The
incorporeal audience remained by the nebula, trapped in awe at the sight. It
had witnessed the death of countless billions of stars before this event, and
would witness countless others afterwards, yet it never tired of the spectacle.
The being shifted its attention to a passing cloud of helium within the nebula.
With all its power, the being struggled to feel that cloud's essence. It sensed
the presence of every single atom in the cloud, empathizing with them until it
felt that it was each one of those atoms itself. Euphoria crossed over the entity,
and it knew once more that all that existed in the universe was beautiful. It
had done a good job, it thought to itself.
Jacob
Bear stared out the window, a nebula of no concern to him visible off in the
distance. His heart raced anxiously, his wrinkled forehead covered in sweat. He
had waited a long time for this day. He still remembered all those decades ago,
when they'd figured out faster-than-light travel. It was strictly intended for
unmanned missions, of course. Nobody dared throw their life away, floating
through the dismal expanse of space. Jacob Bear, however, had a purpose, one
single goal pushing him throughout his adult life. After all he had gone
through, it began to consume his other, less realistic desires. Jacob Bear was
going to find God. And if the bastard was out there, he was going to speak with
him.
"Are
you sure he's here?" asked a technician, sitting from the comfort of an
office parsecs away from the man he was assigned to supervise. Nobody, even the
ones in charge, was quite sure of just how Jacob earned the permission to pilot
a faster-than-light spacecraft all those years ago. They should have known
better, many an employee of the space program thought to themselves. You don't
trust a vehicle in the hands of a lunatic, especially not a vehicle of this
kind of sophistication. Maybe someone up top was touched by his story. Jacob
wasn't the first person to go looking for God, but he was the first one to
promise he'd go straight up into Heaven itself and bring him.
"He's
here, all right," Jacob said confidently, poring over a screen densely
packed with equations only he could quite make sense of. "There's
a...thing here."
"A
thing?" asked the technician.
"A
thing," Jacob repeated confidently, as he began to ready his spacesuit.
"It's...it's a thing, it's something that shouldn't be here. Something
we're not quite sure what it is." Jacob grimaced to himself, realizing how
foolish he sounded to the technician. He had gone his whole life ruing the fact
that he had so much trouble with words. Then again, he was on the hunt for a
creature nobody quite had the words for.
"With
all due respect, Mr. Bear..." the technician replied, struggling to remain
as formal as his job required. "We must remind you that you're in
possession of an extremely valuable spacecraft, and the last thing either of us
need is for someone to bring about a second Cervantes
incident. Are you confident that you're in a suitable emotional state to
continue this mission?"
"I'm
not going to continue this mission," Jacob answered gruffly. "I'm
going to finish it. God is out there. I'm going to find him, and I'm going to
get my answers." Jacob put on his helmet, his uniform having completely
replaced his own weathered visage with the heroic figure of an astronaut. With
bated breath, Jacob prepared the exit to his ship, and stepped out into the
abyss.
“Another?”
thought the bodiless entity, sensing the presence of a new mind. In all the
eons it had been, not once had it encountered a thought that was not its own, a
being that wasn’t itself. It was disappointed to look away from the nebula, but
it decided study of the curious object was in order. It shifted its attention
towards the strange visitor, and as it did so Jacob Bear knew the beast was
approaching him. Without a form, the nebula’s observer was beyond sensory
perception, yet there was something about its presence that could be felt, a
stirring in the gut that occurred only when one had the attention of the
Almighty. Jacob Bear smiled, knowing that he had earned his audience.
“Are
you God?” asked Jacob. He wasn’t sure if his words would be heard, or if his
unusual discovery even could hear, but he had to speak. He had come too far not
to. Sensing another thought from the visitor, the intangible being allowed its
thoughts to be sensed as well.
“What
is God?” it asked in turn. Jacob was stupefied, barely able to comprehend such
a response.
“Did…did
you create the universe?” Jacob asked hesitantly.
“I
did,” answered the being. “All of this is my work.”
“Then
you’re God,” explained Jacob.
“I
see,” said God, its thoughts betraying no emotion. “And what are you?”
“Me?
Really? You don’t know what I am? I’m a human.”
“What
is a human?” it asked. Jacob’s eyes widened. He clutched his chest to make sure
his heart hadn’t stopped.
“How
do you not know what a human is? You created us, didn’t you?”
“Do
humans come from stars?” God asked. “The stars are what I notice the most of my
creation.”
“Er…well,
sort of,” Jacob said, in disbelief he would need to explain such a concept to
God. “We live on a planet, which orbits a star, I guess.”
“You’re
on top of a planet?” thought God. “You are very small, then. Smaller than a
planet. Much smaller than a star.”
