Trump In The Afterlife: chapter 5 Kim

     If Marty was going to get anywhere with Trump, he was going to have to put a little effort in. He just wanted it to be over, but he was going to have to do the work this time. He waved his hand, and the wall of people appeared again. Maybe it would help to have some input from Trump, and see if they could manage a plan before he just threw him into something.
     “Okay,” Marty said, “let’s take a look at some people and see if we can’t find something that might match up with your strengths.”
     “Everything is a strength for me,” Trump told him. “I’ve never failed at anything.”
     “How can you believe that?” Marty asked. “You’ve failed at almost everything you’ve ever done.”
     “Hardly!” Trump replied, looking incredulous. “I’m rich, I’m famous, and I’m the president!”
     “Former presi…”
     “Whatever, but I was the president,” admitted Trump, “and I was one of the greatest presidents ever.”
     “Look, you obviously believe that,” Marty said wearily, “so I’m not going to try to convince you otherwise. I guess you just tune out reality and think whatever you want, and somehow that works for you. This time you’re going to have to pay attention if you want to get through this. If I’m going to get through this.”
     “What do you mean if you're going to get through this?" Trump asked. " This isn't about you, it's about me."
     “I’m stuck with you until you either get this right or I give you enough rope to hang yourself,” Marty said. “We need to get serious and you really need to help some people.”
     "Not interested,” Trump said simply. “I told you that.”
     “Well, this isn’t going to fix itself,” Marty tried to explain. “This problem isn’t just going to go away; you need to work at it.”
     “Really?” Trump replied. “Because I’ve found that if I just ignore stuff that I don’t want to do, someone will take care or it, or eventually just give up.”
     “Is that true?”
     “Of course!” Trump said happily. “That’s probably why I made such a great politician. They’re great at ignoring shit and doing nothing!”
     “Well, we're not going to do that, at least not anymore.” Marty said, with what he hoped was purpose in his voice. The sad thing was, he was a lot like Trump, and apparently most politicians, in the sense that he often ignored his problems and responsibilities as well. There was always someone else to pick up the slack, and if something never got done, well, Divine Plan. It must not have been that important a part of the plan after all if She didn't make sure it got done.
     Now it seemed to Marty that it might not have been the best course of action all the time to just shirk his duty. Perhaps his attitude had been wrong all these years, at least to some degree. It wasn’t like he wanted to go out and find more work, but maybe he could put just a little effort into his life. If nothing else, he wanted to put whatever effort it took now to just get it over with, and that was enough motivation to get moving.
     “Okay,” he was saying to Trump now, “let’s take a look at what’s going on down there, and see who you think you could help.”
     With Carl, he had simply pulled up the wall and looked for the most miserable person he could find. It wasn’t hard, most people looked miserable most of the time. Who could blame them? The world was a mess, and had been for a long time. He actually had to give Trump some perverse credit, because he never thought anyone could make matters worse. He was kind of an idiot savant in that area. Or perhaps just an idiot, but whatever he was he came along and set humanity back farther than almost anyone in history. That was saying a lot, because besides all the monsters everyone is aware of throughout history, there were plenty of others that had simply been lost to time.
     There was a ruler back in the early Aztec civilization before they had any way of recording history who actually ate babies. There was an Asian tribal leader who demanded his subjects routinely cut one of their fingers off every solstice, and couldn’t figure out why industry collapsed and everyone starved as people tried to farm and make pots with nothing but stumps.
     There was the bizarre early Germanic leader who just liked sticking things in people’s asses. He would have his court artisans carve intricate and beautiful figures, only to have them inserted into the rear ends of his subjects. Marty laughed whenever archeologists found the remains of one of them, with the figurines, and assumed that they were sacred ritual objects buried with them. They had some of these items encased in displays in museums. If they only knew that they had been shoved up people’s butts a week before they died of sepsis.
     People were weird and horrible, and most of them weren’t truly evil, they were just fucked up. Trump was a rare combination of all of that. Marty wondered why God would even allow someone like him to exist. He thought that maybe it was just some big, demented experiment to see just how messed up people could get. If that were the case, Marty was pretty sure He could have just stopped at the ass guy, but apparently God had a much higher tolerance for depravity and cruelty than him.
