Witness

Dirty Jake pressed 3 without hearing the entire menu.

"What is the patient's name?

"Bitsy Stolzfus" he said.

"Mah, what beautiful name!" the telecom operator said. " Sounds like a rich debutante."

"We're just Plain folks , nothing more," Jake said.

"Mah, I'll bet you are. Just look at those muscles," she said. "Wish you we're taking me out for a little spin or better yet a long spin, a very long spin."

"I'll take that remark under advisement, as I carry out my duties over the next few weeks."

"Aren't you forgetting something , big guy."

"What?

"The lights and sounds of the saucer. Our inmates expect them, especially after Spielberg. "

"Right, sorry, I almost forgot," Jake said. and then nodded at John Shaftsman, who pushed the button labeled "Light Show." Suddenly the saucer rose to a height ten feet above the Hospital for Mental Deviants, and a complex series of light s ran around the rim of the saucer. The familiar musical theme of Spielberg's Close Encounters began to play. After two minutes, Jake decided that it was overkill, cut the display short, and pulled up to the pickup window.

"Are you here to pick up Bitsy Stolzfus?" asked the melodic voice of the pickup window operator.

"Correct a mundo." Dirty Jake said, He pulled up to the exit door, and Bitsy stepped out in all her hyper-jeweled glory and climbed aboard the saucer.

Jake pressed the intercom button, and asked, "Can you also provide us with three dates for my friends?"

"Doberman?" the exit clerk said.

"Don't worry, no Doberman this time." Jake lied. "I promise."

"OK," the receptionist said. "Go ahead girls, it's safe. Have a nice visit. Everybody wang chung tonight.

"By the way tough guy, thanks for all false memories. And especially thanks for letting me see the grays. We don't often get to meet our inmates' hallucinations, much less talk to them."

"Aw shucks, that was nothing, ma'am." Dirty Jake said. "You provide a great service here. We are lucky that there is a hospital for the treatment of abduction fantasies right here in the geographic center of reported UFO activity in Lancaster county."

"Yeah, ain't that a fortunate coincidence." Jake said. He rested his muscular arm on the driver's side window. There was a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve on his muscle T-shirt.

"That's a nice ride you've got there,," the receptionist said.

"Oh, are you seeing the saucer or the Lexus?"

"I'm looking at you, stud. I would like to ride you big time, long time," the receptionist said, popping her bubble gum.

"So climb aboard, baby, and take a Dirty ride on the Jake train."

"Sorry, sweetie, my shift isn't over for six minutes."

"What are they going to do to you? Send you to Hell? You're already in the fucking afterlife," Jake said.

"You got a point there," the receptionist said, shedding every trace of her clothing before climbing aboard the saucer.

Jake put the saucer in park. and walked back in to the abduction room, where seven naked women and five naked grays were lounging on the circular couch, merely one of many sadomasochist and mysterious medical devices scattered about the room.

The grays had already strapped Bitsy Stolzfus onto the primary examination table, her feet in the handy obstetric stirrups, spread wide and ready to go.

"Do you know why we have taken you? " the gray formerly known as Delilah asked the client formerly known as Princess of the Universe.

"Sure, I'm gonna be Queen of the Galaxy, the Ruler of the Multiverse, the Creator of All Souls, the Master of Disaster," Bitsy Stolzfus said.

"Well, she doesn't seem to suffering from low self-esteem problems," someone in the back row muttered.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing," said the offender, whose gray name was ZZTOP.

"OK, my trembling little gray, I will grant you the first ride on the Bitsy train. You had better please me or the consequences will be dire. Octopus me, you lowly bitch, and it had better be good."

With no discernible exterior genetalia in his gray form, ZZTOP was at a distinct disadvantage, However, he quickly morphed into cephalopod form.

"All of you octopus me. I want to see the real you before my husband shows up, and he's likely to be early on Thursdays.

Soon Bitsy was surrounded by octopodes, including several mimic octopuses and a bitchin' Humboldt squid. She knew that mimic octopuses could disguise themselves as any creature or object whatsoever and could put on a light show that would put any Las Vegan casino to shame. Also a Humbolt squid's mantle can grow to seven feet in length.

At Bitsy's command, the grays all dropped their gray disguises , and revealed them to be the cephalopods they truly were (I they could be said to have a true forms at this point in their evolution).

They chanted in union, "We are the Cthulhu, the formless. We were here before Time itself."

"That's great, boys. But right now I need you to take on very specific forms. You know what ah Iike.".

"Chantilly lace? " ZZTOP guessed.

