The Infinite Matrix | Michael Swanwick & Francisco Goya | The Sleep Of

Reason 62

05.15.03

the sleep of reason

by Michael Swanwick

with illustrations by

Francisco JosÉ de Goya y Lucientes

Click image to enlarge

Digital image © copyright

Davison Art Center,

Wesleyan University

DAC permission required

for any other use.

62. [Plate 52]

Worshiping the Scarecrow

Armageddon was coming, and the nightmares weren't prepared. They didn't

have an Antichrist. Somehow they'd forgotten to budget for one, and then

there had been cost overruns, and... well, they simply couldn't afford

the prices that the heavy hitters of Hell could command. When they came

begging, hat in hand, Beelzebub laughed scornfully. Lucifuge Rofocale

slammed the door in their faces. Asmodeus, Rhotomagus, Beliel... Nobody

was willing to work pro bono.

Still, the End Times required an Antichrist and so, having no better

options, the nightmares built a scarecrow. They lashed some poles

together and wrapped cloth about them. They fashioned a face from a blob

of wax. They put it up and hoped for the best.

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T H A N K S !

As a scarecrow, it wasn't half bad. As the universal enemy of mankind,

last ruler of Earth, and scourge of Christianity, it was a joke. "Oh,

come on!" snorted the Pope when he saw it. "Cut me some slack, why don't

you?" Even the tabloids wouldn't take it seriously.

So the nightmares hired a consultant.

"It's simple semiotics," he told them. "You have an areferential

null-content signifier."

"Huh?"

"It doesn't mean anything. Which means that it means nothing. And that's

the message you've got to push!"

So the whispering campaign began. "It's worse than vacuous," the word

went out, "it's kitsch. It has neither interior nor exterior

significance... it's self-spoofing irony turned upon itself... nihilism

gone mad."

The very next day, a woman walking by the scarecrow fell to her knees and

vomited up worms. Whether they were real worms in real vomit is

irrelevant. It was a shocking thing to do, when the Antichrist wasn't

even trying to convince you it wasn't a sham. To be possessed by demons

is bad enough. To be possessed by a value-free self-referential icon of

postmodern theoretics is just perverse.

People gathered before the scarecrow, muttering and wondering. Inevitably

somebody fell to her knees and began to worship it. Inevitably, she was

joined by others. Within a week, all the world was in the grips of an

antireligious mania.

Everyone knew that nobody believed, and nobody believed that anybody was

sincere about it. But that was exactly the point.

Neat, huh?

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This is the 62nd of 80 stories by Michael Swanwick written to accompany

Francisco Goya's Los Caprichos. For a listing of the most recently

available stories, go to The Sleep of Reason.

Eileen K. Gunn.

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