     Now Marty was looking over the screen, trying to find someone for Trump to help. He pointed to a person in one of the little squares in the screen. They seemed distraught over something, and they were alone, drinking in their apartment in the middle of the day.
     “How about this one?” He asked Trump, gesturing towards the person in question.
     “Really?” Trump answered, looking almost insulted.
     “Yeah, why not?”
     “I mean, he’s black,” Trump explained. “I don’t really want to help black people.”
     Marty stared at him in disgust for a moment, but then composed himself. There was no use explaining why that was wrong because he had come to realize that Trump wasn’t capable of changing his mind. Arguing or pointing out facts or reasons didn’t make a difference. It just frustrated them both, and wasted time. This is who he was.
     “Okay, so you’re not even willing to help black people?” Marty asked.
     “That’s right,” confirmed Trump. “Never liked them. Even the famous or useful ones. I mean, it’s nothing personal, they just aren’t white. You know, normal.”
     “Alright,” Marty said, trying not to think about it, “no black people.”
     “Or Mexicans, obviously,” added Trump. “I spent my presidency trying to stop them, I’m certainly not going to help them sell drugs or rape people now.”
     “Okay …”
     “Or Muslims. I’m not going to help terrorists. Or the Chinese. They sabotaged my whole presidency with that Kung flu.”
     “Do you realize how offensive that is?” Marty finally said.
     “What, Kung flu?”
     “All of it!” Marty was trying to keep it together, but it was hard. Again he found himself caring about things that he shouldn’t. It wasn’t like Trump was the only racist human. A good portion of them were blatant and horrible racists, full of hate and poison. Then there were the rest of them. They all had some racist stuff going on, even if they did their best not to give in to it. That was another cruel joke God played on his creation, making so many races and making them look just different enough that it made people act like maniacs. Even some of the most tolerant and woke humans still couldn’t escape it. It was hard wired into them.
     God had made all the angels essentially the same. They seemed to encompass all aspects of mankind in their appearance, so there was no real reason to feel segregated or different. Angels were angels, and while some were more beautiful than others, none of them were ugly or unpleasant to look at.
     Nor were humans. So many of them held themselves up to arbitrary ideals of beauty, which changed constantly. The thing humans never seemed to get in their lifetimes anyway was that the meat golems they inhabited didn’t count for much. Yes, some of them looked better than others, depending on the trends at the time, but it was their souls that mattered. Some extra weight or slightly asymmetrical features was not nearly as big a thing as an ugly soul.
     People could sort of see them too, they just weren’t aware of it most of the time. The ability to see each other’s souls clearly had been lost over time, starting as soon as they left the garden. On one level, they were completely oblivious to the fact that they had to maintain and beautify their souls, yet they were still vaguely aware of souls on a subconscious level. No wonder they rarely felt at ease with each other. They often had no clue why they were drawn to someone or distrusted them vehemently. They were affected by something they could never get more than a glimpse of, yet it had a profound impact on everything.
     “Okay,” Marty finally said, “Let’s find some white person for you to help.”
     Marty scanned the screen, and finally settled on someone.
     “Okay, what about this guy?” Marty asked.
     “Him?” Trump said, pointing to the person Marty was indicating. “I can’t even understand what he’s saying.”
     “He’s speaking French,” Marty explained. “Don’t worry, I’ll make it so you can understand him when we get there.”
     “I’m not helping any French people, either,” Trump said. What is so hard about finding me some normal person to help?”
     “And by normal, you mean …” Marty floundered.
     “White and American!” Trump exclaimed. “Why is this so difficult?”
     Marty realized that there was no way out of this.
     “Okay, we’ll do it your way.”
     Marty scanned the screen again, and this time when he located someone that fit Trump’s narrow requirements, he simply waved his hand and they were on their way there. He wasn’t going to give Trump a chance to shoot another one down.
     They appeared in the living room of a small apartment. A woman was sitting on the couch, rocking her baby, who was fussing and had obviously been crying just seconds earlier. She was now soothing him, and he was settling down.
     “I know you’re hungry, baby,” she was saying. “Tomorrow I’ll be able to get you some more food, as soon as they put more money on my EBT card.”
