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And so the Pantheon gathered in Heaven to create the Ultimate World. They had some popular music from ancient times playing in the background, and a cozy room full of divine food and drink. Some wanted to have something to smoke, but that was not done. "You know what happened the last time you had a smoke," the Goddess of Life said, and pointed to the Sahara on Earth. The Gods sat at a round table and had their keyboards ready for Creation - creation with a capital C, it wasn't the daily work they had gathered for. They had the newest gear surrounding them, and some fresh daemons put in the software for good measure. "Why should it be a ROUND table we're sitting at?" asked the God of Oddities. "Why is it so traditional to put people at a round table, why can't it be a rectangle or triangle for a while? I mean, next thing we do is probably create a round world, or worse, a sphere!" "What's wrong with a sphere?" said the others, and started to type the parameters and sinusfunctions for such a world. At least they had some experience with that and knew it would work out in the end. "Anyway, it doesn't matter what form it has, but what happens on it," the Goddess of Life said. "And size does matter," the Goddess of Love said. "So how big..." "Don't start that again," the others said. "You know how boring Jupiter is after you messed with the coordinates. Let's first discuss what we will put on this world, and then we'll calculate the size of it." The Goddess of Love smiled. "So you all DO confess size does matter in the end?" "Yes, but only in the end," the God of Fire said, and lit the candles on the table. The God of Oddities grumbled. "It is not very orginal to start with light, guys." "There ARE ladies here, young man," the Goddess of Life said. "And besides-" She stopped midsentence as the God of Chaos just released a worm in the system and destroyed the settings of the project. He grinned at his companions and pointed at his screen. "A virus, the first life in our project. But at least, it ain't compatible with my hardware." The others cursed like only gods can curse. They cleaned out their harddisks and typed the data again. Hurried now, they didn't notice the typos they made. Not that they would notice anyway... they usually were too content with the contents of the worlds to mind about the small errors. Like the weather in Albion had been a typo. Not to mention the Plague... or Aids. Whose error that was no one knew, but when it was mentioned many of them threw a dark glance at the Goddess of Love. "So then, we're all cleaned up, now let's continue with our core business," the God of Fire said cheerfully. He shoved aside some stained cds and funny mousepads, placed a large sheet of paper on the round table and handed out some pencils. The God of Art gazed at it. "What is THIS suppose to mean? I mean, we're not going for the traditional hand drawn world creation, are we?" "We've got a universe of highspeed hardware available and all you give us is pencil and paper?" the Goddess of Hardware complained. She threw the pencil that was given to her on the table. "I'm not in for that!" "At least it is compatible," someone said. But nobody listened. They all pointed at the spot the pencil had made as it landed on the paper. It was a small, black hole, somewhere at the center of the paper. "Look what you've DONE!" the Goddess of Love said. "It's a black hole!" "Maybe we should make it the center of our galaxy," the God of Fire said. "Too traditional," the God of Oddities said, "Would be too boring. Besides, I thought we were gathered to create a new world, and not an entire new galaxy." They stood around the table, looking over the screens of their computers, and pondered the black hole. "I reckon..." the Goddess of Love said. Then she fell silent again. Thought. Reconsidered her words, foreseeing something she wouldn't like. "I reckon we need a good 3D engine to make this piece of paper into a sphere, would we?" "What's wrong with a flat world?" the God of Oddities jumped up. "I won't be working on a flat world again, all those people falling off the rim isn't, like, me! I really don't feel comfortable with that." The Goddess of Love sat back in her chair and looked up dark from under her cute brown eyelashes. She could be taken for the Goddess of Death at moments like this. "Spheres are boring!" "Flat is stupid!" "Spheres are SO mainstream!" "As if flat ain't mainstream after what Pratchett did to it!" "At least spheres got a nice design!" "Oh yeah? It's nothing but kitsch, those f^%&%$ spheres!" "Flat lacks any bloody logic!" "We could consider a pipe shaped world," some one said, but was not heard in the fuzz. CDs went flying over the table, a keyboard hit a coffee mug in midair, and the God of Chaos was really enjoying himself. After a while, they were tired fighting and gathered around the table again. The God of Fire had cleaned up the mess, some had done some cooking, and all was quiet again. "Hope they don't make a myth out of this," the Goddess of Hardware muttered. "I'm deeply