Dave felt anxious. He disliked conflict, judgement, pressure and incessant questioning—a shrivelled remnant of a childhood he never discussed except with pets and other animals. Now he was in a cupboard-sized room with his creator and had no idea what to ask. Instead, he was the one being questioned.
Why are we in a cupboard?
Hiding here seemed obvious because God was having some kind of divine nervous breakdown in his office, and for Dave nervous breakdowns made him uncomfortable and cupboards did not. It turned out that most of this anxiety had been triggered by the appearance of a hazy green message that slowly rendered across God’s screen, rather than by the fact that God had an entire contraband human in the office.
Being stuck in the cupboard felt like the right response to this message.
Dave decided to try the kind of “active listening” questions he’d been trained to ask at one of his soul-destroying corporate half-day offsites. Maybe something he learned at the office might be useful in this office.
‘God. Let me get this straight. A) I’m not dead. B) You look pretty much identical to the beardy guy who works at the gas station around the corner of my office C) Yet you have no idea about what humans are?’
‘Boss.’ God placed his elbows on the small office table and leant forward. ‘A, I’m not really sure what alive or dead is, but I think all your organs are functioning so I think that means you continue to work. B, I have decided to be a physical approximation of the current average person on Earth. I felt this would calm you. C...’ Dave interjected as it dawned on him. ‘...You really look like Jesus. I mean like a business casual Jesus vibe with this Polo shirt and chinos with sandals thing.’ God looked baffled. ‘What is a Jesus? I guess this is related to your final question. I don’t know what you are. I know rocks. I know fire. I know dinosaurs and I recently knew plankton. You, as a thing, seem to be default annoying.’ Dave leant back, stared around the room and then regained focus. ‘Oh. I thought, of everyone, you definitely should know Jesus. He is meant to be your son. And you. And a ghost maybe? I’m not too into the detail of this whole thing to be honest.’ ‘Seriously?’ God laughed. ‘Who came up with that one? I’ve been far too busy to think about having family - I was pretty occupied doing my bi-millennium reports, being ignored by everyone around me and occasionally pressing a blue button.’
God looked immediately worried as he saw Dave’s face slowly drop. ‘So what happened to this Jesus? Sounds like you all thought he was a big deal.’ Explaining Jesus to God was not how Dave expected Tuesday to play out. Usually, Tuesdays were doing his weekly reports, adjusting the resourcing for the team and experiencing millennial angst for the third time that week.
‘I think he was just a really, really, really, nice guy. Probably the first one ever. And his friends tried to make him you so that people would be nice to each other. I think nice people were in short supply 2,000 years ago and if God tells you to be nice, you have to listen, right?’ ‘100%. So what happened to him?’ ‘We killed him.’ God rested his head on the desk, closed his eyes and exhaled deeply. Dave didn’t know where to look. He leant over and awkwardly patted God on his shoulder and whispered, ‘This isn’t Sunday, big man.’ ‘I just want my lizards back...’ God snivelled.
‘Look, don’t we have that report to do? Also, it might be helpful in planning this thing to know what units of time Admin counts in. Admin is popping over in four whats?’ God chose to ignore Dave’s cry for time-unit-clarification. In increasing frustration Dave got up, pacing around the small windowless box room they were in, the ethereal light from a single bulb flickering as he cautiously went across to the shelves and started flicking through the pads, post-its and pens. ‘Blimey, you have some really great colours of pads here, we don’t get anything like this at work,’ he muttered out loud. God lifted his head. ‘Purple is my favourite.’ Dave slid a purple pad into his pocket surreptitiously.
‘Look Dave. For the first time in 4.5 billion years I think I could get promoted. Promoted I tell you. I could get more powers, some respect and even a few new planets to run. I could even put a few big lizards back in the mix. No-one here cared about my Earth and my lizards, and now they are gone. But they might care about you and Jesus and all that stuff you’ve going on now. I just need to be able to explain what you are, what you have been up to and I assume how great you are doing.’
‘And a bad report?’ Dave cleared his throat nervously.
‘Active Management. There is an entire department that handles the mess-ups and could-do-betters. They are very efficient. They all wear identical beige slacks.’
‘Doesn’t sound that bad.’ Dave looked at his wide-legged off-white chinos.
‘Tell that to the civilisation that got hive-minded with a shoe.’
