Michael Smith

Michael Smith’s final arc joins spiritual completion to public martyrdom: after declaring that he has grokked the fullness, he returns to the streets of St. Petersburg, faces a mob before the cameras, and discorporates with the words “Thou art God.” His death does not close his story. In the aftermath, he appears in the workroom of Archangel Foster, accepts Foster’s assignment, and begins a new role as Archangel Michael.

Readiness and the End of Waiting

At the end of his conversation with Jubal Harshaw, Michael says that he is ready and that he groks the fullness. He has been troubled by the possibility that he let his brothers down, but now tells Jubal that he is “all squared away.” His decisive change is expressed not as an argument but as readiness: he has reached the state for which he had been waiting.

Michael then turns toward the doorway and says he has heard Patty, announcing that the waiting is ended. Patty answers him as Michael. The brief exchange marks the passage from private preparation to action. It also gives the moment a communal dimension: his readiness is not detached from his brothers and sisters, but directed toward them.

St. Petersburg and the Public Spectacle

The last public scene is mediated by television. Patty reports that Michael and Duke have entered the lobby, where Michael has been spotted and photographed. The news broadcast instead presents him as a “fake messiah” who has emerged from a hotel hideout in St. Petersburg and is apparently about to surrender. Its account describes his escape from jail as an act enabled by followers who smuggled in explosives, then treats the city’s cordon as a possible trap. The broadcast’s confident performance of breaking news contrasts with the human event it only partially understands.

Commercial interruptions make the coverage still more dissonant. A real-estate advertisement for Elysian Fields promises reclaimed land and elevated homesites even as the broadcast follows a hunted religious leader. The scene’s television framing places violence, spectacle, sponsorship, and ordinary salesmanship in the same stream. Michael’s final appearance will likewise be interrupted by advertising, so that the machinery reporting his death cannot keep it separate from entertainment and commerce.

The Son of Man Before the Mob

When the sky clears and sunlight reaches him, Michael’s clothes vanish. He stands before the crowd as a golden youth, and the narration describes his beauty through Jubal’s imagined comparison to Michelangelo. Michael asks the viewers to look at him and identifies himself as a son of man. The exposed body, made visible on camera, becomes the focus of a confrontation between the message he offers and the crowd’s hostility.

The violence escalates after Michael says, “Thou art God. Know that and the Way is opened.” The crowd answers with objections and attacks: men surge forward with a club, rocks, fists, and feet. Even as his ribs are kicked and his bones broken, Michael continues speaking. The violence is not softened by the camera; its zoom brings the wounded face and shoulders into view, while someone in the mob calls for space to pour gasoline on him.

Instead of answering the mob in kind, Michael smiles at his brothers and says, “I love you.” A grasshopper lands in the grass beside his face. He turns to look at it, calls it God, and happily discorporates. The small insect occupies the frame at the instant of his departure: the final recognition is directed not only to the people watching him but also to another living presence beside him. His death is a voluntary departure from the body, not an escape by retaliation.

From Martyr to Archangel Michael

The camera fills with flame and billowing smoke after Michael’s discorporation, and Patty reverently calls it the best blow-off ever used. Her response preserves the book’s collision of sacred event and show-business language. The broadcast has made Michael’s death a public image, but the image is also the end of his earthly bodily presence; the crowd’s violence cannot reduce his last act to the spectacle it records.

In the concluding scene, Archangel Foster tells Archangel Digby that he will be away for a few eons on a special assignment and introduces Michael as his new supervisor. Foster describes Digby as someone who knows the studio and will make a steady straw boss for whatever Michael conceives. Michael assures Foster that they will get along, then asks Digby whether they have met before. Digby cannot remember, though he allows that there have been many when-and-wheres. This exchange connects Michael’s new post to a larger continuity beyond earthly time without explaining it further.

Michael’s ending therefore moves through two sharply different public identities. On Earth, the authorities and news coverage label him a fake messiah, and the mob destroys his body; in the closing scene, Foster recognizes him as the successor to his own work and gives him authority over a studio. The transition does not undo his martyrdom. It places his death within a continuing spiritual and institutional story, with Digby beside him as assistant and an immense assignment ahead.