by Steve LeBel
Desperation rather than hunger sent Bernie in search of the cafeteria. He filled his lunch tray without thinking. It was only when he started looking for a place to sit that he thought of Suzie. The cafeteria was large, but he didn’t see her anywhere.
“Bernie? Is that you?”
Bernie wasn’t used to having anyone talk to him. No one in Final Assembly talked to anybody. Turning to look, he saw a god waving from an empty table. He looked younger than twenty-five—about the oldest a god ever looked—and his voice lacked the resonating qualities of an older god. The god’s unkempt hair was accompanied by a hopeless attempt at beard growing. That would make him a little older than I am, thought Bernie. There was something familiar about the eyes. I’m sure I know him…
As recognition came, Bernie’s expression changed to a smile. “Lenny! How have you been? I didn’t recognize you with the beard!”
Lenny had been the first to greet Bernie when he walked into the OWT meeting. Bernie wouldn’t have been there at all, except his guidance counselor had urged him to get involved in an extra-curricular activity. ‘The Business wants well-rounded people for their builders, Bernie. You need to get in some groups or clubs.’ When Bernie chose the Off World Technology (OWT) group, the counselor had not been impressed. ‘Is that the best you can do? You don’t want them to think you’re just a geek, do you?’
A quick look at the other eight OWT members told Bernie he was among his own kind. They all had that gaunt and haggard look you get from staying up all night, playing with computers, desperately trying to avoid social contact, and slapping down energy drinks. They had something else in common: they were all fascinated by technology found on intelligent worlds.
“When did you start?” asked Lenny. “Where are you working?”
“This is my fourth day. I’m in the Final Assembly Division.”
“Oh, that’s not good. You’ve got old man Shemal for a boss.”
“Why do you say that? He seems okay.”
“Everybody hates him. He’s fired more people than anybody. You remember Julie? She used to work for him, and he fired four people before she could get her transfer approved. She said people are so afraid of him they won’t even talk to each other. And it isn’t just Julie who hates him. Everybody hates Shemal.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Final Assembly had lots of complaints about their kits from The School. The Board of Directors set up the Quality Assurance Division (QAD) to look into the problem. Before any kits could be shipped, QAD made them pass all kinds of tests so The School wouldn’t have anything to complain about. For a while, QAD rejected so many kits, no orders were being shipped at all.
“Shemal claimed it wasn’t Final Assembly’s fault. He claimed the other divisions were sending him defective suns and planets. So he set up his own QAD to inspect the stuff they sent him. If he didn’t like what he saw, he refused to accept the parts. To justify Final Assembly’s shipping delays, he sent a report on all the components he rejected to the Board of Directors and blamed the other divisions for the delays.
“So, heck yes, they hate him. They hate the whole Final Assembly Division.”
Bernie didn’t know what to say. So he changed the subject. “Did you have to make your own universe when you hired in?”
“Sure. Everyone does. What are you working on?”
“I can’t decide. Any suggestions?” Bernie tried not to sound desperate.
“Well don’t do any of the things you did in school, Bernie. I’m sure most of those will get you fired.” Lenny chortled the way geeks sometimes do.
Bernie knew he was being insulted, but he refused to play into it. He would not give Lenny the satisfaction of asking him which screw up he was referring to. Most of his ill-fated endeavors had not received much attention, but the whole school knew about some of them. Billy claimed the School Board developed a special class called Avoiding Bernards, so they could teach students what not to do. Bernie was pretty sure that wasn’t true.
Lenny, sensing his friend’s discomfort, went for the kill. “And be sure you don’t Bernie-up the life forms. They were never your strong suit.”
The sound of geek laughter is never funny when they’re laughing at you.
* * *
Bernie winced. Life forms were much harder than celestial bodies. Well, they weren’t hard if you just left them alone. If you left them alone, they were pretty good at evolving all by themselves. But the lab manuals were never content to let that happen. They wanted you to give them certain characteristics. Make them green. Make them tall. Give them scales. Make them fly. Make them intelligent. Make them breathe underwater. Give them yellow eyes. Give them three eyes. Get rid of the tails. Teachers had been teaching so long, there was no end to the things they could think of making students do.
Lenny was probably thinking about Bernie’s Advanced Life Design 300 class. The projects were designed in a diabolically clever way. They made you put in writing exactly what you planned to accomplish before they let you start. Wicked Wanda, of course, always did well. But this was one of the most difficult classes for Bernie. He thought of himself as a seat-of-the-pants kind of guy. Go with the flow and all that. An artist, really. It was hard to make things happen just because you had some silly idea a week ago, and they wanted you to stick with it.
That was the class where Bernie decided to do flying things. He had long admired the flying creatures in the Awards Museum, so when he wrote his project paper, he described the beautiful creatures he would make, and how he would gift them with the ability to fly. His project paper was approved, and he began his work.
