Wax

The Most High Priest of the One True Faith sat back in his chair and sighed contentedly. “Truly,” he said to the man across the great walnut-wood desk, “we have the world now at our feet.”

The Archdeacon looked surprised. “I heard rumours to that effect, Your Holiness,” he said. “But still I must confess myself bewildered by what miracle might have brought this to pass.”

“Miracle, yes,” said the Most High Priest, and made a face. “But it’s a miracle of science, I must confess to you. Mere science.”

“I don’t understand.” The Archdeacon, younger and less flamboyantly dressed than the Most High Priest, “Your Holiness, I beg your pardon, but I need more information.”

“Yes,” said the Most High Priest. “That is why I have summoned you.” He got up and walked to the corner of the sumptuously furnished office. “Come with me.”

The Most High Priest slid open a panel in the wall and pressed a button. With a soft whine, a section of wall slid open. Inside was a massive steel door with a combination lock. Shielding it from the Archdeacon with his body, the Most High Priest turned the dials. With a soft hiss, the door swung open.

Inside was a small room, brightly lit, and unfurnished but for an unpainted wooden table set in the middle. On the table was an ordinary stainless steel bowl covered by a glass dome. The Most High Priest tapped the dome. “Here it is,” he said.

The Archdeacon stood beside the Most High Priest and looked down at the bowl. It was filled with a creamy white waxy substance, flecked with black. “What is it, Your Highness?”

“It’s nothing,” said the Most High Priest of the One True Faith and paused dramatically. “Just god.”

“What?”

“Yes, god. We have captured the electromagnetic fluxes that made up the Deity, dissolved them in kerosene, and prepared this wax. It is god, and all of god, anywhere in the Universe. Science, as I said.”

“Is it...aware?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. It is trapped forever, in the inert medium. There is no escape.”

“But...” the Archdeacon goggled at the Most High Priest. “Why?”

“Why?” The Most High Priest beckoned the Archdeacon back to his office and shut the steel door and the sliding panel behind him. “Why not? God is now ours, our property, for ever and ever. Nobody has a claim on it, other than the One True Faith...and we can prove it’s so.

“And can you imagine what that means? We can do as we wish from now on, secure in the knowledge that god is with us, and that anyone who is on our side has god on his side...and again we can prove it’s so.”

“And what will you do with god?”

“We don’t have to do anything with it,” the Most High Priest said. “It is enough that we own it.”

“I begin to understand,” said the Archdeacon, becoming excited. “But that’s...absolute power!”

“Power beyond the dreams of the greatest megalomaniac in history,” the Most High Priest affirmed. “Now, do you understand why I said we have the world at our feet?

“I have prepared orders for you,” the Most High Priest said, taking an envelope from his drawer and extracting several sheets of top grade bond paper from it. “You will go to these people and demand audience, in my name. You will tell them of the power we have. And you shall offer them our friendship...for a price. And here I have another list of...”

The Archdeacon tried to calm the hammering of his heart. He could see the future before him, spreading out like a shimmering golden road. No door would ever be closed again, no dream impossible to fulfil, no aspiration too high. Why, play his cards right, and eventually he might succeed the man sitting across the desk, and wear the same robes of the highest office in the Universe!

That day shall surely come, thought the Archdeacon, and stroked the Most High Priest’s desk lovingly with his fingertip, when all this shall be mine.

I want this desk, he thought. The wood is so lovely and smooth. I wonder what furniture polish he uses on it. 

Copyright B Purkayastha 2010