     Trump and Marty were still invisible to her. Trump looked around the apartment, and Marty could see the look of disgust on his face.
     “Okay, focus,” Marty told him, “you’re not here to critique the living space.”
     “Speaking of focus,” Trump said, “where’s that little naked guy with the drugs?”
     “You’ve had enough Adderall for now.”
     “Apparently not,” Trump contradicted. “I’m asking for it, aren’t I?”
     Marty ignored it and pushed forward.
     “Okay, this is Kim, and she’s worried because she doesn’t have enough food for her or her baby. She has no money, and she’s all alone. She’s frightened.”
     “Yeah …” Trump started to say, but just let it hang there.
     “What’s wrong now?” Marty asked, perturbed. “She’s white, she’s American.”
     “Yeah, but she’s a woman.”
     “So?”
     “So,” Trump said, “It’s hard to relate to woman problems. It’s hard to relate to women, period. I mean, they’re women. I have a hard time caring about them, to be honest.”
     “Once again,” Marty said, “I have to say that’s horrible. I mean really horrible. Why are you so horrible?”
     “I’m not horrible!” Trump protested. “Why do you keep saying that? If anything, I’m just honest.”
     “You’re only honest about the worst things,” Marty replied. “You lie about everything else.”
     “Eh, I’ll give you that one. See, honest!”
     “Okay,” Marty sighed, “Just help her!”
     With that, he waved his hand, and Trump materialized before her. Kim froze in apprehension and terror at the sight of the recently deceased man standing before her.
     “Oh my God, what’s happening?” She cried.
     “I know, right?” Trump told her. “It’s cool, isn't it? The President of the United States, right here in your living room!”
     “Didn’t you lose the election?” She asked, momentarily forgetting her shock.
     “Okay, whatever!” Yelled Trump. “Does everybody have to fucking remind me?”
     Kim was standing now, and tried backing away from the apparition, only to feel the couch behind her knees blocking her. Trump noticed, and tried to calm her.
     “Alright, calm down, everything is okay,” he told her. “I’m here to help.”
     “Help me how?” Asked Kim suspiciously.
     "Well …” Trump trailed off. “I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out. Now what seems to be the problem?”
     “The problem is that I have no money and no food and I’m about to get kicked out of my apartment any day.” She started to cry.
     “Okay, well, maybe we can …” He trailed off again.
     “We can what? My baby is hungry.”
     “Can’t you just, you know …”
     “Can’t I just what?” She demanded.
     Marty could tell that she was already exasperated with Trump. He noticed that female humans often seemed exasperated when they were talking to the males of the species.
     “You know,” Trump repeated, “Breast feed it?”
     Kim started crying again. She sat down on the couch, and her baby started crying too.
     “No, that’s not an option,” she said. She said it very matter of factly, without much emotion, like just thinking about had knocked the wind out of her.
     “Well, why not?” Trump persisted. “You’re a woman, you have tits, use them!”
     Marty froze in shock, and Kim recoiled in horror. She started crying harder.
     “I’m getting chemo for cancer, I can’t breastfeed.” She spat out, and now she was sobbing and her baby was wailing.
     “Oh,” offered Trump meekly. “That would explain the whole bald thing.”
     “Yeah, it would.” Kim was furious and exhausted. Marty could tell that this wasn’t the first time she had to deal with someone like Trump.
     “Yeah,” Trump said, “FYI it’s not a great look.”
     Kim stopped crying and just stared at him in disbelief. Marty knew the look, he had it plastered on his own face most of the time he interacted with Trump as well. This was going even worse than it had with Carl. Her son was still crying unabated, and she went back to trying to soothe him again.
     “Yeah, could you shut him up while I’m trying to think here?” Trump asked her. “It’s really annoying.”
     “Oh my God, you are so horrible!” Kim yelled. “Why did I vote for you?”
     “You voted for me?” Trump perked up. “I shouldn’t be surprised, I mean I won the election. They stole it from me.”
     “Oh shut up with that nonsense. You lost! It’s no wonder, you are such a horrorshow!”
     “If I’m so horrible, why did you vote for me?” Trump asked smugly.
