Vanity: A Paperweight

Below is Chapter 1 from my first draft at my novel, Vanity: A Paperweight. Thanks for reading.

Chapter 1-The End Will Be Televised


The Monk and I watched the world end like the rest of the human race, live on satellite television, on February 14, 2054. It made sense. Television had nursed me. It dreamt dreams of fame and fortune for me. It taught me to love people who had never lived. Television told me secrets I was never brave enough to make my own. Television told me what to say to women who shared my bed It took me places I would never see—rainforests, deserts, the deepest trenches of the oceans, the highest peaks in the world. Television renewed my will to live whenever hope dried up. For all television had done for me, I felt I owed the thirteen-inch screen in my kitchen my last hours on Earth. There was nothing else on.

The commercials were outstanding. I thought they were better than the ad spots during the Super Bowl. The Monk disagreed and I turned to a station where the Pope addressed the world on a sixty-second ad spot. A toll-free eight hundred number flashed at the bottom of the screen. He said there were legions of priests, nuns, and monks manning phone lines beneath the Vatican, waiting for my call. They were waiting to give viewers worldwide absolution, waiting to give each and every caller the Last Rites, just pick up the phone and you, too, would live on in the hereafter. I turned the channel. Click.

A car salesman in New Hampshire begged viewers to call him. He had a large inventory of the last year’s models he needed them to go-go-go. It was the End of the World Sale. No money down. Just pick up the phone and call now, before, they’re all gone. You don’t pay a cent unless we make it through this. And then, only with an unbeatable financing plan. “Remember,” the salesman said, “I can’t take it with me, but maybe you can.” Click.

A Baptist preacher broadcasting from Arkansas extolled his followers to brace for the Rapture. It was coming any minute now so baptize yourself, “with toilet water if you got to.” Before the missiles launched. Before the automated drones carrying all manner of virulent airborne pathogens took wing. The preacher, wearing his finest double-breasted suit and gold rings, suggested we all put on our Sunday best and cracked a smile. Everybody’s a comedian. Click, click.

A cigarette company aired a commercial it had produced just for the occasion, disregarding a century-long prohibition on televised advertising. A man stood on a hill covered with daisies as he watched a city in the distance vaporize beneath a mushroom cloud. He turned to a gorgeous brunette with livid green eyes. “Smoke ‘em if you get ‘em,” he said, rippling his jaw muscles in stoic distress. The brunette took his hand. There would have been hell to pay from the Federal Communications Commission, American Cancer Society, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and various Congressional committees if we would have made it to tomorrow.

On a different station, the Monk and I watched a short spot for an age-defying wrinkle cream. They were giving out free samples of the concoction, made from embryonic stem cells and aloe vera, nationwide. No woman wants to leave an ugly corpse. Disgusted at this fear mongering, I changed the channel.

We watched another short spot, this one from the American Ad Council, showing a continuous collage of pretty children while a seductive British woman begged via voice-over: “Whoever has set the Doomsday Device in motion, please, consider these faces. These are our children. Whatever is wrong, whatever has led you to call in and activate the Device, let the world try and fix it. If you won’t do it for us, do it for them. Please.” Click.

A television actor, famous for his starring role in a boilerplate courtroom drama, sold life insurance policies for just dollars a day. Representatives were standing by to take my Visa or MasterCard information. I didn’t watch the rest. I had seen this commercial often enough before.

A longer spot, a plea from the Dalai Lama, live from London, urging viewers to be completely aware in these final hours. It’s your only hope, he said, of breaking free from the circle of death and rebirth. He implied that if viewers failed to do this, we might be reborn as rats or cockroaches or ugly deep-sea fish because they were the only creatures likely to survive. I got the impression the fifteenth incarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, after generations of choosing to come back to help the human race attain enlightenment, was finally ready to get the hell out of Dodge.

The commercials kept coming. Thank God it wasn’t an election year.

The news coverage was less thrilling. A young man reported live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. He gushed on about the bravery of the dozen stock brokers, “these Christs of commerce,” still yelling out trades, just in case the world didn’t end.

A woman reported from a bridge over the New Jersey Turnpike. Her cameraman panned over the freeway below. Thousands of cars moved at a crawl, west out of the Megalopolis.

“What a way to go,” the Monk said, “stuck in traffic, listening to Top 40 stations.”

“Poor bastards,” I grunted.

On another channel, a reporter wandered the bustling floor of a manufacturing plant in China. Hundreds of men and women kept working for the day’s wage of five dollars to make plastic toys for American children. This reporter expressed amazement at the “selflessness of these men and women, here in China” doggedly assembling plastic ponies that neighed and pranced on robotic legs for children who would be dead in a matter of hours, if all went according to plan.

A news anchor in New York informed viewers that his staff had been trying to reach me to ask how I felt about the impending demise of the human race, but had been unsuccessful. He promised to keep trying. “Ha!” I laughed at the television screen. “Good luck. I disconnected the damn telephone.” I felt better after saying it, though the Monk looked displeased. I’d be damned if I was going to apologize on air.

Some intrepid producer thought to arrange an interview with the woman astronaut on the International Space Station, all alone in the lifeless heavens, conducting an isolation experiment. “How do we look from up there?” the reporter asked.

“Beautiful,” the astronaut replied seconds later. “Blue and green like a virgin prom queen.”

The Monk and I caught a quick glimpse of a thousand people huddled together in Times Square, braving the February cold to watch the world end on the largest television screen in New York. Click.

A reporter, eager for a different angle, broadcasted live from a maternity ward in Cincinnati. She held a new born baby in her arms. “This young baby boy was born just hours ago,” the reporter said as she cooed softly at him, the camera zooming in on her face. “It’s difficult to think about this,” she said, “but this little boy won’t make it to see his second day on earth.”

On another station, we watched footage of myself accepting the Nobel Peace Prize three years earlier. I looked like hell. The news anchor narrated over the clip as viewers watched me shake hands with Norwegian royalty. “This, folks, is the man who brought us to this. Hailed as the greatest peacemaker to ever live for his creation and implementation of the Universal Democratic Doomsday Device, for quote, ‘forcing the entire world to care about the suffering of each and every human being, or else.’ He has now doomed us all. I’m generally above begging, but not in circumstances like this. Please, whoever called in to activate the Doomsday Device, please whoever you are, whatever injustice you have suffered, please let us help you. Please, let the world help you and save us all. And Mr. Hove, if you’re out there watching this, know that you’ll meet your end with the rest of us. If you are able to stop this madness, please do so.” I turned the channel.

“Can you even stop it?” the Monk asked.

“No,” I replied. “It wouldn’t be fair.”

The Baptist preacher was in another ad spot. He reminded the viewing public that the Rapture was close at hand, just keep faith, and keep baptizing. “And don’t you all worry about whoever caused this and that man who made it possible. Pray for their souls.” The preacher smiled wryly. “They’re gonna need it.”

With five minutes left until certain apocalypse, the television networks held a moment of silence in a preemptive memorial for the human race. I used the lull to unplug the television from the kitchen counter.

“Are you happy?” the Monk asked.

I smiled. “Like a kid on Christmas morning.” The Monk turned away. I flipped up the rug in the hallway and opened the trapdoor hidden underneath.

“Wait,” the Monk said. “Where are you going?”

“My bunker,” I said with a wink. “You coming?”

“But—” the Monk sputtered.

“Look, I don’t want to end like this. Do you?”

The Monk looked shamefaced at the floor.

“I didn’t think so,” I said. “Now grab the T.V. from the counter and follow me.”