The Power of a Little Boy
©Jason I. Stutz 2019
There is a boy sitting on a metal bench at the top of the subway stairs. The rumbling of trains come and go as the wet, cold rain soaks him through and through. He has no place to go, and the rain is getting heavier. He decides, with a sigh and a regret, to try to get inside the subway system with no money. The cops are waiting for him down below- they know already he is there. He is cold and it is rainy. His nose begins to drip and he feels a pneumonia stabbing his lungs. He stands with his heavy backpack and turns to go down the concrete stairs. They all know him down there, but his feet hurt too much in the cold, wet rain, to walk to another station.
He pulls the coat of the police officer who hates him. “What is it, Billy?” Billy could hardly speak, his misery was like a sword in his heart. “Get out of here, you vagrant!” shouts the officer who hates him, with a finger at the end of a strong arm pointing the way back into the cold. He would rather Billy die than find free warmth in the station he patrols.
But the pain in Billy’s heart is felt by the hateful policeman’s partner, and he cannot bare it but to reach into his pocket for a token and gives it to Billy. The hateful policeman glares his hate at his partner, who places his free hand on his partner’s shoulder and shakes his head as they look into each other’s eyes, one with pity, one with hate. Billy takes the token from the policeman’s gloved fingers. Billy is grateful. He stares up at the police officers staring at each other and decides it is best to just go.
He puts the token into the turnstile and goes to the subway platform to wait for a warm train to take him anywhere. It takes an excruciating twenty minutes in the damp cold of the underground before a train comes lumbering through. He can’t recognize the train line, as the letter or number has been covered over by vandals.
The doors split open and Billy finds the car with the most people who would heat the cold air with their bodies and breath. He cozies up to a crowd of adults all gripping one pole in the center of the car and fits his wet body between a man and his wife. They move away together, vexed by Billy’s interruption. The man stares at Billy and thinks he is on a dangerous path- not able to care for himself, and almost too old to be cute. Billy knows, from the look on the man’s face, “No one cares for you once you look like them. Before that, you’re cute enough to get anything you want.”
Eventually, the crowd in the subway thins and it is him and only two others, two bums clothed in black plastic garbage bags with all their plastic shopping bags full of dirty clothes strewn around them. Billy knows he will end up like them. He sits, as though in his underground castle, sideways on the seat and puts his feet up, just like the other bums are doing. They sleep deeply, snoring with their faces in their chests. The train bores on and on, stopping, starting again, until the end of the line.
The train doors open and he has to get out. He waits on the platform for it to turn around, but it has stayed there for over an hour. The sun is coming through the clouds above and things looked brighter for a time. His heavy backpack weighs on his back but he doesn’t think to put it down. The rain has slowed to a stop. He is cold and he is wet, but warmer than before, at least. But, now, his lungs are really hurting as he breathes. He can’t get enough air. His head spins and spins and he falls to the concrete and cracks his head- the weight of his heavy backpack pushes him harder into the ground. His head is bleeding and he is out cold. This is the first sleep he has had for almost four days.
As his body lay contorted and cold on the concrete subway platform of some station far out beyond the Rockaways, Shazzam! gently nudges the booth attendant to look through the security camera. She noticed a small mass lying across the westbound platform, and, at first, does not pay it any mind. Shazzam! nudges her again, and she looks closer- she sighs. Her fingers dial 911. “Yes. Yes. A boy, I think,” she says. “Yes.”
It was ten minutes before the two EMTs purged out of an ambulance with duffel bags and a cot. The first thing they noticed was the contorted form of a boy no more than eleven years old, his head offering forth a disc of fresh blood for three feet all around him like a halo.
He was still alive. But his body was ravaged by cold. Hypothermia. Pneumonia. Concussion. Fractured skull. Blood loss. Even his shoulder was torn from the weight of the fall. The EMTs thermometer said 105.2 degrees. He was threatening to die from not one, but many causes. This, however, is the moment (of course) that changed Billy’s life.
Billy’s soul rose up out of his living body as the EMTs sought to revive it. “Thank God I am still a kid,” thought his spirit. “They might have let me die if I’d been older.” His soul’s feet still sunk deep within his physical body. It wasn’t his final end, at last, this time.
Billy’s spirit followed his body closely as it was placed into the ambulance like a treasure, as into a china cabinet, a rare piece of porcelain only used on special occasions. Billy liked that feeling and hoped he didn’t have to die to experience it.
The ambulance drove away, lights flashing. At first, no sound, no siren; but the EMTs thought and sought each other’s eyes- the woman driver grew a steely look in her eyes and flipped the switch to turn the siren on! Traffic slowed and parted as she sped and wound through the New York City streets to the hospital. Billy liked that feeling, of cars letting him go. He felt important, this once. But he reminded himself- rather, God sped his thought to Billy’s mind- “You won’t have to die to feel important, again.”
At the hospital, the emergency room doctors and nurses stood around him with their blue masks and only their eyes visible. He liked the calm attention their eyes gave, even as they tried to save his life. Billy remembered those eyes deep, deep into his heart. “Again!” shouted the medic. His heart welled with gratitude and he suddenly stood up within his limp body like a jolt of lightning.
Shazzam!, half-asleep in worrisome dreams on his throne in his holy lair, jolted in his awareness to Billy’s awakening. Billy had remembered his life to come.
At once, Billy’s heartbeat steadied, his head’s wound clotted shut, the air in his lungs cooled and he opened his throat to cough out a huge mess of green phlegm upon the latex-gloved hand of a presiding nurse. His spirit at last looked through his physical eyes upon the doctors and nurses surrounding him. His heart pounded joy. His temperature was still rocketing dangerously as his immune system sought to resolve all the various damage in his brain and body systems. The nurses and doctors moved as one unit above him to shift his body back onto a rolling cot and shuttled him swiftly to another part of the hospital. Billy’s body collapsed and fell into a coma as they rolled.
He’ll be able to rest, now- hooked up electronically to monitors and pressure-sensitive tubes flowing into and out of his mouth and arms. Slowly, his body cooled and his spirit went away, away, away into the centuries. Shazzam! found him at the Egyptian pyramids 3,762 years before the Christ’s tiny feet set down upon the physical plane of Earth. There, Billy’s training began.
Billy sat at the feet of Shazzam! as he was on his throne, in the holy lair he built in the center of his near-infinite heart. Billy had never known such a presence- from his feet to his eyes, at once calm and ready to pounce! Head like a rooster, eyes like diamonds. His voice is what Billy remembers most: like the sound of many rivers, and then one little brook, and then a torrent of hurricanes, and then a one tiny cricket calling out into the endless night.
The primary message Shazzam! sought to convey to Billy that day is that he is Billy. Billy is Shazzam! As soon as he noticed Billy’s tender mind begin to crack, he softened and spoke of wondrous things, mainly of the long mission of emancipation the Earth and her inhabitants have been offered due to her anxious prayers. “You are the most powerful mortal alive, Billy.”
Billy’s face went blank. He had no reference for such a statement. Billy’s nose started to run and he wiped it with the sleeve of his shirt. Shazzam!, gentle father, smiled.
Billy sat cross-legged before the throne of Shazzam! They spoke a bit, and eventually, Billy’s curiosity grew in the direction of wanting to know Shazzam!’s character- what he is made of. “Shazzam!, I have never met a man like you, before. Few would even give me as much as the time off their watch as they hurried past me each day. How is it possible that I am of interest to you? Are you only a dream?”
“Billy,” began Shazzam! softly, ” the people who passed you without much more than a hazy recognition in their eyes all are just like you. None is any wiser, nor more developed, nor richer, nor more kind in their intellect, than they feel it is important to be. I, Billy- surely, I am I. And I see you as I am. And I treat you as I am. And I have been given by God to tutor you, and, even more, to transfer my power to you when the time is ripe. I am declining where I am, here, and as I head for wider spheres where my heart will soon expand, I leave the power I have built in this sphere as a flag, a record, a living word. I hope, it will be left to be given still, in and through you, Billy.”
Billy sat motionless, frozen at what Shazzam! has said. Shazzam! stressed not to worry. “If you feel fear, the time is not ripe, and there is much learning to be done.”
Hearing that, Billy relaxed and went back to enjoying the gift of Shazzam!’s attention, the ambiance of his being, this strange world that Billy yet somehow felt complete and at home in, even from the first second of his receiving awareness of himself there.
Billy pressed him, “If other men are not any more than me, than what are you that you seem so much more?”
Shazzam! sat patiently as Billy asked his question. Shazzam! became quite interested as this question of Billy’s seemed to be the only one he had. “It must be important,” thought Shazzam! What is the difference between himself, Shazzam!, and the people who have come and gone from Billy’s life? “There is no comparison, really,” laughed Shazzam! to himself. Shazzam! is aware that his knowledge and power are always only the leading-edge of his knowledge and power; he has power as long as his knowledge is ever-seeking greater spheres. Most other men find a bit of wisdom and are so impressed with it that they shut down all other learning! They find a single pearl, but it is not of great price- it is rather cheap in comparison to the humble mind of Shazzam! “Billy, you must never ask to compare man to man ever, again!” laughed Shazzam! “This is the difference between myself and them: I do not seek my worth in comparison to others! I seek to know myself!!”
Billy was brought to a powerful stillness inside of himself, then. His whole life, everyone he knew only stayed in his life as long as Billy allowed them to assert that they were somehow superior to and in charge of him, and, he thought, none have been very happy about having that charge over him. This left him with little choice to decide his own fate. Even the food he ate were the scraps from other’s plates, and the good bits all were given to other children who he believed had more right to it than he. He believed that was how it would be forever. Always, he was below everyone: shorter in comparison, weaker in comparison, more stupid in comparison, less bright- darker in comparison- more criminally minded than anyone else any of them ever knew.
Now, he understood for the first time that those were the shadows left on him by others. And he lied for his survival’s sake, taking upon other’s shadows so as to appear darker, himself. He wore other’s shadows like a cloak that camouflaged him, every day, day in and day out, walking the concrete sidewalks and subway platforms of New York City with the weight of a thousand elders hurled upon him, upon the already back-breaking weight of his backpack- the guilt and anxiety of his short years.
A safer house in Queens, NY
Billy walked down the sidewalk, his heavy backpack slung onto his right shoulder, weighing it down. He scuffled along, his face was long and he seemed to be in pain, as though his whole body hurt. Still, if a stranger looked deep into that face- contorted by pain and disappointment after disappointment- that stranger would see, deep, deep inside that face, the fire of Billy’s spirit, and the stranger would find his own reflection there- and the stranger would, somehow within him, startled as all the rest- feel halted from shouting the word that only Billy can say: “Shazzam!”
