Plastic Gods Chapters 6 & 7

"Soma"

Table of Contents

[ Chapter 1 ] | [ Chapter 2 ] | [ Chapter 3 ] | [ Chapter 4 ] | [ Chapter 5 ] |

Soma

Ironically, this was one of the few times that Aios Roe wasn’t watching her. He’d missed the budding couple’s meeting completely, occupied instead with his talk with the young student (whose name he’d learned and forgotten by the end of their conversation), a heap of paperwork that he realized was horrifically overdue, and his Thursday morning nine o’clock class, which was an agonizing three hours and twenty minutes long.

When Aios returned to the Microcosm, Mona, Nathan, Simon, and Craig were in the run-down basement apartment that the two brothers shared, whose abysmal acoustics were made up for by the police’s unwillingness to respond to noise complaints. The band played together the way they always did, practicing their songs (most written by Nathan), trying to get the details just right. In between each successful performance, they would smile and laugh and high-five, and while they were celebrating, Nathan would put his arm around Mona and whisper a compliment just for her.

When Aios saw the two together, some pang inside him urged him to rewind the recording. Who was this guy? Why was he suddenly so intimate with Mona? He had to admit that he and his friends were very good at playing music.

The opportunity to rewind never arose, though. From the time he saw them they were active, and Aios knew he’d discovered something brilliant. For the rest of the day, he had six screens going at once. Two screens showed her and Nathan playing soft acoustic music, and two more displayed the whole band’s loud, aggressive sound. There was another screen showing Mona by herself, in a happy moment where she sat with her guitar and music just flowed out of her. He took turns alternating between them all and listening, overwhelmed with the beauty that he had discovered.

Aios knew he had to move fast—Mona’s time was moving by so quickly he could actually see her getting older. She had three new wrinkles (one on her forehead and two smile lines on her cheeks), and one little crater on her chin from a pimple that turned into a scab that turned into an open wound. Her eyes would sink when she was tired, and thick, puffy creases would form underneath them when she smiled. She looked happy.

Most of the time, anyway.

About a minute after Aios had turned on the screen to see Mona playing music with the band, she looked tense. She was alone, brows furrowed, wine poured, pacing around her apartment, with the primitive little device that some might call a ‘cell phone’ pressed against her ear. Aios got the feeling that he should slow down the recording, and he did, just in time for the start of her conversation.

“Hey, Ma,” Mona said, trying her best to make her voice sound high and cheerful. She smiled, as though ‘Ma’ was right there next to her.

“I’m doing good!”

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry, I’ve just been busy.”

“Yeah, with work, with music. How’s Jen?”

Jen was Mona’s older half-sister—her father’s daughter from a previous marriage.

“Really? I thought you guys were talking again. No, I haven’t spoken to her either.”

“I know, I know I should.”

“It’s just hard, you know? I feel bad, but it’s always so draining. And I just don’t have the time.”

“I work!”

“Yes, I’m still working at the record store.”

“No, that’s not all I do. When I’m not at work I’m playing music.”

“Anyway, I’m sorry I asked. I called to hear about you.”

“That’s good!”

A smile erupted on Mona’s face and quickly faded.

“Oh, don’t say that.”

“Why don’t you go out with your friends?”

“Sign up for a class or something if you don’t like being around them.”

“Well it’s better than just sitting home feeling bad all the time!”

“I know, I know. But how do you expect it to change if you don’t do anything differently?”

“Fine, I’ll stop.”

“It’s going good! Really good, actually. I’m surprised you asked.”

“Well no, it’s not finished yet. But I think it will be soon. Maybe not the way I thought, though.”

“I joined a band.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty excited.”

“No no. I didn’t go looking. It all happened kind of out of nowhere, actually.”

“Well the guitarist just walked into the store one day.”

“Yes, he’s a man.”

“It’s not like that!”

“Well, yeah.” Blushing, she shifted on her feet.

“He’s nice!”

“Definitely not. If anything he’s a little bit of a dork.”

“His name’s Nathan.”

“The band’s called Soma.”

“No, no, definitely not.”

“It’s only been a couple weeks, Ma! I have no idea.”

“Oh, well, you know. I have work, and lately when I’m not working I’m basically always practicing with the band.”

“Well the hours are unpredictable and just so annoying. And I have to work so many to make ends meet, it feels like I don’t ever get a second.”

“I’m talking to you right now! It’s my one day off.”

Mona actually had two days off.

“Fine, fine. You’re right. Next Monday?”

“Okay, great.”

“I’ll see you then.”

“Uh huh.”

“I love you, too.”

She smiled as she said it.

