The Golem and the Messiah Trilogy
Part 1, Chapter 1: I am...
Part 1: I am…
go·lem
/ˈgōləm/
noun
In Jewish folklore, a golem (Hebrew: גולם) is an animated anthropomorphic being created entirely from inanimate matter…
“The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. But given man's nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become Golems, they will destroy their world and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life.” — Erich Fromm
Chapter 1: Spring, 2056
I am The Messiah, born an outlaw on April 1st, 2038, in violation of Greater New York Diversity Council Resolution 1-4c, the Zero Growth Directive of the GreenChoice Act. The Zero Growth Directive mandates abortions for all unauthorized pregnancies. I was born a fugitive, but I was also born a faith healer, an empath, destined one day to become the child leader of the underground Resistance Network, at least according to legend.
IN the off-chance you haven’t already, please make a donation pledge to support my work here at the Quality of Life Resistance Movement. My creditors will thank you. And so will I — in advance: THANK YOU!
I’ve never spent more than a few days in the same place. The Resistance moves me from house to house to keep me out of the hands of the Hate Crime Authority, the main enforcement arm of the Utopian Federation, now more than halfway through its third decade. I am shuttled around in secrecy, blindfolded each time, so I can never betray my previous or current whereabouts. My handlers think I never know where I am or where I’ve been or where I’ll be. They’re willfully wrong, of course. I always know for reasons they can’t begin to comprehend but are required to believe anyway because I’m The Messiah. More on that later. For now it’s much safer for them and for me if they and everyone else think or pretend I don’t know.
Once I spent a few days on a farm with my parents. I was 13 years old. My father took me outside only in the evenings and showed me the night sky under a blanket of stars. I had never seen the night sky before. Many of the stars, he told me, died eons ago, but their light survives just long enough to pierce our eyes. The night air was cool and crisp and it filled my lungs. And I saw the magnificent silhouette of a stallion on a hilltop in the moonlight. I felt fully alive for the first time in my life that night under the stars. I cried for the first time also. My father held me close and I wanted to melt into his arms. His deepest fears were always for me. I know because I felt them. But I haven’t seen the night sky or the stars or a horse since. I learned later that the farm was a secret munitions factory for the Resistance.
My parents survived only five years in the Resistance before they were killed in a skirmish with the Hate Crime Authority last year. They were legends before they joined the Resistance. My father was the world’s wealthiest man. My mother was the world’s most powerful woman. Together they designed and co-founded the Utopian Federation, what we in the Resistance now refer to as The Golem. Here’s how the birth of The Golem is described in The Resistance Fighter’s Handbook…
“The Great Culture Wars ended in the spring of 2030, when a coterie of commercial technomedia elite in New York City, Los Angeles, the Greater San Francisco Bay Area, the Silicon Valley, and Washington DC purchased bloodless coups in their respective markets and declared their independence as vassal-state members of the new Utopian Federation. The handful of municipal and union leaders who couldn’t be bought outright or otherwise refused to cooperate were summarily destroyed in the media, forced to resign, or worse. Within a few weeks, Diversity Councils were established in each new jurisdiction with the supreme power to author, impose, and enforce uniform cultural narratives through regional offices of what would soon become the most feared and efficient security apparatus of the new Federation: the Hate Crime Authority.”
Any child raised in any Resistance Network grade school can recite the above by heart. Few understand what it means when they first learn it at the age of six. They understand only that the The Golem is something evil, something to fear. Also, that a better and freer world once existed in the generations before my mother and my father created it. According to The Resistance Fighter’s Handbook, they breathed life into The Golem one day only to satisfy their own ambitions. Eight years later in the year 2038, my mother ran off and gave birth to me in secret defiance of her own creation. And that was how my legend began. The Legend of the Girl Messiah, as authored by my mother, like The Resistance Fighter’s Handbook and just about everything else around here.
My father knew nothing about me, nothing even about my birth, until we met for the first time on the evening of my 12th birthday, the evening I lost my two closest confidants and friends to one bullet. Later that evening my mother explained to him my birth and my secret life in the Resistance, and how they could no longer return to their previous lives of privilege in the Federation. I had just closed my eyes for the night after the carnage when I felt him touch me for the first time. He stroked my brow, laughed softly, and bent down to whisper in my ear. You are my immaculate deception, he said. I will always be with you. His touch, so sudden after all these years, hit me like a hammer but was too soft to describe. I caught my breath for a moment then fell asleep right away.
Most of those who belong to the Resistance live pretty normal lives out in the open. But they cannot express their true feelings about The Golem, or even breathe the term. They help the cause when and where they can without exposing themselves or their families or their friends to the terror of the Hate Crime Authority. By contrast, life in the Resistance underground where I live because of who I am and what I represent is mostly humorless and soul-numbing. So my father taught me humor. He not only taught me how to laugh. He taught me why to laugh. He called humor the gift of proportion, and took it upon himself to write down many jokes for me to memorize and recite whenever I take myself too seriously. Here’s the last one, the one he recorded for me just before he was killed...
