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The God Show |
| At first, there was nothing.
The universe was darkness. That was only because God was lazy. It is said that before the universe was created, there was nothingness. Just a great big vacuum where something should be. There was no light, no sound, nothing at all. Well, that gets boring awful quick, so we’re going to hang a left, and go two universes down, take a right, and go on until we find a universe much like this one before it was created. That’s right, it’s still nothing, except for the little booth marked ‘REGISTRATION’ smack dab in the middle of it. Those of you asking how there can be a middle in something with no boundaries, just smile and nod. Anyway, there was this one booth, with one light hanging over its attendant. She was not the prettiest of attendants, mind you. Waiting for someone to come and register for an undisclosed amount of time could do that to a person. Anyway, this guy somehow wandered into this blank space. He looked real old, long flowing white beard, and a sort of pseudo-wisdom behind His eyes. He walks up to the booth. “Hey, ‘scuze me, but is this universe for sale?” “Yes. I need to card you before you purchase a universe, so if you would show me an ID...” “Okay, here you go.” “...Your real ID, sir.” *grumble* *snicker* “Okay, this checks out.” *hands back ID* You have several package deals to choose from, including...” “Which one’s the cheapest?” “Uh, sir, you may want to let me run down all of the packages before you consider...” “Which one’s the cheapest?” “...The ‘Start From Scratch’ Package, complete with several blank planets, basic construction tools, some rations and food, and a complementary eight-pack of workers.” He gladly took that one. After a little more paperwork, she takes out a rack of eight bags, all looking like they would hold tuxedos or something. He reached for one bag, opened it up... “Hello!” ...saw Raphael, to his horror, and came very close to fainting in shock. Considering that He was God, it would set a good example if He did actually faint. After all the angels were taken out of their bags, the unpretty registration lady just went *poof* and disappeared. So, it was just God, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Salathiel, Barachiel, Jeremiel, and Lucifer, all by their lonesome, left to start creating a whole universe. They decided to start with this little ten-planet system... Keep in mind that God was a lazy, clumsy son of a gun, and had pensions to do things that were neither productive nor destructive. Okay, He was slightly destructive. For one, He never cleaned up any messes He left in His wake. Oh, and you know that asteroid belt between the fourth and fifth planets of the Solar System? Well, yeah. You should be glad that Earth is His second project. And He absolutely hates being called Phil. Anyone who calls Him Phil must do a good amount of groveling before reaching His Good Graces again. Michael, he’d be the brains of the operation, he knows what he’s doing. But, for now, he has to resort to being the constantly frustrated and disgruntled lackey. And he’s always on the end of bad luck, though it never be his fault. Gabriel’s the judgmental, yet loopy guy. He’s also strangely into cooking. You do something you regret, and he’s probably gonna offer you a fruit salad before passing judgment. Raphael’s the joker of the group. He’s always playing a prank or telling a joke. He’s also got the tinker’s touch to him, loves making little gadgets and whatnot to amuse himself, ends up creating a bunch of havoc in the end. Jeremiel’s even loopier than Gabriel is. Always promoting peace and love and mercy and serenity and all that. He is actually quite comparable to the modern-day hippie. As a matter of fact, most of the Angelic Construction Crew have a bet going that the term ‘high’ is one big joke pointed in Jeremiel’s general direction. Uriel is just there. He’s constantly listening to everyone else gripe. Then, when he has time, he usually takes out his frustrations on someone less powerful and smaller than he. Salathiel’s always asking questions, so he’s an annoying bugger. Barachiel, well, if alcoholics existed, he’d be one. If you’ve ever seen guys with eyes that are naturally glazed over, put a pair of wings on him, and you’ve got Barachiel. He’s also got a lucky streak a mile wide. Something falls from the sky in his general direction, it’s probably gonna land on Michael’s head instead. Poor Michael. And Lucifer... well, some describe him as awful fruity, and he does try to be a nice guy, he really does... On the first day, everyone was wandering around, bumping into each other and tripping over stuff. Well, the big problem was that when the registration lady went, she took her light with her. After a few more hours of stumbling along blindly, Michael and Lucifer suggested that God make light, a really nifty item that they had heard of from other angels from other universes. God thought it was a pretty good idea, and made this light. After a few flawed attempts, which caused red light to be associated with anger and blue light to be associated to depression, God came up with a near-perfect, clear light. And so God saw that it was indeed, good, and gave the responsibility of light to Raphael, much to the dismay of Lucifer and Michael. On the second day, everyone began to get a little annoyed that they had to constantly walk around in water. God announced that He was still too tired to actually move all of the water. Then Salathiel asked if He could just make a level that they could stand on, above the water. God, liking the idea, created this