FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE,
I GIVE YOU THE PREFACE OF
THE GODS OF PROBABILITIES
FROM 12/16/15 TO 12/22/16 IT'S 99 CENTS
Preface
Captain Zousan entered
the control room after a poor night’s sleep. His sour mood had evidently been
preordained, given not one single member of his crew was to be found. Fine with
him. He took no pleasure in terrorizing his crew, but honestly, they all
behaved like spoiled God-children.
He recalled his own
petulant arrogance when he declared to his father, Cronus (a.k.a. Big
Boss) that he’d make his own damn multiverse and it would be far superior to
his. Instead of apologizing for his constant complaints and unreasonable
expectations, his father had accepted his resignation. “It will do you good to
fail, Zousan. Your arrogance far exceeds your value. A bit of humility will
serve you well.”
Cronus had been pleased
to send him off into new space until he’d discovered Zousan intended to take
his baby daughter Athena with him. “You can’t take a baby on a ship!” he’d
bellowed.
“She’s on a ship here.
Unless you told them to sabotage the ship you’ve commissioned for me, then
she’ll be fine on my ship as well.”
While his father had no
use for Zousan, he did love Athena. But who wouldn’t? His daughter was
perfection in all ways. She was the light of his life, the only creation he’d
ever made that his father hadn’t criticized.
Cronus had insisted on
“additional improvements” to the ship, culled out a bunch of losers from his
crew he’d been dying to get rid of for billions of years, and set up a big bang
to birth a new multiverse.
Zousan could still
remember the day they’d flown into the tiny new bubble of multiverses. He’d
been heady with power. Finally, he was in charge, and he’d do everything right
and put his father’s multiverse to shame in comparison.
For the first ten billion
years, Zousan and his crew were bored out of their minds as they waited for the
planets to form and seed life. The only matters he had to deal with were the
annoying crew and his fabulous little girl as she grew into an extraordinary
young woman.
From early on, his
creative daughter spent most of her time making artwork from space particles.
At first they were clumsy splatters, but as she matured so did her designs.
Recently she had created three plumes that looked far too much like a man’s
privates to suit his liking.
Since he’d threatened all
his male crew with a one-way trip through a black hole to who-knows-where if
they messed with his daughter, she shouldn’t have a clue as to what lay beneath
their uniforms, especially not ones standing so firm and tall.
He intended to discover
which of his worthless crew he needed to return to his father with a note
saying, “Great job! This loser you insisted I take onto my ship defiled your
beloved granddaughter and you are thus fired from all grand-parenting duties.”
For the next million
years, he spied on his daughter. Upon finding no worthless men sneaking into
her room, he tried another technique: honesty.
He called her in and
asked her what she thought her pretty columns represented.
Athena blushed and
suddenly found great interest in her hot cocoa.
“Sweetheart, I’m not
trying to embarrass you, but I do need to know who showed you something that
inspired you to make three of these.”
She breathed in deeply.
“The computer.”
“Then none of the crew
has touched you?”
“No, but that has to
change. I am a young woman now, and I have needs.”
He so regretted opening
up this can of worms. “Wow! Look at the time. I have a meeting with my
crew...”
From then on, Zousan
never complained about any men-parts that showed up in a galaxy, but he did
have another problem. Not one life form was to be found on any planet. Thus, he
decided he needed his brightest mind working on how to move things along.
So he called in his daughter.
“I know you love
painting, but I was sent here to make a better world, and while you’ve made the
galaxies gorgeous, none of the planets have life on them. Nor does any of the
crew know how to make life.”
“Why would Grandfather
not share that?” Athena asked.
Zousan wanted to say,
“Because he’s an ass.” Upon taking a breath, he softened his response since
Athena still loved the pompous, overbearing jerk. “He wants me to fail at my
task. He sees this as a chance to humiliate and humble me.”
Athena hugged him,
dissipating his anger at once. “I’m sorry. I wish you would have told me
sooner.”
