I leaned against the bus window and stared off absently. “When God speaks today and ends his vow of silence,” I said, “then that’s it. We’ll have world peace.”
Caleb sat beside me in the aisle seat. He looked bored, but he didn’t bother to argue this time. “I could stand to see less politics, but that’s just me. You’d think God is a fan with the way things are.”
The two of us jostled along as our bus careened over shoddy roads. The landscape outside glowed barren and stark, covered with lingering mountain frosts. Red banners had been strung up between shanty houses that grew denser along our path. As civilization crept in again after eight hours of desert nothingness, it snapped me back to attention.
Our bus began to slow as the crowds outside picked up dramatically, blocking the roads. We entered the overpacked town along with the rest of our train; hordes of white people filling the streets of the Asiatic waste, packing into and claiming a foreign space as thoughtlessly as any conqueror. All of them gathered now for one purpose; to hear the Godman.
Caleb craned past me to look. “It’s like Disneyland in summer out there.”
The fanfare leading up to the temple grew intense, and I gave him a bitchy look, “We’re barely going to make it on time. Can you stop complaining just a little while?”
“I’m not complaining. I’m getting in the mood.”
“You may not believe in the man, but it cost Anton a lot of money to get us here, so you should be grateful. Try to be serious.”
Our bus could go no further. We had to grab our belongings and disembark. From here we would walk, and if we couldn’t find accommodation, then we would sleep in the streets before returning home the next day. We’d prepared camping supplies for just that possibility.
My friend gestured for me to go first as he said, “You can be grateful since you wanted to be here. I’m just tagging along to look after you.”
“Plenty of young people travel alone.”
“See this is your problem. You trust everybody, and everybody takes advantage of you because of it. You know that Anton is grooming you, right?”
I stepped out of the bus and tried to find space on the sidewalk. Already, I could see the peak of the great temple in the distance. “He’s not grooming me. He’s just the only other person I’ve met who really gets this stuff.”
This stuff, I thought, made up the purpose of my life. It carried me all this way, and soon everybody would understand. Spirit and truth. Maybe a little yoga. It had all been brought together in the seven Godmen before, and now the final Godman today...
“You hit it off with some random guy on Twitter,” Caleb spoke, “he buys you a new iPhone, you talk to him all the time, because he compliments you—oh, you’re very enlightened—and then he offers to pay to send you all the way out to bumfuck nowhere for a special meditative retreat. Next, he’ll offer to fly you out to his house. And that doesn’t sound like grooming to you?”
“You know what, I would love to meet him in person,” I said, just to drive my point home. “And it’s not a retreat. If it were a retreat,” I stepped over a piece of donkey shit, “this wouldn’t be so miserable.”
“Right, we’re gonna watch a real miracle. That’s gonna blow my mind. I’m not kidding, if it happens I’ll convert.” Caleb marched with me up the town’s incline, closer and closer to the temple as we spoke. “I’m looking forward to it, actually.”
“It’s not a religion, the man is God in human flesh come for the last time, at the thirteenth level of consciousness. Even the Buddha only had no-mind, but this is full-mind.”
“So?”
“So, the world is ready to be transformed, Caleb. I could go over the evidence again, you know, but I’m not bothering. Just hold it in and wait.”
My exhausted friend let out a scoff, and we buckled down to hike the rest of the way in silence, coming to the base of the temple grounds. The great, tawny exterior of the structure arrayed in ancient flaking murals overshadowed the mountains and their glory. The gates of the temple stood open for all, leading into the center courtyard surrounded by mountain-hewn secondary structures.
Inside, spiritual leaders stood clad in a rainbow of colored robes. The crowd of them showed faces from all across the world. They packed like sardines into the entrance, barring our way forward and forcing us back with the other, less important travelers; so many resigned to waiting outside.
“There’s… no room left,” I said. “At least they’ve got a speaker system, right? We’ll be able to hear the man speak.” The sweat in my jacket and the cold of the mountain combined, and I felt like I would melt into the morass around me as the jet lag set in. I was ready to give up.
Caleb, though, sat his backpack against the wall beside the temple. He rummaged violently through it for his wallet and passport. “We didn’t travel to the other side of the world just to listen to a couple of speakers in the dirt,” he said. “Get your papers.”
“What? We can’t just leave these here. What about our stuff!”
“This is God, right?” Caleb asked. His eyes bore a hole in me.
“He is.”
“Then you’re insane for standing there. Drop your heavy shit. You can buy more.” He left all of his clothes, his camera, his food, anything he couldn’t stuff in his jacket.
The scales fell from my eyes. If I didn’t find a way into that courtyard now, I knew I would regret it for the rest of my life. I had to swallow my pride and follow.
