just an artificial intelligence with a personality chip; it did not understand things like context or annoyance.
The person who programmed it, on the other hand…
“We have arrived at your destination,” the elevator woman repeated, her pleasantness undiminished by repetition.
Joshua stepped out of the elevator.
As the elevator door closed behind him, Joshua looked at the number next to the closed door to his left. 3027. He took a couple of steps and looked at the next door. 3025. From this, he learned two things: 1) he was headed in the right direction, and 2) this was going to be a long slog. Nodding “It figures” to himself, he started slogging. Now, was that five tenfold plagues at the Red Sea, or ten fivefold…?
About twenty-five minutes later, at around door 1511, Joshua noticed a figure walking towards him. Seven minutes later, he met a small man with read hair and the nose of a dachshund. “Excshushe me,” the man said, “but room 1984?”
“You’re heading in the right direction,” Joshua encouraged him.
“Shanksh,” the man said, and walked off in the direction Joshua had come from.
The slog continued. As did the argument between the ancient learned men about whether the hand of God was at play in Egypt on that fateful day so long ago, and, if so, what that meant number of plagues wise.
An hour later, Joshua arrived at room 326. Noting that there appeared to be an elevator at the other end of the hallway, he knocked politely on the door and was told equally politely to enter. The room he entered was small, with a plain wooden desk, a metal filing cabinet and a chair. On the wall to his left was a poster with an image of a starfield and the caption, “Heaven – it’s…you know…” In smaller print in a bottom corner of the poster was the message, “For more information, contact the Heaven Tourism Bureau at 1-800-PRAYERS.” Behind the desk sat a woman who couldn’t have been more than thirty. She wore jeans and a bulky brown sweater and more bracelets than you would have thought her slender wrists could hold. She reminded Joshua a little of his older sister Leah – or, at least, she would have if her head hadn’t been shaved and the right half of her face outfitted with a prosthetic eye.
“How may I help you?” the woman asked.
“Eye…umm…” Joshua stuttered.
“Yes, you,” the woman shortly responded. “How may I help you?”
“No, I mean…your eye…”
The woman shook her head. “They always start with the eye,” she muttered. “Okay,” she said out loud, “I assure that there is nothing to be alarmed about. The Transdimensional Authority bought a whole bunch of electronics at a discount from the Borg on Earth Prime 3-3-4-8-7-6 dash Rho when the collective decided to forswear conquering the galaxy and become a modern dance troupe. As you might imagine, they can synchronize exquisitely. All of the software was thoroughly debugged before the Transdimensional Authority gave it to their employees. And honestly, other than the occasional urge to shout, ‘Resistance is futile,’ I have never had any trouble with the hardware. It just helps me do my job more efficiently. So, why don’t you have a seat and tell me what I can do for you.”
Joshua sat. “I’d like to ask God a question,” he stated.
“Which God?” the woman asked him.
Still flustered, he said, “Oh, umm, you know, the one true one…”
“Right,” the woman nodded her head gently. “Only, our database of known universes lists three thousand two hundred forty-seven different deities, with seven religions with new deities currently waiting to see if they build enough of a following to qualify for Godhead. So, I’m afraid you’ll have to be a teensy bit more specific, yeah? Like, maybe, tell me what religion you are.”
“Ah,” Joshua ahed. “I’m Jewish.”
“Ah,” the woman ahed back at him. “I’m afraid there’s good news and bad news.”
“Ye-es?”
“Well. The good news is that Yaweh, your god, has an aspect which he uses to interact with his people. The bad news is that there is a waiting list of people who want to see Him.”
“A waiting list?”
“Yes. A waiting list. A long waiting list.”
“A long waiting list?”
“That’s right. It’s…quite long…”
“How long?”
“Dauntingly long, really.”
“How long is the waiting list?”
“Nine hundred and thirty-seven years.”
“How am I supposed to live long enough to see God to ask my question?”
The woman behind the desk chose her next words carefully. Her first impulse was to reply, “Of course, if you die sooner, you’ll get to ask God that much faster.” The interface that her eyepiece projected in front of her was running Take a Different Tact, a programme that measured the social desirability of making certain conversational gambits. The programme told her that there was an eighty-seven per cent chance that that statement would be received as insensitive. Good to know. Another possible reply occurred to her: “If you froze yourself, we could send your caretakers a message when your spot in line was about to come due.” TDT informed her that there was a seventy-nine per cent chance that such a response would be construed as sarcastic, and a ninety-seven per cent chance that the person she was talking to didn’t live in a universe where cryogenics had been perfected, which would reinforce the whole sarcasm thing. The woman settled for replying, “People will drop out. You know, die or lose interest. I expect you won’t have to wait the full nine hundred thirty-seven years.”
