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Judgement"Desert island...what? What happened...shipwreck?! Where the hell am I?"
"Ahem!"
Startled, I wheeled around. A wild-eyed man grinned back at me, tapping the sign mounted atop the post on which he leaned. "Ask and ye shall receive," he smirked.
Warily, I stood up, plodded over to the sign, and read it aloud.
"'Welcome to the Desert Island of Hypothetical Philosophical Dilemmas. Abandon All Hope Ye Abandoned Here.' Oh, no," I groaned. "And...let me guess. You're the Hypothetical Psychopath About to Kill a Helpless Hostage."
"Only one?" sneered the stranger. "Try a hundred. I'm not *necessarily* about to kill them, though. We'll find that out shortly." He whisked his other hand out from behind his back, revealing a blackjack. "Naptime!"
...
"Wakey wakey!" The psychopath's mocking voice dragged me back out of my coma.
"Ow," I moaned as I woke up again, gingerly massaging a welt on the back of my head. "Playing your role to the hilt as usual, I see."
"Who's 'playing'? Anyhow, let's get down to business, shall we?" he chuckled. "As you can see, here we have the Hundred Helpless Hostages..." A grand sweep of his arm directed my gaze to my left, where a row of men and women lay ruthlessly bound and gagged.
"...here, we have the Thousand Thoughtless Thugs, just to make sure you don't try any silly heroics..." The psychopath gestured to my right. A battalion of ridiculously muscular men brandishing an assortment of nasty weapons glared back at me.
"...and here, of course, is our Dilemma." A final flourish drew my attention to the table in front of me. The table was bare except for a fist-sized steel cube sitting at its center. I picked up the cube and turned it over in my hands; the numbers '1' through '6' gleamed back at me from its etched faces.
"Here's the deal. I'm not going to slaughter these pitiful waifs -- no, at least not yet, for I am in a positively *whimsical* mood today!" the psychopath laughed. "First, we're going to play a little game. I'm going to roll this die," he said as he snatched the cube from my hand, held it up above the table, and dropped it unceremoniously, "*just* like this."
After bouncing about chaotically for a moment, the die chattered on the table top and came to a rest. A '6' shone from its upper face.
"Based on what I roll, I'm going to decide whether or not to bump off my charming guests over there." The psychopath waved casually towards his hostages. "But," he emphasized, "*you* must choose how the numbers will persuade me."
"You may select either of these two schemes," he said, tossing me a small metal plate with the following engraving:
"Scheme I: If a '1', '2', '3', or '4' is rolled, all of the hostages will be brutally murdered; if a '5' or '6' is rolled, they will all be set free. Scheme II: If a '1' is rolled, all of the hostages will be set free; if a '2', '3', '4', '5', or '6' is rolled, they will all be brutally murdered."
"And I suppose that if I refuse to choose...?"
The psychopath nodded. "You and all of my 'guests' will be put to death. With 100% certainty. Oh, and with a little torture thrown in for good measure. But you knew all that already."
"Uh...how can I be sure that the die is fair?" I gulped.
"See for yourself!"
I picked the die back up and gave it a few good tosses.
"Five...three...one...four...three...six...two...four..."
"Enough -- you're trying my patience," the psychopath scowled, grabbing the die from the table. "I assure you, the die is 'fair', as you would call it." He raised the die above the table once again, his hand in the same position as before.
"You have thirty seconds."
Panic-struck, I frantically read the engraving over once again.
"Scheme I...Scheme II...what? This isn't a 'dilemma'! Only a sadist or a complete fool would choose Scheme II if the die is fair! What kind of stupid game IS this? What are you trying to prove?!?"
"Five seconds," the psychopath whispered. A loud "CLICK!" emanated from the horde of thugs as its members activated their weapons in unison.
"ALL RIGHT! ALL RIGHT! SCHEME ONE!" I yelled just as the psychopath's hand released the die. The die bounced...bounced... chattered to a rest...
"HA HA HA! I rolled a '1', you poor slob!" the psychopath shrieked. "A hundred people die as a direct result of YOUR CHOICE! The Judge will attend to you shortly to administer your punishment." He grinned, pulled a nasty-looking knife from his pocket, and started a leisurely walk over to the row of hostages screaming helplessly into their gags. The thugs leveled their weapons directly at me, ensuring the psychopath's unimpeded progress towards his goal.