platform, and called it ‘Heaven,’ for reasons only He could fathom for the time being. Some say it was because Uriel was munching on some cream cheese product with the logo ‘A slice of heaven,’ and God was feeling unoriginal. Some also say that’s why the clouds on which Heaven is based are all white and puffy, as it resembled the cream cheese product Uriel had been eating. In a few more hours, everyone began to get bored. So Raphael went back down to Earth, filled a bucket full of water, and dumped it on Salathiel’s head from the Heavens. God, being massively amused by this, decided to take a large amount of water from the surface, and store it in the clouds. This ‘rainwater phenomenon,’ as it was called, was only made worse when Uriel accidentally discovered static electricity. God, once again being the kind to take things too far, had a little too much fun with this ‘static electricity from the Heavens,’ and only once or twice completely obliterated any trace of leaves on any poor tree that just happened to be standing by. And so God saw that it was indeed, good, and used Heaven as a perch in which He would dump rainwater and other assorted items on anyone unlucky enough to be below Him... On the third day, God was sitting back in His Recliner, watching Genesis-Day Football (Angels versus Angels, remember Lucifer hasn’t gotten the big ole’ kick down there yet) on His Twenty-Six-Inch Television With Dolby Surround Sound (sometimes it’s just best to smile and nod and to forget about asking questions), munching on His Pretzel-Popcorn-Beernut Mix and brooding in the heavens. He had been quite angry most of the day after Lucifer had started calling Him His real name. That had instantly soured His day. So, now He was trying to dislodge a popcorn kernel from His teeth with a toothpick. He did dislodge it, along with some of last week’s salad mix (courtesy of Gabriel; the angel had to have a broccoli infatuation or something), and unwittingly threw it at His little planet, embedding it deep in its surface… To make a long story short, the broccoli got bored and began to take over the toothpick, meantime wondering why it had not been digested yet… For no truly viable reason at all, God decided to check up on His planet, and was quaintly surprised. The following transcript is His conversation with Michael… “Oh, wow! What is this wondrous thing?!” “It’s a toothpick, God.” “I must think of a name…” “It’s a toothpick, God.” “…for My beautiful creation…” “Toothpick! Toothpick! It’s called a toothpick!” “I know, I shall call it… a tree!” At this point, Michael groans in misery, walks away, and resolves to never ever talk to God again, as to avoid any future frustration over such a trivial matter. The following transcript is the conversation He had with Uriel not too long after… “What’s that, sir?” “It’s a tree, Uriel.” “…” “Isn’t it beautiful?” “Sure looks like a big toothpick to me. You sure you thought of this all by yourself?” “…Of course I did!” “Surrrrre… Phil…” Thankfully for Uriel, God didn’t hear that last comment. And, for the next few days, God spent His time eating fruits and vegetables, cleaning His teeth with toothpicks, and then flinging them at Earth. He created many trees, including apple trees, pear trees, cherry trees… Some of His more ‘creative’ ideas bottomed out, like potato trees, onion trees, watermelon trees (though He got a big kick out of seeing a rather ripe one fall squarely on Michael’s head…), and, later on, fish trees. Yes, fish trees. Gabriel had told Him repeatedly that fish trees wouldn’t work, period. Fish were water creatures, not ones that grew on trees. God proved him wrong by growing one, but then trashed the idea because the trees smelled to high heaven and were just generally ugly. God later had much more fun with rocks, animals, people, and water balloons (Calvin once said that something so useful could only be made by a benevolent God… Not John Calvin, you strange person, Calvin of ‘Calvin & Hobbes’ fame. When did religious figures factor into this?), but, as He was lazy, He had many, many people write His biography for Him. (God got a little angry when Michael compared His Biblical personality to a petrified tree, but Michael avoided becoming Lucifer’s drinking buddy by means of excessive groveling). And so God saw that it was indeed, good, and eventually began to ponder what the pattern of the landmasses He was going to create would be, once again causing mass grumbling by Michael, as well as pondering about what kinds of trees He would make... On the fourth day, God finally realized exactly how bad of an idea it was to give the responsibility of light to Raphael. He kept flipping it on and off when the other angels were doing something important, and it usually ended with them tripping up severely. God got so irritated with Raphael’s constant giggling that He began to debate how He was going to basically razz him. Jeremiel then wished that he had a flashlight or something to the like, conveniently out loud and during one of Raphael’s blackouts. Lo and behold, God had another nifty idea, and it somehow came into fruition by separating light into the sun, moon, and stars, and giving the responsibility to Uriel. So what did Uriel do with it? He came up with this crazy system of days and nights that he decided to implement, because night wasn’t really getting its due time it deserved. The other angels did get really disgusted with this, but eventually decided that nighttime was a perfect time to rest. God eventually assented, finding that nighttime had the unusual ability to make Him feel really tired. And so God saw that it was indeed, good, as did everyone