Part 11: God casts about for ways to win.

Sarai was concerned. God had promised Abram an heir and had not delivered. She pestered Abram over and over again until finally Abram took Hagar, Sarai’s personal servant and close friend as a concubine, a fancy word for a mistress your wife knows about, and Hagar right off became pregnant.

Sarai was very angry. She hated Hagar for making it seem so easy. She hated Abram, blaming him somehow for making Hagar pregnant, as if it was Abram’s fault or in any way in his power. She hated god for not having gotten her pregnant soon enough for her to not have gotten in this silly scheme.

So she went and yelled at Abram for six or seven hours, and Abram finally said, “She’s your damn servant, you take care of it. I’m tired of hearing about it.”

So Sarai went in and started yelling at Hagar, and so meanly did she yell that Hagar left. She ran into the wilderness. She became so lost she feared for her life. At the very end of her thirst, she stumbled on a fountain and drank her fill.

Now Sarai became worried that Abram might not have an heir, and went in unto Abram and said unto him, “Beseech the lord thy god for us, for thy heir is even now perishing in the wilderness where that women has taken her womb.”

So Abram went in unto his prayer tent and sought the lord. He got Jesus, who was running the switchboard that night. Abram explained unto Jesus the predicament and how the heir might be dead. And Jesus thought to himself that maybe this was the heir god had wanted, so decided to handle it all himself.

So Jesus called Gabriel, the dog, and said unto him, “Go down to the earth and find this Hagar. Tell her to be good and do what his wife wants because if she doesn’t god will be very upset. Tell her that god will make her children as the sands of the sea, they will possess all the land and all the other stuff.”

Gabriel, who had a very good memory, left and went to the fountain where Hagar was found, weeping. And Gabriel, concerned, asked her what the problem was, after licking her face.

“I have left my home because the drama is too much to bear. I’d rather die than let that witch raise my child as her own,” seethed Hagar, her sorrow turning to anger.

“But god has promised to make your children as the sands of the sea, to rule all this land, and all that. To get that, you have to go back and submit to Sarai. I promise all will be well.”

“Why can’t god make it all good without my having to go back there?”

“Because, behold, you know, that Abram is the father of promise, and if your child is to be a patriarch, he must be raised by the previous patriarch.”

“Well, ok, I guess.” And with that, Hagar went back, happy at the prospect of her son’s success.

Jesus did enter the episode into the log that the lord had demanded be kept, in an effort to make the organizational structure of heaven more effective, and to track which people he was helping and which he was hurting. And god read the log a few days later, when he had some time, and came thundering into Jesus’ room in heaven.

“You idiot!” god bellowed.

Jesus was scratching Gabriel right behind the ear, right there, where he liked it, where it made his leg twitch. “What did I do?” he asked.

“You promised everything to that spawn of the devil!”

“What spawn of the devil?”

“You know, the one growing in Hagar’s belly!”

“Um, that’s the spawn of Abram, the child of promise...”

“No, he’s NOT!” God started pacing, the fury red in his face, balling his hands into a fist, then conscientiously unclenching them.

“You promised Abram an heir. This is his first-born male son, therefore an heir,” Jesus said smugly.

“NO! I promised Abram AND SARAI an heir! I promised both of them an heir. This child is from a union proving Sarai’s lack of faith!”

“Well, you got to write this stuff down. That last memo said that the patriarch was the first born male son.”

“Well, it’s never come up before.” God was calming down a bit.

“So, I guess this kid is it then?”

“No! I promised Abram and Sarai an heir. I have to teach them a lesson about faith. We have to figure something else out. In the mean time, I better get that woman’s pipes unstopped.”

“Ok. Let me know.” Jesus was back to scratching Gabriel already. “Oh, and update that damn memo. We’re not mind readers, you know.”

So, God went off and spoke the word and Sarai’s pipes were unstopped. And God ran down to earth and entered Abram’s dream again and said unto him, “I will make you a great nation. Your children will be as the sands of the sea. I told you this. You and Sarai. Why do you not believe me?”

Abram said, “I’m sorry; the wife pestered me.”

And god replied and said unto him, “I’ve heard that one before.”