ashamed of myself..." "If we make the people of this world-to-be the image of ourself, the world will be destroyed in no time, I think. Better rethink that concept." "We HAD a concept for people?" the Goddess of Love gasped. "No, we didn't, but we should have," the Goddess of Life said. "I'd say we just use the concept had worked out earlier, that of the Neanderthaler, if possible." The Goddess of Hardware got the back-up from Earth on her screen and showed the concept. "That is © YHWH -4000! You cannot do that in this multiverse! There are natural laws against that!" "Well, as long as it doesn't know it doesn't matter, would it?" "Oh it would matter, and YHWH will know for sure... it knows all, anybody knows that, it's in the Bible!" "And if it doesn't know, I'll tell," the God of Fire said. "So we don't steal anything and come up with our own creative ideas, is that understood?" So they sat down again, and thought. They had some more food and drinks to fuel the process. They doodled on the paper with the pencils and wrote some gibberish in COBOL. "I think I have a writers block," the Goddess of Love said finally. "I just cannot think of anything creative. My mind has gone all empty..." "So has mine," the Goddess of Life mourned. "We might cross some existing or extinguished animals, YHWH wouldn't mind a new creation like that, I reckon. In a way, it is creative to put all this DNA together and make it work in a whole new way." "Like, cross what animals? I think that is boring. A mouse sized elephant, a cat with fins, it's so predictable, and YHWH already had that stupid platypus made up." The Goddess of Life had had it. Tired, she laid back in her comfortable chair and looked at her colleagues. "Why do we never come up with anything new?" "I KNOW something new!" The God of Oddities looked rather excited among his energy drained companions. "It's really brilliant! Amazing! They will show it in tell sell of Valhalla centuries after now! It's so simple that I ask myself why nobody has thought of it before!" He jumped up and down now. "Don't you guys want to hear it?" "There are ladies..." the Goddess of Life said, bored. "We're waiting..." the God of Chaos said. "What if we make a world with more than two sexes in the intelligent species? Now? What do you say?" "I say it's done before... And that is still under copyright." The God of Art turned to the drinks and snacks again, not really intrested. "I know what you're all thinking. But no. That had only three sexes, I was thinking among the lines of seventy, eighty... maybe even more." "Done before...." The God of Art yawned. "Earth. System of Sol. Seventy-four sexes they had. And boy had YHWH fun... it made them think there were only two." "It did? Really?" The God of Oddities was disappointed. Maybe they were making fun of him. But the Goddess of Hardware showed him the backup of Earth's design. "Oh. Naughty. So then.... we should think of something else..." "By the way, that design sucks," the God of Art said. "Humans are really bad designed. They get sick, fall ill, break their bones and die much too easy. And then I do not even mention the looks they have, oh man.... it really hurts the eye." "Well, at least they are compatible," the God of Chaos smiled with a satisfied smile at the thought of it. "Hello, you guys!" a voice at the window said. "I thought, it is really neat here, so I thought, I just drop by and join you lot!" He made a move to enter through the window. "There are ladies-" "What are you doing here?" The God of Fire interrupted the Goddess of Life. He looked enraged. "You're not welcome here, you haven't been invited and you're much too late to join! You should have been there when it wanted us!" "Hey, relax, I thought the more the merrier.... You're designing a world again are you? Thought about anything less mainstream than the ones you have prepared earlier?" "Could you please disappear from this room?" The Goddess of Love was playing her role as the Goddess of Death again. Although roleplaying was not her game - she meant every word she said, and kicked the God of Inspiration out of the window with her bare feet. "That cleaned up," the God of Fire said, content. He watched the God of Inspiration fall down from the Heavens. Somewhere, it would rain bright ideas. "Now we might want to continue our Quest." "WHAT?" The God of Chaos jumped to his feet and spilled his drinks over the table. "A Quest? We're not going to do a fantasy world again, are we? I'm totally fed up with dungeons and dragons and unicorns and elfs and-" "That's pronounced elves," the Goddess of Love said. "And by the way, look what you've done to the paper! You spilled your brandy all over it!" The God of Fire took a towel and tried to dry the paper with it. "Well, we could call it the Brandywine River..." "Copyright Tolkien!" they all yelled at the poor Goddess of Hardware, who crawled back in shame and into her shy, geeky self. She thought she definetely needed to read up on that Tolkien person. As soon as she had finished the other essential literature, like Hawking, Sterling, Adams, and