The God Chronicles

By James T. Blake

For aeons the universe has been ruled by the council of the Educational and Scientific Research Anomaly (ESRA).

Their CEO, Draper, has developed a program of sending trainees to manage emerging planetary systems according to the ESRA doctrine of "create life in your own image."

Draper sends what seems to be his favourite trainee, God, to the Sun system in the Milky Way to do just that, but, unbeknown to Draper, God has his own theory on life creation called evolution.

God sets evolution in motion on the planet he has called Earth but when the development is too slow he starts to meddle with the process causing the planet to be populated by giant creatures he calls dinosaurs. He reports back to Draper who strangely, rather than giving him a bollicking, summons the Intergalactic Trouble-shooter, Armageddon, to help.......

Armageddon manages to sort most of the problems and gradually gets seduced into helping God with his other hare-brained scheme called religion.

Religion takes off in different forms so God sets himself up to become a Messiah to unite them all. The plan falters when he gets a local girl pregnant but Armageddon comes up with an idea that will make the child, Jesus Christ, the said Messiah.

It all goes pear shaped when the local authorities crucify Jesus but Armageddon spirits him back to ESRA where they attempt to save his life.

The ruling council aren't happy but they are sufficiently intrigued with evolution and religion that they approve a watching brief on Earth. As the planet sinks into a mess of wars, conflict and religious intolerance Armageddon finds a loophole in the directive and he and God help out where they can while preparing for the return of Jesus.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Feb 8, 2007
• ISBN: 9781466956957

James T. Blake

Born in London, England in 1950, now lives in Australia.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Earth

I knew it wasn’t going to be good news when I was summoned to ESRA HQ for a meeting with Draper, the Supreme ruler of the Universe, but when he suggested I should go and help out on a planet I’d never heard of called Earth, I thought he’d lost his fucking mind.

Now, for anyone who doesn’t already know, ESRA (the Educational and Scientific Research Anomaly) controls the universe and Draper is their head honcho. He and I go way back, almost to the start of ESRA, but he is my boss and I know swearing at him isn’t always the best approach but even I have some limits. My name is Armageddon (my friends call me Army) and I’m an ESRA agent, a Category 1 Intergalactic Trouble-shooter to be precise and I travel the universe sorting out problems and saving worlds. I’d just returned from Zygon 7 after spending three months fixing their Nektonic equilibrium shift problem and he wants me to go to a place called Earth. Not fucking likely!

While I’m at it I should warn you that Intergalactic Trouble-shooters have a tendency to swear occasionally, not surprising really considering some of the crap we have to sort out. On the up side we virtually have a license to live forever through a system of cell and memory regeneration which I’ll explain later. Suffice to say I’ve been around, and will be around, for a long time.

As a minor point of order I should probably mention that unbeknown to Draper I’ve been seeing rather a lot, well to be perfectly honest, all of his daughter, Leona, lately. This may not seem very important to the average punter but anyone who knows Draper would know that this is not necessarily an ideal scenario if you want to progress in the service.

Are you ready? I heard Draper say. If there’s one thing I like about Draper it’s his refusal to use sarcasm as a means of reminding you who’s in charge.

All right, I said, what’s the problem?

Earth, he said, is a small planet in the Milky Way Galaxy. I’ve sent a trainee to run the place and see what he could build but it’s all going a bit pear shaped. He’s been playing around with genetics and at the moment there’s no real life as ESRA decrees it should happen, just a planet full of giant lizards he calls dinosaurs. Someone’s got to get it sorted or we’ll have to close it down.

What’s this guy’s name? I asked.

God

God?

God.

Not the God I was at the Academy with? Not the God who was my vice captain when we won the Intergalactic Racquetball league? Not the God who was my absolute best friend?

Unfortunately yes.

Well, I knew he wanted to progress in the service but what complete imbecile would put a brainless idiot like him in charge of anything bigger than a Tactone’s nitwad, let alone a planet system?

