The Last Testament: A Memoir

by God

  10 And I watched it all unfold, and I could not but be impressed with the great achievements of my own greatest achievement; but the wickedness . . .

  11 My goodness, the wickedness.

  12 I shall spare thee the embarrassment of describing in detail the wanton debauchery of thy ancestors; I will simply say that the wickedness continued to grow, and in all aspects of society: family life grew more wicked; tribal governance grew more wicked; even group sex grew more wicked, which was surprising, since it was starting from a point that was already pretty wicked.

  13 Finally I came to feel what is recorded in Genesis 6:6: “And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart.”

  14 At this point I can almost hear some of my young doubters reading this in their dorm cloisters, sipping their bean extracts, brows arched midsmirk, scoffing, “But if you’re ‘God,’ why didn’t you just make man perfect to begin with, wiseguy?”

  15 There are two answers to this question, the first being: consider thyself smited.

  16 But the second is, that in creating the human race I did achieve perfection; a perfection of balance between the forces driving it toward good, and those driving it toward evil.

  17 The dozens of distinct impulses and drives within thee, may be likened to individual athletes tasked with uniting themselves for the betterment of a team; a team which may be a nation, or a tribe, or a family, or even a single human soul.

  18 And some teams rise, and others fall; and some succeed dishonorably, and some fail with honor; and individual victories and defeats are short-lived; yet the larger cycle of victory and defeat is eternal.

  19 And eventually all the teams go under, and are replaced by new franchises that play in stadiums with bigger luxury boxes than the previous ones; and it is in the biggest such box of all where you will find me, rapt, smiling, sipping a metaphysical brewski; enthralled by the game, and the perfection of its entertainment;

  20 For I am the LORD thy God, Commissioner of the Universe: and I am always ready for some football.

  21 Yet once in a while something in the very fabric of the sport goes so awry, that the Commissioner himself is obliged to step down from his high perch, and reset the balance.

  22 In the sphere of football, this means re-allotting draft picks, or renegotiating the collective bargaining agreement.

  23 In the sphere of divinity, this means drowning humanity.

  CHAPTER 8

  1Of all the people of his time, only Noah found grace in my eyes; for he was wise, and upright, and honest, and as it says in the text, he “walked with God”; though in truth I wish that now and again he would have jogged with God; for he had a bit of a paunch.

  2 Noah was a great man; he had a lovely wife, Nameless; and three terrific children, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; verily, their domestic interaction had a real My Three Sons feel to it; for they were always courteous, and hokey, and unironically used words like “Jeepers!”

  3 So I told Noah my plan; and how I meant to save him and his family by having him build an ark of the dimensions 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits.

  4 (Here I must insert a plea, that mankind at least consider reinstating the cubit system; which remains the most marvelous method of measurement ever invented, putting the metric and imperial systems to shame.

  5 Four digits a palm, seven palms a cubit, six cubits a reed, two reeds a nindan and ten nindans an aslu—I defy thee to devise units of greater common-sense and utility; especially to anyone with even a passing interest in the irrigation of millet.)

  6 And Noah did wondrous work constructing the ship, considering I bade him make it of “gopher wood”; that is the phrase used in Genesis, and scholars ever since have debated exactly what type of wood was so denoted; and the answer is, no type at all;

  7 For gopher wood was at that time a euphemism, for lead-bolted plate steel.

  8 And now I come to one of the bigger revelations thou wilt find within these pages.

  9 I did not ask Noah to put two of every animal on board the ark.

  10 I know that is what it says in the Bible, but consider: A phylogenetically complete double bestiary contained within a 450,000-cubic-cubit water-craft?

  11 Why, in but a medium-sized zoo, the animals themselves occupy nearly 450,000 cubic cubits; and that is to say nothing of the space required for their food and shelter, or their grazing and roaming areas; and of course a zoo contains but a tiny fraction of the total number of global species;

  12 Not to mention the wide array of artificial habitat needs, ranging from arctic to tropical, that would have to be constructed and maintained on board; or the arduousness of gathering the animals from these habitats, many of them in continents heretofore not even mentioned in the Old Testament . . .

  13 I could go on and on.

  14 No; I did not say, “Put two of every animal on board the ship.”

  15 What I said was, “Put two of any animal on board the ship.”

  16 For I knew Noah and his family were in for a long, treacherous voyage; and that they would be confined indoors for over five months; and that under such circumstances, it would be comforting for all aboard, particularly the kids, to bring with them two dogs, or two cats, or even two hamsters.

  17 I recommended dogs, but I left the choice to Noah; for I have never been a cat God.

  18 As it happened, Noah did choose two dogs, cocker spaniel puppies he purchased the day before the rains came—Sparky and Pillow.

