OPUS’ DAY?

GOD came slamming through the door and threw itself into its super-soft generic, eco, revolving, and gas-uplift chair, wafted a straggling wisp of long grey beard into its mouth and proceeded to chew.

Gabriel, viewing all this, created a soft pink pastel screen, complete with gently undulating mermaids wafting delicate sea fronds in time to some nondescript mind-soothing music that he had downloaded from the Internet.

Gabriel’s efforts were totally ignored by GOD who was absent-mindlessly making a total dog’s breakfast of his magnificent white beard.

Gabriel sighed.

Gabriel waited. The screen was still undulating; the mermaids were really pulling out all stops, trying to get GOD’s attention. GOD was completely oblivious to all the goings on and chewed and grumbled and farted and swizzled the chair it was on.

The mermaids got fed up, wound up the delicate fronds and packed them into a couple of rucksacks; flicked their tails and gave the “finger” to GOD, then stormed off the scene. They later sent the bill for their services to Gabriel via GOD’s email.

GOD SAID (in a voice of stellar shaking, stentorian, I pod-blasting tones) “LET THERE BE LIGHT!”

Gabriel sighed, “You’ve got light, and you created that last week! You silly bugger!”

“I DID?’ SAID GOD, STILL IN STENTORIAN TONES, “you’re SURE?”

“GOD! Turn that damn thing down! For “expialidocious” sake! Gabriel squealed. If he had hands, they would have been rammed in his ears. Tightly.

“Sorry,” said GOD, pulling some stray wisps of beard that had entangled round its teeth. “What ye want? Eh? Bugger off!”

“GOD, you have already created so much light that we are in very real danger of a massive explosion. I have teams out, neutralising the star systems. You cannot go around willy-nilly, waving your arms and creating. We have committees and commissions that need to evaluate every situation before you act. DO YOU UNDERSTAND, GOD! YOU SIMPLY CANNOT GO AROUND CREATING!”

GOD crumpled in its chair, which was becoming less like the all-encompassing throne that it had envisaged, the longer it sat in it.

More beard went into its mouth, more was masticated by working jaw and yellowed molars.

“GOD, look at me, look at me,” said Gabriel “look at me.” GOD looked at Gabriel. GOD found it hard to maintain eye contact with Gabriel’s screen. It shifted in its chair, humphed, hawed, grumbled and twisted some more.

“Have you finished?” Gabriel snitted “Well, let us begin.” If Gabriel could have sniffed disapprovingly, it would have be the greatest snort in the history of the galaxy!

“GOD do you know how many worlds you have created?” GOD just looked bug-eyed at Gabriel. Gabriel SNIFFED.

“You have created four thousand, seven hundred and twenty-six worlds. This is too much.”

“How many?” GOD choked, “Surely not!”20

“I repeat, 4,726. This would be acceptable but for the fact that your success rate is abysmal, according to my statistics, using the accepted coefficients, i) Stability, ii) Function, iii)Life-forms, iv) Religion.” Gabriel paused, viewing GOD with distaste. GOD knew this and was not pleased.

“Gabriel am I or am I not GOD! Supreme being!” God growled.

“You are God, you are architect and creator of all you see, but you have engineered some ill-thought and ill-executed actions. These must be corrected or there will be a meltdown and all the effort will be for nothing. You understand I am sure. This is not personal this is for the greater good." Gabriel soothed, watching as GOD settled and became less aggressive. After a slight pause, during which GOD’s beard chewing became slower and more rhythmic, Gabriel chose to re-open the discussion.

“What needs to happen now, this minute is for you to voluntarily close some of these worlds down and consolidate your abilities onto the worlds that are left, do you agree, GOD?”

“I s’pose,” GOD grumbled “But there must be some good worlds out there that I have made!”

Gabriel said nothing. The screen began scrolling very slowly, beginning with:

i) Stability: 442 have been recognised with a stable atmosphere and a reasonably stable land mass.

ii)Function: None. There has been no function applicable to any of the worlds that would have benefit to the universe as a whole.

iii) Life-forms: Only one has progressed from basic life to a self- sustaining growth.

iv) Religion: There has been a singular lack of progress in this area. In fact, only one world has any form of religion and that is the one incorporated into Life-forms.

After this piece of information was scrolled, there began a long series of tables and graphs which GOD ignored. GOD started swivelling and swinging idly in its chair.

“What’s all this then, Gabe? “ GOD grumbled, “Looks like a load of rubbish to me, turn it off and let’s play a game. How about Super Doom?”

Gabriel cringed inwardly, gave a secret sigh and patiently slowed down the scrolling and changed the screen to summary.

GOD, seeing the facts on the screen, stopped its idling rotations with the chair, sat up and leaned froward. Its beard was forgotten and loose, soggy strings of hair clung to his face like spider webs. GOD exhaled slowly,

“Is that it, Gabriel, out of all those worlds I created, one and only one is progressing and at a marginal rate at that!”

Gabriel said nothing, the undulating, gently coloured screens re appeared. There were no gyrating nubile mermaids this time.

God looked at the screen, then at the various symbols on the keyboard in front of it. “Gabe, what are these buttons for?” Gabriel cleared the screen and said, “They provide easy access to many functions within the computer.

God said quietly “Thankyou, Gabe.”

God ruminated, with beard, for sometime. “I’m not much good am I, Gabe?”

Gabriel replayed a soothing screen and replied, “You’re not bad, and you have had a bad day. It is late now, stay up if you want, but don’t touch anything on the keyboard. I have some disks to clean up. Will you be fine?”

God said, “Yes, thanks, Gabe, by the way, what is this button named delete for?” Gabriel would have jumped if he could “It is to delete work highlighted. I advise you not to touch it. Don’t forget I will be working below cleaning disks. So don’t touch, OK? God, OK?”

“Right, sure, OK. Not to worry. Go ahead, I won’t meddle” Gabriel flicked over to clean disk and defragment.

God played around on the keyboard for a while, creating pictures, music, and snippets of wisdom. Eventually God began yawning. It closed down a few of the screens it had opened, but it was taking some time individually closing them down. God thought to itself “There must be a better way than this, there must be a short cut somewhere.”

It started fiddling and pressing some of the “F” keys and nothing was happening. God scanned the various keys until it lit upon a little key tucked away at the back of the board labeled “Del all”. God grinned,

“That’s the one! I’ll press that one!” So It pressed it. A small panel came up “ Are you sure you want to delete all?” underneath the message was “OK” and “Cancel” God yelled “Well, OK!” and clicked on the “OK” box with a flourish! God instantly disappeared. Gabriel smoothed the screen and placed a neutral shade over it. Then Gabriel sat back and waited for the next God to appear.