• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

DEUS EX MACHINA: THE GOD MACHINE by NICHOLAS JAMES PINCUMBE A THESIS Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of English in the Graduate School of The University of Alabama TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA 2009 Copyright Nicholas James Pincumbe 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT God is our salvation from eternal death. That’s what Professor Nicholas Updown grew up believing. But what if there is no God? What then? These questions lead Nicholas down an unprecedented path of scientific exploration that unlocks the secrets to traveling through time. The wake of this discovery sweeps up a cast of odd and ambitious characters, including Updown’s sultry wife, a no holds barred Presidential candidate, a mysterious hooded killer, a curious journalist, a crusading cop, the founder of Forever Life, and a whole slew of uniformed Time Travelers. Along the way, Nicholas Updown learns a thing or two about the secrets of the universe and those in his own life. ii DEDICATION To Rachel, who was worth waiting for. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Without the efforts of all those I’ve met at the University of Alabama, this thesis would not have been possible. I’m grateful to Wendy Rawlings, in whose workshop I wrote the original short story this work is based on. To Phil Beidler, as well, who helped me find the literary depth for the work’s expansion. To Michael Martone who helped me look at the big picture and Gary Mankey who helped me find the scientific sounding lie. To Kate Bernheimer for being on my committee and always being a kind face. I would like to thank my friends and family, especially my parents and sister, who make so much in my life possible. I am also indebted to Melville, Irving, the Bible, Ryan Kazmirzack, and Einstein for always making me think. iv CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………....ii DEDICATION……………………………………………………………………………………iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………………iv FOREWORD: REASONS FOR BEING………………………………………………………….2 ENTRYWAYS……………………………………………………………………………………8 WINDOWS PREFACE………………………………………………………………………….20 WINDOW ONE: THE TRINITY………………………………………………………………..23 WINDOW TWO: THE QUEST…………………………………………………………………42 WINDOW THREE: FUTURE TENSE………………………………………………………….75 WINDOW FOUR: CONVERGENCES………………………………………………………..125 WINDOW FIVE: AN UPDOWN FOR ALL SEASONS……………………………………...162 WINDOW SIX: WORLD WAR THREE………………………………………………………198 WINDOW SEVEN: FALLOUT………………………………………………………………..234 BACKWORD: BEING…………………………………………………………………………252 v DEUS ex MACHINA A Posthumous Writing Of Nicholas Updown When Man went to seek God Man walked round and round When God searched for Man It all began again, again (F. Nietzsche – 1900) 1 FOREWORD REASONS FOR BEING 2 Dear brave reader, The tome you hold before you is produced not without trouble. Nor without trepidation. Not without crisis, nor tremor. I was laying awake in bed one night, trying to make out the texture of my stuffy studio apartment ceiling in the darkness, when I felt those sweaty prickles of fear take hold of my shoulders and neck. My best friend had, just a few hours before, told me he no longer believed in God. He would always be a Catholic, he said, but more from a sense of cultural belonging than from any pull of faith. This shook me, quite a bit, and there I was, eyes rubbing my scratchy pillowcase in the dark, thinking of how a good number of respectable scientists, associates of mine, and now even many close friends found religion to be a bunch of overblown, superstitious hogwash, with no reliable basis. All these important people in my life were quite convinced that God did not exist. In the grand scheme of things, for my lonely person, the consequences of this line of thinking were that, within the mere span of forty, fifty, sixty years, I would most certainly also not exist. Or maybe I had only a few hours left. For me, for the throbbing chambers of my heart, for the grasping, the choking of these chambers, these ideas were worse than Hell. Humans have two primary instincts, my mind insisted, as I slowed my breath to even ins and outs. Two primary instincts at the very core of us that, in one way or another, inform everything we do in this life. One is the drive for survival. We eat, we sleep, we drink, we duck and flee from danger or stand and fight. We find outlets for our emotions, distractions from our insanities, better living conditions for our families, better medicines for our bodies, longer lives. All of this 3 we do because, at our truest, we cannot stand the idea that one day we will be rotting in the ground. Our second drive is, of course, for sexual reproduction. The