“Where are you going, Billy?” asks a bum.
“A home, I guess. I might go to a school later- if I don’t get to eat yet.”
“Oh… can I get you a burger?”
“Oh, yes, please, mister… uh… I gotta go to the home, now, though.”
“It’s okay, Billy. Another time, then.”
Billy sniffs and rubs his hurting belly. “Yeah.”
His shoulder is numb from the weight of his backpack- he doesn’t even recognize pain anymore. It’s just in him, on him, all the time.
As Billy walked up Bartleby Avenue, the leaves on the large trees had already started to fall and the breeze cut gently upon his face and hands. He feared the crunching of the leaves under his feet. What if they were someone’s and he was breaking them? He looked at the wrinkled paper in his hands: 1347 Bartleby Ave.
The white house stood prominently behind two trees. He opened the black iron gate and walked up the stoop to the door. “Knock, knock, knock” his soft knuckles rapped the door. No one came. He waited. His feet hurt. He waited. He put his backpack on the ground and sat on the concrete porch at his feet.
Eventually, someone came to the house, through the gate and acknowledged Billy. “Are you one of the new boys?” asked the tall, wool-suited woman. She looked like a librarian or a lawyer.
“I… I don’t know… I think so.”
“Come on in,” said the woman. She turned the key in the lock and opened the hard oak door to a wide entranceway. Upstairs there were the sounds of people moving about cautiously: a door closed slowly and a doorknob turned until the door clicked in the latch. A toilet flushed. Then sounded a dog growling.
“I’m here to see—”
“Oh, don’t worry about that, we’re all at home here. Once you learn the rules, you’ll be fine. Keep quiet, eat only at the scheduled times, do chores, go to school, and write your daily self-assessments to be handed in before bed.”
“Self-assessments?” asked Billy, concerned.
“Oh, you’ll get used to it.”
The governess noticed Billy talking with her daughter. She found Billy to be rather beautiful and saw a special light about him. She came upon him and told him to come with her upstairs and she’ll show him his living quarters. There was a bunk bed with three bunks in the room. She noticed Billy’s clothes and shoes were worn, thought a moment, and opened the closet, inside of which were various supplies. Out came a pair of red, canvas tennis shoes with white laces. “Try these on,” she said, with much aplomb.
Billy’s eyes grew wide and his excitement peaked as they were placed into his soiled hands. The canvas felt fresh and the rubber smelled good. He sat on the carpeted floor and removed his worn shoes. His socks were soiled, too. The Governess, determined to make this a memorable occasion, found a pair of socks for him, too. Billy was over the moon.
He laced the shoes up tight on his feet and stood up tall and straight. They fit pretty good. “Oh, thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” he cried.
The Governess smiled tightly and nodded her head at Billy. “Good!” she said. Now feel free to get something to eat before school. But remember to come home immediately after to check in and do your chores.
Safer, now
Billy tried to wrestle away from the governess as she held him with tight fists around his arms, snarling at his attempt to free himself. Billy pulled with all his strength. Finally, she broke him, and put him over her knee. She pulled his pants down. She placed her hand on his bottom and then spanked him a few times. Then, it was over shortly after it began.
“That wasn’t too bad,” he thought. “I will love this woman and she will care for me. At least I will be protected. I may be hungry half the time, but I will feel safe.”
And so it was Billy was safe, but for a weekly or so spanking for no reason, and he was still hungry, but half the time- that’s twice the time not hungry as he was before.
And Billy was happy, and quite a bit relieved. His school grades soared and his rare B+ was but a fluke. All he needed was stability and direction.
One day, though, his red shoes broke a lace as he was putting them on. He felt terrified and tried to hide the lace. But as he was running to catch the bus (as he was never late) his shoe flipped off and instead of continuing on toward the bus without a shoe as he knew he should have done, he failed that moral test (as he felt it to be) and reclaimed his shoe 10 yards back. He walked slowly back to it, admitting his defeat. As he bent to retrieve it, there before him stood the spirit only he could see. It appeared for a moment, said, “Hello, Billy,” and then disappeared, leaving Billy standing alone on the sidewalk, wondering what just happened.
Shazzam! saw only goodness in Billy, and he looked very intently for any evil. He sought Billy’s soul for his divine purpose, and was astonished at what he saw, even Shazzam! He also listened to Billy’s thoughts about his future and could not understand where he ever got the ideas that were inside of his head, about being a lawyer or a computer programmer “when he grows up.” What kid thinks about being a computer programmer?? Billy’s thoughts seemed out of harmony with the superhero Shazzam! beheld before him.
“Billy, can I talk to you?” Shazzam! appeared again, and then as quickly disappeared. Billy was getting nervous. He was certain he was being punished by God for missing the bus.
“I see you are quite anxious, but maybe I can help you find your way,” Shazzam! said, layers of meaning attached to his words. Again, Shazzam! appeared to Billy’s eyes just long enough to speak and then disappeared. Billy wanted to run. He searched behind him but there were too many people and he was afraid they would see this man and punish him. Even still, somewhere inside Billy he was waking up with each appearance of Shazzam! Something like a tiger growling in his solar plexus. Something inside Billy wanted to see him, as though his eyes were cleared and healed each moment he saw Shazzam!.
“Have you considered, Billy,” Shazzam! appeared,” that your purpose here is not what you have been thinking- that it’s not what people tell you you should be, but that your purpose was given before you were even born?” Billy’s mind halted. This was maybe a little too much for him. Shazzam! was aware that Billy’s mind was cracking and appeared again to place his hand gently upon his head and it healed Billy’s mind. Billy felt calm and awake.
“Billy, you are who you already are. Remember!” Shazzam! appeared and disappeared.
Billy collected his shoe and ran to the subway with his right heel slapping on the sole of his foot. He ran to the turnstile and hopped over before the man in the booth could see. The train rolled in hissing and shrieking on the rails, its dirty headlamp beaming forward into his eyes. Billy looked behind him and was relieved to see no one coming after him. He felt ashamed for stealing and shook with anger at himself, his stupidity. The doors opened near the back of the train and he stepped to the back of the car. The trained rocked to and fro- the doors between his car and the rear car split open on their own. The fresh breeze cleansed his spirit and he let the wind feed his smiling face.
A man noticed Billy, his shoes, his dirty face, and offered Billy a piece of fruit. Billy sought the kindness in the man’s heart with his gratitude, a hunger beyond all hunger seeking it. “Thank you, mister!” his face shining, eyes tearing at this small act of generosity.
The stranger tousled Billy’s hair. “Good luck, kid.”
Billy sniffed. “Thank- (gulp)… sir.” His voice trailed off. The stranger walked away, his wool trench coat waving like a flag, his hat crooked on his head. Billy watched him go, then turned back to the preeminent thought of his existence: FUTURE. All his anxieties were generated by it. “Thank you, Sir,” he turned his face upward and whispered to the man in the sky without thinking of what he was doing.
As the train bore on, Northbound, Billy missed his stop several times and finally, he let his thoughts go as they willed, like a wind he couldn’t resist any longer. The doors between his car and the rear car split open, again. There again, now, was Shazzam!, appearing and disappearing. The fire in Billy’s belly was getting stronger with each of Shazzam!’s appearances. Now, instead of wanting to run, he reached to the doors to find him, and they split open again on their own. Shazzam! was invisible. But, Billy felt him- he felt him as something he wanted and was promised a long, long time ago.
Billy stepped out and his red sneakers stood powerfully on the small platform between the cars. The noise and racket of the rumbling train etched in his ears and the breeze was somehow sweet. He smiled. And there appeared and then disappeared Shazzam!- so close to Billy- and Shazzam! shouted, “It’s time!” so loud that Billy’s spine shot upward like lightning and he was ready, he knew, but for what?
And Shazzam! at last appeared before Billy, soft like velvet, his head cocked like a rooster, eyes like diamonds; a genie, or an archangel- a superhuman man- Shazzam!! There, before Billy, he stood, hemorrhaging goodness, a wound of goodness giving forth like light, the eternal fountain of generosity that Billy’s soul had always sought.
Part II
Shazzam! found Billy’s spirit wandering around the Great Pyramids of Gaza, both wondrous and confused. He addressed Billy as his student and assured him he will be alright under his care while his physical body receives this crucial period of rest. Billy trusted Shazzam! and went with him to his lair, a large, underground cavern that felt unaffected by the passage of time. They sat on the dirt floor while the flames of a small campfire burned between them. Shazzam! set to teach Billy all he would need to learn in preparation for his mission. Years passed in this realm as Billy learned from Shazzam! Once he had returned to the lower plane where people were born, lived their lives, worked, joyed, suffered, ate, loved, hated, hoped, died- only a month had gone by. But this is the story of Billy’s training under the fatherly guidance of Shazzam!
Head like a rooster, eyes like diamonds: Shazzam! used his head like an arm of self-expression, punctuating his thoughts in a dramatic dance. Often, he would stretch his neck out very far so that it seemed his head was stretched several feet out from the rest of Shazzam!’s body; or he would extend it toward an object to point, or stretch very close to Billy’s face with his head if he said something very important. Billy often wondered amazed at what he had seen with his own two eyes, but Shazzam! acted at all times naturally.
Shazzam! meandered through a dialogue with Billy, not only explaining to Billy what was to happen, but demonstrating marvels Billy would only later comprehend. Shazzam!, by turns, came to the subject he had hesitated around, and mentioned God to Billy, and watched as Billy considered this word.
Billy had not heard this word before. He, of course, had heard people use it, but it hadn’t felt substantial in any way until he heard Shazzam! make reference to the source and progenitor of all creations.
“Shazzam!, what do I have to do with God?,” asked Billy suddenly, his eyes like mountain lakes, waiting for Shazzam!’s words to dive in. Shazzam! felt very surprised. Shazzam! was only very rarely surprised by anyone or anything.
Shazzam! moved his feet on the dirt floor of his lair from his seat on his throne. Shazzam! felt anxious to Billy, as never before. Shazzam! suddenly seemed almost as small as Billy.
Suddenly, Shazzam! rose from his throne as though repelled by its significance. He turned and glared at it as though to separate himself from something that had held him from his true freedom.
“What’s the matter, Shazzam!?” cried Billy.
