Good To Be A God

Build me a temple, Zem had ordered Magnolia. And she had done so, or at least made plans to do so. She had, in fact, laid out a scheme to turn the whole damn valley into one big temple, deconstructing and scattering it up and down Las Vegas Boulevard and Fremont Street and for miles around the edges of the city.

Vegas had always been the home of more churches, per capita, than any other mid-sized city in the U.S. They hung like spiritual Spanish Moss on the city’s edifice of greed and prurience. Faith fed on sin, and in turn sheltered it from outside forces of destruction. It was a neat little symbiosis.

But now Zem would be bridging that gap. A little reward, a little punishment… just what Vegas had always offered. As always, in Vegas, the results would be immediate. But the stakes would be a lot higher than ever before.

In each hotel, all up and down the Strip, and on Fremont Street, and out in the suburbs, would be a shrine, or room, or attraction, where specific pilgrims would be directed, depending on their desire. Blessings, healings, and wisdom would be on offer, providing the needy pilgrim were willing and able to fulfill a complex series of moves and rituals, making requests at one site and paying tribute at another, completing a series of trials that might have made Hercules cry. Zem liked it.

Anyone wishing the blessing of, say, a successful pregnancy, would be required to make their plea at a lovely blue and pink-veined quartz temple sitting just off the lobby of the Buccaneer’s Pier Casino, somewhat far north on the Strip. Then, if their petition was in order, they’d be sent to gather an offering of flowers and various baby items (conveniently available from the gift shops of several different hotels, but not the Buccaneer’s Pier) and deliver it to the pregnancy temple’s sister site, a garish found-object construct that was to be the new centerpiece of Gotham’s poker room. Later, there would be continued offerings at three other satellite altars in locations all around the city, interspersed with fertility rituals performed outside the Bal Harbor, which had been struggling for years to settle on a successful entertainment policy and would now have that problem taken care of. Len, down there at the Bal, could finally breathe a sigh of relief and convert the old showroom to a buffet.

After all the duties had been fulfilled, and all the offerings supplied, and when at least a week had passed to give the god time to consider, the desirous mother would return to the Buccaneer’s Pier to get her answer. She might leave Vegas knowing that her dreams would come true. Or, she might slump back to the airport, knowing for certain that no hope was left.

In either case, she’d know. She’d know for sure. She could go buy a bassinet or go find some new dream to chase, but she wouldn’t have to waste time anymore on wanting. A better result than any doctor could offer her, for Zem’s money.

The process would be time-consuming and complex, and extremely costly for the more indulgent petitions. Any mistakes would require starting over from the beginning. The system assured both that dilettantes would be eliminated from the pool of pilgrims, and that all the properties in town got their fair share of business. The final design, Zem could see, would send devoted pilgrims scurrying from place to place according to their means and desperation. He laughed out loud as he traced the patterns on the map Magnolia had handily included.
Magnolia figured that wealth-seekers would be more likely to gamble than, say, bereaved mothers, so they were sent to the biggest, highest-limit casinos on the Strip. The terminally ill might be sent on two routes– the ambulatory ones around the outskirts of the city, to the more outrageous low-rent venues on the theory they’d have nothing left to lose and would therefore whoop it up at those threadbare, unpolished properties. The comatose were to be wheeled through smaller houses up and down Fremont by their relatives. At first, Zem assumed Magnolia had succumbed to an out-of-character attack of pity in that instance. But then he saw her notes and grinned. The sick bed attendants would be unlikely to spend money at the tables, but they could be used as entertainment for spectators. Magnolia suggested gurney races, and contests where blindfolded relatives had to grope their way through dozens of mixed-up beds in the street to find their ancient uncle or ailing mother. With just a small adjustment to one city ordinance that forbade gambling out on sidewalks, wagers could be made and the money split among all the houses.

And when the time came for a final answer to any given petition, of course simple yeses and noes were only the beginnings of the possible answers. If a desperate woman begging for a baby displeased Zem somehow (and there were oh, so many ways), she might be told he’d shut her womb forever. Those sick-bed attendants might be sentenced to a lifetime of serving their comatose relative, if Zem chose to sustain life but ignore any other recovery. People were so careless in the ways they phrased their petitions, and so unprepared for a deity who thought like a lawyer. Zem chuckled and licked his lips as he thought of it. Humans liked to think the world played by their rules, that they were in control. The few who’d seen through that delusion usually settled, instead, on the idea that no one was in charge, the world ran blithely by itself, beholden to nothing more coherent than the mathematics of chaos. Imagine their surprise to discover there was, in fact, an Ultimate Authority, and that He could be found in Las Vegas. And he played by no rules at all.

Another martini, another vodka-soaked olive. He hadn’t even heard the bartender come or go, this time.

There would be healing founts at Bombay and Nero’s. Bombay’s fountains would heal from illness, while Nero’s would see to birth defects. Resurrection had been set aside for the Galaxy– which famously had, as the Goats were so often reminded, by far the oldest demographic in town. Magnolia had come up with a very impressive, slightly tomblike setting for the resurrection ceremony, with directions for lots of flowers and wreaths and even organ music.
Zem smiled. Occasionally, he and Magnolia shared an astringent humor. Maybe he’d make Sam and Dan act as temple attendants, forcing them to spend the rest of their days shifting flowers and speaking in low voices to bereaved, hopeful families. If they could stay in human form long enough, at least. He’d recently had to put the goat charm on automatic. The boys just couldn’t seem to remember to behave, and he’d be damned if he’d follow them around like a divine babysitter, smacking their hands whenever they reached too far. He’d heard Dan and Sam were now spending about equal time as men and beasts. They seemed to be growing increasingly comfortable in either role.