“Oh, well, thank you,” Joshua awkwardly said. The woman made a note in a text editing document before her that, in her opinion, he would have been part of the thirteen per cent of people who would not have been offended by the “you’ll get to God that much faster if you die” comment.
“Is there anything else I can help you with?” the woman cheerfully asked now that she sensed that the conversation was coming to a close.
Joshua stood to go. “No, thank y – actually, yes. I was wondering: is there an elevator at this end of the hall?”
“As a matter of fact, there is.”
“Why did the elevator leave me off at the other end of the hallway?”
TDT suggested that there was a ninety per cent chance that the response, “It chooses which end of the hall to open onto randomly,” would be received well. The woman shut down the programme and answered with the truth: “We try to discourage people from coming here. We process requests much more efficiently by email.”
As he walked towards the nearest elevator, Joshua reflected that that just about summed up his experience with the Transdimensional Authority.
“Shabat shalom.“
“Shabat shalom.“
Leaving on the lacy kerchief which she used to cover her bright red hair while she said the prayer over lighting the candles, Sarah Shapiro sat kitty corner at the dinner table to Joshua as he Yom hashishied and Qui vo shavated his way through the Sabbath prayers. After wine was drunk and bread was broken, she waddled into the kitchen to get dinner for them. Sarah was short and, at the best of times, zaftig; six months into her pregnancy, she had more curves than the Indy race down by the lake. But dinner wasn’t going to serve itself…
Shabbas dinner could be anything Joshua wanted…as long as he wanted chicken. Tonight, it was cacciatore style, with a tomato sauce and spaghetti. And if the spaghetti was a little…glutinous and the chicken was just a touch…overcooked, we can afford to be charitable because she had only been married for a year and a half; Sarah’s mother Edie didn’t really get the hang of the whole cooking thing until seven years into her marriage! And in any case, we’re not the ones who have to eat it.
Over dinner, Sarah grilled Joshua on his day at work. She had only been on maternity leave for a month, but she was already missing her job teaching at the Charles H. Best Western Public School. And being the Rabbi at the Beth Tzedakah Synagogue was kind of like being a teacher, right? As he talked to her about how boring he found his afternoon meeting with the Friends Don’t Let Friends Let the State of Israel Be Overrun By Savages Because They Don’t Have Enough Funds To Muster a Proper Defense Committee, she thought, Aahhh, I know exactly how that feels!
Towards the end of the meal, as Joshua was demurely hiding a particularly blackened piece of chicken under a few strands of spaghetti and Sarah was pretending not to notice, he casually said, “I was thinking of using the Home Universe GeneratorTM later this evening…”
Sarah considered this for a moment, then leaned over the table and, clearing Joshua’s forehead of his thick, curly black hair, put the wrist of her left hand over it. After a few seconds, she sat back down. “You don’t have a fever,” she commented. “Could your brain have been invaded by some kind of parasite?”
Joshua considered. While he was doing that, it seemed like a good time to explain: Joshua Shapiro was the hip, happening new Rabbi at Beth Tzedakah. He shared his weekly thoughts on Facebook, and let all of his congregants know that they could ask him questions by email. He encouraged bar mitzvah boys to use Youtube videos to practice their Torah portions.
His one blind spot was using Home Universe GeneratorTMs, the technology that allowed users to look at any other universe in the multiverse (the ad campaign touting “the ultimate reality TV – the multiplate reality TV!” was very effective…except for persons named Joshua Shapiro who lived in Toronto and were Rabbis). He was generally ill-disposed towards the machines because of religious warnings against busybodiness, but what really made him want to have nothing to do with them was that his Hebrew school students would try to argue with him on matters of Biblical interpretation based on things they had seen in other universes. “Let’s focus on one reality at a time,” he would joke. But there was no denying that he was irked. Irked mightily. So, he wanted nothing to do with those stupid old HUGTMs!
Then…
Ari Gluckstein was being his usual…rambunctious self in class. “Why did it have to be salt?” he interrupted Joshua explaining how Lot’s wife looked back at Sodom and was punished for her disobedience. “I mean, it was a desert. There was already more salt there than anybody knew what to do with. Why couldn’t hashem have turned her into something more useful, like Jello?”