Draper started to look decidedly testy so I decided a bit of discretion was called for. Of course, I said, it could turn out to be a master stroke. These dinosaurs obviously have big brains and could be trained to do all sorts of things. They might even prove to be good work animals or a food supply on developing planets. Anyway, perhaps I’d better get over there and see what’s going on.

This calmed him a bit and after getting a handful of instructions I set off for the transport bays where they’d been refurbishing my light cruiser. It was almost ready so I decided to zip round to my apartment and have some well deserved R & R before take off. I just got in the door when my message screen beeped and displayed the message ‘GO NOW’ in bold letters. That Draper really has a way with words when he puts his mind to it!

Earth was a crappy little Class B rock in a group of space junk orbiting around a dwarf star called the Sun, light years from any sensible life forms. I scanned the surface for any sign of God as all ESRA officials have a built in detection device. It’s ostensibly so they can’t get lost although there is a school of thought supporting the theory that if you know where they are you can avoid them more easily. I located him and landed at a safe distance. As I exited the cruiser he just stood and stared at me, no wave, no greeting, nothing. I was stunned; I mean he’d been down here on his own for quite a while so I thought he’d be glad to see anyone, particularly me. I called out the most friendly and diplomatic greeting I could think of on the spur of the moment.

Are you fucking mad? Shhhh

What? Shhhh

Why Shhhh?

Because there’s a forty foot long T-Rex standing behind your cruiser.

Now I didn’t really know what a T-Rex was but, based on God’s reaction, my guess was that having one close to your favourite toy might not be a good thing. It proved to be correct as I turned to see a huge creature with enormous teeth about to tread on the cruiser. I flicked a switch on my blaster and the cruiser’s shields came on, not even a rampant T-Rex is going to get through the latest version Nikes. It didn’t stop him trying but the ensuing electric shock scared him off. We withdrew to a safer location and I repeated my opening question.

Are you mad?

Nice to see you, Army.

Save the pleasantries till later, Draper’s totally pissed off with what you’re doing and he’s sent me to stop it.

Good.

Good?

Good.

Why good?

It turned out God had been working in mysterious ways and had developed a life creation theory he called evolution. It was totally opposite to standard ESRA doctrine and you apparently start off with dense foliage and lush vegetation then add some primeval swamps, chuck a few chemicals into the atmosphere and sit back and wait. This can get pretty boring compared to the traditional create life in your own image format so when nothing much happened for a while God started to dabble with genes. Dabble became fiddle which begat meddle and ended up with interfere, followed by a planet full of brainless, bloodthirsty dinosaurs. To cap it all off he’d made them immune to almost everything!

What a cock-up, although in all honesty it gave me a chance for a little creativity, I mean, killing fifty million dinosaurs in a way that future generations would write off as an accident was going to take a bit of thought on my part.

We sat up late into the night considering a number of plans but with no obvious answer forthcoming slipped into reminiscing about old times. After we’d done all our past sporting heroics to death God explained his views of life in other galaxies and how different he wanted Earth to be. How he wanted something he called religion where everyone had faith in one benevolent omnipotent being that no one could see but would just know was there because of the wondrous things he did. Everyone would be happy and love each other. It was a wonderful and euphoric night and, at times, I believed he could actually make it happen even though to an innocent bystander it sounded absolutely insane. Then, just as I was about to go to sleep, there was a slight Earth tremor and a small boulder dislodged from the hill behind us and landed in our campfire. It showered us with dust and ashes and in a flash of inspiration I suddenly knew how to get rid of those sodding lizards.

I developed the plan in my mind and by the time I woke the next morning operation dino-death was in the can. As I prodded the campfire and warmed myself on its embers God came and sat next to me.

Well? he said.

What we need is a meteor strike.

A meteor strike?

A meteor strike.

At the risk of seeming unduly thick, what for?

