A-Theism, the Great Godkiller

Mary Beth nudged her friend and smiled in mock embarrassment for her tact. Ellen easily saw her efforts to restrain her laughter. The pop-less lecture continued for some minutes before Mary Beth looked at her watch and gasped.

"Crap! That thing's happening sune!" she whispered. They noisily assembled their belongings and ran indiscreetly out the lecture room and into the hall, even forcing the usually stoic professor notice. Mary Beth's paisley skirt freely billowed around her gams with each running stride while her arms embraced herself, securing her books against her feminine waist; her plump breasts struck the upturned books with each crash of her feet. God she was beautiful.

As they rounded the corner to the main lecture hall, Ellen saw other persons such as herself running inside to catch a seat. Though the presentation would not begin for another five minutes and most surely would start late, everyone wanted to find a seat. Despite the four-hundred person capacity, it was difficult to find two seats next to each other. Ellen considered telling a selfish loaner to slide down one or remove his jacket and backpack from a seat, but she knew Mary Beth would be genuinely embarrassed so they sat in the nosebleeds.

Ellen immediately recognized every logic professor the University of Minnesota had to offer stood in front by the podium. While most chatted amongst themselves, the always stoic Professor Yusef (he insisted on that name) stood hands grasped in front of him, eyes squarely forward. Though men were not her thing, Ellen agreed with every girl he taught—and a few of the men—that he was perhaps the hottest professor in the liberal arts. Mary Beth's eyes did not dwell on his chiseled body and brown skin but rather Professor Zimmermann, a short, bald, and corpulent Polish Jew who shuffled up to the podium. She checked her watch and gasped sarcastically to Ellen that they were actually beginning on time.

"Yes, thank you everyone for coming, please turn off your cell phones, stop talking, and let me begin without interruption. This is being recorded for posterity and I don't want some complicated ring tone rendition of a flavor-of-the-month song mucking up the record. If your phone goes off, I'm willing to make a fuss in the recording by personally booting you out." He took a sip from his bottle of water just as some of the crowd erupted in laughter. He paused mid sip and stared back at them. "Don't think I'm kidding," he finished his sip. A few people, unsure if he was joking, laughed uneasily but the rest clearly understood he was serious and simultaneously filled the room with ringing clicks and flips as they checked and turned their phones to vibrate or silence.

"You all know I'm a man of few words so I'll let Professor Yusef speak for me and for himself. You all know HIM to be quite modest but in my last few seconds let me just say this on for his behalf," he leaned his mass against the podium and pointed resolutely at the center of the audience, causing a few attendees in front to lean as far back into their seats as possible, "this is the most important non-material creation in the history of the world. I am quite serious on this..." he trailed off. Now smiling gleefully, he stood aside and let Yusef take his place. The new voice coughed uncomfortably into the microphone.

"Um...thanks. Uh, that wasn't quite the introduction I was expecting but rather than start over I think I should just go with it," he mused with a helpless smile. Though quite a few found his humor refreshing from the abuse they just had, no one was reeled out of their caution and resisted laughing. "This assembly was hastily gathered by Dr. Zimmermann's request so I've no remarks prepared. On the screen behind me," he pointed, "will be a transparency of an equation simple enough that even skilled undergrads can solve but like many inventions, it is more difficult to find or create than it is to explain," he defended the creating process, a tinge of deserved ego materializing. "The solution is an explanation to the question our colleagues in Continental philosophy have debated for centuries," a few murmured at the word 'colleagues', one braved a boo despite Arthur's curt preventative admonishment not seconds earlier. His fists resting on his hips, the old Jew scanned the crowd for the culprit but his bitter expression made everyone cower, not just the glare's intended.

"I assure you the answer is correct and is already on its way to be published." He explained modestly as the lights dimmed and a transparency of logic equations projected onto the enormous white screen behind him. The skilled graduate students and visiting professors were the first to turn and chat amongst themselves after just a few minutes. Then the less skilled of each, then undergrads like Ellen and Mary Beth. Thankfully no students capable enough sat clustered near them to spoil the ending like someone in line at a movie theater telling you Darth Vader is Luke's father or at the bookstore that Snape kills...

