Me
I was editing an anthology of stories told in the first persons of aliens titled, appropriately enough, I, ALIEN, and my friend and fellow Cincinnatian Steve Leigh had turned in a story titled “You,” which encouraged me to come up with one I could title “Me.”
In the beginning I created the heavens and the Earth.
Well, not really. That’s just folklore. In point of fact I’m a fourth-level apprentice Star Maker, and my assignment was to create a nebula out in the boonies, so to speak. Nothing special; I won’t be qualified for Advanced Creating for eons yet.
So they called it the Milky Way, which struck me as myopic at best, since I made a lot more red and blue stars than milky white ones. And for the longest time this particular race, which calls itself Man, thought it was at the center of all creation. (Actually, the mollusks that dwell in the oceans of Phrynx, seven billion light years away, are at the center of all creation, but let it pass.)
Anyway, this ugly little race soon covered the entire planet, which was not really what I had in mind when I built the place—I’ve always had soft spots for the koala bear and the gnu—and before long these annoying bipeds got notions above and beyond their station and actually declared that they were created in my image. As if I would settle for only two eyes, or teeth that decayed, or an appalling lack of wings.
The nerve of these creatures is amazing. They feel that if they implore me to intervene in their lives, everything will turn out well. They call it praying; me, I call it nagging.
Their science is as twisted as their religion. For the longest time they believed that the dinosaurs died out because they were too dumb and slow to survive. Can you imagine that? The average Allosaurus or Utahraptor could give Carl Lewis a 60-yard head start and still beat him in a 100-yard race.
And then there was all the excitement over Isaac Newton’s three laws. You think a stegosaur or even a wooly mammoth couldn’t get hit on the head ten or twelve times by falling apples and conclude that apples fall down rather than up? I mean, how the hell bright did Newton have to be, anyway? Every animal I ever created except Man figured out very early on that the intelligent thing to do is to not stand under trees that possess ripe fruits or inconsiderate birds.
But then—you’re never going to believe this—they change their minds and decide that what really killed the dinosaurs was a fluke of chance, a stray comet that crashed into the planet 65 million years ago. Now remember, this is a race that believes in predestination, in reincarnation, in prayer, in ghosts and Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, in all things supernatural. And yet when they finally get proof of a power greater than their own—I threw the asteroid at a Tyrannosaur in the Yucatan in a fit of pique after it ate my favorite slippers—they absolutely refuse to accept it. No, it couldn’t possibly be due to an all-powerful alien being who might or might not answer to the name of God, it had to be a stray comet from the Oort Cloud. Like, who the hell do they think created the Oort Cloud in the first place? I’d have been happy to use a comet, but it just so happened that I was in the system and an asteroid was much handier.
Oh, well, no one ever said intelligence was a survival trait.
You wouldn’t think one race could be so contradictory. They kill the man they call the Prince of Peace, and then they hand out these million-dollar peace prizes in the name of the guy who invented dynamite. When they go to war, they actually believe they’re slaughtering each other in my name, as if with 127 billion worlds to tend I give a damn who wins each little battle they fight.
Still, you have to admire certain aspects of their character. For example, when I manifested my presence on Grybyon II, every last inhabitant keeled over and died from the sheer thrill of meeting their maker. Yet the last time I set foot on Earth, I was immediately panhandled by three grifters along Fifth Avenue, mugged in a back alley off 49th Street, and given free tickets to Letterman. When I explained that I was a fourth-level Star Maker, the few people who were paying attention immediately wanted to know what the job paid and if medical benefits were included. Finally I decided to lower myself to their comprehension level and announced in front of nine Men that I was God. Five of them called me a liar, two more said they were atheists and therefore I couldn’t exist and I was probably just a manifestation of Buddha, the eighth claimed it was a Republican trick, and the ninth wanted to know what I had against the Chicago White Sox.
There are millennia when I feel like I just want to throw everything back into the primal soup and start all over again. Then I remember that it’s just the one mistake I made, this race of Man, that’s giving me fits, and that the rest of the galaxy’s shaping up really well.
In fact, my Instructor gave me a B-minus, which isn’t bad considering this is only my second galaxy. I really wanted to add a third spiral arm, but for some reason he insisted that galaxies have to be bilaterally symmetrical.
I’m especially proud of the Brilx Effect, which you can still see from any spot in the galaxy. I got an A for concept, an A- minus for artistic visualization, but he gave me only a D-plus for execution when he found out I wiped out 73 races when Brilx went supernova.
He likes the black hole at the center. It gives everything balance, he says, and utilizes a certain felicity of visual expression. I hope he never finds out that I created it because I’d used up all my building materials out on the Rim.
He never quite understood the Greater and Lesser Magellanic Clouds. How could he? He wasn’t around the afternoon I ate all that bad chili. Serves me right for trying temporal food. I’d have dispersed the gas clouds and saved myself millions of years of embarrassment and teasing by the other apprentices, but you know the rules: you create it, you have to incorporate it.
