OXYMORON

That day, Joaquín discovered his life was like an unfinished sketch—one somber and battered by the shifting tides of time. He might even say the strokes of the instrument that devised him had already begun to fade in places; incomplete edges and blurred vertices. On that day, the parchment upon which Joaquín’s life was rendered tore apart, shredded into tatters and blood. Putrescence.

“He has ceased to believe,” some used to remark. As if failing to believe in the god of the fashion-moment exiled him from every manifestation of spirituality. One could disbelieve in witchcraft, the government, or climate change. But the moment one stopped “believing in God,” they became, ipso facto, a non-believer. Nearly a heretic.

For those very people who point fingers—with the scrutiny and authority of one who deems themselves judge of their society—speak of rivers of fire and lakes of sulfur; an existence of eternal post-mortem suffering. Life after death, in one sense or another.

Joaquín did not believe in such an oxymoron.

A deity as contradictory as the principles that anointed its cult was a matter of indifference to him. It was a triviality whether that God-oxymoron, sustained by the vast majority of the population, existed or not. Perhaps it was that entity that had arranged the great screens and shimmering skyscrapers—structures as ancient as only a witness to dozens of generations can be. His grandfathers, the grandfathers of his grandfathers, perhaps further back still. The great screen was already watching them. He was but a spectator of the eighth or ninth generation.

If the promised reward for a sinless life is summed up in a contradiction and the vow not to cast him into pits of infinite agony for all eternity, then it strikes him as ridiculous. He does not want it. At least, not in its entirety.

Joaquín did not crave an endless life of purity, worshiping some metaphysical entity beyond his comprehension. To be precise, the only thing that truly interested him was the possibility of perpetuity. He had no desire for any paradise, nor did he believe its infernal counterpart could be any more horrid than his earthly present.

Murders were no stranger than thefts or common colds in that region. The aggrandizement of plunder, justified as ambition, leveled some small country every now and then; it happened frequently in parallel with the march of history. Poverty remained, just as it always had. It was perhaps there that he had found the first traces of eternity: in the ubiquity of pain, suffering, and tragedy.

From amidst the innumerable screens, a feminine voice extends an invisible arm—a castaway among the circuits, transistors, and components of the EUCOLOR—promoting a health clinic for one of the great transnationals. DNA and telomeres, mutagens and cellular dedifferentiation processes. He understood little, almost nothing, but “the research is promising,” she summarizes. Facultative immortality.

Four billion, six hundred-odd million years: the origin of the Earth. He could not fathom such temporal monstrosity. Sixty-seven million years since the great Cretaceous extinction. He couldn’t wrap his head around that either. Ten light-years, or a hundred, or a billion. Was it even possible? How could he believe in the magnitude of such distances—and the time it would take a ship of impossible engineering to traverse them—if he was incapable of even approaching the threshold of the path that leads there?

He was still young, but he would be dead within the next hundred years. He would die before he could even leave the solar system. That thought stifles him, yet there is little to be done against the imposition and enforcement of physical and physiological laws.

He would have been fascinated to watch planets form and suns extinguish; the genesis of great galaxies. Imagine having the time to watch life proliferate and shift into new organic forms. Could life flourish beyond the human horizon? Or is life merely a human conception, framed by the insignificance and finitude of our existence as individuals?

Joaquín thinks of those forms, imagining that such abstract aliens might not be sentient, might not be recognized as living or conscious. Our evident inability to recognize the other living beings of Earth as equals would, after all, drive us to ignore them in the same way.

If they were a sentient “Other,” what would they make of our way of life? Would they have the time and technology to cross the hollow spatial abysses that separate us? The interest to come toward us at all?

Perhaps the plan of the God-oxymoron was to keep us apart from one owned. Separated by impassable walls of thick nothingness. It is possible He does not wish for us to encounter His other creations, our brothers. Perhaps out of sloth, perhaps out of fear. Fear that the experiments might rebel against the Maker; those who, upon discovering they are a multitude and comparing themselves to one another, might grow resentful. Resentful of His favorites, His resounding successes, and those failures so repulsive they have been cast into some corner of the void, far from His gaze, condemned to decay in the darkness of the infinite cosmos. It is in that ponderous upheaval when the universe would turn against its creator for making it cruel and meaningless. Unjustly beautiful and unjustly hideous.

