devotees. I don’t see the actual wordsmithing as the hard part for a hot-shot writer like you, though—that’s why I don’t think you need to quit your job, especially given your financial situation.”
Fisher’s patronizing tone was rubbing me the wrong way, but I was so relieved to learn he wasn’t expecting me to resign from my position at Warren & McCaul, I let his bossy attitude slide. When I started to flip through my own pages, however, most of which consisted of nothing more than a heading atop a blank page, I was suddenly struck by the enormity of the challenge facing me.
“You claim the writing per se is not going to be hard,” I said, “but there’s a hell of a lot of major blanks that need to be filled in.”
“You got that right,” Fisher agreed, with a condescending smirk, “and most of it’s not the sort of stuff we can really trust a subcontractor with, is it? I mean, we’re talking our most secret and sacred doctrines.”
I think that was the very first time it actually hit home what we were truly attempting to do. I’d been thinking of our idea like it was going to be any other web-based diversion, albeit one in which I had a financial stake. Now, laid out in front of me in Fisher’s ornate, design-school hand lettering, was an entire concocted belief system we were going to try to get people to buy into—literally.
“Don’t worry,” Fisher said, “we’ll work out the details of our doctrine together. That’s going to be my prime focus for the next month.” He reached under his chair to haul out a knapsack, and began placing a pile of religious texts on the table. There were books on Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and Taoism, plus a number of other more general ones covering mysticism and mythology. “It’s basic marketing, boys–you start by evaluating the competition. Our religion is going to have to be the real deal, providing all the answers for those confused, seeking souls that come to us. Oh yeah, and we’re also going to need a cool name and a kick-ass logo.”
He opened his own notebook and began to show off some of the ideas he’d been tinkering with. But no sooner had Stan and I leaned forward to peruse his handiwork when Fisher slammed the notebook shut in our faces. I flushed with anger, convinced this was some sort of power-tripping ploy on Fisher’s part, and was just about to let the cocky bastard know what I thought of his arrogant mind-fucking games when someone spoke from over my shoulder.
“Hey you guys ... is this some kind of going-away party? How come I wasn’t invited?” a husky female voice said, and I turned to see Rita DeMarco, the hot chick from W&M’s accounting department. She was accompanied by some skinny, pimply-faced young guy I didn’t recognize, who was clearly devastated to have lost his monopoly on Rita’s attention. She may have been addressing all three of us, but her eyes never wavered from Fisher.
In an odd reversal of roles, I was the one about to tell a chick to get lost, when Fisher put on his most seductive smile and motioned for the pair to join us. He nonchalantly swept up the religion texts, and all three of our notebooks, into his knapsack, and patted the seat next to him, which was promptly occupied by a giggling Rita. Her companion, instantly forgotten, had to fetch a seat and unhappily squeeze in between Stan and me.
“I was supposed to meet someone here, but he had to cancel,” Fisher lied. “Brad and Stan just happened to run into me. Not much of a going-away party, really.”
“Well let’s see if we can do something about that,” Rita purred, leaning closer to him.
Fisher smiled back. “Excellent idea.” He turned to me. “Say, Brad ... why don’t you fetch us all some drinks?”
I was pretty pissed off at him, on so many levels—his condescending tone, the fact he was making me buy the round and, most of all, because he had this gorgeous babe hanging off of him—but, of course, I meekly complied. When I got back, Rita and Fisher had their heads so close together you wouldn’t have been able to slip a piece of paper between them.
Stan, which was typical of the lovable galoot, had meanwhile already befriended Rita’s estranged companion, and the two of them were going on about some sci-fi TV show I’d never heard of. I felt completely left out, so I headed over to the bar where I could at least chat up Bill, the bartender, given it was a Monday night and Macbeth’s was dead. As I looked over, I saw Fisher reach down towards Rita’s chest and pull up a crucifix she wore around her neck. As I watched him fondle the small gold cross between his fingers and whisper something seductively in her ear (no doubt about how he had something to offer her that Jesus didn’t) I found myself shaking with violent jealousy, even though I barely knew Rita.
I mentioned earlier how Fisher had never previously shown any interest in women while the three of us were out carousing together, despite plenty of come-ons. Perhaps I had come to think of him as asexual, and this had helped me feel less threatened by Fisher—more like his equal. Now every ounce of competitive, pound-on-my-chest, primate belligerence came to the surface and I wanted to throttle the fucker. I think I could have done it. I had four inches and at least twenty pounds on him, and he looked like the sort of guy who had never been in a scrap in his life.
Would anything have changed if I’d acted on my violent impulse? I doubt it, unless I’d actually killed or maimed him. I won’t play at revisionist history and claim I wish I’d performed that service on behalf of humanity, even if it meant going to jail. I’m too much of a wimp, and didn’t even so much as hurl an audible insult Fisher’s way. Instead, I sat at the bar, fumed in silence, and got progressively drunker ... until the rutting couple couldn’t keep their hands off one another any longer, and practically ran out of the bar together.
With the gift of hindsight, I can see now that Rita was simply Fisher’s way of rewarding himself for having taken a major step towards accomplishing his ultimate goals. This is not a man who gives up things easily, be it his secret thoughts, or his bodily secretions, but he has a megalomaniacal belief in his own destiny, and the unwavering sense of the intrinsic entitlement which that brings. Any sexual behavior I would subsequently see Fisher indulging in—and there would eventually be an epidemic of debauchery at the highest levels of his church—was simply a manifestation of his lust for power, reflecting a twisted, pathologically self-obsessed personality. I never saw so much as a glimmer of genuine affection for any of the legion of women he fucked. In fact, I seriously doubt that Sky Fisher has ever loved any living thing, despite his title as the Benign Wellspring of Universal Kindness (a title I invented, among others). And that, my friends, is the real skinny on the fat cat.
Article updated Sunday 2 November 17:21
I thought I was done writing for the day, but the weather has turned nasty, and there’s not much else to do in this trailer. All that stuff I wrote earlier about Fisher’s eventual orgiastic lifestyle spawned vivid remembrances of the sexual scraps that came my way (at least for a little while) and made me horny, so I knocked off to masturbate and take a nap.
When I woke up, it was snowing, and I went out into the surrounding bush to gather some more firewood before the stuff got too deep. I doubt if a few inches of snow would deter any Phasmatian death monks from coming to get me, and the odds are it would in fact be easier for them to sneak up on me, but somehow that white blanket covering everything makes me feel a little more secure here in my snug, warm little hideaway. My strategy to conserve energy seems to be working, so I’m going to spend the evening plugging away at my own version of Revelations.
The next night, the three of us got together at Stan’s apartment, which would be our headquarters for the next several months. Fisher had already converted the living room into an office, complete with a big whiteboard for sketching out ideas. Stan was hard at work, poking away at the keys of his computer, while Fisher and I began methodically to lay out the guts of Phasmatia.
I don’t imagine any other person alive today can say he created an entire religion from scratch, certainly not one that would eventually rival the other major faiths on the planet—almost a billion card-carrying members at last count, and growing. Yes, as I’ve already told you, Fisher was the one who gets the lion’s share of the credit (blame?) for directing the eventual outcome, but I confess freely (and, damn it, to some extent proudly) to