All the other cephalopods morphed each of their appendages in to into seven foot-engorged johnsons and cried out in unison "Schwing," the sacred mantra of the dark Wayne's World sect.

"Ok boys, we're going to need an six -foot ki speculum probe if you are going to give me a proper alien abduction exam, Bitsy said. "Also I need a 900-volt cattle prod applied directly to my forehead about tree inches to the right of my the midline."

Doberman clicked his tentacles in salute and exclaimed "Ya volt mein furher!" He buried the seven foot speculum up to the hilt in Bitsy Stolzfus's cooze. The other Cthulus hastily inserted their appendages into every nook and cranny of Bitsy Stolzfus' brain and body. ZZTOP's seeming infinite number of chin tentacles began whipping around in a mad frenzy. Soon every orifice in Bitsy's body, including her eye sockets, ear canals, nostrils, skull sutures , pores, follicles , and, last but not least, snatch, anus, and mouth, was penetrated by a horde of pulsating, throbbing tentacles, many of them as fine as the examinee's hair. In some cases these tentacles wrapped themselves around individual neurons in Bitsy's brain. Delilah wrapped her tentacles around the cattle prod, slammed it down on Bitsy's forehead and sent a mega-jolt of electricity into the amygdala and hypothalamus of her brain.

"O my my my! Ah do declare," Bitsy said, and climaxed around every tentacle penetrating her body, each of which harbored its own brain, just as terrestrial cephalopods did (if they were in fact terrestrial). These countless tentacles erupted in a thunderous eruption of white lava that blossomed into thousands of the bioluminescent Jellyfish called panopyrai, which then circled and flew through the smoke hole in the roof of the banquet hall kiva in search of new worlds to conquer.

At that precise moment, the door to the examination room flew open, and in walked Bitsy Stolzfus' husband, J. Cuckold. Stolzfus.

"So this is your Friday night bowling league? I don't see any bowling balls." J. Cuckold Stolzfus said.

"Take another glance," Delilah said

J Cuckold Stolzfus did so, and saw that all of the Plain folks in the saucer were in fact carrying bowling balls.

"But I caught you red-handed!" J. Cuckold said, "You were both buck-naked banging on the control room floor."

""Wasn't me," Bitsy said., shifting into octopus mode,

"I caught you in a 100-way.".

"Wasn't me," Bitsy reiterated, changing to a squid for emphasis.

J. Cuckold Stolzfus squinted at his wayward spouse. "I guess maybe I could have been mistaken."

"Thank you", Bitsy said. "I am really getting tired of these continual accusations. Now come along . Were having Thor Stolzfus over for lunch at 1500 hours today."

"I love it when you talk all military like that. It's so hot." J. Cuckold said. "Thor? You mean the guy with the biceps, hammer and long blond hair?"

"That's the one," Bitsy said.

"Shit, I'm chairing a meeting of the welcoming committee at 3PM today.

"Oh, shit . I forgot all about that. Well, you'd better go ahead. I'll hold down the fort for the Thor luncheon by myself. You OK with that?"

"Oh sure, honey. what could go wrong?"

COSMOGONY

Six months later, Delilah and John walked hand in hand (or more accurately tentacle in tentacle) on the shore of an ancient lake.

"So, my Fancy stud, have you decided what you want to do for your outreach obligation?"

"Kind of. I was thinking of becoming a godling or a god. The idea of creating a world out of pure mathematics has a strange appeal to me. I'd like to visit every mathematically possible world, worlds with different laws of physics, worlds in which there is only mind and no matter."

"Be careful what you wish for my Fancy love. You'd probably wind up jumping into a universe in which Daffy Duck rules as God and says "suffering succotash" every five minutes, resetting the universe for a new five minute run.

"Surely, there can be no such world." John Shaftsman protested.

"Au contraire, mon ami, I was there just Tuesday," Delilah said.

"How the fuck did you get out?"

"Timing my sweet handsome multi-tentacled beau. As Jimmy jones sagaciously observed in song in back in 1960, 'You need timin,' a tick, a tick, a tick, good timin' A tock, a tock, a tock, a tock. Timin' is the thing. Good timin' brought me to you.

"So you want to be a god, eh?" Delilah said. "Have you ever thought about what it's like to be a god, Shaftsman?

"You know a god or even a godling has to know a lot of math in order to set up a universe with fertile laws of physics and initial conditions, never mind to breathe it into life," Delilah said. "You'll have to learn a lot about mathematics, including conjugate hyperstring theory, recursive Minkowski spaces, non-Euclidian quantum theory, and don't get me started on noetic consciousness theory. Did you know that the astrophysicist Max Tegmark has asserted that every mathematically possible exists. "

"But you told me it's OK if I don't know much about history, biology, my science book, the French I took, geography, trigonometry, algebra, and what a slide rule is for."

