The Last to Know

Jessica was pretty sure that tree hadn’t been staring at her before.

“Ganesh was the one with the head of an elephant, right?” Jack asked from over to her right.

The park bench felt solid beneath her. Grass and trees a little too brightly green made Jessica wish she’d brought her sunglasses. Flowers in red orange yellow here and there in beds beside the trail, leading up to the playground. The playground empty of people with its slide and monkey bars, the swings rocking though there was no wind.

It’s normal for a tree to be staring at me, I think.

… so am I supposed to smile and wave? Or whatever the polite thing to do is.

“Jessica?” Jack asked.

“What?”

“Ganesh.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, I’m pretty sure he’s the one with the elephant head. Why?”

“No big deal. It’s just that that’s what your head looks like right now. Or at least it did until a minute ago. Till I blinked, or something.”

“Weird…” Jessica said, glancing over to the left. “Hey… you see that tree over there? It’s staring at me.”

“What tree?”

“Right there!” Jessica said, pointing to it. The tree was thin, no more than six feet tall, with a pair of black eyes probing with a curiosity that seemed more practical than theoretical. Although Jessica didn’t believe her eyes, it appeared to be drawing nearer as she watched.

Without undue concern Jack said, “Jessica, that’s not a tree. That’s a man.”

And so it was. A tall, lanky man approaching the seated pair with a steady but leisurely stride.

Jessica sighed. “Damn. I was sure it was a tree.”

“Such is the provisional nature of all human knowledge,” Jack said with all the gravity of a man making a Taco Bell order. Jessica thought about punching him, but it struck her that there wasn’t much difference, cosmically speaking, between punching and being punched. All things being one and the same, deep down, after all.

By now the man had reached them. He asked, “Do you two know where the BLM protest is? I’ve been looking for it for… I dunno, sixty thousand years, maybe. Still haven’t found anything.”

“Hmm…” Jack said. (Jessica noticed he now resembled a lion in the face, although the rest of him was human.) “I don’t know for sure, but I’d wager it’s located somewhere in three-dimensional space.”

The man nodded, said, “I thought that too, but I’ve heard time might be a fourth dimension. Maybe I’m here on the wrong day?”

“How long has that siren been going off?” Jessica asked, but the two men weren’t listening.

She was sort of surprised.

It was a loud siren.

“No, I’m pretty sure it’s still going on today. If I were you I’d try going…” Jack scratched his chin (which still looked like a lion’s, by the way), “Just down the path. It’s supposed to be close to the park exit, right?”

The man shrugged with a dubious expression, but followed the path anyway.

When he was gone, Jack turned to Jessica and said, “You know, it’s too easy to forget we’re all God.”

“Yeah. It’s not always as obvious as it is now.”

Gunshots and explosions roared placidly from the direction of the park exit.

The shriek of the siren sang alleluia as it witnessed the beatific day.

“And another thing,” Jack said. “You know back in the sixties the US military experimented with using LSD as a chemical weapon?”

“Really?”

“Yeah. The idea is that instead of rubbling a city you just drop a few acid bombs and have your troops move right in. With gas masks, of course.”

“Of course.”

“I wonder if China ever tried it… Of course, the US military never used it. But they must’ve been tempted to use them to suppress riots in ’68. Chicago, San Francisco, places like that.”

“Can you imagine?”

“I know, right?” Jack said. “Of course if they ever did it, the American public would be the last to know.”