Gods Without Men

What if one were to want to hunt for these hidden presences? You can’t just rummage around like you’re at a yard sale. You have to listen. You have to pay attention. There are certain things you can’t look at directly. You need to trick them into revealing themselves. That’s what we’re doing with Walter, Jaz. We’re juxtaposing things, listening for echoes. It’s not some silly cybernetic dream of command and control, modeling the whole world so you can predict the outcome. It’s certainly not a theory of everything. I don’t have a theory of any kind. What I have is far more profound.’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘A sense of humor.’ Jaz looked at him, trying to find a clue in his gaunt face, in the clear gray eyes watching him with such - what? Amusement? Condescension? There was something about the man which brought on a sort of hermeneutic despair. He was a forest of signs. ‘We’re hunting for jokes.’ Bachman spoke slowly, as if to a child. ‘Parapraxes. Cosmic slips of the tongue. They’re the key to the locked door. They’ll help us discover it.’ ‘Discover what?’ ‘The face of God. What else would we be looking for?

Driving was almost the only thing that felt natural in America. It was traditional. It was patriotic. When you accelerated, you could almost hear the crowd cheering you on.

Joseph Smith himself had laid a hand on his shoulder and prophesied that as long as he cut not his hair, neither bullet nor blade could harm him; and so it had proved.

shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the Negro Race? If a white man mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty is death on the spot.

The Lord God had caused a cursing to come upon the Lamanites, a sore cursing because of their iniquity.

He’d been a young man, one of nine, covenanted to pray and never cease to pray to Almighty God to avenge the murder of their Prophet upon the Nation, all sworn that they would teach the same to their children and their children’s children unto the third and fourth generation.

She was wearing an odd pair of granny glasses, whose lenses were faceted like gemstones. Dawn put them on. The fire broke up into splinters of prismatic color. “The Urim and Thummim,” said the girl. “They show you the past and the future.” Dawn had no idea what she was talking about.