Instalment Eighty Seven

Each day is long and takes a toll on us all.

To mark the day’s end, the light will leave us.

The burning reds and pounding purples, the deep, deep blues that fade into a patchy, inky, blackness.

The sky has been battered and burned day long.

This is not a sunset, the sky is beginning to bruise.

The bruised sky is beautiful to you and me. We oooh and ahh, coo to each other as we watch the sky bleed.

It spends its days blue, awaiting its fate. Beaten to submission by the rigours of an ever spinning world, the sky can only fade, its purple welts and red scratches aching, fade away into blue and black slumber.

Those days that never light up, remaining gray or fading to a sickening yellow at the edges? The day before must have been long, too long. Those are days the sky can’t face, too hurt to approach, the sky curls up to lick its wounds.

The dutiful sky, some days survives unstruck and blushes pink with pride. Those are the good days.

Sunrise is no better than sunset. It is someone else sky saying goodbye to yet another bloody long day.

Instalment Eighty Six

If God were an intelligent [insert career here] designer

1.1

If God were an intelligent software designer

His word was good. His word was code:

public static void Main([String[]args){

/*Intantiate an array of 7 heaven objects */

Heaven[]heavens = new Heaven[7];

for(int i=0;i

/* Add heavens to world */

world.addComponents(heavens, 0, 1000);

/* Create an earth object */

Earth earth = new Earth();

world.addComponent(earth, 0, 0);

/* Light it up baby! */

Light light=new Light("ff", "ff", "f9");

world.addComponent(light,500,1000);

world.startSimulation();

There was much typing. God consumed many stimulant infused drinks.

On the sixth day of programming God typed Run.

And then he rested.

In his ergonomic, leather, executive gaming chair with built in motors for exposition simulation and full-tilt range.

God awoke to witness Player One and Player Two invalidating the parameters of Level One – Eden.

“There’s always bugs,” God muttered, casting the players into Level Two with mere key-strokes.

And there were bugs:

#/bin/world-manager--connect7777

World manager connected on port:7777

~ delete-locations sodom,gomorrah

locations deleted

~ remove-all-units egypt/*/[:firstborn]

units deleted

~ remove-all-units egypt/livestock/*

units deleted

~ deploy-items commands/* Mt-Sinai

items deployed

Macro level tinkering failed. God logged-in as an avatar of himself, which his world deleted of its own accord.

God left World10.1 running and started work on programming a better humanity, World10.2 Ocelot. 

Illustration by Alex Douglas - click to embiggen

1.2

If God were an intelligent graphic designer

God sat in yet another meeting for all creative staff at the agency. They were being told, again, how important it was for them to properly bill their hours out to each individual client at the end of every day.

God took the pencil out of his mouth and began to doodle in the margins of the memo explaining billable hours.

Around the title, he drew The Heavens, vast and sweeping. The letters MEMO became gates into this wonderful kingdom.

At the footer, he drew The Earth, filling in a coffee-stain with scribble to create The Seas.

The meeting dragged for what seemed like forever. So God created Day and Night, so as to be able to measure his boredom and he drew The Sun and The Moon on either side of the page to illustrate these creations.

Bored, God filled the page with absurd, insane doodles, birds and fish, cats and dogs, a man and a woman.

“Be fruitful with your time,” the accountant lectured.

The copywriter sitting by God leaned over and wrote, “Be fruitful and increase in number.”

“No more rest, back to work,” they were ordered.

God sighed, balled up the world and threw it away.

1.3

If God were an intelligent genetic designer

Imagine if the world you knew and the God you love weren’t as you thought.

God is a scientist and everything you have ever known was created in her Laboratory.

In the beginning, God was methodical.

The Earth, agar. The atmosphere, contained. The stars are imperfections in the jar, catching light from the labs overhead florescent strips.

We are an experiment.

Monitored and measured but never interfered with.

That would be bad scientific practice. God had made that mistake early, tinkering with us. Never again, it can’t be replicated, and something that can’t be replicated can’t be proved.

But every action has an affect on us. These acts of God, floods and earthquakes are slide samples. Those taken from us are with God, for specimen examination.

Her interference has created the one thing she can’t replicate in her lab.

Life with hope.

Our jar sits on a shelf and is labelled Experiment 1. The jar next to us is labelled Control Group. They remain untouched. She is unable to test if they have hope without causing interference. Next to that is Experiment 2, then Experiment 3. The shelf is full. As is the one below. And the one below that.

1.4

If God were an intelligent theme park designer
They wanted something. Always something. New. Different. Fun. Exciting, and they wanted it now. On deadline, God designed The World in six days. Even though it was a rush job, once he saw The World he new it was good.

The World was an experience in living. The staff (self-perpetuating) were also the attraction. They were designed in the image of the customers, so the whole visit was immersive. They were unaware they were staff and attractions. They couldn’t tell the customers from themselves.

God had to lay down the Park rules, not stealing etc. All common sense, as much for the staff as the customers, they were taking advantage of each other.

Nothing worked as planned, years past. God tinkered with the layout and format. A change here, a change there. Once it was right, he retired.

His son entered the family business. Like all second generations entering a family business, he lacked his father’s management skills. Lines were long. Food was overpriced.

On his first visit to The World, he was killed by the World's staff.

God closed entry to The World. “It’s no longer safe,” the sign read, “Do not bring one more person into The World.”

Instalment Eighty Five

“A well considered act of stupidity is the most optimistic thing a person can do,” he says, inhaling deeply on his unfiltered cigarette

I shake my head.

Blowing a smoke ring, his eyes dart from mine to the ring floating between us.


“Like this,” he says waving the cigarette.


“Countless people around the world smoke, all well informed of the risks involved, they are written right there on the pack. But they keep doing it. Why? Optimism. With each puff we think Cancer, well it won’t happen to me.”


“That isn’t optimistically stupid,” I say, “that’s simply stupid."


“But it is though. Like those suckers that by lotto tickets every week knowing they will lose. Or you, wanting a baby. The world is a mess and is full of sadness, evil happens as a matter of course, disease. That child will die one day. But yet you stupidly hope otherwise.”

“Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce,” I sigh.

“That means there’s hope for half of us,” he laughs, blowing another smoke ring at me.

I hold out my left hand and let it hit my ring finger. He gets up off one knee.

I relent. “Fine, I’ll marry you.”

Instalment Eighty Four

Illustration by Alex Douglas - click to embiggen

The battlefield smouldered with bodies, steam rising from breath and wounds. Those still living writhed and moaned, the dead lay still, detritus of grand mens’ foolish plans, littered carelessly across the churned mud like leaves in autumn at the base of an old oak. Yet the invading hoards still marched forward.

“Who’s with me?” a defending soldier bellowed.

“Certainly you will catch your Death,” his fellows cravenly cried.

“I will catch my Death,” he roared, charging the enemy line alone.

They believed, rightly, that there was not one sole Death that came for us in turn but a Death for each living person. Countless Deaths each ready to slay us all, one for you, one for me. Out there waiting for us to find them, on the correct day and at a precise time. A coward will hide from their Death and a brave man may charge down his Death. You cannot know which decision led you to where you are finished.

You will catch (up to) your Death.

Now we say “You will catch your death,” to people standing round in the cold but we are no less wrong. They too will one day catch up to their Death.