“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.”