by Ian Newton
Chapter 20
The Illusion of Control
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“Sometimes at the beginning, we can’t imagine the end. And sometimes at the end, we can’t remember the beginning.”
Andrew Weaver
The foundational strategy used to save Colesco was quickly adapted and enhanced for each new challenge. By documenting their strategic solutions, the citizens created something akin to a playbook and began combining them.
By the end of their fifth campaign, they had successfully relocated almost twenty thousand people in a single day.
With nothing to limit them except their own creativity and determination, the City began growing exponentially. In the seven months since Colesco, and just before the birth of Marie Erynn Elbe, the City census reached one hundred and ten thousand.
Outside the City of Light, a second city, the City of Hope was founded for those who had the courage to live within it. It too was growing quickly, bringing challenges within its sprawling border that seemed all too easily overcome by the efforts of the citizens.
In this time of limitless possibilities, it was never considered an accomplishment to become a citizen. That gift was something you could give to yourself, even if it came with a great struggle. “The challenge,” as it came to be known, was to exemplify the benefits of a virtuous world and the inward and outward perspective needed to cross into the City of Light.
Rising to “the challenge” was demonstrated through the honesty of mentorship. Anyone who knew they needed to change and wanted to change, could be mentored. The key to being mentored and hence the key to mentoring, as the citizens had deduced, was not in explaining how to change, but in demonstrating what it was to be changed.
Walking into the City of Light with someone for the first time was the real job of a citizen. It was rewarding in itself to watch each new person come home.
After stripping the populace from every king, queen and city state for the past five years, the citizens had begun their sixth year with a bold new strategy. With more than half a million citizens, their new goals were based on geographic areas, with the intent of sweeping huge regions.
Jacob, Andrew, and Kaya all took turns flying the Lady Marie to every corner of the globe, twenty-four hours a day. There was no scheduled downtime. If they were not on “ship duty” as they called it, they were on “logistics,” transporting people and materials with their staffs twenty-one hours a day. Even when they were scheduled to “meet and greet” at the gates, they were asked to multi-task with their staffs. Even Marie was putting in ten hours a day by the time she was six.
With a support team that just kept growing and a strategy involving everyone, even their most ambitious goals were running ahead of schedule.
In what became an annual celebration of the City’s rebirth, every citizen far and wide would come home for two weeks every year. Kaya, Andrew, Jacob and even Marie would use their gift of “perspective voice”, as it had come to be known, to review the prior year’s accomplishments and reset the ongoing agenda of the citizens.
With preparations underway for the seventh annual Homecoming, the City was a flurry of activity. Andrew was with Marie in the fields as the daily crops were emptied into both of their staffs; reappearing in distant lands for use by the citizens and their ever-growing flock. Marie liked watching the vegetables regrow after being picked. It was truly amazing, even if you’d seen it a hundred times.
Kaya was on “meet and greet” at all three gates and Jacob had just returned with the Lady Marie. Tonight was the opening ceremony and the excited crowds entering the City were starting to overwhelm Kaya.
“I could use some help on meet and greet,” she called to Andrew, Jacob, and Marie.
“We’ll be right there Mom,” Marie thought back as the last of the apples rolled into her staff.
“Let’s fly Daddy,” she said to Andrew, taking his hand and lifting into the air.
“All right sweetheart, but we should hurry. Your mom doesn’t usually ask for help. Jacob,” Andrew thought, “Jacob, we’ll take the east, you go west. All right?”
“Got it,” he confirmed. “This place is packed!”
Andrew and Marie were en route to the east Fountain when the Beacon went out.
There was a gasp heard throughout the City and everyone everywhere stopped.
“What does it mean?” Marie asked, but before Andrew could answer an ominous sound started coming from the top of the half-spire.
Andrew focused his mind, and he and Marie disappeared and reappeared above the half-spire with a “pop”. A second later, Kaya and Jacob appeared next to them.
They watched as individual crystal blocks appeared with a loud “pop” and made a sharp clicking sound as they were set into place. The half-spire was growing at an alarming rate and Marie asked again, “What does it mean?”
