by M. T. Miller
“Given what you’ve seen, I’d expect you to be less shocked,” Horace said as he turned to the barbeque grill on his right. Several pieces of chicken sizzled on it. He flipped them over with a tool, paying no heed to the Nameless’ confusion.
“If you tell me Horace is really God, I will kill you out of principle,” said the Nameless. He had had enough absurdity for a hundred lifetimes.
The host laughed. “I’m no Horace, my friend, though I did take his shape.”
“Oh,” the Nameless said. “Well, thank God for that.”
“Plenty of reasons for you to be thankful,” God said. “This is not one of them.”
“Why him, though?” the Nameless asked. “There had to have been something more… representative. Was there a reason, or did you just pick at random?”
“There’s a reason behind everything I do,” God said. “Or at least there used to be. But please, have a seat.” He pointed to the empty chair on the other side of the table. The Nameless wasn’t certain whether or not it had been there before.
“No, thanks. Unless you insist.”
“I insist on nothing,” said God. He took the deck of cards and resumed playing solitaire. “I couldn’t help but notice, you know? In that world you all created, using my power, of course, you revived nearly everyone remotely dear to you, and even some you despised.” He gave the Nameless a playful look, then resumed putting cards in their places. “Yet you didn’t revive your first friend and ally. I find that more than a little amusing, and I’d like to know why you think that happened.”
That was a matter the Nameless had given very little thought. Regardless, he knew the answer.
“I was ashamed,” he said.
“Of what, exactly?” asked God. “A lot of the people you brought back didn’t actually die due to stellar judgment on your side, you know?”
“I do,” the Nameless said. “But Horace was different. I was not only ashamed of having killed him… God. I was ashamed of everything regarding that man. Of his crimes. Of the way I mishandled him while he was alive. Of having had to associate with someone like that, and also for feeling regret for erasing him from the world.”
He weaved his fingers in front of his face, elbows propped on his end of the table. “Nothing I did was easy. But there was always some semblance of light at the end of the tunnel; some way for me to justify what I was doing. Not so with Horace. Everything about him, including me at the time, was mired in shades of grey. He was my friend, but… I do not enjoy remembering him.”
God smiled. “Which gives this chat of ours a bit more weight, I’d say. Now, for being sincere, I’ll let you ask me something.”
“Something?”
“Anything. Fire away.”
The Nameless took a second to think about all this. “Do I have a limited number of questions?”
“If you did,” God said, “now you’d be one shorter. No, Nameless, you’re not limited in any way. I don’t get that many guests, you know. Might as well make the most out of this.”
“Am I the only one to reach you?” the Nameless asked. “Others must have looked, especially the Church’s fanatics. I find it unlikely that no one had ever walked into the Mist with the explicit goal of finding you.”
“There were attempts, of course,” God said. “All inevitably lost their minds before realizing what was going on.” He grinned. “Ain’t easy being me.”
“What are you?” the Nameless asked, barely waiting for God to finish his sentence. “Of course, you are the Creator, that I understand. But what is the Creator? What made you God? What made me a god? I can keep going, but you understand my question. What stands behind this economy of faith that seems to run both this world and the one outside the Mist?”
God’s smile waned. “I don’t know what I am. Maybe I sprung from nothingness. Maybe I made myself and forgot it. Maybe someone else created me. Regardless, I exist, and that isn’t changing anytime soon.
“As for the flow of faith,” he said, “I’m afraid the answer isn’t as glamorous as you or anyone else would like to think. You’ve seen what mankind is; it’s basically a race of sentient batteries. The Earth, like it or not, is my investment. It made it, and in return it prevents me from dissipating my power with use. If I never made this world, I’d have expended myself eons ago. Without me, it would have inevitably destroyed itself. That’s about all there is to it; symbiosis on a metaphysical level.”
“What about me?” asked the Nameless. “What of all the other gods? As far as I know, we’ve spilled oceans of blood over that rock. Am I to believe you allowed this to happen when could have destroyed us with impunity?’
God’s smile returned. “You little gods are like weeds, Nameless. Whatever I do or don’t do, some wise guy always makes more of you up. Do you know how many of your kind I’ve destroyed over the course of history? That isn’t cost-effective. Far easier to sic mortals or sellout gods on you.”
The Nameless’ brow furrowed.
“I know that look,” God said. “It’s the ‘you’re an asshole’ look. Suits everyone but actual assholes. Which, regardless of what you think, Nameless, you are. You’ve killed countless mortals, both in this incarnation and your previous one, only to sustain your life. At least I offered some reward for… let’s say, good behavior.”
The Nameless leaned back against his chair. “Do not tell me there is a Heaven.”
“Of course I won’t,” God said. “That’s reserved for mortals. You, on the other hand, will go into oblivion after you expire. Jealous? You should be.”
The Nameless couldn’t help but test his luck. “I have survived complete destruction at least once. As far as we know, I may never die.”
“Have you survived annihilation?” God asked. “Because what I see here is a new entity. Sure, you’ve inherited the god Gerovit’s skills and some of his knowledge, but you are your own individual more than you are him.”