Shazzam! suddenly cringed at that name, as though Billy had read him a writ of his many sins. He walked across the dirt floor of that underground cave into a field of energy that opened like a door only he could see; it opened, he entered, and then the energy portal closed with Shazzam! in it, and Billy was left to himself sitting on the cave floor. Alone in his hidden room, now, Shazzam! bent over himself, uncertain whether to vomit or cry. He breathed deep and his lungs rattled with phlegm as he breathed some more.
Shazzam!’s eyes filled with tears and he wept as his whole body convulsed with the grief of the meanness of his own humanity. God reached a gentle hand down upon Shazzam!’s shoulder. Love and compassion flowed through His fingers into Shazzam!, embuing him with the energy he will need to finish his task.
“Thank you… thank you… thank you… thank you…” cried Shazzam!, a word spoken through every realm of his eternal soul.
When Shazzam! at last emerged from his hidden chamber, Billy was sleeping sweetly like a dog on the dirt floor of the lair. Shazzam! eyed the throne with caution and approached Billy where he lay. Shazzam! saw how, beneath the rough treatment he had found in his life thus far, Billy’s heart shone clear and bright as the diamonds in Shazzam!’s eyes. Shazzam!’s lips began to tremble and tears welled in his eyes. He knelt to Billy, placed the palm of his hand on his ribs, and sighed. “Thank you…,” Shazzam! said from another dimension of his being. “Thank you…,” he cried, and scooped Billy’s sleeping body from the dirt, rose with him in his arms and placed him tenderly on the wide seat of the throne that has, until now, known only Shazzam!’s bottom. “Thank you…” his whole chest heaved his breath and his heart nearly burst from Love.
Billy stretched sweetly between sleep and wake as his body touched the throne for the first time. As the gold of the throne touched his bottom, he became gently charged with the power the throne signified. Golden lightning flowed into his body, nourishing his nerves, his bones, his brain, his heart (the golden lightning lingered long nourishing his heart), and finally, Billy’s solar plexus whereupon all power would be given to him to work marvels, and to save humankind from dark forces that wish to destroy humanity. Shazzam! smiled noticing Billy sweetly smiling as he became nourished by the golden lightning, his body in full agreement.
After many minutes, Billy awoke fully to find himself vivified, and full of the electrical power he had only before felt in the presence of Shazzam!, now, in himself. His awareness widened until he realized where he lay. Upon the throne of all Goodness, his body rest. He marveled at his own body, the vitality he felt. All his pains were gone.
While this was happening in the spirit realm, Billy’s comatose body that lay in the hospital bed hooked up to beeping, dotting machines, suddenly surged with equivalent energy to what his spirit felt in that dimension far away. The machines suddenly beeped faster, and his respiration became strong. The attending nurse turned toward the change in sound of his life support machines and smiled with relief before going on to other patients.
Back in the lair, Billy sensed… something… he had always known, always felt… something… arising in his blood, surging in his spine… a sense of purpose he had always known… something hidden beneath the many voices of adults and older children telling him to do this, believe that, be such and such a way in such and such a situation and he’d be a good boy and avoid punishment if he did these things as he was told. Billy, marveled at his feelings of himself, as Shazzam! smiled thoughtless awareness at Billy. Billy turned his face to see Shazzam!’s smiling face creasing every line of a smile he gave. Billy was realizing who he is.
Billy is bright. Billy is so bright that he didn’t know it. His light bounces off the skin of everyone he meets and he thinks they are beautiful, not him. Often (often enough, for Billy’s sake), someone senses Billy’s only weakness and takes him for a ride, as he gives and gives his light to make them appear more beautiful than they have the right to feel. Often (often enough, for Billy’s sake), they purge their ugliness onto Billy and claim that their ugliness is his, as Billy takes their face onto his own.
“I am so ugly and they are so beautiful,” he says. And they salivate and grind their teeth, “Yes. Yes!” they say. “I am beautiful and you are ugly,” they wickedly laugh inside themselves.
But because Billy has not learned to hate, he eventually is returned from the old man’s joy ride on Billy’s road of light, and finds himself, again, receiving the light from above, unknowingly to himself. “What a special man. I’m so glad he chose me to spend the day with. I feel so lucky,” he says.
Meanwhile, the old man drives away literally drunk on Billy’s energy, gurgling his own saliva, suddenly sweeter than he could remember. “Yes, yes, yes!” he shouts as he turns the wheel down 7th Avenue. He says he’ll look for Billy if Billy’s around, but deep down, ashamed, he’ll avoid his bright gaze at all cost so he can forget, forget, forget what he has done.
Billy is there, again, on the metal bench he seems to squander his youth sitting upon- above the subway platforms ruled by the one hating and the one loving policemen.
“What is it, Billy?” says the one hating officer, as Billy presents his tearful face to him, always him, first. And the one loving officer pulls a token from his thick winter coat and hands it to Billy without turning his face from his partner’s eyes. And Billy’s eyes, too, are still riveted upon the face of the one who hates him, for what seems like the longest time, still glaring his hate, building day by day at his partner shaking his head incredulously in return. Finally, he tears away through the turnstile, with a heart full of gratitude for the officers, for the warmth of the station, and for the impending trains coming and going like Viking ships taking him safely on an adventure.
Billy sat on the throne of Shazzam! as Shazzam! sat cross-legged at his feet. Billy and Shazzam! had become very relaxed in each other’s company and Billy had not yet even considered that Shazzam! would leave him and set him independently on his path. Shazzam! sought to teach everything he could in so short a time as he now had. The more relaxed and at ease Billy became, the more self-possessed in Shazzam!’s company, the closer, Shazzam! knew, he was to the end.
Billy was as of yet a young boy- however, Shazzam! could see very clearly that he was becoming a young man. Two energies existed in Billy- the boy and the man he was becoming- one moving day by day toward the other emerging more and closer and closer. Eventually, they crossed paths, and Billy stood, perplexed, facing neither his youth nor his manhood, but watching the two discover themselves inside of him. As though two individuals were walking in opposite directions on the same road, eventually there came a point in time when they would meet. Here is the story of that happening:
Shazzam! asked Billy what he thought of the people in his life. Billy conversed a while, always offering the kindest possible words- the governess, the hateful cop and the loving cop, the man who took him for a ride, on and on- mostly, he could only express gratitude for these people and speak of how generous and nice they are. Shazzam! listened and nodded graciously. “Yes, yes, Billy- these people who you mentioned do have these qualities as you suggest.” Billy sat innocently on the seat of the throne, expecting nothing more.
Shazzam! stood all of a sudden from the ground where he sat and rubbed his hairy cheek with his hand. He cleared his throat and extended his pointer-fingered hand. His mouth moved as though to say something…
“What is it, Shazzam!?” asked Billy.
Shazzam! felt rather awkward, as though he were about to tell a child that Santa Claus does not exist as was believed, or that Jesus wasn’t actually hung on a cross when he was killed. “These people who you have shared these moments, hours, days, months, and years getting to know…”
Billy was feeling rather anxious. He had no idea what Shazzam! was about to say.
“What if I told you they aren’t all what they seem to be?…” said Shazzam!, and he left it at that, for Billy to ponder for a good, long while. Billy became very curious and a bit anxious.
He reached his young mind as far as his young mind could reach. Finally, he laughed a large laugh and Shazzam! felt momentarily relieved. “I already know what you are going to say, Shazzam!, and it’s not a big deal! The governess told me she is my mother but I know she was only saying that so that I would feel more comfortable living there with her! She is very kind and generous.”
Shazzam! was very worried, not for Billy, for he knew Billy would be fine, but for those in his life. He silently prayed to God that Billy would find no cause to harm them once he “saw” who they are inside. God looked closely at Shazzam!’s request and laughed. “You know I have no control over a person’s free will, Shazzam! But, perhaps there is something I can do, as I understand your predicament.” God entered a channel in Billy’s heart where Billy welcomed God, and placed a piece of His own consciousness there, never to be removed, not even if Billy died. Billy suddenly sat straight up, aware of something happening within him, and then yawned. Shazzam!’s lips trembled almost weeping from emotion- his face rippled in the Light of God as shown in Billy’s heart. Shazzam! felt more confident, now, and proceeded to share with Billy his insights.
“Billy, surely you are a very compassionate young man to forgive the governess her lie.” Billy shrugged his shoulders, knowing it was an obvious omission of the truth and nothing he should have been concerned about. “I would like to show you a little more… in depth… some things about these people in your life.”
Billy’s eyebrows raised a bit- he felt a shock of awareness already entering him, to his surprise.
Shazzam! showed Billy in his mind Shazzam!’s impression of these individuals. The governess, the loving cop and the hateful cop, the man who drove him in his car, the man who offered to buy him a hamburger. Shazzam! showed him the inner lives of those who showed genuine kindness to Billy, first. Billy’s heart swelled almost to the point of bursting when he had seen such tender truths as these people experience in their thoughts and hearts. Billy felt his assessments of all people were hereby confirmed and he felt very pleased, not only with these people, but with himself for guessing rightly.
“Now,” Shazzam! warned, “I have something to show you about certain others in your life.” Billy knew instantly that something wasn’t quite right with his assessments of those certain others, and he felt a terrible regret for them- and, now, Shazzam! showed him.
“Billy, ” said Shazzam!, ” you are going to have to accept that you have been very naive- so naive, in fact, it almost cost you your life.” Billy’s heart reflexively convulsed upon hearing these words. Shazzam! continued, “It surprises you that a person could, out of sheer depravity, cause you harm for the sake of their own pleasure? could take advantage of this, your only weakness? Because of your naivete allowing them to do so? Inviting them, almost, to rake you of your vital energy for mere moments of the drug you feed them… the drug of believing their lies!!”
Billy’s mind began to crack. Suddenly he was two people- one, a sweet, believing boy who would never disobey… like… anyone!– and the second, a frightened, even angry, even rageful man who had been trying to reach Billy the boy for years and years. Here on this path, the two sides of Billy finally approach each other and met- one full of rage and grief at Billy the boy’s actions in the world, his failure to protect himself, his willful belief in those who hurt him, now staring into his face, sweating, lips quivering with rage, boring holes into Billy the boy’s eyes, in, through to his brain. “Get it?” snapped Big Billy.
Little Billy quaked, and God’s consciousness moved in his heart, as he was frightened- now, not for what these others have done to him, but for what might become of him if he failed to hear Big Billy’s voice, again. Billy quivered and squeaked a tiny voice through his choking throat, nodding submissively to his Big Self. “G-g-got it,” he said as tears streamed down his face.