With all eyes on the growing spire, only those outside the City seemed to notice the outer walls slowly sinking into the ground. It wasn’t until the shrinking archways threatened to crush people that they screamed, making those around them turn and take notice.
The stone archways disappeared, and the once towering outer and inner walls of the City of Light were gone.
Andrew, Kaya, Marie and Jacob all held hands, forming a tiny line hovered just above the growing spire.
Far below ground, in a small chamber at the very base of the spire, Father had shrunk Himself to miniature proportions. He stood in front of a single block of crystal, the doorway of the spire, the only place in existence He had never been and couldn’t go.
High above, the window frame atop the spire was completed, the last block clicked into place and Father reached for the doorway. As it opened, He focused on a singular connection to the past.
Andrew, Kaya, and Jacob were floating above the very first Kingdom watching Marcia and her Travelers approach. In His timeless connection between past and future, He spoke to His heroes in a detached voice, knowing all too well what obstacles lay ahead.
“Time is an odd thing for those who live within it, and while you may never truly understand my words you should each know you have already succeeded, the doorway is open.”
As Father moved into the doorway, time rippled. The effect was just enough to be noticed by those who had traveled through it before and a fraction of a second later, as Father’s essence was removed from the universe, time stopped.
The barrier between the doorway and the universe of his creation felt cold. It pulled at his body and mind, leaving him slightly disoriented. “That’s new,” he thought, blinking several times as his eyes adjusted to the dimly lit hallway. His feet were bare, as they always were, and he scrunched his toes into the plush red carpet running out in front of him. Glancing over his shoulder at the oversized, metal door, he realized he was someplace new for the first time.
The long, wide hallway was made of the same stone as the City, and he stood scrunching his toes into the carpet and admiring the space. Its tapered ceiling arched into a point high above, and the decorative wall sconces brought forth a soft, comforting light. On either wall, over-sized frames were hung at odd intervals. He couldn’t see what had been framed from his place at the end of the hall, so he stepped closer.
The first frame he came to was almost as tall as he was and slightly wider than his shoulders. It was made of a lovely burled wood and was double matted with a subtle blue and green material. “That’s just wonderful,” he said aloud, admiring the way the frame and matting pulled out the colors of the slowly rotating view of Earth.
Even from a distance, the blue of the atmosphere and the even deeper blue of the salty oceans played against the inky black of space. The slowly drifting continents made him pause and think back to their creation.
“Still my favorite,” he whispered, looking farther into the frame at
all the original planets.
Off to the right, a gold plaque caught his eye. It read, “Best Planet.”
His forehead wrinkled in thought as he turned toward the opposite wall. Walking to the next frame, he wondered who or what was actually behind his mysterious little door.
Invoking his powers was useless, and by his own account, he was now quite simply, human. While the soles of his feet enjoyed the soft carpeting, his piercing blue eyes traced the simple ring of a circle captured within the black metal frame. Intrigued, he put his nose right up to the glass and stared intently at the minuscule filaments used to create the seemingly solid black line. At the twelve o’clock position he found the beginning and smiled.
As if it were a lullaby, he started softly singing the endless strand of numbers, “3.14159265358.” Pulling back from the picture he kept humming the sequence as he read the gold plaque. “Best Non-Repeating Algorithm.”
“It’s just a circle,” he said playfully, thinking of all the work he’d put into it back in the very beginning. “Congratulations circle,” he said, giving the picture a wink, “you’re a winner.”
Father turned and crossed the hallway again only to see his favorite creature staring back at him from within the frame. “Hello my friend,” he said, bowing to himself in the mirror. “We’ve come a long way together you and me.”
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” his reflection replied.
Father smiled at himself, and asked, “End of the hallway?”
“They’re all waiting for you,” the reflections answered.
“Who’s there?”
“Knock, knock?” the reflection answered playfully.
“Very funny,” said the man and his reflection in perfect synchronicity. “I’m sure there will be time for these pictures later,” he told himself as the reflection winked back.
“Good, because I don’t want to miss anything,” he said, turning from the mirror and facing the end of the hall. “Thank you me.”
“You’re welcome, now get out there and enjoy your big show.”
He glanced at the plaque on the wall. It read, “The God we’ve all been waiting for.”
“Let’s get this party started,” Father said, putting one foot in front of the other.