And god stood to his full height, and then some, as his platform shoes were the bomb, diggety, and said unto Abram, “You will keep my covenant from here on. As a sign, and a reminder, you will circumcise the foreskin of every male in your camp. Anyone who is not circumcised is not part of the promise.

“And your wife’s name is no longer Sarai, but Sarah. This is the new name of the covenant where she learns to have faith and follow me. And your name is now Abraham, the father of many nations. You will introduce yourself as Abraham everywhere, to show faith that you will have a child.

“And that child that is coming, to Hagar, you shall call Ishmael. I’m going to make him into a great nation, as well, just not here. He and his shall be my people and I shall be their god, but they are not the children of promise through which the great ruler will come.

“Next year around this time you will have a child and you will name him Isaac. He will be the child of promise. God, out.”

So, Abram, er, Abraham, went home and had himself and all the males over the age of 8 circumcised, which was met with much complaining, but he explained that god, the god who gave them all the riches they had, had demanded it. And the women laughed a bit, then started complaining when the men were too sore to do anything, and the sex stopped for months. So bad was it that Abraham and Sarah nearly did not conceive at the appointed time.

Now, Ishmael was born very soon after god spoke to Abraham. Sarah became very angry again, but kept it to herself. Hagar had been told of the new covenant, and that Ishmael was to be hers and hers alone, and she was content. She had gotten her very wish.


So, back to Lot. Lot had been spending most of his time in Sodom these days, leaving the day to day operations of his holdings to a manservant of his. Such was the increase in wealth he had that he felt he could safely live off it in a life of ease. He’d even met the devil at a party a time or two and thought the devil a nice guy. He’d started talking to Abraham about the devil, and the lord got wind of this.

“Jesus, what the heck are we gonna do?” god was pacing again.

“I don’t know, what do we normally do when the devil gets near a patriarch?”

“Well, we sort of kill, maim and pillage until the patriarch runs away.”

“Well, Abraham thinks Lot is a fine young man. If we kill Lot, Abraham may change his mind about us.”

“Hmm. Well, how about we go warn Lot and get him out of Sodom and then level the place. And, while we’re at it, we can destroy Gomorrah, too.”

“Why Gomorrah?”

“They’re sort of a package deal. If we destroy Sodom, everyone will wonder why we didn’t destroy Gomorrah and vice versa.”

“But what about Nineveh? What about the other cities?”

“Well, we can deal with them later. I think people won’t lump them together like they do with Sodom and Gomorrah.”

“Ok, let’s do it.”

God stopped pacing, resolve firming his features. “I’ll take Gabriel, and, I don’t know, Michael, down to talk to Abraham, then to Lot.”

“You never take me,” Jesus pouted, but was ignored by the retreating back of the almighty.

Now, Abraham was out sitting in the heat of the day and hadn’t had enough water and was feeling feverish, and slipped into sleep. God came unto him in the flesh this time, and had to wake him up.

“Um, hello,” Abraham said. “Can I offer you some water, a little shade, maybe?”

God said, “Yes, please.”

So Abraham got up and got Sarah to get some water and start baking a little bread for his guests, and came back out to them.

God said to Abraham, “So, remember, you will have a child next year.”

And Sarah, being decrepit, did laugh, saying to herself, “How will I, in my dotage, have a child? And why would I want to?”

And the lord was wroth, but strove not to show it. How dare the little lady even say she didn’t want the kid? God had spent so much time, well, a few seconds, anyway, granting her this miracle, and she was acting as if she didn’t even want it.

So the lord said unto Sarah, “Is anything too hard for the almighty? You will have the child.”

And, to Abraham, he said, “And, oh, yeah, I’m going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.”

And Abraham was concerned god had forgotten that Lot lived there, so thought to make a deal with god. “Well, would you destroy the righteous with the wicked?”

God, intrigued, said, “Of course not. I would never do that.”

“Well, what if there’s fifty righteous in the city? Would you destroy it then?”

God wondered what Abraham was getting at. Abraham had never so much as discussed anything with him before. This was odd. So, curious, god said, “I won’t destroy the city for fifty.”

“Well, what if there’s twenty? Would you destroy it then?”

