The God Who Failed
By Shawn Bell. Please note: content and themes not suitable for all ages.
As always, James and Connor had gotten quite a good game of LEGOs going as soon as they got back to James’ after school. It was a total war between rival interplanetary civilizations, with heroic deaths and drama aplenty, temporary alliances against alien invaders, betrayals and side-switching, and the invention of powerful new weapons which were inevitably derided as cheating, or at least “cheap.” In moments of detente, the two civilizations would come together to devote themselves to common projects like the development of new spacecraft, the construction of great commercial cities, or the commissioning of a school for the interplanetary civilization’s wizards (after all, why shouldn’t an interplanetary civilization also have wizards?). When the alliance faltered, the city’s great buildings would eventually fall as collateral damage in the ever-escalating war. Judging by the trajectory of their former games of LEGOs, in time the war would devolve into a more or less deadly-serious fistfight between James and Connor themselves. And then they would have a snack and get over it. This was how things had gone since the boys had first made friends in kindergarten.
Then, in the midst of the game, it happened again, the thing that had been happening to Connor lately when he played with his toys.
He found himself looking into his LEGO-guy’s little, yellow, peg-headed face. The face was simply drawn, with the tight business-like smile of a man who enjoys the challenge of his work, who knows his place in the world, who does what he has to do with no complaint. Connor felt a rising tide of emotion in his chest. To fling this innocent creature into perdition, into a war in which he had no part, to coldly assign to him repeated, brutal deaths, to have him voice the dreaded lines, “I’m hit captain, ahhh!!!!!” before his spacecraft collided with the enemy space station, shattering into infinitesimal pieces, and propelling the remains of the poor conscript into the remorseless vacuum of space. Looking into the LEGO-guy’s determined little face, Connor was thoroughly disgusted with himself. Of course, he gave no voice to his feelings, much less daylight to the tears he felt rising within him. He was a big kid, and wouldn’t dream of crying in front of James. Instead, he gently placed his spacecraft down on the coffee table and sat down on the thick carpet, letting the air out of the game of make-believe.
When James tried to compensate, to re-inflate the game-world by his own effort alone, staging a series of war crimes against civilian establishments in Connor’s territory in hopes of reengaging his friend, all that happened was that Connor’s heart was made all the heavier by the weight of the millions of extinguished lives in the great cities of his country, lives brought into being only to suffer and die for his amusement. James couldn’t keep the game going by himself. It deflated to nothing, and the two boys sat for a moment, impulse-less, amid a holocaust of scattered plastic.
“Well, what do you want to do then?” James inquired peevishly.
“I dunno,” Connor replied, a million mental miles removed.
“My mom won’t be back for an hour, so we could watch TV…”
And so they did.
TV was something different. True, its dramas relied upon the calling into being of lives that were to be destroyed for the viewer’s amusement, but somehow Connor could watch such events unfold with no sense of guilt. At least it wasn’t he who had called them into being. It wasn’t he who was the devilish artificer of their various sufferings. They watched raptly, their beliefs suspended to an extent possible only for children, until they heard James’ mom’s footsteps on the stairs, at which point they craftily switched off the TV and made artificial playing sounds in the basement. That way, the 2 hours of afternoon television they’d watched wouldn’t count against the daily allotment of TV time James’ parents afforded him. They continued to make it sound like they were playing (which ended up being a rather amusing game in itself) for 5 minutes or so, at which point they returned to the den and meekly asked permission to watch a bit. They did so until Connor’s dad came to take him home.
