Exhibition

The Inquiry

by Kate Christensen

She threw her legs over the arm of the couch and plunged back into it. "I do believe in God," she chanted to the guy with the wild brush of black hair who seemed to be hitting on her, or not, she wasn't sure yet. He sat in an armchair next to the couch; she had been sitting on the arm but had grown tired of perching. "I do believe in God, I do I do I do believe in God."

She meant this in an experimental, reaching way, as if only by saying the words would she know whether or not they were true. They came from her mouth with a metallic taste.

"Of course you do," said the guy, whose name was Charles, or so he'd said, or so she seemed to recall. "You have to. It's programmed into your avatar."

The couch pillow was made of a nubbly fabric that was rough against her cheek. She thought of all the butts that had sat right where her head was. "What?"

"There's a philosophical theory that says there's a fifty-fifty chance we're living in a SIMS game. The entity you think of as God is actually the author of the computer simulation you're a character in. He's a Coke-drinking schlub at a computer."

She laughed.

"The most interesting thing about this idea to me," said Charles with mounting, half-drunk enthusiasm, "is that the way to win the game is to be entertaining rather than good.  The more interesting you are, the longer they let you stick around. The fun characters get to continue; they kill off the dull ones to make more room. In other words, the more trouble you make, the better your chances of survival. You shouldn't have any problems in that department." 

So he was hitting on her. She looked sideways up at him from the couch pillow. "No," she said in a deceptively lazy voice. Her brain felt as if it had flames licking at its edges. "No no no no no. Here's the problem with that theory. No computer program will ever be big or complex enough to support seven billion brains."

"How do you know how many characters this program has? How many of those seven billion have you actually met?"

She liked being argued with. She considered the possibility of going to bed with him, and the idea did not immediately repel her.

"Seven billion people," she said. "And I just read somewhere that almost one third of these humans have literally nowhere to shit. They go on the streets and fields and beaches. We are vermin. God is not amused."

"He's laughing his ass off at his computer screen," said Charles.

There was a short silence. She stared upwards at the darkness toward the ceiling and waited for him to fill it.

"What about this God you say you believe in?" he asked eventually. "Who do you imagine he is?"

"A great, all-knowing daddy," she said.

"Or a great, all-knowing SIMS game designer."

She launched herself up from the couch and went over to the bar and ordered herself another vodka. The bar was so dark the people in it glowed and gleamed dully like rock formations far back from the daylit mouth of a cave. 

He was waiting for her on the couch. She sat properly next to him and took a slug of her new drink and liked the way the ice cube hit her teeth. She was forty-two and had recently given up on the idea of having kids; it was a great relief, actually, once she'd got past the wrenching sadness. Something about this guy, though, made her reopen the topic somewhere deep down in her guts or loins. He smelled like clean dirt and fresh bread, a healthy male smell.

"Ahhh," she said, feeling her whole system revving and hot to the touch. She had been in this state all summer, but she refused to take the medication the psychopharmacologist had prescribed because it made you fat, or so she thought he'd said. Instead, she was allowing herself to drink all the vodka she wanted until she felt like herself again. It did not seem to help or hurt. When she was in one of these spells, she could drink forever without getting sick or sloppy as long as she had eaten enough. The only troublesome results from the drinking were the occasional blackouts, but who needed to remember everything? And she usually came out okay in general at the end of the night; she had a dodgy sense of right and wrong at best, but her ego refused to allow her to make too much of a fool of herself, drunk or sober. "Your name is Charles, right?"

"Edward."

"I knew it was one of the princes."

"I'm named after the guy my mother wished she'd married. Chew on that, Dr. Freud."

"If you have to be interesting to advance into future rounds, then serial murderers are rewarded and housewives get snuffed?"

"It's not a moral system. We're just programmed to think it is so they can watch us struggle. Wouldn't that amuse you if you were watching?"

"Will you marry me?"

"I'm already married."

"Okay," she said; so much for having kids who smelled of dirt and bread. "Okay."

The next morning when she woke up in her own bed alone, she had forgotten every word of this conversation. James or Charles or whoever he was existed in her memory only as a warm, blurred presence in the murk of the bar. She had also completely forgotten about God, at least for now.

Kate Christensen is a writer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her novels include In the Drink, The Epicure's Lament and Jeremy Thrane. She was awarded the 2008 PEN/Faulkner award for her novel The Great Man.