To his right, a platypus played in a shallow stream behind the picture frame. To his left, a row of small frames lined the wall. He noticed lightning in the first frame, a golfer in the second, a snowstorm in the third, then the sound of applause started up.
A bright light shined across the end of the hallway from another room, the applause got louder, and as he stepped into the blinding blue-white Light, he was introduced by a man over the speakers.
“Now joining us on stage is the God you’ve all been waiting for,” the voice announced as the applause reached a fevered pitch. Father stepped out onto the small stage and heard, “Appearing in his favorite form, a man who prefers to be called Father, the creator of his own universe, the omnipresent being who just finished his first City of Light, please welcome Father!!”
Father held up a welcoming hand and waved to a crowd he couldn’t see.
Coming toward him was a man. A human being dressed in a blue suit, white collared shirt and a blue and red tie. His arms were spread wide, and they embraced.
“Welcome home,” the man whispered in Father’s ear. “I’m glad you made it.”
“Come on over to the couch,” the man said to the crowd and Father as he pulled him farther onto the stage.
“Where are we?” Father asked over the applause.
“Come on, you’re going to love this,” the man said reassuringly. “It’s your first time here, everyone wants to meet you, and there’s loads to talk about.”
With spotlights following him from above, Father walked to a green fabric couch next to an oversized desk.
“Sit, sit, please, sit and relax,” the man coaxed, walking around to the other side of the desk.
Father sat down followed by the man in the suit. The crowd behind the lights began to settle down, and the lighting started to change.
Father looked out over an audience of several hundred beings. Some of them were balls of light, some had beaks, others had tentacles, many of them didn’t have anything resembling a face, and not a single one of them looked human.
“Where am I?” Father asked. “And who are you and what is all this?”
The man smiled reassuringly, and his blue-gray eyes twinkled under the stage lights. “All of this,” he said, sweeping his hand across the stage and audience, “All of this is for you. You finished a City my boy, your very first one. Congratulations!”
Applause and strange celebratory noises erupted from the audience.
“All these Gods,” he said, motioning toward the audience, “They’ve all done the same thing at least once. You’re in a very exclusive group now, and we’re all expecting great things.”
The man leaned across his desk toward Father, and said, “Lean in. Let me show you.”
The audience was waiting for this part, it was always a crowd favorite, and they watched intently as the barely visible Light flickered between the man’s fingertip and Father’s forehead.
Instantly, Father was transported to a warm tropical beach. His toes sank into the smooth grains of white sand as breaker waves played their musical songs all the way down the scalloped coastline.
The man in the suit was next to him, but he was wearing the robes of the Kingdom, the same ones Father wore.
“Getting you up onto the stage is really just fun for everyone, including me,” he explained. “You’re not a child, I‘m not a talk show host and this time together is what this is really all about.”
“Thank you,” Father said, scooping up a handful of the warm sand. “It was all a bit patronizing,” he observed, watching the sand trickle out between his fingers.
“Which one of these is mine?” Father asked, looking at the dusty white residue on his hand.
“It’s here,” the man said, holding out his hand and showing Father a single grain.
Father held out his hand, and the man tipped the single grain into it.
After a long silence, Father asked, “Why?”
“Because someone always needs to make sand.”
“Your sand is different than mine,” Father said, looking into the infinitely wise eyes of his creator.
“Your very best beach is called Earth. Your very best sand is humanity. We both make sand.”
“Am I good sand?” Father asked.
“You’re a promising grain on a large beach,” the man offered, clapping Father on the back.
“Let’s walk,” the man offered warmly, “and please, call me God.”
As they walked down the beach side by side, the waves occasionally rolled up over their ankles making them pause. Father scooped a tiny shell out of the water and tossed it back.
“Is it too much for you?” God asked.
“I don’t know,” Father replied, looking out across the water. “It’s not what I expected. It’s just another…,” he trailed off as his thoughts wandered. “It’s just an endless circle.”
“The door didn’t take you where you expected. The path doesn’t end where you thought it would. The point of the journey is not to arrive,” he said optimistically.
“I feel small,” Father said, looking down at the sand. “Not an insignificant kind of small, just an ordinary kind of small.”