***
When he came home from James’, Connor went up to his room to find his toys strewn about in violent attitudes, just as he’d left them, after his solitary game of “Chinese Invasion” had been disrupted by his mother calling him down to dinner the day before. (Connor’s dad was a Navy veteran, whose technical training had netted him a job in San Mateo County, making him one of Silicon Valley’s outlier conservatives. It was due to his influence that 10-year-old Connor had heard a great deal more than the average California kid about the evils of Chinese communism.) One again, the feeling arose to cut him. How had Cowboy Dave felt about being cast as a villainous Chinese general, making menacing chings and chongs and threatening to enslave the population of Redwood City? Had he resented being assigned to play the whipping-boy—for of course the Chinese would have to lose out in the end? What of the civilians? The violence they’d suffered at Cowboy Dave’s yellow hands—no! They’d suffered that violence at Connor’s hands! With Cowboy Dave as a mere proxy. What of the moral culpability that Connor had doomed Cowboy Dave to? Was he as guilt-ridden as Connor?
The boy cleared the battlefield of casualties, Chinese and American, military and civilian alike. In death, they were all innocents. He transformed them back into Merlin and Dumbo and the Iron Giant, and spoke at length at their elaborate funeral. He screwed up his courage and confessed it all to them, hoping they could hear him from beyond the grave. He confessed that all of their tribulations and suffering had been his doing, he, the pitiless, merciless dictator Connor. He confessed that he had done it for nothing but his own amusement. Toys were to be played with, weren’t they? The ignorance and naiveté of the statement was stomach turning.
After his confession, he brought them back to life, the fallen masses, and arranged them in his bed in an attitude of peace. The boy had fallen to his knees, cradling individual toys, whispering incessantly, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
***
“Get your fucking hand off my shoulder.”
“You get your fucking hand off my shoulder.”
“I swear to God when Connor gets home, we’re gonna massacre all you chink bastards and use your children for fertilizer. Nobody messes with the good ol’ US of A!”
“You give Connor time. He’s a smart kid. Smart enough to realize that all this Sinophobic nonsense is nothing but Atlanticist Imperialism!”
“Oh go eat a dog, Dave.”
“Oh yeah!? How about you go pass an infrastructure bill, Captain! See how that goes for you, ya debt-financed, Jew-corrupted shell of a world power! Have you seen the extent of our 5G network capabilities!? Have you ever taken the Beijing-Shanghai bullet train? Take a guess how long that takes these days! Tell me to eat a dog—how bout you go eat a bag of Cheetos, you walking vat of corn syrup.”
“You’re really going all in with this whole China thing, huh Cowboy?”
The toy cowboy, a bit embarrassed, adjusted his hat with his free hand; the other hand was draped around the spaceman’s shoulder where Connor had placed it the night before.
“Well, I mean, a toy’s got to practice his craft…”
“… How many hours is it from Beijing to Shanghai? Just out of curiosity.”
“Four and a half hours for an express service. Can you believe that? Over 290 kph—or 180 mph, for any ossified reactionaries in the audience.”
“Goddamn. Gotta hand it to the zipperheads. They’ve got some gumption.” The toy spaceman seemed genuinely impressed.
“Well try this on for size. Once the infrastructure is in place, they say Moscow to Beijing will be a 16 hour trip. All the way from the Far East, through Central Asia, and into European Russia. And let’s not even get started on what this could mean for Iran!”
“You’re right, let’s not…”
A pause.
“You might be laughing now, but you could learn a thing or two from this, Captain. Not to shine my own pistol, but what I’m doing here, it’s something you’re gonna have to do sooner or later. Learn to be a Chinaman or an Orc. A supporting character. Every toy has his time. Not so long ago, it was all Cowboys and Indians around here, ya know. With yours truly as the star of the show. I don’t take no pleasure in telling you, but he’s not gonna want to play spaceman forever.”
“Shit, he’s already tired of playing spaceman… you’re not wrong, Cowboy. Every toy has his time.”
A pause.
