the god experiments
amanda schlegel
“What’d they do this time?” asked Four.
“They invented the toaster again,” said One.
“That’s good. Why did it end?” Four looked through the glass at the white light arena. They knew the experimentation could go on forever but certainly hoped that humans would stop sodding off.
“They used it to electrocute everyone in industrial waterways,” One informed them.
“Ain’t that just the way,” Four shook their head, “Well, what are we changing this time?”
“Let’s run it again, but don’t give them different weather. The lightning is usually how it starts. Tell Two to plug that in, then I’ll go visit this time around 2056 a.d. to stop the turtles just in case.”
The gods had been simulating since time began, using nothing but their joint imaginations as a viewing box with which they manipulate the environment. One, Two, and Four would make the perfect human race — though the word “perfect” was something that they had to eliminate completely in a few of their scenarios.
One variable at a time, they adjusted humanity. They had gotten about 14,000 years into their best attempt, but then there was a rice shortage which sparked a war that lasted only a year until the Growers learned what a great fertilizer human blood was.
Two sat all folded-up in their imagination space, which was the source of the white light One had since abandoned Four for.
“No lightning this time. I think we are getting close,” Four instructed.
“Did we try that already? On round —” they paused, “Round 2,009,482,223 perhaps?”
“No, no,” Four corrected, “That was the one where we did not extinct the Megaladon and it caused a tidal wave drowning most of humanity and the rest of them died pursuing the beast.”
Two huffed. One usually kept track of each attempt and had marked up their records like a “__ many days without accidents” sign that humans put up in their workplaces (or at least they do in our attempt).
“Is One really sure they want to keep Jesus? Mary giving birth is not natural,” Two asked before beginning.
“Assuming we get that far again, we can do one try with him and another without. A single variable at a time, remember? One thinks religion decreases suicide rates. Besides, we all like watching Christmas parties.”
The lights in the arena brightened as Two tested the boundaries of their mind. Four pressed their nose against the glass again to watch this scenario play out from their own personal Olympus. For a moment, Two was omnipotent. They were able to see and experience all of the occurrences at once and impose the desired variable change or treatment on the simulation.
The lights flickered off and One walked through the glass before the lights came on again.
“Well?” Four asked.
“The damn turtles. Why can’t we get rid of them again?”
“They are good for the environment or something. I read it in a book when I was in one of my simulations. They’re also cute,” Four reminded them, “You still couldn’t restrain them all?”
“I can’t help it if they have their cold-blooded hearts set on Russia. The turtles were always Three’s job.”
“Don’t talk about —” Two blurted out before turning the lights back on as a distraction.
Four walked away from the glass so it would not fog with their breath. They began to weep softly, though gods were not supposed to weep. Three lost hope after the 4,003,486th simulation. Carrying on for a few billion more trials was taken hardest by Four, the team’s representation of the human mind.
“We will keep going, Four,” One encouraged, “What’s next?”
“That’s your job,” Four muttered back, “Because if it were up to me, I’d bring back Three in every simulation.”
Of course they all missed Three, but when the success of the human race was at stake, longevity took greater priority over friendship. Scenarios since 201 had eliminated selfish desire over the desire for the greater good (which naturally resulted in a few dystopian Communist societies, but the gods do what they can). Four was all that remained of Catch-22: the last of humanity.
They ran simulation after simulation, all in a day’s work until the lights went off to signify a rest period. Two usually determined the time periods since none of them could see the sun, moon, or stars from within the arena and viewing boxes.
The gods knew that they might live forever, but their precious earth might not. They alone have been charged with the power and technology that could change this. Why them? Only those in the very first version of the World Experiment knew that, the ones who created the gods and then died off. Four often sat up alone during their presumed nights wondering why they were made. Was a short and happy apocalypse not better than monotonous adequacy?
“One?” Four interrupted their rest.
“Yeah?” One responded as if they had not been resting either.
“I can restrain the turtles. Only if you’d like.”
“You can’t handle the turtles. Remember what happened last time?”
One and Four reflected on the time when Four was sent to stop the turtle overthrow but was won over by their serene movements. Those outside of the arena might be confused; no, turtles do not magically acquire skills that they do not have in other timeliness. If you still don’t understand, you’ve clearly not seen a stampede of turtles taking over Russia. Their slow rise and room for free movement are so awe-inspiring that most humans form a religion around them and fight a path for them to enable them to roam free. If this still does not make sense, then you must be in a timeline where they tried to eliminate turtles.
“I can take the turtles, One. I need you to believe in me.”
“I believe in the results of the experiments,” One did not understand.
“Then let me show you the results if I go in and stop the turtles,” Four used the rhetoric picked up from time in the arena.
“Okay,” One agreed, “But only because this means we no longer have to test each variable with and without turtles. We will reach the Eternal Society sooner.”
The Eternal Society: their end goal. Would it be perfect? Perhaps not, but it would last forever. They preferred a society that they could control to one that could end at the drop of a hat (it did once end because Oscar Wilde dropped his hat in the street which set off a century of undesirable battles over gendered clothing, resulting in the abolition of gender and thus humanity). Never eternal. Nothing lasts forever except the gods.
