Once, there was God. And that was pretty great, as far as the universe was concerned. All those roiling colors, needles of searing heat and gnawing cold — they needed someone to tell them where to go. The cosmos panicked and flailed to find some point of perspective with which to grip reality, before She came and saved it.
God enjoyed Her work, self-appointed as it was, finding every loose strand and deciding what to do with it. She had one of those minds that loves to watch pieces fall into place. It is possible that God would have made an excellent accountant.
But She was God. And accountants hadn’t been invented yet.
The first billion years everything was expanding all at once, still taking shape. So God suggested that the matter and energy be grouped, for better organization. The universe thought this was a splendid idea. Nebulae were born, slowly collapsing into the first stars. God took fistfuls of spacetime and twisted them into knots, forming black holes.
Now that the universe had laws and definition, She busied Herself with the details of light and heat. Blue hypergiants, red supergiants, white dwarfs, neutron stars — all of this unfolded in the next billion years of existence.
It was at this point that God took a breather and admired Her work. But as the universe began to take matters into its own hands, She realized that there was still something unsatisfying about physics. The glowing center of Her heart continued to beat indefinitely, and although She traced and retraced Her creations, finding no flaw, She had an underlying suspicion of what She was feeling.
God was lonely.
But the universe whispered to Her, and again there was purpose in Her life. In the following four billion years, She drew heat from the stars and rock from asteroids and squashed them together in a giant cosmic melting pot. God carved and shaped planets, trillions of them throughout the galaxies, and to each She gave Her most treasured gift. Life sprung from every surface on every planet, some withering and dying in an instant, finding their environment too harsh, but most flourishing and blossoming.
God watched entire civilizations awaken, gain complexity, invent space travel, colonize other solar systems and then collapse again, vanishing from the universe completely. Hundreds of times this happened, billions of years passing before God’s eyes, stretching on and on into the distance.
As She sat and watched Her work unfold, She realized She had a question. After pondering it for some time, God decided to ask the universe if all of this would ever end, snuffed out and crunched back into the nothingness from which it came.
The universe said nothing for a long moment, a sorrowful expression upon its half-face, both staggeringly massive and unimaginably small. Eons passed while it looked into Her eyes, searching for the right answer. But then it spoke. The universe told God that all of this would not end, would never be snuffed out, would never be crunched back into nothingness.
And God was tired.
So after thirteen and a half billion years of living, She decided it was time to die. God found a planet in its early stages of life, a species who had just begun the endeavor of space travel. She descended to this planet, to a small gathering of pointy houses called “Pipestone, Minnesota.” And once She was there, She reached down deep inside Herself and murdered the pulsing, glowing thing that let Her live forever.
God went to church. A church where they told Her all about their own God, about His heaven and His hell. About how living a life of piety would ensure your place in an eternal afterlife of bliss and prosperity. God listened to this, and She cried for them.
Now She is old.
God will die very soon.
Relief, finally. But She is appalled by the humans’ idea of heaven. Grief-stricken by the amount of time they spend refraining from activities that might mark them unfit for an eternal afterlife. She is not sad because they are wrong about its existence — they may or may not be, She will discover that soon — but because She knows they will hate it.
Oh, how they will hate it. It took only a single god-lifetime for Her to discover this little tidbit. Thirteen billion years to realize that every experience, be it suffering or ecstasy, loses all meaning in the face of infinity. Eventually, they will run out of things to think about and things to love and things to hate. And all they will want is to stop thinking and loving and hating.
But heaven is eternal.
So as She draws Her last breath, God is pondering the minds She has possibly sentenced to something far worse than pushing a boulder up a hill or having a Caucasian Eagle eat your heart out.
Once, there was God. And that was pretty great, as far as the universe was concerned. But now, there isn’t God. Perhaps since She died, the universe has stopped moving. But it doesn’t really matter, as time certainly hasn’t stopped.