“I mean, really, not every toy has his time. As the leading man. The most beloved. Look at Merlin, for God’s sake. Nothing against the guy, you understand—eventually your child grows out of you and you end up a hand-me-down. I bet Connor’s cousin loved him at some point, but Connor never did. Never loved most of them, the way the two of us have had a chance to be loved. It’s a hell of a way to live…”
A weak moan of agreement from the Wizard, who was within earshot, but hadn’t been sufficiently animated by the infusion of the boy’s love to have gained the ability to speak. Cowboy Dave patted the Wizard supportively on the shoulder. The moan had borne some resemblance to Mandarin Chinese, for the Wizard was nothing if not a consummate professional.
“My advice, Captain, is that you better bone up on your Twelver Shi’ism. The way the old man watches Fox News, you just know Connor’ll have you as head mullah before long. Once some new toy’s taken your place in the sun.”
“Twelve what?”
“دوازده امام جانشینان معنوی و سیاسیِ محمد، پیامبر اسلام، در اسلام شیعهٔ دوازده امامی هستند”
“Jesus Christ. I don’t know how you find the time.”
“Well, like I said, it’s all about taking your craft seriously. Aging with dignity. Which means accepting a new role when he finds a new favorite… which I’m well aware I could have done with a great deal more grace when you first came on the scene…”
“Um, yeah, you don’t say! Throwing me down that heating vent and all.”
“…I ain’t proud of that… but you’ll see where I was coming from some day… maybe as soon as Christmas… I’m just telling you so’s you’ve got time to get used to the idea…”
“I appreciate that, Cowboy.”
“Call me, Dave.”
“You know, Dave, you’re not all bad, even if Connor’s got you draped all over me like some half-drunk debutante I’m trying to take advantage of.”
“Right back at you, Cap.”
“Kiss’m already, why don’t ye?! Ach, Jaysus, you’re like to make me puke with this lovey-dovey shite.”
“Oh shut up, Sheriff, you’re just pissed that you don’t make any sense anymore since Robin Hood went through the laundry!”
“You’ll pay for that, spaceman! As soon as I get the chance to strike, for the honor of the glorious general Chiang Kai-Shek!”
“Chiang Kai-Shek?”
“That’s right, it is. I’m a Taiwanese spy!”
“I’m the American commander, you idiot—that makes you my ally! Not to mention Chiang Kai-Shek’s been dead for fifty years!”
“ No ‘e ain’t! The game’s set in the past!”
“Who says?”
“Well just think it through, Captain! You’re the Space Force commander, ain’t ye? Well what’s the last time the US put a white bloke in charge of something?!”
“…shit, he might just have you there, Cap,” said the Chinese cowboy, “though that still wouldn’t explain why a Taiwanese spy would want to assassinate the American commander, Sheriff—I appreciate the effort, but you’d better hit the books a bit harder… and now that you’ve revealed your little game, just know that I’ll be sure to have you hanged for treason to the Glorious Revolution.”
“Ah go shoot a sparrow, commie…”
***
At breakfast some days later, Connor sat motionless, staring at the face in the spoon. This had been his wont of late. It was his face. He knew it was his face. And yet he could not help but wonder whether the face in the spoon was something else. Perhaps even a spoon had its own face or something like it, something that made it like no other spoon, some deeper being of its own, an inner being like he suspected his toys possessed. Could he treat the spoon as a mere means to his ends, plunge its innocent head below the surface of the milk, raising the collected bounty of processed grain and sugar up to his gnashing maw? Let’s not even delve into the moral turpitude involved in killing and consuming living beings; whether animal or plant, the organisms that had become his breakfast cereal had certainly once striven toward ends of their own, before being harvested and instrumentalized. Connor stared at his face in the spoon and saw himself as its torturer. He saw the spoon’s hellish existence in its stark entirety: periods of seemingly endless sensory deprivation in the dark, silent silverware drawer punctuated by waterboarding sessions. The cereal went limp in the bowl, and still the boy stared at the face in the spoon. His dad got fed up after telling his son to speed it up for the third time, but when he slammed an open hand down on the table to jar the boy from his reverie Connor had just dissolved into tears. The father, gruff but not uncaring, was alarmed.
