Up, up, up I went. I hated heights. Nothing was very

high in the city, except for this bizarre construct

housing God at the very top. The lift taking me up

was exposed on one side to allow a view of the Earth. It didn’t

ease my mind in any way.

      Then the doors parted and I got out as fast as possible.

Emerging onto a sturdy floor didn’t assuage my fears: the top

floor beneath the pyramidal cone of the spire was completely

glass-walled. I could see everything. Everything. It was like

floating above the world.

      Clear, outside walls enclosed a walkway around glass

inner walls to an office or meeting room decorated with little

more than a large table and chairs. Corners of the floor outside

the room had round openings allowing spiral staircases to go

downward. These were places where attendants and assistants

would emerge to help God carry out his rule of the Earth.

      It also allowed entrance and exit of four, large stewards

without the use of mechanical devices. Those four men stood

backs to the central room at each wall within the corridor

around; arms crossed, expressions stern. Creepy. Until that

day, I never knew why God would need such assistance.

     No one stopped me or even recognized my trespass into

the central chamber. I was expected, no doubt, but it was as if I

didn’t exist in the world: a ghost gliding nervously along.

      Inside that room was one, obvious thing: the old

man from last night. He made my skin crawl. As I entered,

I became tense and cagey; my skin seemed to be contracting

behind my shoulders and in my neck, causing me to hunch and

ready for trouble like an awkward creature. Those elderly eyes

merely watched as I rounded the room’s edge while facing him.

      This was the most important moment concerning my future. A

smell of strange emotion began to rise like essence off of my

body. It was a feeling I never felt before. This was true fear.

      He was challenging me with his presence.

      “Pill,” he commanded me. Perhaps he stated. I didn’t

know.

      Within a frigid silence was a pointed claw motioning

me to a bountiful bowl of Still-Pills in the center of the table.

Those capsules were the only vibrant color in the room. Their

yellow and purple ends seemed seductive. He was a fool,

though, and I would enlighten him to his stupidity.

      “Pill,” he reiterated.

      My hand slowly slithered towards the glass bowl. I

made it seem as if I was reaching for one, then fluidly rotated

my hand before contact and slowly scooped up the heavy object

with that outstretched appendage. Raising the bowl to my

mouth, I put lips to the rim and tilted the vessel while working

my mandibles until I was eating hundreds of pills. A painfully

forced sound came from me as I stared at the ancient man out

of the corner of one eye.

       That force feeding seemed eternal. I wished to eat

all day to avoid what would come after, but I hadn’t enough

stomach space or pills. Half of the bowl consumed, I lowered

it gently and continued chewing while we stared at each other.

      His eyes widened. He knew I knew. We both knew

something we shouldn’t have known. We both did something

we both shouldn’t have done.

      “Murderer,” he whispered with a venomous hiss.

      “Accident,” I rebutted.

      “You killed her,” he kept voice low.

Presumably he didn’t want the minders to hear. I

understood.

      “I aided you in your intended task,” I smugly

countered.

       With a tad of arrogance, I sat in his presence. I was at

the opposite end of the table and faced him with calm hubris.

      “Broke bond!” he declared.

“And you did nothing about it. Tell me your reason.”

       There was no answer.

       “I know what you were doing,” I told him.

       “You know nothing,” came a hasty reply.

       “I could talk.”

       “I could stop you.”

       My eyes wandered to the minders facing away from

us. I had no doubt he could make good on the threat. Inside

me came a surge of survival instincts. All cards were now mine

to use, even those I had no possibility to possess, but he didn’t

know what I had close to my vest.

       I chose silence. For now.

       “Red eyes,” he noted.

       I stayed silent. There was a smugness inside of me.

He knew I knew something. Something about me was valuable

enough to probe instead of eliminating. He didn’t alert the

stewards last night and requested this meeting today. It gave

me bravado. Something about me was of temporary value to

the old man.

       “Never was I notified of any births with unusual iris

pigmentation,” he continued.

       Reluctance to come to the core issue meant he was

stalling. My silence remained.

       His city was a fault through and through: my existence

proved it to me for decades. Those idiots in the birthing

chambers were probably too narrow-minded to record

something so slight as eye color.

       “The pills have no effect,” he openly deduced.

      More silence.

      “You know they have no effect,” he continued.

      Silence.

       “Tell me what made you so!” the old man demanded,

“I authorized no one like you. You are an anomaly and an

abhorrence. Explain why I should allow you to live.”

        “I knew it would be something like this,” I began.