I refrained from the obvious comment and explained the plan starting with the need to get rid of the dinosaurs and the need for any future generations to think it was an accident. I touched on the need to get back to traditional life creation but left out the need for me to get this sorted and back to ESRA in time for the racquetball soiree I had been invited to by Leona. Believe me there are worse sights in the universe than a hot, sweaty and breathless Leona walking towards you scantily clad in a racquetball outfit, chest heaving …

Anyway, I got my mind back on the job and ran through the procedure again.

We crash a chunk of rock into the planet big enough to blast dirt and smoke and ash into the atmosphere. This in turn blocks out the light, vegetation dies, no food for little animals and, therefore, no food for big animals. What could be simpler?

God seemed to grasp the fundamentals so I stoked up the cruiser and scanned the nearby solar system for a suitable meteor. I found one about the right size less than two light years away so we set off in pursuit.

We arrived just in time. Miners from BHP 7 were about to take the meteor in tow to extract its minerals. I contacted them and transported over for a congenial meeting on board their freighter.

Get stuffed.

I’d introduced myself and advised their Captain that I needed the meteor for an emergency. His response was a little terser than I’d anticipated.

Look, I said, I don’t want a problem with you guys but I need that meteor. I’m a Category 1 ESRA agent and have absolute jurisdiction here.

Show us your badge then.

I showed them and they seemed very impressed.

What a wanker, we’re 20 million bio-parsecs from ESRA and you’re threatening us with ‘jurisdiction’. We could kill you and blow up your ship and no one would be any the wiser.

This guy was obviously scared shitless so I decided to play my trump card before he got too erratic.

Careful, I said. My cruiser’s fully armed and I’ve got one of the universe’s nastiest pieces of work sitting there, just spoiling for a fight. Unless you piss off right now we’ll disable your ship and you can drift in space until I can have you arrested. We intergalactic trouble-shooters also have a penchant for lying should the situation demand it.

This should have done the trick but just as I finished speaking God appeared on the freighter’s bridge carrying a tray of drinks and a plate of freshly baked muffins.

Hello, everybody, he said, thought I’d whip up some refreshments while you guys were chatting.

Fuck me!

The next thing I remembered was waking up next to God with both of us tied to chairs and the miners having a party. He leaned over to me and whispered, I could hear you were in trouble so I thought I’d better get over and help.

You call this helping? What I really needed was a plasma bolt fired across their bows and it would have been all over. Instead we’ve been captured, soon to be killed, and you’ve supplied them with drinks and food for our wake.

God was looking infuriatingly smug. Have some faith, Army, he said, when have I ever let you down? Now I could have been seriously picky, the last racquetball tournament we played, scores level, God serving, double fault, but it’s not in my nature so I said, Go on, smart arse, what have you done?

I’ve spiked the drinks.

You’ve spiked the drinks?

I’ve spiked the drinks.

Turns out he’d tried to fire a torpedo but was out of touch with the latest systems and couldn’t get it to work. Drugging was the best thing he could think of. Noise from the other end of the ship had completely subsided so his little cocktail had obviously done the trick. Not bad for God, I thought, but we now needed to address the immediate problem of being tied up and unable to move.

Can you get over here closer to me? I said. I’ve got a knife in my pocket.

Not that really swish one with all the gadgets on? he asked.

Yep and it’ll slice through this stuff like a Chelorian firestick through pettech.

With a bit of manoeuvring he managed to get the knife from my boot and thirty seconds later we were free. I had to admit God had done well so there might be hope for Earth yet.

We tied up the miners and set them on course to the closest police outpost with a message to the commander then prepared to transport back to the cruiser.

I really like this knife, Army, said God and as I was feeling fairly good about things I told him he could have it.

Great, he said. When we get this planet up and running I’m going to make these and sell them as Swish Army knives.

Piss off!

We changed the meteor’s trajectory and gave it a quick blast up the backside to speed it up then set a course to follow it into the Earth’s solar system. I figured it would take about a week to get there so I headed for my cabin for some well-earned rest.

I was just dreaming about practicing my serve with Leona when I was awoken by an enormous shuddering that almost threw me off the bed. After a couple of uncharacteristic swear words I got to my feet and made my way to the control centre. By the time I arrived the vibration had stopped and God was standing there ashen faced gripping the control stick.