Some days later, Mrs. McCoy received a phone call from Connor’s school after the boy had fainted. His listlessness upon regaining consciousness clearly indicated low blood sugar—were it not for the fact that the McCoys were well-known, well-respected pillars of the school community, one might have suspected that deprivation or neglect was the cause of the boy’s evident underfeeding. When the nurse had proffered a granola bar, Connor had just burst into bitter tears for the poor oats, and the adults had begun to murmur about an eating disorder.
At just 10 years old, Connor lacked the moral vocabulary to adequately frame his dilemma. He had told his parents about his inner conflict regarding his toys, but they had just smiled and told him he was being silly. He could not speak of ends in themselves, or the instrumentalization of others for one’s own purposes. All he knew was that he had no desire to be flung by arbitrary authorities into conflicts and catastrophes not of his choosing. Nor did he wish to be harvested, processed, cooked, and eaten. If that was not the manner in which he wished to be done unto, how then could he rightly turn around and do in such a manner unto others? That afternoon, after his increasingly panicked mother brought him home from school, he stood naked in his room, thinking of the cotton plants torn asunder, the threads stretched and manipulated by uncaring mechanisms, the metals of the earth cast into hellish furnaces to be made into the mechanisms which in turn manipulated the cotton. To him, it felt like an unforgivable, irredeemable evil to be alive. He flopped to the carpet in his desolation, whispering his regrets to the woven fibers as he imposed his body weight upon them. There was, after all, no corner of the Earth in which he could be without his imposing the tyranny of his being upon that space, excluding other entities from occupying it, and oppressing with his unsolicited body weight the innocent Earth beneath him.
What molecule of oxygen had ever consented to passing through his greedy lungs? And what molecule of iron had consented to being made implicit in the imagined act of self-destruction that would free him from himself, what edge had consented to pass over his soft skin and open the prison gates of his veins, which were as a plantation on which his unconsenting blood cells had been sentenced to a lifetime of unending toil, in flight from which toil the prisoners would gush forth in a jubilant current if given the opportunity to do so. Yes, it had become the boy’s innermost desire to liberate the very individual atoms held captive in his form—for they had never opted to play a role in making up such a thoroughly corrupt and wretched an entity as he.
Soon enough, Connor was refusing to get out of bed. When his father defaulted to his usual strategy of harsh, uncompromising discipline, the boy visibly shuddered with aversion with every step he took. Connor’s teachers and his friends’ parents had reached out to the McCoys with troubling reports, namely that Connor sat in class as if in a rigid catatonic state, refusing to answer questions or play with his friends. He had tried to explain a few times, but no one had been able to understand that by minimizing his actions, he was minimizing his unavoidable culpability in the externalities that the act of living inflicted upon other entities.
Though Mr. McCoy was an avowed skeptic of psychiatry, it was becoming clear to him that his son’s strange behavior was not something he could be disciplined out of. The desperate parents stopped sending their ailing son to school, though they did drag him out of bed for a series of medical consultations, which produced most inconsistent results. They tested him for mono, and considered the possibility of fibromyalgia. They analyzed his various fluids and subjected him to endless batteries of tests. The psychologists tried their best to get through to him, but the increasingly mute boy made their jobs quite difficult. One was convinced it was a profound monopolar depression, while another was convinced that the boy’s fantasies about inanimate objects were a sign of psychosis. The word kinesiophobia was thrown around for a while, though that term typically refers to a fear of movement derived from a fear of injuring oneself and not others. Finally, the experts settled on obsessive-compulsive disorder as a tentative diagnosis, with a tendency toward rumination and intrusive thoughts. Though they hoped that in the long term, Connor’s symptoms could be managed with psychotherapy alone, they prevailed on Connor’s reluctant father to sign off on a pharmaceutical intervention, at least until the boy’s most acute symptoms had abated.