chase. The flirtation. The seduction. Tarzan swinging after Jane in the jungle. Coffeehouse dates and Internet chat rooms. We fear settling down with a single mate and producing our brood only because we wonder what purpose will be left but to grow old and die? This is why men squirm at the thought of vasectomies. Why women weep at barren wombs. Are we supposed to be content in making way for the next generation like one second passes to allow room for the next? Is it enough to convince ourselves, to lie to ourselves, that we will have immortality through our children and their children’s children? Most of us have met our grandparents, sure, maybe have even heard stories of our great grandparents, but before that, beyond that in the great span of history? These people, no matter how many descendants they may have, are now no more than dust. And we’re supposed to smile in our nursing homes, our children having forgotten us even now, while we still breathe, and put up with this nonsense? What about that little voice, deep down, insisting, my life , my romance , it mattered. I was here first. And yet, we don’t want to be here alone. We do want those future generations. We love them. Everything in our beings strain to make them. Our constant pursuit of each other’s flesh shows how our greatest instincts push past any fears or reluctance. Just as we are hardwired to wish for our own survival, so too are we built to promote the well-being of our entire species, if not as individuals (what with our petty squabbles, our violent homicides) then certainly as a whole. So the thought of nonexistence, complete obliteration – of mine, my family’s, my friends’ and neighbors’, all those scientists’, the televangelists’, the politicians’, the strangers’ on the street, the actresses’ smiling in toothpaste ads, even my children’s and grandchildren’s in the future – was inexcusable to me. Something simply had to be done. The pleading prayers I offered to the ceiling of my bedroom provided only fleeting comfort to me in those moments. The seeds of doubt planted in my brain had too firmly rooted. So I needed to find comfort somewhere else. 4 It was then that I first thought it. Perhaps if God cannot save us, if there is no God to save us, we can save ourselves. But how could I aspire to have such power? The power of an immortal, an eternal, an omnipotent being? Did all of human history contain enough knowledge for such a pursuit? I wasn’t sure, as I lay there in that room, but I knew I needed to find out. So I got out of bed and scoured the Internet. For hours and hours, seeking answers for questions humankind had forever been asking – whether we knew it or not. But the sun rose, and set again, and there were no answers there for me. Over the next several years, I would also traverse the country, far and wide, from university to university, library to library. I would study high energy, philosophy, aeronautics, psychology, physics, alchemy, genetics, Voodoo, mystics, magic, new age thinking, the cosmos, alternative medicine, even time travel. I would see the barren plains of Russia’s frozen tundra. I would hike the wide plateaus of Tibet, beside those seeking Shangri-La. I would float down the Amazon in a rubber raft, contemplating the Universe and the stars, with strange natives perhaps hiding in dense foliage on all sides. In the outback I would stare at Uluru, the monolith Australian red rock, called Ayer’s by the first European settlers there, but rightfully called a more ancient name by its true guardians. These journeys took their toll on me, the toll of years, and my grey hairs grew many as my time grew short. My face birthed wrinkles, even as I failed to birth any children of my own. My legacy was set, then – many spent their lives seeking a spiritual route, a path straight to God. I would, instead, seek an escape route. A path around. A circumnavigation. It was in Arizona I finally found my prophet. My words of hope. Not far from Death Valley, from cruel desert and unrelenting sun, at a small, out of the way college library, I found the first of the texts rejected by the major institutions. It was called Deus ex Machina , and numbered fewer than one hundred pages long. The back cover was torn off and a few pages ripped to shreds. Someone had tried hiding it, on a back bookshelf, far from similar 5 subject matter, in a corner of the building covered in dust. I had long since learned to peer past the obvious sectors, though, and now, at last, I had the first part of my treasure map. I had no idea what it was I sought. This book, now a finished, polished project, was just scraps and torn pages then. I had to gather it piece by piece, and it came with no small trouble.

Load more

  259

Copy Link