Book of Jim: Agnostic Parables and Dick Jokes From Lucifer's Paradise by Adam Spielman Page B

simple to Jim.  He said, “So what do you need me for?”
    “I’m coming to that, hillbilly.”  Einstein pointed through the crack.  “Some of these religious waves have seeped into my antiverse .  Apparently, in the antiverse they can take form, and they’re goddamn crazier than you are.  I have succeeded in collecting them and I’ve gathered them into the gravity well of a dark star.  After I infuse them with super particles and charm quarks I intend to ignite the quasar and point the energy beam directly at this breach.  And that’s where you come in.”
    “Of course it is.”
    “I need a distraction, Jim.  I need you to distract every soul within the visual radius of the aberration.  If a single pair of eyes looks up it will be a disaster.”
    “Well, wait a minute.  That all sounds kind of awesome.  Why can’t we watch?”
    And Einstein took Jim by the shirt and shook him.  “Because!  You goddamn crazy hillbilly.  When your nut nuked a hole in the firmament you gave form to the madness of humankind!  If it is observed before reentering the phenomenal sphere, the wave function will collapse and the heavens will be enslaved by the Immoveable Asininity!”
    “Are you telling me God is back there?”
    “Not God.  The half-baked and ill-founded mutation dreamed up by the intellectually perverted.  Now, take this walkie-talkie and contact me when the distraction is in play.”
    “You’re fucking with me.”
    “Do you know the difference between science and religion, Jim?”
    “Kind of.”
    “Results!  Get me that distraction, and I’ll get us a firmament.”
    3
    So Jim sought out the one man he knew of that might supply such a distraction.  He found the man in a cabin surrounded by autumnal woods.  Jim explained to him that there was a crack in the firmament, and its mending required the stirring of the Christian fold.
    “I won’t do it,” Hitler said.
    “Oh come on.”
    “It’s a bad idea.”
    Hitler sat upon a lawn chair on the deck of the cabin.  The deck overlooked a creek that whispered through oak and pine.  On the table beside the chair there was a paperback novel, and the Fuhrer sipped on a pineapple pina colada.
    “I golf now,” Hitler said.  “I tell jokes.  I read books.  I no longer incite calamity.”
    “Just do it one more time.  That’s all I’m asking.  Just one more.”
    “It’s too reckless.  You couldn’t even get Jesus to do it.”
    “So you’re gonna bitch out just cause that’s what Jesus did?”
    “I am not a bitch.”  Hitler sipped on his pineapple pina colada.  He looked out upon the autumnal woods.  “Though I must admit, all of this relaxing can get very tiresome.  Sometimes I wonder if a little bit of calamity might do me some good.”
    “That’s what I’m talking about.”
    “So all I have to do is distract them?  I don’t have to holocaust anybody?”
    “Nope.  No holocaust.”
    “I don’t know . . .”
    “What’s the problem?”
    “I’m rusty.  I wouldn’t know what to say.”
    Jim made the guffaw.  “Dude, you broke Europe.  Like, a substantial number of the people that are up here, they’re up here because of you.  A hundred million, two hundred.  I don’t know exactly, but it’s a lot.  And I know you don’t get any credit, but that was you, man.  You did that.”
    Hitler nodded.  He drank the last of his pina colada.  He picked up the paperback and thumbed through its pages.  “This is a terrible book,” he said. 
    “So you’ll do it?” Jim said.
    Hitler stood and stretched his back and his legs.  He said, “I will do it, but we must become homosexual partners.”
    “Uh, what?”
    And Hitler put his hand on Jim’s shoulder.  “My lips are going to finish what your dick has started.”
    Jim got it.
    4
    Einstein.  Einstein, come in.  Are you there?
    Jim!  I am in orbit around the dark star.  The apparatus is fully operational.  Is the distraction in play?
    It’s ready, but