And God laid his hand upon Big Billy’s chest, softening the rage that lived there. “Get it?” said God to Big Billy.
Big Billy breathed and let go the fire of rage from his chest for the first time. “G-got it,” Big Billy stammered to God as tears streamed down his face- he sobbed and moaned bent over himself within the heart of God.
Shazzam! sat on his throne, now, snacking on ambrosia as he and Billy laughed about the state of the world. “It’s very difficult!” he and Billy agreed, laughing, again, from their bellies to their chests. They had found a new level of relaxation in each other’s company, and there seemed to be no thoughts too irrelevant to be expressed.
Just then, a rumbling in the infrastructure was clearly felt. The walls of the lair vibrated, even though it existed in a dimension removed from third-dimensional reality and the city where Billy was born and lived. They sat motionless and listened. Shazzam!’s demeanor, still calm, shifted to a new stream of thought.
“Billy,” said Shazzam!, “I almost neglected to ask you: have you ever had the desire to learn how to fight?”
Billy’s posture became rooted like an arrow to the earth beneath the cave floor. He acknowledged within himself the enormity of the question Shazzam! had just asked him.
Shazzam! nodded and rose from his throne to begin the training of Billy’s fighting temperament. He motioned Billy over to a circular patch of dirt that until now had not shown any use. Billy took Shazzam!’s fatherly hand like a child, meekly, but with his heart glowing around a small, burning coal.
Once they had found their space inside the dirt circle, Shazzam! invited Billy to rush him with all his force. Billy acknowledged that he felt no violence in him toward Shazzam!, and that he might be a very poor opponent.
“Billy, this is the condition of your heart from which to fight all fights, always. If ever you feel violence in your heart, you have already lost the fight- and your own soul.”
Billy stood like a young sapling several feet from Shazzam!, a great tree. Instantly, Billy recalled to mind a kitten he once found in a garbage can above the subway platforms. He was transported for hours without any other thoughts, playing with this kitten, so loved it was by him. He found scraps of discarded meat to feed it, which it hungrily devoured. It followed Billy if he got up from his metal bench, and rushed to bite and scratch at his feet and ankles as though they were small animals. Billy felt the the kittens joy and playfulness, attacking him. He held, now, that kitten in his heart. His eyes became bright and fierce! Billy giggled as his smile gleamed. Shazzam!’s eyes opened wide and his heart ticked fast in surprise! Shazzam! howled with joy as Billy pounced! Billy first toppled Shazzam! to the dirt, and they howled and whooped as they burst laughing! Rolling, tumbling, crawling across the dirt floor of that Holy Lair! Shazzam! matched Billy’s strength like a joyful father. “Yes!” cried Shazzam! “Yes!” laughing and whooping, they wrestled with all joy!
Suddenly, Billy felt rising within his chest the power that would serve him forever more. Without any forethought, Billy opened his throat and cried with all might: “Shazzam!!!”
Shazzam!’s eyes grew so wide like vast galaxies dancing side by side, and his mouth opened agape. “Yes,” he whispered.
Billy grew in a pillar of light and energy to his true stature, and, laughing with all joy, lifted Shazzam! from the dirt floor of that Holy Lair to spin him like a helicopter in the air above him.
Shazzam! whooped!! as his body completed the journey through gravity in perfect stillness and relaxation, landing like a cat, or a champion gymnast, on his two feet facing his darling protege. Shazzam!’s eyes glowed gold like two hot suns, in awe and adoration of Billy, who had awakened, now, the coil of energy that fed the power of his true nature.
Billy, surprised by himself, began to analyze what had just happened, and began to slowly shrink back to his child state. “Shazzam!” he cried, again, and he lowered himself all the way down to the dirt floor at his master’s feet. Thus, he knew already to become Shazzam! and to retract again into ‘Billy,” as he felt want to do, whenever he needed to.
Shazzam! approached Billy to embrace him, and Billy received him in a state of partial shock, partial joy, comprehending the enormity of what he just experienced.
Shazzam! lowered his face to Billy’s. “I could have given you power to say the name at any time, Billy,” speaking it to the crown of his head. “You had to realize it in yourself.” Shazzam!, laughing and crying, holding Billy close to him, he opened their embrace and held him with two arms, “You are ready, now, at least to begin acting on all you have learned. It’s time to return.” Billy sought Shazzam!’s face for other answers but found no truth but the one he just spoke. Billy nodded. His heart glowed.
Billy sought in his mind for his physical body as it lay, still comatose on the hospital bed, in New York City, the year 1,985 after the Christ’s tiny feet first set down upon the expectantly waiting Earth. Billy and Shazzam! embraced each other one last time.
Shazzam! offered him some advice. “Each morning when you wake from sleep, sit in stillness for a little while and the memories of our experience in this lair will return. Do it at night before sleep after each day, as well. If you do not, our experience together will begin to feel as though it were only a dream and you would begin to discount it as such, despite your heart’s realizations, here. If you do not sit in stillness in the morning after you wake and at night before sleep, all would be lost- for you, for me… and for the world.”
Billy, startled by his words, agreed and sought Shazzam!’s face for more advice, any advice he would wish to give. But that was all, and Billy now knew that he had learned all he needed from Shazzam! in order to begin his heart’s mission. In his mind, again, he sought his body as it lay in the hospital bed. His mind became an inter-dimensional portal- he “went” fully and completely into the heart of his mind, and emerged, again, into his still healing, half-broken body where it lay.
The shock of pain hit Billy immediately and he felt dizzy from his wounds, still quite far from healing. Also, to his surprise, memories of all the events, all the choices he had made that put himself into those situations that contributed to his being there in that hospital bed, flashed like cards in a Rolodex across his mind’s eye. He knew, now, how irresistible was this fate. Gratefully, he understood himself much better, now. He is done, finished bouncing from one person’s will to another person’s will. He saw, also, that he had much to disentangle himself from- but, now, he knew how to begin.
Billy’s physical eyes opened as his spirit, again, sought the world those eyes knew. The attack had not happened yet to the city. It was felt first in the dimension of Shazzam!’s Holy Lair. Billy has returned with all his power to the world he once knew himself to be entirely subject to like a slave- but, now, his rule is more powerful than any president, any king, and they all would soon seek counsel with him before anything they would ever decide to do in and of themselves.
The machines around him in the hospital room beeped and toned faster. He felt calm. The fullness of his power could never leave him as long as he willed it. Only his naivete for people’s lies, his sympathy and confusion about their ills, about the insufficient truths they tell, could make him lose the power that is rightfully his own.
Now, how can he prepare for the worst about to come?
Part 3: Mirror of Sound
Dr. Eifelstein overheard his least favored colleagues talking in hushed tones in a courtyard near the Science building. He stood behind a large pillar as Dr. Holmes, told a colleague, Dr. Eagril, of a meeting in secret with a renowned scientist whereupon he will reveal his secret project. Dr. Eifelstein grinned too-pleasingly as he emerged from his hiding place to greet them.
“Hello,”
“Hello,”
“Hello,”
said the three men- the two colleagues now suspicious, as always, of Dr. Eifelstein’s demeanor. A smile on Dr. Eifelstein’s face, they have learned, meant something terrible was brewing in him.
Dr. Eifelstein mentioned something about “the board” and how pleased they will be for any new research to boost the reputation of the University. The two colleagues watched him speak, always amazed at his ruthlessness in every word he said, and had no reply, only stayed watching him after he had punctuated his vigorous statements. Dr. Eifelstein looked confused. Hadn’t he rattled them?
“So, that is to say, if you know of any new research…” he laughed and slapped, awkwardly the shoulder of Dr. Holmes, “you’ll be very well with the board!” he sang. Dr. Holmes stayed motionless, observing him. Then, when the social discomfort was quite enough, he smiled and laughed a generous laugh and said he’d be sure to tell them should something of interest like that come his way.
Dr. Eifelstein, pleased, now, by Dr. Holmes’s promise, felt at ease to return to his spiteful, evil demeanor and grinned. What a relief to not have to be amiable anymore, eh, Dr. Eifelstein!? So much effort! “Be sure to do that,” he glared icily into Dr. Holmes’s eye.
Dr. Holmes shuddered and said, “Hmmm…” watching Dr. Eifelstein very carefully, now.
Dr. Eifelstein unlocked his icy gaze from Dr. Holmes’s eyes and relaxed (as far as Dr. Eifelstein ever allowed himself to relax). “Well, then. You must be teaching your Physics class about, now… teach the basics well, Dr.!”
“Hmm…” said Dr. Holmes.
“Ufff,” said Dr. Eagril who shook his head from disgust. They all just stood there until Dr. Eifelstein pressed on their shoulders to move them forward. “Onward, now,” he said. But they didn’t take his cue and stayed with their feet, even as their bodies swayed from his hand pressure. “Onward, I say,” he demanded. Dr.s Holmes and Eagril looked at each other warmly and smiled and nodded.
“See you soon… Dr.” they smiled and said goodbye with a nod. But there was something sinister about separating. The phrase “divide and conquer” came to the mind of Dr. Holmes as he maneuvered through crowds of students toward his class.
Dr. Eifelstein immediately called security from the nearest phone and requested to have them followed.
The following evening, Dr. Eifelstein’s telephone rang. His red phone purred until he picked it up. “Ring-ring. Ring-ring,” he was salivating from excitement, holding the precious gift in his hands, sure to be evil news against his least favored colleagues.
“They are meeting very soon. The two are meeting the scientist on Market and 3rd St. at the scientist’s mansion.”
“Stay with them. I’ll need you when I arrive.” Click.
Each sings its own song, thereby adding to the Great Chorus!
The three men could be seen gathering around a small table in what appeared to be the scientist’s living room. Comfortable, linen couches provided a welcome atmosphere in the spacious room.
The scientist, Dr. Moses, could be heard explaining his invention. “By utilizing the aspect of the brain called mirror neurons- a very key part of human, emotional intelligence whereby we are able to experience others’ victories, failures, and hopes as though they were our own, we can provide healing across broad subsets of psychological, physical, and emotional suffering. This machine I have invented, and will show to you, now, responds to the electromagnetic frequencies encoded by the brain and heart, which like a key, effects the machine to respond in such a manner as to provide vibrationally harmonizing frequencies to the individual or individuals in its sphere of influence. This sphere of influence, as you will see, could be very small, so as to effect a single atomic structure… or, it can be very large, so as to effect the entire planet… or beyond.” The Dr.s Holmes and Eagril’s eyes and ears both became excited and their hearts, too, began to beat stronger and faster.
