Creation Archives - Sci Phi Journal

Fiction

Combustion

by Bob Johnston

Carver hung out over thousands of meters of nothingness and suddenly realized he didn’t want this assignment. Not for all the phlogiston in the three worlds was he prepared to be dangling by a rifle strap from the weakening hand of his squad leader. And then suddenly another hand appeared out of the rolling mist to haul him back onto the narrow ledge. And even as the voice of their point man announced that the target was within reach Carver felt the purpose fill him up again, just as the bowel loosening terror subsided.

The squad continued to move round the curved wall but a sudden burst of noise told them that the target was already being restrained. As Carver stepped onto the flat platform, he could make out figures struggling in the mist. He ran forward just as the squad leader turned holding a small glowing bottle.

“Get that physicist up here, Carver.”

“Phlogiston?”

“I think so.”

The prisoner suddenly jerked and threw his captor off. In a moment he had risen and grabbed back the bottle. With a smooth spin he threw the cap off and tipped the entire contents down his throat.

Everything stopped, everyone stopped, and every man and woman adopted pretty much the same facial expression, that of a rabbit caught in headlights while picking someone’s pocket.

The prisoner turned slowly and let the empty bottle fall into the ankle-deep mist.

Finally one of the squad spoke for everyone else.

“Oh bollocks!”

The prisoner pulled off his head-dress, eyes wild and triumphant.

“The very essence of combustion, my friends, and in moments it’s going to be all yours. Brace yourselves people, this is going to be memorable”

His belly filled with a substance stolen from a government installation and extracted from the very fires of reality, the very spaces between atoms, the very spark points that brought the universe into being. He prepared to launch the fatal counter-strike they all knew only too well.

Only for a faint, and distinctly wet, belch to replace the expected flames of creation. And the life seemed to crumple out of him as he slowly collapsed to the ground. Two troopers grabbed him while the squad leader fished about in the mist for the dropped bottle. He found it, raised it to the poor light, and then cautiously sniffed at the rim.

Then he turned to Carver.

“It’s another wrongly labelled bottle! Carver, get onto base straight away and tell them we’ve found another of the missing samples.”

Carver stood dumbly for a moment until the penny dropped and his eyes went straight back to rabbit, headlights and pickpocket wide.

“Holy Spirit?”

The squad leader just nodded and looked down at the restrained man, whose eyes were now a solid, opaque white. A gentle, unpleasant froth was oozing from his mouth.

“They’ve got an hour to get here. After that we’ll be wishing it was phlogiston he took.”

He sighed. “Holy Spirit. Damn. Why is there never a theologian when you need one?”

~

Bio:

Bob Johnston lives in Scotland where he scribbles, reads theology, and marvels at the country’s beauty when it isn’t raining, which isn’t often. He likes a good story; ancient, old, or brand new and tries to create good stories of his own.

Philosophy Note:

Despite science’s bold claims about logic and systematic thinking, most great ideas started out like most terrible ideas. In this story I describe a world where the long debunked phlogiston theory actually works, alongside other ideas, and where science and theology are parts of the same intellectual framework.

Fiction

The Story Of Atoms

by Geoffrey Hart

In the beginning was the first scientist — the God Particle, GP hereafter. (Even in the beginning, scientists loved their acronyms, abbreviations, and clever wordplay, and GP was no different. And, of course, GP was ineluctably masculine, since back then, only men could be scientists. There being only one of him, that was less sexist than it might seem to modern sensibilities.)

Darkness was upon the face of the universe (for back then, there was only one), and GP looked upon it and saw that it was good: it had the simplicity of a really good Japanese watercolor, though, of course, such things had yet to be invented. Best of all, it left everything to the imagination, which was a more effective technique than overexplaining and overcomplicating everything. That was to come later, when universities were invented.

After a time — unquantifiable, because time was still a new thing, the paint still drying and GP not quite sure whether quantification was as good an idea as it had seemed at the time — GP began to feel just the slightest bit lonely. After all, what good was a universe if there was no one else to appreciate it? So in a fit of enthusiasm, GP created another being with whom to share the void. Let’s call her “GP Prime”, or “Prime” for short, for there would eventually be mathematics, mathematical tradition, and the notation it spawned. More importantly, of course, any good story needs conflict, and laying claim to first rank, first causes, and first publication was a primary source of conflict then, as it is now.

Prime was very impressed with the universe; there was, after all, nothing else quite like it. But after a time, she noted a certain sameness to it. With no light, there was only structure and symmetry to gaze upon, and though it was an admirable and symmetrical structure, it was a trifle… bland.

“GP, I think something’s missing,” she ventured.

“Why? It’s perfect and, by definition, cannot be improved upon.”

“While I concede, for the sake of argument, that perfection is perfect, I’m not sure it’s sufficient.”

“What would you add?”

“Hmmm… perhaps a little… light?” And there was light, a warm reddish background glow that both illuminated and concealed, and now the structure and symmetry stood out and could be more easily appreciated.

“But… But… It leaves nothing to the imagination!”

“Don’t over-react. It’s only a little light. Be still, and I’ll fix it.” And Prime created shadow, and GP saw that it was good.

“I like that shadow.”

“Thought you might. But why stop there? For example, all that structure is perfectly lovely, but what’s it all in aid of?”

“Well… us, really.”

“Why not try a little of this, instead?” And Prime created atoms, and GP saw that they were good.

“Huh. Never would have thought of that on my own.”

“Of course not. That’s why we have peer review.”

GP was a little miffed, but deeper down, felt something he’d never felt before. Intrigued. Despite his trepidation, he could hardly wait to see what Prime had up her (thus far, entirely metaphysical) sleeve. “What else have you got?”

“How about this?” And where once there were atoms, perfect and indivisible, now there were subatomic particles.

“Neat! Can I name them?”

Prime nodded, secretly pleased.

“Let’s call this big one a proton. And this smaller one an electron.”

Prime pursed her lips. “And just to shake things up, how about this?” And a third particle appeared.

“Ooh! That’s transgressive… it’s… unbalanced! What will you call it?” GP was, after all, perfectly willing to give credit where credit was due. Eventually.

