Brother Odd

"Gentlemen, meet your first floppy."
        I was not present in the school to witness this, but following is what I was told of events unfolding parallel to Brother John's revelations in the Mew:
        In Room 14, as Jacob does needlepoint, Brother Knuckles places a chair in the open doorway, where he sits, a baseball bat across his knees, and observes the activity in the hallway.
        Brother Maxwell, fifteen years downriver from his journalism career, is perhaps hoping that he has not come all this way and time only to encounter the same mindless violence that he could have had without a vow of poverty, in Los Angeles.
        Maxwell sits in a chair near the only window. Because the whirl of snow half hypnotized him, he has not been focusing on the fading day beyond the glass.
        A noise more crisp than the wind, a series of faint clinks and squeaks, draws his attention to the window. Pressed to the far side of the panes is a shifting kaleidoscope of bones.
        Rising slowly from his chair, as if a sudden movement might agitate the visitor, Maxwell whispers, "Brother Salvatore."
        In the open doorway, with his back to the room, Brother Knuckles is thinking about the latest book by his favorite author, which isn't about either a china rabbit or a mouse who saves a princess, but is nonetheless wonderful. He doesn't hear Brother Maxwell.
        Backing away from the window, Brother Maxwell realizes that he has left both his baseball bats beside the chair he vacated. He again whispers for Salvatore, but perhaps no louder than before.
        The patterns of bone at the window constantly change, but not in an agitated fashion, almost lazily, conveying the impression that the creature may be in a state similar to sleep.
        The dreamy quality of the kaleidoscopic movement encourages Brother Maxwell to return to his chair to pick up one of the baseball bats.
        As he bends down and grips that weapon, he hears a pane of glass crack above him, and as he startles upright, he shouts, "Salvatore!"
        Although it had formed out of cubes, the floppy was as furry, cuddly, and floppy as its name. Its huge ears drooped over its face, and it brushed them back with one paw, then rose on its hind feet. The Pillsbury Doughboy might have something like this as his pet.
        His face a portrait of enchantment, Brother John said, "All my life, I've been obsessed with order. With finding order within chaos. With imposing order on chaos. And here is this sweet little thing, born out of the chaos of thought, out of the void, out of nothing."
        Still standing, no less wary than when he had expected one of the boneyards to rise up before him, Romanovich said, "Surely you have not shown this to the abbot."
        "Not yet," Brother John said. "In fact, you're the first to see this… this proof of God."
        "Does the abbot even know your research was leading to… this?"
        Brother John shook his head. "He understands that I intended to prove that at the bottom of physical reality, under the last layer of apparent chaos is ordered thought waves, the mind of God. But I never told him that I would create living proof."
        "You never told him," Romanovich said, his voice groaning under the weight of his astonishment.
        Smiling at his creation as it tottered this way and that, Brother John said, "I wanted to surprise him."
        "Surprise him?" Romanovich traded astonishment for disbelief. "Surprise him?"
        "Yes. With proof of God."
        With barely throttled contempt, more directly than I might have said it under these circumstances, Romanovich declared, "This is not proof of God. This is blasphemy."
        Brother John flinched as if he had been slapped, but recovered at once. "I'm afraid you haven't entirely followed what I've told you, Mr. Romanovich."
        The giggling, toddling, big-eyed floppy did not at first glance seem like a work of supreme blasphemy. My initial take was: furry, cute, cuddly, adorable.
        When I sat down on the edge of my chair and leaned forward to have a closer look at it, however, I got a chill as sharp as an icicle in the eye.
        The floppy's big blue peepers did not engage me, did not have the curiosity of a kitten's or puppy's eyes. They were vacant; a void lay beyond them.
        The musical burbling and the giggle charmed, like the recorded voice of a toy-until I reminded myself that here was not