“Bye, Ma.”

Aios stopped watching after this—he had to prepare for his afternoon class. Before leaving, he took one last glance at Mona and found her at Cheap Jerry’s, on the phone with her mother telling her that she’d have to reschedule. She had to stay late at work, she said, but she’d call soon to set up another time. Aios would never know if she’d end up calling.

---

Socrates

A lot happened in the two months (or three hours and twenty-five minutes) that Aios was gone. Soma became a regular act at a bar owned by one of Simon’s buddies. This scored them a gig at a different bar, which put them in touch with another bar, then a second one (at a bar owned by a friend of a friend of someone who had attended their first show).

If Aios was watching, he would have seen that this had set off a kind of chain reaction. It turned out that the second bar they’d performed at was a common haunt of a prominent talent agent named Marty Blaise, who was hanging out in a seedy part of town to avoid detection while enjoying the company of a woman, who the band swore never to speak of and certainly never saw again.

We’ll get to the agent and the gig at the bar and the meeting that followed. For now, let’s discuss how Soma got there—a thing which, as previously stated, has everything to do with Mona’s epiphany in the shower.

These two events are not related in the same way as the performance at the second bar and the union of the band with its eventual agent—that’s to say, with one event directly setting the other in motion. Mona’s shower wasn’t a moment of decisive action. It was instead a pivotal moment, in which nothing and everything changed at the same time. It was the moment that Mona first realized that she could do what it was that she’d been claiming she’d been doing since she dropped out of college.

This had a lot to do with the feeling of power she had felt over the helpless creatures that she’d potentially massacred. It also had to do with a conversation that she and Nathan had on their first night together, which had been running through Mona’s head ever since, and had surfaced again immediately after the slaughter.

They were sitting on her bed, each holding a guitar. They were about four and a half beers deep at this point, meaning that Nathan was fairly clear-headed but mostly uninhibited, and Mona was starting to feel foggy enough that she would forget small bits of the conversation but remember its overall ‘gist.’ There was a palpable tension in the air, and that Nathan’s vision was nearly as compromised as Mona’s in that it was fixated only on her. They were talking about making music—the way it felt, the fear that inhibited them.

“You just have to do it even though you’re scared,” Nathan said.

“Yeah, okay,” she replied, giving a mocking kind of smirk.

“Seriously,” he said. “That’s what’s stopping you from writing music, you know. Its the same for everybody. All the ‘artists’ of the world.” He gestured air quotes when he said the word ‘artist.’ “We’re all terrified of the thing we want to do the most.”

“You might be an ‘artist,’” Mona said. “Not me.”

“You play guitar at Cheap Jerry’s hoping that someone catches you. You’re an artist. You just have to let go. You’re scared that you aren’t good enough. But really, the only person you’ll ever disappoint is yourself.”

“And how do you overcome yourself?” Mona slurred a bit as she spoke the last word.

“Well that’s the hard part.”

Mona rolled her eyes and diverted her attention towards the fretboard of her guitar, slowly moving her fingers to form the shape of different chords.

“Do you believe in God?” Nathan asked. Mona’s head shot up abruptly. She looked at him without saying a word, making a face as though she were dismissing the question, but actually contemplating it in her own mind. “I’m seriously asking,” he said. “No judgment.”

“I guess?” she said. “I don’t know.”

“Never really thought about it?”

Mona let out a short laugh. “No, I’ve thought about it,” she said. “Just not recently. I used to not believe at all. When I was a kid, you know? From ten until about eighteen years old.”

“You stopped believing in God when you were ten?”

“My mom dragged me to church all the time,” Mona said. “You know. ‘Believe, or face eternal damnation.’ That kind of stuff. It kind of ruined it for me.” She took a long sip of her beer.

“So what changed?” Nathan asked.

“My brother died,” Mona said matter-of-factly, and then took another, even longer gulp.

Nathan froze.

“Afterwards weird things started happening. Strange coincidences, dreams. Numbers started popping up, like his birthday.” She swung her head back and emptied the beer can into her mouth. “It might’ve just been in my head. But I think things like that make you start looking for something to believe in.”

“Damn,” Nathan said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, yeah. I didn’t say it to get all depressing. I just mean that you don’t really start thinking about that kind of stuff until you have to. The idea that there’s nothing out there is just too depressing, you know? So to answer your question, I believe in something. The universe, or something. But I don’t know what it is, really.”

“That must’ve been awful. You were eighteen?”

“Yup.”

“How old was he?”

“Twenty.”

“Damn,” Nathan said again. Neither of them spoke for a few moments.