“Neutron. And here’s another cool thing:” Prime disappeared the electron.

“Wait: where’d it go?”

“Into the proton — and now it’s a neutron!”

“Put it back. I like having three different particles.”

“Very well.” The electron reappeared. “Hmm… then you’ll love this.” And suddenly there were a great many smaller particles humming with energy and bouncing off each other and vibrating and rotating and translating with their enthusiasm. “I’ll call them quarks, and… and…. This undeniably cute one will be Charm, and this one I haven’t completely figured out yet I’ll call Strange, and…”

“Enough! Enough! My head’s spinning.” GP was beginning to regret having given Prime both a mind equal to his own and agency to use it.

“But if I subdivide the quarks into these littler things…”

“STOP! NO FURTHER!” GP regretted having to shout, but it seemed necessary to catch Prime’s attention before she got carried away. More carried away, leastwise. Things were still relatively simple, just the way he liked it, but he had a sense of foreboding.

Prime took a deep breath (now that there was something to breathe) and pondered a moment. “Well, if you don’t want more smaller things, how about larger?” She banged two atoms together, and there was a brilliant flash of light.

“What was that?”

“I call it fusion… bang enough little things together and you get bigger things. Bang a few of those bigger things together, and you get even bigger things. I’m going to call them elements.”

“And what if I were to break them apart again?” And GP did, and there was even more light. “Ouch! That stings.”

“I’m going to call that fission. And if you’re going to break the things I make, then you’d best take care.” There was no doubting it; a note of petulance had crept into Prime’s voice.

GP attempted a placating tone. “Nice. What else can you do?”

“Well first, let’s make the light a little more steady. There.”

“Wow. I’m going to call those stars. Because you’re a star performer.”

Prime managed to conceal her wince; it helped that GP wasn’t really paying attention to her, gaze focused on his universe. “OK, good. Now how about these?” Large clusters of atoms came together and began circling the stars.

“Nice. I’m going to call them planets… because… um… they move.”

“You like moving things? How about these?” More atoms came together and started orbiting the planets.

“Nice. I’m going to call them moons. But stop: no further. Let’s enjoy what we’ve created before we needlessly recomplicate.”

Prime sighed. We? Even then, before academic review committees and departmental politics, authorship was an issue. “But why stop there? There’s so much more we could create.”

GP, entirely missing how Prime lingered over the we, tried to reassert his authority. “Because it’s my universe, and I say so.”

“That’s easy enough to solve. Here!” And suddenly, where once there was a single universe, now there was a multiverse. “You play with this one, and I’ll play with that one, and when we’re done, we’ll compare notes and see who’s done the better job of putting things together.”

GP tried to push stars and atoms and planets and moons and other things back together into the simple, elegant simplicity he’d created, but Prime, though younger, was not naïve. She’d known this would happen, and the harder GP tried to put things back the way they’d originally been, the harder her multiverse strove to create more of itself.

“STOP! NO FURTHER!”

Prime chuckled. She hadn’t realized just how much she resented being told what she could and couldn’t create or modify or play with. “Don’t like that, huh? Well try this:” And around one of the older stars, on the surface of a planet with a single moon, more clusters of atoms came together and rose from the earth. Some were happy to stay in place; others were restless as the moons and planets and stars themselves, and moved about.

“STOP! NO FURTHER!”

Prime doubled over in outright laughter as GP grew apoplectic. The new things began making their own new things, some like themselves, some not. I’ll call that evolution, Prime said to herself. See how he likes that.

GP tried, with increasing desperation to put things right; Prime knocked them astray again. And so it went through the aeons. Each time GP put the genie back in the bottle, Prime gleefully tugged loose the cork; when GP vacuum-welded the cork to the bottle, Prime invented wormholes; when GP constrained the wormholes to atomic diameters, Prime created quantum tunneling.

Which brings us to the present, the end (for now) of this story of the early days of atoms, and — if you’ll forgive me — the moral of this tale. The multiverse is an endlessly messy place, and it’s not yet clear whether this is a good thing. But it’s what we’ve got, and we’ve got to make the best of it. Occam’s razor tells us we mustn’t ignore the true complexity, but that we must also not complicate things unnecessarily. If we keep trying, someday we’ll achieve an understanding that’s no more complex than necessary. And perhaps that will satisfy GP and Prime enough that they can shake hands, agree to disagree, and get on with figuring out what it’s all in aid of.

~

Bio:

Geoff Hart works as a scientific editor, specializing in helping scientists who have English as their second language publish their research. He’s the author of the popular Effective Onscreen Editing and Write Faster With Your Word Processor. He also writes fiction in his spare time, and has sold 60 stories thus far. Visit him online at geoff-hart.com.

Philosophy Note:

The eternal struggle between man and woman seems to be built into the physics of the universe.

Fiction

Fractal Gods Of Minuscule Things

by Ramez Yoakeim

After three unsparing days, she conceded defeat and called it quits. On her way to the car, she fought off yet another hypnagogic episode but dismissed the risks. Distracted teens and droopy-eyed semitrailer drivers posed little risk to the likes of her. It would take considerably more than a highway pile-up to dispatch a goddess.

The ill-timed collapse of a magnetar into a blackhole, perhaps, or the tumult of a galactic merger. Events unleashing energies too vast for a goddess to sidestep with deft navigation of quantum states in superposition alone.

Not unlike all the roads untaken, collapsing the quantum uncertainty banished undesired outcomes to other universes. Or perhaps the goddess, by virtue of her choices, translocated from one universe to the next. Which, in essence, was all the divine power any god possessed.

From greenlights like a string of verdant pearls extending to the horizon to other vehicles simultaneously exiting the highway to clear her path. Not the sort of occurrence that could provide proof-positive of the supernatural or her divinity, but that was precisely the point. How else could a pantheon walk among mortals unnoticed?

That was until she lapsed into a microsleep at the wheel. A goddess she might have been, but only while conscious.