     “Because my pastor told us to. I didn’t really like anything about you, but he said you would save innocent babies, and that would be enough.”
     “So you still voted for me, even though you didn’t like anything else about me?” Trump asked, seeming truly shocked. “You voted for a man you thought was horrible? Why?”
     “Honestly, I guess because I just expect men to be horrible. You seemed like most men I've met in my life. Like my father, who was never there and used to hit my mom all the time before he left her for someone else. Like my uncle, who raped me when I was fourteen. Like Jaden’s father, who knocked me up, and left when he found out I was sick. Now I’m on my own, with no help, on welfare and medicaid; programs that you wanted to kill.”
     “Did I?” asked Trump. “I mean, it's possible, I say a lot of stuff. I really don’t know much about any of it, but other republicans told me that it was a bunch of poor and lazy people mooching anyway. They just don’t want to work.”
     “Do I look lazy?!” Kim shouted. “Do I look like I’m trying to game the system?”
     “Well,” said Trump, “if you weren’t bald, I might believe it. I can’t imagine that you would do that to yourself. Have I told you how bad it makes you look? Women should have long hair.”
     “Yeah, I heard you the first time.” Kim just glared at him.
     "I mean, at first I just thought you were a lesbian," Trump continued. "Not a hot lesbian, like in porno, but one of those angry, mannish looking ones."
     "Really?" Kim asked him. "And do you see a lot of bald lesbians?"
     "Well, maybe not bald," Trump said, actually pondering the question. "I guess they had crew cuts or something. Very unattractive though, and I know attractive. I used to own beauty pageants, you know."
     "Yeah, I know." Kim had had enough, and even Trump could sense it.
     "Okay, let me think," he said.
     Trump actually seemed to be considering the situation now.
     “If I was still alive, I could just do one of those executive orders to help you.” He was saying now. “I mean, maybe. Sometimes they worked, but sometimes they were just things I did to shut people up. Speaking of shutting up, Jared there is finally being quiet.”
     “Jaden, not Jared.”
     “Whatever, I’m just glad he stopped crying. It’s really grating.”
     “So can you actually do anything for us at all?” Kim asked
     “Probably not,” Trump admitted. “This whole thing they got me doing is really dumb. I have to constantly come down here and try to help losers who don’t even listen to what I have to say. It’s exhausting.”
     Kim let the “losers” remark go, and pressed on.
     “So no advice or words of encouragement? You were president, isn’t there anything you can think of that I might have overlooked, any government plans or services that could help me?
     “Yeah, I thought I already made it pretty clear I don’t really know anything about government or helping people.” He thought some more. “You know, I knew a lot of women who made money by having sex with men. You should probably get a wig or something if you’re going to try that, though.”
     “Your advice is that I should become a hooker?”
     “Well, when you say it like that, it sounds bad,” Trump explained, “but you should go with your best chance at making money, and men like to have sex with women. They'll gladly pay for it. It’s a no-brainer.”
     “Okay, how do I get rid of you? Do I burn sage or get holy water or something?”
     Marty was mortified through all this. He saw once again that Trump wasn’t fit to talk to anyone, especially people in crisis. He would have made a great crisis negotiator, if the goal was to get people to jump as quickly as possible. He materialized in the room, ready to apologize to Kim.
     “Hang on, Marty,” Trump said, seeing him appear. “There has to be something you can do for this woman.”
     “You mean you actually give a shit?” Marty asked, surprised. He glanced over at Kim, who was now staring at him, her mouth agape.
     “Oh, hi,” Marty said to her. “I’m an angel, name’s Marty, nice to meet you. I’m sorry about all this. He’s just terrible, isn’t he?”
     “He really is,” Kim agreed. “So you’re an angel? Heaven’s real?”
     “Yep!” Marty confirmed. “Don’t tell anyone. It’s supposed to be about blind faith and all.”
     “So can you help me? Or ask God to help me?”
     “Sorry,” Marty said, “It doesn’t work that way.”
     “Well that’s not fair,” Kim said.
     “It’s really not,” Marty agreed. “But I mean, this monstrosity was rich and got to be president, so why would anyone think anything is fair.”
     “That’s depressing,” said Kim. “Why should this piece of shit get rewarded?”
