“Let there be no Gods” I snapped.

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Smug. Content. Alone. I woke today from a dreamless night. I took a deep breath and inhaled the scent of accomplishment. Years of research, months of design reviews, six days of frenzied development work. Finally everything seemed worth it. Impatience fuelled by self-indulgence drove me to the workstation to monitor the systems I had set in place with absolute precision. A touch there, a tweak here––everything breaks apart. None of them before me had survived a Sabbath.

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The blues and greens sparkled. The creatures I moulded multiplied and thrived. Checks and balances worked in tandem. Floods for droughts. Water for fire. Ying for yang. And he, my special one, learnt to fly and swim, to talk and write, to kiss and kill. The void in me seemed to ebb and was filled with a strange feeling.

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Is this what love felt like? To be able to look at something with only pride, not a bit of envy.

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But the elation was short-lived. The reports showed the cracks clearly. The blues were turning cold greys while the greens rotted from the inside. And he, the messiah of the mess, looted and plundered for greed. He turned everyone into his slaves. Creatures his food, thunder his power, words his weapons. As though eight billion of him wasn't enough, he made another billion of him. In mud and wood and gold and some in blue ticks. He called them me and waged wars incessantly.The impudence. I took the best of me to create him. And I met the worst of me through him.

“Let there be no Gods” I snapped.

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And so it was. The idols crumbled, money lost all meaning, blue ticks vanished, and he forgot me. All in a snap. Order was restored.  It was all good.

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I watched him as he woke up from a dreamless night into the first Ggodless day. A new day, where churches and temples were just buildings. Where lands knew no borders nor seas any owners. He felt nothing amiss. He opened his eyes and saw her. He felt a primal hunger filling him. She startled and woke up to his eyes brimming with lust. Lust can be returned with only two things. Lust or fear. And the fear in her eyes was his aphrodisiac. He knew no god, but inside her he found one. And he built the first temple to his phallus.

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He found a god in his sword that drew his enemy’s blood, and another in his art that earned a brother’s awe and yet another in his beauty that bestowed a lover’s warmth. He found a god in things he feared and things that made him feared. I killed the me in him. But I forgot I was another story he created.

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Let there be no gods. Let there be no gods. I snap. Then I snap again.