“I won’t destroy it for fifty. I won’t destroy it for twenty.”

“Please, don’t be angry,” Abraham said, because god looked angry. “Would you destroy it for ten?”

“I won’t destroy it for fifty. I won’t destroy it for twenty. I won’t destroy it for ten. But I tell you, Abraham, I do not like Sodom and Gomorrah, I do not like it one bit.” God began to feel like a character in a Dr. Seuss tale. He also knew, including Lot, that there were fewer than six righteous in the city.

Abraham became still, as he was certain that there were more than ten righteous in the city and that he had saved his nephew. They ate in silence after that.

At length, god got up and said, “I will make your children as the sands of the sea. I will make you the ruler of the world.” There was more, but Abraham had started to tune this speech out whenever god made it.

And the scribes write that we should be always careful to entertain strangers because some have entertained angels unawares, which is an odd thing to say, because there was only one angel, the other two being god and a dog, respectively, and there is no known incidence of a human entertaining an angel unaware, given that Abraham was absolutely certain who it was once the fog of sleep had lifted from his mind. One wanders where these proverbs that slip in come from, whether they are merely adornment, or if some stupid priest or rabbi or whatever simply wanted an excuse for a free meal.

And god went back to heaven and let Gabriel and Michael journey on to Sodom. Lot saw them coming and perceived them for what they were, angels of the lord god almighty, well, a dog and an angel, but Lot knew that not. Thus did Lot not entertain them unaware, er, he entertained them but not unaware. And Lot was ashamed and not a little worried about being caught in the den of iniquity, and the orgy was that night. So he ran out to greet them and insisted they come with him to his house for the night.

They replied, “No, we will sleep in the street.”

“But it is not safe!” Lot lied, hoping to scare them into his house.

“It’s ok; we’re set,” the angels said. And, yes, I know it was an angel and a dog, but the scribes all wrote that it was two angels, which is pretty much how Lot saw it, so we'll just let it drop and call them angels.

Lot, scared, said “Come on, I’ll give you a good meal and wake you up in the morning and you can be on your way.”

The angels argued a bit more, but Lot persuaded them, and, let’s face it, nobody really wants to sleep in the street.

Now, the orgy started, and the men of Sodom were ecstatic, and the women even more so, and they came to Lot’s house and asked if maybe Lot and his new guests wanted to come out and play.

Lot was worried that his guests would wander out, so he turned and told them, “The crowd out there is demanding that I send you out to be raped. Here, I’ll send my two virgin daughters out to pacify them!”

And his daughters were ecstatic for Lot had refused to let them join the orgies, but here was their lucky day, and they moved to go out the door, but the angels pulled Lot back in and sealed the door with the heavenly seal, and cast a spell of blindness on those outside, which cause much furor amongst the pretty but no end of relief amongst the ugly.

And Michael and Gabriel slept the night in Lot’s house, satisfied that their host was righteous. In the morning, they got up early and went in unto Lot and said, “Get up, get your family and run to the hills.” The hills was the preferred place for god’s people to live.

Lot, however, didn’t like the hills. “Please, let me go to a city rather than the hills. I don’t think we can make the hills in a hurry.”

“Ok, go to Zoar, but be quick. Don’t stop, slow down or even look back,” Michael and Gabriel put on their most severe faces, which didn't work so well because Gabriel was trying to get a pernicious flea out of his fur using his hind paw.

Then they shot up to heaven and god prepared the fire and brimstone while Lot, his wife and his two still virgin daughters left Sodom and ran to Zoar. Lot’s wife, naturally, was very pissed, and kept up a constant nattering behind Lot, saying “I can’t believe you believe them. Why destroy Sodom? It’s such a nice city? Zoar is a little pit stain. I can’t believe we’ll be saying we’re from Zoar.” And so on.

After a bit, Lot’s wife became convinced that nothing was going to happen. She’d been looking back surreptitiously for some time now, and had fallen all the way to the back of their little caravan. Finally, she caught up with Lot and said, “Look back there, the city still stands! It has been simply hours in the hot sun, running for our lives, and the city is fine! What were these angels playing at?”

