The Last Testament: A Memoir
Page 2
23 Day Five was a stressful day, a near-disaster; for it was when I “let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.”
24 Fill the sea with fish, fill the sky with birds; in hindsight this seems obvious; yet up until the last minute I had been planning on putting the fish in the sky and the birds in the sea.
25 I kid thee not!
26 For I had conceived feathers as a means of aquatic propulsion; whereas scales were designed to provide maximum aerodynamic lift;
27 Yet when it came time to let the waters teem, for some reason I went the other way, and threw the fish in instead of the birds.
28 And lo: The fish took to the waters so perfectly, that today to even imagine a fish out of water, is to envision a comical juxtaposition.
29 As for the birds, having no other place to put them I threw them all into the sky; where their quill-flippers proved unexpectedly adept aviation aids; so it worked out for everyone, except the penguins and ostriches.
30 And then came Day Six, a whirlwind of activity; for I spent it creating the land animals.
31 I created them in groups: mammals, amphibians, reptiles, insects; over 400,000 different species of beetles alone did I create.
32 It is not that I am fond of beetles; to the contrary, I did not like any of them; over 400,000 times I strove to make the perfect one, and over 400,000 times I failed;
33 Until finally I created the Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata; and I thought, “Now there is a beetle!” and I moved on.
34 Late that afternoon, I paused to take in my work.
35 In just under six days I had built an entire universe in literally the middle of nowhere; and I had done so under budget.
36 Life thrived everywhere; the stars shone, the oceans roared, the flowers bloomed; all around me flourished the myriad signs of my glorious abundance . . .
37 And then, thou walked in.
CHAPTER 3
1But before I speak of humanity’s earliest ancestors, I must here address a subject of great importance to all seekers of truth; but particularly those seekers of truth, who are tenth-graders in Kansas.
2 Over the last several hundred years, scientists have uncovered an obscene amount of evidence in support of the theory of evolution expounded by Charles Darwin.
3 And each such piece of evidence has seemingly revealed a new and more profound inconsistency between reality, and the account of Creation offered in Genesis.
4 Now, I know many of my faithful servants have labored earnestly to reconcile the two; even going so far as to form a new discipline, “creation science”; a phrase carrying roughly the same intellectual heft, as “dragon anatomy.”
5 But by now, the absurdity of this endeavor has surely become apparent to even my most steadfast defenders.
6 And so I must tell thee here, in the spirit of candor, that the evidence for evolution is now indeed so overwhelming, so incontrovertible, so beyond the level of mere “theory,” that it can no longer possibly be denied,
7 How impressive it is, that I planted it all.
8 Because I did.
9 I planted it all.
10 Every . . . last . . . bit of it.
11Zing!
12 Canst thou grasp the scope of my hoax, humanity?
13 Can thy mortal minds absorb even a drop of the immense ocean constituting the thoroughness of thy punking?
14 If all of thee, working together since the dawn of time, were charged with devoting thy lives to the single task of fabricating all the evidence that exists to support evolution, thou wouldst fail utterly.
15 But I am God; in me all things are fakeable.
16 I molded the fossils; I deposited the dinosaurs; I modified the DNA; I mutated the vestigial tails; I arranged the migratory distributions; I specialized the finch beaks; I booked Darwin’s cruise.
17 And I did more than this: I meticulously layered geological strata; I altered the level of carbon 14 in every rock on earth; I even redshifted every particle of light in the universe so that it would appear to thy observers that the cosmos was created through some kind of large-scale explosion 13.7 billion years ago.
18 Yea; over the eons I have invested more time and energy into falsifying an empirically unassailable case for evolution than any other venture since Creation itself.
19 Wouldst thou like to know why?
20 Because every time a scientist dies and ascends to heaven, and I spend an hour lavishing him with praise about his use of reason and facts to overcome the primitive superstition of his fellows;
21 Then does the entire colossal undertaking become worth it, at that glorious moment, when the thunder claps, and the skies darken, and I bellow, “So long, sucker!”, and the trapdoor opens, and I send him to hell.
CHAPTER 4
1To resume:
2 It is often said—and even more often screamed at anti–gay marriage rallies outside the statehouse in Lansing—that I created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.
3 Wrong.
4 Now will I tell the story of the first man, Adam; and of the companion I fashioned for him, Steve; and of the great closeting that befell their relationship.
5 For after I created the earth, and sea, and every plant and seed and beast of the field and fowl of the air, and had the place pretty much set up, I saw that it was good;
6 But I also saw, that by way of oversight it made administrative sense to establish a new middle-managerial position.
7 So as my final act of Day Six, I formed a man from the dust of the ground, and breathed life into his nostrils; and I called him Adam, to give him a leg up alphabetically.