An oracle was in store for the new Nile Hotel, that silly pyramid. All its monolithic architecture demanded it. Zem scribbled on that page, too, choosing from two alternatives and approving the plan to clear the center of the casino and build a small temple there– small in terms of square footage, but four stories high, made of pure marble, and designed so that its architecture created constant airflow and sound effects the Wizard of Oz would have given his eyeteeth for. Steam pits underlay the temple to provide the “breath of the god” that gave the resident oracle his or her visions. They necessitated moving a kitchen and two service bars, but such was the price of doing things right. Zem had made it clear to all involved he wanted no half measures.

The other temples, page after page of them, delighted him and made him laugh. Either Magnolia had learned his taste, or else she had the seeds of godhood in her after all.

He considered that thought seriously when he saw the plans for his Hall of Audience.

He knew some of the pilgrims would demand a place where they could talk to their god directly. They’d want answers, information only he could provide. Some of them would no doubt want eternal philosophy or insight into the true nature of the universe. Others would want petty, personal things like vengeance, which was all right, too. In any case, it all came back to availability, so he’d told Magnolia to build him a Hall where his worshipers could approach him, one on one– otherwise he’d be no better than Jehovah or Buddha or any of those other MIA deities who’d infiltrated and stolen the world from him in the first place. He’d said she’d just better make damn sure his Hall was fitting to its purpose. He wanted any pilgrim he was faced with to have proved him or herself unquestionably worthy two or three times over, at least.

She'd outdone herself. He found himself almost eager for the first dumb, small-minded request for an audience, just to get to inhabit this Hall.

These Vegas types really did have a flair for drama, he thought.

The Heroic Pilgrims would begin with various Trials. The Trials themselves were random, so no one could possibly be prepared in advance. Magnolia knew that word would spread, and potential heroes would soon have books, coaches, and probably training camps available to improve their chances. She foresaw a whole new industry; she’d already incorporated three separate dummy corporations to set up and sell just such camps and training, thereby adding yet another layer of profits. But on the Vegas end, she wanted to make each individual pilgrim work as hard as possible, and prove his or her wits as well as daring. Potential tasks included reversing the flow of traffic along the Strip at noon, diving to the bottom of Hoover Dam for a single, inscribed pebble, and climbing up unaided to the Hall of Audience itself.

And that was, perhaps, the most daunting task of all. The Hall of Audience was set atop the Vegas Spire.

The Spire had begun life as the Vegas Needle, and like needles the world over from Cleopatra’s to Seattle’s, it was a tower, a single cylinder sticking up from the earth, with a fat, revolving ring on top. But after limping along with minimal profits from its opening in 1981 to its sale in 1990, it was closed, gutted, and completely reconstructed, and after that it looked like nothing else on earth.

There was a central column, and six curving support legs twisted around it. They held a stack of hotel rooms, meeting spaces, and restaurants on top, and contained escape stairs numbering in the millions. Atop its supports, the shape of the Vegas Spire proper flared up and out to loom asymmetrically, thousands of feet above the earth. It had been called a concrete lily, a champagne flute for Godzilla, and the ugliest piece of architecture anywhere on earth, but nobody could call it unimpressive. It was a huge, carved mountain in the air, hovering and ready to crash down and make a crater that would suck in all of Vegas, all of the desert, all of the Southwest in one gulp.

All sorts of legends had accrued to the Spire even before its Grand Reopening, just as small clouds gathered around its columns even when the rest of the valley sky was clear. Three architects were said to have gone mad designing it. Workmen were rumored to have died by the dozen, their disappearances hushed up by bribes that cost as much as the structure itself. The Spire was said to be a missile, a doomsday bomb approved by the U.S. President just in case the Cold War rekindled. Nostradamus was supposed to have prophesied about the Spire.
Acrophobes had been known to vomit or completely pass out at their first sight of it, even when they stood miles away.

Zem’s Hall sat atop the Spire’s slanted roof, so far above the earth that individual pedestrians on the street directly underneath could not be distinguished– not that any pilgrim was likely to be insane enough to lean over and look.

The Spire’s owner was insisting on a mountain of releases and disclaimers for every applicant, and also suggesting a weight requirement of 110 pounds as a bare minimum. Smaller pilgrims, he said, would be swept off by the wind.

To Zem’s mind, if you wanted to seek a god, you took your chances and hoped for the best. But he understood that in the modern age his philosophy might not stand up in court, so he signed off on all the plans and legal rigmarole anyway. He planned to do a little sweeping, himself. Heroic Pilgrims who bored the god, or who called him from other pastimes more diverting, might find that the daunting tasks required to get to the Hall were as nothing when compared to the challenge of surviving their quick exit. Zem chuckled at that image, too. He’d never thought of himself as a cruel god. But one’s followers needed to learn their limits, and the limits of their god’s patience. Human self-indulgence, as demonstrated by a failure to amuse one’s deity, was definitely beyond the boundaries of acceptable behavior.

Zem rang for another drink and chuckled.

It was good to be a god, he thought. Even in this Age, when people thought they didn't need one.

NEXT POST: A MOLL AND SOME NIGHT VISITORS (Monday 10/12/09)