“Dr. Moses,” interjected Dr. Holmes. “I am astounded by what you are describing… I would believe it were only a concept if you had not already told me you have the machine in your grasp!”
“I understand, Dr. Holmes. It is amazing even to me. But let me say more.” They assented to let him speak. “We are simply providing a helpful, vibrational support to groupings of traumaticized frequencies in the patient’s electromagnetic, vibrational field of energy.”
“This is amazing research, Dr. Moses. Surely this could help a great many people!”
“And it is very inexpensive and easy to build- hehe- once you have the formulas grasped.” The Dr.s Holmes and Eagril’s eyes both filled with excitement and sought Dr. Moses to offer even a tiny fragment of his math. Dr. Moses giggled, seeing the boyish enthusiasm on his beloved compatriots’ faces. Shyly, his face red, embarrassed even himself, he told them. “The math works out precisely, gentlemen, with various updates to the work of Pythagoras and the evolutionary spiral patterns of Fibonacci.”
Dr. Holmes gasped loudly, careful not to disbelieve what would be proven to him very soon. “Fibonacci! I am aghast!” He laughed. “You hippie!”
Dr. Moses laughed, sardonically. “We all have our pets, don’t we Dr. Holmes?!”
Dr. Holmes blushed deep red in his face as he looked up submissively to Dr. Moses. “Touche.” They all laughed, heart laughs, like rolls of jolly thunder that sounded as one.
“Do not fear,” he chided Dr. Holmes affectionately, “this machine’s effect reaches even into the realm of astrology, as planets, stars… and humans, share vibrational frequencies, too.”
Dr. Eagril patted Dr. Holmes supportively on his back. His face, however, was showing increasing intensity. “Dr. Moses, I beg your pardon. You said “updates” to Pythagoras’ work…?”
Dr. Moses nodded affirmatively, pleased by his line of questioning. “I did, Dr. Eagril, dear compatriot. And I will show you everything. For now, let me say, briefly, that the updates refer to Pythagoras’ explorations of resonance and dissonance.”
“I don’t know of such work, Doctor,” inquired Dr. Eagril. Dr. Holmes agreed with Dr. Eagril.
“Of course, you do, Doctors. His work in vibrational scales all hinge upon resonance and dissonance. Sound itself is impossible unless two particles are resounding with each other. His is a description of vibrations relevant to varying degrees of tension on strings of varying thickness, where the string holds the tension between two opposites. Yes? But, ours… dare I say, “ours” doctors?” he pierced them with a passionate glance, which they both affirmed to themselves enthusiastically in their hearts. “Ours is a little more in tune with Nature, as it revolves around the resonance (or dissonance) between non-stringed objects.” Dr. Moses folded his arms on his chest and looked very pleased as he awaited their response. They gushed, privately, but then, as the seconds passed, and their joy mounted, they burst simultaneously to embrace Dr. Moses with a thousand questions, and he laughed so loud and with such joy in their embraces that Dr. Moses’ house began to sing.
Finally, after they had calmed down from such peaked dialogue, Dr. Eagril felt a concern growing in his thoughts. “But… are there any dangers to this technology, Dr.?” he asked, anxiously, well aware of the maleficent intentions of such characters as Dr. Eifelstein, the favored child and spy for the University’s board of directors, who, let us not forget, was spying on them that very moment.
Dr. Moses paused and thought carefully about what he was about to say in response to Dr. Eagril’s valid question. “There is one,” he sighed heavily, his shoulders suddenly slouching forward. “My dear compatriots… my dearest brothers… I have grown increasingly anxious regarding this, as it is so easy to misuse.”
Dr. Eifelstein’s eyes widened as he skulked in the hallway behind a tall, potted shrub listening to them talk. His teeth gnashed, and he began to drool on his chin as he heard of this admission by the Dr. Moses.
Dr. Moses continued, “If it fell into the wrong hands… hands connected to a brain that had been educated in the sciences involved in this machine’s creation… hands connected to a heart with no moral development and only the knowledge stored in books,” he paused, “…”
“What is it, Dr.?!” shouted Dr. Holmes.
Dr. Moses measured his words carefully, “If it fell into the wrong hands, it could be used to control a great many people at once, merely by, instead of matching the frequencies of the individuals in order to provide a vibrational support for their traumaticized frequencies that are unhealed in those individuals, they would provide a vibrational counterbalance to the traumaticized frequencies. A person would be compelled, against their best intentions, into actions spawned from their darkest impulses.”
Dr. Eifelstein’s eyes and ears perked up and he salivated more upon his chin. He returned to consciousness to discover his shirt had become wet, too.
The three scientists each fumbled on their feet, searching for words to encourage each other. Finally, Dr. Moses spoke. “The benefits of this invention far outweigh the risks. It can be placed in a single room in a hospital and heal everyone inside those same walls until doctors are rendered obsolete! It could be given to a prison and within 24 hours, all of the criminals will be reformed and ready to start their lives anew in service to Good!” He laughed so much his belly shook and Dr.s Holmes and Eagril both ignited with his enthusiasm. “Judges, lawyers, wardens and guards! All will be forced to find new work to occupy themselves with! It can overthrow dictators by rendering the tyrant helpless but to weep, repent for his crimes, and forgive all wrongs!” they laughed- a high laughter, holding their bellies as tears fell from their eyes.
Dr. Eifelstein grew restless and then snickered quietly so that no one could hear, “Fools.”
Dr. Moses, replete with emotion, continued, “Even the carnivorous mammals we used in our experiments- mongooses in particular- no longer wanted to kill! Rather, in all, my findings showed, unbelievably, that they could live well past the typical age of their species without ever having to eat, at all, ever again! They were sustained, it seemed, by the sheer harmonious alignment of their electromagnetic field with the Universe’s electromagnetic field at large. This alone,” the Dr. Moses became overwhelmed and his voice broke from tears, “this, alone,” he repeated, “is evidence that the Universe is far more beneficent than we have ever before realized!” his voice quivering with these words, his belly convulsed from the emotion as his voice croaked this final testament of his findings. Dr.’s Holmes and Eagril stood, jaws agape, suspending all disbelief, in utter shock.
“My God,” spoke Dr. Holmes, “Doctor… how many standard deviations- how long did they live past what is normal for their species before they died?”
Dr. Moses paused and gathered his words carefully, his face showing his own feelings of perplexity, he looked into each their eyes, uncertain if they’d believe him. “Doctors. My friends, my contemporaries, my confidants…” he shook his head. “None have yet to die.”
How the Master Slide was created.
As Dr. Moses began to move the conversation to the formulas, themselves, he seemed perplexed. “The Master Slide came into existence while I was, as it seems, in a state of heightened consciousness arrived at temporarily through the sheer fever of my contemplation. I could taste the fulfillment of the formulaes… as though something was cooking and its aroma was tempting my nose! The whole of my thought, the entirety of my heart was entrained in my inquiry. Truly, the world could have collapsed, and I would still be sitting there on my stool, trying to pierce heaven with my mind’s eye.” Dr.s Holmes and Eagril listened with attention rapt. Dr. Moses paused and look down at his chest.
“Please continue, Dr. Moses,” said Dr. Holmes.
Dr. Moses looked into his eyes, and then into Dr. Eagril’s. He found there oceans of cognizance, goodness, wisdom, and in each he found the same fire as he felt in himself.
“Gentlemen, it was as though the hand of God softly touched my mind. An electrical current flowed… powerfully… through my entire body and being, from the crown of my head, down my spine, into the soles of my feet and the palms of my hands. The knowledge I then received… as though the knowledge itself moved my fingers along the glass slide you see here before you, encoding it with what I feel is, and what I describe as, “The Master Name of Humankind.” The name applicable to one and all human beings.” The “Master Name” he explained, is, of course, a mathematical formula, a formula that Dr. Moses’ bright mind received from a flash of God’s Lightning-like Will, and grasped.
“Gentlemen,” he paused, again. The whole of his academic career felt insignificant in comparison to what he was about to admit. “I have received this formula not entirely from my own calculations, but, it seems, I merely held the cup high enough to heaven- like an excited little child, gentlemen!- and it was Heaven who filled it.”
Dr. Eagril, astonished by what he just heard, walked several feet away from them in a loose circle and gasped in a whisper to himself, “Like Moses on Mt. Sinai…,” his heart knew- Dr. Eagil, and Dr. Holmes, too.
Dr. Moses relaxed, having divulged the most difficult parts of his research to these men who he felt such affinity growing in him such that they were brothers, compatriots of the country they as of yet, would shortly be the only inhabitants.
“After the event where the slide was created, I’ve had to play some catch-up, to learn the components of the formula I have received in its completion. I feel on the precipice of this completion- only one piece of the puzzle remains. May I, now, show you the formula and my proofs?”
“Dr. Moses, my heart exults with your request,” said Dr. Holmes.
“As does mine,” Dr. Eagril affirmed to Dr. Holmes and Dr. Moses.
Dr. Moses pulled the parchments out from the drawer of the side table where upon a small metal frame held a rectangular glass slide. The slide appeared to greet them- it glowed in response to their vicinity. Dr. Moses observed their reaction to seeing the slide and extended the parchments for them to analyze.
“Hmm… yes… of course!”
“Yes… Hmmm… hmmmm.”
Dr.s Eagril and Holmes both laughed at once.
“Pi,” said Dr. Eagril.
“Huh?” asked Dr. Moses
Dr. Holmes looked at Dr. Eagril and smiled. “Pi,” said Dr. Holmes, turning back to Dr. Moses’ comically vexed expression.
“Pi?” asked Dr. Moses.
“The two sticks with the squiggly line on top?” mocked Dr. Holmes with high humor.
As though waking from a dream where he dreamt he did not know the formula, Dr. Moses saw what they meant.
“Just multiply the whole thing by it,” Dr. Eagril smiled a laugh so joyously rueful he almost pierced Dr. Moses with his joy.
Dr. Moses shouted, “That’s it!!” He burst into such revelry that he grabbed Dr. Holmes’ face and kissed him on the mouth, then reached for Dr. Eagril’s face and did the same. They laughed and blushed hotly as Dr. Moses jumped in the air and did a little dance on his tippy-toes.
The Dr. Moses then shouted, “Gentlemen!,” his glasses wet from mist. He offered to turn the machine on for his guests, as a gesture of friendship, power, and faith in these men and in the validity of their enterprises.
