The booths in The Good Egg are lacquered hard wood without cushions or covers. The tabletops are Formica edged with brushed metal. Plastic salt and pepper shakers flank a bowl of creamers and a small, rectangular plastic container with disheveled white, yellow, pink and blue packets of sweeteners sits on every table. The walls are dotted with watercolor seascapes featuring lighthouses or ships under sail. Three friends occupy a booth near the back. They consider their menus as their fresh coffee cools in large ceramic mugs.
There are few things in life as reliable as blueberry pancakes and I was in an anxious mood. I needed something I could count on. A short stack of blueberry pancakes and a side of bacon. Heard it in a love song, I thought. Can’t be wrong.
Steve put down his menu and sipped his coffee. “Do you believe in the immortal soul?”
I waited for an “Amen!” that never came.
Glenn put down his menu. Despite the fact I already knew what I was going to order I held onto my menu, feeling a possibly irrational or perhaps primeval need for a shield of some kind.
“Energy can neither be created, nor destroyed,” Glenn offered. “I guess that’s a yes from me.” He turned to me. “And you?”
I lowered my menu just a bit. “Well, I was going to say no until you went all First Law of Thermodynamics on me.”
“So?” Glenn asked.
“Maybe it’s the terminology. ‘Immortal soul’ comes with implications. Heaven and Hell. One club exclusive, the other not so much. That just doesn’t sound like something a benevolent God would do.”
“He’s not asking if you believe in God,” Glenn said.
“Certainly not a benevolent one,” Steve added. “God kicked Satan’s ass, so, total badass. Plus He’s single. He’s probably tense; no one to talk to after a long day of war and famine and pestilence. If you were God would you masturbate like all the time? You know, because you could, right?”
“I think I’d rather answer the ‘immortal soul’ question,” I said.
Steve shrugged. The waitress arrived. I wondered if she was wondering what God was doing with his left hand on the Sistine Chapel ceiling while his right hand reaches out to Adam. I ordered. Glenn asked for an omelet, mushrooms and jack cheese with a side of hash. Steve ordered biscuits, gravy and sausage. The waitress left promising to be right back with more coffee and made good her word in short order.
“So,” I said to Glenn, “You’re positing some kind of quantum persistence as the ‘immortal soul’? Without pre-conditions or dependencies?”
“You’re dodging the ‘omnipotent masturbator’ question then,” Steve noted.
“Yes,” I said.
“Well,” Glenn said. “I’m not sure I can give you an unqualified ‘yes’. I think you have to accept the possibility that life on this planet is a fluke, a series of fortunate events, if you will. Similarly, consciousness may simply exist as a result of this fluky fortunate evolution, a critical mass of gray matter. I fire synapses, therefore I am. Consciousness is creation.” Glenn shrugged. “Or not.”
“Maybe you just pass from one universe to another in the multiverse,” I said.
“Isn’t the multiverse finite, though?” Glenn asked. “In that it is a totality. A finite system would impose a constraint – eventually – on immortality.”
“Unless you could transition to a universe more than once,” I said.
“No hesitation,” Steve observed. “You’ve thought about this.”
“So have you,” I said. “Only in a creepy dirty kind of way.”
“The question stands,” Steve said. “Would you?”
“Well, not all the time, not that linear time would have any meaning to me,” Glenn answered. “I’d spend some time fly fishing,” he added. He sipped coffee. Steve sipped coffee. I sipped coffee. Glenn continued. “I’d play quarterback for the Denver Broncos, too. And I’d throw four touchdown passes every time we played the Raiders.”
“Would that be the best use of God’s time?” I asked.
“You’d rather I spent my omnipotence on masturbation?” Glenn asked as the waitress arrived with our breakfasts, my blueberry pancakes balanced on her right forearm. She set down our food in a quick and practiced set of three quick flourishes. She looked directly at Glenn. “More coffee, hon?”
“Yes, please,” Glenn answered. She left and quickly returned with a steaming urn of coffee, refills all around.
“She’s hitting on you,” I said.
“Why wouldn’t she?” Glenn asked.
“Because you’re a chronic masturbator,” I continued.
“You’re right,” Steve said. “She should be disgusted by your behavior. Instead she seems intrigued.”
“People have asked me, ‘Has anyone ever told you that you look like George Clooney?’” Glenn said.
“Someone suggested that you bear a resemblance to George Clooney?” I asked.
“Well, now that you put it that way, no,” Glenn said.
“Look, I’m just saying playing quarterback for the Broncos is like a deal you make with God,” I said. “Not something God does.”
“Heaven Can Wait,” Steve noted.
“So?” Glenn said. “I could fly fish and masturbate at the same time I was throwing a 47-yard touchdown pass against the Raiders. And I’d be out having dinner as George Clooney, too. I bet he gets really good service.”
“No doubt,” I said. “Fly fishing, a touchdown pass and dinner as George Clooney. That’s going to be a huge orgasm.”
“God always has huge orgasms,” Glenn said. “You know, He’s God.”
“What about ghosts?” Steve asked.
“Is this a new discussion thread or a related question?” Glenn asked.
“Related,” Steve said. “Ghosts are another non-corporeal representation. Might they not be souls?”
“Well, I suppose proving ghosts are real would give proof to multiple planes of existence,” Glenn said.
“Not to mention the First Law of Thermodynamics,” I added while carving out another forkful of blueberry pancake.
“I hardly think the First Law of Thermodynamics is in doubt,” Glenn responded. “What about you? Do you believe in ghosts?”
I sipped some coffee to wash down the pancakes. “Yes,” I said.
“You’ve seen a ghost?” Steve asked.
“No,” I said.
“You have no evidence that ghosts exist, yet you believe in them anyway,” Glenn said.
“The question was whether or not I had seen a ghost, not whether or not I had any evidence, which I do, though admittedly it is indirect,” I said. Steve and Glenn looked at me, obviously expecting additional detail. I continued. “You remember the old place we had in Rollinsford, right? Well, Vickie was convinced the house had a spirit in it. She thought she saw it several times, movement, distorted light, that kind of thing. She kept an old rocking chair in the basement and she said she saw the spirit sitting there on several occasions when she was down there doing the laundry.”
“That’s it?” Glenn asked.
“You won’t take my wife’s word on this?” I asked, trying to convey a sense of indignation.
“Let’s face it,” Steve said. “Vickie’s belief system is rather… expansive.”
I shrugged. “There’s more,” I said. I ate more pancakes.
“Okay,” Glenn prompted.
“Well, you remember our dog, Sally,” I said.
“Sure,” Steve said. “Black lab mix. Nice dog. Sweet dog.”
I drank some coffee. “Sally would not go down in the basement. Not for treats, not if you went down and called her, not if I threw her beloved tennis ball down the steps. I tried pulling her down by the collar one time and she absolutely freaked out, whimpering, hackles up, her feet scrambling to find purchase on the linoleum flooring. I felt bad about that afterwards. There was something in that basement that she wanted nothing to do with, something that frightened her in an abandoned 19th century sanatorium kind of way.”
Glenn and Steve were quiet for a moment and then Steve said what we all were thinking.
“Dogs always know.”
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