74 - John Murray Spear & The New Motive Power Part II: Heaven’s Last, Best, Most Perfect Gift

The Nonsense Bazaar

This week we’re concluding the story of John Murray Spear and the New Motive Power. What’s a New Motive Power, you ask? It’s a big ol’ pile of gizmos and gadgets meant to contain the life-animating power of God, a mechanical messiah to lead humanity into the golden age, complete with wires and knobs and pulsing balls. We pick up our tale as John Murray Spear has left his activist life behind for good and is now taking directions from the disembodied voice of Benjamin Franklin and the other members of the Association of Beneficients, a sort of spirit non-profit group that lives in John’s head. Taking the direction of these spirits, John constructs a mechanical messiah and then builds a commune of circle houses and starts giving away miracle spring water. It’s a tale as old as time and it’s absolutely ridiculous.