"But! But!" I sputtered. Before I could gather my thoughts to deliver any sort of rebuttal or plea, a giant human figure clothed in a black robe appeared on the horizon; within a matter of seconds, it had stomped thunderously across the island and stood directly in front of me. His visage was contorted with rage.
"You EVIL BASTARD!" the Judge bellowed, thrusting an enormous finger at me accusingly. "ANYONE with a smattering of REAL intelligence would realize immediately that the psychopath was going to roll a '1'! But you willfully IGNORED this fact, DIDN'T you?"
"Wha...what??"
"It all works out logically, using this incredibly sophisticated physics calculation here, given the particular way in which the psychopath dropped the die, the orientation in which he was holding the die before he relased it, and the values of merely a dozen universal constants, each to a paltry ten decimal places!" The giant held out a huge black book; the title, "Why Scheme One Was the Wrong Answer, You Unspeakably Sadistic Fool", was written in blood-red letters across its front cover.
"But! But! There's no way I could have...given what I knew...the rational thing to do...not even enough time!?..." I stammered impotently.
"IGNORANCE IS NO EXCUSE!" the Judge roared. He raised his gargantuan tome high above my head.
A gleefully spiteful cheering rose from the ranks of the Thugs. "Go, Judge! Squash him! Smash him! Make him pay!" they bleated. I glanced over at the psychopath; he grinned at me once again, waving "goodbye" with one hand while holding his knife over his first intended victim with the other.
"The Court finds the defendant...GUILTY!" the Judge guffawed. He let go of his book, and a horrendous wind engulfed me as the book raced downwards towards me, tumbling end over end over...
...
I found myself before a massive throne of gold and bone. The air was thick with a white luminous mist which cast a pale, eerie light on the area; the throne and I rested on a surface of clouds which undulated slowly beneath my feet. I could barely make out the silhouettes of many winged creatures circling above like vultures. Four hideous monsters, each covered with eyes and having six wings, crouched by the throne, repeating in a mind-numbing monotone,
"Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come."
"Huh? No! This *can't* be right," I said, snapping out of the hypnotic trance into which the beasts' chanting had lulled me momentarily.
A thousand clarions called out in an unearthly, warlike rallying cry. An angel said in a loud voice, "Fear God and give Him glory, for His hour of Judgement has come," and the monsters ceased their chanting. From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder. A whirlwind of reddish dust materialized on the throne; gradually, the dust coalesced into the shape of an oversized man. Three grotesque faces crowded onto its single misshapen head, and its body assumed the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A giant iron hammer resembling a gavel rested in His lap. The Lord God gripped the handle of His hammer tightly in an angry fist, and shook its blood-stained head in my direction.
"We have an UNBELIEVER in our midst!" He shouted triumphantly. I heard hundreds of spitting sounds in the air above me, and drops of phlegm began raining down upon my head. "Unbeliever! Hammer him! Crush his skull! Burn him! Make him beg for mercy!" the angels jeered.
"QUIET!" the Lord God thundered, and the angels fell silent. Six gleaming red eyes gazed into mine. "So, unbeliever! How does it feel to discover that your years of philosophizing and 'proving' my non-existence have come to naught, and that you are about to be Judged most mercilessly as a result?"
"But! But!" I sputtered. "I thought about this stuff for YEARS! As objectively as I could, and to the best of my ability! How can I be morally blamable for concluding that Christianity was probably bullsh..."
"I WILL NOT TOLERATE THE UTTERANCE OF SUCH HERESIES IN MY PRESENCE!"
The Lord God waved his gavel wildly in a fit of ineffable rage; a hapless angel whose flight path intersected the hammer's exploded into a flurry of bloodied feathers, and a crumpled clarion landed in the clouds by my feet.
"DAMN! SEE WHAT YOU MADE ME DO?!"
The Lord God regained some semblance of composure, then hissed through three sets of clenched teeth. "Ignorance is no excuse! All of those nagging doubts and apparent contradictions swimming around your puny little mind were completely reconcilable. But you blew it."
"What?! Some of Christianity's flaws seemed so *totally* ridiculous that..."
"To a mere mortals like you -- even some of the most intelligent ones, I might add -- that might have *seemed* to be the case. I must admit that some of My aspects are impossible for you cretins to comprehend or predict. Not unlike your perverse psychopath's little die-rolling 'Dilemma'," the Lord God chortled. "However, I assure you, they *are* completely reconcilable; it all works out logically, using this incredibly complicated philosophical argument here, which is completely beyond the grasp of you pathetic humans and relies on approximately two hundred historical facts of which you were all blissfully unaware." A book appeared in His hand, and He held it out for me smugly.
