Robert Sawyer - Calculating God

“Sorrow,” said T’kna. He touched his belt buckle with the red pinwheel on it.

“There are lots of devoutly religious humans who have died horrible deaths from cancer and other diseases. How do you explain that? Hell, how do you explain the existence of cancer? What kind of god would create such a disease?”

“He/she/it may not have created it,” said the deep, translated voice. “Cancer may have arisen spontaneously in one or multiple possible timeslices. But the future does not happen one at a time. Nor are there an infinite number of possibilities from which God may choose. The specific deployment of reality that included cancer, presumably undesirable, must have also contained something much desired.”

“So he had to take the good with the bad?” I said.

“Conceivably,” said T’kna.

“Doesn’t sound like much of a god to me,” I said.

“Humans are unique in believing in divine omnipotence and omniscience,” said T’kna. “The true God is not a form idealized; he/she/it is real and therefore, by definition, imperfect; only an abstraction can be free of flaws. And since God is imperfect, there will be suffering.”

An interesting notion, I had to admit. The Wreed made some more rattling sounds, and, after a bit, the translator spoke again. “The Forhilnors were surprised that we had any sophisticated cosmological science. But we had always known of the creation and destruction of virtual particles in what you call a vacuum. Just as the fallacy of a perfect God hampered your theology, so the fallacy of a perfect vacuum hampered your cosmology, for to argue that a vacuum is nothingness and that this nothingness is real is to argue that something exists which is nothing at all. There are no perfect vacuums; there is no perfect God. And your suffering requires no more explanation than that unavoidable imperfection.”

“But imperfection only explains why suffering begins,” I said. “Once your God became aware that someone was suffering, if he did have the power to stop it, then surely, as a moral being, he would have to do so.”

“If God is indeed aware of your illness and has done nothing,” said T’kna’s computer-generated voice, “then other concerns mandate that he/she/it let it run its course.”

That was too much for me. “Damn you,” I snapped. “I vomit blood. I have a six-year-old boy who is scared out of his mind — a boy who is going to have to grow up without a father. I have a wife who is going to be a widow before next summer. What other concerns could possibly outweigh those?”

The Wreed seemed agitated, flexing its legs as if ready to run, presumably an instinctive reaction to a threat. But, of course, he wasn’t really here; he was safely aboard the mothership. After a moment, he calmed down. “Do you a direct answer desire?” asked T’kna.

I blew out air, trying to calm down; I’d forgotten about the cameras and now felt rather embarrassed. I guess I wasn’t cut out to be Earth’s ambassador. I glanced at Hollus. His eyestalks had stopped weaving; I’d seen them do that before when he was startled — my outburst had upset him, too.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I inhaled deeply, then let it out slowly. “Yes,” I said, nodding slightly. “I want an honest answer.”

The Wreed rotated 180 degrees, so that its back was facing me — that’s when I first got a glimpse of its rear hand. I later learned that if a Wreed faced you with its opposite side, it was about to say something particularly candid. His yellow belt had an identical buckle on its back, and he touched it. “This symbolizes my religion,” he said. “A galaxy of blood — a galaxy of life.” He paused. “If God did not directly create cancer, then to berate him/her/it for its existence is unjust. And if he/she/it did create it, then he/she/it did so because it is necessary. Your death may serve no purpose for yourself or your family. But if it does serve some purpose in the creator’s plan, you should be grateful that, regardless of what pain you might feel, you are part of something that does have meaning.”

“I don’t feel grateful,” I said. “I feel cursed.”

The Wreed did something astonishing. It turned back around and reached out with its nine-fingered hand. My skin tingled as the force fields making up the avatar’s arm touched my own hand. The nine fingers squeezed gently. “Since your cancer is unavoidable,” said the synthesized voice, “perhaps you would find more peace if you believed what I believe rather than what you believe.”

I had no answer for that.

“And now,” said T’kna, “I must disengage; time it is again to attempt to communicate with God.”

The Wreed wavered and vanished.

I merely wavered.

A reconstruction . . .

Half a city away, down by the shore of Lake Ontario, Cooter Falsey was sitting in a dingy motel room’s overstuffed easy chair, hugging his knees and whimpering softly. “That wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said, over and over, almost as if it were a mantra, a prayer. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Falsey was twenty-six, thin, blond, with a crew cut and teeth that should have received braces but never had.

J. D. Ewell sat down on the bed, facing Falsey. He was ten years older than Cooter, with a pinched face and longer dark hair. “Listen to me,” he said gently. Then, more forcefully: “Listen to me!”

Falsey looked up, his eyes red.

“There,” said Ewell. “That’s better.”

“He’s dead,” said Falsey. “That man on the radio said it: the doctor is dead.”

Ewell shrugged. “An eye for an eye, you know?”

“I never wanted to kill anybody,” said Falsey.

“I know,” said Ewell. “But that doctor, he was doing the devil’s work. You know that, Cooter. God will forgive you.”

Falsey seemed to consider this. “You think?”

“Of course,” said Ewell. “You and me, we’ll pray for His forgiveness. And He’ll grant it, you know He will.”

“What’ll happen to us if they catch us here?”

“Nobody’s going to catch us, Cooter. Don’t you worry about that.”

“When can we go home?” Falsey said. “I don’t like being in a foreign country. It was bad enough coming up to Buffalo, but at least that was the States. If we get caught, who knows what the Canucks will do to us. They might never let us go home.”

Ewell thought about mentioning that at least Canada had no death penalty, but decided not to. Instead, he said, “We can’t go back across the border yet. You heard the news report: they’ve already figured it was the same guys who did that clinic in Buffalo. Best we stay up here for a piece.”

“I want to go home,” said Falsey.

“Trust me,” said Ewell. “It’s better we stay awhile.” He paused, wondering if it was time to broach the topic yet. “Besides, there’s one more job we’ve got to do up here.”

“I don’t want to kill anybody again. I won’t — I can’t do that, J. D. I can’t.”

“I know,” said Ewell. He reached out, stroked Falsey’s arm. “I know. But you won’t have to, I promise.”

“You don’t know that,” said Falsey. “You can’t be sure.”

“Yes, I can,” said Ewell. “You don’t have to worry about killing anybody this time — because this time what we’re going after is already dead.”

“Well, that was a baffling conversation,” I said, turning to Hollus after the Wreed had disappeared from the conference room.

Hollus’s eyestalks did an S-ripple. “You can see why I like talking to you so much, Tom. At least I can understand you.”

“T’kna’s voice was translated, it seemed, by a computer.”

“Yes,” said Hollus. “Wreeds do not speak in a linear fashion. Rather, the words are woven together in a complex way that is utterly nonintuitive to us. The computer has to wait until they have finished speaking, then try to decipher their meaning.”