"Oh my Gaw!" Mary Beth exclaimed, her drawl refusing to yield to shock. Ellen finished as well but could not grasp its significance. She had known most of her life that the supernatural didn't exist. What did she need this for? As far as she was concerned, each new scientific discovery stacked upon centuries of evidence that built a pyramid of reason.

The oldest blocks, comparable to the theory of the Sun centered solar system, were the largest ones at or near the bottom. Micro evolution, the kind Darwin observed, was middling while macro evolution, the Big Bang and all that, just a little smaller and higher. Braving the fierce desert storms of ignorance and the picks of looting spiritualists (i.e. "Intelligent Design") claiming to know Truth but ignoring Fact, man's capability to breach and excel beyond God's exalted station was proven, freeing the other sciences to resume or start other pyramids, never ceasing until bestowing mankind the power to be gods themselves; this equation was merely the golden capstone. How well the world would respond to the ribbon cutting ceremony was not a question she thought to ask herself.

"Now, now, I assure you this is 100% peer reviewed and correct!" Yusef shouted and gestured quiet over the murmuring crowd. "I know it's unpleasant but it's factually correct!"

"Destroyer!" someone shouted from the front. "Atheist!" came another. Then the floodgates opened and all manner of praise and insults launched at him.

Turning her watering eyes to Ellen, Mary Beth grasped her hand. "No, it can't be trew!" she cried as she lunged her face against Ellen and sobbed into her breast. Though her wrapped arms and smooth voiced assurances were those of a consoling friend, her pleased smile betrayed her to any potential onlookers.

As she squeezed her love harder amidst scattered boos and applause, one thought repeated in her euphoric mind. "So there is a God after all..."

* * *

The Schock Prize, established by the will of Rolf Schock in 1993, biannually awards men and women 50,000 United States Dollars for achievements in four fields including logic/philosophy. Until Yusef flew to Stokholm for his award, few if any lay people had even heard of them.

Months after his formula was published and days before the ceremony, the major news outlets across the globe picked up on the sleepy bombshell. The atheist government of China's People's Republic heralded it, slouching culturally Catholic and Protestant Europeans shrugged at it, but the Muslim and American worlds cried all manner of epithets when they learned the academic community disregarded their certain faith in God for the uncertain logic of man. Catholics from Mexico used baseball bats to beat paper carcasses in Yusef's effigy stuffed with sweet sweet candy.

In a nod to the Wahabbists who could crush the monarchy with assassination and unrest with but a few strategic attacks on oil pipelines, the King of Saudi Arabia verbally chastised Oman for being the ethnic homeland of the latest infidel; secular interests were also met by simultaneously venting steam for continued illegal immigration from that country. And as usual, they read from the standard "Death to America" letterhead for Yusef's birth nation and its rampant secularity. This was quite an accusation considering 83% of those in the Great White Satan believed Jesus rose from the dead.

Regardless, with such a free and fair press not on the ball, anger was fresh in the days leading up to the Schock Prizes but it was not until Yusef flew out to Stockholm that he realized just how passionate his countrymen felt. Flights out to Sweden were booked solid the day his award was leaked and thousands of American protesters awaited him outside the airport as he got into his taxi. The driver, uncertain which language Yusef spoke, somehow asked "Where to" with four syllables. He answered, butchering the name of his hotel, but the driver nodded reassuringly like he understood. Their cold reception matched the late Spring weather. Though Minnesota was notorious for its harsh winters, he was no match for Sweden's inhospitable wind chill. He glanced at the vehicle's external temperature gauge, an uncommon tool in American cabs, but cursed himself when he realized he couldn't convert Celsius to Fahrenheit.

Somehow the United States, the first nation to adopt metric currency, missed the bandwagon conversion and still conducted itself with its stubbornly entrenched modified British system. Lengths for distance, weights for food, and volumes for soda were harmless in everyday life; its so called flaws, like aboriginal tribes, only arose when conversion was attempted. The metric system however had incontestable advantages in science and trade but the people who needed to know did and students continued to learn both in school. Celsius, Yusef believed, belonged to the sciences. One-Hundred degrees Fahrenheit was approximate to the average human body temperature (98.6), a handy reference point since its everyday use was the daily weather forecast. But Celsius, which used water instead of the human body, was tailor made for the lab. When absolute zero was comprehended, and astronomers began measuring in temperatures Kelvin where absolute zero was the absolute bottom, it was a scientific scale with a reasonable scope and contextual application unlike its Celsius parent.

