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It was so much easier when...
You know me, I’m not one to complain, but being the Supreme Being several times over is bloody knackering.
The first universe I could handle.
So straightforward – fling one or two subatomic paradoxes together, tease a few oddballs into churning out a sacred book with all your best gags, chuck a couple of buckets of poetic justice over everyone in sight, then put your feet up at the greyhound stadium for the rest of the afternoon. Sorted.
But you know how it is. Nothing succeeds like success, apart from a demonic grin and a Yorkshire accent.
And the next universe did make me a tempting offer, though they’d crammed so much stuff up my nose that I don’t recall the details now. Something about ‘in view of your great achievements’ and ‘wider sphere of usefulness’ and ‘unlimited quantities of Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers’.
So off we went again. Trying to whip up novel uses of particles. Inventing capricious methods of reproduction. Busting a gut transmitting impulses from vernal woods, not that anyone bothered to listen. Sodding Wordsworth (as punishment for those who committed genocide).
Oh, I got my performance-related bonus, don’t you worry. But the bloom was gone.
Yet there it was on the mat one morning, among the final demand notices and defective matches floating in pools of petrol: ‘As proprietors of a hitherto neglected universe, we write to propose…’
As it happens I was having some hassle back then from my ex-wife, or ex-husband, we were never entirely sure, which may have been why it didn’t work, so the chance to up stumps and run amok in an alternative space-time continuum appealed, even if I was the mug who had to hold the damn thing together.
I roughed it out on the back of an envelope that had contained an ill-written threat to abduct my bandicoot.
Reptiles to breathe polystyrene. Dark matter to be unbelievably ticklish and whinny with laughter whenever you brushed against it. Hatred to trigger an irresistible compulsion to do George Formby impressions. Yup, the old magic was still there.
Dreary as hell in practice though. Been there, done that. I’ve had more fun at the AGM of Failed Legal Executives Anonymous.
Nonetheless...
Safe pair of hands. Doesn’t flood his universes with bubonic sputum, not like that awful locum we had last year. In they flowed, those ingratiating missives on textured cream-coloured paper three centimetres thick.
I’d got the hang of it, heaven knows. Omnipotence? Hire a good PA. Omniscience? Drink with the rent boys. Unknowableness? Give up personal hygiene and the question won’t arise.
So what’s another five universes here or there? Bring ’em on, fast as you like. It’s not as if I’m doing anything else.
My twelfth universe was a pain in the ass. I’d gone for a retro look. Ice floes and mountains in Strawberry Hill gothic. Sub-atomic structures based on the works of Mabel Lucie Attwell.
It might, I thought, be in keeping with this theme if the primal urge in all sentient creatures were to be, not all that done-to-death survival/power/reproduction malarkey, but The Wish To Be Considered Well-Brought-Up.
Bad move.
A series of natural disasters occurred in which the death toll was grotesquely high because everyone politely stood back to allow everyone else to escape.
Species after species died out because none of them wished to be seen in a state of nudity or arousal.
As for not seeking or exercising power, have you any idea how much extra work that makes for the poor bleeding Supreme Being? I mean someone’s got to take these decisions.
My secretary suffered a mental collapse and locked herself in a filing cabinet, shrieking that she was an aubergine.
That wasn’t the worst of it either.
These ingrates actually turned round and began campaigning against me, on the grounds that I was ‘vulgar’ and ‘unedifying’. My mind was ‘full of indelicate ideas’. I wasn’t the sort of Supreme Being they would allow their children to go out with, apparently.
Well! When I thought of everything I’d done for them – the Charles Rennie Mackintosh sunsets, the edible toffee-flavoured boulders in regions with no indigenous flora or fauna!
I might as well have stuck with my original scenario of ‘early Punk meets Japanese game show’. Wouldn’t have liked that, would they? Tossers.
It’s water under the bridge now. In my latest universe – my twenty-eighth – water is a vermilion solid and flows over bridges, which tend to be made of gas.
I’m toying with creating a race of bearded whales that implode if you mention Val Doonican.
Or how about gazelles with supernaturally strong teeth and throats, so they can eat dense matter, but the moment it reaches their stomachs it tears them apart and plunges into the ground?
‘How he does keep surprising us…’ ‘Endlessly fertile…’ ‘Oldest enfant terrible in not only this universe but all parallel universes we have yet been able to examine...’
Could do it in my sleep. Have done.
Did you know there are an infinite number of parallel universes, most of which have unsatisfactory, over-promoted chief executives?
Look at this letter on foot-thick paper with a Jack Vettriano watermark that materialised this morning: ‘Number of vacancies exceeds the number of suitable candidates… Urgent necessity to take this universe forward… In the light of your proven abilities… ’
And there are a number of ex-wives in these parts I’d be happy not to see again…
SIMON said…
Forget it. You'd only end up paying huge amounts of parallelimony.
TOASTY replied…
Sorry, Simon, only just noticed this comment of yours, what with devoting sixty hours a week to creating absolute realities ex nihilo with alternate Wednesday afternoons off.
The best legal advice I could get was to ‘sod off out of my chambers and never let me see your face again you philandering bastard and/or vexatious litigant (without prejudice to any subsequent fees).’ Amazing how vicious that Charlie Falconer can be when he’s roused.
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