I dropped the turkey on the way to the dinner table on Auto Saints Day. Then I spilled gravy on grandma and knocked the stupid priest over on his butt when I only meant to give him a little shove. I have days when I get nerved up. Usually there's some reason like your twin brother killing himself or something. But it can be little things too, like getting a parking ticket that you don't deserve. That's the reason I couldn't get my dorm room open. My hands were shaking.

They have ancient door appliances at the optometry college. Instead of Iris ID they use long metal things with serrated edges, called keys. My key was bent and no matter how I kicked the door and slapped the knob, the damn key would not slip all the way into the slot. So I yelled "Fuck YOU Door!" and made the sign of the raised middle finger. To my surprise, that worked. The door slowly open. And there was my big brother, standing with arms folded in the semi-darkness of room thirteen.

"Who are you?"

"I am Sadaya of Sumeria."

I walked into the tiny room and looked around. A flash screen dominated the entire back wall. It showed an ancient movie called "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest." The room had no furniture, just a thin blanket on the floor, presumably my bed.

Sadaya of Sumeria did not make eye contact; he had no eyes, just dark holes that seemed eternally deep. He had thick black hair tied in a ponytail in the back. His chest and arms were muscular.

"What's wrong with your eyes?"

"Eyes are overrated; they lie and cheat. You are in danger, my brother. There are people with eyes everywhere. To go from reality to Sumeria was thought to be impossible before you appeared. You are alien and they are wary, worried, and wiener schnitzel."

"Very funny. Maybe they should be wisenheimer. "

"You need a good lawyer; a seasoned attorney. That would be me, Sadaya of Sumeria (the lights flickered). Besides, there are debts to pay. Your court costs alone will keep me solvent for the next ten years. I am also getting a pittance for being your big brother. By the way, it's customary for big brothers to tell little brothers the parable of the adolescent optometry student."

"I'll skip the parables, thanks."

"No, you won't."

"I'm feeling anxious."

"It's the eyes."

Dear Tim:

So, if the S-bomb blew a hole in God's head and all the zombies escaped and the walking dead started running for the exits, then you're not really dead, right? It doesn't matter what I said about you being an incompetent asshole. You know, asshole, maybe I was sort of talking to myself. Maybe I was confused, too. Maybe being identical twins is not so wonderful when they both get depressed at the same time. Funny how we came to different conclusions about the pointless universe. You blow your fucking guts open with a nanoblaster, I go catatonic, dad breaks everything not nailed down, and mom, shit. You get to be with God, asshole. I am left down here with blood on my favorite pants and two worthless parents.

So, if you aren't dead, where are you? Never mind, I probably don't want to know. Just so you are almost still there, whatever.

Well, I made it, Tim. I'm a college man. I got my chocolate eye. I got my professional fight songs. I got the start of a bleeding ulcer. There's some kind of red stuff in my shit. Hey, listen to this; there's a secretary here named Sybil. When I opened the door and saw her, Tim, I realized that maybe it was okay to be alive; even in a pointless universe. You left too soon, asshole, they got these creatures called "girls" on the planet. It does something to your chemistry when the right one blows on her nails.

Oh, sorry. I forgot about Alice. Why would you kill yourself if you knew about girls? Something doesn't add up here, Tim. Someday, I'm going to call Alice. Do you remember her number? Send it by quantum telepathy.

I got a parking ticket, too. Well, actually I got three parking tickets even though the parking lot was empty. So, it's not fair. I won't pay.

So, what was Heaven like before the Collapse?

Hey, I have to go, Tim. The great white doctor has his pad and pencil out. Fuck you, Plutus. And the nurses, too.

Dear Steven,

We got your letter addressed to me, your father and mother, and to Tim, your dead brother. Thank you for thinking of us. We always appreciate hearing from you, and we love you deeply. If you recall, your brother put a hole in his abdomen with a level five nanoblaster. We cannot find the nanoblaster; do you know where it went? Also, the AM Camel was stolen; your father is quite distraught. That Camel is extremely unstable and needless to say can be lethal. You might not know this, but your dad got the AM Camel cheap on the black market because Dallas killed his creator. No one knows why.

We were somewhat concerned with your confusing and at times irrational ramblings, but I think we were able to decipher most of your thoughts. I was most concerned with your questions. Frankly, they seem paranoid and somewhat hostile. Are you okay? Has school started yet?

You asked about the seven commandments and about what I found in the Trinket Jungle. The media accounts are slanted and hysterical, so I can see why you might be worried. You need to know some history.

Before the Collapse there was a religious movement called Christianity. They had an ancient book called the Bible. In the Bible was a list of ten things, called Commandments. Unfortunately, after the Collapse, the Commandments were lost. No one knows what they said. Archaeologists have been digging through the rubble of the Collapse trying to find these famous words. Just about the time your brother decided to pull the trigger, I found an ancient set of stone tablets in the trunk of a car in the northwest zone of the Trinket Jungle. On each tablet was the seal of the Sacred Mechanics, so we know these are the authentic commandments; although contrary to the ancient mythology, there were only seven commandments.

