This one is rather silly, and the perfect story for those of you who think mine are on average about 1500 words too long...

The opening popped into my head yesterday, and since I realized it was going to be a short-short one, I figured I'd bang it out and post it, getting me a bit caught it.

#38 will also be rather silly, and will be posted this weekend. Or maybe Monday depending on how time goes while travelling, and access to the tubes.

---

In The Beginning

The goddess stands on the brink holding her hands high over her head. She's naked; clothing will not even be conceived of for several millennia. She pauses for a moment, overwhelmed by a sheer sense of wonder of it all. By the sense of possibility. She is surrounded by a massive disc of dust and ice particles billions of kilometers across.

She is fighting back a grin as considers her Plan. The dust particles will coalesce into planets whose orbits will leave her people scratching their heads for centuries, spurning them on to deeper and deeper knowledge. Nudging them closer to the divine. One day their urge to Know will drive them to build ships capable of exploring the other planets she will cause to form, and later the entire galaxy. But before then they will need to learn to work together, to cast aside petty differences. They will need harmony.

She spreads her arms wider and says in a voice meant to echo across the cosmos, "Let there be light!"

"But how much light," comes a voice from behind her, "This is what I've been saying all long."

The goddess turns, trying to keep a tremble of anger out of her voice.

"We've been through this already, at least three million times."

"Three million, seventeen thousand, four hundred and twelve," says the god who came up with math.

The goddess turns around to face the assembled committee of gods.

"The amount of heat and light generated by the star is dependent upon how much mass coalesces. We've discussed this over and over. I'm ready to begin."

"But I'm still concerned about it," says the complainer, "My Rousettus spinalatus prefers the night. How many hours of night are there going to be on this planet of yours?"

"Rousettus spinalatus?" asks another god.

"Bats."

"You invented Latin just so to name your creatures?"

"'Bat' sounds so...pedestrian."

"In any case," the goddess says, rolling her eyes toward the soon-to-exist heavens, "There will be plenty of nighttime for your animals. If you'd bothered to show up for our meetings on the plant's axial tilt you would know that-"

"It was so boring though. I don't care about orbits, I care about Rousettus spinalatus, the entire order Chiroptera, really."

The goddess clenches her hands into fists. "I don't think this is the time to-"

"You know, now that we're reopening discussions I have some ideas about plate tectonics that really have some merit."

"We are not reopening discussions, we-"

"It's just that I've come up with a way to transform decaying organic matter into a useful, abundant fuel."

She shakes her head slowly.

"I think it's worth hearing him out."

The goddess turns back to the cosmic scene arrayed before her. The dust swirls in its massive arcs, needing only the slightest divine nudge to drive it into action. A mere billion years later life would begin to sprout. True life, not the simulacrums they could conjure into existence.

She sighs, creating the concept of sighing then and there. She casts her gaze far and wide as the other gods begin to argue over how many moons the planet should have, which then turns into a fight over tides.

"There must be a less crowded corner of the universe."

4 responses to "Week #37 - In The Beginning "

Sheeple wrote: Wednesday, 24 Sep 2008 07:48 haha

Erinn the Bold wrote: Wednesday, 24 Sep 2008 17:34 I dig it. Very Pratchett.

Karen wrote: Wednesday, 24 Sep 2008 21:08 Phwoar! I loved that! Typical of a man to create math, ha ha!

Debs wrote: Sunday, 12 Oct 2008 20:10 Love it!

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