Over the next few weeks, Marty tried again and again to take Trump to Earth to help people in crisis, and over and over again, Trump failed miserably. He didn’t even try. Marty had seen a little glimmer of hope when Trump seemed a tiny bit invested in Kim’s situation, but it quickly faded. Trump had become even more closed off and resistant to even attempting to help anyone. He seemed convinced that due to his status and based on his previous life experience, he would simply be allowed into heaven no matter what he did.
Marty had observed the fact that many humans completely ignored any personal responsibilities for their actions. It was one of the things that made Marty indifferent to people. In fact, it made him loathe them most of the time. Trump was the absolute worst, though. He had never seen someone just eschew all self-accountability for everything he had done. Trump simply followed any compulsion or stupid idea that popped into his head, and didn’t give a thought to any consequences it might have. He didn’t seem to learn in hindsight. He didn't even seem to be aware of hindsight, for that matter.
Usually because the consequences for his actions rarely affected him. They affected other people, and Trump was such a raging narcissist and sociopath that he was hardly aware of other people at all. Just by virtue of being himself on a world stage made it possible for him to act as a siren call to all the other selfish and self-absorbed people. His followers were legion, and their ranks were filled with every horrible type of person imaginable. Racists, misogynists, homophobes, Nazis, plutocrats, authoritarians, and just people filled with generic anger and hatred. All of them were willing to believe the most ill-informed opinions and outlandish conspiracy theories possible if it somehow supported their shitty worldview.
Marty knew that a lot of them were just ignorant. Ignorant of facts and science, ignorant of politics or how their own government worked, even ignorant of who they were. Most of them seemed almost proud of their ignorance. They saw a chance to lash out at others who to them seemed like know-it-alls; elites who thought they were better than them. They were insecure, and not at all willing to do any work whatsoever to better themselves. It’s easier and more satisfying in the short term to rail against the things that threaten you or hold you back than it is to actually learn and grow.
That was another thing about humans that Marty detested. They always took the easy way, no matter how it hurt them in the long run. Heaven wasn't too keen on those humans. When they got to the intake desk, Peter would examine their lives and see that they never even bothered to try, and off to hell they went. Not always hell, there were other avenues for redemption for people who weren't purely evil, but the point is that none of the people who simply drifted through life hurting others and not noticing it would ever get into heaven.
And I know what you’re thinking, but Marty possessed enough self-awareness to realize that he was simply drifting through life(well, afterlife) as well. He knew he was taking the easy way out, but in a herculean feat of self-delusion that would make most humans proud, he saw his circumstance as very different from the people he detested so much. He was simply drifting his way through heaven, where nothing he did really mattered. It didn’t hurt anyone else if he just floated along, trying to get out of doing any real work. There were no real consequences anywhere, for him or for any of the other heavenly beings. There were no consequences for humans as well. He barely had any interaction with them at all, up until now. In his mind, he was nothing like humans, and certainly nothing like Trump or his supporters.
He had to laugh at the people who followed Trump. The difference between Trump and most of his followers is that Trump was rich and powerful, so most of his horrible behavior never really touched him. The vast majority of his followers were simply hurting themselves. The karma could barely keep up with it. They were metaphorically punching themselves in the face on a daily basis, yet they still couldn’t figure out why their face was swollen and bruised. They ignored all science and health advice during the current pandemic, simply because they saw it as a chance to lash out at their perceived enemies, the people they felt were looking down on them. They were dying by the thousands as they deluded themselves into believing that the aforementioned know-it-alls were lying and perpetrating a hoax for their own means. Never mind that they really had no good theory why health officials and scientists would want to trick the population into believing that a virus was real. Most of them were just filled with paranoia and fear that someone somewhere was trying to get over on them or control them. People were big on not being told what to do, and would do whatever someone told them to achieve their freedom. It left Marty shaking his head.
Marty also thought it was both amazing and ludicrous how people tried to understand most of the things that other humans did or thought. On one hand, it was definitely the right thing to do to try to understand human behavior, but on the other hand they attached a lot of importance or credit where it didn’t belong.
For example, a lot of people gave Trump credit for being some evil mastermind or the antichrist. To be an evil genius, you have to not only be evil, but be a genius as well, just like the title implies. Trump was no genius. Not even on some basic level. Not even like he had some idiot savant thing going on where he was a master manipulator who didn’t even recognize his true power. He was just an idiot, and most people who weren’t idiots saw right through it. Enough people who weren’t idiots didn’t see through it as well, that’s true, but Marty thought that part of the problem was just how people defined idiots.
The successful or wealthy were seen as people who couldn’t possibly be idiots. Doctors and lawyers, people in any profession that carried any sort of clout, were assumed to be immune to being idiotic. That was not the case. Marty saw idiots everywhere, because he had no illusions about people’s status or wealth or profession. He simply saw them as humans, and all humans were basically psychotic apes who leapfrogged their way through evolution and up the food chain. Some of them recognized that it didn’t make them infallible or more important than any other life on the planet, or bigger than the planet itself, but most didn't.