Gibson. It was now settled the quest they had was to design the Ultimate World, and nothing else. The pantheon was quiet again, but stressed because they knew they would have arguments later on. More than that, they would be rather disappointed if they wouldn't have an argument later on. "What if we just start a continent each?" the Goddess of Love proposed. "Just take a part of the paper and start drawing, creating, and designing." She took her pencil and gave the example. "Yes, but-" the God of Chaos started to say. "It probably ain't compatible, but at least we're getting somewhere!" "No, because-" The God of Chaos was interrupted again, now by a slightly enraged Goddess of Life. "Sit down and shut up!" "All I wanted to say is that you can't have any tectonic activities the way you draw continents. And that means no earthquakes, no volcanoes, no chaos. I want a world with chaos." "Well, without tectonics those people we design might last somewhat longer. If I might recover California from your memory. And the insurance companies we had to pay..." The Goddess of Life gave him the backup of Earth. "He is right, in a way," the God of Fire said. "If we don't have tectonics, we should skip love as well." "WHAT? No love?" The Goddess was on the edge of a nervous breakdown again. "I can't live with a world without love!" She didn't mind grammar this time, paced the room, giving her rant and complained about a lack of compassion and empathy. "If you don't build in death, and leave love untouched, the people will fuck themselves off the planet," the Goddess of Hardware said. "Sorry I put it that way," she added shyly. "Love ain't sex," the God of Fire considered. "It works better including sex." "No it won't." "Yes it will." "Oh, it would if only the design is good enough and from what I've seen-" "You're a lurker, a peeper, a voyeur! Confess it! You've never really experienced a really good f-" "There are ladies here!" the Goddess of Life screamed over the brawl and the music. She took a keyboard and hit the foul mouthed God of Oddities with it. He got a bottle and flung it around, hitting random objects. There was fighting and melees. Deep below, the God of Inspiration heard lightning and saw thunder, and it confused and frightened him. He shook his head, and unfolded his jetengine. "Oh, LOOK what you've done to the paper! It's all ripped and fumbled!" The God of Art said to the God of Chaos. "It looks like a mess now." "But she nearly raped me-" "At least we have some tectonics now," smiled the lady with an extremely disturbing innocent look on her face. It was getting late and the pantheon got tired and lazy. They left the paper and the computers alone and brainstormed on the couches. "We could play it out..." "With dices, you mean? That is-" "Copyrighted, I guess. Anybody some more drinks?" "Bring some muffins, too." "I need a smoke." "Know this joke about the guy going out for cigarettes?" "If it ain't different from the other umpty times you told that joke today, yes." They went silent again and ate their muffins. "We could make a muffin shaped-" "I'll design the gerbil that will eat it." "Yawn." "Yawn too." "Let's go to bed." "Men, they only got one thing on their tiny minds..." "There are ladies... ah..." The next day, it was very early, still dark actually, and the Gods were still in bed, as the God of Inspiration sneaked into the Heavens. "What are you doing here?" a voice came out of the dark. "What? Who said that?" the God of Inspiration asked, startled. "The Goddess of Dawn said that. And what I want to know, is what you are doing here." She was standing in the dark room, eating muffins and spreading the crumbs all over the table. "Oh, I see. Kid Inspiration." She sighed. "You're never there when you are needed and if you're somewhere, you're always off topic." "Sorry, Dawn. What's that? They finally made it?" He walked over to the table and studied the paper. Studied it closely. "It is finished?" he asked the Goddess of Dawn. She shook her head. "Don't think so. They never stopped arguing about it. But it has to be finished by now. I mean, it is DAWN. Twilight. The Deadline. I should deliver this world now. We're rather short on new worlds, you know." "You could ask them..." "They are still asleep and it is time." "I think I heard someone in the bathroom..." "There you go again..." "What?" "Being off topic." "I did? Excuse me, Dawn, but there is someone..." She threw some angry glances at the God of Inspiration. Sighed. She heard the toilet being flushed. There was. Probably... "See?" The God of Inspiration grinned like evil. "Hush!" There were footsteps, some whispers, laughing. The Goddess of Dawn frowned. Then she came into action, getting her energy and divine powers, and brought the world to life in the first light of day. "I really don't like the design, with all those brandy stains and muffin crumbs and rips and wrinkles and those awful pencil sketches, the virus in the code, and you can't even navigate it," grumbled the God of Inspiration. "Shut up. At least, it ain't mainstream, and you're off topic." Related topics: |