        His ultimate threat was crushing my inner organs.

Something was strangling me under the muscles. Outwardly

my demeanor was kept very different. This lie of the flesh was

exciting, but it hid the worst sensation I had ever felt inside.

       “A lie,” I concluded.

       He remained silent. Beads of sweat from my arms and

back were felt emerging. My face tried to remain calm during

his quietus.

       “Those pills are a lie,” I brashly began to explain,

“Drugs to still the inner disquiet: a lie. They are tricks for

weak minds wishing to remain blind to the greater lie you

support and have built.”

      Silence.

       “This world is a lie,” my speech continued, “because

you are a liar. Those pills are a lie. Your commandment is a

lie.”

       “Repeat the commandment,” he demanded ferociously.

       “Do no wrong,” I automatically repeated back to him,

almost overlapping his words.

       My programming had been very thorough in youth,

much like everyone else’s. Though I knew something contrary

to this Earth, I couldn’t escape what was hammered into me

through endless lessons and social reinforcement.

       “You did wrong,” he explained to me.

       “I did what you were doing,” I told him flatly, “but I

did it quicker and better.”

       “You killed!” he hissed at me.

       Again, he kept tone low to avoid the stewards hearing

us.

       “I did as you were doing.”

       “You have been murdering long before last night,” he

stabbed at me.

      It was a good ruse. I fell for it. My inner control

snapped and I sat stiffer with widened eyes and pursed lips.

      “I know what you have done!” the elderly man

declared.

       That was a lie. I relaxed in my silence. He could see I

knew his game.

       “I’ve been tracking your murders!” he added.

      “Do tell,” I purred.

       “We know what you have done!”

       “I have no doubt.”

       He knew I knew he was lying to me. It compounded

his problems.

       “You challenge me!”

       “You challenge yourself,” disdain dripped from me.

        His words were now moronic and desperate. “Mr. God sees

all. Mr. God created all. Mr. God knows all. Tell me what you

know.”

       “Mister God: you blaspheme!”

       He was becoming offended on top of being ridiculously

out-classed in a game of lies. I had no idea who I was until that

moment. It was clear that I had no true power in the world, but

I had power over the potentate of all creation.

       “Mister.”

      “Explain before I terminate this conversation and you

with it,” he hissed.

        “Mister: you aren’t God. You aren’t a god. I fell for it,

too, until last night. Now I know for certain. Look at yourself,

listen to your words; you are cornered within your own

impotence. I now know more about you than you probably

know about yourself. All those lies tell endless facts without

you ever directly stating them.”

      He remained silent and digested what I had told him.

His veins bulged. The old man’s face strained and burned with

helplessness. Lack of challenge had made him and his creation

a soft pudding. Every day of my life this existence inwardly

challenged me, I would challenge myself, and I have become

strong and clever within a world sleeping through a pointless

dream.

       “Mister,” I said again.

       “You rescind that insult!” he thundered.

       “Tell me my sins,” I honestly demanded, “prove my

lowly self wrong, and I will conform to your every word. I will

stand abashed before my God.”

       The fraud cooled down. He was going to attempt to

catch me.

       “Hooke,” the creator exclaimed.

       He knew my name. It meant little to me.

        “Hooke 5-302,” proudly continued the elder, “living on

Avenue 265. I know everything about you.”

        “Tell me all. Tell me more. Tell me my

transgressions.”

      “Access way Avenue 46 crossing through to 121st

Street.”

      He knew. I am sure he saw it in my eyes: I knew he

knew and now he knew I knew he knew. My hands didn’t

move, but I wanted to wipe sweat from my brow.

       “Basement level at corner of Avenue 21 and 89th

Street,” he continued, empowered by my obvious fear,

“Rooftop of Building 912 on Avenue 103. Body laying in

street, thrown from a window on 41st Avenue. Choked on pills

in an apartment last week on 72nd Street. Head smashed from

a presumed trip in bathroom on 2nd Avenue.”

      “NO,” I declared.

      “Explain no,” he commanded.

       “No: 2nd Avenue,” I obeyed in triumph, “I never did

that. I never touched anyone on or near 2nd Avenue. If one

died there, it wasn’t me. Probably was an accident.”

     “You lie!”

      “No.”

       He could see outrage in my eyes. The old man pressed

a bluff.

       “You lie! I know!”

      “You know nothing!” my words were true, but insults

to him, calling him out on his lie, “I know what I did. I have no

shame. I did what I had to do.

       What I had to do.