“Stop looking at me with pity eyes!” Mona got up and grabbed another beer from the fridge. “He got involved with drugs. It was kind of a relief, really. Anyway, why’d you ask me if I believe in God?”

“I feel bad even saying it now! It doesn’t seem appropriately…somber, I guess.”

“Don’t! I’m sorry I said anything. We were talking about writing music. You asked me if I believe in God. I said yeah, sort of. Now it’s your turn. Continue.”

She sat down on the bed again, closer to him this time.

“Well, the reason I asked is because I don’t believe anyone can write music without God.”

Mona raised an eyebrow. “I could think of a few musicians who might disagree with you.”

“And they’re wrong,” Nathan said. “Any time you’ve successfully written anything—fuck it, any time you’ve ever given a good performance—you weren’t thinking, right? You were gone. Out of your head.”

“Okay?”

“Well, when you’re not there, who takes over?”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Well, we like to think that we’re defined by our mind, right? And if we’re defined by our mind, our thoughts, then who are we when we’re not thinking? There has to be two different parts to us—the part that usually rules us, that thinks all the time and makes decisions, and then something else.

What guides us when we’re not thinking, not deliberately choosing what to do? It has to be some kind of intuition. Something we can’t really explain, but don’t need to explain, because the part of us that wants to explain everything is the thinking part, and that part’s gone when the intuition part takes over. The intuition part is God.”

“Well, why does it have to be something external?” Mona asked. “Can’t it be your subconscious or something?”

“Different words for the same thing. Who said God is external?”

“So you’re saying that when you’re playing music you’re becoming God.”

“Yes. That’s essentially what I’m saying.”

“Kind of egotistical, huh?”

“It’s the most humble thing there is!” Nathan practically sprung forward. “What do you do? Take credit for this thing that you do that you can’t explain?” Mona was stunned. “That’s why you’re so sporadic. You’re expecting yourself to come up with the genius that only happens when you step out of the way. That’s why so many creative people are addicts. They can’t get out of their head on their own, so they need a drug to help them do it. Your talent is your ability to step out of the way and access it. It comes from something bigger than you.”

The arrogant smirk was gone from Mona’s face. “I don’t know” was all she said.

“There’s proof! How come all of the religions in the world came up with more or less the same ideas, completely independently, all in different places?”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” Mona said. Her intoxicated voice stumbled on the words, but what she said was, in Nathan’s eyes, surprisingly well-thought-out. “All it proves is that all people want to believe the same thing. Everyone’s scared of death. Everyone wants their life to mean something. It’s not that crazy.”

“Well it proves that there’s something that connects all of us, at any rate, which is one of the things that the atheist, nihilist ideas seem to ignore—

“Forget it. The biggest proof that it’s all true is that it works. Spiritual people make music without drama. Atheists make the process painstaking, drowning out their own inner voice just so they can hear God’s for a second. They burn out quickly and their work is inconsistent, while the spiritual people are consistent and happy. That’s all the proof you need.”

“So then how come God only talks to some people?”

“I think that God’s always talking, and only some people know how to listen.”

Mona froze, her face serious. After a moment, her expression abruptly changed and she shifted in her seat. “Yeah, I don’t know if I buy it,” she said.

“Fine.” Nathan shrugged. “But think about it. Assume that you know for sure that this divine creator that made the world around you actually does exist. Wouldn’t he want to make music?”

Mona didn’t like Nathan’s use of the word ‘him.’ It reminded her of the god that her mom believed in—the big guy with the white beard, waving his divine staff somewhere up in the sky.

Yet the thought nagged in her mind, right from that first night. Her memory of that conversation stood out clearly, even though the rest of the night was foggy. It was as though Nathan and God entered her consciousness simultaneously.

The whole thing hurt her head to think about, and that’s when she settled upon the closest thing to faith that she could muster. There were only two possibilities—either Nathan was right, or he was wrong. If he was right, then his whole ‘step out of the way for God’ thing just might work. And if not—well, what was there to lose?

Still, Mona didn’t really know what this meant. She desperately wanted to hear the answer from Nathan—wanted to test his faith, measure it against hers—but she didn’t want him to know that this was her objective. Instead she initiated conversations in which she played the skeptic. One such conversation occurred at a seedy diner late at night, in between bites of cheesy eggs.

“It’s all mythology,” Nathan said. “All these religious teachings that we laugh at because of how unbelievable they are were stories that people came up with thousands of years ago to explain the world. They distilled these life lessons into fables because it was easier to communicate. This was before the media. Before printed books, even. It was all verbal tradition. And stories are easy to remember and pass along. You can tell them to your children and they’ll remember the story, and then they’ll gradually start to understand it more and more as they get older. The reason we don’t relate to them now is because of how old they are. They’re boring.”

