“It’s just that easy,” his inhumanly eased features
hissed to me, “it would be no problem at all, my son.
You do as I say.
You do as we agreed.
You do your duty.
Report your understanding.”
“I-I-I understand,” my voice stammered in mortal
terror, “o-o-o-I o-obey!”
A pause.
He smiled cruelly.
“Good.”
Another pause.
“I believe you,” he calmly said.
The creator stood and turned to watch the panic outside
his glass cubicle.
“Now go,” the old man commanded me, “Go and
maintain our world. Harmony is all-important to us. Be at one
with yourself and know you have my trust, Hooke. We live in
a very tenderly perched mechanism known as the Earth. Its
balance relies on you from today forward.
Now go.”
Mr. God never turned to see me leave. He merely stood
with hands clasped behind his back as he piteously watched
additional health helpers and assistants arrive up from below
to attend to the tragic and mysterious death outside of God’s
room.
“One more thing, Hooke,” he told me, never turning. I
stopped to hear his words. “You and I: we must never be seen
again. Together again. We must never be seen together. You
are a danger to me--to the harmony of the world--if we are seen
together. In case you are caught, you understand. I must have
no fingerprints on the corpses, so to speak, in case you fail to
hide your guilty actions.
Only come here when called.”
“I understand,” my reply mumbled.
I left quickly.
When I emerged into the streets outside of the creator’s
spire, everything was different. My hands clutched the data
device as my face scanned the sky. A desperate wish to fly and
never stop until I was hidden from the eyes of Mr. God covered
my fearful brain.
The world looked strange to me. It wasn’t what I ever
wished it to be.
Moments later, all distress bled from me and I felt a
relish within my heart. Looking at the screen on the slate, I
thirsted for my first assignment. It wasn’t me, though, it was
that darkness that crept within me: it wanted to do what I was
made to do.
As I walked, I looked at the faces of others. Everyone
was blind. They all slept. Their features were placid. Mine
must have been tortured or twisted.
Everyone was now mine to destroy.
My path halted abruptly.
Clever, I thought, clever and evil. Everything I saw
and was told by Mr. God made me wonder. The old man was
craftier than I believe myself to be. There was a possibility that
even his frailties and atrophied logics were merely pre-set and
practiced acts to wind me down his road, down an inescapable
necessity to do his bidding.
The pills.
I never saw the steward, Mr. God’s minder, take a pill.
There was a definite possibility that those pills I ate contained
nothing, just like regular Still-Pills. There was a possibility
that he was telling the truth. He was crafty, indeed.
“Lies,” I muttered aloud to myself, “all lies.”
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