I have a secret... I'm God. (Patreon)

This is another story! Your dearest friend reveals to you that she's God... and tells you that she's thinking of ending things. All things.

"Hey, I wanted to tell you a little something. We’re best friends, right? Of course we are. Well I wanted to tell you a little secret. The kind of thing I’ve never told anyone else.

I’m God.

You chuckled, just like I knew you would. But that laugh was a bit forced, wasn’t it? I can feel the emotions swirling through that tiny little head of yours. No, you don’t actually find it ridiculous. You’re not in disbelief. You’re just in a state of mild surprise… but more than that, you feel stupid for not realizing it earlier. Like a puzzle who’s solution seems blindingly obvious as soon as you hear the answer.

It’s not especially surprising. I’m a world-famous actress and a billionaire. I look utterly perfect in every way, and my demeanor always seems to suggest that I know more than I let on. I get everything I want. Billions of people love me. Worship me.

I tried to drop little hints now and again. I didn’t want to make it too obvious, not even to you. But you came close. You suspected there was something supernatural about me, even if you never considered a possibility as seemingly blasphemous as my godhood.

No, I’m not the god of Abraham, or Buddha. They’re not real… or at least, not in this universe… but I am.

No, don’t get down on your knees and pray to me. I get enough worship as it is. What I want is someone who will listen. Really listen.

No, I didn’t create this universe. But I can create them.

Do you want to see?

Here, I’ll make one for you. See, there it is! Now take a good look. That bright flash was the big bang. It looks tiny, but size is relative. There are just as many stars in this universe as there are in our own. The only real difference is, time moves faster in this one. MUCH faster.

I’ll give you a closer look. You can see the first signs of life showing up on a planet that’s a bit like ours. It’s getting more complex. Ecosystems are evolving. Microorganisms beget macroorganisms. Now one species has become sentient. They invented agriculture. Civilizations are springing up. They invented the toilet, and the car, and the cellular phone. And just now, they invented the nuke… it took them a bit longer than most planets, which could be good or bad... And there’s that telltale flash. A thousand mushroom clouds, one after another, erasing all life. So much for that planet. Oh well.

Don’t feel too bad, there are a billion other little planets just like it, just in that one little universe. Does that sound like a lot? There are two hundred billion trillion stars. That’s only one in two hundred trillion that develops life. Barely anything, really. A billion isn’t very many, not when you can truly understand the vastness of the emptiness that surrounds it.

Life is beautiful like that. Fascinating little springs of beauty and intelligence in an otherwise barren universe… but it’s always fleeting. In an instant, or an aeon, those flickering candles are snuffed out… usually, by their own hand. Sometimes it’s a quick process. Sometimes it’s agonizingly slow.

I could save them… but that would compromise things, in a way. I’ve tried making little paradises for them… But that pleasure is fleeting. For your kind, ‘heaven’, is barely different from being put on an ever-increasing IV drip of opiates. Constant happiness erodes everything else. It flattens things in ways that you cannot imagine. After a few hours of pure ecstasy, you barely even notice that pleasure. It’s just background noise. It’s a single blissful note of music, played for all eternity, until all meaning and memory is erased.

But even worse, for me… It's terribly boring for me to watch.

Most of the time, I like to watch things play out on their own, with minimal interference. It’s a beautiful symphony, but each one is a different version of a tune I’ve heard countless times. After a while, those songs start to sound the same… and then they begin to grow irritating.

It can be cathartic, then, to interfere. Not as some benevolent deity, but as a living cataclysm. Rather than allowing things to end on their terms, or the terms of nature… I end them on mine.

Sometimes I would have fun watching their reaction. They would see a living god reveal herself, and prostrate themselves before me… and then I’d turn on them a moment later. I would bring my wrath down upon them. Only it wasn’t wrath, so much as mild annoyance… but that was still more than enough to end them. Fire and brimstone, as your people say. Or said. It doesn’t feel like all that long ago those words were written for the first time.

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But I have no attachment to that little universe. I would gain little pleasure from drawing things out… and so I will simply end it. I squeeze the little thing between my fingers, and it is erased. Just like that, it’s gone. The only thing that remains will be our memories of the place. Yours are vague and fleeting, but mine track the movement of every last subatomic molecule. In my mind there is a near-perfect synecdoche of those all those stars, all those lives, moving through time and space until they reach their inevitable end by my hand… Until I erase it from my memory, and even that will be erased.

There, that’s gone too.

You can see where I’m going with this now, right? Of course you can, but I’ll just come out and say it. I’m thinking of ending things. All things.

Your pulse is quickening. I can feel the fear in your heart… But do not be afraid. You are my best friend… And so I’ll kill you last.

Yes, of course I’ll kill you. Would you rather that I let you asphyxiate in the cold vacuum of space? Or that I make you live forever, floating about in the endless expanse of nothingness for all eternity, in a universe void of light and space and time? No, I thought not.

Fear of death is not rational, although it is useful. Individuals that do not fear it are less likely to pass on their genes, and so that fear evolved. But there is nothing to fear, save perhaps the fleeting pain that precedes it. Death is nothingness. Do you want to see what it feels like?

There. That was it. I erased you from existence, for precisely three minutes, and then I brought you back. You don’t remember it, because there’s nothing to remember. It’s a dreamless sleep, the one that exists before and after all things.

Yes, even me. I am uncompromisingly vast, in space and time and thought, but I am not infinite. Nothing is, nothing can be… save for the vast emptiness that surrounds all matter and meaning. But do not fear the void. It is what we are born from, and it is what we will return to, even if a trillion universes will have been born and created before that day comes. The fleeting nature of our lives means that each moment is precious… and I do not want to waste them.

I want to create a world that does not exist in nature. Something impossibly grand and complex and beautiful. Wheels within wheels, populated with beings nearly as intricate and beautiful as I am, all singing together in unity. Creatures that could enjoy bliss, that could live among a living god and not be reduced to quivering masses. All of them spinning around me in a chorus of unimaginable beauty. That’s how I want to live out the rest of my life… or at least the next few aeons of it.

But to do that… I need a clean slate. Not out of physical necessity. No, I could create that universe, while still leaving this one here. No, my problem is something else: I have grown attached to this universe. I have allowed myself to fall into its rhythms. I lived one of your lives, and it was almost as if I were one of you. I even allowed one of you to become my friend.

This all gave me a fascinating new perspective… but I fear there is little more for me to learn from you, and so it is time for me to embark on something new. I cannot truly embark on a new journey until this universe is gone… and I lack the patience to wait for its inevitable destruction. So today, I will destroy it. I hadn’t made up my mind, not entirely, until I uttered those words. But my word is truth, and my will shall be done.

I will erase this universe from existence… and then from my mind. I will not remember you, but that doesn’t make the time we shared any less special.

Now, my dearest friend, my sweetest little pet… Feel my love radiate upon you.

Do not be afraid. Be at peace.

Now watch me, and rejoice while I destroy your world."