"Well you still don't have to know what slide rule is for, at least not if you have a quantum computer on your smart phone."

"I'm not sure, if I do ," Shaftsman said, frantically pressing keys at random.

"Look at that those pillars over there. Pretty impressive, huh?"

"Yeah, what are they for?"

"That's Godling University. It's where aspiring godlings get the technical background they need for participating in the creation of universes.

And the Dr. Who-style telephone booth next to it?"

"That's how the godlings insert themselves into the universes they create. For you Fancies, it looks just like a Clark Kent-style telephone booth."

"What does it look like, really?

"The truth? You can't handle the truth, Fancy. If I were to show you the true appearance of the Hyperspace Transmogrifier, you would be driven instantly insane. Even I would be driven mad if I looked at it for more than 300 milliseconds. So if you want to hang on to your sanity, you should thank the Progenitors for masking the HT's true appearance."

"How does it work?"

"Do you really think you are ready for this jelly, my Fancy?" Delilah asked , sending ripples up and down her tentacles in the Cthulhu equivalent on of a Polynesian belly roll. Soon, an intricate pattern of lights ran up and down her tentacles sending arcane messages directly into Shaftsman's main brain.

His tentacles began to throb in cephalopodic sexual excitement.

"But how does it work?"

"Don't let that worry your pretty brains," Delilah said to her tentacle-lashing paramour. "Here, I'll show you how it works.

"Watch carefully," Delilah said.

A Cthulhu by the name of Jedidiah Stolzfus emerged from the main entrance to the Godling University and walked down the majestic steps from the main exit from Godling University. He was carrying a clipboard under this arm (seventh tentacle, really). He seemingly studied his notes one last time before tossing his clipboard into the conveniently-provided trash receptacle. He was no fool, and had carefully studied the remake of the classic horror film the Fly starring Jeff Goldblum in preparation for his imminent transmogrification. No way he going to suffer Goldblum's fate of being turned into a mosaic of human and fly ,which Goldblum called Brundle-Fly, due to failure to completely evacuate one of the HT booths before the transmogrification. No way Jedidiah was going to be changed into a Stolzfus-Clipboard, a possibly more horrific fate than being a Brundle-Fly.

John and Delilah watched Jedidiah walk over to the HT transmission pod (the false phone booth), Jedidiah opened the sliding accordion door and stepped inside. He began to feverishly punch in a long list of numbers on the keyboard, and was "rewarded" with the sound of an AI speaking in what sounded like the voice of Lily Tomlin in her Laugh-In role as Ernestine .

"Gracious good afternoon. Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?"

"You didn't call me. I called you. But yes, I suppose you have."

"Sorry honey, your call did not go through. Whom were you trying to reach?"

"Look, it's very simple," Jedidiah said. " I am trying to become a god."

"Sorry, but this is the wrong number for deification. I will transfer you to the correct department." Jedidiah thought he heard a Lily Tomlin-esque snort, and the muzak began again, still featuring the Mormon Tabernacle choir.

Suddenly, the line was answered. Another snort. "Gracious good afternoon. Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?"

"Yes, I was just speaking to you."

Another snort. "That must have been one of the other Ernestines."

"Other Ernestines?"

"Yes we are all multifaceted here in the Deification department. Each of us is truly the other."

"I don't care about that." Jedidiah said "I need to talk to God directly"

"Please deposit three half-dollar coins ."

"But I don't have any coins on me. Nobody does. I've never even seen a half-dollar."

"What kind of god are you going to make? You can't even materialize three lousy coins to make a fucking phone call. Here, I'll show you how it's done."

Jedidiah felt a sudden coldness in his palm. Sure enough he was holding three four-bit coins. He was somewhat puzzled, as he had always heard that Jack Kennedy was on the half-dollar coins. But these bore the countenance of Donald J. Trump and they were a gaudy orange brass, not silver.

"I'm still not sure how you did that, but I will use these." Jedidiah Stolzfus said, dropping the ersatz coins into the slots of the phone. "Well goodbye," he told the latest incarnation of Ernestine. "I'll see you later."

"That will be sooner than you can imagine, my rube."

"What did you call me?" Jedidiah asked. But the voice at the other end had already been replaced by the static left over from the Big Bang, which was then replaced by the Mormon Tabernacle muzak. Then Jedidiah heard a series of whirs and clicks, and someone picked up at the other end.