else, and they all began to sleep for extended periods of time, being the lazy ones most of them were... On the fifth day, Jeremiel began to get bored. I mean really, really bored. And for someone as loopy as he was to get bored, well, it was merely not a good thing. So he began to make paper boats, and setting them at any river or stream or flash flood he could come across. But he began to get bored with that too, so he began to make paper airplanes, and tossing them everywhere. By this time, he had caught several of the angels’ angelic attention (excluding Michael’s, who was still trying to recover from having a watermelon fall on his head), and they began to complement on how good he could make things out of paper. Eventually, it led to a competition between he and Barachiel, in order to see who could make the best paper airplane. Somehow, that got God’s attention. He outdid them all by making little things that could fly and swim by themselves, with no prompting and folding required, effectively ruining everyone’s fun (except, once again, Michael’s, for his fun had been ruined long ago). But that ruination was replaced with fascination as God began to create more and more ‘fish’ and ‘birds.’ God eventually won the entire thing by creating the epitome of Earth life so far, mudskippers and flying fish. And so God saw that it was indeed, good, as did everyone else except Michael, and He began to ponder other designs for other animals... On the sixth day, the trash God would leave in His wake began to really pile up. There were wrappers and discarded pieces of paper and plant clippings everywhere. The trash eventually got on His nerves, and after His Angelic Construction Crew threatened to join a union, He created creatures to clean up the Earth for Him. First, came the design stage. His first, and only, idea, well... Imagine blue whales with itty-bitty legs that were incredibly disproportionate to their bodies. Next, came the testing stages. He dropped them on Earth from His spot in the heavens, and... Well, the earth looked closer than it appeared, and He made the whale things a few sizes too big… So when He dropped them, they hit hard enough to mangle the nice checkerboard design He had set up for the Earth’s landmasses. Though they were slightly bigger than what would be called Alaska, and though they were slightly less intelligent than rocks the size of what would be Texas floating around in space (they gotta be dumb if they try to collide with things much bigger than they are), the whale-with-legs-cleaning things got their jobs done. Later on, Lucifer tried to give those slightly-less-intelligent-than-rocks whales-with-legs-cleaning things the ability to distinct right from wrong as well as some intelligence (Lucy’d try the same trick later, but he’d get his grand cumuffins for that one...) and they ended up attempting to renegotiate their contracts with God, with several new clauses demanding that they be allowed take several hours off in order to sleep and eat. They also thought this ‘breathing’ thing the Angels did was pretty nifty, so they wanted in on that too. The thing is, they actually succeeded. In renegotiating their contracts with God. Doesn’t that sound funny to you? This is the same God you pray to when you want stuff. Eventually, even more whining from Gabriel forced God to take action and make animals that served no purpose at all. He ended up making so many, that He had to make one more just to master over them all. But, those creatures alone got themselves into enough situations involving the animals they were supposed to lord over that it provided endless hours of amusement. And so God saw that it was indeed, good, as did everyone else, and at that point He began to wonder what He was doing... On the seventh day, God remembered how lazy He was supposed to be, and compared it with how much work He had done in the last six days. Needless to say, He was downright astonished with how much work He had done. He had created light, trees, animals, fish, humans, and mudskippers (alongside flying fish, still the epitome of all life on Earth) all in one week. It had been a pretty good week. And so He resorted to doing what He had done on the third day, and that was recline, eat, and watch His Twenty-Six-Inch Television With Dolby Surround Sound. Sometimes He would switch between watching His Twenty-Six-Inch Television With Dolby Surround Sound, to watching all the little people scurry around and get into random wackiness involving the animals they claimed they had control over. Other times it would be watching His Angelic Construction Crew hard at work, then either getting rained on or having another prank pulled on them by Raphael. All and all, while watching this, God began to feel pretty good about Himself, and all that He had accomplished in six days. He only saw it appropriate to take the day off, and found it pretty invigorating. And so, all things God did were good, though most of them be mistakes, as they were yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, and the day before that, and so on and so forth, and today He doth remain ‘The God,’ and the day is called His Day, despite Michael (truly ‘The Man’ as ‘twere) and his obviously superior intelligence and reasoning capabilities…
Written by Ren Start - 09/16/2001 (technically) End - 05/01/2002 I compiled this for the final meeting of the year of the school’s Theater guild. Some people asked for transcripts, others didn’t seem to dig it at all, and one guy told me he loved me. Pity I hadn’t brought a tranq. rifle... |
The C Force © 1996-2001 Matt Laskowski --- The R. Force and other assorted crap © 1995-2002 Ren