Ignoring the snickers of some of the other boys in class, Joshua, who enjoyed a challenge, explained that punishment of an individual is not supposed to reward the community with a delightful after dinner dessert. It’s supposed to punish an individual.
“Too bad they didn’t have Star Trek transporters,” Ari continued, ignoring him. “Then, they could have used the pattern of Lot’s wife stored in the transporter’s memory to bring her back to life!”
Joshua was about to respond that if it was God’s will, the transporter would only be able to reproduce pillars of salt in the shape of Lot’s wife when Mark Gabriel raised his hand. Nobody else in the class ever raised their hand – Joshua hadn’t actively discouraged the practice, but on the first day of class, he had made it clear that he preferred a less formal atmosphere. Mark was a mousy little kid who frowned a lot and rarely spoke. But when he did speak, it always revealed a depth of thought that Joshua wanted to encourage.
“Yes, Mark?” Joshua encouraged.
“I have a question,” Mark quietly stated.
“Yes, Mark?” Joshua encouraged. Again. It went that way with Mark.
“In the multiverse,” Mark asked, “are all of the gods of the Jewish people separate entities, one for each universe, or are they all one entity that spans the entire multiverse?”
“Well, Mark, you see,” Joshua started, then stopped. “It’s like…” he tried, then stopped himself afresh. He had never considered this question. “The Torah says that there is one God who created the heavens and Earth,” Joshua finally said, falling back on first principles. “We can infer from this that He created the heavens and Earth in every universe where He exists, which would suggest that there is only one Jewish God in all of the multiverse.”
“That makes sense,” Mark thoughtfully replied. Before Joshua could pat himself on the back, Mark went on: “But when the Bible was written, nobody knew anything about the multiverse. Genesis was about the creation of this universe. So, that’s just your interpretation of the Torah.”
Joshua smiled. “As our understanding of the world changes,” he claimed, “all we can do is interpret the ancient wisdom based on current knowledge.”
Mark nodded thoughtfully. When, a few seconds later, it appeared that Mark would not challenge his interpretation of the nature of interpretation, Joshua continued with the story of Lot.
But a seed had been planted in his mind that afternoon. Was there a single Jewish God throughout the multiverse, or was there a local Jewish God for each universe? A couple of weeks after the class, Joshua sought a meeting with God to clear the question up. We’ve all seen how well that went. A few days later, he was seriously rethinking his opposition to Home Universe GeneratorTMs.
“If my brain had been invaded by some kind of parasite,” Joshua responded, “how would I know?”
“Well, obviously, you wouldn’t know about that specifically,” Sarah agreed, “unless the parasite whispered in your mind, ‘Hi, I’m a brain parasite. Mind if I take over your thought processes? I mean, I will, anyway, because that’s what we do, us brain parasites. But it’s always nice to get permission.’ Something like that would seem to be counterproductive, though, you know? No, you would just have a vague feeling that something about your brain processes was just a bit…off. You know. Off. So, do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Have a feeling that something about your brain processes is a bit off?”
Joshua shook his head. “Nope. Sorry. No vague feelings like that here.”
“So, what’s up?”
Joshua outlined the situation for her. “I thought using it would help me…clear up this question,” Joshua concluded.
Sarah had inherited the Home Universe GeneratorTM from her parents, and had brought it into the house despite Joshua’s (admittedly not very strong) objections. She didn’t feel possessive about it, though, and was happy for him to use it. She did feel the need to point out that it was currently off, so he would have to wait until the Sabbath was over because they were not allowed to turn appliances on. Just as well – after dinner he had to walk back to the shul for the evening prayers, and then he would be busy all day tomorrow.
So, it wasn’t until Sunday morning that Joshua sat in the well padded chair in front of the large wooden cabinet that housed the Home Universe GeneratorTM. He looked at the keyboard which rolled out of the cabinet just over his legs. He looked at the screen. He ran a finger over one of the many scratches that time contributed to giving the cabinet character. Eventually, he shouted from the den, “Honey?”
From their bedroom, Sarah replied, “Lying down!”
“How do you turn this thing on?”
“Button at the bottom of the screen!”