The Christians were very interesting, and it is worth a quick review of their culture. We lost a lot of the data, but essentially here is what we learned. They worshiped a brown skinned man named Jeewhizz. He traditionally wore a red hat and he had a long white beard. Children used to pay to get their picture taken with him in the Shopping Markets. On Jeewhizze's birthday, the women would get hysterical and spend huge amounts of shekels to purchase trinkets. These would be wrapped in colorful paper and given as gifts to people who didn't need trinkets. The Christian culture was the most excessive potlatch society in the galaxy. In the suburbs of Christianity lived malnourished children with sores on their faces and a couple more years to live. After two weeks the Christians threw the trinkets away.

Jeewhizz was arrested eventually by pagan police. They nailed his body to a cross and only allowed him to drink Pepsi Cola when the cameras were on. Many of the auto companies parked their vehicles near the dying holy man and tried to sell cars to the Hippites by subliminal advertising on ancient videoscreens called Tellmevisions. That's how the Auto Saints got started.

Anyway, there they were in the trunk of the Buick Regal, seven sacred stones. They are written in Egyptian sentence fragments, using the dialect of the pre-Collapse era. We have yet to determine what the commandments mean, but we are sure the messages are mystical and powerful. Unfortunately Steven, politics tied up the release of the tablets. I was authorized to display only the first of the seven commandments. Chiseled in stone all these years, yellow with lichen, the Holy Christians had written:

The First Commandment of Jeewhizz, All Holy, Auto Saint Supreme, hereby proclaims and orders the family of mankind to:

SHUT THE FUCK UP

Like I said, it is a mystery what this first commandment might mean, but no one doubts its authenticity or importance. Early media hype proclaiming that the first commandment said: "See the USA.... in your Chevrolet", is total crap; excuse my Egyptian.

My understanding, from earlier mystical texts, is that God tried many times and in many ways to get this message across. Sometimes He would say "Please be quiet in the back; or, Tone it down a little, people, or, If you don't be quiet, you get no dessert. But none of the messages got past the thick skulls of the ordinary human. So God decided on a little harsher language for the first commandment.

About this girl, Sybil. We are pleased to know that you have a girlfriend and are so deeply taken with her charms. You mention that you talked with her only once, but are sure she is your future and eternal love. Your mother says it is okay to bring her to dinner (maybe next Auto Saints Day), and your dad says it was about time you noticed there is another sex. My two cents is that you might want to have a second conversation with her, knowing what I do about women. They tend to need more than one verbal exchange before agreeing to eternal commitment.

Your Uncle Joe

Once upon a time there was a semi-suicidal adolescent boy who set out into the unknown to find himself. Not knowing where he was in space now, he had no idea which way to begin his journey. So he signed a contract to attend a school that specialized in vision, where they would feed him, give him a blanket, let him use the toilet down the hall, and where he didn't have to listen to his parents sobbing in the evenings. He was a good boy, and yet he swore and carried on as if his life was hard. He bitched about everything, he was not grateful, and he could not keep his mouth shut long enough to avoid traffic tickets. He could hardly complete a paragraph without saying "asshole" three or four times.

One day, he met a blind sage who told him that vision was unreliable; that blindness was true and light was a lie. The blind wise man told him that people who could see were visually dependent and so they missed many of the essential vibrations. Worst of all, they were so well fed with visions, sated with the light, that they failed even to be aware of their starvation. None of them ever attained. They were blinded by the light.

The adolescent boy knew that if he was to find himself he would need to ask questions, and he did. He asked "What is the nature of the universe? Why am I surrounded by assholes? Are you going to eat the rest of that sandwich? And the world answered his questions. But while the world was telling the adolescent optometric student the answers to all things, and about God, and the meaning of the Commandments, and the answer to life's riddles, the boy was talking to himself: "Man, look at those tits"; "I wonder what's for lunch?" "I better start working out or no girl will give a shit about me"; "Hey, look at the ant;" "That is one huge mother fucking ant!"

When it came time to learn his lessons and parables, the boy said "Are you going to finish that sandwich?"

And so, the boy had to learn the hard way.

The seven commandments faded away slowly over the decades, as had the ten commandments of the historic Christians. The Seven are preserved here because of our famous ancestor Steven Timothy Great Northern Beans Ishmael. What knowledge that remains of the commandments is saved for generations of Ishmaels to come.

Our coat of arms originated with Great Northern Ishmael; seven ant angels hover above a 1993 Black Buick Regal. On either side of the Regal are golden Mann Glasses. Below is the clan motto: Call Alice.

We cannot leave any ambiguity about the commandments. The writers of this history did not concern themselves with solid truths. They knew (know) that truth is always blurred and so that is how they expressed it. But the confusion has led to a denigration of the commandments and they have been so often reinterpreted that their original meaning has been obscured, and in the worst cases, made to seem the direct opposite of the intentions of our Lord of the Sacred Mechanics.

Let us put aside the vulgarity of the first commandment. We shall simply say that the Lord commanded us to be silent.

That's it, just shut up.

The hard part, and the often overlooked fact, is that God's commandment requires that no words be allowed in the mind.

We may still order Great Northern Beans in a restaurant, and provide for basic needs through conversation, but we are forbidden to use or think words that have anything to do with God.

It really pisses God off when we pontificate about things that are way out of our league. Religiously speaking, all humans are nincompoops, and are forbidden to insult God with their simpleton language.

The brain is for solving problems; God and life are to be experienced, not solved. But God cannot be experienced unless we take the first step: silence.