  19 But hundreds of years later, when I dictated this story to Moses upon Mt. Sinai, he misheard me as saying “Two of every animal.”

  20 I corrected him immediately, but we both found the implication of the phrase amusing; and for the next hour or so we made much mirth of the idea of a ship containing so many animals;

  21 For Moses would say, “It sounds un-‘bear’-able!”; and I would say, “Really? To me it sounds ‘purr’-fect!”; and he would say, “You’re a ‘dog’-gone liar!”; and so forth;

  22 And this brought us such happiness, that we kept it in; never thinking any of thee could possibly take it seriously.

  23 A six-day creation, talking snakes, 969-year-old men: such things are clearly factual and fall well within the realm of the credible.

  24 But two of every animal on a single boat?

  25 No; all the other animals—the beasts, and the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the earth—all of them were zapped frozen and left floating in ice cubes until the whole thing was over.

  CHAPTER 9

  1The tempestuous cruise of Noah and his family was of such duration that by the time the waves subsided, the buffet was almost depleted.

  2 The ice sculptures had long since melted; the top-shelf liquor was gone; the bottomless shrimp were approaching their bottom, and what little cocktail sauce remained had to be licked off the side of the bowl.

  3 The Flood had taken much longer than I expected; I confess that many of you were much better swimmers than I had ever conceived, and that your corpses proved far better flotation devices than I had previously anticipated.

  4 But finally the last one of you drowned; and thou wert all devoured by fish; and these fish in turn shat thee out; whereupon smaller fish ate the thee-shit.

  5 And the oceans began to withdraw; and here there is yet another animal-related error in the Bible: for Noah did not send forth a raven and a dove to determine whether the waters had subsided; he sent forth Sparky and Pillow.

  6 Yea, he dropped them both into the waters; and Pillow swam but a few cubits, and yelped pitiably, and returned to the ark; but Sparky proved more intrepid, and paddled and churned through the endless ocean, until he disappeared beyond the horizon.

  7 He did not return; and Noah presumed he had found dry land; and Noah loved Sparky; and I loved Noah; so I left it at that.

  8 Then at last the waters receded, and the ordeal was over; and humanity emerged ready to move past its long global nightmare, known at the time as �
��Floodgate.”

  9 The ark landed upon Mt. Ararat, which I chose because it had jutting from its summit a perpendicular ridge of sufficient width to double as a pier.

  10 I remember as the ark approached, mirthing cunningly unto Noah and his family, “Behold, I see a pier appear up here!”

  11 Long I waited for a response; but they kept silent, lost in grief for their tens of thousands of drowned kinsmen.

  12 A righteous family, Noah’s; but a tough crowd.

  13 Then I blessed him and his descendants, and bid them be fruitful and multiply; and as a sign of this blessing, I displayed unto them a glorious rainbow;

  14 Which is why it is most ironic, that of the millions of people who today take the rainbow as their banner, not one of them can multiply without outside assistance.

  15 And I made a covenant with Noah never again to destroy every living thing with a Flood, as it is written: “And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.”

  16 That is Genesis 9:11; and lo, everything changed after Genesis 9:11.

  17 For the survivors of this new, post–9:11 world had learned through bitter experience, that behind daily life’s peaceful façade there lurked always the potential for unimaginable horror, at the hands of a religious extremist with little regard for human life.

  CHAPTER 10

  1And so for a second time the earth was repopulated from a single family; and for a second time I will refrain from delving into thy prurient curiosity over whether or not this entailed the practice of “siblings with benefits.”

  2 The only event of note over the next 400 years was the Tower of Babel, which caused me to confound all the languages of the earth.

  3 That was a zoning dispute.

  4 Thou seest, the Tower’s blueprints called for it to be 57 cubits high; yet municipal ordinances of the time allowed for the erection of no commercial structure over 50 cubits high, as per §[C26-801.1] of the Greater Babel Building Code.

  5 (The reason was that a building higher than 50 cubits would significantly obstruct my view of earth, thus lowering the resale value of heaven.)

  6 But the building’s owners countered that as the Tower would comprise partly single- and double-family dwellings, it should be granted a residential and/or special-use exemption under a little-used (and, to be candid, poorly-worded) secondary codicil of the Code of Hammurabi.

  7 This prompted a hearing on the matter, featuring rambling testimony from idle senior citizens, and much bluster from the architect about “aesthetic integrity,” when verily from a purely visual standpoint the design lacked even the charm of a second-tier ziggurat;

  8 And when the Babel Development Board ruled in my favor by a vote of 6 to 3 (with one abstention), an immediate motion to cease construction was filed with King Gungunum; which was clearly a tactical ploy on the part of the Chamber of Commerce to bide time until the reinstatement of the planning committee . . .