“Well then what about prayer?” Mona asked. “You’re just supposed to just ask for something and then it happens? Everyone asks for all kinds of stuff all the time, and no one ever gets what they want.”

“What do you think?”

“I think people want to have hope. They want something to believe in.”

“No!” Nathan said. “Come on, were you even listening? Everything in these stories is true, it’s just metaphorical.”

Mona gave Nathan a strange look.

“Have you ever heard of manifestation?”

“You mean where you think about something really hard and then it’s supposed to happen?”

Nathan shrugged. “Basically, yeah. But you don’t just think about things in the sense that you repeat them over and over in your head while also kind of thinking that the whole thing isn’t gonna work. You have to believe in them.”

“Well if that were true then how come no one just manifests the perfect life?”

“One problem is that most people are scared of what they want,” Nathan replied. “But the real reason is that you still have to follow the laws of the universe.”

“Sounds like a cop-out.”

“It’s true! We’re all tapped into this divine energy source, and we can harness this energy basically at will. But it’s still only one tiny fraction of everything that’s out there. We still live in this world. The energy that we can manifest as individuals is not as powerful as the entire fabric of reality. There are still laws. Everyone has to die, everything has to change. That kind of stuff.

That’s where physics comes in. Everything needs its equal and opposite force. If you throw a ball into the air, it has to come back down to the ground. Everything that lives has to die. Pleasure wouldn’t exist without pain. So, you can manifest anything, as long as it follows these laws. You can’t stop someone from dying, for example. And you can’t get something for nothing.”

“So which one’s ‘God’?” Mona asked. “Is it this energy that we can manifest into whatever we want, or is it the laws of the universe that won’t change no matter what we do?”

The conversation that influenced Mona the most occurred after a late night at a bar. In fact, this very bar would later be the site of the band’s first live performance.

A friend of Simon’s named Mark had recently bought the place, and invited Simon and a bunch of their old friends from high school to check it out. Since they were writing music together earlier that evening, Simon invited the band along.

The topic of conversation had eventually turned to Soma, but as of this moment, it was focused on Mark. He had started the evening by telling them how excited he was about the bar, but a few drinks revealed that he had started to think he had made a terrible mistake.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Mark said. “I mean, I knew the place wasn’t doing well. Why else would the old man sell it to me for so cheap? But I think I thought that I could fix it up. Make people want to come here, you know? But no one comes to this part of the city. This block is a mess. It smells. Like four different homeless people use the building as their toilet. I don’t know how I didn’t notice it before.”

“You could always sell,” was the advice that one of the friends offered.

“At a loss,” Mark said. “And then what? I quit my job to do this.”

“You hated that job,” said Simon. “Maybe this was your way out of it.”

“Yeah, and if I sell this bar now I’ll have to get a new job just like it.” Mark sighed. “I’ll stick it out, I guess. I just wish I had some idea of what to do in the meantime.”

The four members of Soma were the first to leave. They could still hear the inebriated laughter of the rest of Simon’s friends as they walked down the sidewalk toward their homes.

“I feel really bad for Mark,” Mona said as soon as they were safely out of earshot.

“Why?” Simon asked. “He actually seemed pretty happy.”

“Did you see how empty it was in there?” Mona said. “He’s gotta be losing a ton of money.”

“I know Mark. He’s doing alright. On some level, he’s loving the thrill of all this.”

“What made him make the jump, anyway?” Nathan asked. He had a strange, inquisitive look on his face.

“Buy the bar?”

“Yeah.”

“He came into some money. I think he won it at a casino or something crazy like that. I don’t really know. I don’t keep in touch with those guys much anymore.”

“But why buy a bar?” Nathan asked. “Some people would’ve invested it. Or bought a house, or just blown it on something stupid.”

“Mark’s always been impulsive. He probably gave the whole thing less thought than you are right now.”

“So you’re saying he bought this place on a whim, and now he’s losing money and it’s doing terrible but you’ve never seen him happier?”

“I guess. I don’t know. I just told you I barely speak to the guy! Why are you asking, anyway?”

“I just think it’s interesting,” Nathan said. “It’s almost like some type of divine intuition.”

Mona’s ears perked up at the mention of the word intuition.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well I kind of have this theory.” Nathan’s eyes lit up as he said this. “All these big decisions happen like that. We might think about them for a while, but the actual event is quick. It just happens. And it’s always a gut feeling that makes you do it.”

“So you mean everything that happens that’s important just happens on a whim?”