Whether through chance, or the benign intervention of a fellow deity, the goddess snapped awake barely in time to avert disaster and wisely proceeded to the nearest motel: a two-star serviceable concrete edifice with faded, threadbare carpets and stale linen.

What she had not expected was how elusive sleep would then prove to be.

Instead of the slumber of the dead she longed for, she found herself passing in and out of a trance-like state of semi-consciousness, roused by stray beams of vehicles’ headlights in the carpark, or the scuffing of footsteps and barely suppressed giggles in the corridor outside her room.

A couple in the throes of the rapturous copulation of strangers. A crying infant unsettled by its very existence. Two men arguing in slurred incomplete sentences. The auditory conflict of late-night televangelists competing with home-shopping steals, and the oft censored affray of promiscuous kin on decades-old broadcasts of reality distortions. Too much bass vibrating the furniture without hinting at a melody. Dripping taps and flushing toilets and buzzing light bulbs on the precipice of long-overdue oblivion.

At some level, she was cognizant as she wished away every intrusion as it occurred, yet not lucid enough to contemplate the path through the dense strata of quantum states her wishes described. An endless stream of excised universes ensued until, at last, there remained nothing to obviate, and the goddess slumbered.

#

She roused reborn. Ablutions followed, and dressing and composition. Only then did she note the deathly quiet.

She pulled the curtain to find only a starless night outside, fathomless darkness that transformed the smudged windowpane into a blurry mirror.

She ran and flung open the door, only to find another room where a corridor had been. The covers lay half-spilled onto stained carpets identical to her own.

Glancing behind, she found the side door into the adjoining room open and a familiar silhouette cast in shadows through the doorframe. She retreated and let the door’s mechanical closer pull it shut. Both doors thudded sealed at the same time. Braided sheets, relocated bathroom mirrors, and hurled remote controls eliminated any doubt.

After, the goddess sat on the edge of the unmade bed and surveyed her new universe with a small tilt of her head. Devoid of uncertainty, there remained nothing to collapse through selective observation. Only a state of perfect determinism from which no escape remained; her godhood defanged.

Did she obliterate the multiverse or excised herself out of it? The distinction mattered little when her wishes ceased to be commands.

She raged for a time, and cried, and raged, then stilled. There remained copious water and power, a perpetual busy tone and a jukebox of looping television shows, an inexhaustible minibar packed with peanuts, pretzels, chocolates, booze, tiny cereal boxes that defied emptying, and coffee sachets and creamers with forever resealing foils.

Stultified, the goddess slumbered and awoke to a bedside clock that never changed. She could set it to any time she desired; the change lasting only until she glanced away. An eternal reminder of the moment when her divine irritation consumed existence and ended time.

What meaning had time when nothing ever changed?

She let her mind wander and roam unrestrained, fighting to stay sane, until she noticed something new unfolding before her eyes. A miniature universe she fashioned unaware in a droplet of water on the bedside table.

In its infinitesimal depth, a fierce brightness flashed, forcing the goddess to avert her eyes. By the time the purple pinprick afterimage faded, the new universe twinkled with the birth of uncounted stars. She watched, entranced, as leftover matter coalesced and cooled, and seemingly instantly teeming life erupted throughout the vast universe of a water droplet.

Beings on a trillion worlds crawled out of primordial oozes and pondered their creator, gazing unseeingly at her through the surface tension membrane.

Her heart swelled with joy, and she resolved to benevolence. She would leave her accidental creations be to lead whatever lives brought them contentment. She would only ever intervene in small ways. Measured acts of divine providence to right the scales or set proper what went askew, but only ever with grace.

The goddess sat back, sustained herself up with a pack of perpetually replenished double-roasted lightly-salted peanuts, and watched innumerable consciousnesses coerce the minuscule universe with the prayers of a new creation. She laughed at their foibles, and cried at their loss, and set to wondering if countless deities sat, like her, on creaking beds in telescoping motel rooms varying only in scale and orientation and watched their creations while telling themselves that they only ever intervened for good. Is that all that the multiverse is, the penance of exiled gods?

~

Bio:

An engineer and consummate problem solver, Ramez Yoakeim’s work harkens back to the darker side of speculative fiction classics, marred only by the occasional utopia. Find out more about Ramez and his fiction at yoakeim.com.

Fiction

Apeiron

by Anthony Lechner

Deity: A.X. Mander

Project: Universe

Purpose: Debriefing Report

I would like to thank the master deities for allowing me a third pass at Project Universe (PU). I have learned a great deal from my previous two passes as well as the plethora of passes from other deities. In particular, the debriefing report from T.H. Ales inspired me to create a device called Apeiron, which can supply boundless creations and dissolutions of multiple and synchronous universes.

T.H. Ales’s universe revealed the required features for not only multicellular life but also sentient life, viz., H₂O. T.H. Ales also learned that H20, if left unchecked, floods the universe beyond saturation to the point of oblivion. I don’t blame Ales for leaving the project with the way that universe ended on his pass. The main problem, I believe, rested in the fact that the universe required constant attention from T.H. Ales, and an action innocuous as a coffee break drowned the whole of existence. To think of the creatures’ pain—all dying from suffocation—is unbearable. We are more generous than that.

One of the functions within the Apeiron device is H2O regulation. Each created universe is only allotted 42 FUs. Apeiron provided intriguing results. In the first universe, all 42 FUs of H₂O started within one galaxy and there was no life within it. But by the end of the run, over 30 galaxies had enough water to sustain life. There was no evidence of the initial H₂O-filled galaxy in itself at the end of the run. It appears, though, that its remnants eventually settled into every galaxy that had life. The one had become many.

Apeiron created over one billion universes in this pass, moving beyond exponential growth from previous passes where I did not have the device. The device’s algorithm learned from each universe the ideal amount of H₂O needed in each world within a galaxy to sustain life. The device made minor changes from run to run. The median number of galaxies with H₂O-based lifeforms per universe ended up at 8,160, with a range of 27 to 12,050. The variety of worlds and lifeforms created continues to baffle me. I barely had enough leniency to calculate all the galaxies, and I am estimating 31.4% of the worlds within those galaxies with creatures before the end of the pass.