“By God,” said Dr. Holmes, trying to believe. “If all that you say is true- and if I will not be altered against my true self as I am talking to you right now- then I consider it a gift to my life and my loved ones that I might become what I believe you are suggesting I will.”
“And I concur, out of gratitude to your incredible work, and to God who gave you this gift to share with humanity,” offered Dr. Eagril.
“Then it is done,” he said with exuberant, but weighty significance. And he walked to the table, put his finger deftly under the switch, and turned to pause, to watch the changes in the Dr.s faces. With teary eyes, they each nodded. It was strange, that dissonance- where they were on this cliff of existence. They were not saying goodbye, even though there was a sense of passing; they, instead, stood shoulder to shoulder as men who are about to say hello for the first time.
“My honor,” said Dr. Holmes, looking deeply into his dear colleagues’ eyes.
“And mine,” Dr. Eagril concurred.
“Flick!”
The Prison, freed
Dr.s Eagril and Holmes introduce Dr. Moses to a man they know, the warden of a prison in their county, who had chanced to strike up a conversation with the Dr.s and confessed to a desire to find new solutions to help prison reform. “The old ways keep the old ways going,” he said, in his simple, country vernacular. “It didn’t work then and it never will. When will we learn?” he said, his voice cracking on the word ‘learn,’ his eyes a labrynth of craze and pity.
The two doctors were extremely touched by what appeared to them as spontaneous and desperate prayer. Dr. Holmes imagined he could feel God hearing the warden’s voice, his heart, deepening the intensity of his hopeful but occluded vision like a divine sword between his eyes. The doctors each swore in their hearts, as they left the coffee shop, the warden sunken in his seat alone, to hold a light in their hearts in case they ever could help this man. And now, two weeks after their first meeting with Dr. Moses, they prodded Dr. Moses to come with them to the prison where he could meet the warden face to face.
The warden was skeptical, but, remembering the two physics professors from the local University, and overcoming embarrassed remembrance of his emotional display, he gratefully accepted their invitation. He remembers admiring these two men who he considered “very smart men,” and he was anxious to see them again, hoping his memory of them was not tainted by his emotionality that day.
The three doctors approached the prison gates, informed the stern, but kind, guards of their appointment with the warden, and were escorted through several checkpoints and up several levels of the prison before being issued to the door and the desk of the warden. His face was both hard and gentle, deep lines a road map of the many things he has seen, and much pain, and much seriousness. A soft glowing light eeked out from his rigid command in the area of his heart, and it seemed, by some observers, he was in a continual dance trying to hide this glow. He looked just the same as when Dr.s Holmes and Eagril met him three years earlier, just a little shade older and a few more lines etching between his eyes and eyebrows. His bright blue eyes were as clear as a cloudless sky in winter. He has seen very, very much with those blue eyes.
He rose out of respect and leaned his torso over his heavy, metal desk to embrace the doctors and their friend, Dr. Moses, with a handshake. After a moment of pleasantries, the Dr.s Holmes and Eagril threaded their conversation back to where they met and talked at the coffee shop three years earlier. The warden, his name is John Warshaft, remembered with both embarrassment and humility. He loved himself enough to love his dreams, but for the doctors’ sake, he joked about his crazy vision and said he hoped his tears did not accidentally cross-contaminate the doctors’ coffee.
“Quite the opposite,” Dr. Holmes offered, and Dr. Eagril concurred. “If I may speak plainly,” said Dr. Holmes, “I vowed to do anything possible to assist you if ever I could.” The warden softened and his bright eyes wet and shone with gratitude.
Dr. Eagril laughed, “And the tears weren’t so bad a flavor, if I might add!”
The warden vibrated with laughter and turned to offer them all a cup from the coffee pot behind them. “Here, perhaps we have more tears to cry with each other… cream? sugar?” The doctors all chuckled and accepted his gracious hosting. Their cups were filled and each spooned their cream and sugar as they needed.
Dr. Moses spoke for the first time, “Perhaps our coffee today will be very sweet… I hope.” The warden graced him with the light from his eyes and face, and encouraged him to continue his thought as he returned the pot to the hot plate behind him.
Dr. Moses cleared his throat, embarrassed. Dr.s Eagril and Holmes helped him, taking turns describing Dr. Moses’ invention and the various points of value it could provide. With each point and each word, the warden, John Warshaft’s eyes became more intense, more scrupulous, more questioning, more hopeful, and though he tried to hide the glow of light from his heart, he could not brake it. His teeth gnashed, but his heart pushed the light through. His eyes, again, teared and he cried, now tears of hope, whereas three years ago his tears were desperate tears, guessing failure, hoping without any hope in his loving heart for one small ray of light to change things.
The warden was poised in a moment of stillness. No sound or movement betrayed him as he interpreted with his pure but simple mind what the doctors had told him of Dr. Moses’ invention. Minutes passed… none of the men could speak. It felt as if they were all tottering on a high cliff, and that the decisions made that day would change everything, not only in the prison, not only for the men imprisoned in it, not only for the warden John Warshaft and not only for the doctors, but everything connected to the prison, everything in the world.
One small word, one word which seemed too large for John Warshaft’s mouth to speak, croaked through his fearful lips, “T… try,” he said, meaning, ‘Ok… let’s try it.’
With effort, he gathered his composure once again and the doctors all watched him as though with minds stunned after watching a miracle happen. “Try,” they all heard the warden say.
“– Ok,” said Dr. Holmes.
“Ok,” said Dr. Eagril.
“Okedokee, ok, ” said Dr. Moses. “Let’s try.”
The four good men nodded their heads in affirmation. “How soon can you bring it? We’ll start in one small room of the prison and see what happens. I will tell the prisoners about it and… I should probably have a welder build a cage for it in case things don’t go well.”
Dr. Moses naively shouted, “Oh, no, ” he laughed, “that won’t be necessary.”
“‘Trust in God but lock your car,’ Dr. Moses,” shined the warden, John Warshaft.
“Ah… ok,” laughed Dr. Moses. “Mr. Warshaft,” said Dr. Moses, “I don’t have anything better to do today… or, perhaps any day.. ever in my life moving forward from this day… I could bring it by this evening, if you like,” Dr. Moses laughed, considering the three hours drive back to his estate and three hours back to the prison that seemed to him like nothing short of purest joy.
The warden, never a man to prefer delay, gladly nodded his head and rose to shake the Dr. Moses’ hand. Dr. Moses, for the first time since he was a child, felt like his father’s son in the approving presence and affirmative attention of the warden, John Warshaft.
“I… I’ll be back really soon!” Dr. Moses laughed, and was a fistful of helium balloons reaching toward God when he shook the warden’s hand. Dr.s Eagril and Holmes giddily laughed, never seeing Dr. Moses so overtaken like this before. But they all felt the gravity and the lightness, both, and as soon as they hit the hallway, the guards escorting them toward the gates the prisoners would soon pass through into the unconfined world, they felt the enormity and gravity of this endeavor, again.
The Dr.s Moses and Eagril made the return trip together but without Dr. Holmes who, sadly got called away on important business that didn’t turn out to be very important after all. Dr. Holmes punished himself in his mind for his poor decision-making as the Doctors Eagril and Moses drove on to deliver to the prison what the prisoners would soon nickname, “Mary,” as in Mary, the Mother of the Messiah of the Human Race.
The Warden, John Warshaft, weeps for joy continuously for three consecutive days…
Prisoners crammed themselves into the workshop where “Mary” did her work, as her reputation quickly reached everyone to a man. For three days, prisoners filled, then left the workshop, only to be replaced by as many men. After a period of intense transformation where wailing and sighs were heard ringing in every hall, John Warshaft let all the prisoners roam around free. Huge men with tattooed faces and necks, scarred faces lined by many deadly deeds, let their bodies shudder and sob, kneeling doubled over on the ground. And then, rising and seeing their sworn enemies looking back, they wept all the way into each other’s welcoming arms.
And the warden wept for joy ceaselessly for days on end, eating no bread, drinking only the water of his own joyous tears and being quenched of the thirst in every cell of his body and vivified by those tears.
Finally, the warden knew a law above any law that held these graceful men apart from society, and he swung wide the prison gates to set them free in full consciousness of the truth and rightness in so doing. The prisoners, to a man, embraced John Warshaft, the only father many of them ever had and he wept in gratitude. And the prisoners walked hand in hand as they left the prison that final time, so many bitter tears now gone, in the past, so far from them they could see only the beautiful light of the radiant future ahead. And the news crews soon caught wind and began to gather with their cameras; and, the governer’s shock at hearing such news brought him to throw a firm hand at John Warshaft.
John Warshaft rocked gayly in his wooden desk chair as the black phone rang before him. He breathed and answered it.
“Gad blasted what the hell is happening over there, Warshaft??!!”
John gently encouraged the Governor to accept the retirement of his command, and if he would like to come down here and see about it in person, then, John Warshaft would gladly receive him.
The governor shouted multiple threats and obscenities and told John to stay where he is, as he is calling the “cavalry” to take command of the prison and John Warshaft. Twenty minutes later, ten black limousines, 50 squad cars and every paddy-wagon he could command on short notice, arrived as John Warshaft moved to the workshop where “Mary” generated her mirror of sound.
A thunder of hard-soled feet marched through the empty prison. The governor marched ahead of the police and the national guard soldiers, echoing his call for John Warshaft through the vacant, concrete halls.
John shouted down to them to let them know where he lists and moved back next to “Mary” to wait, his arms crossed, smiling like a saint, laughing, his heart pounding for what was about to be.
The governor, his stern gray suit, white shirt, and dark necktie, met the door first and stood there, held back by a force he did not understand, unable to cross. He visibly softened as “Mary” read his traumaticized frequencies. “T-… well, ta-… take ‘im…” he indicated, confusedly, unconvincingly, to a team of police officers who also did not encroach, even on command of the governor.
The layers of the governor’s traumaticized frequencies peeled from him. Later, some observers, independently, would each concur that for a moment, his whole body seemed filled with a certain kind of clear, luminous liquid. The governor stammered and anxiously loosened his dark necktie from his white collared shirt, unbuttoning the top two buttons. His shoulders visibly relaxed. He sort of walked around in jagged circles as though pacing around a thought he was having.
“Ok,” said the governor, turning to look at John Warshaft, who shook his head and smiled, praising God with the smile in his heart. “Ok,” said the governor, again.