A black man, a Mexican, a Jew, and a bigot are all seated in the same room. The black man looks down and spots a dusty lamp on the floor. He picks it up, dusts it off and poof! A magic genie appears.
“Thank you,” says the genie to the black man. “I’ve been trapped in that cramped little lamp for the past two thousand years. Because you have freed me from my prison of darkness, I will grant you and each of your friends in the room one wish. Anything you want. One wish only for each of you. Consider carefully.”
The black man’s mind starts racing. “I could own homes, mansions, all over the world,” he says out loud. “Or a harem of gorgeous women. Or billions of dollars to buy whatever I want!” Finally, he interrupts himself. “No!” he declares. “For once in my life I want to take the high road. I want to return to Africa with all my African American brothers and sisters to restore the glory of the African Nation!” And poof! He’s gone!
The Mexican picks up the lamp and turns to the genie. “Wow!” he says. “That was truly inspiring. I want to return with all my Mexican American brothers and sisters to Mexico. Viva Mexico!” And poof! He’s gone!
The Jew picks up the lamp next. “I’m so humbled,” he says to the genie. “I want to return with all my Jewish American brothers and sisters to the Promised Land. Next year in Jerusalem!” And poof! He’s gone!
Finally, just the bigot remains. “Let me get this straight,” he says to the genie. “You sent all the blacks back to Africa, all the Mexicans back to Mexico, and all the Jews back to Israel.”
“That’s right,” says the genie. “What would you like?”
The bigot says, “I’ll take a Diet Coke.”
My father said the Resistance can claim final victory when someone can tell this joke without going to jail, or when someone understands it, whichever comes first. I’ve told it to several trusted Resistance colleagues so far. But none of us understood it and most of my colleagues called it hateful. So I guess we need to stay underground for now. Despite his humor, I could feel the deep sadness in my father’s soul whenever we touched, whenever he held me. Sadness in his soul not for his circumstance as a hunted refugee or his fall from grace. Sadness for me. Always for me.
My mother told me once how easy it was to assert total control over the populations of New York City and Washington DC and Los Angeles and San Francisco and the Silicon Valley. Apparently, there was no resistance to The Golem because the people who lived in those places at the time were already conditioned to think the exact same way about most things anyway, the result of a carefully crafted sequence of media-induced crises and traumas manufactured by a handful of corporate media conglomerates owned mostly by my father and controlled mostly by my mother. So she would know.
A media prodigy in her previous life, my mother became General Counsel for my father’s media empire at the age of 28. According to legend, those who opposed her in boardroom negotiations at the time called her a monster. Those who served under her on the ruling Diversity Council of Greater New York after she and my father created the Utopian Federation were scared to death of her because she also created and controlled the Hate Crime Authority. She understood media because she understood and felt deep in her bones how the emotional mechanics of fear and envy breed compliance and consent for those who don’t understand them, and power for those who do. The Golem’s sole purpose for existing, she told me, is to manufacture perpetual fear and envy and consent for the sake of those in power. Once upon a time she wanted to rule the world. Then she met my father and she became The Golem.
My father knew a little something about media also. He founded and ruled Allcorp, the world’s largest media company, with a market cap north of twenty trillion dollars by the time I was born. It was said that whenever my father appeared at a public event, every reporter at the event and every reporter who mentioned the event was on his payroll. The few who weren’t on his payroll weren’t at the event and likely wouldn’t dare to mention it. He told me once that the only real function of commercial media is to maintain the apparatus of addiction. Everything else, he said, is an illusion. He understood media because he understood the chemistry, pain, and opportunity of emptiness and despair. Once upon a time in the depths of his solitude he believed that he alone knew how to save the world. Then he met my mother and he became The Golem.
Together my mother and my father understood the emotional mechanics of fear and envy. Together they understood the chemistry and pain and opportunity that rise from the ashes of emptiness and despair and solitude. Together they understood these things better than anyone. But they believed and trusted only in themselves. That’s how and why it was so easy for them to conjure a golem like the Utopian Federation. That’s how and why they ruled the Federation vassal state of Greater New York together. That and a trillion-dollar bankroll. You won’t find that bit of wisdom in The Resistance Fighter’s Handbook, maybe because everyone in the Resistance thinks the same way about the same things also. I am my parent’s daughter, the sum total of who they were and what they became. Now that they are gone, I am The Messiah and I am The Golem. At least for now.
Thank you for reaching out, Frederick. I'll check out In the Year 2525.
Great essay. Along those lines: https://open.substack.com/pub/frederickrsmith/p/in-the-year-2525