One of Apeiron’s most impressive features is the ability to copy the design of a universe, and alter a mere 1% of its core and peripheral components (never repeating an alteration, permutation, or combination). Of course, I had to design the initial universe. This was no easy task, based on my previous two passes. I discovered after those failed passes that a blended universe, uniting T.H. Ales’ H₂O universe, C.R. Onos’ Terra universe, and A.X. Menes’ CON universe, made for a successful initial design—through the three, one. (See Appendix 1.A. in this report for the technical blending schematics.)

Rendering the right composition of substances proved to be a minor hurdle compared to the rationic patterns needed to perpetuate the proper proportions among these core substances. I dubbed these patterns embedded existants. I owe a great deal of appreciation to the many deities that created the good variety of substances accessible to the PU. Without embedded existants, however, the substances couldn’t blend or morph with other substances and couldn’t evolve—which explains why so many deities dropped from PU, feeling their creations were failures. These universes were not failures; they merely lacked the language to move about without constant effort from the deity who constructed them.

An unexpected consequence emerged from the embedded existants, viz., intelligent lifeforms began to theorize about the existence of embedded existants. Once a civilization of lifeforms successfully demonstrated a working knowledge of some of the basic existants, it did not take long for that civilization to apply their own understanding and add a further layer of evolution to their world. For example, some worlds began creating their own dwellings, modes of transportation, and various other unnatural structures. They even began theorizing whether they themselves were deities or were created by deities.

Some civilizations showed such mastery of embedded existants they created modes of transportation to leave their worlds. Very few civilizations (<1%) ever discovered a means to travel between galaxies. This variant occurred in 3% of the universes within Apeiron’s construct.

In exactly one civilization in one universe, a mode of transportation overwhelmed me. They discovered the source of embedded existants within Apeiron. By doing so, they were not only able to travel to any galaxy in their universe; they could travel to any universe within Apeiron. I named them Apeironic Anomalies (AA). While their visits to other universes showed not to be motivated by violence, they did interfere with the natural development of other universes.

At first, I speculated whether it was permissible to allow the AA to continue exploration and alterations within Apeiron. Realizing, though, that they dominated not only their universe but other universes, I believed it important to suspend their existence within Apeiron. I couldn’t allow for their dominance to mar the growth of other intelligent lifeforms. My apprehension predominately rested on the possibility that either they would become worshipped as deities or they would take on the role of deities and limit the natural development of worlds (or both). Because of this apprehension, I suspended their universe and all universes where the AA had spread. To be more exact, I had to create the embedded existant language within Apeiron to lock all motion within the affected universes.

I would like to be clear that I did not worry about the AA finding a way of leaving Apeiron, for that would be utterly impossible because their mere existence depended on the construct and couldn’t maintain any viable form of existence beyond it. But as the AA were suspended, I began wondering what would happen if they were permitted to continue to explore Apeiron. And then, what if I could construct a way for Apeiron to allow us to be able to interact with this species (either by projecting our image into Apeiron or projecting their image outside of Apeiron).

After some initial thinking toward the end of my third pass, I realized I needed a fourth pass at PU. I cannot complete these two speculations with the Apeiron 1.0, as I am starting to call it now. Apeiron 2.0 will have a few major adjustments. It will have two major structural divisions. In one division, it will allow AAs to visit other universes and allow deities continuous monitoring regarding how multi-layered creation and alterations evolve. In another division, it will strictly prohibit the formation of AAs. In this division, lifeforms will be able to theorize about multiple universes but never be allowed to travel beyond their own universes. Both divisions can create boundless universes. Additionally, I will add a feature into Apeiron 2.0 that allows projections, at the command of a deity and not an AA, to allow for closer observation and possible communication.

Regretfully, the new specifications I started for Apeiron 2.0 mean that I had to terminate the universes Apeiron 1.0 created so that I could access Apeiron’s internal components for recycling. If my analysis is correct, no creature felt any pain during the termination of any of Apeiron 1.0’s universes. Compared to the natural pains of daily life and the natural endings of their solar systems and galaxies, the forced termination can be seen as peaceful. (See Appendix 2.A for a more detailed explanation.) From their point of view, it happened as quickly as turning off the light.

Appendix 1.A

Initial design: 33% Liquid, 33% Gas, 34% Mineral

Effect: With embedded existants, this composition blended well. The variety of syntheses formed various other substances on their own. I discovered that even the embedded existants took miniscule parts of the initial substances to function through predictable patterns. This is the most likely explanation for how the AA found a way to travel within Apeiron.

Apeiron began altering 1% at a time in each direction for each of the original substances. For example, it would subtract 1% from liquid and add 1% to gas or to mineral (32% liquid, 34% gas, 34% mineral, followed by 32% liquid, 33% gas, 35% mineral, etc.). Consequently, liquid gases, liquid minerals, and gas minerals formed through the combination and permutation processes. These syntheses continued down to the level of embedded existants. As Apeiron rearranged each universe, the proportions of the initial design within the embedded existants mutated.

Appendix 2.A

Median number of galaxies with life: 8,160

Within this mean, the variants dispersed unevenly. Some galaxies had hundreds of forms of intelligent life, others a dozen, some a few, with the occasional isolated civilization. One fact remains constant in each universe: solar systems and galaxies fluctuate in size and number. Having intelligent life in a solar system or galaxy was not a permanent property of the system or galaxy. It was common for the embedded existants to collide the substances, in various, yet predictable ways. These collisions forcefully terminated many lifeforms (intelligent or not). I conjecture that civilizations that found a means to exit their worlds were motivated by these predictable and potentially tragic endings.

With Apeiron 2.0, however, most of these universes with these types of systems and galaxies will evolve to the exact same likeness as to when Apeiron 1.0 ended. Toward this end, we will find out whether or not civilizations can self-correct. The irony, of course, is that Apeiron 2.0 could prove to provide more pain compared to the peaceful ending of Apeiron 1.0. Only a forth pass will tell.

~

Bio:

Anthony Lechner is a special education teacher and philosophy instructor in Idaho, USA. Visit www.anthonylechner.com for more information.

