“Good morning,” said God.
“Hey, good morning,” said The Devil, refilling the coffee machine with water. “Coffee?”
“Yeah, thanks,”
The machine grumbled. When it was done, the Devil handed the full cup over to God, who took a small sip and quickly pulled backs his lips. “You always make it too hot,” He said with his typical devilish smile. Both of them chuckled.
They walked out to the hallway, then into the conference room, sat down, stared at their phones for a bit and sipped.
“Okay…” the horned man said rubbing his eyes. “So, what’s on the agenda today? Let’s begin with ––– that thing with the Tadpole Galaxy?”
“Well,” said the bright, shining creator, while suppressing a yawn. “I had Gabriel look into it and he says that he’ll try to find another galaxy to merge it with. Something close by I reckon. Seems like he miscalculated the last time and the two galaxies didn’t hit each other properly. So, now Tadpole has this weird looking tail from the gravity pulling it out. It’s just all a bit screwed really,” He scratched his gargantuan white beard. “It’ll probably cost us about 8, maybe 10 civilizations in the long run.”
“That’s not too bad considering,”
“I agree. Not that big of a deal. Looks pretty ugly though.” God said with that mischievous smile. A new chuckle followed between them. “How about you? How’s Orion?”
The Devil smiled his happiest of smiles and leaned back with his hands behind his head. “Oh, you wouldn’t believe this one! I thought I’d seen it all man. But this? This lizard race is full of raging maniacs! You did some genesis there, old man.”
“Sounds like you’re having a blast,” God grinned.
“Hey man, you know me, all I do is hold up the mirror. They create their own hell once they look into it. I just didn’t know you could create one so horrible for yourself! I must admit, it is very enjoyable. Thanks for creating them. When their anger finally dies off, and that will be a while mind you… I mean, they’re going to feel guilty for at least a couple million years coming. And all because they thought the rodents were stealing their jobs! Hahaha!”
God smiled, pulled up his eyebrows and threw his arms in the air. “They tuuk ur jobs! THEY TUUK UR JOOOOBS!”. They both roared with laughter.
Baal looked around the corner to see what the ruckus was about. “Gentlemen. Good morning. I trust you are well?”
“Hey!” The pair of them both waived from their slumped position. “How was your holiday in The Great Void?”
“Great! Voidy too. I’ll tell you about it at lunch,” Hissed the god of lies. “I have a meeting now for the Annual Conference of Supernova’s. Just wanted to check in and say hi.”
“Okay. Looking forward to hearing the stories!” Baal winked and went his way.
The Devils smile had kindness in its eyes. “I like that guy,”
He looked down at his papers on the table. “Now… next on the agenda is… Eart, Uth… how do you pronounce it?”
“Earth. Like the dirt.”
“Ah, okay, Earth. Dirt planet. Got it. So, how’s that going?”
“Curious,”. God scratch behind his divine ear.
The Devil crossed his arms with amusement in his frown and waited.
“Curious. What I did was give the top primates over there, humans as they call themselves, a little tap. Just a little tap. What happened next was fascinating.”
“What was the tap?” said the devil, still with his arms crossed, but now the smile was gone, leaving only an expression of intense curiosity.
“Oh, a little virus. Nothing too fancy. I’d tested some before and they didn’t really react. I thought I’d give them a slightly bigger puzzle through a bat like rodent that lives there. I gave the bat an immediate ticket upstairs for a job well done of course.”
God leaned forward with his arms on the table, still looking into the distance. “I then used one of your mirrors, just to see what they’d do. If they could watch their own shadows ––– you know, what they are doing to their planet and its animals. It’s a real mess.”
God fell silent for a while.
“So, then right, I threw in a bit where the virus would spread fastest in actual meat packaging plants. You know, meat, virus, meat, virus, I kept repeating it. I thought they’d see the irony in that one. Thought they’d catch on. It was so on the nose… but they missed it. Missed it completely. Not a clue.” He shook his head.
The Devils eyes tingled.
“They didn’t see my blue skies. Didn’t notice my birds sing… some flocked together yeah, but most of them just panicked. I almost felt guilty. It was just this tiny little tingle. Minuscule.” mused God, ever deeper in thought. “I mean, I expected some fear of course. That was the whole point. But not this level. Instead of being afraid of the virus, I seemed to release a total whirlwind of anxiety. Turns out they even fear their own species when they have different skin colors. They make all of these weird distinctions too. Mostly based on their exchange system. The idea of mixing genes… keeping the temperature acceptable… they seem oblivious. It’s just so strange.” Gods whiskers frowned with frowns of their own.
“I gave them genesis after all. I created them. But now they hate their own? Can you imagine? It’s crazy. Bat shit crazy.”
Beelzebub didn’t hide his serenity: “Now you know my field,”
God frowned and shook his head again. “They dominate all other species on their planet. Just dominate. Yet they turn on their own at a whim! It’s not at all logical. And not that satisfactory either. I just wanted to give them a bit of a jump scare, like you always do. Thought it would be fun. Good for them too. And yes, some of them do really love. But they also started a whole haunted house of horrors all on their own. Their hell must be terrible. They just jumped right into the vortex. Whoop. Straight down. The lot of them.”
The silence hung in disappointment.
“But…” he ended with a finger pointing upwards “Original. A very original vortex of fears. That much I’ll give them.”
The Devil downed the last coffee in the cup. “Seems like you stirred in a bit of an ugly pot.”
“It was only a small tap you know. Just a tiny little tap…” he threw his hands up in surrender.
“A little out of my league to be honest,”
The Devil looked at his friend without hiding his undying love. “You want me to look into it?”
“Yeah, that would be good. That would be good.” God sighed with relief, turned to meet the love in the Devils eyes with that ever-devilish smile. “You might want to bring an extra mirror or two”.
They chuckled.
“Will do. Now, what else do we have...”
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Rogier van Kralingen