What happened? I asked calmly.

Nothing.

Nothing?

Nothing.

Don’t fuck with me, God. I think he could tell I wasn’t happy so he decided to come clean. He’d given the meteor another zap to cut down the travelling time even further and had hit it off centre causing it to slew sideways and sideswipe another planet. We’d been hit by the shock wave as a ball of gas and ice crystals had been smashed off the side of this planet and were now following the meteor on almost the same trajectory. In itself this probably wasn’t a big deal although it could have stuffed Earth’s solar system completely as well as killing us. It did cause me a bit of concern and reinforced this nagging thought in the back of my mind that God’s recent effort had been a flash in the pan and that if something could be cocked up God was likely to be the cause.

If you ever interfere with any project I’m running again I’ll cut you into little pieces and feed you to those giant Juno birds they have on Kaspa 5. Is that clear?

He mumbled a quiet yes.

Is that clear? I almost yelled.

Crystal, he replied.

I traced the path of the gas ball and worked out it would pass close to Earth but not hit it so I readjusted the meteor and we sat back and waited.

A week later it struck with exactly the desired effect, huge clouds of smoke and ash enveloped the planet and life as God made it started to die. The gas ball got caught by the Earth’s gravitational pull and became the planet’s only moon. I left God with some words of wisdom, Don’t bugger this up again, and headed back to ESRA.

Chapter 2

The Evolution revolution

I arrived back at ESRA five days later and after a bit of R & R was on my way to check out the cruiser when Draper buzzed me.

I’ve had a complaint from BHP7, he said, my office NOW.

I arrived at his office and was ushered in to the usual pleasantries,

Apparently you and God drugged some miners and stole their meteor.

What a shame, I said, perhaps a tad sarcastically, but they were going to kill us. Anyway, we needed the meteor more than they did and it’ll teach ‘em not to mess with ESRA agents, me in particular.

There’s more to it than that, he replied. BHP is a very influential member of the ESRA advisory council and they’re seriously pissed off. I was going to rebuke him for using unnecessary vulgarities but remembered an old adage about pots and kettles and one or the other being black so I let it go. I tuned out as Draper droned on about unity and acceptable behaviour blah, blah, blah, and tuned back in when I sensed he was approaching the end. And in conclusion, he was saying, I just want you to be a bit more politically aware at times.

Yes, sir, I’ll do my best, I said with all the sincerity I could muster. If you can fake sincerity you’ve got it made.

He visibly relaxed, You know, he said, between you and me those BHP guys are serious pains in the arse. You may not have noticed but my sense of humour sometimes borders on the ordinary, well, those guys are even worse. At one stage during their complaint even I burst out laughing when they suggested you’d crashed the allegedly stolen meteor into Earth on purpose. I was still getting to grips with the thought of Draper having any semblance of a sense of humour and was caught unawares. I tried to hide it but he had already seen the look on my face.

Please tell me you didn’t do that.

What could I say? I was torn between obeying what appeared to be a direct order and blatantly lying. I don’t normally lie to Draper unless at the time I think the odds of getting caught are pretty low and, to be honest, this didn’t seem like one of those times.

If you want me to be politically aware, I said, I would say that the meteor’s trajectorial variation brought about by an increase in pressure due to the close proximity of several, seemingly unrelated but turning out to be integrally intertwined, galactral bodies caused a slight miscalculation of events and the meteor, albeit unfortunately, struck the planet we call Earth. If you want me to be absolutely technically accurate, I said, yes, I deliberately crashed the meteor into Earth.

Why?

I explained about operation dino-death. He didn’t seem very happy but I think he understood my motives. I secretly think he wouldn’t have minded being there to see it, I mean the poor bastard doesn’t get out much.

Don’t do it again, he said, and remember the ED.

The ED?

The ED.

What, may I ask, is the ED?

Bloody hell, Army, you don’t even remember the main ESRA Directive, vis-à-vis, to try to keep all unnatural interference on other planets to a minimum.