A mother didn't need scientifically crafted temperatures to know her pot was boiling and, whenever her child became sick, a few degrees Fahrenheit could mean a fever whereas a non-digital Celsius thermometer would show no change at all. Total metric conversion by the general American populace would be painful and beneficial for uniformity's sake but little else since most simply used it for cooking and traveling, necessary but mundane acts that could frankly rely upon any scale so long as it was familiar. Sure they could become accustomed after a few years and certainly a few generations, but one had to ask if it was worth needlessly rocking the boat?

A few dozen protesters broke the police barricade and rushed the BMW. The driver had carelessly picked the wrong fare and panicked impotently as they encircled the cab and pounded their fists against the windows, nearly tipping it. "Why'd you do it!?" a newly frightened Yusef stiffly turned his neck to the protester. "How can you destroy Jesus!?" another began. "What good can come of this!?" and so forth. Though still panicked himself even well after the driver cleared the crowd, Yusef realized a majority of their angry exclamations were rhetorical questions not insults. He smiled queerly, unsure at first why this fact made the near-death experience more enjoyable. Questions, he remembered, were how understandings were formed and, if there was hope they'd wholeheartedly accept God's scientifically proven non-existence, these roughing-up exercises were comparable to a body stretching a tight new shirt. Sooner or later they would have to make an adjustment as the quality people, institutions, and businesses abandoned the God centered model for a secular one which was just as good if not better than the old irrational one. After all, charity was charity without some divine gauge. But religion was so stubbornly entrenched that the ultimately beneficial conversion would be painful.

He would have considered this line further but his cab pulled in front of his hotel. Unfamiliar with tipping customs in Sweden, Yusef just doubled the fare. The driver held it in his hands and stared. Yusef apologetically reached out, willing to offer more money, but the cabbie clutched his Kroner to his chest and shook his head. Yusef promptly withdrew his hands. The driver popped the trunk and bolted from the car, tearing the wind as he passed the exiting professor. By the time his door was closed, the luggage was already out and the Swede smiled thanks. Yeah, he definitely over-tipped him, but Yusef just shrugged his shoulders. Whatever the customs in any country, what that driver went through for his single fare was probably worth twice that.

He checked into his room and turned on the television to find America in flames. Sitting at the edge of his bed and leaning forward, he stared mouth ajar at the live destruction in Washington D.C., Houston, Dallas, Memphis, Atlanta, Los Angeles, but especially the Twin Cities. When a CNN camera man on the ground provided an audio/video feed, the Swedish media immediately tapped it. The Swedish anchors knew little, but they translated and spoke over the American counterparts, claiming the protest filled with well dressed men and women of every age and class developed in residential St. Paul and traveled to the Minneapolis side of the University. Fists beating the air and placards held high, this diverse group yelled for all ranges of the religious spectrum. If Hell still existed anymore, it would have frozen over as religious skinheads walked shoulder to shoulder with Rabbis all in the name of God. Hastily assembled horse police in riot gear formed a line (seen from a helicopter news crew) to block the crowd. The audio from the camera on the ground recorded their megaphone demands.

"Go back to your homes and places of businesses. This protest is blocking roads and is not cleared through the proper channels. Please turn back, we'd rather not use force but will if..." just then the helicopter camera spotted a sudden red flash in the upper left corner of its shot. A fraction of a second later, the ground camera picked up the audio and, perhaps sooner than the people actually there, the audience at home realized a bomb had just gone off. The news crew switched visual to the ground camera and stole a look at the billowing hole launching shrapnel down at the Civil War memorial. Just as suddenly, uncertain of what happened and by whom, and fearing for their safety, the police instinctively took to their pepper spray. Some of the stunned crowd absorbed the reality of their situation, prompting many to swiftly run opposite the explosion and the deathly screams of pepper sprayed protesters closest to the police line. These fleeing sensible people worked an obstacle course past the resolute and/or stupid and filtered out the closest edge, merely caring to get away from the trouble. When the front thinned enough, the tear gas arrived.