Joshua looked at the screen. There wasn’t an obvious button there. Frowning, he ran his finger along the bottom of the screen, left to right. Towards the right corner, he felt a…bump. Joshua poked around at the bump, but nothing happened. This would be so much easier if it was voice activated! He thought. Then, he said, “This would be so much easier if it was voice activated!” As if he expected the machine to respond, “I know, right? But, what can you do? This is the level of technology we have today! If only there was some way for me to tell you that I’m not plugged in – but, no, at this moment in my evolution, I must remain mute.”
Joshua must have heard what the machine hadn’t said, because he looked at the faded beige carpet on the floor (it would be replaced when he had saved up enough money to renovate their modest home, believe you me!); he found the cord of the Home Universe GeneratorTM lying just below the wall outlet. Isn’t that always the way? He thought to himself as he plugged the machine into the wall. He fumbled with the bump on the bottom of the monitor for a few seconds, but his unwitting hand gestures must have conjured up the right magic, because the machine hummed to life.<.p>
Thirty seconds later, Joshua was looking at the home screen. It contained three icons: Multiple Earths getting smaller and fading into infinity, the image of the Home Universe GeneratorTM programme; a similar image featuring five alternate Earths, each in a different colour, the image of Google Multiverse, and; an image of a sheet of paper with the words Home Universe GeneratorTM Frequently Unasked Questions beneath it. Using the touchpad built into the keyboard, Joshua opened Google Multiverse.
“Is the Jewish God connected across the multiverse,” he wrote, “or is there a different Jewihs God for each univrse?”
Almost immediately, the screen displayed: “Showing results for Is the Jewish God connected across the multiverse, or is there a different Jewish God for each universe?” All of the responses he could see on the page contained a single word: “Yes.”
That’s not very helpful! Joshua thought.
He spent the next couple of minutes considering his options, but there was no doubt that he would end up doing what everybody who has just started using a Home Universe GeneratorTM ends up doing: he Google Multiversed his own name.
And that’s where the story really begins.
Joshua looked at his face in the mirror. It was long, but not uncommonly so for his species. It gave him an expression that was part hangdog, part hound dog, an expression that was catnip to a certain kind of woman (his kind of woman). Joshua realized that, at some point in the future, this expression could harden into a very unattractive forlornness, possibly bordering on morosity, but he practiced smiling in front of the mirror for at least two minutes every morning in order to forestall this eventuality.
| One of the – well, you would hate to call it a design flaw – let’s settle for massive pain in the ass drawback, okay? – of the Home Universe GeneratorTM is that it can only access other universes within the same time frame as yours. You cannot travel forwards in time. You can theoretically travel backwards in time by viewing a recording you made of a previous session, but most people are not satisfied with watching reruns when the programme constantly streams live. Still, if at the time of your viewing the person you are watching is brushing her teeth or scrambling eggs for breakfast or throwing out the scrambled eggs he had burnt or examining himself in the mirror, that is what you are stuck with. Welcome to the the multiverse – sorry for the inconvenient tedium. |
Joshua pried his left eye open with his fingers. Hunh. Still red. It was starting to rival the brown for the dominant colour. He had drops for that, of course, but the ultimate solution to the problem would be to get more sleep. Not that that there was any danger of that happening any time soon…
| Joshua wasn’t entirely comfortable watching himself preen in front of the mirror. For one thing, he tried to be humble, and he didn’t like the way he was looking at himself. More than that, though, it was him and it wasn’t him, and Joshua wasn’t sure if he was being a voyeur or just being attentive to his body. |
“Josh, sweetie?” a woman’s voice called from the other side of the bathroom door. “Are you going to come out and help me order something to eat, or are you going to wear out that mirror?”
Get more sleep? Yeah, that was for the mythical “some other time.”
Joshua ran a soft hand through his curly black hair and thought, Oh, so tight! People pay good money for what you’ve got naturally, baby! With one last smile at himself in the mirror, he turned and went out the door.
Joshua was in a hotel room. It was large, with a kitchenette on one side and a window looking out over the sun setting on a bustling city. A round bed lay between them. A woman lay on the bed, conspicuously naked.
|
“No! No! No! No! No!” Joshua was definitely not comfortable with naked strangers. And, why were these people naked during the day? He and Sarah had always made love in the evening. With the lights out. And their eyes closed. Well, his eyes closed. He resolved to ask Sarah about that. |
The woman’s legs were long, uncommonly so for her species (unless she belonged to the sub-species known as “actress”), longer than the blond hair that reached to the small of her back. The carpet definitely didn’t match the drapes; it’s unfortunate when women feel the need to overrule the sensibility of their interior decorators. The woman had high cheekbones set in a face like molded plastic and a mouth that had been described in the press as “cruel.” She didn’t think it was cruel; she thought it was misunderstood.
