It was bright, when I opened my eyes. Although, maybe bright isn’t the right word for it. Radiant would be more appropriate, I suppose. It was radiant, and everything was white, the whitest white that I’d ever seen. It stretched as far as I could see, too. A radiant white that went on for, as far as I could tell, infinity.
It was at that moment I noticed I didn’t have a body. No hands to move, no legs to walk, not even a face, judging from the lack of a visible nose. I should’ve panicked, but I felt a strange calmness for some reason, as if the fact that I was a disembodied consciousness was something normal. Then I noticed something else.
To what I assumed to be my right, since I didn’t have a body to use as a reference, I saw a figure sitting on a chair. I looked closer and it was, to my shock, me. Or rather, my body.
“About time you saw me,” my body spoke to me, “no matter how many times I do this you humans always notice me last, although I must say, this isn’t the worst body I’ve been in.”
I have no idea how the figure even knew I had registered it since, again, I had no body for Him to even see. I thought to myself, can I even speak like this?
“You can’t speak, per se, although as you can tell I can understand what you want to say just fine.” my body told me.
Ok, that’s a little freaky, I thought, where am I, and who are you. Furthermore, why do you look like me?
“Come on now, you already know the answers to those questions. You’re dead, and I’m God,” He said, “well, I’m not ‘God’ exactly. You humans have all sorts of names for me, God, Allah, Yahweh, Chaos, Ra, the Norse even thought I was a tree and called me Yggdrasil. Basically, I’m the man behind the curtain, the one that made everything. And the reason I look like you, is because I am you.”
You- what? Alright, I figured that humans didn’t have the whole picture on what was going on behind the scenes but, what do you mean you’re me?
“I mean exactly that, I’m you. At least, you are a part of me,” He said, “you look confused, I’ll elaborate. You know how the bible says that I ‘made humanity in my own image’? Well, that’s not totally wrong. See, I was super bored just chilling in this void all by myself for all eternity, so I had an idea. The idea was, everything, literally. I just thought of it and poof, existence was a thing. So no, it didn’t take me six days to create the universe, it took me less than six seconds. Anyway, stuff existing was cool for a while but then I got bored again. After I got bored again though, I had another idea. What if I made stuff like me? And so that’s what led to me creating life. Plants and animals were pretty entertaining for a while, don’t get me wrong, but they were missing a certain flavor to them, and so I had my most recent idea. I took myself, and I split a part of it off in order to create you guys, the humans. So, every human alive has a soul that’s made of me.”
I was speechless, I didn’t even know what to think or how to react to this information. All of humanity existed because God got bored? I wanted to be upset, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. We humans create stories of characters who face adversity. We cheer when our heroes are beaten down into the mud and get back up for another round in the ring. We enjoy it, as sickening as it sounds. God was no different, it seemed.
“Right on the money there dude,” He said to me while I was lost in thought, “I don’t know where this idea of me being all kind and merciful came from, but if I was then nothing bad would ever happen and things would get really boring really quickly.”
So what now? I asked God, do I go to an afterlife or do I get reincarnated or something?
“Well, if I pull out my list here,” He said, a notepad filled in a writing I couldn’t read much less understand appearing in His hand, “you’re slated to go to Hell unfortunately. However, I’m going to offer you a choice since you’re one of the few people to actually figure it out. You have the choice to either go to Hell like it says in my list or, you can take a deal.”
What’s the deal? I ask Him.
“It’s simple, really. If you accept, I’ll let you go to heaven. However, one good soul will be damned to Hell for all eternity if you do. You don’t know the soul, and nobody will ever know it was you who did it. What do you say?” He said, an inhuman smile slowly growing onto His face, the edges of His mouth stretching much farther than they should, and the number of teeth was much too large.
I thought about it, I’ll admit it. I’m no saint, and I’m not gonna lie and tell people ‘I declined the deal immediately, I’m a good person’ yadda yadda. I thought long and hard about it, wrestling with it. I looked back on my life, trying to see what exactly I did wrong. I should’ve been a better partner, I thought, I should’ve been a better child. I spent what felt like hours thinking, wrestling with all the possibilities. What if the person I sent to Hell was a genuinely selfless human being? Someone who had dedicated their life to humanitarian aid. Would it be fair to assume that a good person like that would be ok sacrificing eternity for someone else? Of course it wouldn’t. Eventually I made a decision.
Neither. I want to stay here and watch humanity with you, I said to Him.
He paused, about to snap His fingers in anticipation of my decision. Then, His already inhuman smile grew wider, and He started cackling. I don’t know how long He was laughing for, minutes, hours, days, years. He rolled on the floor laughing, seemingly incapable of pulling Himself together. Eventually He managed to compose Himself and He looked at me with mirth in His eyes.
“Now that, I was not expecting,” He said, snapping His fingers.
A second chair appeared next to Him and all of a sudden I had a body again, the two of us identical in appearance. He gestured to the seat next to Him and popcorn appeared in my hands as a giant movie theater sized TV appeared in front of Him.
“So,” He told me, “what do you wanna watch?”