And if someday a true end does arrive, surely the universe will love that end more than it has ever loved God or itself.
Because, as it turns out, forever is kind of a long time.
God enjoyed Her work, self-appointed as it was, finding every loose strand and deciding what to do with it. She had one of those minds that loves to watch pieces fall into place. It is possible that God would have made an excellent accountant.
But She was God. And accountants hadn’t been invented yet.
The first billion years everything was expanding all at once, still taking shape. So God suggested that the matter and energy be grouped, for better organization. The universe thought this was a splendid idea. Nebulae were born, slowly collapsing into the first stars. God took fistfuls of spacetime and twisted them into knots, forming black holes.
Now that the universe had laws and definition, She busied Herself with the details of light and heat. Blue hypergiants, red supergiants, white dwarfs, neutron stars — all of this unfolded in the next billion years of existence.
It was at this point that God took a breather and admired Her work. But as the universe began to take matters into its own hands, She realized that there was still something unsatisfying about physics. The glowing center of Her heart continued to beat indefinitely, and although She traced and retraced Her creations, finding no flaw, She had an underlying suspicion of what She was feeling.
God was lonely.
But the universe whispered to Her, and again there was purpose in Her life. In the following four billion years, She drew heat from the stars and rock from asteroids and squashed them together in a giant cosmic melting pot. God carved and shaped planets, trillions of them throughout the galaxies, and to each She gave Her most treasured gift. Life sprung from every surface on every planet, some withering and dying in an instant, finding their environment too harsh, but most flourishing and blossoming.
God watched entire civilizations awaken, gain complexity, invent space travel, colonize other solar systems and then collapse again, vanishing from the universe completely. Hundreds of times this happened, billions of years passing before God’s eyes, stretching on and on into the distance.
As She sat and watched Her work unfold, She realized She had a question. After pondering it for some time, God decided to ask the universe if all of this would ever end, snuffed out and crunched back into the nothingness from which it came.
The universe said nothing for a long moment, a sorrowful expression upon its half-face, both staggeringly massive and unimaginably small. Eons passed while it looked into Her eyes, searching for the right answer. But then it spoke. The universe told God that all of this would not end, would never be snuffed out, would never be crunched back into nothingness.
And God was tired.
So after thirteen and a half billion years of living, She decided it was time to die. God found a planet in its early stages of life, a species who had just begun the endeavor of space travel. She descended to this planet, to a small gathering of pointy houses called “Pipestone, Minnesota.” And once She was there, She reached down deep inside Herself and murdered the pulsing, glowing thing that let Her live forever.
God went to church. A church where they told Her all about their own God, about His heaven and His hell. About how living a life of piety would ensure your place in an eternal afterlife of bliss and prosperity. God listened to this, and She cried for them.
Now She is old.
God will die very soon.
Relief, finally. But She is appalled by the humans’ idea of heaven. Grief-stricken by the amount of time they spend refraining from activities that might mark them unfit for an eternal afterlife. She is not sad because they are wrong about its existence — they may or may not be, She will discover that soon — but because She knows they will hate it.
Oh, how they will hate it. It took only a single god-lifetime for Her to discover this little tidbit. Thirteen billion years to realize that every experience, be it suffering or ecstasy, loses all meaning in the face of infinity. Eventually, they will run out of things to think about and things to love and things to hate. And all they will want is to stop thinking and loving and hating.
But heaven is eternal.
So as She draws Her last breath, God is pondering the minds She has possibly sentenced to something far worse than pushing a boulder up a hill or having a Caucasian Eagle eat your heart out.
Once, there was God. And that was pretty great, as far as the universe was concerned. But now, there isn’t God. Perhaps since She died, the universe has stopped moving. But it doesn’t really matter, as time certainly hasn’t stopped.
And if someday a true end does arrive, surely the universe will love that end more than it has ever loved God or itself.
Because, as it turns out, forever is kind of a long time.