Oh that ED, of course I remember, it just doesn’t seem all that relevant in most of my missions.

Draper sighed and shook his head and we talked for a while about God and how much he would like to see him succeed and I couldn’t help thinking there might be more to their relationship than meets the eye so I filed it away for future investigation. As I got ready to leave he asked if I would be prepared to spend an extended period on Earth to sort of baby sit God through his teething problems. I summoned all of my newly acquired political nous and said, No fucking way.

He countered with, There’s a lot more money in it.

When do I leave? I said. Not that I can be bought but this could set me up for life. We worked out a deal where I came home for regular leave and decided on a return date to Earth which gave God a bit of time to either get himself under control, or my private guess, cock it up completely. I left Draper’s office and called Leona.

Hi, Army, welcome back.

What’s happening? I was in no mood for pleasantries. I’d just left Leona to take up my baby-sitting role with God.

I think he could see that I was a bit tense so he said, Come in and see where I live. I followed him into a cave and sat down by the fire on what looked like a giant skull.

This looks like a giant skull, I said.

It is, he replied.

I thought we’d gotten rid of all the dinosaurs.

Well, he said, the plan worked perfectly except there were still some small ones who survived.

So?

It’s very lonely here, Army

What have you done?

Turns out the surviving animals were all quite small and cuddly so he decided to start a new life stream of ones that suckled and nurtured their young, mammals he called them. Everything seemed to be progressing well when the inevitable God induced cock-up occurred. For some reason, still not clear to me, the mammals started to grow and become much more aggressive and he now had a planet full of brainless, bloodthirsty, out of control mammals. Why does this sound so familiar?

What about another meteor? he asked rather sheepishly.

No can do, I said, don’t you remember the ED.

ED?

ED, the main ESRA Directive, honestly, God, sometimes I despair of your commitment to all this.

Sorry, Army, even more sheepish, what are we going to do then?

I don’t know, I said, but I’ll think of something. What I want from you is a detailed explanation of this evolution bizzo.

We sat in his cave for nearly two days while he extolled his theories about survival of the fittest until, at last, I thought I had a fundamental grasp of the basics of evolution. As we walked out of the cave into the bright sunlight a very large animal that turned out to be a sabre-toothed tiger confronted us. It was so close I could almost feel its breath on my back as we ran for the safety of some nearby trees. As we approached them I couldn’t help thinking, why am I running? I have a bigger brain. I’m better equipped for survival. So I stopped and turned around to face the beast. It stopped as well and stood facing me about two feet away seemingly unsure of what to do next.

What the fuck are you doing? God called out from the safety of large tree.

It’s evolution in practice, I said. I have a bigger brain and am therefore fitter to survive and, therefore, won’t be killed.

Army, he replied, it’s a long term thing and it doesn’t apply to one on one physical confrontation.

I wondered for a second if he’d left that out or if I hadn’t been listening. No matter, this tiger was obviously my intellectual inferior and I shouldn’t be afraid of its size and strength. Almost on cue it launched itself at me so I pulled out my blaster and vaporised it. It seems evolution can be adapted!

We revisited the theory in relation to timing and I think I finally got it. You mean, I said, if someone developed some different traits and, say, became bigger and stronger and had more stamina, when times got tough that person is more likely to do better than the average person.

Yeah, roughly right, he replied. Well that explains last year’s Galactic Racquetball final, I knew that prick who beat me must have been some sort of mutation.

Then he told me about the subtlety of the changes and the sort of time periods involved and it all became much clearer and even explained why he continued to play around with the process. He was committed to evolution but it all took too long. As we bantered around time frames and mutations I could feel the memory of a previous mission stirring deep inside my brain. Suddenly I had it, of course, Bonsai 1 a tiny planet right on the edge of the Enfield Constellation. I can’t really remember the mission but I do remember that everything on the planet moved in an accelerated time frame. Just what we need here, test the theory by increasing the speed at which it all happens by condensing sixty million Earth years into a couple of hundred. Everything lives, evolves and dies as normal just much quicker. Wow! What a concept, I love it.