     “I’m standing right here!” Interjected Trump.
     “Yeah, we know,” Marty said. “You really screwed the pooch again here.”
     “Wait a minute,” Trump said. “You mean no one is going to help her? That’s not right.”
     Marty was taken aback. He found himself liking Kim as well. There was something about her. She seemed smart and brave, and in spite of the fact that she was crying and somewhat horrified about the whole crazy situation, there was just something so likable about her.
     “I'm still in shock that you actually care,” he told Trump, astonished.
     “Well, yeah. I mean, she’s gonna die, and what’s gonna happen to little Jamie?”
     “Jaden!” Kim and Marty both shouted.
     “Wait a minute,” Kim said. “I didn’t say I was going to die.”
     “Well, you have cancer,” Trump said, “sooo…”
     “So there’s still hope, right?” Kim looked imploringly at Marty.
     Marty knew the future. He knew that Kim was not going to make it. In truth, it was one of the reasons he chose her. He knew that no matter what, she only had a limited time left, so he figured that Trump couldn’t screw things up too badly.
     “Well,” Marty was now telling her, “with God, all things are possible.”
     “That doesn’t sound very encouraging,” Kim said. It started to sink in, and suddenly the fear felt very real. “Oh my God, I’m going to die!”
     “Wait a minute,” Trump interrupted. “You knew she was going to die anyway? There was nothing I could have done? You set me up!”
     “No I didn’t!” said Marty. “I just figured that whatever you did here, you know, no harm no foul.”
     “What the fuck?” yelled Kim. “You’re an angel, and you’re just as horrible as he is! Both of you get out of here!”
     “Okay, calm down,” Marty told her. “I’m going to clear your memory, you won’t even have any recollection that this even happened. I’m really sorry about everything.”
     “Yeah, fuck you, too.” Kim said, crying again. Jaden was crying as well now. This had been a complete disaster. He waved his hand and Kim’s mind went blank, and Marty and Trump were gone.
     Later on, Marty was thinking about what had happened, he had to admit, he was shocked that Trump actually seemed to have a slight bit of empathy. Of course, Marty had to bury his feelings and remain neutral, but that was different. It was a professional thing. He still felt bad about Kim’s situation. He really liked her in a way he had never liked another human before. Maybe this is what Peter had been on about the other day. He was now thinking about how he didn’t like the detachment he had taught himself so he could deal with these humans. Well, things had worked out with Carl, so maybe Kim would be alright.
     Marty winced when he remembered that she wasn’t going to be alright. This wasn't like it was with Carl. There were no other options, no loving spouse to prop her up. He had seen the future, and the Divine Plan didn’t allow for changes. What was going to be was going to be. In another week, the doctor was going to look at her test results and tell her that the chemo wasn't working, and that she only had a few months to live. He decided that he would brush it off, and not let it get to him. Marty knew how things worked around here. Heaven seemed indifferent to anyone's suffering at best, and more often just seemed viciously cruel. Maybe when Kim died, he would be there to meet her, and tell her how sorry he was, and try to make it up to her.

     Time passes differently in heaven, and while Marty was busy thinking about what had just occurred, it was already a week later on earth, and Kim was sitting in her doctor’s office while he talked to her about her test results.
     “Well, Kim,” he said, “I have to admit, I didn’t really expect good news, but these tests …”
     “Yes?” Kim asked nervously, “what is it?”
     “You’re 100% cancer free. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
     “Wait, what?” Kim asked, “Really?”
     “Really!” The doctor confirmed. “It looks like you’re going to have a long and happy life.”
     Kim’s world went swimmy, and she started to laugh. She couldn’t believe it, after the operation and weeks of chemo, she had a bad feeling about all of it. Especially the last week or so, she was sure that she was not going to make it. Sure, her life was hard, but she still got to live, and now it didn’t seem quite so terrible.
     She thanked the doctor, and headed out to her car. She was about to get in, when suddenly, it was like a bright light, almost electric, flashed in her brain, and instantly she remembered everything: Marty the angel and Trump in her apartment, that they said she was going to die. When she got over the initial shock, she smiled to think that even heaven had underestimated her.

