[Cont.]
Now a man approaches me — yes, poor me, with all my legs and arms all broken — and tries to engage me in a political argument, after what I’ve done. (Recall that, recently, I saved the world.) I’m suspicious that he was sent by my clandestine adversaries for the purpose of giving me a headache:
“Bryan, is it really you? Ah, still faking your injuries, I see,” sez the Accuser. “Well it looks like everyone is happy now, and the globe is harmonious. But there’s just one teeny tiny person who’s NOT so happy. You know who that is?”
“Who?” I smile.
“ME!!” shouts my Accuser (I directed him to shout during the key points of this interaction, so that the audience sides with my own character’s argument rather than his); “I’m, in fact, the opposite of glad: I’m SAD. Even MAD.”
“Really?” I smile like that pretty cat Nermal from the Garfield cartoons, whom Garfield hates because Nermal is handsome whereas Garfield is obese. “Why are you sad and mad, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Because you taxed all the trillionaires,” sez the Accuser. “So now they left the country and took their entrepreneurial ingenuity elsewhere. Why WOULDN’T we all be sad and mad that you caused this!? Now all the JOBS have vanished.” (He belches while dragging out that word “jobs”.)
I cock my head, still smiling: “But there is no longer a need for any human to be compelled to perform tasks or chores or labor anymore, because we automated every necessity. Moreover, the ultra-rich did not move away — for the tip-top Peace Tax on wealth is an international fix: that means a global solution; and they can’t move away from the globe.”
“But that’s cuz you keep thwarting the trillionaires’ efforts to confiscate the blueprints of your spaceship; plus you won’t agree to give a lecture at the Technology-Entertainment-Design Conference, demonstrating the trix and gadgets of your famous cosmonaut outfit, so they can’t figure out how to make a bubble helmet. Finally, worst of all, you put black tape over the lenses of all the secret spy cameras that they hid upon your premises, thus leaving them nothing but audio surveillance — this is cruelly unfair, for almost all powerful men prefer visual learning,” the Accuser rubs his nose.
“Look,” I rise and stand firm, despite my broken body, “I’m right and you’re wrong. One hundred percent. And the proof is that the entire Earth is at peace now, and everything is harmonious. There’s no more bombs, no more army tanks, no more fighting, not even any political arguments… and people still work hard and are employed at various activities, but they only do what they WANT to do, when they FEEL like it. And it turns out that humanity is far more industrious now than when its overlords had enslaved it. (By “overlords” I mean the oligarchy, the owner class, the creditors...) Best of all, diversity is everywhere — human society is not flat and dull: each person lives as differently from her neighbors as she desires — there’s no boring gray sameness among the population; people are more unique than they’ve ever been; we now realize that what was causing the homogeneity among mankind was the unified poverty: the big boot of destitution that was crushing them all down flat. As William Blake always sez: One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression. But now, at last, people are truly free to pursue the paths in life that most strongly appeal to them; and they can abandon one path for another at any time, on a whim: they can take multiple paths simultaneously, or toggle between a few paths, or even leave all paths to go loafe indefinitely beneath a palm tree at the edge of space… they can simply think… fall asleep and dream, perchance — this was impossible under the old system of ‘try again if you fail but it’ll cost ya’.”
“Ugh, you always weasel out of my toughest inquisitions by filibustering,” sneers the Accuser. “You only seem willing to answer softball questions. That’s a sign of weakness.”
“Hey,” I drape my broken arm around the Accuser, “we’re all weak, are we not? We all have gooey organs on our inside — we’re like pastries filled with red jelly. Who cares about that. All we need to do is love and respect each other, until the day that we die. And then we resurrect, because life is eternal and unstoppable — even the smallest blade of grass proves THAT — and then we do the whole thing over again.”
Now a title card with the following epigraph appears to introduce our slapdash conclusion:
He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment... (Deuteronomy 32:4)
The Accuser stands in silent thought for a while, trying to accept the fact that his raison d’etre has expired. So, taking him by the hand, I lead him back to an oblong stone that’s about the size of a lover. Now I blindfold the Accuser and tell him to wait for his surprise. After drilling two holes in the angel-sized boulder at about the place where its loins would be if it were a saint (for the Accuser, like my old rap group, has two male members), and draping sheets of Mylar over the entirety of its surface; then cutting a pair of holes in this reflective material whose locations correspond with those drilled in the rock, I position the Accuser before this funhouse mirror-idol, very nigh unto it, so that he and his zelem are pelvis-to-pelvis (read: face-to-face like God and Moses [Exodus 33:11]), and I shout “OK, all ready — you can remove the blindfold now.”
Therefore the Accuser ends up becoming one with his divine vision, thinking that he has henceforth forfeited the ability to play Virgo in any future Zodiacs (hereto, his goal was to star as Mary in at least one Passion Play; but this will remain mercifully unfulfilled). And that’s how Rock & Roll was born.
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