“How you change is up to you,” God said, completing the thought occupying Father’s mind.
“What happens now?”
“I take my finger off your head, and we go back and finish the show.”
“After the show, do I ever come back?”
“Absolutely!” God said enthusiastically. “Every time a City is completed you get to sit in th
e audience and watch the show, but you only get to come on stage when you complete a City. It’s a big deal, a major accomplishment.”
“What if it never happens again?”
God put his arm around Father’s shoulders and hugged him as they walked. “Then your just ordinary sand and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Unless you’re the sand,” Father observed.
“We’ll talk more after the show. Try to look at everything that’s about to happen as a learning opportunity. If you can do that, you’ll be well on your way to completing your next group of Cities.”
Before Father could react, God was pulling his hand away and sitting back down behind his desk. Father stared blankly at the crowd.
“Hey, new guy,” one of the beings called out from the front row. “You didn’t step on my grain of sand did you?!”
The crowd laughed and made silly gestures toward the stage, but it was all in fun. After all, it wasn’t every day an omnipotent being sat speechless on a stage next to his creator, struggling to come to terms with reality.
Father looked at the multi-tentacled, light blue creature in the front row and rolled his wrist and hand in a formal, little gesture of acknowledgment as he announced, “My humble apologies your eminence, but we visited the top of a high mountain where only one grain of sand was on display. Yours must be down on a beach somewhere with all the other ordinary sand. Not to worry, I’m sure it’s still safe right where you left it.” He grinned and gave the creature an over-emphasized wink.
The audience exploded with all manner of comical chortling noises, and God smiled broadly from behind his desk, applauding the exchange. Even the creature with tentacles playfully acknowledged the masterful execution of Father’s comeback.
The audience lights dimmed, the stage lights came back up, and a huge mountain appeared, hovering atop the stage. The image zoomed in on the massive mountain until they were at its very peak. The zoom continued until individual rocks could be seen and finally, a tiny golden plate came into focus. Zooming into the dish a single grain of white sand became visible, and the zoom just kept on going until the grain was as large as a mountain. The audience was clearly enjoying the build-up, and Father had already accepted the moment for what it was, and what it wasn’t.
When the zoom finally stopped, God asked the audience, “Would you like to go in and take a look around?”
After a unanimous explosion of enthusiasm, they zoomed deeper into the tiny grain of sand. Everything turned white, then everything went black, and they entered the infinitely large, completely unique, breathtakingly beautiful, impossibly strange and staggeringly detailed universe of Father’s creation.
“Would you mind taking us on a tour?” God asked.
“It would be my pleasure.”
“Just think it, the rest will happen for you.”
“Easy enough,” Father said, looking at the three-dimensional image hovering above the stage.
“Can we bring the lights down by eighty percent please?” Father asked, and the room darkened. “Yes, that’s much better, thank you.”
“Welcome to my universe everyone,” he said to the audience. The scene on the stage rippled as Father navigated across time. “Let’s go back to the beginning shall we?” he asked, bringing them closer to and finally into the center of an impossibly dense, incredibly bright pin-point of light.
“This is what I had to work with!” he joked. “This is the third time I’ve crammed it all back into a single place and started over. Give me just a fraction of a second and I’ll unpack it for you,” he said playfully, pulling their view out of the point of light as it exploded.
“I call this a Big Bang, and I’m sure I don’t have to tell any of you, this is where the really fun stuff happens.
This time around I made gravity the dominant force,” he explained as they watched everything expand. “It gave me a nice structure to work with, and it’s really a lot of fun to add mass to things.
There’s a lot going on here,” he said, speeding up time, “but I won’t exhaust you with the details. I think we all know what it takes to make the particles play with each other.”
The audience laughed, knowing just how challenging and rewarding “Planck time” could be.
The scene rippled again as Father brought them to the edge of a spiral galaxy littered with stars. “I thought I’d finished this galaxy ages ago, then I noticed this empty pocket in one of the outer arms. It seemed like it was missing something. My gravity was complaining about a lack of mass in the area and so,” he narrated, taking them into the area where Earth would be, “I decided to fill it.