     Peter sat at his desk, watching all of this transpire, and thought to himself “now that was odd. Very odd indeed…”

Trump In The Afterlife: Chapter 4 A Bit About Humanity

     The next morning, Marty woke up early and stopped by to talk to Peter. It is probably not important, but it is still worth pointing out that there was no night or morning in heaven. Time works much differently there. Time is a human concept, at least in the form of 24 hour days and minutes and seconds. In truth, multiple versions of many events happen simultaneously, while the actual time between seconds on earth can stretch out for eons in heaven, depending on what’s needed. It’s all very confusing, and that’s why when people arrive in the afterlife, things like daytime and nighttime, sleep schedules and other stuff like it are maintained for their benefit. It takes time for the human mind to adjust to the fact that many of the things they took for granted are not even needed anymore.
     Sleep was not one of those. Human souls never adapt that much. Even in the afterlife, people slept. The angels quickly learned that not sleeping drove humans crazy. In fact, people got to sleep in hell as well, otherwise they soon deteriorated to the point that eternal suffering was losing a lot of its effectiveness. Granted, they never got a good night’s sleep in hell. Their beds always felt too hard or too soft, it was always just a little too hot or cold, and they felt like they had to pee constantly. In heaven, none of that was a problem. You fell right to sleep and slept soundly in the perfect temperature all night. That alone was reason enough to try to live a good life. Marty often thought that if Jesus had mentioned that little perk, mankind would have been much nicer throughout history.
     Angels slept as well. It wasn’t that they needed to do it, it was just that God designed it that way so that they wouldn’t be bored silly or lose their minds. Like humans, they just needed a break. Being forced to be conscious every moment of your life is no good for anyone or anything. It overwhelms you. Only a few angels never slept, and they were the head angels; God’s favorites, and those with a lot of power and decision making clearance, like Peter.
     The truth is, heaven or not, Marty didn’t sleep well at all the night before. He dreamt of Carl, and woke up several times, worrying just how he was making out. He finally gave up on sleep and headed over to the front desk.
     “Did you see that shitshow yesterday?” He was asking Peter now.
     “You know I did,” Peter replied. “It was horrible.”
     “And that doesn’t tell you enough? You can’t just send him to hell based on that and get it over with?”
     “It doesn’t work that way.” Peter explained. “You know that, yet you keep asking. Just accept your job and get on with it.”
     “But it’s pointless!” Marty protested. “He’s irredeemable. He’s not going to learn or change.”
     “You better not let Jesus hear you talking like that,” Chided Peter. “I mean, redemption is kind of a big part of his whole deal.”
     “Yeah, but even he couldn’t save everybody. You had to want him to, and you had to accept him and all that.”
     “So now you know how Jesus works?” Peter shot back. “You were there, did you ever hear him say that?”
     “I don’t remember,” admitted Marty. “I think it’s in the bible, though. Somewhere. Isn’t it?”
     “Well, you know there’s a bunch of stuff in that book that doesn’t even belong there,” Peter said.       "There are so many different versions at this point, and it’s lost so much in translation. Not to mention that a lot of it is shit that people just made up.”
     Peter chuckled a little at his own words. He tried not to let it sound condescending, but it was hard when he was nearly as all-knowing as God at this point. He understood things on such a different level than most beings, and definitely more than Marty. Marty had such potential, though. He just had a lot to learn, and it was stuff that you can’t really teach; it came with experience. Unfortunately, Marty didn’t seem to want to experience things. He just wanted to skate through time, doing as little work as possible. He thought that Marty deserved better for himself, so he wasn’t going to give up on him just yet.
     Besides, he genuinely liked Marty. He reminded him of humans in some ways, and that was rare. Most angels had lost their humanity. More accurately, they never possessed it in the first place. They weren’t human, they were heavenly beings, created long before human beings even existed. Still, God made both angels and humans somewhat in Its own image, which is possible because God was a multitude of things, made up of more elements and possessing so many facets that it gave even Peter a headache when he tried to comprehend it.
     Which might be why all the beings he created seemed so disjointed at times, and felt pulled in so many directions at once. Perhaps that’s why people were dichotomies unto themselves. They were too complex because they were made up of all different traits of an immortal and omnipresent being that they had no hope of understanding. It’s hard to find peace when every part of you feels at odds with the rest of you.
