Dear diary,
The Gospel of John is in the jacuzzi with John the Dipper. In steps John the Disciple Whom Jesus Loved.
“Hi,” sez the Gospel of John. The Dipper waves.
“Hi, what are you guys doing?” sez the newcomer.
“Just relaxing, trying to clear our minds,” sez John the Dipper. “As Diogenes the Dog said: City life is r-r-r-RUFF!”
“Tell me about it,” sez John Whom Jesus Loved. Then, after swishing his legs around in the water, he sez: “Where’s everyone else?”
“The Johns of the three New-Testament Letters are working on a small farm that they recently bought, and Johnny Patmos is out hustling,” replies the Gospel of John.
“And where does God fit into all of this?” asks the Loved One.
“That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out,” sez the Gospel. “If you follow the trajectory of his latest disturbances back to their presumed infractors, they do not quite converge; yet they suggest an area that is too big to be a point while still too small to constitute anything that might operate a body.”
Suddenly, flying robots having the shape of chimps descend en masse upon the jacuzzi, having been sent by the current U.S. President (whoever that happens to be by the time that you’re reading this: it could be anyone, from either side of the duopoly — I’m not trying to take sides), and they begin to shoot laser-beams from their… Actually, forget where they are shooting from; the point is that they’re trying to badger our trinity of bathing Johns with electromagnetic lasers. Which is dangerous, especially when water enters the equation.
“Ow!” sez the Gospel of John. “I’ve been hit in the shoulder! I’m bleeding some sort of clear ointment, just like an insect might squirt out if squished. I’m scared! — Am I dying?”
“No,” sez the Dipper, after inspecting the wound, while more lasers ricochet around the steam-room. “Just have your Jesus convert your fluids to wine. That way, they’ll clot and cauterize a little faster.”
“Ah, good idea,” sez the Gospel of John. “I’ll do that now.” (And he does this, and it works.)
Now the John Whom Jesus Loved Most emerges from the hot tub and points at the chimp-bots and yells: “You stupid monkeys are breaking the law against working on the Sabbath — did you know that? Oh! judging by the sound of the cessation of your laser-beam attack, I’m guessing that you never even read the Law of the LORD. Apparently I’ve taught you some new knowledge today. Maybe the engineers who manufactured you forgot to program you to be able to read Ancient Hebrew, and now you’ve converted to the faith of the truest truth because I basically broke down the logistics of that old message into modern, colloquial Greek, which you’re more familiar with...”
However, before this John could pronounce the word “engineers” in that last-printed sentence above, the winged chimp robots shoot him — once and then twice — directly in his forehead, and he splashes back naked into the jacuzzi and fouls the water with his gore.
“Hey now!” the Gospel of John rises up out of the tub and stands in righteous indignation, wholly disgusted by what he just witnessed. “If it was illegal for you to shoot your laser guns on the Prescribed Day of Rest, then I guarantee that it is illegal for you to murder saints on this selfsame occasion! You wing-monks are ruthless: I bet you’d even circumcise a sleeping Philistine! (Seriously, seeing what I’ve witnessed here today, I wouldn’t put it past you!) Moreover, I bet that you’d proceed with the aforesaid circumcision, even if the Angel of the LORD himself was standing nearby and whispering urgently: ‘No! Don’t do it! Stop! Leave the man alone! Don’t you know that the foreskin of the male member is the greatest proof that we’ve yet discovered for the argument that an intelligent Creator exists!? Therefore holster your phaser-guns, or the dew will rust them!’ Yes, instead of slipping your phasers back into their sheaths, my guess is that you would keep both of your weapons aimed at the organ in question and deliberately press and hold down both triggers so that deadly glowing beams shoot forth and perform the procedure regardless of the heavenly advice.”
And the flying chimp-bots allow this second victim to finish his speech, because they find his prophecy interesting. But, as soon as he leaves off talking, they blast him in the exact same fashion that he predicted that they would do to his hypothetical Philistine. Their lasers zap John’s Gospel right in its Lazarus.
But, at this point, the scene and mood of the paperback titled The Seven Spirits of Saint John, which is now The Five Johns, changes and becomes more gentle and humane, as it turns its focus on Johns 1 thru 3 of the canonized epistles, who, in a subplot, have all decided to become small farmers. This pivot towards pleasantness is something that we remember from our initial few readings of this airplane novel. So my audience, Pig and Humper, who have been listening to each of my recitals of the book, are now able to relax (hereto, they had been on the edge of their seat, biting their nails in suspense about the fate of John’s Gospel and Jesus’ beloved). We all enjoy a good nap, as I read the next ten thousand words, which describe the daily routine of Johns 1 thru 3 while listing in detail all the crops that they choose to grow.
The flying robot-chimps visit the Farmer Johns, and the Farmer Johns feed them, so they wax happy. They feed them table-salt. This is the robot-chimps’ favorite food.
But, as we all knew was bound to happen again; because the words of a storybook might seem different every time you hear them, although they’re condemned to trace the identical path toward doom; I say, the part that we all dreaded now comes up: Little Johnny Patmos exacerbates the climate chaos that Johns 1 thru 3 have been suffering during the final few chapters; then he detonates all the Weapons of Mass Destruction and effectively ends the world.
“The End,” I close the book smartly. My friends Pig and Humper Bun are asleep.
I decide to wander away from the palm tree where we’ve been hanging out; I go and visit the filmmaker Robert Altman, and we take my speedboat over to Portugal and visit the poet Fernando Pessoa and all of his heteronyms. “Hi!” we say. “Hi!” they say. (“O my gosh, it’s a relief to be away from that stuffy room with all those Johns in it,” I think to myself. And Altman nods, smiling, because he hears what I just thought.)
So all of us begin riffing on this dimension, and we very quickly strike upon the Solution to Reality: We say in unison, “Let us appoint Mr. Altman to take the place of the Ancient of Ancients — everything will be better, then.” Therefore we implement this amendment.
Now there are multitudes of sailors who have been standing in long lines, waiting for their ships to arrive. So Fernando and I go and playfully push all the sailors off the dock, and they all laughingly agree to drown forever. Thus Fernando Pessoa and I become the ocean’s first pirates. We don’t bother to go to no school or get no certification: we just step right out and start swashbuckling unlicensed and illegally.
[To be continued...]
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