It’s really just a tiny space, but I wanted to give it something special. I wanted to make a home for my favorite little people, but it needed to be more than what I’d made before,” he said, pausing for a moment of self-reflection.
“What I’d created before,” he said, looking far off into the distance and stroking his white beard. “What I’d created before was perfect, but it never worked out. It never changed into something more, it never evolved into something better. All of my previous attempts at everything were flawed in a way I didn’t understand. I could see and feel the problem, but I couldn’t figure out how to fix it. How to control it. How to make it better.”
The audience was enthralled, they knew they couldn’t afford to miss a single word.
God was reclining in his black, padded chair. His eyes were closed, and he listened without preconception to every word of wisdom flowing from their remarkable guest.
“That’s when I did something that never actually made sense until, until…well until right now,” he said, sounding very far away. “I made a planet that would never be perfect. I designed it to never stop moving and changing. I created non-repeating algorithms to churn even the smallest of items. Every action and reaction would be unique, virtually unrepeatable.” He was smiling now, thinking back to his inspiration. “It would either self-destruct or somehow reach a quasi-state of equilibrium. But even that would be unpredictable.”
Hovering above the stage in Father’s empty workspace, the playthings of a creator were quickly assembled.
While the pieces and parts of the new planet were blended together, Father displayed his endless series of infinitely long equations. These works of art were already driving complex quantum mechanics into a chaotic harmony. With chaos in play, a tumultuous ball of molten mayhem grew into its final mass and Father gave it a single push.
As the little glowing orb took to its path, Father sighed.
“That was the last time I touched it,” he said, gazing at his newborn creation. “I gave it everything I had.”
Everyone was on the edge of their seat. Every word was a gift. This was the best show most of them had ever seen! When Father paused there was an uncontrollable need to applaud, to thank, to recognize the achievement so very, very few ever happened upon. But God held up his hand, silently commanding everyone not to move, not to twitch, not to even think loud thoughts, because this was it. This was the lesson that could not be taught.
Father tugged at his beard as millions of years passed by in seconds. “I just watched,” he said, as the little planet cooled and changed. With a dark, murky atmosphere beginning to surround the world, he said, “It did things I didn’t really like. It did things I didn’t really want. It changed in ways that made me not want to even look at it.” And they watched as the single landmass on the planet broke into multiple pieces, each drifting a different way.
“Chaos,” he announced in disgust. “Perfectly ordered chaos. What a mess,” he added, zooming in on one of the many active volcanoes covering its surface. “I knew my people couldn’t live here. I knew I had once again tried and failed, but I didn’t know why.”
He continued showing them all manner of cataclysmic events like tornadoes, fifty-foot tidal waves, hurricanes, a
nd tidal pools filled with sulfuric acid. “That’s when I gave up on Earth and put some non-sentient lizards down there. I filled it up with other crazy ideas, but not with my people. They wouldn’t survive down there, and I knew it.”
The image above the stage flickered and went out. Father turned away from the stage and looked at God. “How horrible is all this?” he asked. “Do you really want me to keep going?”
Looking into the audience, God asked, “More?”
The audience went crazy!
“All right,” Father sighed, “I just don’t want to give anybody the wrong idea about all this. Earth was a mistake,” he said, making the planet flicker back onto the stage.
Playing to the role of host, God asked, “Why did you put your humans there? What made you do it?”
Father stood up and took off his robe. Turning around, he said, “My form, the one I’m in right now, is a male human being. It’s a fragile body that will break or leak with little provocation. It wears out quickly, and it always needs food and water.” Putting his robe back on and sitting down, he told them, “It’s only got a little bit of hair, making it’s easy to get too cold or too hot. In short, it’s fragile, and it’s temporary.
I’ve been making humans for millions of years. They appeal to me. I like them, and I’ve gotten really good at making them smart, creative and resourceful. Sort of the way I see myself.” The screen showed all manner of humanity and human civilizations as he narrated. “What I never really tried with them was what I just showed you with the planet Earth.
I never let them live in chaos. I never made them survive without the basic ingredients. Things like intelligence, food, water, hope, and lots of other little things. I thought all those things were necessary and because of the way I made them,” flickering above the stage were scenes of brutality, war, destruction, cruelty, and death. All inflicted by one human on another. “Because of the way I made them,” he said, acknowledging the heinous acts, “something always went wrong.”