8 And lo, I made him for my image; not in my image, but for my image; because with Creations thou never gettest a second chance to make a first impression;
9 And so in fashioning him I sought to make not only a responsible planetary caretaker, but also an attractive, likeable spokesman who in the event of environmental catastrophe could project a certain warmth.
10 To immediately assess his ability to function in my absence, I decided to change my plans; for I had intended to use Day Seven to infuse the universe with an innate sense of compassion and moral justice; but instead I left him in charge and snoozed.
11 And Adam passed my test; yea, he was by far my greatest achievement; he befriended all my creatures, and named them, and cared for them; and tended the Garden most skillfully; for he had a great eye for landscape design.
12 But I soon noticed he felt bereft in his solitude; for oft he sighed, and pined for a helpmeet; and furthermore he masturbated incessantly, until he had well-nigh besplattered paradise.
13 So one night I caused him to fall into a deep sleep; fulsomely did I roofie his nectar; and as he slept, I removed a rib, though not a load-bearing one.
14 And from this rib I fashioned a companion for him; a hunk, unburdened by excess wisdom; ripped, and cut, and hung like unto a fig tree before the harvest;
15 Yea, and a power bottom.
16 And Adam arose, and saw him, and wept for joy; and he called the man Steve; I had suggested Steven, but Adam liked to keep things informal.
17 And Adam and Steve were naked, and felt no shame; they knew each other, as often as possible; truly their loins were a wonderland.
18 And they were happy, having not yet eaten of the Tree of the Knowledge That Your Lifestyle Is Sinful.
CHAPTER 5
1Now the snake was more closeted than any animal in the Garden; literally on the downlow; for though he oft hissed his desire to mate with comely serpentesses, yet he lisped, and fretted over his skin care, and could not have looked more phallic if he’d had balls for a rattle.
2 And that which he needlessly despised in himself, he set out to destroy in others; so one day he slithered unto Steve and said,
3 “Steve!
4 ’Tsup?
5 Hey, random question for thee: Hast thou ever eaten the fruit of the Tree of the Kno
wledge That Your Lifestyle Is Sinful?
6 ’Cause I hear it’s some quality produce!”
7 Long did the serpent cozen Steve in this way; at first he balked, but the serpent tricked him, by telling him that the fruit would intensify his orgasm; which was a reckless lie;
8 For the fruit did not intensify orgasms; it merely prolonged them 45 minutes.
9 And so Steve ate of the tree; and he bid Adam eat of it; and the knowledge that their lifestyle was sinful shamed them, and also filled them with white-hot lust; and they entwined themselves unceasingly until dawn.
10 (For it was and remains true, that all aspects of sexual activity grow more pleasurable following their moral condemnation.)
11 But in the morning they grew embarrassed, and cloaked themselves in fig leaves; these constituting the entirety of their fall collection.
12 And they heard me walking in the garden in the cool of the day; and they hid themselves from my presence behind a grove; which, a lot of good that’s going to do;
13 And I called, “Adam and Steve, where art thou?”
14 And Adam said, “Father, there is something we need to tell thee: we are gay.”
15 And I said, “Whhhuuuhhhhh?!?”
16 And Steve said, “Yea, it is true, LORD; for the snake bid me eat the fruit of the forbidden Tree; and I gave it to Adam; and now we know that we are not only here, but queer; and lo, we would thou growest accustomed to it.”
17 And I turned to the serpent and screamed, “Thou hast ruined everything; for I had wrought Steve of the same gender as Adam, so that they could not breed, and would be free to focus on their gardening careers;
18 But thou hast made them ashamed for no reason, by convincing them to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge That Your Lifestyle Is Sinful.”
19 “But LORD,” said the serpent, “surely I could not have done this evil thing, if thou didst not inexplicably put this stigmatizing tree in the Garden to begin with.”
20 I considered this.
21 “Look,” I said, “hindsight is twenty-twenty.
22 And surely this is not the time to play the ‘blame game’; at least not until my full-scale internal investigation is complete;
23 Whose findings will be used to ensure, that an event as tragic as the Fall of Man, never happens again.
24 But in the meantime, serpent, thou art cursed above every beast of the field; and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life; and even the humans who study thee will be accursed; for they will be known as ‘herpetologists,’ which sounds like ‘herpes.’
25 And as for thee, Adam and Steve: Damn it! I knew I should have made thee lesbians!
26 Then thou wouldst have tended the Garden with more diligence; yea, and been a lot more outdoorsy in general.
27 But thou hast been disobedient; and for that I must now inflict upon thee the harshest punishment possible:
28 Transforming thee from carefree young lovers living in the heart of everything, to a married couple with kids stuck in the suburbs.