After a while, it was apparent the life forms were evolving slower than he had hoped. He saw small wings coming out, but they weren’t good for much except gliding. He tried moving their food high up in the trees to give them an incentive to fly, but they mostly just waited for it to fall or they ate the tree bark instead. He tried introducing high winds and the occasional hurricane, hoping their airborne experiences would give them the idea. He even thickened up the atmosphere so they wouldn’t have to flap their wings as hard, just in case they ever felt like flying. The birds-to-be were totally uncooperative.
In the hours before the project was due, Bernie’s solutions became more and more desperate. He heated up the planet’s surface, effectively giving all the birds a hotfoot, but it didn’t motivate them to spend any more time in the air. He even introduced nasty bird-eating creatures who prowled the ground, hoping to scare them into the air. He tried lots of things. Nothing worked, and he ran out of time.
The teacher gave him a C minus. The only reason he didn’t fail the project altogether was because she noticed during one of Bernie’s acts of desperation, specifically when Bernie marched the entire species off a 1,000 foot cliff, that three-percent of them could fly after all.
* * *
“Well, Bernie, I have to get back to work,” said Lenny, dragging Bernie back to the here and now. “Good luck on your universe. Try not to get fired.”
“Thanks, Lenny.”
Somehow Bernie remembered Lenny being much nicer back in school.
Inspiration
Staring at the void never did much for Bernie. Maybe people like Wanda-the-Weirdo could see things in there, but normal people couldn’t.
Then, somewhere deep in Bernie’s brain, a small flicker of inspiration took root. It wasn’t a big flicker, but Bernie could feel it growing into an idea. Hmm… Maybe the reason he had problems in school was because they never let him get good at anything. He was always given something new to do. If he’d ever had the chance to do the same thing two or three times, who knows how good he might have been? All he had to do was think of something he did well in school. Something he could do better the second time.
That was easier said than done. None of Bernie’s projects had been impressive. Well, they might have been if Apple-Of-Every-Teacher’s-Eye-Wanda hadn’t been in so many of his classes. Just being in the same class a
s her meant the best you could hope for was a C. Everybody did better when she wasn’t around.
Back to the subject. Maybe the reason he hadn’t done anything great was because they kept making him do such complex things. Building a universe was like building a house of cards—every new level was harder than the one before. But what if you only had to build two or three levels because the bottom levels were already built for you? Hmm… An idea had landed and was busy clanging a bell inside Bernie’s head, trying to get noticed.
Bernie grabbed the manual and turned to the section he’d read on the pilot program. Yes. There it was. If the employee needed additional supplies, they could requisition them from the Supply Division. Looking through his universe supplies, he found a stack of requisition forms. This was going to be easy!
Wait, Bernie. Don’t forget: Plan First, Then Create, he admonished himself. I need a plan. He grabbed his yellow pad and began scratching out a basic universe—not an impressive one, to be sure, but it would provide the foundation he was after. Let’s see, he mused. One sun. Let’s go with yellow. One planet. Make it a standard rock planet. What about more planets and some moons and comets? Bernie surprised himself when he decided to not add anything else. He could always add them later. Right now, he had to establish the foundation. It was the most basic universe possible. Nothing could be simpler. Once it was perfect, he would add to it. And he had plenty of time to make sure each new addition was also perfect.
* * *
The Supply Division proved helpful. They gave him a glossy full-color catalog describing the features and benefits of each product. After some consideration, he chose a beautiful sun-planet combo he’d worked with before. This would help him avoid starting at the bottom of the learning curve again. He hurried back to his desk and laid everything out.
Bernie entered the void and carefully placed his sun in the center. Examining it from every angle, he was convinced he’d made a good choice. Next, he calculated the optimum habitation zone from the sun and positioned his planet in the center before giving it a push into an orbital pattern. After a moment’s thought, he straightened the planet’s elliptical orbit into a perfect circle. Smiling, he gently twisted the planet, giving it daily revolutions. So far, not even Wanda could have done better. Just to make sure everything went right, he advanced the time lever a full two billion years. And still everything looked good. He pulled the time lever back to the beginning. Time to think about the next steps. From here on, it gets complicated.
And that turned out to be correct. Bernie spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what kind of planet to build. His planet was a blank, and he could make it into almost anything. He considered the big gas planets. He had worked with them before, but he hadn’t done life forms on them, and that was why he set them aside. He liked water planets, because they had interesting swimming things that you couldn’t get on a rock planet—although a rock planet with water had possibilities. But again, although he had experience with water planets, he didn’t have much experience with life forms on water planets. And everyone knew water planets were his dad’s specialty. If he did one too, wouldn’t everyone automatically compare his to his dad’s award-winning worlds? That’s more pressure than I need for my first universe, thought Bernie.
As Bernie considered different types of worlds, he listed them on his pad. By the end of the day, he had listed fourteen planet types, and had crossed them all off his list.
When quitting time arrived, he was discouraged. He straightened up his desk, checked to make sure his supplies were stacked neatly in the corner of his cubicle, and headed for the door. He would sleep on it.
Tomorrow he would decide what type of planet to make.