The image flickered again, and they watched a meteor smash into the beautiful planet Earth. “With all sorts of chaos built into this whole solar system…well, there went the existing population.” And they watched as the atmosphere clouded over.
“Even though my Earth was failing, I still loved it. And even though my humans always turned out horribly, I still loved them too.”
The scene faded to black, and Father said, “That’s when it happened. That’s when I realized whatever I was trying so hard to create would never be more than what I created because it never had the chance to grow. It never struggled to survive. It never worked to become more because it didn’t have to. The perfection I had created was surrounded by disappointment, all because of me.”
God proactively called for silence and the audience struggled to comply.
“That’s when I finally looked at the Earth from a different perspective. That’s when I realized just how special it really was. It wasn’t perfect, it would never be perfect, and that’s why I loved it. That’s what gave it the chance to be more than what I had created.
What happened next was just another silly experiment. I never expected anything to come of it, but I knew I had to try.”
The stage flickered again, and the image of a male and female human appeared. They looked like Father, but younger. Their eye’s had a natural spark of intelligence, and they stood tall on two feet.
Then Father slowly changed them. They got shorter, they stooped over, their heads got smaller, they got harrier, and when he was done, they didn’t really look human at all. Even the spark in their eyes was almost gone.
“This is what I put on Earth. I sprinkled them around and changed the skin color a little, but this was their starting point,” he paused, “I guess it was my starting point too.”
After the guests in the audience had left, Father and God sat on the long, green couch talking.
“I’ve got to hand it to you,” God said, putting his hands behind his head. “That was one of my favorite shows ever. You really surprised everyone, especially the part at the end.”
“You mean when I told them it was ‘game on’?”
“Game on,” God laughed, “Yes, I loved that part.”
“They seemed surprised you were giving me five Cities. Is that more than usual?” Father asked.
“Nobody’s ever gotten more than four after their first City. But nobody’s ever had five worlds with five evolving species worthy of a City. At least not right after their first time here.”
“So each time one gets finished, do I get more?”
“Only if you have a place to put them.”
“How long have you been making sand?” Father asked.
“Long enough to know good sand when I see it,” God said, resting his hands on his lap. “And what kind of question is that anyway? Time is something you built into your universe, it’s not even a real thing.”
“I was just fishing,” Father thought aloud, “It’s something I learned from my humans. What happens to the City on Earth and to my heroes?”
“That’s up to you,” God said, pointing at Father. “It’s yours to do with as you please.”
“Interesting,” Father mused to himself.
God smiled at Father, and said, “Some of your experiments and mistakes were really fun to watch.”
“That’s not nice,” Father said, pretending to be offended. “I was experimenting.”
The more God thought about the bloopers they had watched during the show, the bigger his smile got. Finally, because couldn’t keep it in anymore, he started laughing out loud.
“A trillion copies of Earth?!” he proclaimed with pure joy. His whole body was shaking with laughter, and he blurted out, “And the last few you made,” he said, barely able to say the words because he was laughing so hard. “That poor man was struck by lightning seven times,” he gasped for air, and shouted, “Seven! And the identical snowflakes,” he cried out with tears running down his cheeks. He fell sideways onto the couch holding his belly with both hands, and cried, “The repeating face thing, that was excellent!” The couch shook in rhythm with his convulsive laughter.
Father pushed him in fun, and said, “I didn’t know anyone was watching! Maybe it was so random it happened a few times. You don’t know.”
“Yes,” God managed to say between gasps, “Yes, I do know.”
“Poor Roy,” Father said, sounding sad. “Do you think I should send him a card?”
God was laughing so hard he rolled off the couch.
“Dear Roy Sullivan,” Father dictated. “I’m sorry about the lightning thing, my bad. Your friend in high places, God.”
“Stop it!” God yelled with delight.
“P.S.,” Father continued, “Please apologize to the wife for me.”
“I can’t breathe,” God whispered.
“Dear Jacqueline Gagne.”
“Please!” he managed to cry out between sobs of pure delight. “I can’t take it.”