  9 Anyway, long story short, I wound up confounding all the languages of the earth.

  10 And from that day forward the peoples of the world no longer all spoke good old-fashioned English, but instead blathered incoherently in thousands of tongues; each more un-American than the next.

  11 But other than Babel, I spent most of those four centuries doing something I should have done much sooner: assembling my staff.

  12 I mean this in two senses: first, in the sense of finding a large piece of cedar wood, whittling it, varnishing it, and affixing unto it an ornate golden handle.

  13 It came out nice.

  14 It was shiny.

  15 But secondly, I mean it in the sense of gathering unto me a team of agents, representatives, subordinates, messengers, interns, and temps to help me run all facets of my ever-expanding enterprise.

  16 Perhaps thou art asking thyself why a supreme and self-sufficient God would need a celestial support system of any kind.

  17 That is a fair question; one I myself mused upon often in the antediluvian period, always arriving at the conclusion that no such system was needed; for I am the LORD thy God, King of the Universe; I never give myself anything I cannot handle.

  18 Yet in looking back on the Flood, I realized there were several occasions when the deployment of an associate on my behalf would have been useful.

  19 For example, informing Noah that all his friends and extended family were going to be destroyed forever due to my wrath . . . there was no reason I had to be the one to tell him that.

  20 The piteous cries of the wicked and their children as they fought in vain against the relentless surging of the waters . . . there was no reason I had to take that call.

  21 The unremitting continuance of the torrential rains for 40 days and 40 nights . . . there was no reason that repetitive task could not have been delegated to an aide; a younger aide, perhaps, eager to work his way up in the machina.

  22 Moreover, my failure in the days before the Flood to appreciate the full scope of the growing wickedness had been partly a result of my over-reliance on my own omniscience; a fact that, in retrospect, I should have known.

  23 But now I saw that, in the post–9:11 world, the vital job of gathering intelligence would be best served by an aggressive team of “wings on the ground,” charged with monitoring the goings-on in the region of my principal concern, the Middle East;

  24 Thus making that area safe and stable in perpetuity.

  CHAPTER 11

  1So I began assembling an elite group of subordinates—Genesistants, if thee will—to do my bidding, deliver my pronouncements, oversee the earth’s natural processes, and manage the inevitable papyruswork produced thereby.

  2 I quickly decided it would not do to use transplanted humans; for few were worthy, and those few were needed on earth; where good men were, and remain, hard to find.

  3 (Verily, ladies, am I right?)

  4 No; the only thing for it was to create an entirely new class of creature; and this time not of the dust of the earth, or aught else terrestrial, but of immaterial chunks of pure spirit I would rend from the mystical heart of my own essence, and then futz around with for a while.

  5 It went very smoothly; within a few days I had over 3,000 employees; I gave them halos to help them see better, and wings to make air travel less burdensome;

  6 I called them “angels”; and collectively I called them The A-Team; or at least I did until 1983, when I dropped it for reasons thou mayest well imagine.

  7 I wish not to speak in great depth of my angels; partly because much of their work is classified, and partly because I value their privacy.

  8 Also, I assume thou already hast a basic understanding of the ninefold angelic hierarchy, and the Three Spheres, and the Three Orders within each Sphere, from having read Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite’s 5th century treatise De Coelesti Hierarchia in fifth grade;

  9 Or, in more poorly-funded school districts, sixth grade.

  10 Yet I would be remiss if I did not here acknowledge five angels, without whose dedication, hard work, and loyalty everything would still have happened, but not with the same bonhomie.

  11 The first of these is Uriel; he is the wisest of my angels; the patron of poets, the guardian of thunder, a repentance whiz, and a great wordsmith; his collaboration with the prophet Ezra on The Second Book of Esdras is the reason that work was such an improvement over The First Book of Esdras, which was a piece of shit.

  12 It was also Uriel who devised the idea for Kabbalah; so Madonna, next time thou addest up the numerical values of letters in the Torah, and useth the sums thereof to schedule thy body waxing, forgetteth not to thank Uriel.

  13 Offer him a prayer, Madonna; yea, or something like it.

  14 The second angel is Raphael; a healer of mind, body, and spirit; he is considered the patron of travelers, and sojourners to this day call upon him to protect them during their journeys, although that is not an excuse t
o lie out without sunscreen.

  15 Raphael is also endowed with a dry wit that has proven of great comfort in those moments when my disposition waxes saturnine.

  16 As an instance, I remember the council to determine whether to send the Black Death to the world; it was a long and sober discussion, until I turned to him, in his capacity as chief medical consultant, and asked how long the disease would take to kill its victims.

  17 He looked at me with a face void of levity, and said, “My LORD, they will go from coughin’ to coffin in three days.”

  18 And there was great tittering, for a weight of gloom had been lifted from the deliberations; and our spirits were much lightened, as we set about killing one in every three Europeans.