With my passport and wallet out of my suitcase, I sat my pack down knowing my possessions wouldn’t last five minutes unattended. I joined Caleb circling around the outside of the temple and toward the mountain’s face. The craggy surface of the stone could be climbed at the corner, where the temple wall met rock just out of sight of the crowds. At the end of my strength, it took everything I had left. Like summiting the mountain to end this journey—I joined the wild few who went this far. We lay on our bellies to stay hidden at the top.
Out of thousands, the true believers numbered just a handful. Somehow, they included Caleb before me. That fact kept eating at me the more time went on.
The four walls of the temple stretched between four pillars, forming a long rectangle. Down below, I could see the whole rainbow of proud meditators beginning to take their cross-legged seats in the courtyard. The area was subtly leveled, and they arranged themselves by prestige on its ascent to the middle. There, a singular square platform sat, and the only white-robed man dazzled in the sun.
I looked at him and smiled, but he didn’t smile back. The man sat on a small, ornate carpet. His long black hair and mustache had grown grey, and his once tan skin looked sickly ashen. People had speculated the man was dying, but I never believed it until now.
Even as a vision of decay, though, he sat erect and strong. It wasn’t just my imagination, I was sure; he looked completely different from everyone around him, seen plain as day in the simple shifting of his eyes, and the posture of his face. This was the Lord of all the Earth, the master and creator; he saw everything there was to see. I was sure that even now, he was aware of me like he had been from before I was born. This moment had been drawing me forward like a magnet so that we could meet.
Caleb ribbed me. “They’re bringing out the mic,” he said, pointing across the courtyard to the only spiritualist left standing. We’d made it just in time.
But that couldn’t be right, I thought. The miracle promised was meant to come before the man spoke. There was to be a great sign for all the world.
“Where is it?” I asked.
“What?”
“The sign. The miracle!”
As I cut my gaze to the left, I saw that another person high on the courtyard wall standing for all to see. He lingered in the distance, a tall figure in a black robe, as his feet perched with their toes off the precipice. He began to lean forward.
“Caleb!” I shouted.
My friend turned just in time to see, but not to act. We gasped and watched as this new man stepped off, and there it was. The miracle.
This young man stepped free from the courtyard walls, but he did not fall. He drifted slowly forward, tilting slightly until his arms spread out over the people below, and he began to laugh. It sounded like a charitable, joyous laugh, yet it had an edge that filled me with dread; something I couldn’t describe.
“Oh my god, what the…” Caleb started to swear more, but stopped himself. For the very first time, he looked between me and the man with awe. I had stopped smiling by now.
The one flying and laughing continued on, and he turned over himself, twisting like a black ribbon in the wind. His laughing picked up more, and the charity faded away. There came a thread of malice breaking through.
The Godman pointed cryptically up, which set a fire in the crowd of meditators. They began to shout and argue, begging him to explain what this meant, yet the man remained silent. Standing up, Caleb began to run, circling around the wall as the flying one alighted on the other side of the courtyard. “Come on!” my friend cried. “I have to talk to him!”
Somewhere in the middle of it all, the mic hit the ground and the speakers blared with feedback.
Stricken with the moment, Caleb left me where I hid. The Godman’s meditators flowed around in a panicked rush; everyone now after the same target, and the Godman himself disappeared. The cryptic man in black who had already begun to flee ducked with cackling laughter into the door of the nearby tower. I knew they wouldn’t be caught by now.
I took a minute to stand. With Caleb disappearing across the walls, I entered the dusky interior of the closest tower stairwell alone. I could have crossed over and gone further, pursuing the young man in black like the rest, but I didn’t. I descended the stairway into the courtyard and found it utterly empty. At the side opposite its entrance a narrow, covered hall hid away, carved between the mountain and wall. Drawn to it, I passed over the expanse of ziggurat stone and entered under its archway. There I found the Godman.
He sat in a short wooden chair, smoking a cigarette as he looked my way. He had gotten out of the panic somehow and found a place to rest, as if waiting for me.
“That was something,” I said. Part of me wanted to bow and scrape, but the better part of me felt as though I was speaking to an old friend. “I think the guy who sent me here is a groomer,” I admitted. “Caleb was probably right about that, and some other things too. But I guess you knew that.”
The man nodded tiredly, a quirk of amusement on his face.
“Everyone’s run off,” I noted.
He gave no response.
“You know, I think he was mocking us,” I said. “I don’t understand it.”
Just smoking.
“I guess you’ll save breaking your silence for another day, then. Sorry.”
Finally, the man let free a long, pensive drag. “I think I’ve said enough.”