Creation Mechanics 101
Gods create things. It may sound complicated, but, as they say, ‘Magic, once explained, is merely science.’ The gods do it with three skills. They use willpower, visualization, and concentration. When we explain it, you’ll see creating things isn’t as complicated as it might sound.
First, consider willpower. Gods have a lot of it. You might not think Bernie received his fair share, but on the scale of gods vs. men, you will find every god has a ton of it. They need willpower to conceptualize the vastness of what they’re trying to do. If they didn’t have enormous willpower, as soon as they had the idea of creating anything as big as a universe, they would be so overwhelmed, they would just give up. Their willpower is essential.
The second thing gods need is the ability to visualize. They must carefully picture in their minds exactly what they’re trying to create. It has to be fully three-dimensional. One reason Wanda was good at her creations was her excellent visualization skill, which came from her detailed planning. Bernie, on the other hand, was weak in this area because he often tried creating things before he’d thought everything out.
The third thing a god needs is enormous concentration. Think about what’s going on here. The god needs willpower to create on a cosmic scale. He then has to visualize exactly what he wants to create. Every detail of the creation has to be understood and pictured perfectly in his mind. He then unleashes his power of concentration. The concentration is what makes the visualization real and gives it substance. Then the god moves on to the next thing he wants to create, carefully repeating the process over and over until his universe is complete.
Now one thing about the nature of universe creation might surprise you. When a god first creates something, it’s quite fragile. During the visualization phase, almost anything can destroy the creation. It’s like a sculptor creating a statue with soft clay. During the visualization phase the artist shapes his sculpture and makes it look exactly the way he wants. The concentration phase is when he bakes the clay to make it hard and strong. The gods do the same thing. Until this concentration process is complete, their creations are very delicate. This is why gods have to be careful with their creations until they have a chance to set properly.
One thing makes a godly creation far more complicated than any sculpture. It’s also the main reason the visualization and concentration phases are so demanding: the gods create living things. They must imbue their creations with the spark of life. They may even want to define the purpose of that life. Although the spark is instant, it takes a while for the creation itself to absorb the spark and fully understand what its creator wants. If the god doesn’t concentrate long enough, you end up with a creation that’s alive but has no idea why.
Unfortunately, in today’s fast-paced world, the gods never have as much time as they want to concentrate on their creations. Recognizing the problem, the gods discovered an unorthodox solution. They found if they get ten or twelve gods in a room, put a dot on a blank wall, and then have everyone 1) visualize the same dot and 2) concentrate on making it real, something amazing happens. By focusing their combined creative energy on the same thing at the same time, it produces a “creation excess.” All around the dot, a wild and mysterious gooey substance begins to form. Soon, there’s enough that it starts sliding down the wall and onto the floor, where it’s collected and put into containers. They call this ‘Universe Putty.’
How is Universe Putty used? Well, during the creation process, the gods use the putty in both the visualization and the concentration phases of creation.
During the visualization process, it is helpful to slap a little putty on your visualization to keep it in place while you are working on other details. For example, as you visualize one side of the object you want to create, you can add some putty to it. This freezes your visualization in place. Then you can pick it up, turn it over, and work on the other side; you don’t have to keep thinking about the first side anymore. You’re free to give your full attention to the back side. As you can see, putty is very handy stuff.
The putty is also useful during the concentration phase. After you complete your visualization, you have to make it real by concentrating on it. If you add a dab of putty, you don’t have to concentrate for as long. This frees you to go
on to the next part of your plan without having to wait until the last object you created is completely dry.
As we said before, not all gods are created equal. Some gods have better visualization skills. Others are better at concentration. Because of this, some gods don’t use as much putty as others, but everyone uses at least some.
In school, students are taught good workmanship, so they learn to go back periodically and remove any excess putty. First of all, it’s expensive. Second, leaving it all over your creation is a sign of slovenly workmanship. But more importantly, too much putty can cause unexpected consequences, so you have to be careful. It is, after all, pure creative power.
And the only really safe place for it is packed away in the jar it came in.
The Problems Begin
The next morning, Bernie’s blank pad was still waiting for him. He stared at the paper, willing his pencil to fill the page with answers. What kind of world? What kind of life forms? The pencil did not move.
He glanced into his void, looking for any source of inspiration.
What? His planet was wobbling, like a top slowing down and about to fall over. It was fine yesterday. He’d never seen anything like this. He had time-tested his work two billion years ahead. How could it have gone bad overnight?
The planet was no longer spherical. How could it have lost its shape? The planet’s crust showed extensive cracking, like a hardboiled egg squeezed until the shell had broken in many places. Magma seeped through the cracks, forming small pools of liquid rock.
Bernie instinctively reached out and slowed the planet to a complete stop.
He plunged deep below the surface of the planet, looking for its molten core. The core was the heaviest part of the planet, composed mostly of metals. It looked normal. What wasn’t normal was its location. Instead of the center of the planet, the heavy core had shifted to a location near the surface. There, in combination with the natural spinning of the planet, it had caused both the wobble and altered shape of the planet.