     Peter liked people as well. There is some confusion about Peter, as most people think of him as Saint Peter, who once walked the earth as a human. He was not. He was an angel, created at the dawn of time like all true angels; he just happened to share a name with an apostle. He kind of bristled when people thought of him as that Peter when they arrived here. Saint Peter had been kind of a mess. He wound up denying his lord when push came to shove, and the Catholics didn’t do him any favors. When Jesus said that he was the rock upon which he would build his church, he didn’t mean it so literally. Still, the overzealous and literal christian extremists went out and found a rock they claimed Saint Peter was buried under, and built a church on it, and named the church Peter as well, for good measure. So yeah, he liked humans, but they could be really weird at times.
      And as much as he liked them, he had to keep his relationship with them from becoming personal. He had to maintain professional detachment, although it was hard sometimes. It didn’t used to be. Back in the beginning, he didn’t have much problem with it, but now that he had become more familiar with humans, interacting with them for millennia and all that, he saw that it wasn’t always their fault. He saw that many of them didn’t even have a chance. They were born into situations they had no chance of rising above. They were victimized and left behind by everyone and everything that was supposed to protect them and nurture them. Some of them were sick, and didn’t know any better. How was he going to judge people whose own body chemistry and the electric flashes in their brains sabotaged them at every point?
     So he shook all that off and did his job, at least for the most part. He knew that some of them were evil and just plain horrible. Irredeemable, as Marty had said. Still, it seemed that a lot was up to his discretion. He had learned that he could fudge the rules here and there, and since he was apparently allowed to do it, it must be part of His Divine Plan. Of course, Peter knew that wasn’t really proof of anything. That was more like Marty’s logic, but he seemed to have a point.
     Sometimes Peter thought that part of the whole Divine Plan and free choice was that beings could change and grow, and it was figured into the equation. It was self-correcting, and maybe that meant that he was in charge of the correcting part of that, just another cog in the machine. For whatever reason, growth and change happened, and that was part of the whole point of existence, wasn’t it? If not, why even bother with existence at all?
     All of which meant that Marty was capable of growth and change as well. And if not, at least he was amusing and helped pass the time. Peter didn’t sleep, and God knows he needed something to help pass the monotony of living his life wide awake at all times. The day in, day out tedium he experienced was like nothing Marty could ever comprehend. Even now, he existed in many dimensions simultaneously. Beings were dying every second, and not just on earth. He was occupied every moment, in an infinite number of realities, and conscious of every single one. It was a lot to handle.
     “I don’t think any of it really matters at all,” Marty was saying now. “It’s all been planned out, and one stupid human in the history of civilization isn’t going to matter very much, right?”
     “Well,” said Peter, “He sees every sparrow …”
     “Does He, though?” Marty interrupted. “Does He really? Because He might see them, but He doesn’t seem to want to help them or save them or make their lives any better, does He? I mean, what’s the point of spending eternity obsessively staring at birds if you’re not going to do anything about it?”
     “Who say He doesn’t?” Asked Peter.
     “Don’t play that game with me,” Marty laughed. “I’m not some wide-eyed, recently deceased Southern Baptist housewife showing up here. I know the whole “He works in mysterious ways” routine.””
     “Sorry, force of habit,” admitted Peter. “Still, who are you to question His ways?”
     “Show me where it says that I can’t,” Marty said. “I mean, if something makes no sense, I should be allowed to call it out.”
     “Makes no sense on your level of understanding,” Peter reminded him.
     “Yeah, okay, but if you spent your life watching birds fall, wouldn’t you be tempted to help them out at least once or twice? At some point, it’s psychotic. I mean, even Trump would help a puppy if he saw it suffering.”
    “Are you sure about that?” Asked Peter.
    “Okay, bad example,” admitted Marty
    “I guess we could try an experiment,” Peter said.
    “No, I don’t think we need to …”
    “Yes, send him down to help some poor dying puppy,” Peter continued
    Marty thought about how much the whole Carl incident bummed him out, and shuddered to think about what having Trump try to save a puppy would be like.