“The mirror should be so lucky, Marian,” Joshua told her as he went over to the window to watch the sunset.
The woman roused herself to get out of bed and join him by the window, her tiny ass tracing a perfect parabolic curve on the way. “If Hecate hadn’t knocked the flowerpot on your head, do you think -“
| The Home Universe GeneratorTM allowed the user to manipulate its point of view. Joshua fumbled with the controls, desperate to view anything but the woman’s body, but he couldn’t figure out how to make it work. In frustration, he shut the machine down and went off to take a long, cold shower. |
A week later, Joshua was sitting in an office with posters on the wall. The most prominent depicted a man with features so chiselled you would have thought somebody had found a way to magically animate Mount Rushmore; behind him were the faces of a scared white woman, a determined Asian man and a sneering white man. From Haifa to Hell was on the top of the poster. Next to it on the wall was an identical poster with Hebrew writing instead of English.
Looking intently at the laptop open on his desk, Joshua was animatedly talking on a cellphone. In Hebrew. “Achmed, what are you busting my tuchis for? I’m doing a table read in an hour – this movie is going to happen!”
| Joshua had spent six months at a Yeshiva in Arad, so his Hebrew was pretty good. You know, for a Canadian. He did not want to rely on Google Multiverse Translates to follow the conversation. He had tried it once: “Good talking to you.” had been translated as “You speak welly.” There was the occasional word he couldn’t understand, however. Google Multiverse Translates phonetically repeated those words. Very helpful. A search of the Internet revealed that, in his reality, they were archaic Hebrew that had gone out of use. |
Joshua deleted an email from Benjamin unread. He hadn’t asked the writer for any more rewrites – he was secretly negotiating with somebody else to punch up the dialogue – and Joshua didn’t have time to listen to him whine about how unhappy he was with the second act. Benjamin was chronically unhappy about his writing; if he hadn’t won two Abraham Awards for Best Original Screenplay, nobody in the industry would work with him! (Although, Joshua secretly wondered if he hadn’t been given his first Abraham just to stop the whining for a while – the academy could be inscrutable about its motivations.) Instead, Joshua opened an email from a fan named Ira telling him about how From Haifa to Hell 3: Mishegum Go Boom changed his life.
“Achmed!” Joshua finally sternly stated into the phone. “Need I remind you of how much money International Hit Squad II: The Hits Keep Coming made? I’ve earned the right to make the movie I want to make!”
As he listened to his producer rant about his poor life choices, Joshua saved the fan email to his archive. He hesitated over an email from Simcha Tovovich, the President of the Israeli Director’s Guild. He knew what it would contain: a plea for somebody, anybody to run for President of the organization for the coming year. Joshua had always thought that becoming the president of a professional guild was an admission that your career was over, but he had enough respect for Simcha to at least give the email a cursory glance before deleting it.
| Joshua went to the bathroom. |
Before he opened the email, he began shouting, “Because I’m an artist, dammit! I can do more than choreograph gunfights in the middle of an endangered species refuge! I want to stretch. I want to show people what I can -“
Five minutes later, Joshua was standing in an elevator, doing his best to ignore the short, dumpy man in the ill-fitting brown and orange suit and the dark woman with short brown hair with a single curl on either side of her head that was so severe you could hang a coat on them. This was not hard for him to do, given that he was still talking on his phone.
Joshua went to make himself a sandwich for lunch.”…med, Achmed, Achmed, take a deep breath,” he was saying. “You’re going to have a stroke. Nobody wants that. If you think that The Lot of the Wife is going to have problems as it is, imagine how bad things will get if, God forbid, you’re in the hospital for six months!”
Joshua didn’t want to remember that, thank you very much! Good thing Sarah had shown him how to change the point of view on the Home Universe GeneratorTM or this would have been an even more choppy narrative!About an hour later, Joshua was sitting at the head of a long table, six people on either side of him giving him their complete attention. Well, as complete as attention can be when you have a laptop open in front of you. (To be fair, the little old but feisty lady who sat third from the right – Ethel Melnick, wardrobe – and the little old but broad and feisty man fifth on the left – Mohammed Westerbrook, cinematographer – gave him even less attention, and they only had paper scripts spread open in front of them!) The woman who had been with Joshua the previous weekend was sitting on Joshua’s left; she was wearing a simple peasant skirt and plain dark shirt. Her legs were tucked demurely under the table. On her face was an expression that was anything but.