Lot said, “I will not look back. One thing I’ve learned from Uncle Abram, er, Abraham is no matter how stupid a rule god has given is, violating it brings swift punishment. It may seem foolish to even consider that the city is going away, but this god destroyed the whole earth with a flood and killed thousands at Babel. I will keep running for my life.” It was quite a lot Lot said while running, and he was quite out of breath when done.

But Lot’s wife knew better than Lot so turned at the exact moment the lord god almighty started throwing around the brimstone, and he saw her, and she saw that he saw her, and he threw out his finger, the middle one, and she turned to salt. Were it raining regular water, nobody would ever know, and, as it was, if it hadn’t happened in front of Lot’s daughters, Lot would have never known, so dedicated was he to not looking back.

His daughters were sore distraught. They cried the rest of the way to Zoar. All that was left of their little family were Lot and the two young virgin girls. They became concerned that there would never be any more of Lot’s line.

While they were worrying about that in Zoar, Abraham was staring at the horizon in the direction of Sodom and Gomorrah, a big grin on his face for outsmarting the almighty. His grin shattered as the smoke rose up. He sank back into his chair and began to wait for news of his nephew.

And the devil wept. The tears of the devil were as nothing compared to the brimstone of god. It is said the smoke of Sodom and Gomorrah was leavened with the steam of the tears of the devil. After the destruction, the devil once again sought out Loke and once again poured out his heart to Loke, Thor and Odin. Thor was only restrained by the wiles of Sif from attempting to kill the almighty outright. Dark days those were in Valhalla.

Zeus, from Olympus, looked on with puzzlement. He went to Atum and asked of the destruction, what a pair of cities could get up to that would warrant that sort of thing. Atum did not know, but was certain that they must eat babies or some other equally horrendous thing. Zeus became more than a little concerned when he found out that Sodom, in particular, had been destroyed for exactly the sort of thing his Greeks got up to all the time. Fortunately, this deity ‘the almighty god’ only seemed interested in destroying areas where his pets might be found enjoying themselves, so Greece was safe, for the time being.

And word was sent from Zoar to Abraham that Lot was safe, and Abraham fell on his face and thanked the lord, with the relief that comes from stopping banging one’s head on a piece of wood.

And Lot’s daughters, worried that there would be no male heirs, did get their father drunk and take turns on him. Getting him drunk was not hard, given how distraught he was at the loss of, well, everything, and he was seldom sober anyway. They both became pregnant from him, the eldest bearing Moab, the father of the Moabites, which show up later in this story, and the younger bearing Ben-ammi, the father of the Ammonites, which show up later in this story as well.

I should point out that the oldest virgin ever in Sodom was all of twelve, and was a stick figure of a geeky boy. This means Lot's kids, even if they were raised with a stern hand on the switch, would have been maybe ten when they decided to get a child by their dad. Given that this bit may have happened as much as a year after the destruction, we're looking at perhaps eleven and twelve.

We’re done with Lot and his family for now.

And god did spend a day staring off into space, wondering at his creation. Here were two perfectly normal young girls who had raped their father to get him some boy children so his line could continue. Did they not have any faith in their god? And there was Lot, disconsolate at the loss of that wife of his that had brought him such misfortune, just like that idiot Adam and his current thorn, Abraham. Why were men so easily misled by women? And why did women never, ever listen to him? When he talked to Jesus about it, Jesus just said, “Maybe women can see through your bullshit using that intuition of theirs.” And that put god in a much more foul mood and he threw his shoe at Jesus, which missed and struck down a vase, but god spoke a word and it was back.

And while he was wondering about all that, Abraham was off on a trip to the south, to Gerar. There was a king there, Abimalech, who had not heard of Abraham nor his god, which is an odd thing, given the recent complete destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, but there you have it.

And, Abraham was once again concerned about his life, fearing someone would kill him over his wife. Abraham had begun to lose his marbles a bit, and still thought of his wife fondly as a twenty year old nubile female. She was as old as dust at this point, easily over 102 according to the canonical records. She wore a veil in public to hide her sagging wrinkles. She rode a large camel with opulent decorations on it. Her handmaidens told stories of her beauty or were fired.