“Yeah,
yeah, that’s right,” answered Jacob. “We are smaller than a star. You want to
know something else interesting about us?”
“Yes,
please,” said God eagerly, its words laced with emotion for the first time. “This
is all very fascinating.”
“Quite
a few of us are very unhappy,” Jacob scoffed. He waited for a response, but God
stayed silent, lost in its own thoughts.
Unhappy.
God understood what Jacob meant by the word. It could tell the feelings Jacob
experienced as he thought it, but God was unfamiliar with the emotion itself.
Happy, it knew. Happy was what it felt when it gazed upon its work, when it
observed all the incomprehensible vastness of a galaxy at once. Unhappy was the
opposite of that, it deduced.
“What
could make one unhappy?” God asked, breaking the long silence. “Can you not see
the stars?”
“We
can see the stars just fine, thanks,” replied Jacob. “We’ve also got crime,
poverty, hunger, loneliness. There are a million different ways the world can
screw you over. I’ve gone through quite a few of them myself. For a long time I’ve
wanted to know who I’m supposed to talk to about all the shit going on back on
the good Earth, and as far as I can tell the buck stops here.”
“That
is unfortunate,” God answered, pondering the thoughts behind Jacob’s words.
“You’re
right, it is,” replied Jacob just as bluntly. “Now why does it happen?”
“I
don’t know,” God replied, sounding just as serene as ever. Jacob’s eye began to
twitch involuntarily, his hands briefly balling up into fists.
“What
the hell do you mean you don’t know?” he asked, poorly attempting to remain
calm. “Didn’t you create the universe? Didn’t you create us? All of this is
yours, isn’t it? You’re supposed to know!”
“Are
there things smaller than you?” God asked.
“What?!”
Jacob screamed. Quickly regaining his composure, he cleared his throat and
tried his best to answer the question. “I mean, uh…yeah, sure. There are things
smaller than us back home. Like bugs and stuff.”
“I
see,” God answered. “Do these bugs ever suffer?”
“I’m
not sure if they’re smart enough to, but…I mean, I guess so.”
“Do
you care that the bugs suffer?”
“Of
course not. They’re just bugs. Sometimes we even kill them oursel…” Jacob
stopped himself, realizing the gravity behind his own words. “Wait a minute…you
don’t mean…”
“How
unusual,” God said, its thoughts laced more with curiosity than anything else. “I
would never kill something smaller than me. Death is common enough when it
comes naturally.” God’s attention gradually shifted slightly away from Jacob,
and back towards the shifting gasses of the nearby nebula.
“I
love the stars,” God said. “I think they’re my greatest creation. When their
time arrives, some of them leave behind a nova, expelling all their gas into
beautiful clouds, like these. Eventually, the gas will settle back down into a
single mass. More matter will be attracted by its gravity, and soon a new star
appears in its place. The stars die, and then they are born again.”
“Not
all of us are born again,” retorted Jacob. “I had a friend once. He worked his
ass off every day in exchange for just barely enough money to stay off the
streets. He had no love, no future…nothing worth living for, he thought. One
day the…the world just got to him. Why did that happen, huh? Why wasn’t he
allowed to be happy?”
“I
don’t know,” God answered tonelessly. Jacob tossed his hands into the air in
frustration. How could something with the intelligence to create worlds be so
idiotic? How could this thing dare to call itself the one behind all that
exists yet be so ignorant of even the most basic facts of how people work?
“What…what
the fuck is the matter with you?” Jacob roared. “I’ve gone my whole life
thinking that God was trying to screw me over, but finding out you don’t care…that’s
even worse! If I died…if all of us died, would you even know it happened?” God
remained silent.
“That’s
what I thought,” continued Jacob with a grimace. “And now that I’ve found you,
I’ve got to go back home. I’ve got to go all the way back to Earth and tell
everyone this whole trip was a bust. And after that…I don’t know, I guess I’m
supposed to spend the rest of my days as the world’s laughingstock. There’s
fucking nothing for me now, is there?” Jacob began to hyperventilate, tears
forming around his eyes. “I thought after I found you, after I got my answers…I
thought I’d be happy. And now it turns out my life dream was a complete waste.
I mean…just what the fuck am I supposed to do?” God pondered Jacob’s thoughts,
making sure it understood each word as deeply as Jacob himself did.
“You
could try looking at the stars,” God suggested. Without a further word, Jacob
turned around, preparing for the long journey back home. As its curious visitor
left, the being returned its attention to the nebula. Already it could sense
the dance of the clouds beginning to slow. Soon it would become a star, its
role in the universe beginning anew.
Euphoria
crossed over the entity, and it knew once more that all that existed in the
universe was beautiful.
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