Heavenly Court

By Jessica Lake

“Please rise for the Lord God Almighty.”

God stepped into the courtroom draped in a white toga, leather sandals on his feet, his long white hair flowing down his back. His beard did likewise down the front. He smiled at the crowd, he smiled at the prosecutor, he smiled at the defense attorney, and lastly, he smiled at the Communion of Saints who served as the jury. God had finally found something for them to do.

Pamela did not like God’s smile.

As the defense counsel, her lot was to represent her clients, who would ultimately be judged to serve eternity in wherever. She hated God’s smug look more than anything.

Of course, God (pronouns he/him) knew the verdict. And he could change it on a whim. She often wondered why they went through this farce. What surprised her was that she had actually won a time or two.

“The Heavenly Court is now in session. Please, be seated,” said Michael the Archangel, who looked quite dapper in a three-piece suit.

God said, “The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost court is now in session.”

Then the reverberating hammer of the gavel against the sounding block.

Pamela represented three defendants. No question the brothers would roast in Hell. They racked in millions selling arms to warlords and petty dictators around the globe.

The Hardy Boys got off on murder in big numbers.

“You know, what we need?” Bill said, a $100 dollar bill up his nose.

John waited until he finished a big hit off the line of cocaine on the coffee table.

“What?” was delayed and goofy smile.

“Weapons from the future. Super weapons. Ray guns, antimatter hand grenades, and shit.”

“Dude. Yeah.”

A few years later they had the talent. Jessica. Smart. Maybe a genius. A nobody lab tech. Who just happened to dabble in multiverses.

Blah.

Blah.

And then the three were here.

John and Bill looked frantic.

“Dude! There’s an afterlife,” said Ted.

“We are so fucked.” Said Bill.

Jessica smiled.

But she always did that.

“Ted and Bill, rise.” God gestured. “You’ve been found guilty.”

A smash of the gavel came down without Pamela ever speaking a word. And He called this justice.

“What about her? What about Jessica? She’s as fucking guilty as we are!” Ted yelled. “Without the bitch, we couldn’t have done anything. She’s the brains behind it. She seduced us!”

“Bailiff, take these two away,” God commanded.

And just like that, there was only Jessica left. She looked as unworried and unfazed by the demise of her co-conspirators as she had throughout the whole charade.

“Jessica,” the prosecutor said, stepping forward. “You do know why you’re here. You know that we’re talking about how you spend eternity. If you understand that, say, 'Yes, I do.'</EM>”

Jessica smiled, looked at the prosecutor, and asked, “What do you want me to answer?”

The prosecutor looked bored and said, “Say, 'Yes, I understand.'</EM>”

“Yes. I understand.”

“Your Honor, I would like to begin by showing as evidence Jessica‘s life story.”

For the next 55 years, they watched Jessica‘s life story playout right up to the day she died. As lives go, it was on the awful side. Crushing childhood trauma, such that by the age of eight, her arc of life was frozen.

Pamela was surprised to see that there were actually a few people in the jury who cried, evidently ignorant of reality.

“I have no more to say,” the prosecutor concluded.

Pamela stood, confident that she just might win this case.

“My Lord, people of the jury,” Pamela began. “Jessica might as well have been a robot. Childhood trauma had robbed her of any semblance of free will.”

Pamela judged the reaction of the jury as being positive, but you can never tell.

“She was a genius—not that she was ever able to enjoy it. Hers was to serve others and surrender agency.” Pamela was getting into the swing of it. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this woman is beyond guilt or innocence. Circumstance robbed her of life.”

Pamela continued her sob story.

“She never had a childhood. She never was a child. To find this woman guilty would be a travesty of justice. She never grew beyond the child, despite a massive intellect. Hers was to serve and please, to ask for nothing and to give everything. That’s what life taught her, and that’s the truth she lived.”

While Pamela was talking, the jury kept looking at God for some sign of how they were supposed to vote. No one likes to piss off God, and Pamela could vouch for that. The worst thing she had ever done was win a case against Him once.

She glanced over at God, and He still had that smug look on his face. She had obviously won the jury over, but He knew that meant nothing. God, she hated this game.

“God, obviously you’ve got an ace in the hole. Let’s see your cards,” Pamela said, fully crossing her arms over her chest.

The prosecutor shrugged. He was also done with it. Why did he bother to present a case if God was just going to pick whatever He wanted?

“I’m so glad you guys’ invented justice,” God said, practically gleeful. “To balance minds, to balance a life on the edge of antagonism, is something surely I should’ve thought of.”

“And…?” Pamela said, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Pamela, why are you so sad? You’ve won your case.”

“Don’t give me that shit,” she replied, shrugging and showing a little bit more malice than she should have. “Isn’t this the time you’re supposed to pounce and show me what a fool I’ve been?”

“My children in the jury,” God began, using that voice of His that admits no rebellion. “Jessica is neither guilty nor innocent. That’s the trick.”

Then He whispered in that voice that cannot be ignored or shut out, “I didn’t give her a free will.”

Pamela knew that He wanted her to connect all the dots, to see how God had outwitted the human.

“Are you saying because she was never granted free will, you can decide whatever you want? That the judgment of the court is whatever you decide?”

“And…” God prompted.

“And…” Pamela’s mind raced, trying to see what God was getting at. Finally, she tipped her king, realizing she had been completely outplayed. Not that it was any big deal, since He knew everything anyway. “She has no soul.”

“Bingo,” God said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“How could you give a child all the gifts of a human being and leave out a soul? And then you torment the pitiful thing endlessly. What’s the point?”

“Duh. So, I can get rid of the other two guys. They’re the ones I was really after. And thanks to Jessica, it was a piece of cake.”

“You don’t think you owe Jessica anything? You haven’t robbed her of her life, have you?” Pamela asked bitterly.

“Because she never had one to begin with,” God answered.

“Exactly.”

Pamela suffered from a flood of emotions, all of them pulling her in different directions like a person being drawn and quartered.

“How could you?” Pamela gasped. "You made her to suffer as a human but gave her no rights to enter heaven.”

“I think you described her best,” God said. “She’s a robot. A machine of flesh and blood. Naturally, she had to seem realistic, otherwise the criminals wouldn’t have gone for the bait.”

Pamela was always at a loss in moments like this. God: omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. And yet this clown seemed to get off on torturing people. Perhaps this wasn’t surprising; in all likelihood, He was the devil as well.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I can’t call this anything other than what it is: skullduggery,” Pamela said, turning to the courtroom. “To avoid the law, God introduced a character who is as human as you and me but did not grant her a soul. How could someone—how could anyone—stoop so low just to win a fucking case?”

Pamela turned to the jurors and looked them all in the face, up and down. Most of them avoided her eyes, already sure of how they would kowtow to God.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the Lord Almighty maintains her suffering was nothing to grieve because that’s just how she was made. That’s why she was made—to suffer. Her suffering was as real as any human being, and there was nothing she could do from the moment of birth to alter her life in any way. She isn’t guilty. She did her job admirably. So, my Lord, what becomes of a creature—a thin raft of a soul—who was made to suffer and to serve others? A complicated mousetrap meant to catch rats.”

“She ceases to exist,” God replied flatly. “Don’t pity her. There’s nothing to pity there.”

Pamela turned back to the jury box. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.”