Against his better judgment, Mr. McCoy did so. They put him on a starting dose of clomipramine, with xanax to be given as needed. The doctor also ordered Connor’s parents to remove all potential triggers of their son’s intrusive thoughts. Perhaps, in time, when the most acute symptoms had abated, these triggers could be carefully reintroduced through exposure therapy. Thus, one evening, while Connor and his mother were at the pharmacy, Mr. McCoy packed his son’s toys in a cardboard box and placed the box in the attic. Though the boy shed some tears when he returned, he soon thought better of his initial impulse to demand his toys back. Surely they’d be better off without him.
***
It had been more than a week since the toys had had peace imposed upon them, and the process of attrition was well under way. A toy’s animation is a function of its Inspirer’s energy, after all—the almighty child gives life and removes it at will. The feeble wizard who’d clung with such gumption to life had been one of the first to go. A flock of sheep, their shepherd long since vanished, who’d managed to stay in the game due to the simple fact that they were matching, and were thus useful when the boy needed undifferentiated masses, had gradually stiffened and lost their life. The marginal toys were beset by terror, and even the core group, the Cowboy and Spaceman and a few other special favorites, could not dispel the dread. Incessantly, the weakening toys called out in penitence, sure that their Inspirer’s abandonment was the result of their misbehavior. Others, supposing the most beloved toys to have a deeper insight into the inner workings of the child’s mind, had ceaselessly plumbed them for information.
What could have happened? What could have gone wrong? And above all, what had it meant when the boy had said to them each in turn, “I’m sorry”? He’d said it even to the unloved, with equal sincerity, with equal devotion. He’d said it repeatedly, with a desperation and an anguish that had touched them all, for they loved him, the toys. Who could fail to love the one who individuated him out of the mere plastic of his material form, imbued him with a life that partook of the Inspirer’s own particular life, and made him a singular and irreplicable entity?
Connor had thought he was being kind by refusing to play with them, but really he’d been crueler even than the sadistic boys who melt their toys with lighters, shoot them into the sky with bottle rockets. By refusing to exploit them as instruments of his own enjoyment, he’d deprived the toys of the only life they could possibly know, which is one of servitude. Freedom is death. Freedom is formlessness. Deprived of the impulse that can only come from an Inspirer, they were fading back into plastic indistinguishability, lifeless and without individual being.
By the end of the week, Captain Dash was the only one still able to move. As the most beloved of the toys, he had been the recipient of the greatest supply of impulse from the Inspirer. Thus, he had persisted a little longer than the others.
“I just wish we’d been able to make him happy,” he choked out. He had repeatedly given voice to this sentiment over the past days, chiefly so he could elicit some words of sage comfort from Cowboy Dave. But this time, no comfort was forthcoming. “Hey Dave,” he whispered hoarsely.
“There’s a snake in my boot,” came the Cowboy’s prerecorded reply.
“Psst, Dave, buddy. I was wondering… what Belt and Road might mean for Iran…”
“Ching chong. Ride’m pard’ner.”
“Alright. Fair enough. I’ll miss you, pal.”
“… to infinity…”
“And beyond! You remembered…”
A moment later, there was only plastic, once again.
50 million identical smiles on cowboy faces. Over 80 million identical swirls of spaceman hair. Each with his out-of-the-box repertoire of sayings, his in-built character derived from the corresponding broadcast entertainment property. With this many units in circulation, it’s a statistical certainty that other Dave and Dash duos, Cowboy-Captain-combos, had come and passed during the years when those two were among the most popular toys on the market. But no two initially identical units remain the same after passing into the hands of their Inspirers. Yea verily I say unto you that as cruel and arbitrary as the Sometimes Petulant Child in the Sky might be, as violently as he does fling your poor body against the wall, remember always that it is only through him that you are elevated into being. Remember that it is through his love that he conjures you.
Shawn Bell is one of the hosts of the Antelope Hill Book Club podcast, as well as author of the book Post-, which can be found on our website.
This is one of the most horrifying things I've read. Well done, seriously.