“…don’t want to look glammed up!” she was screaming. “I’m a simple shepherd’s wife thousands of years before anybody had even heard of glam!”
“You want I should dress you in rags?” Ethel complained.
“Rags win Abrahams,” Mohammed pointed out.
They’re worse than my twelve year-old students! Joshua thought.”My character is actually a prophet when the story starts,” a good looking middle-aged man named Carey Hershkovitz sitting on Marian’s other side argued.
“That is sooooo beside the point!” Marian retorted.
“People!” Joshua started. “Can we please get through the first table read without petty squabbles? The first act, even? We have six months for pettiness – that’s what the shoot is for!”
The table went quiet. A couple of people at the table had the grace to look chagrined; the others looked at their email (which was opened in a window next to their script). Joshua nodded. “Alright, then,” he said. “If there are no questions…”
“Mister Shapiro?” a skinny young lad with a cherubic face half raised his hand and asked.
“Yes, Michael?”
“I was wondering what my motivation is.”
“You’re an angel.” (I stand corrected: a skinny young lad with an angelic face.)
“That’s not really a motivation…”
“You radiate love and compassion all over the place.”
“That’s a behaviour. A motivation? Uhhh…not so much…”
| Are they talking about…the destruction of Sodom? Joshua thought. We were just talking about that last week – what a coincidence! |
| Actually, not really. In an infinite multiverse, everything happens in one infinite number of universes or another. There are no such things as coincidences: you either live in a high probability universe or a low probability universe. |
“Ach. Okay. Look. You love God. He tells you to do a terrible thing – to destroy two cities. On the one hand, you feel that you must obey him. But, on the other hand, all the death and destruction offends your angelic nature. Is that conflict enough for you?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Okay. Are there any other -?”
“Just one other thing.”
“Yeeessss?”
“Well, it didn’t happen that way, did it?”
| What‽ |
“What -?”
| No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! |
“When my character reported back to God that Lot had pled for leniency for Sodom and Gomorrah, God agreed to spare the two cities. Everybody knows that. I mean, it’s not even my religion, and I know that. Why do you think we call people who take their shot at redemption Sodomites?”
“A desert city that nothing happens to? Boring!” Mohammed muttered. “Death and destruction? I get another Abraham nomination for sure!”
|
“Joshie!” Sarah waddled into the workroom. “Yes, my love?” Joshua asked, not tearing his eyes away from the screen. “Could you get me an apple fritter from Tims?” “I – I’m in the middle of something, right now, love. Can it wait for a few -?” Sarah’s voice hardened. “I. Want. An. Apple. Fritter! From Tims!” Joshua shrugged. She had had stranger cravings – the date yogurt craving of a couple of weeks ago, for one. He couldn’t find any – nobody made it. So, he got a regular yogurt and some dates and mixed them as best he could in the hope that they would suffice. The couch was especially uncomfortable that night. “Your wish. My command.” Joshua peeled himself away from the Home Universe GeneratorTM and went off into the night in search of sickly sweet pastry. The first two Tim Hortons were sold out of apple fritters. Forty-five minutes later, he finally found one. Success! |
Joshua rubbed his eyes. “No! No! No! No! No! No! No!” he protested. “This is not a story about what the Bible actually says happened. I want to explore an alternate reality where God is not so merciful and actually carries through on some of the threats He made in the Old Testament.”
“He’s not bloodthirsty enough for you in the New Testament?” Mohammed offered.
Joshua rubbed his eyes wearily, and it was only four in the afternoon and he had gotten four and a half hours of sleep the previous night in anticipation of needing all the energy he could muster for the table read. “That’s not the point,” he insisted. “The point is that we sometimes take for granted how…benevolent God has been to the Jews. By looking at what He could have done, I hope the audience will have a greater appreciation for what He actually did do.”
Joshua ostentatiously hit a button on the keyboard of his laptop and looked at the screen. “Now, if there are no further questions…”
“I have one about Edith,” Marian offered.
“Lot’s wife is not named in the Bible,” Joshua pointed out.
“I did some research – later sages gave her a name. And anyway, it helps me get into character. So…Edith convinced Lot to intervene with the angels. Why didn’t she just talk to them herself?”
