lumen fit, non jam

Well beyond anything that anybody's familiar with, somewhere that Things That Aren't Yet are and then two exits beyond that, God had his workshop by the lake. He had all of his tools and raw materials there, all neatly organized on shelves and on a peg-board with their outlines stenciled in white. He even had a wall with glass jars and neat, handwritten labels on each of them so he could remember the cosmic forces and components he needed for his projects.

He looked down at his latest project on his bench, wondering what to do with this still-cooling singularity that had just come out of the kiln.

"Where are you going, little world?" he asked it, turning it over this way and that with a pair of forceps. He bent a magnifying lens mounted to the back of the workbench in front of his eyes and he flicked the light on. "What do you want to be when you blow up?"

Through the lens, he watched the forces squirm and dance under tremendous pressure. Not yet the substance of particles, they flexed and bent and twisted and shimmered in their nothingness. A sphere of limitless potential for... well... everything that ever will be.

God took a sandwich out of wax paper and chewed a corner off of it. The tomatoes were just right, as he always made them. This time, he'd decided on a hearty rye bread with the subtlest hint of spice in the mustard.

He swallowed, and put the sandwich aside.

The singularity continued to wrestle with itself, pulsing slowly.

"What will they think of you?" asked God of the singularity. "Will they even think of you? Will they get that far, even? Or will they just think of me, and never think that you ever were or ever could be?" He pushed the magnifying lens aside and turned it off.

"Will there even be anybody to think of you?" he asked, wondering if the singularity somehow, someway contained the seeds of life. "Or am I the only one who will ever know you existed, right here on my workbench?"

The singularity sat there, and God reached for a set of quantum-adjusting pliers in a drawer of his bench. They were bright and shiny metal talons with a sturdy rubberized grip, just like all of God's tools. Only the best, he had demanded, and that's what he got. He reached with them into the field of the singularity, and then decided not to make any more adjustments after all.

He put them away and closed the drawer slowly.

"I have great plans for you," he said. "Or should I not have any plans for you? Should I just let you be? Just step aside after you've started instead of carving out a path for you?" God reached for his sandwich and took another bite. "Or should I carve out that path for every piece of your being, and stick you to it for all eternity?"

The singularity pulsed slower. It was starting to cool. The forces within it weakened and twisted less strongly.

"I'd better make my decision soon," said God. "If you cool any further, I won't be able to do anything with you and I'll have to put you with the others." God looked in each of his drawers, wondering if there were any other adjustments he ought to make, but nothing really stood out as critical or necessary.

"I had an idea once," said God. "I could let you go on your own. Expanding and cooling and forming worlds upon worlds. Like the ripples of light on the lake, you'd have an endless expanse of stars. Stars in clouds, and stars exploding and fading out... stars around stars of all colors and shapes and sizes. Light everywhere. How does that sound?"

He took another bite from his sandwich and closed up the wax paper.

"There would be living beings in your expanse, many kinds and many forms," said God. "I'd even make one of them like me, I guess. They could think up all the great thoughts there are to think, and they might even think of you, my little friend. Perhaps there might be a chance they'd even think of me." God chuckled. "Maybe, just maybe, I'd pay them a visit. How does that sound?"

The singularity started to lose some of its luster, and the twisting motion of the forces slowed even further. God pulled the magnifying lens over the singularity and turned the light on again. He watched the singularity cool even more, and it was almost beyond ignition when God spoke to it again.

"You're a beautiful little thing," said God. "You'll be even more beautiful when you've sparked out in The Void. All the wondrous creations inside of you, and all the works that those bits and pieces of life create within you. And even the ones that are not so wonderful-" God trailed off, thinking.

That last Creation had been a total disaster. Was it not enough planning, or too much planning and tweaking and fine-tuning? Should he have appeared at all, or should he have stepped in to set things right more? It wasn't like he didn't care, but...

He just didn't know. It had been so painful, hanging there for all that time. He rubbed his hands in the memory of the wounds.

"So much to think about," God said, biting his lip. He tapped the lens for a while, and then turned off the light.

"Perhaps I'd better not release you into The Void after all," said God. "Sometimes things don't always go so well, you know? You can do only so much before it's time to start over. I guess I'm still not ready to try this all again." He looked down at the singularity, and watched it cool itself into nothingness.

Creation flickered, and then it was gone.

"You're better off that way," said God, brushing off the workbench with his palm. He looked at his dustbin and sighed. Several half-formed worlds and twisted singularities and essences swirled about in its bottom. "Maybe I'll try again some day."

He looked through a window and saw that the fish were leaping from the water, snapping at flies on the surface.

"Perfect," he said, reaching for his fishing cap and sliding a tacklebox from under the bench.

He turned off a light over the bench, picked up the remains of his wax-paper covered sandwich, and tossed it in the dustbin with the rest of the garbage. He looked over his rows and rows of tools on the walls, making careful nudges and adjustments until everything was neatly resting in its white outline or resting all lined up in their drawers, and he left for the day.

[tipu]

We've heard of the problems facing Stephen Ambrose . . .

. . . it's time for Harlan Ellison to get in on the act.

He could start with file13.

This was intended as a parody on Hemmingway's style used in all those Nick Adams stories. Combine a bit of the Ruler of the Universe in the shack in that Hitchhiker's book and you've got the role of God here.

I write a lot of stories about God as some doddering, happy old dude just futzing around. I don't know why.

[lanaia74]

Totlly AWESOME!