       My actions were not a trifle: what demands it is

something beyond me. It is above us.”

      “You are sick!”

      “I do what I must!”

      “Evil!”

      “I can only be what I am. However, you are not allknowing.”

       My open declaration stilled the ancient architect of the

Earth. He took moments to stare at me and exhale his angers

and distress before attempting a different approach.

       “I thought they were all accidents until last night,” he

continued with a quiet resolution, “They seemed accidental,

but I was curious why deaths were multiplying so ferociously

in the past years. My city can’t stop all accidents, but the

mortality rate of my subjects, my children, is close to nil.

Then you appeared. At first I felt my task was

compromised. I believed, at first, that there would be

reckless complications. Then you completed my intended

maintenance.”

       “Maintenance,” I said. Such a word. It was not a word

I would expect someone, anyone, to use to softly polish such

supreme crime.

      “You are an abhorrence: an anomaly, a mistake, an

aberration in my flawless mechanism I structured with my

hands alone.”

      “Then it is not flawless.”

      “I--,” he choked off.

      “You are flawed,” my accusation hit hard, “This world

is like you: it is a lie and a feeble contrivance. It is a mask for

sloth and ignorance.”

      “Quiet!” his straining voice hitting a high.

       None of the stewards flinched. I figured they

would have come in by now, or at least turned to witness

the confrontation. Those stalwarts must have had very

precise commands that would dictate their required services.

Obviously I was still safe and this conflict, this fiery challenge,

was not so heavy a depravity as we were all told it was.

In the real world below us, such a display would have

had the combatants hauled away for revision and repackaging.

Not here. Not here. I contemplated the reason. Within these

walls was a corruption lingering above and over the entire

world. Rules meant very little in this glass chamber. There

were two sets of rules on Earth: one for everyone and one for

him. Sickening.

      “I have lived in your enervated cage for decades,” I

explained, “My life has been a flaw. Every day has been a

testament to your failure.”

      “Explain.”

       “My happiness: it never appeared. Those pills: they are

useless. My life is empty. I hate. There is no bonding.”

      “You haven’t been pair-bonded?” he was shocked.

      “Never. I am a singularity. I am alone.”

       “You are so old.”

       “You call me old.”

       “Old for...,” his face froze a while before he spoke

again. “My plan, my intricate and beautiful realm within

which you were born, leaves no room for such a possibility.

Impossible.”

       “I sit here, a corporeal impossibility.”

       “No...”

       “No: define no.”

       “NO: it is impossible. I won’t accept it.”

       “You are a fool.”

      “I am God!”

      “You are Mr. God: I already discovered your

limitations, lies, sins, and mortal frailties. You delivered them

all up to me as we talked. You aren’t omnipotent. You don’t

even know what I have done or why I have done any of it.”

      “But my plan is perfect!”

      “Look at me.”

      “If you haven’t pair-bonded... that is the key.”

      “It is the greatest imperfection.”

      “No! It is the ultimate perfection.”

      “....explain.”

      “I crafted all of it. I made it myself. I deduced and

distilled the most perfect and complex function--the function of

the human mind and the human society. I can use numbers and

magical knowledge you will never comprehend, and I use it to

see the future and predict everything. This world is flawless in

how it works: I made it.

      You exist at this time to do what you are doing because

it is necessary. You are part of the plan.”

      “Part of the plan you didn’t foresee.”

      “I never would have thought!”

       “You can’t be wise or perfect or God if you can’t see

things that you supposedly made to happen. This means you

are a blind and stumbling God.”

      “But, my creation is perfect. It is perfect--it must be

perfect!”

       “Thus I am perfect.”

       “Yes.”

       “This torment I live in is perfect.”

      “Yes!”

       “This is not perfect.”

       “You do not exist for yourself. Like all of us, you exist

for the community, for the world, for all of us.”

       “And I must kill.”

       “Yes.”

       “Explain,” I requested.

       This was a tedious and frustrating path locking me

inexorably into a life of perpetual anguish. He was saying my

entire existence was sculpted to be something miserable and

twisted inside of paradise.

       “Everything within my realm is held in perfect control.

All aspects of life and necessity are provided. Everything is

meant to cater and maintain and sustain our lives here. We lack

nothing. Nothing! I made it so.

       Our bodies have been made to live forever. We might

die one day, but as of yet there is no upper limit we have found.

I am older than all of you, and I am nowhere near death. We

all live in a perfect world without end.

       Explain why you must kill.”

CONTINUED....