Usually censors for live television are quite quick to catch obscenity, accidental nudity, and violence, or anything the FCC thought might offend at least ten people, but as the crowd hysterically ran away from heavy gray clouds of tear gas, they trampled anyone in their way including the camera man and an adjacent boy no more than ten years old, probably attending the protest with his mother. The camera was knocked onto its side and the protective outer lens cracked, crudely splitting and tripling the screaming boy's image as countless feet stamped his back. Just as a can of bursting gray smoke skipped a landing in the background but before the outer lens was crushed in the foreground, those rendered dozens of indiscriminate footsteps cracked the thrice rendered middle's skull, permanently silencing the scared child's cries. CNN immediately cut the feed, the American anchors apologized to any upset viewers, reminding them it was live television to cover their asses, and urged them to pray for the child's family. Their Swedish counterparts apologized that the feed was lost and moved on to the weather.

* * * *

"C'mon honey, Yusef's coming on!" Tina shouted and hopped in her seat as the television cast its hazy blue glow upon the darkened room. It was late afternoon in the states, but evening live in Sweden, and the over-cast made an artificial night sky. The only lights in the house were from the kitchen where her husband Jim made popcorn and outside where the moon reflected on the May snow. Peer review of Yusef's formula had been done with bewilderingly deliberate speed and readied it for the Schock Prizes just four and a half months after it was published.

"Do you see him on the screen?" he replied cattily. This was not a scathe however but the natural sound of his mildly effeminate tones.

"No, he's not on yet," she replied still excitedly.

"Then I still have time, you know how I hate wasted kernels and I'm not about to take the popcorn out early!" he shouted with a lisp that reached around the wall separating them. A moment later he arrived with a bowl of microwave popcorn and sat next to his wife. He crossed his legs knee-to-knee and away from her as it bobbed up and down in a steady nervous beat. The glow reflected off his glasses and nearly bare scalp.

Every major news outlet in the country was covering the Schock Prizes, a significant rise from the zero since 1993. The C-Span announcer dryly commented on criticism of Yusef in the last few months but took no discernible stance on whether non existence—or death rather—of God personally meant anything to him. Panned back, the convention center in Stockholm was packed with respectably dressed men and women in tightly organized large round tables. Tina had been to functions like this and figured they were too bunched to be accidental and probably meant to cram as many people inside as possible; unless this was some Swedish play on efficient use of space and resources. A tuxedoed blond man spoke for a few moments but proclaimed that, in a slight breach of tradition, they would give the Logic and Philosophy prize after the other three prizes and not before. Everyone of course knew that was to build suspense to an obvious and far more anticipated decision.

"See?" Jim lisped. Tina offered a fake frown and shoved him with her shoulder. After the other three awards were given, each recipient conveying appreciation before gracefully leaving the podium, the first man, now glowing with sweat underneath the stage lights, announced Yusef's win and a brief explanation as to why.

The blond man looked solemnly to the audience. "To quote Nietzsche, 'God is dead.' And though he did not literally mean this, Dr. Yusef Muhammad of the United States is slowly making that a reality." No one in attendance shifted in their seats. "Every day more and more people are convinced they have placed their faith in fictional afterlives called Heaven, Nirvana, and reincarnation so they may engage in communion with non-existent beings named Yaweh, Allah, God, Vishnu, Jah as opposed to Hell with Satan, the Devil, Beelzebub, Woland, the untouchables or whatever spiritual scheme you believe," his use of 'scheme' indicated his British English education. "The certainty is absolute—but God is not dead as long as people believe in him, her, or it," he ended ambiguously, receiving modest applause.

"Yeah, and there's still a flat Earth society but you don't hear much from them anymore!" Tina laughed triumphantly at the man on television. She knew it was like clapping after a movie in a regular theater, but she could not help herself. She also knew Jim had strong Lutheran sensibilities and tended to take her occasional bashes without a grain of salt but strangely, in this period of contention where not only his faith but the whole world's was tested, he remained calm and attentive.