To Save The Plurality: An Unfinished Novel: Part Six
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XIII.
After Mark had gotten hip to 'The New World Order,' as it were, he sought out Liam, "Liam The Devil," he called himself. They compared notes, and came to gratifyingly complimentary--if not exactly similar--conclusions about the nature of reality. They hung out together as friends. They jumped from planet to planet, star to star, as though they were bouncing on trampolines. They played baseball with meteorites, swam in the sun, and skated on stardust, giddy with their powers.
Mark, being the just and merciful God he had declared himself to be--could be, would be--had had no intention of getting into an adversarial relationship with Liam, in the sad, tired old repetition of the Lord-Satan struggle that scripture had chronicled, or had been interpreted to chronicle. He let all of that go like so much rubbish. Ying needed a little Yang to make life interesting, or, indeed, even worth living at all.
Mark had been somewhat surprised by the ease with which he had latched onto or developed ideas that would have been intolerably avante garde, in the circles he had associated with on Earth; and dismissed or altered notions that had been similarly sacrosanct in those same spheres of affiliation. But... when he was honest with himself he admitted that there had been at least a portion of his hardcore fundamentalism that had been opportunistic, political, even theatrical, and simplified with the object of attracting and communicating with the... well, let's be honest about it, the simpler folk.
The God before him had known all that was in his secret heart, had known what an imperfect, if earnest and hardworking, servant he had been, Mark assumed. The God before Mark had known about all of the dark places in his soul and his life, had known about his ambition, his craving for power, and his willingness to use that power in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to get even his base, Id-driven desires fulfilled.
Still in all, he had been found worthy, worthy of worthies to carry the mantle of Lord of the Universe.
They could not wallow in idleness forever, Mark had said to Liam. The time would come again when Mark would have to create life again, human life on Earth or some planet like it. It didn't have to be humans necessarily, the sentient species might be made to arise from some other kind of animal, which along with all other life would have to be re-created, re-derived from the amoeba.
"Yes," Mark said to Liam, "sometime I am going to have to bring forth LIFE again."
Liam said, "And I suppose it will fall to me to try to corrupt it," with a smile.
Mark smiled too. There would be no "cosmic struggle between Heaven and Hell," somehow played out on the souls of humankind. "You will give it its backbone, its strength and will to fight and survive and reproduce above all."
Mark thought of Liam and himself as two chefs preparing a grand meal together: each supplying their own special ingredients, techniques, inherited traditions, and special flair to create something that neither of them could have made on their own.
XIV.
Mark had been punch-drunk with the possibilities before him, all of those he could perceive with his obviously enhanced imagination, and all those that were, perhaps, even beyond his reckoning at the present---not that "present," "past," and "future" have any meaning in this domain. He would be the best God ever! If there was ever a Hall of Fame for the Gods...
But mightn't there be other, pretenders to the throne? Mark thought to himself, spoiling his own good mood. But it was worth considering. After all---returning to his inheritance idea---it had always been common for aristocrats to have rather large families with certainly more than one child. As a consequence, succession struggles were not exactly unheard of.
But being "God,"... or at least having access to the legacy of God, wouldn't he know if there other afterlife souls making such erring presumptions? Surely he would! Wouldn't he? But how could more than one soul grasp after the mantle of the One God of the universe?
The notion was surely rubbish; it didn't make any sense. But nevertheless, Mark could not stop it from growing in his thoughts like a cancerous tumor. Mark should be able to sense such an emergency... unless... unless... somehow the other or others were shielding their intentions from him, from each other, from all of the other pretenders, how ever many there might be.
"What does that mean?" Mark asked himself. What was he thinking? What was he imagining? For he did not know...