By the Light of the Moon

'Who in God's name are they – the Secret Service, the CIA, Santa Claus's elf gestapo out making their who's-been-naughty list?'

'Cow pie. Waste.'

'Frankenstein didn't say who they were,' Dylan reported. 'He just said if they find the stuff in our blood, we'll be as dead as dinosaurs and buried where our bones won't ever be found.'

'Yeah, maybe that's what he said, but why should we believe him anyway? He was a mad scientist.'

'Evacuation. Voidance. Toilet treasure.'

'He wasn't mad,' Dylan averred.

'You called him a lunatic.'

'And you called him a salesman. We've called him a lot of things in the heat of the moment-'

'Potty packing. Outhouse input. Excreta.'

'-but given his options,' Dylan continued, 'considering that he knew those guys were on his tail and were going to kill him, he took the most logical, rational action available to him.'

Her mouth opened as wide as if she were assuming the cooperative position for a root canal. 'Logical? Rational?' She reminded herself that she didn't really know Mr. Dylan O'Conner. In the end, he might prove to be more peculiar than his brother. 'Okay, let me get this straight. The smiley creep chloroforms me, shoots Dr. Jekyll juice or something into my veins, steals my fabulous car, gets himself blown up – and in your enlightened view, that behavior qualifies him to coach the university debating team?'

'Obviously, they'd pushed him into a corner, time was running out, and he did the only thing he could do to save his life's work. I'm sure he didn't intend to get himself blown up.'

'You're as insane as he was,' Jilly decided.

'Dejecta. Bulldoody.'

'I'm not saying that what he did was right,' Dylan clarified. 'Only that it was logical. If we operate under the assumption that he was just nuttier than a one-pound jar of Jif, we're making a mistake that could get us killed. Think about it: If we die, he loses. So he wants us to stay alive, if only because we're his… I don't know… because we're his living experiments or something. Consequently, I have to assume that everything he told me was meant to help us stay alive.'

'Filth. Dung. A withdrawal from the bowel bank.'

Immediately to the north and south of the interstate lay plains as black as ancient hearthstones stained by the char of ten thousand fires, with isolated mottlings as gray as ashes where moonlight and starlight glimmered off the reflective surfaces of desert vegetation and mica-flecked rock formations. Directly east, but also curving toward the highway with viselike relentlessness from the northeast and the southeast, the Peloncillo Mountains presented a barren and forbidding silhouette: hard, black, jagged slabs darker than the night sky into which they thrust.

This wasteland offered no comfort to the mind, no consolation to the heart, and except for the interstate, it provided no evidence that it existed on a populated planet. Even along these paved lanes, the lights of the oncoming and receding traffic made no conclusive argument for a living population. The scene possessed an eerie quality that suggested the science-fiction scenario of a world on which all species had perished centuries before, leaving their domain as morbidly still as a glass-encased diorama through which the only movement was the periodic bustle of perpetual-motion machines engaged in ancient programmed tasks that no longer held any meaning.

To Jilly, this bleak vastness began to look like the landscape of Hell with all the fires put out. 'We're not going to get out of this alive, are we?' she asked in a tone entirely rhetorical.

'What? Of course we will.'

'Of course?' she said with a rich measure of disbelief. 'No doubt at all?'

'Of course,' he insisted. 'The worst is already behind us.'

'It's not behind us.'

'Yes, it is.'

'Don't be ridiculous.'

'The worst is behind us,' he repeated stubbornly.

'How can you say the worst is behind us when we have no idea what's coming next?'

'Creation is an act of will,' he said.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'Before I create a painting, I conceive it in my mind. It exists from the instant it's conceived, and all that's needed to transform the conception into a tangible work of art are time and effort, paint and canvas.'

'Are we in the same conversation?' she wondered.

In the backseat, Shepherd sat in silence again, but now his brother spewed a prattle more disturbing than Shep's. 'Positive thinking. Mind over matter. If God created the heavens and the earth merely by thinking them into existence, the ultimate power in the universe is willpower.'

'Evidently not, or otherwise I'd have my own hit sitcom and be partying in my Malibu mansion right now.'

'Our creativity reflects divine creativity because we think new things into existence every day – new inventions, new architectures, new chemical compounds, new manufacturing processes, new works of art, new recipes for bread and pie and pot roast.'

'I'm not going to risk eternal damnation by claiming I make a pot roast as good as God's. I'm sure His would be tastier.'

Ignoring her interruption, Dylan said, 'We don't have godlike power, so we aren't able to transform our thought energy directly into matter-'

'God would whip up better side dishes than me, too, and I'm sure He's a whiz at beautiful table settings.'

'-but guided by thought and reason,' Dylan continued patiently, 'we can use other kinds of energy to transform existing matter into virtually anything we conceive. I mean, we spin thread to make cloth to sew into clothes. And we cut down trees to make lumber to build shelter. Our process of creation is a lot slower, clumsier, but it's fundamentally just one step removed from God's. Do you understand what I'm saying?'

'If I ever do, I absolutely insist you have me committed.'

Gradually accelerating once more, he said, 'Work with me here, okay? Can you make an effort?'

Jilly was irritated by his childlike earnestness and by his Pollyanna optimism in the shadow of the mortal danger that confronted them. Nevertheless, recalling how his eloquence had earlier humbled her, she felt a flush of warmth rise in her face, and for the moment she managed to put a lid on the sarcasm that a fire of frustration had set boiling. 'Okay, all right, whatever. Go ahead.'

'Assume we were made in God's image.'

'All right. Yeah? So?'

'Then it's also reasonable to assume that although we aren't able to create matter out of nothing and although we can't change existing matter solely by the application of thought, nevertheless even our less than godlike willpower might be able to influence the shape of things to come.'

'The shape of things to come,' she repeated.

'That's right.'

'The shape of things to come.'

'Exactly,' he confirmed, nodding happily, glancing away from the interstate to smile at her.

'The shape of things to come,' she repeated yet again, and then she realized that in her frustration and bewilderment, she sounded disturbingly like Shepherd. 'What things?'

'Future events,' he explained. 'If we're in God's image, then maybe we possess a small measure – a tiny but still useful fraction – of the divine power to shape things. Not matter, in our case, but the future. Maybe with the exercise of willpower, maybe we can shape our destiny, in part if not entirely.'

'What – I just imagine a future in which I'm a millionaire, then I'll become one?'

'You still have to make the right decisions and work hard… but, yeah, I believe all of us can shape our futures if we apply enough willpower.'