Nathan rolled his eyes. “No,” he said. “I’m saying that every time we make an important decision we’re responding to an extremely powerful internal force that’s steering us whether we realize it or not.”

Then Nathan started talking about Socrates.

Well, it wasn’t actually Socrates. Not the Socrates you know, anyway. Whenever a human civilization reaches a certain level of advancement, it inevitably produced a Socrates. The Socrates that Nathan referenced lived in a once-prosperous civilization similar enough to ancient Greece to warrant a comparison (despite the minor difference that this one reached heights that were a bit greater, and thus fell a bit harder). There are many such ‘constants’ throughout the evolution of human ingenuity—people who discover important ideas which radically change the way all humans afterwards think.

“They hated Socrates because he challenged the narrative,” Nathan said. “A lot of what they taught didn’t hold up under that type of scrutiny. People who question everything are not easily controlled.

Socrates obviously wasn’t the first person in the world to intellectually ‘stick it to the man.’ He probably wasn’t even the first guy to get executed for it. But they don’t get credit for creating a school of philosophy that people are still talking about two thousand years later. So, what made Socrates so special?” Nathan paused for effect before answering his own question. “He martyred himself.”

Craig was testing how far he could kick a rock on the sidewalk. Simon was nodding along in agreement, as though he’d heard Nathan’s speech a million times before. Mona was hanging onto Nathan’s every word, her face like stone.

“There’s a lot of power in martyrdom. Yeah, you can get some kind of notoriety by preaching controversial beliefs. But to die for them. That’s a whole different level. And that’s what Socrates did. He had the chance to flee his city. He had a buddy who was gonna get him out right before he was executed. And he thought about doing it. But right at the last second he decided not to, and that’s why we’re talking about him right now. Do you want to know why he decided to stay, even though it meant his certain death?”

“Because he was deranged?”

“Because he followed his gut!” Nathan exploded, hastening his pace and extending his arms forward. “He was intuitive. He always listened to this little voice inside his head that always warned him when he was going to make a bad decision. He called it his ‘daimon.’ It guided him through everything. If he was going to do something and the daimon warned him not to, he did the opposite. If he was gonna do something and the daimon was quiet, that meant he was making the right decision. He always obeyed the voice. That’s what made him different.”

“Daimon sounds like demon,” Mona interjected with a laugh. “You sure he was a good guy?”

“It doesn’t mean demon.” Nathan said. “Kind of the exact opposite, actually. Even though I think they might come from the same root word. I’m not sure. Anyway, Socrates always listened to this voice. So he was gonna flee, right? But then right before he escaped, his daimon told him not to go, so he stayed. Then, the day of his execution, when he was given the choice to either die or renounce his beliefs, the daimon told him not to renounce them. If he didn’t listen, the world might’ve forgotten about him. But who’s gonna forget about that?”

“So what are you getting at?” Mona asked. “What do Socrates’ magical powers have to do with Mark’s bar?”

“Socrates didn’t have magical powers! The fact that Socrates had a daimon isn’t what made him special. The voice will speak to anyone. All of us have it. What was special about Socrates was that he let himself hear it, and what made him even more special was that he listened to it.

Anyway, Simon, you said that Mark seemed happier than he’s ever been in his life.”

Simon’s head suddenly shot up and his eyes widened with the realization that he was supposed to have been paying attention. “And you think that he bought the bar on a whim. In other words, he was following a hunch. An intuition. Or his daimon. He’s happy because he did what he was supposed to do. He’s on the right track.”

“Then why is he failing?” Mona asked.

“Because he doesn’t have it completely figured out yet.”

“That’s true, actually. I didn’t wanna say it to him, but he’s approaching it the wrong way. He bought the place, but he didn’t actually change anything. The location sucks. He doesn’t advertise, and the clientele he’s looking for isn’t going to just stumble in there. All he did was change the sign.”

“Live music would help.”

All three of them turned their heads. It was the first time Craig had spoken.

“That’s genius!” Nathan said. “We could play at the bar! Pass out flyers. We could take care of the whole thing. Simon, you need to talk to your friend about this now.”

Which was how Mark saved his bar, and how Soma got their first show, which turned into the second and the third and all of the countless shows afterwards. It’s how Mona found out about her daimon, or about God, as she called it, though it could just as rightly have been called herself. And that’s how, when Mona flushed the spiders in her shower down the drain, she heard that little voice in her head telling her not to do it. It was the first time she recognized the voice, and she made a pact with herself to never ignore it again.

---

Thank you for reading. If you’re enjoying this book and would like to support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

You can also buy me a coffee.