“The world reset seems to have helped,” said the Nameless. “The Baron Samedi called me a dead god, forevermore deprived of a divine spark. Imagine the look on his skull if he saw what I can do now.”
“Yes,” God said with a wry expression. “A good chunk of the Mist went into fixing you. Congratulations, I guess.”
“What is this Mist, anyway?” the Nameless asked.
“It’s a sizeable chunk of my power,” God said. “Ever packed a suitcase? You put things into it, I load up on faith. Same purpose: bring essentials while you’re on a trip.” He stared into a card on his table. It was a joker.
“So, what happened?” the Nameless asked.
“You’re gonna have to be more specific,” God said.
“It was SIM, wasn’t it?” the Nameless asked. “The bombs he detonated. In some way, this led to a release of your power.” He leaned in, waiting for God to speak. When he didn’t, the Nameless pressed his point. “You had a plan, I guess. A far-reaching one. And he foiled it in some way.”
“You know,” God said, “I could unmake you with a thought. Oh, sure, maybe another, dumber version of you would sprout from this spot in a few hundred years, but who cares? You’d be out of my hair until then.”
“And you would be sentenced to boredom,” said the Nameless.
God kept silent for almost a full minute. When he spoke again, his voice was full of regret. “It was supposed to be the culmination of everything I’d done until that point. Reward for the good ones, and a new chance for those not so exemplary. Miracles take effort, you know? They require investment. You can’t just snap your fingers and magic things into existence. Well, you can, but that’s not the way to do it. On the scale I operate on, you have to manage your input and output, else you’ll come up short.”
“Hold on,” said the Nameless. “Why reward the good and the just? I mean, I would most certainly do it, but you said yourself that the whole point of the world is to feed you. Why do you care how its denizens live? Faith is faith, is it not?”
“At first I though
t like you,” said God. “I gave the people a bunch of laws that maximized the influx of new humans, and punished transgressions severely. As time passed, though, I found myself attached to the poor sods who lived by my commandments. Next, I started caring about those who didn’t. It’s an irrational thing, I admit it, by there’s no going around it. In time, I started loving mankind, and I wanted to pay it back in some way.”
The wrinkles around God’s eyes tightened, then relaxed. Horace had them as well, but in this case they seemed much more pronounced. “I’ve revised the Holy Book many times,” God said, “and even allowed Man to experiment in various ways. Eventually, I stopped judging people based on their adherence to the intricate codes of conduct I created so long ago. ‘Be good to each other’ became the sole criteria I’d use to judge people worthy of the prize. But in the end it wasn’t enough, and I needed to do something more.”
“The Rapture?” asked the Nameless.
“If you want to call it that, sure,” God said. “It’s nothing fancy, really. I just, temporarily at the time, phased the best people out of reality. So they’d be safe while I took care of business, you know. After it was done, they would all go to their prize. As I said before, such miracles require massive expenditures of power, and one must plan ahead to the tiniest of details. But then…” God’s stare darkened. “Unforeseen things happened.”
“What things?”
“It was a simple matter,” God continued. “Man had turned to idolatry, and a bunch of minor gods had attached to this idol like parasites. Remember the Management, Nameless? Imagine the same thing, but on a global scale, and centered around the concept of what was the United States of America.”
“You are telling me the States was controlled by beings like me?” the Nameless asked.
God nodded. “From the shadows, yes. It was a convenient, and from their perspective, safe way of running the world. Most of it, anyway, and more than enough for them to grow in power over the course of centuries. And with the advent of modern technology, both their reach and grasp grew immensely. I had no choice but to act.”
A chilling breeze blew over the Nameless’ shoulder, spraying some dust over the trailer’s deflated wheels. Somehow, this dirt didn’t touch the two men, the table, or the meat at its side.
“So…” God smacked the King of Diamonds with his palm. “I struck the Great Satan down where it stood, cutting its head with one swing of my heavenly sword. My angels were to deal with whatever little messes remained. But there’s always one asshole…” He took up the joker card. “No matter how meticulously one plans, there’s always one joker who fucks it all up for everyone. And this one happened to have access to world-ending destructive potential.”
The breeze died down, but the cold seemed to remain.
“You are God,” said the Nameless. “I doubt SIM could harm you, even with nukes. Besides, could you not have planned around him?”
“I know everything that happens in the minds of those born to Earth, Nameless,” God said. “But creatures like SIM, they don’t belong there. Man created SIM, not I. Whatever goes on in that head of his will forever be a mystery to me. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even register the creation of him or of his brothers and sisters. I was completely blind to their existence.
“And no, he couldn’t injure me in any way. But what he could do is what he did do: interrupt my focus. And the shock and bewilderment of having someone—something—act outside my vision, had, for a single, crucial moment, driven my attention away from the people I phased away.”
God took a card, then drew a finger over it, causing it to disappear. “The cat doesn’t exist while it’s inside the box, Nameless. When I stopped thinking about them, they lost their shape. Those people weren’t taken; they died. Their immortal souls, if you want to call them that, won’t go to the prize. They were, effectively, deleted.”
“Once again,” the Nameless said, “could you not have re-created the lot of them? Even we were able to do that, right here in the Mist!”