Most people used heaven and religion to boost the claim that humans were special and different, and it irritated God to no end. People on their own were definitely capable of being special, but as a whole, the human race had a lot of competition. Not just with most of the other animals living on their planet, but with the trillions of other races and species populating the universe. All of them had their own unique and special traits, and all of them had a place in His kingdom. Heaven was not exclusive to humans, and humans had no clue as to just how many versions of paradise existed. Every earthly religion got it wrong on most levels, because religion was invented by humans, and humans were very fallible indeed. As was already pointed out, an awful lot of them were indeed idiots, so most theology and religious dogma was as idiotic as the people who made it up. A lot of them were harmless idiots, but idiots just the same.
So back to the previous point, Trump was not a genius on any level. Most of his selfish and idiotic behavior was helping him in the short term and not really having much of a karmic impact, but life is a marathon, not a sprint. The Divine Plan definitely seemed like a scattershot mess, but it also usually saw to it that bad behavior had consequences eventually, even if people didn’t always see it. There was an oversight department for what people called karma, even if it wasn’t exactly what people would think it would be. Karma basically took care of itself, but records needed to be kept. There were a few instances along the way where some higher angels had to tweak things now and then, but most of the time it was left to run its natural course. Marty could never figure out just what triggered some heavenly intervention, because some very good people got some very bad breaks, and some very bad people never got their comeuppance. It’s like the karma division was asleep at the wheel most of the time, but Marty supposed that maybe they knew more than he did about the people involved, so he just left it alone.
Speaking of karma, though, Marty actually thought Trump might be getting off easy, dying before he vacated the White House. He would never have to answer for his crimes. Marty had to keep in mind that ultimately Trump would wind up in hell. No matter how Trump deluded himself into thinking that he would somehow get a pass because of who he was, Marty knew that it didn’t work that way up here. He didn’t even understand how it had dragged on this long. Surely Peter and God knew that Trump was going to go to hell and face eternal torment. Heaven was kind of a bureaucracy though, and every base had to be covered, so Marty resigned himself to it.
Still, all the trips to earth with Trump didn’t seem to be making much of a difference either way. Trump was not growing or learning, but Peter and the powers that be weren’t any more convinced that Trump should get flung into hell. Marty complained to Peter after nearly every trip down there, after every disastrous attempt at helping people, and Peter just told Marty to keep trying. It was almost like there was no plan whatsoever, as if God and heaven simply wanted to torment Marty.
Maybe this was about torment, but not about Marty. Maybe this was all just to torment and annoy Trump. Maybe this was hell for Trump. Maybe Marty was going to have to spend eternity dragging Trump around Earth everyday. He shuddered at the thought.
But no, that wasn’t the case. It couldn’t be. Marty was an angel, and heaven didn’t get involved in torture and retribution. Heaven was about rewards and growth, hell was in charge of all the misery and teaching lessons and such. Nope, this was just bureaucratic nonsense, redundancy and a waste of time.
Marty laughed when he thought about how it was this type of thing that drove otherwise decent people to vote for someone like Trump in the first place. They had had enough of inefficiency and incompetence in their government. It wasn’t just the government, it was human beings in general. The population had gotten too big to manage. Corporations and organizations and pretty much any large group of people were unmanageable at this point. Everything was corrupted and the systems put in place for oversight was broken, in every aspect. Apathy finished off any chance they had of getting it under control.
So Marty watched as it all fell apart a little more each day. It was all breaking down. Most people didn’t care about their jobs anymore. The people who did were discouraged to realize that the people who didn’t care at all were getting a free ride. The harder one person worked at their job, the less three other people bothered to do their job at all. Most workplaces were pits of resentment and indifference, full of inequality and out of balance.
Every institution was riddled with it. Government, businesses, schools, churches, the post office, law enforcement and the armed forces, you name it. Nothing was working like it should, and it was really throwing people off their games.
Another dichotomy about humans was that as much as they screamed about not letting anyone control them, they actually wanted everything to at least appear like someone was in control at all times. As much as they refused to take personal responsibility for most things, they were more than happy to give up freedom and control if it meant that someone else was going to do it. They hated the government, but it was too much effort to get involved in the process, so they were more than happy to listen to someone like Trump who said he had the answers, so long as they didn’t have to think about what those answers were.
So they fought even harder against reality whenever anyone came along and pointed out that Trump didn’t actually have any answers. They railed against anything that threatened to expose the fact that there were no real solutions being offered. They talked themselves into believing whatever they had to if it convinced them that things were getting better and they didn’t have to do any actual work. They would believe any garbage at all if it meant they could just go on in blissful ignorance.
The thing was, no one was happier. Nothing had changed. In fact, all the things they hated about government and the system had only gotten much worse. Somehow they managed to ignore that fact, as it all crumbled around them.