“Even though you made ten ‘hole in one’ shots in less than four months, you’re not a very good golfer. I’ll try harder next time on my non-repeating algorithms. Thanks for understanding, your friend God.”
Little sobbing noises and occasional snorts came from the floor as God shook with spasms of comical ecstasy.
“All right, last one,” Father chuckled. “Dear Nancy Knight.”
God was pounding on the stage with his fist.
“Sorry about those two identical snowflakes. I think my quantum mechanics were a little off. Can we just keep this between us? The creator of all things, God.”
“Stop,” God called out. “My stomach hurts.”
By this time the laughter had spread to Father and the two kept on laughing even after God had managed to crawl back onto the couch. E
very time they made eye contact the giggles would start up, and they just fell apart all over again.
“A platypus,” God whispered. His eyes were puffy, his cheeks were wet, and he patted Father on the shoulder. “Thank you. That was exquisite. I needed that.”
“I’m glad I got your sense of humor,” Father said warmly. “All of this would be overwhelming if I couldn’t laugh at myself.”
“If you take it all too seriously,” God said, giggling and wiping off his cheeks for the fourth or fifth time, “if you can’t have fun as the omnipotent god of your very own universe, you’re doing it wrong.”
The two men talked until there wasn’t anything else to say, and as God opened the doorway back to Father’s universe, he said, “I’ll see you again before you know it, and don’t try to make it back onto the stage. Just let it happen.”
“Thank you,” Father said, as they embraced one last time. “Thank you for the imperfection.”
“Remember,” God whispered secretly into Father’s ear, “control is just an illusion. Keep experimenting, keep smiling, and keep coming back.”
Just as he stepped into the doorway, Father looked back at God, and said, “Game on!”
~The End~
My Team of Heroes
The following brave souls rolled up their sleeves and cleared more than a few nights and weekends to edit, proof read and generally mark up what use to be a difficult to read collection of ideas and visualizations. Through this process, each of them has brought something to me that I did not or could not see at the time.
The difficult, frustrating, humbling and ultimately very rewarding journey from dream to written story would not have been possible without their help.
Thank you all, I am forever grateful to each of you.
The following brave souls rolled up their sleeves and cleared more than a few nights and weekends to edit, proofread and contribute to this project. Each of them has brought something to me that I did not or could not see at the time.
The difficult, frustrating, humbling and ultimately very rewarding journey from dream to written story would not have been possible without their help.
Thank you all, I am forever grateful to each of you.
Elizabeth Meith
Gwynn Newton
Marcia Adams Ho
Finnigan the Great
Dennis Stephenson
Amy Cathers
Elana Memke
Molly Spurgeon
Michelle Meith
Suzie Bottjer
Lynn Bryant
Sonya Joynes
Jim Ramsey
The Book Club
Duncan “The Book Guy”
James Hoover
Kyle Schroer
Pam Mathews
About the Author
About the Author
Ian Newton lives with his amazing wife on the Kitsap peninsula in Washington. He is a pharmacist, photographer, stargazer, artist, inventor, avid outdoorsman and father to three sons. He is currently working on the second half of this story. The title of second book is “Beyond the Hero’s Chamber” and it will be available in the summer of 2016.
He’s also a dreamer, but he’s not the only one.
If you want a hardcover copy of this book, just email me at
[email protected]
About the Illustrator
About the Illustrator
Tucked away in a nondescript Southern California home, Marcia Adams Ho illustrates a world full of color. She creates art with detail that both draws the eye in and gives the author’s story a magical reality while keeping the reader’s imagination alive.
Marcia graduated with a BFA from Art Center College of Design and began her career as a background artist in animation. She currently freelances as an illustrator and produces fine art paintings in her studio. More of Marcia’s work can be viewed at marciaadamsho.com.
Endnotes
i Lyrics from the song Chain Lightning by RUSH, from the 1989 album Presto, lyrics by Neil Peart.
ii Lyrics from the song Natural Science by RUSH, from the 1980 album Permanent Waves, lyrics by Neil Peart.
iii (Adapted from) Lyrics from the song Closer to the Heart by RUSH, from the 1977 album A Farewell to Kings, lyrics by Neil Peart and Peter Talbot.