Chapter One
In the beginning, there came the word.

And the word was ‘Bugger!’

After some muffled swearing and several thuds, there came the sentence:

‘Let there be light.’

And yea there was light, pouring out from an anglepoise lamp, washing over a large desk covered with paper, pencils and a ruler. An old man sits at the desk, dressed in a shabby dressing gown, his long grey hair flowing behind him, his beard, similarly long and grey, rising up against the paunch of his belly.

Stop.

Let’s take a look at this chap before we go any further. Forget the hair and the beard and the shabby dressing gown – look at his eyes. The iris is a brilliant, crystal blue that seems to sparkle with golden light. The pupil is deep and black, look at it for too long and you can feel yourself being dragged in; weighed, measured and found wanting...

This, for all of his flaws, is God.

And he’s designing the Universe.

~~

So far, it had not been going well. 7 days is a tight timeline, even when it is self imposed, and it’d taken a couple of days just for Him to work out the mechanics of tectonic plate movement. Sure, the majority of space hadn’t been much of a problem being as it was, well, space, but the life-supporting planets were a whole different kettle of... whatever kind of marine animal you put in to a kettle. But he’d get to that later.

So, the last few hours had been dedicated to creating the animals. There were the Slow Moving Grey Ones With Big Noses, the Small Furry Ones, the Wet Ones, the Ones With Long Necks (even at this early stage, He realised that he’d have to invent Marketing to come up with appropriate names, this was not his strong suit), and Rover, the Intergalactic Spaniel, who lay curled up at His feet.

He sat down again at his desk, breathing out heavily as He did so. In the time he was looking at the paper, galaxies burst in to life, flickered briefly, and died away again. He picked up a pencil and, with a flourish, began scribbling emphatically upon the paper before him.

Seconds pass. A cloud comes across His face and he screws up the paper and throws it towards the bin. He misses. No matter, because he is already scribbling again, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth in concentration. No sooner has he started, though, than another ball of paper is hurled with poor accuracy at the bin. This sad pattern continues until, with bad grace, he grabs a mug (emblazoned with I Love and nothing else, presumably as he had not created anything for Him to love, yet), and stamps off in to the darkness.

He returns a few minutes later, a steaming coffee in hand and a look of determination on His face. He sits quickly and draws, discards, draws and discards. Hours pass. With a final look of resignation, he drinks the remainder of his coffee, and a look of disgust crams itself in to His features. Cold!
He slams the mug down. Lifting it up, He stops. An ugly coffee stain from the bottom of the mug has created a perfect circle on the paper. His hands reach for the edges, and He’s just about to screw it up when...

He sits down. He takes a pencil in his hand, and draws seven further shapes on the paper. He labels each one, and titles the sheet with heavy underlines. Then, he picks up the mug and a pantbrush, and carefully paints something on it. He rises, leaves the room, and seconds later we can hear the strains of bad singing over the sound of a roaring shower.

We can move, oh so slowly, to the desk. The sheet of paper has eight circles on it, labelled Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. It is titled: The Galaxy.

And that, dear friends, is where our story begins.

Oh, the mug. The mug is now emblazoned with the words I Love Uranus, which not only proves that God is a man, but that He is also directly responsible for Clacton.
( Devil_In_Tights the *real* DiT!, Thu 21 Aug 2008, 15:59, Reply)