29 Steve, so that thou mayest bear young, I will tomorrow transform thee into a woman; fear not, the operation is relatively standard; in the meantime, put this on.
30 Oh, and consider what female name thou wilt want; try to make it something that rhymes with ‘Steve,’ so that 6,000 years from now, the righteous can use it to create the most inane slogan of all time.
31 As for posterity, do not worry about humanity learning the true nature of thy relationship.
32 I am the LORD thy God, King of the Universe; I know how to spin this.”
CHAPTER 6
1So Adam and “Eve” left the Garden, and wandered the wilderness, supporting themselves through foraging and occasional freelance work.
2 And they learned how to copulate; and after a few years they learned how to do it vaginally; until finally Eve found herself with child.
3 It was the first human pregnancy, and she had no idea what was happening; so I explained to her, that a tiny person would be living inside her uterus for nine months and growing to the size of a watermelon before passing out of her vagina.
4 She did not take it well.
5 But I give her credit; despite all the dangers she stuck it out; and though she suffered in childbirth like no woman has suffered since, when it was all over she had borne Cain;
6 The first baby, and in time, the first great disappointment to his parents.
7 Thou hast read of what transpired between Cain and his younger brother Abel; how Cain murdered Abel in a jealous rage.
8 For Abel was a shepherd, and as a sacrifice he offered unto me his flock’s firstlings, which were absolutely adorable; yea, to this day they remain the cutest things I have ever seen burned alive on a pyre.
9 But Cain was a farmer, and his offering to me was but ten sheaves of wheat; pretty scanty, sheafwise; and thou shouldst have seen these sheaves; completely unacceptable, even by the most basic standard of sacrificial wheat-sheaf quality.
10 And I told Cain as much; and he grew angry, and set out to kill his brother.
11 Now, this will sound strange, and even cruel, but it is the truth: Abel’s murder was not only the first in human history, but for that very reason the most mirthful; for Cain had absolutely no idea how to commit it.
12 From dusk till dawn he attacked Abel in the most fruitless of ways; he blew upon him; he strangled his hair; at one point he spent two hours simply shouting “Die! Die!” at Abel from various angles.
13 Fortunately for him, Abel was equally ignorant of how to fend off a murderous attack; neither defending himself nor running away, but making what in retrospect proved the tactical blunder, of lying perfectly still.
14 Ah . . . thou canst not make this stuff up.
15 Eventually Cain made use of a rock; but rather than throwing it at his brother, he picked up his brother and threw him at it; he did this 50 times, until Abel finally succumbed to a preexisting heart condition.
16 But in intent it was murder; and afterward I did indeed ask Cain of Abel’s whereabouts, and he did indeed reply, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
17 Thus did Cain also invent sarcasm; and lo, who is not eternally grateful to him for that.
18 I remember marking Cain upon his brow to denote him as a murderer and a fratricide, and saying unto him, “Behold, thou art branded forever.”
19 And he turned to me and smiled, and said, “Indeed, O LORD, thou hast ‘branded’ me forever, and most winningly; for now I shall position myself as ‘the original bad boy’;
20 And I shall wander the earth a lonely rebel, with an air of danger, and a visage most brooding; and all men will want to know me; and all women will want to know me.”
21 At the time I thought him mad; yet he proved most savvy, and within five years Cain was the most famous man in the world.
22 (Granted, this made him the most famous man among 23 people; but still.)
CHAPTER 7
1I shall skip over the next ten generations of begetting; thou mayest consult Genesis 4 for the thrilling details of how Irad begat Mehujael, and how Mehujael begat Methusael, and how, with the help of Vicky—an Edomite streetwalker with a heart of gold—Methusael begat Lamech.
2 I shall also skip over certain other questions thou mayest have; such as “So who did Cain marry?” “Where did all the other people come from?” and “Doesn’t this mean there was all kinds of crazy incest going on?”
3 That last allegation is shocking and outrageous; and I would like nothing more than to provide thee the simple explanation for how all this begetting was accomplished in a perfectly wholesome manner;
4 But alas, I have been advised by counsel not to discuss these matters due to ongoing litigation.
5 Instead I will now turn my attention to my next great crisis; for one of the lessons I had already learned about godding, was that it involved a good deal more crisis management than I had anticipated.
6 So after Cain, I decided to step back for a little bit; to le
t mankind find its own way in the world; to sweat not the small stuff—for lo, it was all small stuff.
7 Thus I observed silently as generation begat generation; as the human race developed new skills like hunting, and gathering, and the now-lost art of gatherhunting.
8 There was ample time for everyone to learn from their mistakes; for recall that in those times people’s lifespans were many centuries long.
9 (The record was Methuselah, who lived 969 years; the last 940 of which he spent repeatedly telling family and friends how much better things were the first 29.)