‘Yikes.’
God got himself together as he began chewing his pen, while Dave slunk into his chair.
‘So who are the boxes then? Are they your friends?’ ‘The boxes?’ ‘Yes. Your planet is covered in millions of moving metal boxes. Are they you? Can you turn into them?’
‘Cars. These are cars. Some are red. Some are blue.’ Dave felt as though he were a primary-school teacher about to reach for a bottle of gin.
‘But what is a car? You aren’t a car right?’
‘No. No I am a person. A car is a box that moves us around. Don’t get too hung up on the details but just always remember I’m not a car. Don’t try to get inside me. These ears, despite their size, aren’t doors.’
Dave’s understanding of the universe was now being stretched beyond his limits. He started the day drinking a green shake and was ending it talking to God about the anatomical difference between a car and a person.
Maybe I’m here to save you, Dave mused.
God took a pen and started scribbling on one of his notepads, each turn of the page was a new question, each sentence was an answer that gave him more anxiety. Why. How. When. Where was T-Rex. The God of Earth, for most of his existence, had occupied a tiny corner of this entire universal operation. He barely left his office let alone walked down his corridor; the insignificance of what he did day to day was beyond comprehension for even himself, he couldn’t even take a modicum of credit for creation - that was all the big guy upstairs.
However he did have absolute control in this stationery cupboard. God took advantage of his stationary situation and had been scribbling for a while, pen scratching up and down, as he grilled Dave to try and document the entire history of all humanity in as few pads as possible.
God flicked back through his notepad. ‘Okay. So you mentioned this Stone Aged hairy woman who lived in a cave about 2 million years ago and invented fire. Did you know her?’
Dave sighed. ‘Sadly not. I didn’t know her. Nor the other Stone Age guy. Or any Stone Age people. None of them. I know the people in my office, my parents and the people who live above my flat. That’s it really.’
God’s patience was wearing thin. He swivelled his chair around and looked at a whiteboard on the far wall which was now also covered in words and scribbles like the streaks of rain across the non-existent window in this windowless room.
God shook his head. ‘Are you sure this is exactly everything that you humans have been up to while I was asleep?’ Dave grimaced. ‘More or less. Look I listen to a lot of history podcasts but to be honest I mainly remember the adverts.’ He felt awkward getting into the details of the ecological disaster, climate change and all the other things he should have been worried about but never had the time. ‘And you say most people believe in me?’
‘Yes. I don’t. Well I do now. Most people believe in a sort-of-you, sometimes you are an elephant guy, sometimes you are just one of many Gods, while some people think you are a rock. Or the rock is you. But generally they like to credit you for everything. And blame you at the same time. For everything, including the ice-bucket challenge, and war. And all of creation, and for all the wonders of the earth, land and sea.’
‘That bit was good, I guess,’ as Dave stroked his beardless chin.
Dave didn’t want to defend or attack the achievements of God with God.
‘And I guess for all the different matcha latte flavours you can now get.’
Dave was being ironic. What he was actually thinking about telling God was that Earth was down to the last two northern white rhinos. They were both female, with Sudan the last male having died a few years prior leaving them aware they were as a species, functionally extinct
Dave didn’t think he should break this news to God yet, just in case it inspired him to make humans functionally extinct, which sounded both complicatedly painful and deeply embarrassing. So instead of telling him about the rhinos, Dave decided to show him his algorithm.
‘Look, let me at least show you how they make matcha. It’s amazing what you can learn by doomscrolling for a few hours,’ as he got his phone out. ‘Actually you have pretty good 5G reception up here.’ Dave knew as he said this that there wasn’t 5G up here but something much more theologically sophisticated.
He opened Instagram and immediately began swiping and laughing, ignoring God and their mutually precipitous situation for a moment - hearting videos, reading comments and pausing on a prank reel featuring a dad and three goats posted by a meme account with five million followers. His hand hovered over the follow button, but muscle memory kicked in. He swiped up, and there was Olive staring at him.
Olive with her 50 million followers. Olive with her matcha empire. Olive preaching to the world about how to run the world.
God’s eyes lit up. He had been hovering over Dave’s shoulder this entire time.
‘We need to talk to her. She looks like she’s in charge.’
Dave looked at God and said, ‘Well I guess we could email her?’