Fiction

Two Variations On Default Salvation

by Andy Dibble

Suppose your theology of salvation is that only those who deny Christ are damned. Everyone else is saved by default. This is an attractive view. Children and others unable to grasp doctrine are saved. Those who live without opportunity to accept Jesus as their savior are saved as well. The damned are damned, on some level, because they choose to be. God wisely grants them autonomy.

This complicates Original Sin, but there is a more pressing problem: assuming this theology, why did Jesus have a ministry?

#

I. Default Salvation Beginning with Creation

In the beginning was just the Father–my Father–and me. Heaven was just this lonesome twosomeness. He and I eternally begotten from Him. Succession in eternity is strange, but that is how it was. The angels came later. Creation came later still, and with it the Spirit, once there was a Creation to work within.

As long as there were humans, Creation has surged into Heaven: people die, and they end up here. I can’t blame them. It’s just the natural progression of their lives and after-lives. They would have lived forever in Eden–marvelous, almost divine–but the Serpent came and led them astray. He knew Father, knew me, better than I like to admit. He knew that Father would put them out, and they would end up in Heaven instead. He knew the human migration to Heaven would irk me.

The Fall changed much: Eden was bountiful. Once outside Eden, they had to till the ground. Children would have arisen painlessly in Eden, but outside pregnancy is like a disease. Outside there is disease. Outside their lives are brutish, short, and stunted.

But not their after-lives. Here they just go on and on. The trespass in Eden gave them a troubling handful of decades, but no more. For Father exalts them just because they have not denied me. What kind of reason is that? On earth, they did not even know me.

And that is why Heaven is neither a lonesome or a twosome place any longer. It’s infested (or so I tell myself in the shadow of my heart). I can hardly walk without stumbling over their prostrate bodies. They want to worship me, to serve me, to bask in my presence. The longer they stay, the more entitled they presume themselves to be! It is hard to host billions for billions of years.

No, for eternity.

I just want to be alone, alone with myself, alone with Father.

Heaven is vast, wider and deeper than the sphere to which the stars are fixed. And if, somehow, souls filled Heaven to its silver rim, Father would make it swell. But even if I tread to the Outer Dark or to the Throne of Heaven where no created thing may pass, I can still feel them yearning for me. Omniscience doesn’t have an off-switch.

This is the end and goal of Creation? It is not the kind of fellowship I crave.

I look down at the few rude blasphemers–certain worshipers of Baal, some geometers and contemplatives, a few peripatetics of the hanging gardens–that struck upon my name in prophecy and dismissed what they had heard. Some are proud, others piteous, as they squander their mortal years or circle the scalding sands of Hell. I know deep down they deserve damnation, even crave it. But still I watch them like a human voyeur. They are few and therefore precious. They have accomplished something I could never do.

Shouldn’t those exalted be few and precious, souls deserving of Heaven?

But how to achieve this? I cannot overrule Father. I cannot correct Him. This presumption of salvation has a place in His Plan.

But I could walk upon the earth and divide the wheat from the chaff by my own preaching. Who will I go among? The Jews, the Chosen People. Their faithfulness ought to be tested. But not them only. I will spread my message to the nations and across the ages. Let all humanity be tested!

I was born. I grew, prospered, preached. But I did not speak plainly. I spoke in parables, bamboozling tripe. I spoke of bridesmaids, wicked servants, sowers, and mustard seeds. So that as many as possible could be exposed to my vagaries, and only a few receive my meaning with gladness, I proclaimed, “Whoever has ears, let them hear!” but, as Mark and Luke record, I told my disciples in secret: “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything comes in parables so that they may always see but never perceive, and always hear but never understand. Otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!”

#

II. Default Salvation Beginning with the Cross

Father and His majesty are wonderful, but fellowship with humans–real fellowship, fellowship they can reciprocate–would be more wonderful still.

Time and time again, I’ve seen them try to pick themselves up, and some have. Some were good, better than I thought a sinful human could be in one brief life. But no matter how upright these few stood, no matter how I marveled upon their grit, they still fell short (for all fall short of the glory of God). The suffering of each soul in Hell pains me, however just their lot might be, but the suffering of these upright few pains me most of all.

Some were saved: Isaiah when the burning coal touched his lips, Elijah when he rode to heaven in a whirlwind and a flaming chariot, and Moses wicked up from the grave. But there isn’t a woman among them, and they’re a stodgy lot. Being the mouthpiece of God leaves a person little room to be much of himself. I want the company of those men and women toiling below that have managed something great and good by their own will and not by the indwelling of God only.

What could I do? The expiation of sin requires sacrifice, but no dove or bull will wipe away the sin of a race. If by some grand transubstantiation the oceans became blood and the planets an altar, that would not be enough. It would not be vast enough. It would not be pure enough.

But I am vast enough, pure enough. I am great enough for it. I can walk the earth. I can reconcile Creation to Heaven and save the human race.

Humbly, I was born, and I learned how warm a body can be. I spread my message. I preached with zeal and laid my hands upon them and saved them by their faith. There were many, and I loved them, loved them all. And so I told my disciples as Matthew records: “This is why I speak to them in parables, ‘though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.'”

My quotation was from Isaiah. I invoked him to demonstrate the hard-heartedness of the people. But I could pierce their hearts of stone. If I spoke dry theology or fiery exhortation, I would only confuse or provoke them. But a story could stir their faith, a story thrown beside life, a parable.

I inspired many, and they loved me as I loved them. But at last the world overcame me, as it overcomes all bodies. I was beaten, sentenced, and hung upon a cross. They killed me, but really the Serpent killed me. He broke a pact sealed at the moment of creation: only those subject to sin are subject to death. But I am not subject to sin. My blood did what sanguine oceans and planetary altars could not.

With my blood the world was saved. Those great men and women were saved, the children and infants too young to know me, the multitudes that never had a chance. All are saved. With my blood, it is only those that deny me that fall away. Father lets them be.

I commissioned my disciples to preach to the nations, and I commissioned the next generation to preach after my disciples are gone. I commissioned all who would take up the mission. I swore I would be with them always, to the end of the age. At last, I ascended, content I had saved as many as could be saved.

