A black building with windows of orange light played sentinel over a dark blue river at dusk in a city I did not know. It may have been Riga, Latvia or Baku, Azerbaijan or maybe even Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There were other buildings, old buildings of red and sand-colored brick defaced by time and the scourge of man. There were long, straight streets and bridges and rows of perfectly manicured trees, rows of imperfectly born maniacs. There was smoke rising from the vessels of the wrinkled people that sat in the carnival-lit squares. I got lost in the lights and the noise as the night pressed down. I came out of a machine.

The very next morning I woke up in a silent yet humming hotel room overlooking the guts of a different world. I ate a quiet breakfast in a warm lobby. A pale woman from another time watched from the shadows between the back and the front. She spoke mystery through the dust in the sun like a rain of whispers. I went out to take a walk and I was wearing a long western gunslinger coat and it was somewhat cold. I didn’t understand what anybody was saying. I couldn’t read the signs. But I had other things on my mind. I was thinking about murdering God.

When I walked into the old dusty church with the golden strands of morning light filtering through the stained-glass hands of Jesus, he was waiting there for me at the end of the velvet thoroughfare. His back was turned, and he was looking into a complicated machine that looked like a technological pipe organ. He seemed to be studying the world, many worlds, the entire universe perhaps in his sight. The multitude of multi-colored planets floated like marbles in an ocean of amniotic fluid. He tapped at various points on the large screen before him. He laughed deeply as an explosion materialized somewhere, a clear vision of man and war and other untidy things of those particular worlds — Earth and Earth 2.

He then spoke deep without turning, as if he were a mighty mountain gazing off onto a distant land with a different set of eyes. He was hairless, large, and pale, draped in a single covering of universal brown flecked with gold. “If you plan on killing me, you’ll have to do better than a dull machete. I’m incredibly powerful.” He shook his hands as if he had just finished washing them. The screen he had been working on dimmed like dark mode and he finally turned to face me like the preface of an Old West duel. His face was contoured and cruel. He looked broken. “What is your complaint?”

A crow descended from somewhere and sat on an ancient stone.

“The world is on fire with hatred. You let people die. You let people suffer. You let me suffer nearly every day.”

“And you blame me?”

“Yes.”

“But I have nothing to do with any of that.” He turned back to his machine and tapped on some keys. He was searching for something. He groaned like he was exhausted. “I have no control over the faulty wiring of your world or any other world. There are no guarantees for any living being.”

“I thought you had control of everything. Everything! You supposedly created it all, yet you just leave it to derail and burn.”

I looked up at the looming statues at either side of his cybernetic altar — one a wooden caballero wearing a full-metal bandolier and cast in a wandering, far-off stare; the other an Asian egg man dressed in the colorful armor of a misplaced childhood. His wide eyes moved side-to-side and ticked like a clock.

The lord of the universe stepped down from his elevated space and walked upon the velvet path of forest green toward me. He must have been eight feet tall, the bottom fringes of his cloak swayed against the carpeting as he moved. He raised his arms in the air and lifted his chin of white granite flesh and bone and he spoke to the sky even though his words were intended for me. “So, then your intention is to reprimand me for the whole of my creations? Infinitely impossible. You are wasting your time here. Go off and leave this place.” He lowered his head and scowled at me as he waited for my reaction. His eyes were an unnatural green.

“What planet are you from?”

Just his eyes glided upward. “I am a member of every single one. There is a propagating drop of me in each spinning stone I placed. But it’s gotten away from me. I can no longer control it.” He turned and gestured with an outstretched arm. “Even with my device… I cannot stop the exponential madness of men and all the other beasts out there.”

He suddenly had a fragility I did not expect. He read my thoughts. “I am, even as you are,” he replied. “Imperfect.”

“Then we are all doomed? Every ounce of this universe… Doomed?”

He repented. “That was never my intention.”

“But rather your conviction it seems.” I threw the machete to the floor. It made a muffled thud upon the carpet. “Then it would serve no purpose to do away with you, would it?”

 “None… There are a trillion and infinite more just like me.”

“What do I do now?”

He motioned to the doors at the vestibule. “Go back out into the city. Walk. Breathe. Eat and drink life until the end. Love everything without flinching.” He turned away from me and returned to his apocalyptic chancel. He made motions with his hands and the entire universe ignited once more before him and he resumed his endless work.

END