Zousan blinked. “Does
that mean you know how to make life?”
She grinned.
“Grandfather, showed me how when I was but a year old. All we need are
chemicals, an electric spark, plus lots and lots of time.”
To speed matters up, Zousan
had Athena teach the entire crew how to make life so a great deal of planets
could be seeded in each of their assigned universes. Finally, a billion years
later, life of some form existed on one planet per sun.
In certain cases, in
which the crew member was unsure or perhaps just lazy, multiple life forms had
been placed on the same planet, but in different dimensions. Also, Athena would
frequently borrow a creature from one planet and put it on another, creating a
sustainable cycle of life.
The ingredients used
depended upon the planet’s natural chemicals, which meant on some planets water
would be the main ingredient and on others mercury, acids, or methane. Soon all
the planets were analyzed so the computer could keep track of where the various
life forms could be placed if for some reason they needed to remove them from
their current planet. They’d lost a great deal of life on the planet Zepwick
before they realized its warming and freezing cycles were deadly and would have
to be managed.
Recently, higher
intelligent life forms began to occur, which brought about new problems.
On the blue-green planet
called Zepwick, a biped lifeform, which mimicked the appearance of the Gods,
didn’t respect the balance of life Athena had so carefully and artfully
established. Instead, they saw themselves above all other life forms. Given
their craftiness and creative nature, they built traps, weapons, and
impenetrable shelters to protect themselves while they not only slaughtered the
lower life forms but other communities of their own kind. Never had Zousan met
such a destructive species intent upon annihilating everything on their planet.
They were not his only
problem, either. Intelligent life forms on other planets began causing trouble
as well. While he couldn’t prove it, he was certain his father was behind the
new sentients’ hell-bent drive to destroy their lovely planet and lower life
forms in the process of self-annihilation.
Zousan had no choice but
to intervene. Culling the better-looking crewmembers, he sent them out to warn
the young species to behave or the Gods would smite them down. Unfortunately,
on some planets the warning backfired.
Take for example, the
planet Zepwick. The only change in behavior the Homo sapiens made upon hearing
his new commandments was to kill their enemies, who were also Homo sapiens, in
the name of their God. Honestly, he wanted to order them wiped out so he
could start over. Unfortunately, according to the probability program, which
would decide if Zousan succeeded or failed to make a better multiverse than his
father’s, the troublesome blue-green planet was critical to his success.
Thus, he decided to give
them a new religion, called the Path of Light.
Rule #1: No killing other
Homo sapiens! Knowing how easy it was to alter computer text, he even had
it carved into tablets of stone for the 6,523 languages spoken on the small
planet. Then they went off to another parallel universe and delivered the same
message. It took several million years to get the word out, and for a while, it
looked for naught. Probability of success dropped to three percent. Zousan was
ready to give up and declare defeat, but Athena refused to let him.
“We need more crew
members,”
Zousan shook his head.
“My father won’t give me more crew.”
“Then let’s pick up the
crew’s children and train them.”
“What children?”
“The six hundred or so
children sired by the ‘Gods’ when they visited the planets.”
“There are unsupervised
God-children running about my planets?”
Athena rolled her eyes.
“A great deal among the Homo sapiens, since their appearance is most like
ours.”
He frowned. “Well, that
explains their troublesome nature. I had no idea our seed would flourish in
other species.”
“Unfortunately, it does.
And most appear to be highly intelligent, which is generally not well-received
by their parents. We need to gather them up before any more are murdered for
being annoying smartasses.”
“Is the problem contained
on Zepwick?”
“It’s the hotspot, both
in the third and fourth dimension, but there are others.”
Another problem came to
mind. “And where are we going to put them all?”
Athena shrugged. “I guess
it’s time to build a bigger ship. Zepwick will have the materials we need. But
we’ll probably need to land in force and remind them we are their Gods before they’ll
help.”
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