But later, in the quiet of my heart, I wondered: Wouldn’t it have been better for me to be crucified in secret? Lure the Serpent in, if need be, but commission nothing–no Church, no missionaries, no scripture. Tell no one I am the Messiah. Maybe even conceal my death by silencing everyone involved.

It is ruthless, but whenever my well-meaning followers preach my message, an audience may hear and reject it. Those that hear and accept are better, for they may live Christian lives, but what matters earthly life, the merest sliver of eternity? And even they have the chance to fall away. They may reject me later on.

What rogue angel was it that told Joseph to name me Jesus? Once heard, my name is an infection a person must guard against all their lives.

To pronounce my name is to acknowledge salvation. But my name has an inner meaning, like a parable: to acknowledge that one may, one day, be damned.

In my gallant zeal, I saved many, but I damned many too.

~

Bio:

Andy Dibble is a healthcare IT consultant who believes that play is the highest function of theology. His fiction also appears in Writers of the Future and is forthcoming in Speculative North. You can find him at andydibble.com.

Fiction

Possible Worlds

by Jack Denning

First conversation

“Well, it’s interesting,” said the first person, a denizen of our universe. “There are certainly aspects of our world that appear to have been ‘designed’ by an intelligent agent. Living creatures, traditionally, were seen this way, for example. But then we discovered how natural selection acts on genetic variation to explain how the diversity of life arose from simpler life forms, and we are confident additional natural laws will be discovered to explain the origin of life itself. The appearance of design, it turns out, is just appearance. Nothing more.”

“That’s not too far from our position,” said the second person, from a different universe. “In our universe, life seems to have been designed as well. In fact, all physical objects appear to have been designed. Every planet is a perfect sphere. Every continent and island on every planet is a perfect square. Every single three-dimensional object in our universe takes the form of one of the five Platonic solids, and all two-dimensional objects take the form of a simple polygon. But like you, we’ve discovered natural laws that explain this. It only appears to have been designed.”

“Yes, yes,” said the third person, an inhabitant of yet a third universe. “It is the same with us. But it is not a simple matter of being complex, or of being arranged according to certain patterns. In our universe, every configuration of objects spells out a coherent sentence. Everywhere you look in our sky, the stars spell a sentence, every collection of molecules twists around to spell something out as well, always in the language of the observer. And as it turns out, nearly all of those sentences are variations of ‘I am the Creator and Designer of the universe! Believe in me!’ But we also have discovered laws of nature that explain this. The universe runs just fine without any supernatural supervision. It just appears to be the product of an intelligent agent organizing things in order to communicate with us.”

The fourth person had grown more and more incredulous as the conversation went on. Finally he spoke: “My universe is almost total chaos. There is hardly any order at all; life and civilization arose from a random and localized order that fell back into disarray when civilization had reached a certain point. There are only a few natural laws that are consistent. Yet even that small amount of structure is enough to convince us that there must be a cosmic designer who constructed it. Yes, the small amount of order is explicable by the few (the very few) natural laws, but who designed the natural laws? Who organized my universe in such a way that matter and energy tends to behave the same way in repeated and repeatable experiences? It seems to me, the more natural laws you have, the more order you have, the more obvious it is that there is a God. Yet you have many more natural laws than we do, and you use them to argue against God. At any rate, as I say, the presence of a single law is sufficient: for how could there be any law at all that we could rely on to continue into the future without an intelligent agent who constructed the universe so that it follows a law in the first place?”

#

Second conversation

Later, they had another discussion. The third person said, “In our universe, the only people who suffer misfortune are those who do not believe in God. This may suggest to a simple mind that there is some cosmic justice being played out, with the sin of unbelief being subject to punishment. But of course, such a scenario is incompatible with the existence of a morally perfect God, the only kind of God worthy of worship and worthy of the name ‘God.’ In fact, if such a God did exist, it would be his believers who should be most prone to misfortune, as they would be the only ones with the context in which suffering is redeemable. They would be the only ones who could handle it. An omnibenevolent God would not visit suffering on those for whom that suffering could be nothing but brute, unredeemable horror. Thus, the fact that only unbelievers suffer in our universe is incompatible with the existence of God. If God exists, we should not expect that only unbelievers would be those who experience suffering. We may not understand why things work out the way they do, but we can rule out the possibility of God from the outset.”

“That’s interesting,” said the second person. “In our universe it is only those who believe in God who suffer misfortune. To a simple mind, this might suggest punishment, as you mentioned, but of course a morally perfect God would not punish people for doing what he wanted. But others claim something like what you have, that only the suffering of those who believe in God would be redeemable. But we have rejected this as well: an omnibenevolent God would not single out those who are obeying his commands to suffer for doing so. Does any parent punish his obedient children for their obedience while allowing his disobedient children to get off scot-free? This would be the height of injustice. A perfectly just God is the only kind of God worth worshiping and worthy of the name ‘God.’ The fact that only believers suffer in our universe is incompatible with the existence of a perfectly just God. Like you, we may not understand why things work out the way they do, but we can rule out God as a possibility.”

The first person, from our universe, spoke up. “Hmm. For us, it’s different. Both believers and unbelievers suffer in our universe. There is no readily apparent reason for this distribution, no universal explanation for it, since the same suffering would have different purposes depending on the theistic proclivities of those who experience it. If a morally perfect God existed, then misfortune would either be exclusively aimed at those who do not believe, as a form of punishment, or at those who do believe, since they are the ones with a ready-made context for it to fit into. The fact that those who believe in God suffer the same misfortunes as those who do not believe convinces us that there is no rhyme or reason to it, and thus no morally perfect, perfectly just God, the only kind of God worthy of worship and worthy of the name ‘God.’ Thus, the fact that both believers and unbelievers suffer in our universe is incompatible with the existence of God. If God exists, we should not expect that both believers and unbelievers experience suffering to roughly equal extents. Even though we do not understand precisely how it all works, we know immediately that there is no God involved.”

The person from the fourth universe didn’t say anything. He wasn’t there. They’d asked him to leave.