The governor turned and walked past the many soldiers and police officers who one by one took turns peering inside the room where John Warshaft stood next to “Mary,” who harmonized with each of their traumaticized frequencies, instantly changing them, and thus, the whole world and everyone in it.
2 months later, the Dr.s see Dr. Moses, again
Dr. Moses seems to have grown in stature. Even his skin seems saturated with wisdom.
He looked upon his guests as upon his dearest family, those two who committed to plunging full-bodied in his work. Something in his awareness registered a thought form.
He turned to finish making the iced tea for the men and said, “You notice you still struggle with life. We are meant to evolve, to push our boundaries, to develop. The snake’s old skin has to come off when the new one is emerging into being.”
Dr. Holmes smiled admiringly at Dr. Moses and agreed. “I feel I am learning that it is not that we should not struggle, but that we aren’t so much in resistance to it.”
Dr. Moses nodded affirmatively, “I had a fight with my wife a few months ago, and, instead of feeling resentful, I quite enjoyed it… and we made up just fine as a result!”
Dr. Holmes laughed, “Haha! Same. My girlfriend was angry that I ate her french fries… they looked so delicious,” he admitted, “but I could tell she was really laughing and trying to get me back in a funny way. I didn’t get that about her before. I’m surprised she hadn’t left me, by now, such a prick I’ve been. But, things are going, like, unbelievably well, now. I’m… so in love with her.” He paused. “We’ve been together for ten years. I feel like as long as my traumaticized frequencies are healed, my sheer presence does the same for her.”
Dr. Moses looked at Dr. Holmes carefully. He nodded his head as he said, “You did see that, didn’t you? That validates my supposition…” he choked on the air in his lungs, gasping. He covered his face with his hands and convulsively prayed. “This machine is us, my friend. It works because we work. It is only a mirror of sound. As you say, we do what this machine does, but for each other when our traumaticized frequencies are healed.” He looked around at all his work, his papers, his formulaes. “I feel validated… your participation has been invaluable. Even if it were only to give me confidence to continue in my work, but your insights have proven indispensible. I am ready to assign it to a production team. Will you two men, help?”
Dr. Eagril jolted upward in his spine as though lightning shot through it. He anticipated this moment from the time he first heard Dr. Moses describing his invention. ‘Only,’ he feared, ‘I am still growing, still maturing in my knowledge. I feel so much to be done to prepare myself. But I am ready, I feel it- in my spine, my heart, my brain. I know it.’
“I am ready, too, Dr. Moses,” Dr. Holmes said, after feeling Dr. Eagril’s emotions. “Doctors- friends, compatriots,” he concurred, passionately, as their three sets of eyes joined as to arrive in one ocean of awareness, in true brotherhood.
“My honor,” said Dr. Holmes, looking deeply into his dear colleagues’ eyes.
“And mine,” concurred Dr. Eagril.
“Flick!”
Dr. Eifelstein had seen enough. He turned and stepped briskly to the foyer, as Dr. Moses’ perplexed butler, Sam, inquired of him by use of a gentle hand. Dr. Eifelstein brusked him off and snarled as he grabbed and turned the knob and opened it onto Dr. Moses’ porch and drive. Dr. Eifelstein met his driver a short way up the drive, his black suit and black car engulfed him. Dr. Eifelstein moved to sit in the back seat and immediately lifted the receiver of the red phone and pressed the glowing red button that contacted him with the board. All 11 of them were rang upon this phone call (Dr. Eifelstein is now immediately the 12th, as he long sought), and 9 of them answered. The other two will be contacted immediately after the call through every possible channel. The nine board members immediately agreed to send alert to their cohorts on the police force and perform a sting at Dr. Moses’ home. ” A weapon, very dangerous,” it was said. “Go immediately.”
As Dr. Eifelstein slammed the door of Dr. Moses’ estate, Dr. Moses heard the door shut and could not imagine who had left his house. He ran out to find his butler, Sam, who told him of the appearance of a strange man who he believed to be Dr. Eifelstein, the strange and spiteful man who he once learned was the head of the science department at the University. Dr. Holmes and Dr. Eagril turned in shock to each other, then to Dr. Moses, eyes widening like balloons pressing against each other as they grew. They at once all understood the danger of Dr. Eifelstein having any knowledge of the invention of Dr. Moses. Dr. Moses gathered them to attention. “We’ve got to duplicate the Master Slide immediately, before Dr. Eifelstein can get his hands on this machine.”
At once, they got to work. In addition to his invention of the Master Slide, Dr. Moses invented a machine that produced light in exact similitude to the original expression of light at the beginning of the Universe. “This light machine is needed to create more Master Slides,” he told the Dr.s. (??but the originalMaster Slide is needed to make more Master Slides.??) “It will take three minutes to make each copy- I just lay the Master slide on top of one unstained slide made of crystal or unbreakable glass, and this light imprints the Master Name upon the previously blank slide. He thought a moment as inspiration filled him blissfully, and returned to them, his eyes passionate and clear: “But now, we are going to improve upon the original invention, Dr.s. A little abstraction for diversity-sake and the health of the species,” he mused.
They needed six minutes to create one for each Dr.s Eagril and Holmes. They got to work immediately, knowing they had not a second to spare; Dr. Moses placed one blank crystal slide upon the platform of the small, putty grey light machine– the machine whose formulaes alone would have angels dancing “hallellujah”– and turned the switch as Dr. Eagril’s slide began to learn of the Master Name that All Love Is.
“Blow,” said Dr. Moses to Dr. Eagril, indicating that he should breathe onto the slide. He did.
They waited, almost comically, looking about, catching each other’s eyes, leaning their butts on the back of the couch behind them, arms folded. Dr. Holmes whistled an unrecognizable tune.
“Is it…” Dr. Eagril said to Dr. Moses, pointing uncertainly at the machine working before them.
“Almost…” said Dr. Moses encouragingly, and they both coughed and shifted on their feet. Finally, it completed and Dr. Eagril’s slide was given to him as Dr. Holmes’ slide was placed on the light machine’s platform with the Master Slide on top of it.
Dr. Moses switched the original-light machine on and suggested to Dr. Homes to, “Bl–… yes…that’s good- just the breath is all– that’s right,” as Dr. Holmes did. And they stood awkwardly and waited as the seconds grew in danger.
“Does… does it create light?” Dr. Holmes stammered.
Dr. Moses considered, “Y-yes. Essentially. Yes.”
Dr.s Holmes nodded his head and Dr. Eagril did, too. “Im-…impressive,” said Dr. Holmes, Dr. Eagril concurring his admiration to Dr. Moses. Dr. Moses blushed happily. Dr.s Moses and Holmes turned to their watches. At the precinct, the police were already heading to their squad cars according to plan. Two minutes. Only Dr. Moses’ long, dirt road will slow them down.
“The gate, Sam!” shouted Dr. Moses, as though remembering to turn off the stove. “Close the gate!”
Sam went straight away, jogging in his hard-soled, black shoes, heels crunching the gravel until he reached the eighth of a mile where he swiftly swung shut the iron fence standing between him and the headlights and flashing sirens of police cars rapidly surging closer. The gate clicked shut as Sam turned and ran back fast as he could, panting and clutching his heart. He had about a 6 or 7 second headstart before the police came to a halt outside the gate, their headlights seeking Dr. Moses’ property, catching the flashing form of Sam as he ran back to the house through the dark of night.
“Give us the weapon!” the police captain shouted through his megaphone at Sam’s back, as he reached the porch. He jumped on it almost slipping on the painted wood, and escaped into the house where Dr.s Moses, Holmes and Eagril eagerly awaited his return. As the door shut behind Sam, the first warning shot stuck into the wood of the house’s siding, a seed of ill omen.
“One minute,” said Dr. Moses, returning his gaze from his watch to Dr. Holmes’ expectant face. The police captain called for the tank, which was expelled down the ramp of a trailer onto the reluctant earth below. The police cars were moved so that the tank could accelerate toward the iron gate, growing to full speed in a few seconds, flattening it easily and moving toward the house of Dr. Moses armed with rockets.
Sam, by no need of suggestion by Dr. Moses, immediately lowered the two-inch hydraulic steel wall behind the front wall of the house Just as it reached the ground, latched closed, the tank let fire a rocket upon it, denting it badly. The house shook and plaster snowed from the ceilings.
“One minute,” said Dr. Eagril.
The tank driver reloaded the rocket. He had only two. He pressed the button and another rocket rammed and exploded through the steel wall. Again, the house shook, and the Dr.s could feel the house shift on its foundation as they rebalanced themselves. The tank rolled up, crushing the wooden porch and rammed the nose of the gun into the hole in the steel wall as the belted wheels pressed confidently into it in full power, bending, mercilessly, the steel wall as though it were made of rubber. Above the deafening din of screaming steel, Dr. Holmes shouted anxiously, “Forty-five seconds”
The steel walls protecting Dr. Moses’ house bent. The tank retreated several feet before surging again into the wall. Each time it retreated, it surged and broke a little more of the steel wall. At last, it retreated a fourth time, further back, and paused. Its belted wheels ground into the earth, surging into Dr. Moses’ house, that steel security wall tore like a shirt and the tank ground and stretched into the foyer, like a wrestler overcoming a weaker, but worthy opponent.
“Fifteen seconds!”
The tank succesfully filled the now shattered marble floor of the Dr. Moses’ foyer, and the drivers unhatched themselves from the tank as a gang of police burst through the massive hole in Dr. Moses’ house. They ran in file to seek and steal Dr. Moses’ most-loving machine. “HAND OVER THE WEAPON!!” barked the Captain through his megaphone.
“Five seconds,” they whispered all at once, as though a prayer given to God. They hid impatiently, now, behind an unfolded room divider, as the original-light machine burned the master name onto the slide that Dr. Holmes breathed upon. A door to the rear courtyard was open to the outside waiting for them to escape through it. The police marched in with machine guns, twelve of them stamping all over the ground floors, denting the oak boards. Good thing they were in the back, the only room in the house that didn’t directly open to the foyer.
One second.
Two police entered hurriedly and found their faces observing the light emanating from the back of the room that was the original light of the Universe. They two both paused a half-second, remembering something in their souls. One stayed, struck in awe, while the other snapped back and ran the through room, aiming his machine gun at the area of the original light that shone at the beginning of time. He was thirty feet away. 1 second. Time itself, at that moment condensed as though a mighty contraction from the heartbeat of God, and sped the final second to its wholeness. Dr. Moses handed Dr. Eagril his slide, took his own, and they all ran with Dr. Moses’ two inventions, his attache of formulas, and their slides clutched gently in each of their fists. They ran into the garden shed which hid Dr. Moses’ bunker and slammed the bunker door shut just as the police released the first round of machine gun bullets at the Dr.s heads. They ran through a brief tunnel and out the other end into a hidden street, as Sam pulled them into a car and sped them toward safety.