“Perhaps humanity is a mistake,” Joaquín says to himself, mid-thought.

A creation capable of imagining such offenses against its creator must, by necessity, be a glitch in the divine protocols. It would be the same creation that would drive research forward and cause the great screens to broadcast their miracles. A transgression of natural principles projected in a dynamic range of hypnotic colors and frequencies.

From the digital clamor emerged a woman’s voice. A deep, velvety sound that joyfully announces researchers have reached the long-awaited goal and are ready to begin human trials. He thinks of the mice, rats, and rabbits that must have served as test subjects for sick and selfish wills. Souls who, horrified by the reality of human senescence, turn greedy and capable of anything—always in the name of some just cause that, in its need for growth, accepts them as allies. Science, art, progress. “What would become of us without such noble beings!”

Only our being a mistake would explain why God permitted wars and famines, plagues and the genocide of the Mother herself, the Earth. Only the indifference of the creator could allow His creation to submit to the absolute rule of the great screen and the men projected upon it. Men whom heaven knows if they truly exist.

That is why Joaquín does not believe in God.

"…—Is there a cure, doctor? —a woman asks, clinging to her husband. The doctor, his gaze pained, shakes his head. Dramatic music swells in the background.

—Prime Minister A has advised the population to remain in their habitats. Do not look out of doors or windows, and go immediately to health clinics if you are bitten by an infected animal. It is also recommended to have your private insurance policy at hand. —He is a man entering old age; his voice is grave and stern. The previous presenter stopped appearing one day.

A naked woman dances a tango with a man in a suit. As a form of censorship, black bars cover various parts of her body, including her eyes. He stops dancing and walks to one side; the stage becomes a bar where a waitress, also naked, offers him a drink. The image of a crystal bottle condenses on the screen.

…—Tonight, Dr. B, one of the lead researchers on the project, has disappeared, leaving behind a video note. Hours later, the official announcement of the contingency was broadcast.

—We transgressed a limit. I can only imagine it as the fury of some higher force. It began with the test animals, with the monkeys. We thought it was a stress response to the treatments. They were often injured or died outright following the experiments…"

And then, he no longer desired that eternal life that had been offered to him. Because life after death was the ultimate tragedy attributable to the abandonment of the creator. The rivers would not be of fire, but of blood. And the torture would not be carried out by little red, horned, winged devils holding tridents and prodding his backside. No. The inquisitors would be his own brothers and sisters, possessed by an unnatural rage and a thirst for life characteristic of the most obscene immortality. He knew it because he had seen them devour, and he had heard them snarl and chew, and swallow. A grotesque and degenerate physicality that he knew to be true.

"—Remain calm, the researchers will find a solution —A was saying.

—Turn off your mind. Total immersion —a seductive voice responds. A rain of colors explodes.

…—Then it happened at a kindergarten in the south. We found no explanation, but the child undoubtedly exhibited the same symptoms. The government concealed everything. It is transmitted through all bodily fluids and tissues. But we believe it can also appear spontaneously in those who are susceptible.

Two men kiss tenderly, interlacing their hands. On both wrists, gold watches occupy the center of the focus. They are available for purchase in installments with minimum interest.

—The Guru, leader of the church, has urged the faithful to repent, for the end of days has arrived. He noted that the impurity of the people has resulted in the punishment of the creator god. It is because of sin that the project has failed —the presenter explains."

And then the voice fell silent.

Silence.

That was the great marvel of EUCOLOR. Everything enters the brain’s reception centers directly; eyes and ears might not pay attention, but the information was there. And then it returned. A failure in the central servers, perhaps. But that silence was enough for him to understand.

This was the God-oxymoron in the flesh; the face in His image and likeness, deformed by torn tissue, exposed bone, and a hanging eye caused by the bites of the dog that tried to defend itself, to defend him. It did not succeed. Joaquín saw its entrails being ripped from its interior only to be chewed and half-swallowed. This was the God-oxymoron, moving slow and clumsy toward him; hungry, longing.

“A perfume commercial.”

It was then he put the barrel in his mouth and wished only to die.

That is why Joaquín never believed in God…

…"

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