Smite Me Oh Dark One



  @2011 Steve Thomas

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover by John Comegno

  ***

  Smite Me, Oh Dark One

  Steve Thomas

  In the beginning, Lux called a meeting and all the gods attended. That would be me (Acerbus, God of Darkness), then Lux (God of Light), O’Plenty (God of Pots of Gold and Other Treasures), Buti’col (Goddess of Whatever Passes for Love These Days), Fromdon (God of Coconuts), Thundorious (God of Inclement Weather)…let’s save a little time here and just say it was me, Lux, and eleven Gods of Sucking Up To Lux.

  We gathered around a tiny speck of darkness, which was currently encased in a transparent field to keep it pure. It was reserved for future use, the details of which were coincidentally the subject of this meeting.

  “Brothers,” said Lux, who is the kind of guy who spells out middle names in birthday cards. “Behold the darkness before us. Compared to any of us, with our magnificent, luminous forms, it is just a speck of black amongst a sea of brightly colored light. It is untouched, a unique flicker of a universe uncreated.

  “We are gathered to conduct the greatest of all experiments. We will fill this void, and we will create life. We will watch it grow from the tiniest spark into the largest creatures. We will care for it, and study it, and in understanding creation, we shall understand ourselves.”

  Eleven gods nodded in unison and I said, “So what do you plan to accomplish?”

  Lux rolled his eyes at me. “We will create and study life, the greatest of all creations.”

  “To what end?” Lux had a tendency to do things without thinking, and he very rarely figured out what his plan was, even in retrospect. “We have life, and we don’t do anything with it. You want to understand ourselves? We’re a bunch of lazy celestial spirits with nothing to do. Why do we need to create a tiny universe full of the same?”

  Lux thought for a moment, tried to come up with a coherent response, and apparently gave up. “Our creation will weather time and space itself and reveal our inner nature.” All the other gods “hmm”ed and “aaah”ed at what they thought was the profundity of Lux’ statement. I couldn’t see it. I guess being the God of Darkness means you can do a better job of noticing when something isn’t there.

  I didn’t want a repeat of the great “should light be a wave or a particle, and why not both?” debate, where everyone bowed to the “glory and depth” of Lux’ philosophical compromise, so I decided to let him win this one.

  And so creation began. We scratched out a few equations to govern the world (light had a wave/particle duality again, much to my annoyance), and set things into motion.

  We watched our collective power explode deep inside the black speck. We watched as the light congealed into plasma, and the plasma deionized into gas, and the gas swirled and condensed into liquid, and the liquid sputtered and froze into rock. We watched as rocks and gas and plasma and liquid sped throughout the universe, ever spreading, ever cooling, and insignificant speck spiraled around insignificant speck. We watched as one insignificant speck exploded into volcanoes and lightning and ocean and granite, and deep in the tiny drop of an ocean, life took hold. A particle, barely noticeable within the vast sea on the vast planet in the vast universe, moved and bred of its own will. They watched it split over and over, changing each time, growing and eating and morphing and swimming and killing and walking and roaring and hating.

  We had created a world, and it bore life.

  But of course Lux wasn’t happy. “Brothers, behold! There is life on this planet, but not life such as you and I. They are but animals, living only to survive.”

  “And what’s wrong with that?” I asked. “You wanted to reveal something about us, and this is a perfect example. We don’t have any goals either, except to sit around and find things to do with our time.”

  Buti’col shrugged and said, “I think the rabbits worked out rather nicely. Maybe we could make something like rabbits, but smarter?”

  “Yes,” said Fromdon. “No one appreciates the beauty of the coconut on this planet, except for a frog living beneath a cracked shell.”

  “And only to find shelter from my storms,” Thundorious added. “They tremble, but they don’t articulate their fear. What’s the point of even having a thunderstorm if no one talks about it?”

  “There is no point to having thunderstorms!” I said. “Or rabbits, or frogs, or coconuts. Don’t you all understand? You started this experiment without any sort of goal, and now you’re upset that it didn’t satisfy you! Maybe you should have thought about what you wanted, and we could have guided the world to get there!”

  They all stared at me with their blank eyes, like they always do when I make a good point.

  Eventually, Fromdon said, “No point in having coconuts?”

  That opened the floodgate. I won’t subject you to it, but I lost yet another argument because no one here was capable of thinking anything but what Lux told them to think. By the time I started paying attention again, they were on the topic of sentient creatures in our own image.

  Lux said, “Then it is decided. I will create the Elves, immortal and immaculate to lead this world to glory.”

  And O’Plenty added, “And I shall make the Dwarves, stalwart and long-lived to collect and treasure my…treasures.”

  And Thundorious said, “And I shall create the bird-people to gracefully soar the skies and weather my divine weather.”

  “Immortal?” I asked. “Long-lived? Graceful? If we’re conducting an experiment, and I’m not sure we are anymore, shouldn’t we shorten their lives so we can learn more quickly? And why immortal? Their lives will be so easy as to become meaningless. Look at that mouse spending all his time learning how to evade weasels—he’s a better creature for every day he stays alive. Look at the frog who had to hide under a coconut to stay alive—he’s learned something that no other frog even thought of. The threat of dying is what pushes these creatures to become greater than they were. If you put immortal, intelligent beings on the planet, you’re just making tiny versions of us down there.”

  “Tiny versions of us, well said,” said Lux. “Let us begin.” He raised his arms to infuse the world with Elves.

  “Wait!” I pushed his arm back down. “If we got frogs and cougars and everything else from the base equations, I would wager that Elves would appear of their own accord. We only have to wait.”

  “Oooh, excellent idea,” said Buti’col. I was suspicious. I always am when someone thinks they’re agreeing with me; it never works out that way. “We could create something whose major strength is the ability to adapt. It could live anywhere or eat whatever it wanted. It would be the pinnacle of evolution!”

  “Yes!” I shouted, having momentarily lost volume control. I suppose I was just excited that she really was agreeing with me. Then I replayed her words in my mind. “Hold…did you say ‘create’?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Well, maybe not create, but if I can just get the right creatures to mate in the right sequence, I think I could bring just about anything into existence.”

  “That’s…close enough,” I said. It really wasn’t, but I don’t like to discourage the other gods from at least trying to be correct.

  “Then it’s decided,” said Lux. “We shall each create our own people. And what will yours be, Acerbus?”

  I sputtered with exasperation. Had Lux even heard my protests? Was he so conceited that my dissent didn’t even register? Still, I might as well play along. Maybe if I couldn’t convince the other gods to allow my opinions into the world, I could at least make a race who would. Something that would be a paragon of learning and suffering. A cre
ature that wasn’t idealized like the Elves, or carefully calculated like the humans.

  I had it. “They will be called goblins. They will be small and ugly, but clever. They will live short, painful lives constantly under duress from the world around them. And somehow, they’ll survive anyway, in the aggregate sense.”

  O’Plenty asked, “You sure you don’t want to at least make them rich?”

  Lux asked, “Short, painful lives?”

  “Wealth and long life must be earned if they are to carry any meeting. One goblin who dies at the age of twenty will have earned his rest far more than one of your Elves who doesn’t need food or sleep. Each goblin who survives will do so in defiance of me, and be the better for it.”

  Lux sighed. “If you insist, Brother. What about you, Fromdon?”

  Fromdon grinned widely. “Frog-people. They shall live along the shores and eat naught but coconuts.”

  All the other gods applauded him. I hate my life.