Dr. Moses Sprouts Wings as an Angel
His light body began to grow as he grew increasingly harmonious with himself in the world and in the Universe at large. Eventually, his frequency grew high enough in his physical body that, as though reaching toward the top of a mountain with all of his energy, the light body fused with him and all who saw him saw the wings of his light body in full expression.
Dr. Moses Devours Satan
Dr. Moses began to harmonize the World at a rapid rate. After harmonizing the 5th layer, the flower of life on Earth began to open of its own accord, convulsing her disharmonies like a lover in ecstasy, orgasming as Dr. Moses sang with the World’s song, opening her wide mouth trembling forth Her song of Herself. There turned out to be, as though one little black grain of sand that all the pearls in all the world ever rubbed themselves against in order to stimulate their growth. That is to say, as the layers of reality flowered opened more fully, there turned out to be one nagging little character- rather weak and frail, but mean-looking, who was the first to blame another with his lean, pointed index finger extending out from him in every direction- that he devoured, Dr. Moses devoured, all at once, forever.
The monster walked through Times Square, cracking the asphalt with every step. The monster sought Billy before he knew Shazzam!, to kill him. He took many guises, but always Billy’s goodness repelled him from harm. If Billy ever leaves the Earth one final time, he will look back on his life in astonishment. How many narrow escapes? So many thousands, each day for weeks on end. As though buildings were collapsing all around him and he was thinking of something beautiful that moved him out from harm- a Holy Fool, traipsing with dreams in his heart at the edge of a high cliff.
Now, here, the monster is taking form. Billy bent and spoke a message into his foster brother, Ken’s, ear. Ken nodded as they locked eyes, then parted ways to do each their parts of their mission. The monster saw them and laughed as his laugh echoed down the streets of Times Square. The glass of the high-rise buildings rattled from his laugh. Ken snuck down an alley on 41st and 7th Ave. The monster followed him with his psychic senses and merely reached down and plucked him up with two fingers before putting Ken, screaming, and crying for Billy, into his mouth. Ken’s body crunched and spurted like a candy filled with syrup in the monster’s mouth.
Billy felt through the airways and gnashed his teeth and shouted, “No!!!” Instantly, he shouted, “Shazzam!” and Ken’s body expanded back into form and the monster was helpless but to spit him out of his mouth. Billy’s desire flew him to the spot on 41st St. where Ken would land and caught him gently, as the love in his heart for his dearest of friend swelled.
Ken looked up meekly into Billy’s warm face, returned from shock and gasped. Billy hugged him tight and placed him back onto his feet. What a journey Ken had just gone through over the past 3 minutes- like none other ever in the history of humanity on Earth.
Billy saluted Ken with a wink, and escaped around the corner out of sight to anyone, where he gasped and felt his feelings. Billy was momentarily enraged at the monster, and he felt frightened at his anger because he knew it meant a loss of power.
In this state of emotion, Billy was wise to retreat into an abandoned building where he knelt in the middle of a trashed room. God sent a shaft of light to comfort Billy, who suddenly felt the world’s grief welling in his lungs. The monster was no evil, he recognized, with God’s shared insights- but it was the reflection of humanity’s violence personified. God patted Billy, offering encouragement. Billy suddenly felt cause to laugh for the sake of the scary monster.
“Go play with your monster,” said God. Billy’s heart welled with joy!
“Shazzam!” Billy’s desire shot him out the busted windows of that abandoned office onto the street at the very feet of his monster. The monster’s face showed vexation and he shirked back a few steps, crushing the hood of a taxi cab with his klutzy feet. Billy’s desire flew him up the monster’s body to his horrible face where he honked that horrible nose with his tiny, mighty fists! The monster staggered around, drunk on Billy’s silliness. ‘This was not supposed to happen,’ thought the monster. ‘Only fear and kill and destroy, not a honking of my tender nose!” The monster swung his hand at Billy and swatted himself in the face as Billy leapt to the monster’s right shoulder just in time.
Billy again welled with emotion, now on his perch atop the throne of the world’s violent urges, this massive, horrible shoulder. This massive shoulder near the ear of the monster who reflects all the world’s violence. This ear that has power to hear sounds, Billy thought. Billy softly whistled a sweet tune, as the monster’s ear hairs tickled and felt pleased. “Look there!” Billy encouraged, pointing to a tree on 43rd St., while the monster felt this brief moment of pleasure from Billy’s tune. The monster felt intensely shy and refused. His arms crossed like a willful child and he shook his head, “No.” “No,” said the monster.
“Aw, come on- for a second? Half-a-second? Pleaaaasssseee?”
“No,” said the monster. But suddenly, Billy had access to his heart, as it had opened. The monster, the reflection of all the world’s violence, said, “I see people destroy and I destroy them!!”
Billy’s heart-blood flowed strongly through his whole body as the monster moved with him toward a mob of people, crunching the asphalt and crushing cars as they climbed rapidly toward the mob. The mob shouted angrily at the monster, who felt he knew just what to do with angry people. The monster could not be swayed. He did not see that he was them, nor they, him. “You are them, dear monster,” said Billy softly in the monster’s tender ears.
The monster looked back on himself so briefly- for the first time in thousands upon thousands of years, the monster looked within, and there he began to cry. “You!” said the monster, implying Billy with his pointer finger turned against him.
“Yes,” breathed Billy. “Me, too,” and although he had given all of his anger to God in that trashed office of the abandoned building, he took a piece of the monster’s anger into his own heart, like a shaman’s death mask, to show the monster himself. The monster didn’t quite understand, but was visibly troubled by the sight of such horror overlayed on Billy’s heart. He tried, again, to kill Billy, this time by grabbing Billy in his fist and stuffing him in his terrible mouth. Billy giggled.
The monster’s breath was noxious to a very fine degree- a thousand swamps stuffed with rotting bodies of the dead for thousands and thousands of years. Billy smiled and nodded his head as he recognized his opportunity. Billy breathed. On his seat, on the monster of all humanity’s violence’s tongue, he breathed a gulp of that noxious breath into his peerless lungs and gracefully released it back into the atmosphere of the monster’s mouth.
Billy momentarily dizzied and swooned until his hand found the side of a black and yellow-stained tooth to lean on. For the moment, instead of crunching Billy’s body for the sweet, but fleeting taste of his blood, the monster smelled his own breath, now altered by Billy’s air. The monster knew. And the monster became very afraid.
Dr. Moses Grows Wings
Defeats: Grows in Power, Wisdom and Stature
The machine was stolen by Dr. Eifelstein through his dark connections in the police force. It was charged that Dr.s Moses, Eagril, and Holmes had created a dangerous machine that any fool with a college degree in physics could use to do all manner of evil. They were not… quite… right- but they charged the Doctors anyway. And Dr. Eifelstein, with his mental-only understanding of physics and carelessness toward Humanity’s Interconnectivity, psychopathically, he wished all to be built for his favor, the grotesque desires he wished to bring expression now arose like hungry worms on cocaine. And, now, he held the machine, and formulas, that all good men would wish to have (and, but a small fraction of the evils one’s).
And, he learned it, to his favor, using the rudimentary, Doctorate-level Physics he has known for over fourty years. He quickly discovered how, by what formula, to apply a counter-balance on a human’s frequency and defeat their better-judgement, to bend them at the knee as with an invisible will, with merely a button. What was that button? Besides the switch built into Dr. Moses’ machine, that button was in every human being, telling the machine as Dr. Eifelstein programmed it what frequency any given being might emit. After many died, killed, or did all manner of things, helpless to their better judgement, alas, they each decided to offer their “buttons” to the Light when Dr. Moses came to their rescue, wings brightest gleaming light, outstretched in good use with Dr. Moses’ will.
How did Dr. Moses do it? It weren’t easy. He grew. Not only did he grow, he advanced in wisdom. Not only did he advance in wisdom, he gained great power to illuminate the world. Dr. Moses met the counter-vibration with the strength that very few human beings will ever match, this “Hercules of the Heart,” once, for an instant before immediately Shazzam! was fully actualized as Billy, was the most powerful man who ever lived. Power of All be in you, Dr. Moses! He matched the vibration of the world with his own vibration, all human beings in it at once and, instantly, the dark scaffolding of aeons crumbled. The Earth began to convulse as a woman birthing a child. Layers of the Earth’s Great Heart came bursting outward as from a purge, like petals of an endlessly blooming flower, each petal a feeling of the Earth’s self; sobbing, chest convulsing sobs shook everything. Shazzam! leapt into the atmosphere as tears flooded city streets. Even the air in the sky was shaking.
Billy grew very tired. He knew that he was losing energy at a rapid rate and he needed to find out why. The seconds passed, and his mental acuity began to suffer. He stood in his ever-loving heart and held his query out to the Universe. God answered. He sent Billy the answer that he is and always will be the super-sum of all people’s vibrational frequencies, and he could find the totality within himself without the aid of a man-made machine. Billy was so confident with this hearing that he cried, “Shazzam!” Billy right then matched every frequency of every person on Earth. Shazzam!, his father-teacher, and God, together, all Said the Magic Word that resounded echoing for thousands of years between earth and sky, “Shazzam!”
The monster, bent over a man like as though the man were a chicken leg nearing his salivating mouth, then, halted and felt something for the first time. He placed the man down decisively, and turned to walk over toward Billy Baston, the most powerful mortal on Earth, Shazzam!. The monster rose with inner light for the first time, and the light from the monster’s face met the light from Billy’s face. The monster desired to articulate what was in his heart. Billy’s own heart exhulted.
“Sometimes, a man choses, because of his pain, to turn his will toward things that cause a lot more pain,” said the Monster, starting to realize a way through the mess he had made for thousands of years..
“Let’s Go With God!!” shouted Shazzam!, his full burst heart expounding and echoing in the sky like song. And his shout was Almighty on Earth. His outstretched hand could not be resisted. And all who rose against him immediately fell down. And the monster relaxed his shoulders and shrugged- his body became small and he walked next to Shazzam! like a child and asked him many questions while they walked.
In this time, Earth returned to power, and Humankind served her interests, even as he served his own.
,
“
Stutz's Fairy Tales and Poems 