~

Bio:

Jack Denning is a teacher in Portlandia where he lives with his family and his piano.

Fiction

So Be It

Allocation Day had arrived. Like everyone else, Amen put on his threadbare robes. He ate his meagre food, and, like everyone else, he had some free time to finalise his preparations. Amen went over the rules again:

You have one reset button
You have three lives
Direct contact is not possible

Simple rules, but he knew from his lessons how important they were if one of the class was going to make a breakthrough.
When everyone was ready, they filed into the pod arena where the grid matrix map of the universe hung suspended before them. Once all twenty-seven of them had taken their standing positions, the doors were sealed shut behind them.
A tiny orange identification cube glowed off-centre. This little cube was their first sight of their new worlds. The suspended matrix of the universe map zoomed in on the small orange cube, expanding it to a massive scale, revealing thousands of galaxies within the area. The cube was segregated further into twenty-seven pieces stacked three wide, three long and three high. With deliberation, this cube broke into pieces so that one piece hovered over each member of the class. They all closed their eyes, finally ready for this day that had been so long in preparation. Amen felt himself being lifted. He rose higher and higher. He kept his eyes closed for as long as possible.
When he opened them a vast panorama lay before him, rugged, rough, devoid of life. This was his palette. He closed his eyes again and thought of all the lessons learnt from those who had gone before him. The future lay with him and the twenty-six others surrounding him, and if they didn’t succeed, there were no longer another twenty-seven waiting to graduate and take their places. Resources were running low and time was running out. If one of them didn’t deliver, there were no more graduating classes left to try, and no more energy to fund the limited chances permitted by the rules.
Amen wanted to start small, tiny in fact. The materials he had been given appeared plentiful, but if there was one thing he had learned, it was not to do what had been done before. Size mattered, but maybe not the way most had assumed. So, with a tiny sprinkle, he crafted a small strand of DNA; nothing fancy, only four nucleobases, not the eight, or twenty-five or even the sixty-four that had been tried before.
In the swirling waters where he mixed this spell, he brought the elements of weather in, and with thunder and lightning that raged over this part of his planet, he brought the spark to life. It was such a tiny spark, and so basic, that it was able to replicate with ease. He was pleased. He wondered if any of his classmates were having similar success. There had been so many losses before them but Amen had given this a lot of thought. It felt right to start small and he was appreciative of the tools he had to hand. He appreciated his soupy, gassy, solid world.
At the end of the first session their orange sections withdrew. Amen looked around, dazed with the fatigue of concentration. Two of his classmates were gone. As interchangeable as they all were, he recognised that Fable and Racon were no longer there. Impatient Racon, thought Amen, and noted the impromptu lesson. Despite being all the same, despite being subject to the same lessons, their uniqueness lay in how they chose to use their minds. It was inevitable that those with the weaker thought disciplines would fail.
When it was time to return to work, Amen nodded farewell. The classmates had compared notes, some more than others. Amen preferred to keep his progress to himself. Their only limitations were their own imaginations. It was their only point of diversity. Their weak and dying bodies were not going to last much longer here, no matter how many versions of themselves they replicated in their increasingly depleted environment. Only their minds could set them free, and Amen wanted to succeed.
Amen returned to looking over his world. His lifeforms were progressing well. He zoomed out and critiqued the location. The nearest star provided energy. The sister planets in this solar system were quite diverse, some were gaseous, others icy rocks. He noted the orbital rotations, he noted the gravitational pulls. He zoomed back in again so that he could do more work. He took a sample of the simple structures, soupy in their mix, and used the flow of currents to separate them to another area of the planet. Over and over he replicated this. He was doing something no-one else had done before, and at each of their enforced breaks he said nothing. His classmates might laugh, they might scoff, they might be curious and want to see. For Amen though, none of this mattered. He simply didn’t tell them because he wanted to hold onto his creative energy, couldn’t afford to let it dissipate. What he was doing was unprecedented, and exhausting.
Some of his lifeforms started to take on a momentum of development on their own. Amen watched how some of the simple structures grouped together to become more complex. He encouraged some of these to emerge from the safety of their salty fluid into the thin atmosphere and solid ground. His world passed through thousands of its years, while Amen watched, waited and prodded once in a while. Each time he took a break, fewer and fewer of his classmates remained. Xay was still there. Za was still there. Epik was still there. None of them spoke much. There was a lot at stake.
Then Amen made a mistake. He’d seen it before, when studying the other worlds. Maybe he’d let it subconsciously influence him. He’d gotten off track and in a moment of insecurity his own world had become full of assorted giants. He understood their allure, the tough outer skin, the ability to change sex by the temperature of their eggs, their general fierceness. He knew from the lessons that others had used creatures like this many times, but mostly as their starting positions. In his world it risked being the ending position too, just like many others. This method, this outcome, had left a series of worlds stuck in limbo, unable to progress. So he invoked Rule Number One. He hit the reset button. The eruption of the volcano spread the cloud of ash across the planet. It was heartbreaking to see his work go to waste. Years passed as he waited for the dust to clear.
But then he realised what had happened. As the atmosphere normalised and cleared, it revealed the beauty and adaptability of his original line of thinking. Yes, the dinosaurs were gone. His reset had cleared them, but there were thousands of beings remaining: small, furry, rooted, feathery. His indulgences, playthings he’d created on the side to pass the time were still there, growing, developing. Even some of the smaller reptiles remained. Small is beautiful, he thought to himself. Given the infinite grandness of the universe it was a hard lesson to learn, yet so simple.
He was glad to see Za and Epik on his next break. He knew they were solid and reliable. But he didn’t share his own discovery, his own success, not yet. Instead, he listened. Amen thought that Za had it tough. In addition to being separated by millions of light years, they had all been allocated different environments to handle. Za’s gassy nebula provided a challenge of form. From listening to Za, Amen deduced that he was going to do away with form altogether and was playing with the energy of light. It was risky, but maybe that was where the edges of success were going to be found. The reptiles, and the mono-species approach, both separately and in combination had failed to be replicable or sustainable, no matter who had tried it in the past. Epik on the other hand was in the depths of a black hole, where everything was about matter, but he too appeared to be making steady progress. Light and dark. With such thoughts Amen headed back to the familiarity of his planet.
