Instrument of God

In the Matter of: Instrument Of God was a long-unpublished comedy book by Paul Robinson. It's a story about an Afterlife, operated in a computer system like The Matrix, only everyone knows they're dead and they are aware they are inside of a computer system.

As a special free offer to readers of All The Tropes, you can read the complete book, as a three megabyte PDF.

Through the story, the star, Supervisor 246, ends up being reincarnated out of the afterlife into another universe, crosses into a third, back into his own, dies, is re-reincarnated along with a friend, is killed by the friend who then blows up a hotel room to commit suicide, is visited by another friend who temporarily dies, plus waits for the death of his best friend who was a man but decided to go back to earth and be born as a woman so that when he died he could have regular sex with his friend Supervisor 246, who isn't into gay sex.

Tropes used in Instrument of God include:
  • All of Them: David gets a call telling him some supervisors have quit in protest over Administrator Marilyn's treatment of Supervisor 246. How many? All 4,306 of them, which means the courts grind to a halt and they can't handle disputes. Actually, it's worse than all of them quitting. One supervisor didn't quit, that way Marilyn can't simply replace everyone.
  • Altum Videtur - "I was, am, and always will be, primus inter pares, your friend."
  • Amusement Park of Doom - "If you go through this door, you will die."
  • And This Is For
    • Another man picks up a chocolate cream pie, hurls it at the picture, and says, "Tom, this is for you, you son-of-a-bitch." Gobs of chocolate goo fall off the picture and onto the floor. A woman picks up two wormy apples, throws them at the picture, and says, "This is for not telling us you decided to live yourself, asshole!" The worms crawl around and start eating pieces of the other apples. When they run out of apple pieces, they begin to cannibalize each other. The last remaining worm eats its own tail and vanishes.
    • "So I haul off, kick him in the kneecap to distract him, then when he's screaming in pain, I bust him one with a fist to the nuts, saying 'This is for Luann!' Then I kicked him in the face."
  • Author Appeal
  • Author Filibuster
  • Author Tract
  • Bad Guy Bar - "It was the typical bar like you'd find on earth, with big guys looking like bikers."
  • Bait and Switch Tyrant - Marilyn, the deputy Administrator and later Administrator of the Welcoming Department is initially a vile boss. But it's okay, she's only like that because she was molested as a child! Once she gets some Intimate Psychotherapy, she's much more reasonable. Somehow.
  • Bar Brawl - "Two guys in the back were beating the crap out of each other, and nobody was noticing."
  • Black Comedy Rape
  • Colon Cancer: The full title is "In the Matter Of: Instrument Of God", but the preceding book it is a sequel to is called "In the Matter Of: The Gatekeeper: The Gate Contracts".
  • Dead to Begin With - "Are you trying to tell me that I'm [deleted] dead?" "No I'm not. I'm telling you that you're dead."
  • Death Takes a Holiday - "If the queue backups get too much, people on earth stop dying. Someone is bound to notice."
  • Did Not Do the Research - The author seems to forget about things such as voluntary manslaughter, so you end up with a judge explaining for several paragraphs why a character gets only a light sentence for murder.
    • "There are some cases where you can say there are shades of gray. It's one thing to murder your wife for the insurance; it's another to give her too much medication so she dies, because she's dying of cancer, and she wants relief from intolerable pain. They're both cases of premeditated murder, but I think the second deserves possibly sympathy, and maybe we might not even punish the person in such a case."
    • 246's Gratuitous Spanish alias "Dos Quattro Seises" (this last sometimes spelled "Seizes"), as well. "Quattro" is in fact the Italian spelling of the word, and "six" is just "seis", not "seises".
  • Doorstopper - 167 chapters.
  • Effective Immediately - 246 announces, "I wish to announce that due to a disagreement in policy with the new Administrator of this facility I have submitted my resignation to her effective immediately."
  • Explosive Instrumentation - The female orgasm meter.
  • Facing the Bullets One-Liner - "Kill me right now before I [deleted] sue you."
  • Free-Love Future
  • Good People Have Good Sex
  • The Grim Reaper - "Calm down, Grim, you didn't do anything wrong."
  • How Do I Used Tense - Tenses shift between the past and present frequently and without warning (with the present-tense sequences often reading more like a movie script -- "We see so-and-so doing such-and-such" -- than a novel).