“And look at how that turned out!” God said. “You can make an imitation, sure. You can make a nearly perfect imitation. But that won’t change what it is. Those people are dead, punished for their virtue, no less! And guess whose fault that is! SIM’s, yes, but also mine! Feast your eyes, Nameless; you are looking at the universe’s biggest, fattest failure!”
Some ten seconds passed before the Nameless spoke. “Are you telling me that you had quit?”
“That’s exactly what I did,” God said. “Let the world go to hell if it wants. I’m done. There’s enough juice in this Mist to last me lifetimes, and the guests just keep adding to it. In time, it might even become self-powered. Funny I didn’t think of it before, actually.”
“Wait,” the Nameless said. “So everyone who has been swallowed up by the Mist eventually develops god-like powers? Wouldn’t that diminish it instead of making it grow?”
“It would if they did it consciously,” God said. “Most go mad before they realize what they’re doing. They repeat countless versions of progressively worse realities until they completely lose their sense of self. Eventually, they simply become part of the mass. The strong ones, however, are still going. Some have created their own pocket paradises. Others are their own jailors. None of it really expends power; barring something as major as patching up your crippled essence, faith-stuff merely goes from one form to another. No loss, only gain in the long run.”
“Is that what will happen to my companions?” the Nameless asked. “Would they get unmade and become part of your… retirement plan?”
“I doubt it,” God said. “They’ll never exit this place, of course, but they’re a stubborn lot. I predict they’ll eventually diverge from each other, forming their own realities. What they’ll do with them is anyone’s guess.
“As for the one you call Divine,” God said, “I have no idea what’ll happen to that one. She spent centuries in the Dark Side, Nameless, unstuck from regular time, which makes her trek here all the more impressive. She really, really hated you. There’s no telling if she’s even capable of existing in the world of the living anymore. Best case scenario, she survives, leeching off someone else’s fantasy. Worst case, she suffocates in the next great re-creation.”
“Would you consider letting them go?” asked the Nameless. “Not Divine. She should stew in her own juices. Same goes for SIM. Annabelle too, I guess. What she’s become cannot be let out into the world.”
“The angel-eater, yes,” God said. “She’ll be quite safe here, thank you. Along with everyone else.” He smirked. “There’s no reason for me to do as you say, Nameless. I hope you understand that. You are here as nothing but amusement; a way for me to piss away my time in a more enjoyable manner. What you ask would require me to expend, and I won’t do that. No reason.”
The Nameless thought long and hard about what he was going to say. Everyone’s fates depended on it, as well as his own. Why not? he thought, repeating what he’d said to himself back in the camp. Again, he had nothing left to lose.
“Playing solitaire for an eternity must be horribly boring,” he said.
“Only for the first ten years or so,” God said. “Then it gets really bad.”
“A two player game is better than a one player game,” said the Nameless as he picked up a jack. “And in terms of excitement, nothing beats playing with stakes.”
“What are you suggesting?” God asked with a flat expression.
“A simple game,” the Nameless said. “Poker, or whatever you care for; I’ve learned them all. If I win, you expel my friends from the Mist. You detox Rush along the way; I cannot have her released only to die from withdrawal.”
God laughed. “You’re insane! I made the world and everything in it. If we played a million games, you wouldn’t beat me once.”
“Why not play me for ownership of the Mist itself, then?” asked the Nameless. “If there is truly no danger as you say, then you have nothing to lose” —he
let the jack drop over the king— “and everything to gain. It only takes a little excitement to turn a mundane thing into something of fascination and wonder. Correct me if I am wrong.”
God weighed his words. “And if I were to agree to this, then you must agree to something else.”
“Such as?”
“You will keep me company until you’ve won,” said God. “Make no mistake, Nameless, in practical terms, this means forever.”
The Nameless didn’t need more than a second to agree. He’d always been striving, working to reach the top, to take control of the system he found himself in, to protect others. But never before had he felt less in control, and at the same time so sure of the rightness of his decision. He would take this challenge, for the sake of his friends, his allies, and even his old enemies.
“Deal,” he said as he extended his hand.
God shook it with the strength of at least twenty men.
Epilogue
Standing near the window, Rush admired the swirling colors of twilight. The sky had never been the same since the Mist had dispersed. Now completely harmless, these unused specks of magic rode the lower layers of the sky, giving the days and nights random, spectacular shades. Tonight, the colors were violet and green. Tomorrow, who knows?
She lowered her gaze to the plains near the house, her attention instantly caught by the pair of children who ran around wildly. They were both as pale as she was, with hair as black as the night. Gary and Val they were called, and Rush couldn’t tell who was more difficult to handle.
I’ve been through worse, she thought as she turned away from the window, drawing the curtain. When she was little, she positively despised being supervised by her parents. Then her parents were no longer among the living, and she missed them. But her children would never suffer such a fate. She and her husband made sure that would never happen.
She approached the door to her left, opened it, and hung up a large sign. Do not disturb, it said. The kids never did what they were told, but she might as well try. She locked the door just to be certain. At the very least, it would give them both a heads up.