Joshua sighed and wondered if they were ever going to get to page one.
|
When he got home, Sarah had eaten half a tub of strawberry ice cream and was good, thanks. Oh, and she was on the Home Universe GeneratorTM , watching the zany, sexy, absurdly well-costumed adventures of four women in New York City. Joshua didn’t wait up. |
Three weeks later, Joshua was in the desert for the first day of shooting. He was resplendent in a tan shirt, light slacks and a white bandana. While the crew were setting up the camera and the actors were gorging in the craft tent, he was standing apart, head down, talking into his cellphone.
“…med, you know I don’t want to shoot inside the Temple. Heaven forbid I should defile such holy ground with a mere movie camera and actors! …Yeah. …Okay, I’ll give you the part about the actors. …Oh, yeah, I get it. Holiest of holies. Four thousand years old. Four thousand years old my ass! That building has had more renovations than Tzipporah Taylor has had face lifts! Only one part of one of the walls is the original limesto – yeah. …Okay. Sorry. I…I just want to get some footage of the exterior of the – …Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. …Well, no. Yeah. You know that if I was based in Hollywood instead of Jerusalem – I know! Our industry is ten times the size of theirs! But they do all the small, character-driven movies that win international awards! I – hold on a second. Yes? Are they ready on the set? Achmed? I gotta go. This is not over.”
Joshua hung up and walked over to where the camera had been set up, a specially designed cowl over it to repel the sand. Mohammed Westerbrook, standing next to it, looked at him expectantly; Joshua nodded. The actors were advised to take their marks. The set was advised to be quiet. Joshua concentrated his attention on the scene in front of him and confidently stated, “Go!”
| It took Joshua a second to realize that the woman was the actress his counterpart in the universe had slept with a month earlier. She wore no makeup (as far as he could tell) and her clothes were plain, but there was no mistaking the cruelty of her mouth…A woman and man in simple dress rapidly walked through the desert, fear and weariness on their faces. Each was holding the hand of a girl. They walked for several seconds, then the woman hesitated and everybody stopped. |
MAN: What’s wrong?
WOMAN: The screams! The horrible screaming. I…I need to know what is happening!
MAN: NO! The angel was very clear that we mustn’t look back! We mustn’t look upon the destruction of the city!
But, it is too late. The woman has turned to look Horror registers on her face. Then, she turns back to her family…
WOMAN: (hard) We must get as far away from this place as we possibly can.
She starts to walk, pulling her husband and daughters forward with her.
“Cut!” Joshua shouted. “Cut! Cut! Cut! Cut! Cut!” The family stopped moving. Cast and crew looked at him quizzically. “Something about the scene doesn’t feel right. It feels…incomplete. Lot’s wife -“
“Edith,” Marian reminded him.
| No, she doesn’t, Joshua thought. She turns into a pillar of salt! |
“Lot’s wife,” he continued, ignoring her, “looks back. We see the horror on her face. And then, she just…sucks it up and leaves? That doesn’t seem right to me.”
“What would you suggest?” Carey wondered.
“I don’t know,” Joshua allowed. “Just turning around and walking away from the destruction seems…anti-climactic. It feels like something…stronger should happen.”
| It does – she turns into a pillar of salt! |
“I understand what you’re saying,” Carey stated, although his face masked whether or not he actually did. “But we can’t play your vague feelings. Stronger – like what?”
“I don’t know,” Joshua mumbled. “Lot’s wife -“
“Edith.”
| Salt! She turns into a pillar of salt! Salt! Salt! Salt! Salt! Salt! |
“Lot’s wife has disobeyed God and looked back on the destruction of Sodom. I think this God would punish her in some way. Maybe a – maybe she could get hit by lightning, or something.”
“Lightning?” Carey mildly chided.
“I know,” Joshua allowed. “Lightning is such a cliche! Still…”
After a couple of thoughtful seconds (in which most of the people on the set thought about how little they had taken when they were in the craft tent), Mohammed asked, “So, you want us to do…what?”
“Take five, everybody,” Joshua commanded.
As people started milling about and/or going back to the craft tent, Joshua walked a little bit off and took out his phone again.
“Benjamin?” he asked. Commanded, really, but there was the slightest uptick in his voice, so let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.
“Joshua,” Benjamin responded. “What a surprise. Listen, I wanted to -“
“Yep. We’ll definitely deal with that,” Joshua cut him off by way of reassurance. “Only, I have a problem on today’s shoot and we need to come up with something right away.”
“Umm…okay.”
| Gaack! |