     “No puppies!” He practically shouted at Peter. Peter laughed and relented.
     “No, I wouldn’t take that chance either,” he told Marty. “But you are going to have to take him back down and try again.”
     “Yeah, I know.” Marty knew this was going to be the outcome all along. He was just blowing off steam. He sighed, not in the usual way he had been sighing regularly since Trump arrived, but in a deep, exasperated way that comes with existential dread.
     “What’s bothering you, Marty?” Peter was asking him now, genuinely interested. As interested as he could be, because in another dimension he was currently handling an influx of victims from a genocide on the other side of the galaxy.
     “I keep thinking about that Carl guy,” Marty said. “I wonder if he’s going to make it.”
     “One thing you have to learn is that humans are very tough and resilient,” Peter explained. “They can really surprise you sometimes with their tenacity and cleverness.”
     Marty never quite noticed until now that Peter really seemed to have a soft spot for human beings. He joked about it with him occasionally, but he never seriously believed that Peter actually cared.
    “I don’t believe it,” he exclaimed. “You actually care about all those little cretins down there, don’t you?” He laughed at the thought of it. Instead of being embarrassed, Peter sat there considering it.
     “Yes,” he finally admitted, “I guess I do. You don’t spend an eternity watching and judging them without gaining a little admiration.”
    “Well,” said Marty, “I hope I never get that pathetic.”
     “Oh, no?” Peter replied. “Want to take a little peek at how Carl is doing?”
     Marty glared at him. That wasn’t fair. It was too fresh. Besides, Carl was just one person, and he had been there and seen how sad he was, and how Trump had destroyed him. Then again, Carl wouldn’t remember any of that, so maybe it wasn’t so bad. Then he thought about how they had found him, his head in his hands, on the verge of tears, as hopeless as he had ever seen anyone.
     “Well,” he said to Peter, “You weren’t there.”
     “I kind of was.”
     “You were watching from a distance,” Marty corrected him. “You weren’t in that room, watching that guy fall apart.”
     “True enough,” Peter conceded. “Would you like to take a look at him now?”
     Marty sighed. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to, and saying yes meant admitting to Peter that he did care, at least a little, but his curiosity got the better of him.
     “Okay,” he relented. “Pull him up.”
     Peter waved his hand, and in front of them, Carl appeared on a screen. He was home now, in his kitchen, eating dinner with his family. His daughter was telling him all about her day of virtual learning, and his son was interrupting with his own story about a video game he had been playing earlier.
     Carl seemed okay. His wife was there, listening intently to the two competing stories as well. She looked at her husband, and they smiled at each other.
     Soon dinner was over, and the kids went into the family room to watch TV, and Carl and his wife started cleaning up.
     “What are our options here?” She asked him.
     “I really don’t know,” Carl replied. “I’m going to talk to the accountant tomorrow, he thinks he has some ideas. I have a call in to our lawyer as well.”
     “Worse comes to worse, the business folds and we both go back to work,” his wife told him.
     “Yeah, I guess …” Carl’s face looked troubled again.
     “Hey,” his wife was telling him now. “Whatever comes, we’ll get through it together. I love you.”
     “I love you too,” Carl told her. “You’re right, and I don’t want to think about it anymore tonight. Let’s just be thankful for what we have and count our blessings.”
     “Exactly,” his wife said, “and besides, at least Trump is dead!”
     Carl and Marty both laughed at that, and both of them felt better. For a moment, when Carl heard Trump’s name, it almost sparked a memory, but it was gone as quickly as it came.
     “You see?” Peter said. “Resilient!” He almost looked proud.
     “Okay, you win. I’ll try again,” Marty said.
     “That’s the spirit!” Peter clapped him on the back. “It will be better this time, wait and see.”
     “Do you really believe that?” Marty asked.
     “Oh, what does it matter what I believe?” Peter replied. “Bye!”
    In a flash Marty was sitting back in the room with Trump on the couch, looking annoyed as usual.
    “Now what are we doing?” Trump asked, already sounding exasperated.
    “I don’t know,” replied Marty, smiling. “Let’s find out, shall we?”
     The wall turned into a screen again, and Marty started to look it over for the next situation to plop the living monkey wrench named Trump into.