They all rose for the next cycle of trials, but with Four and One entering the arena.
“Nothing changes except for Four?” Two asked for clarification.
“Right,” One then leaned into them to whisper, “No Three.”
The lights came on and the two participants descended into the arena. Two doesn’t know how long they were in there, but after the world ended again and the lights went off, they looked pleased.
“270 years longer. I told you I could do it,” Four jumped
“You might have to stop them every time now, though,” One posed the solution.
“That’s alright. Time down there keeps me interested,” Four beamed, “What did them in this time? I was too busy to notice.”
“Romani genocide,” One filled in.
“I watched it start,” Two began, “But I couldn’t get a message to you quickly enough. We will just have to get rid of tambourines.”
The gods could gladly live without tambourines. They gave One a god-ache (some form of celestial headache). The three confer on why they had not tried this sooner. Such devices could surely not be missed tremendously. They ran a few more: no tambourines, no bats, more pine trees, better funding for comic strips, rain twice a week, month-long pregnancy period.
“I could use a rest,” One said.
“We were onto something with the last one, but let’s make reproduction voluntary for both men and women. Just that, then rest,” Two assured, “What do you think, Four?” Four was already curled up into a neat bundle on the floor in the arena. They were not dead — the gods couldn’t die — but they were exhausted.
“Maybe next rotation,” One sighed.
“You know they cannot do this forever,” Two said, nodding towards Four.
“I know. But for now, they will try with all of their little human heart.”
And they rested. They’d gotten through a good many centuries this time, but were far from eternity. The Eternal Society would have to lay at arm’s length, waiting eagerly to be discovered. Inevitably, the experiments continued. Every day was like a zipper (Two’s favourite ancient mechanisms); sometimes flowing smoothly, sometimes getting stuck, and sometimes needing to be undone in order to be yanked up correctly in the future.
“I wish I could be more like you,” Four envied during one simulation.
“Jealousy is human, but I will attempt to decipher your meaning,” One said while watching the world fabricate before them.
“You do not have to feel it: the loss.”
“I lose things all of the time. Just last simulation I lost that package of fibble, remember?” One reminded them of the metallic, edible rock.
“Yes, but you do not feel it.”
“My jaws felt the absence of its crunch and my stomach felt the absence of its nutrients even though we do not need either to survive,” One reasoned.
“But do you really feel it? In parts of your body where you do not expect to? Does it cause a blip in your heartbeat or a tightness in your throat? Do you not feel a knot in your mind each time someone down there reminds you of Three?”
“That is what makes you a unique and irrational creature, Four.”
The simulation ended and Two replayed the events in their mind in search of flaw. They retraced each beat of a butterfly’s wings to discover which wind blew the wrong way. Their eyes opened and their mind closed to the infinite as the arena lights went off.
“I do not want to,” Four threw themselves on the ground, “I cannot bear another simulation. I despise those god-damned turtles, and Three is missing. A part of the great god Quartet is missing and you don’t feel it.
“What are they on about?” Two asked. They paid attention to the activity within the arena, not what their fellow gods did.
“I won’t do another simulation! It hurts too much. Each time the hole in me gets exponentially bigger, which is how it went unnoticed for quite some time, but the rapture is nigh,” Four wailed.
They all hypothesized. What if they surrendered Four’s humanity for just one simulation? Would Two still be able to bring them out of the arena? Would they be able to reattach the humanity, or was it like a shadow flown away never to be regained?
“How can I give you the one thing I do not know?” Two worried, “If we lose you, we lose touch with humanity. I could no longer project your qualities onto the humans. There would be no humans left to carry us to The Eternal Society.”
“Bliff!” Four used the worst word they could think of (excuse the vulgarity and do not speak this word aloud lest you be defenestrated, which was the appropriate punishment in simulation 12,308).
Once they had all eased their weary minds with rest, Four turned to the other two gods.
“What if these simulations are our forever? The three of us reaching for the unattainable?” Four reasoned.
“That’s not what’s best for all of society,” One said.
“Maybe not, but it’s not what’s best for us either. At least the rise and fall of happiness to sadness, experiment to experiment, could last forever.”
“But you don’t know that it could,” One didn’t understand.
“No. I don’t know. We might not even last forever, but as long as we are here, we are fighting against everything that humanity is about.”
“Humanity is ignorant.”
“Yes, but they could be happy if it weren’t for us prodding at their futures all of the time,” Four pleaded.
After a few more begrudging simulations where Four only half-heartedly stopped the turtle take-over, even failing once, One developed a proposition.
“Two?” One brought them into the conversation, “I know what we need to fix.”
“To fix the next simulation? Hit me,” Two said.
“No,” One sighed, “To fix us.”
Four looked at One with high adoration. Any child looking at the spectacle of Christmas lights and gifts would pale in comparison, especially since they no longer experience joy in quite the same way as humanity originally did. The three held each other before One completed their thought:
“Make a scenario where — where we start over. As humans, not gods. Before we started changing everything. Before we drove Three away.” They looked at Four, who had tears in their eyes.
Two managed the least-human smile you’d ever see and closed their eyes tight. The lights flashed on.