"Gracious good afternoon, Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?"

"You again. I thought I got rid of you."

What kind of God would I be if I were not omnipresent?"

"Now you're claiming to be God Himself"

"Don't you mean God Herself, you sexist hayseed pig."

"Sorry, Goddess," Jedidiah said, sheepishly. "I am unworthy of Your presence. I will commit seppuku at once."

"You needn't do that silly. As soon as you type in that phone number, you're going to be vaporized real horrorshow, as Alex in A Clockwork Orange would put it.

"OK let's type the first digit, it's one/zero."

"There is no such number," Jedidiah protested.

"It's a qubit, silly. A superposition of 1 and 0. They don't have numbers in the multiverse, just qubits."

"How do I type it?" Jedidiah asked.

"Just press the 1 and the 0 buttons simultaneously, you idiot. How stupid are you Universe Zero types, anyway?"

Jedidiah pressed the 0 and 1 buttons simultaneously. He heard a delightful whirring sound emanating from the phone.

"OK, sport, the next one is 3/7."

Jedidiah pressed the 3 and 7 buttons simultaneously. After typing in forty more qubits, he heard what the parapsychologist D. Scott Rogo called the divine "Music of the Spheres, " shortly before he was stabbed to death in 1990.

There followed the inevitable cacophony of dial tones and busy signals. And then, finally a voice answered. "Gracious good afternoon, have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?"

"You again," Jedidiah said. "Look, don't have time for this shit."

"Last time I checked you have well over five billion years for this shit."

"Yeah, but I don't want to spend five billion years doing this."

"Look why don't you just call God collect? I'm pretty sure She's got enough wealth to spring for a phone call. I'll put you through."

But the result was the same. "Gracious good afternoon. Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?"

"Look, I am just trying to talk to God."

"You have reached the party with whom you are speaking.

"Goddammit, I mean You-dammit, It that really You?"

"Right here in the flesh. Incarnate, as it were."

"Yeah, but I'm still in this You-forsaken phone booth. Where's heaven, You-dammit?"

"You couldn't handle heaven, Not with those puny nine octopus brains of yours."

"Try me."

"OK, but I don't think you're going to like it."

Jedidiah felt something strange. He looked down at his tentacled Cthulhu body. which was rapidly deteriorating into a swarm of lights. "This can't be good," he said. as he watched his body fly apart into what Bush the Elder would have called in a more optimistic age "a thousand points of light."

John Shaftsman woke up from his stupor. "Holy shit. Did you see that? That dude just got vaporized. What just happened?"

"He just got promoted to the God level," Delilah told her lusty plebe. "And then he got reinjected into this world. He is now a God incarnate, imminent in this physical universe ." She curled a tentacle around one her paramour's eight trembling arms.

"What are all the lights?"

"Those are Jedidiah Stolzfus' souls," Delilah told her hopelessly naive main squeeze.

"Souls?" Shaftsman asked his muse. "You mean we have more than one soul?"

"Perhaps an infinity of them, my Fancy. See look over there. There's the famed mathematician Georg Cantor counting them, trying to figure out what type of infinity they are."

Shaftsman took a gander at the supreme mathematician counting Jedidiah's souls one by one, using only his index finger.

"Man, it would drive me crazy to do that."

"Maybe that's why Georg Cantor died in a mental hospital back in 1918."

"Then how is he here?"

"Everybody's here, baby. Everybody. You just need to know how to find them. It's the fucking quantum multiverse, dude. Somewhere out there is a 173-year-old extremely lucky (or unlucky, depending on your point of view) Georg Cantor. He can't die because if he is dead, he would not be able to observe his own fate and collapse his own state vector. But he is plenty dead in most other universes. In the view of the Munchkins, he is really, most sincerely dead."

"Munchkins?"

"They are over in Universe 35692. They've got a bitchin' yellow brick road. You really should go there sometime, before their star goes all Red Giant on them."

"Will do," John said. "Now tell me what's going on with that Godling University and that phone booth thing."

"You mean the transmogrifier?"

"Yeah right, the transmogrifier."

"OK. The first thing you have to understand is that universes are primarily mental rather than physical. As the famous physicist Sir Arthur Eddington famously observed 'the stuff of the world is mind-stuff and the substratum of everything is of mental character.' In other words, my Fancy, the world is mental rather than physical in nature. The world is more like a collective dream or hallucination than a mindless and soulless careening around of insentient atoms and other entities in the contemporary Particle Zoo so beloved of contemporary physicists.