Page 18 - Unlikely Stories 3

Deus Inspiratori

“I flooded the place, I knocked down your tower—that last one
was part of the plan, I may now reveal. It wasn’t simply that your
ancestors ignored warnings that certain gross infractions were bound
to incur my wrath.”
Thus Monogod addressed the leaders of the two-and-seventy
jarring sects. It had arrayed them on the inside of a dull brown
sphere, like gnats imprisoned in a flypaper balloon, for a rousing pep
talk. To emphasize their lowly and identical status, all were garbed in
haircloth jumpsuits. Each heard Monogod in his or her native
tongue, as they would understand each other should any of them dare
to speak.
“Of course, the whole grand scheme wouldn’t have occurred to me
had your ancestors decided to dig downward instead of build upward.
Much more instructive to discover the inferno beneath your feet than
hope for an elevator ride to the climate-controlled heavens. You-
Know-Who down there wouldn’t have stopped you, either: quite the
contrary. But I digress.”
Monogod’s audience, captivated by the profundity of the occasion
if not by its compulsion, hung on every word. This was the real thing,
a vision verifiable by its sheer incredibility. Who could make up stuff
like this?
“All of you understand, or at minimum are content to promote,
the idea that unfathomable mystery resides in me. Paradox abounds,
ever present to entrap the skeptical in reflexive assumptions and
conclusions. Yea, I fashioned you to chase your tails, and then
removed them; still you run around in circles. Only you self-anointed
panjandrums can withstand the contradictions of the highest wisdom.
And so you do not question my actions, sublimating your doubt into
sermons and homilies proving my good intentions and meting out of
justice on earth and elsewhere.”
And many, among that flock of shepherds, nodded sagely, mentally
spinning their vestiges of a caudal extremity into aerodynamically
efficient generators of renewed thrust and uplift. If they could only
remember a few key words upon waking from this beautiful dream!
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