Amen’s challenge was size. The area he had to work with was tiny in comparison to his colleagues, the risks immense within the context of the vastness of the universe. But he kept on going. By now he had amassed thousands upon thousands of creatures. Some had six legs, some had tens of legs, some had none. Some breathed with gills, some with lungs, some through their skin, some not at all. Some walked, some were rooted to where they grew. Some used sunlight for food, some devoured the others, some didn’t even eat. No-one, ever, out of any of his classmates or those who had gone before, had put so many different life-forms, of such variety, in such a small space. The results were astounding. As he had hoped, in the fight for supremacy and survival, the emerging species had been redirected from a quasi-dominant reptile and was now based on his own form. Maybe it was vain to put these physically weak designs into such a variable environment, but he was intrigued to watch them mature and grow.
Then it began to go wrong. This species, these men, became lazy and greedy. They started to fight amongst themselves and stopped appreciating the goodness of what Amen had provided to them. Amen watched them, this intelligent species, this self-destructive species start to self-devour. It was time to use Rule Number Two; one of his lives. He had to in order to get around Rule Number Three; direct contact is not possible. Close contact, he thought, and leaned into his world and whispered to those who listened.
“No. No. No. No… aaahhhhh,” One life heard the whisper on the breeze, saw the clouds building. Amen amassed them slowly, giving as much warning as possible. Down on the planet, under the guidance of this one life, those with enough intuition, influence and altruism to understand and execute the message prepared accordingly. The floods lasted for months. The planet reshaped and when the waters resided the world was almost fresh and new, ready for another step change.
However, as Amen’s work became more and more advanced, so his own situation got worse. There were now only three of them left of the original twenty-seven, Za, Epik and Amen. Xay, feeling the pressure, and despite a robust start had panicked and his world had exploded, wiping everything out.
Amen’s only remaining contact was with his two colleagues, who were focused on the forces of light and fire, dark and comfort. They were a welcome respite from oversight of his own delicate planet, Earth, where he had achieved diversity and mastered replication. It had even survived his reset button. However, in its abundance, there were tensions building again, and his goal of sustainability was still out of reach. The flood had a been intended as a warning, but it was not enough, and he was now going to have to watch this play out from the sidelines unless he used another of his lives.
This time he created a son and sent him to earth. It was as close as he could get to direct contact. It was as close as he could get to giving them the messages they needed to know to live in harmony. For without that, they would never be able to work together, and without that Amen’s grand plan seemed doomed. If they could not work together, they would never be able to launch themselves away from their tiny speck and achieve mastery of the universe.
While, through his son, he had managed to avoid direct contact, he was pleased to see that collective awareness on the planet had started to build. With relief, Amen found his second and long-awaited source of energy. The stronger their belief and prayers, the stronger he became. He was also gratified to see that many of the dominant groups had finally come together, but for every evocation of love, there were just as many powerful emergences of negative, destructive forces. It was just like watching Za and Epik each struggling separately with their delicate balancing acts. Using radiance and gravity, they were also in their own ways on the verge of joy, replication and sustainability, the Holy Grail.
At their next break, Amen finally spoke. “Direct contact is not possible and we only have the lessons left behind by others. The only remaining direct contact we can ever have is with each other.”
Za and Epik looked at each other.
“You’ve been the silent one, not us,” said Epik.
“But maybe that’s the missing link,” said Amen. “I’ve been watching my lot, and I had hoped for more by now. The intelligence that they are demonstrating is the very same thing that leads them towards self-destruction the moment they become comfortable. If I had a second reset button I’d invoke it. Instead I only have one life left.”
Za shook his head, scattering sparks of light around him. “All of my lives have been used. I wish I had one more. My reset was used early on. But I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for them.”
Epik nodded with heavy despondency. “I’m all out too. I’m on the countdown to see what happens next.”
But Za and Amen could see that Epik was getting stronger more quickly than both of them.
“Maybe we should stop competing then. Maybe the three of us should start working together. It’s what I expect from my planet. If I expect it of them in order to become sustainable, then shouldn’t we do the same?” said Amen.
“But no class of graduates has ever worked together before. It’s always been a competition,” said Za.
“All the more reason to try it,” said Amen.
“Doing again what has been done before has not worked so far,” said Epik.
“What about the rules?” said Za.
“Stuff the rules. This is no time to search for more rules! Let’s just do it,” said Epik.
By then it was time to get back to work. They were forced to separate, but each went away thinking. Yet more years passed. Amen grew a lot stronger from the energy of faith. Then it started to wane. His planet started to decline. The in-fighting was becoming more frequent as their resources depleted. They’d made some token efforts to spread their wings, but had got not much further than their orbiting satellite. Unmanned they had reached some minor distance further with their evolving technology. Amen, sensing the end, did what he could to spur them along. Their progression became more rapid, major steps that used to take hundreds of years were achieved in decades, years, months and soon the pace of change could be measured in days. During this time Za and Epik also grew. The three of them had lasted longer than anyone who had gone before. Collectively they were now sharing everything that they knew. Not just on what they had done, but also on where they were going.
Za had the glow, Epik had the gravity, and so, sometimes, Amen wondered what he brought to their group, especially as he was now starting to weaken. He talked about diversity, adaptability, and keeping it small. Za and Epik understood. He talked about the thousands of species he had created. He talked about imagination and straying from form. Both Za and Epik understood this all too well.
He spoke at length about love on his planet and the energy and attraction it created. At this soliloquy, both Za and Epik stopped still. Their break was nearly up. They were going to have to return to their worlds very soon. There was not much time left. Amen was fading.
“Your third life,” said Za.
“You haven’t used it yet,” said Epik.
“Use it to connect us,” said Za. “I have the power of light.”
“I have the force of attraction,” said Epik.
“I have the love,” said Amen.
“I am the Love,” he realised. Their break was up. It was Judgement Day.

Creation

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