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Martha | Jun 08 2005

Earth is not what it seems but an incredibly elaborate and nasty ruse. The main character—we’ll call her Martha—discovers that she’s not really a human but a creature equivalent to a Greek or Roman god. As a kind of practical joke perpetuated by her fellow gods and goddesses (they’ll all very jealous of her for some reason), she’s been born as a human on Earth, which isn’t really a planet (planets don’t actually exist) but something akin to a Hollywood set. The only parts of Earth that exist are the parts she visits, and these only exist while she visits them. Also, all the other “living creatures” on “Earth” are really her fellow god and goddesses in the guise of “humans” (humans don’t exist either) and other supposedly living things. Basically they’re all secretly laughing at her, even the “babies,” even the “cockroaches.”

Her one god ally, we’ll call him George, writes the story we’re now reading. At the end of the story he explains that her name isn’t necessarily Martha and that in truth he doesn’t know her real name or even if she’s a she. All he knows, because of some unfortunate limitation of his god powers, is that if she’s now reading the story we’re reading, she’s the one everyone is laughing at. His advice to her (and this is how the story ends) is to beat the shit out of everything and everyone, from cockroaches to babies to the President of the United States. This is the only way they’ll learn, he writes.