Yeah, people were idiots, Marty was sure of it. Yet when he went down to Earth with Trump, he still found himself finding good things about them, and having sympathy for them. It was odd. The more Trump had to interact with other people, the more contempt for them he seemed to have. It was the opposite of the way Marty was feeling. He even mentioned it to Peter a few days ago.
“Yeah, they grow on you.” Peter told him.
“They really do,” agreed Marty. “I’m not sure what it is. Some of them are very kind. In fact, I’ve really only been interacting with people in the worst and most dire circumstances, but even with all those reasons to be angry and bitter, they are really decent. They are still kind and good.”
“It’s the damnedest thing, isn’t it?” Peter responded, smiling. “They are really surprising at times. They are pretty complex. I have to admit, I don’t completely understand them.”
“Wait a minute,” Marty said, taken aback, “isn’t it your job to judge them? To take stock of their entire lives and all their actions? Of all beings in the universe, shouldn’t you understand them better than anyone?”
“Shhhh,” Peter replied, “It’s best not to think about that!”
“But how is that fair?” Marty protested.
“Shhh,” Peter repeated, and winked at him. “It all works out, I’m sure.”
While that conversation had bothered Marty a bit, he supposed that Peter relied a lot on his instincts. Maybe Peter was imbued with some power and understanding that even he himself didn’t understand. Maybe She in her infinite wisdom had given Peter some gift that even he couldn’t comprehend, and by not thinking about it too much it allowed the power to flow through him. Of course, maybe it was all bullshit and blind luck. Who would know the difference, and who would even be able to say anything about it?
Marty shook this whole train of thought out of his head. The fact remained that he had to do something if this whole Trump fiasco was ever going to end, so maybe he had to go over Peter’s head. If Peter didn’t even seem to know exactly what he was doing, why was he wasting time spinning his wheels simply because Peter said it had to be so? No, tomorrow he would take some initiative on his own. Isn’t that what Peter always told him to do anyway?
In the weeks after Kim’s diagnosis and recovered memories of what had transpired with Marty and Trump, she had changed. She was more determined than ever, about everything. She had decided that as long as she wasn’t working, she was going back to school. She took her son’s no good father to court, and got child support. She wasn’t sure how long this pandemic was going to last, but she decided that she was going to come out at the other end of it better off than when she went in.
She was also determined to find out just what had happened that night when a dead president and a useless angel named Marty visited her. She tried talking to her pastor about it, but he looked at her like she was nuts when she told him about Trump and an angel showing up in her living room. She couldn’t say she blamed him, although she thought it was strange that someone who devoted their lives to God would dismiss an actual visitation so quickly. “Oh well, belief is subjective” she figured.
So she lit candles and prayed, hoping the heavens would tell her what was going on, or that Marty would come back and explain himself. The heavens remained silent, and Marty didn’t show. It was frustrating knowing that there was something bigger than life here on Earth, but she couldn’t seem to access any of it. She had stood in the same room as an angel, yet still could make no connection to any of it.
If she had taken away one thing from that night with Marty and Trump, it was that no matter what might be going on with heaven and the afterlife, she was going to have to take care of shit down here herself. Angels and ghosts were no help at all. They had no interest in fixing things for humans, that was up to them.
After a couple of months, she was no closer to heaven though, but even though part of her wanted to just let it go, she couldn’t. She was at the point where she was scouring the corners of the internet, looking for any kind of ritual or prayer that might put her in touch with Marty. She even tried praying directly to him. Who knows, maybe he was Saint Marty, the patron saint of ineptitude.
Despite all her research and desperation, Kim knew next to nothing how these things worked. For all she knew, heaven was indifferent to life on Earth. It surely felt that way. She would be surprised to know that every second of every life was observed and cataloged, and even more surprised to find that it was observed and cataloged by beings without much ability to understand what they were watching at all. Then all those infinite moments were filtered through those beings, and some of it passed through to other beings, and even though they only had a little more comprehension about it, it got filtered even further. So on it went, and once in a while, some important stuff got through to the right department, and it did make a difference.
But not often. In fact, hardly ever. The human beings weren’t the only ones working with a broken system. All the odds were against any of Kim’s pleadings ever getting through. Besides all the red tape and inefficiency, I already pointed out that time moves differently on Earth than it did in the afterlife. Only a few weeks had passed for Marty, even though three months had gone by for Kim. The time difference alone made it hard to connect.
Still, on this night on Earth, Kim once again sat in her living room after Jaden had been put to bed. She lit a candle that she pestered the pastor into blessing at church this past Sunday, and poured some holy water out into a bowl with some scriptures written on the side. She closed her eyes, and prayed with all her might to God and Jesus above, and even to Marty, the dopey angel she had met months earlier. A little while later, she stood up, blew out the candle, and poured the holy water down the drain. One more night where nothing happened at all.
In what could best be described as Marty’s room in heaven, as he was plotting his next course of action on what to do with Trump, and just exactly how he was going to take his initiative, he was suddenly startled.
He looked around the room and said “Did somebody call me?”
But no one was there. He was alone.