I explained this all to God, no easy feat mind you, I sometimes wish I could accelerate his brain waves. Anyway, it had to work and we would even be leaving the correct fossil record in case anyone in the future was daft enough to try and trace back to see how the Earth had developed. All I had to do now was to work out the physics of making it happen.

I sent God to set up sensors in various locations so we could monitor the evolutionary development then contacted Anderthal my former physics teacher at the ESRA Academy. If this could be done, this man, my mentor and confidante, would know how to do it.

Army, you brainless little scroat? he greeted me with the disdain he had for all his past students. I hear you’re a big cheese at ESRA, hard to believe you amounted to anything really.

I’ve got a problem, I said.

You think after teaching you for all that time I don’t know that?

I mean a physics problem.

What like you still don’t understand gravity or something?

It’s a smidgen more complex than that.

I explained to him what I needed to do and he thought the idea was sensational. He suggested we could have an ‘evolution revolution’ and we bantered back and forth the possibilities this could generate. In fairness, he did tell me he didn’t think evolution would work but was so excited at the scientific connotations he was prepared to overlook the issue. He didn’t think the physics bit was too hard and reckoned he could modify some existing equipment and ship it to us within a few days. A particle accelerator he called it.

Of course, he said, there’s one major problem with all this.

Go on.

There’s a fibrillation contingency in all living matter.

A what?

In layman’s terms, and for those of my students like you who struggle with the basic concepts of anything, it means you only get one shot at it. If you stop the process you can’t start it again on the same life forms. If you do they’ll all die.

So we can’t stop occasionally to check progress?

Nope, he said, so I hope you’ve got a good man on the button.

I’ve got God.

He looked at me with that little half smile of his and said, Don’t piss me around, Army, this isn’t a laughing matter.

I’m serious. This whole evolution thing is his idea, he’s going to have to decide when to stop, not me.

All right, he sighed, but don’t blame me if it gets cocked up.

One more thing, I said, Draper doesn’t need to know about this.

Bugger off.

The equipment arrived ten days later and looked very complicated. After three hours of getting nowhere I got a message from Anderthal that his assistant had forgotten to put the instructions in. I reminded him they had to be simple like ‘light blue touch paper and stand clear,’ he responded, somewhat unkindly I thought, that he knew who he was dealing with and transmitted the details.

1.   Connect to power supply

2.   Aim at Magnetic North Pole of planet

3.   Push button A

4.   When you want to stop Push button B

5.   Don’t touch anything else!!!

This seemed like a piece of cake so we set it up and in ten minutes were ready to go. I asked God when he wanted to stop and he said when the first Homo sapiens had evolved. I had no idea what he meant so we agreed he would be the watcher and tell me when to switch off. I stood back and said, Push button A when you’re ready to go. He stepped up to the machine, gave the button a quick flick and evolution was off and running.

Nothing much seemed to happen for a while and I started to think Anderthal had got it wrong but suddenly it all began. Forests and rivers appeared and disappeared in the blink of an eye, mountains and valleys were formed, land masses separated and drifted in the sea and animals of all shapes and sizes evolved, lived, and died. This was heady stuff.

We watched in awe as huge areas of the planet became covered in ice then thawed to be lush tropical forests only to change again to sandy inhospitable deserts. This was going much faster than we’d anticipated with the clock running at almost a million years to the hour. God was monitoring his Homo Sapien evolution and after nearly sixty hours of pure exhilaration he warned me that we were getting close to where he wanted to stop. He went to make us a final drink to celebrate and I sat back and basked in the glory of another job well done. Suddenly the monitoring screen changed and I could see everything starting to slow down.

God! I called. What have you done?

Nothing.

Nothing?

Nothing!

Nothing my arse, he’d only pulled out the particle accelerator connection to use it to boil the kettle and, as any first year physics student will know, no power, no machine. The Evolution Revolution was over and he was half