  • Hypocrite - "Somehow, 246, you seem hypocritical." "It took you this long to figure that out? You're not as bright as I thought you were."
  • Incredibly Lame Pun -- 246 says "no pun intended" pretty much every time he uses the word "come" in a sentence. If you're a ten-year-old boy, this will be funny the first few times. By the end of the book, though...
  • Inside a Computer System
  • Institutional Apparel: Barney the rapist is paraded around in public in a standard prison jumpsuit. Lime green with the words "Prisoner of the Welcoming Department" on his back in orange.
  • Ironic Echo: Arlene to 246: Sir, you didn't answer my question. Later, 246 to Arlene: To quote something you said to me, "Ma'am, you didn't answer my question."
  • The Laws and Customs of War - From The Sign By the Right of the Road: From time to time someone may have [the Chairman's] Authority to be [in the Frontier]. I refer to them as a Wizard, because they will have computer support and may use magic. Wizards will wear clear and obvious indications of same under the provisions for Lawful Combatants in the Third Geneva Convention: Article 4.A(2) of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War of Terra Calendar Date 12 August 1949.
  • The Lifestream
  • Master Computer
    • Uh, not quite. Page 542 (PDF page 582) makes it clear, the system consists of billions of interconnected sub processors, something equivalent to a beowulf cluster of several billion PCs. So while people refer to the system as if it were a single large machine, it's actually a gigantic cluster of lots of computers networked together.
  • The Multiverse
  • Never Trust a Trailer: The blurb blatantly lies about several aspects of the world - for instance, the rapist is most definitely not a victim of a horrible crime.
  • No Name Given - We don't learn 246's real name.
  • Portal Cut - The red square 246 will stand within to return to the real world in his universe.
  • Rape Is Love -- well, maybe not love, but lust, at least.
  • Readings Are Off the Scale - The female orgasm meter, again
  • Refugee From TV Land - "More about the star of the TV show Instrument of God, Supervisor 246."
  • Rousing Speech - "This is how a man, lives. This is how a man, dies."
  • Schmuck Bait - "But he had you give him five gross favors. Five times a gross, 144."
  • Shaming the Mob - "I'm going to stop this mob with a piece of paper."
  • Shout-Out - "Have you ever seen 'Star Trek'? We have transporters here, just like they do."
    • This is only one example; there are tons of shout-outs to the author's favorite books/movies/TV shows, perhaps most frequently Heinlein, Ayn Rand, Star Trek, and The Matrix.
  • That's Gotta Hurt - David watches in horrid fascination as the [roller coaster] train reaches the top, the last car detaches as the rest of the train roars on towards the drop while the single car veers off to the right, continues on about 10 meters before coming to the end of the track and flying off into space. The occupant screams out in terror as the car falls. George looks at 246. "I'll bet that's gotta hurt."
  • There Are No Rules - From The Sign by the Right of The Road: "There is no law except the Law of the Jungle in the Frontier, anyone may do anything to anyone out there. Rule #1 doesn't apply there, there are no rules."
  • Title Drop - Each chapter is titled from a line of dialog in that chapter.
    • Usually [...] with lots of ellipses [...] Quote Mine style [...] which make the chapter [...] titles look [...] as though they ought [...] to be read [...] by William Shatner.
  • Translation Convention - "What are guys like me, who don't speak or read English, supposed to do?"
  • Two Guys and a Girl
  • Unstoppable Rage - "I will come down on all of you worse than Keyser Soze..."
  • Vagina Dentata
  • Wish Fulfillment
  • What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic - A number of bible quotes are used in the book, including where the Chairman of the Afterlife sends a messenger to fetch 246, telling him to use the Bible quote Judges 3:20.
  • You're Insane! - Mias 808's response to the bet that 246 suggests in Chapter 22 (details on the bet in question are best read on the PDF):

“You’re out of your mind! That’s nothing but... but... but legal... legalized entrapment! You are a fucking lunatic, you son of a bitch!”

Statler: You know why Paul had to name his book "Instrument of God"?
Waldorf: Because getting people to finish it would require Divine Intervention!
Both: Do-ho-ho-ho-hoh!
 

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