"But! But!"
"BUT IGNORANCE IS NO EXCUSE!" the Lord God roared.
"But YOU gave me my pathetically inadequate faculties! And YOU set up this whole stupid perverse game YOURSELF! And the only crime for which I am being tried here is my offense of YOUR self-righteous sensibilities by falling into YOUR OWN TRAP!" I hollered. Heaven echoed with the ear-splitting, mocking laughter of the Lord God and all His angels. "So what's your POINT?"
The four hideous beasts began repeating another chant:
"Holy, holy, holy,
is the Lord God Almighty,
who was, and is, and is to come;
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit;
the Creator, Psychopath, and Judge."
"Now, of course, not all of my pathetic creations are going to wind up with a fate quite as mournful as your own," God chuckled wickedly.
"If that were the case, I wouldn't be left with any subjects to Lord over up Here."
A throng of zombielike creatures stumbled out from the mist and crowded around the throne. A few grinned evilly at me; the others smiled and stared sweetly up at the Lord God with unquestioning adoration.
"No -- as you can see, I had the foresight to create plenty of sadists and fools who picked Scheme II, despite how evil or stupid it might have seemed to mere mortals like you," He guffawed. "And you thought that was proof of My inconsistency!"
All the angels burst into spontaneous laughter once again, as did a few of the zombies. The other zombies gingerly massaged the curious scars which marred their foreheads, and giggled uncertainly with the rest of the crowd.
"Naturally, I had to 'help' some of them a bit along the way."
The Lord God reached down into the mass of the undead, pulled out one of the more nauseatingly fawning zombies, and placed it in His lap.
"I pull on their heart strings here and there, just to make sure that their gullibility isn't misdirected towards some less worthy religion." The little zombie gave the Lord God as big a hug as it could, and He patted its head gently.
"I didn't bother with you, though," the Lord God sighed.
"And why is that?" I asked sourly.
"Didn't feel like it, I guess," God shrugged. "But then I never claimed that my brand of 'justice' was anything but arbitrary, did I?"
He flicked his finger at the little zombie's head, sending it sailing into the mist and out of sight. The zombie's headless body remained briefly, hugging Him as before, before crumbling into a pile of reddish dust.
The Lord God brushed the dust from His lap. "Anyhow, let's get down to business, shall we?"
The clouds on which I was standing suddenly began to give way, causing me to fall on my knees. "Oh, how quickly they all kneel in the presence of the Lord," God laughed. "However, much as I'd like to watch you squirm right now, I'm afraid I have other heretics to attend to."
Plumes of sulfurous smoke broke the cloudy surface at my feet, and the sounds of roaring flames and billions of lung-shredding screams of agony reached out to me from below. I clawed desperately at the misty floor in a frantic attempt to prevent myself from falling through.
The Lord God stood up from his throne and strolled over to the site of my struggles. As if on cue, a hundred angels chanted,
"You are just in these Judgements,
you who are and who were, the Holy One,
because you have so Judged."
"Kiss your ass goodbye," He whispered, flashing me a final grin before walloping my hands with His gavel. I slipped through the cloudy earth, plunging downward, tumbling end over end as the air grew hotter and hotter...the roaring and screaming louder and louder...blistering heat! ...
...
"Wakey wakey!"
Nearly startled into cardiac arrest, I bolted upright in my bed, yelling loudly and scaring the wits out of my mother.
"AAAAAIIEEE!" she shrieked. "Oh, my goodness! You must have been having a bad dream!"
It took me a few moments before my nervous system had recovered enough for me to make any sort of reply. "Ye...yes, I guess I was."
Fragmented and confused memories danced through my mind -- a glistening steel cube; a wild-eyed man wielding a nasty knife; enormous books; beasts chanting mind-numbingly; the sensation of falling, tumbling end over end...
My mother patted me on the head. "There, there. Anyhow," she said, "your sister and I are heading out to church now. Are you *sure* you don't want to come with us?"
I began chuckling convulsively as the fragments in my brain abruptly fell into place and coalesced.
"Heh heh...heh...hah hah...Hah Hah. Hah Hah Hah! HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH!! AH *HAH* *HAH* <cough!> HAH HAH Haaaaaaaa <wheeze> aaah! ... "
Five minutes later, my lung-shredding, maniacal laughter still echoed throughout the house, my mother and sister having long since fled outside and driven off hurriedly to church.
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