Which brings me back to Man. I knew the moment I set things in motion that eventually Man would evolve, and while I couldn’t foresee just how aggravating he would be, I know he wasn’t going to rank up there with my finer creations like the grubworm and the amoeba. I tried to turn the place into a water world and start over, but I’d only gotten 40 days into it when my Instructor made me stop and gave me a long, boring lecture on planetary irrigation.
Then I figured, well, eventually Man’s going to want to reach the stars, and I decided to have pity on my other creations and make it as difficult as possible for him, so I got my Instructor’s permission to move Sol and its planets way the hell out on one of the spiral arms. Until Man figures out how to break those ridiculous laws of relativity I saddled him with, I can’t see him reaching anything farther away than Alpha Centauri, and he’s going to have more than his share of difficulties communicating with the Chyksi that he finds there. I mean, what do you say to five different genders of two-mile-long fur-covered snakes whose sole topics of conversation are local politics and how to avoid friction burns?
I’m sorry to be writing this so slowly, but I’m receiving an average of 16 prayers a nanosecond, almost all of them from Earth. I get so tired of this what-have-you-done-for-me-lately attitude. I mean, if it weren’t for my subtle backstage manipulations, Men still wouldn’t have Muenster cheese, or electric toothbrushes, or mascara, or unsecured hedge funds. But do they thank me for all this wealth of treasure? No, it’s “Make my pimples go away” and “Make Anaconda Copper go up seven points” and “Kill the Israelis” and “Kill the Palestinians” and “Find me the perfect woman and make sure she’s not looking for the perfect man.” And I know that no matter what I do, there’ll be five billion new requests tomorrow.
Why can’t they be more like the Kabroni of Beta Calpurnicus III? “Thanks for the beautiful sunset, God.” “Hey, God, we really like that new mountain range.” “God old buddy, can you make any more exotic dancers like Mol Kwi Kchanga? She’s really neat!” They’re such appreciative, easy-going folk, the Kabroni.
Not that I demand servility. Take the Budubudu of Naboodi. “Hey, if you’re listening, buzz off and leave us alone.” “We didn’t need you way back when, and we don’t need you now.” “Show up and we’re gonna have roast Star Maker for dinner.” Okay, they’re hardly worshipful, but on the other hand, I only hear from maybe half a dozen of them on any given day.
Anyway, my Instructor says that we’ll let this galaxy play out for a few billion years, and if Man doesn’t spoil everything, my next assignment will be a much larger, more complex nebula cluster four vibratory levels removed from here, and that I’ll get to use really interesting building blocks, like heavy metals and egg whites and just about anything I can think of. My life forms won’t have to be carbon-based, and my first task will be to make a race of crystalline methane breathers who won’t shatter the first time I get annoyed and yell at them. (Yeah, I had a little problem on a frigid world out by Aldebaran. I’m not allowed to play with methane any more without supervision. I still say it wasn’t my fault. All I did was sneeze.)
The other day I asked him if this time I could create a race that really was in my image, and he just looked at me for the longest time and then burst out laughing. I guess that meant No.
I don’t know why not. I think I’m exceptionally handsome, especially compared to the other apprentices. All fourteen limbs are in fine proportion, I have eyes and ears everywhere, wings for every conceivable type of atmosphere, extraordinarily cute dimples, and a fine rich baritone voice when I sing in the shower. A race could do a lot worse than be created in my image. All right, so I don’t have any nostrils and my feet have opposable thumbs (a feature I borrowed for the chimpanzee and the gorilla)—but consider the advantages of never having a stuffed nose again, and think of the savings on shoes. And if they don’t like the warts, they can have them burned off (a process I allowed them to invent.)
Not only that, but we’re smart. I doubt that a single member of my race ever flunked trigonometry or formal dancing. How’s that for bright? Okay, so most of us don’t get passing grades in Keynesian economics, but what do you have to know about Keynes to make change? I can read an entire library in a single night. (“There’s a difference between reading and comprehending,” says my Instructor smugly. Hell, I’ll bet he flunked Keynesian economics, too.)
No, when all is said and done, my race is clearly the finest looking, brightest, and most admirable in the universe. It’s simply no contest.
Damn. Since writing that last sentence, I just got a new prayer in from some kid in Mexico City. Begins the usual way: “Dear God, how are you? I am fine. I hate to bother you, this is not for me, but I have this friend, I won’t tell you his name, who has a hard time scoring with girls, and I wonder if you could give me some words of heavenly wisdom to pass on to him.”
Pretty usual up to that point. But then came the clinker: “While I’ve got your attention, I have a question for you. All my life my mother and father and priest have been telling me that God made me, and I don’t have any serious problem with that. But if you made me, maybe you could tell me: who made you? Yours truly, Manual Acaro.”
I hate questions I can’t answer. Okay for you, kid. Let me see: Manual Acaro. That’s six letters and five, right? All right, Manual Acaro, Mexico City gets a 6.5 Richter earthquake tomorrow morning.
Bother me again and I’ll give you hives. How’s that for a manifestation of Godly power?
Sometimes I really wonder where this arrogant self-centered race gets all its petty annoying tendencies from, anyway.