In Persuasion Nation

When he gets out, there's no axe in his head, and no scar. The green symbol is gone, the roof is back on the house. The vases are intact, the flowers alive, the kitchen table is fine, and actually has a nice new tablecloth.

No problem, the polar bear thinks, in case the symbol is reading his mind at that moment, no problem, no problem at all, just going to work now.

The polar bear walks for miles through the desert, mumbling encouragement to himself. Yes, okay, that moment when the axe goes in is bad. The moment immediately after, when the Eskimo says something in the Eskimo language, and the Eskimo kids laugh at him as he stumbles out of the igloo blinded by pain, and the subtitle appears ("Yo, Keep Yet Pawz Off My Cheetz"), not so great either. The long walk home, dripping blood into the fresh white snow, okay, also not the best.

But what's he supposed to do? Fight with GOD?

He feels a chill. It starts to snow. Everything goes arctic. On his left is the familiar glacial cliff.

The penguins he always passes nod gravely.

The igloo comes into sight.

Is anyone home? They are not. He begins madly salivating.

Filled with dread, he enters the igloo, takes the usual single handful of Cheetos, waits.

In rush the Eskimo children, fresh from sledding. Behind them comes their father, with axe, enraged. But for the first time the polar bear also notices, in the man's eyes, a deep sadness. Of course, of course, it makes perfect sense! How much fun can it be, driving an axe into the head of a perfectly nice polar bear, day after day, in front of your kids? He's heard through the grapevine that the Eskimo father drinks heavily and has lately started having violent nightmares in which he turns the axe on his own wife and children.

The truth is, this stupid system causes suffering wherever you look. He's seen the puppet-boy returning from work, sobbing from his excruciating leg bums. He's watched Voltaire, blinded by the bright sun shining in his extremely wide-open eyes, struggling to find the store where he buys his French bread. He's heard the wives of the headless working-class guys fall silent whenever one of the headless working-class guys insists he's perfectly capable of driving the kids to school.

And the crazy thing is, it's not just the victims who suffer. He's seen the T. rex moping around the quarry, asking passersby if the working-class guys are still mad at him. He's seen the can of Raid absentmindedly spraying its contents around, even when there aren't any bugs, because it feels so bad about what it did to Voltaire, whose work it actually admires.

The polar bear looks directly into the Eskimo father's face.

I know you don't want to do this, he tries to communicate with his eyes. I forgive you. And please forgive me for my part in this. I am, after all, breaking and entering.

With his eyes the Eskimo father communicates: Same here, totally. This whole thing is just a big crock of shit as far as I'm concerned.

The polar bear communicates: Better swing that axe, friend. It's getting late.

The Eskimo communicates: I know, I know it.

And then he does it.

As the polar bear stumbles out of the igloo, blinded by pain, he thinks about his mother, who, all through his childhood, again and again, while out gathering flowers, nearly collided with a guy in jodhpurs, who then shot her, and after being shot, she was made into a rug, which was then, in montage, sold and resold many times, until finally it was shown being cleaned, decades later, with RugBrite, by hippies, after a big hippie party. He thinks about his father, who, every day of his working life, was given a rectal exam by Santa Claus, in the middle of which Santa Claus, who had allergies, sneezed. That was the big joke: When Santa sneezed, Dad winced.

Was selling what all that suffering was about? Selling? Selling RugBrite, selling AllerNase?

Oh, how should he know? He's just a polar bear, and half the time he's got an axe in his head, which doesn't exactly tend to maximize one's analytical abilities, and usually is laying around his house with the icepack on, thinking basically nothing but Ouch Ouch Ouch.

The polar bear leans against a Christmas tree, trying to catch his breath.

It can't be true. It simply can't be.

But it is true. He feels it in his heart.

The polar bear stumbles past the penguins. Noting his agitation, and the fact that he goes right instead of left at the large tuft of tundra grass, the penguins waddle around excitedly, gossiping among themselves.

All gossiping ceases when the polar bear steps to the edge of the huge glacial cliff.

Then he throws himself off.

Falling, his only fear is that the green symbol will appear and miraculously save him. But no. The green symbol, it would appear, is not truly omniscient after all.

Which means, the polar bear realizes with a start, that the green symbol may not actually be GOD at alt. That is, the symbol may not be the real actual GOD. He may just be a very powerful faker. He may have a touch of GOD, which he has distorted. He may be, in other words, a kind of secondary GOD, a being so powerful, relative to him, the polar bear, that he appears to be a GOD. The real actual GOD may not even know about the way His universe is being run roughshod over by this twisted, false GOD! The real actual GOD, the polar bear realizes in his last instant of life, has been heretofore entirely unknown to him! And yet this true GOD must exist, and be knowable, since the idea of this perfect and merciful GOD is emanating, fully formed, from within him, the polar bear! He has, in fact, already taken his first step toward knowledge of the true GOD, via his rejection of the false GOD!

Shoot, dang it, if only he could live!

The polar bear hits the ground and, because no one in this sub-universe can die without the express consent of certain important parties, does not die, but bounces.

As the penguins stand on the edge of the cliff, looking cautiously down, he rockets up past them.

"GOD is real!" he shouts. "And we may know Him!"

The penguins watch him reach the apex of his bounce and start back down.

"The green symbol is a false GOD!" he shouts. "A false GOD, obsessed with violence and domination! Reject him! Let us begin anew! Free your minds! Free your minds and live! There is a gentler and more generous GOD within us, if only we will look!"

The penguins, always easily embarrassed, are especially embarrassed by this, and, looking around to verify that the tundra's vast emptiness precludes anyone having witnessed them actually listening to this heretical subversive nonsense, waddle away to sit on their large ugly eggs and gossip about the fact that the polar bear, about whom they've always had their doubts, has finally gone completely insane.

"Talk about crazy," one of them finally says, in what they all instantaneously recognize as the sacred first utterance of an entirely new blessed vignette. "I myself am completely crazy for Skittles."

Then they all stand. As in a beautiful dream, their eggs have been miraculously transformed beneath them into large colorful Skittles. The penguins look heavenward in deep gratitude, then manically begin dancing the mindless penguin dance of joy.