So it became that a new prince arrived in Gerar, with a woman rumored to be of great beauty that was his sister, and Abimalech felt the urge to marry again. So Abimalech sent for Sarah to be brought to his house. Once in his house, he caught sight of her without her veil and immediately lost interest. These simple herders had the oddest ideas of beauty.

Abimalech meant to put Sarah back without doing anything, acting as if he had brought her merely for a gala dinner, but the lord god almighty got wind of this, as he had increased the staff assigned to watch his patriarchs and one of them felt it might be of interest.

Incredibly irate, god paced in Jesus’ room again. Jesus was tired of having to redo the cloud floor, filling in the beaten path god left every time. Now was not a good time to talk about that, though. Jesus watched god pace. God was too angry to even speak. Periodically he stopped, turned, red faced, and blustered a bit, then went back to pacing.

“Well, it worked out well for Abraham last time he tried it,” Jesus said.

“I punished him!” god exploded.

“You really didn’t. You punished Pharaoh. Abraham made out like a bandit.”

“Damn. You’re right. Well, we can’t make that mistake this time. I’ll go talk to this Abimalech character, I guess.”

So god went down and appeared to Abimalech in a dream. “Abimalech,” he said, “you are a dead man because you’ve taken a married woman.”

And Abimalech replied and said unto god, “Why would you kill a righteous man?”, because Abimalech had not actually heard about god, and thought it a reasonable question. “I did not know she was married.”

And god said unto him, “This is true. I kept you from taking her fully to save your life. Now, if you want to keep on living, you had better give her back to Abraham.”

Abimalech was a bit dumbfounded. Had this god made Sarah look old just to save him from death? How odd. “I’ll take care of it.”

God said, “Until you do, nobody will have any children in your kingdom. Get Abraham to pray for you and I will open everyone’s womb again.”

So Abimalech sent for Abraham, though Abimalech was pretty sure Abraham couldn’t pick his wife out of a lineup, and asked him, “Why would you do this to me?” Abimalech did not know anything about Abraham, either.

Abraham said, “I was worried you’d kill me over my wife, and it really isn’t a lie, because she’s my half sister.”

Abimalech was a bit more dumbfounded. “This is just beyond the pale. It isn’t done. I respect marriage. You would have nothing to fear. However, your god has punished me for a crime you committed. Now, please, make him open our women’s wombs.”

Abraham said, “I will implore him.”

Abimalech sent him off with gifts and told him to take any piece of land he liked. He also gave to Sarah a thousand pieces of silver, muttering under his breath, “This ought to show her.”

And the lord had made Sarah pregnant as he had promised, and she gave birth at the appointed time. To everyone’s surprise, she was able to breast feed the child. At his weening, Hagar’s kid started teasing him. Sarah got very upset about this and told Abraham, “Either that kid goes or I do.”

Abraham was concerned that Sarah might try something and break a hip, so he went to talk to god. God told him it was ok and to send the snot off.

So, Abraham took a loaf of bread and a flask of water and sent Hagar off. Hagar walked out, not knowing where to go. She had the promise of Abraham’s god, but now that there was this other kid, she had lost faith in that promise. She wondered what sort of god would tell his servant she could be let go with just a loaf of bread and a flask of water, to go out into the wilderness. She found a shade tree and set her kid down to die. She couldn’t bear to watch, so she went a few steps away and sat down, staring off into space.

The devil heard about it and was furious. The kid would die in a bit if nothing was done. The devil ran off to Jesus. “Jesus, you got to do something! Who is on the switchboard? Didn’t god promise this kid something?”

“Well, yeah,” Jesus said. “Great nation and all that. Heck, I guess we ought to do something.”

So they sent down Gabriel to find the kid again. Gabriel made a fountain of water for the kid and the devil killed a deer for food. This child, Ishmael, grew up strong, a great hunter, a good friend of the devil’s, although they kept it quiet to keep god from finding out. This promise of god’s, once kept, led to the creation of the Muslim faith, to be a thorn in the side of the Christians at a much later date, all because of a mixup.

And, while this was happening, god was busy following Abraham again, as he moved to Beer-sheba, where he made some sort of agreement with Abimalech that god wasn’t happy about, as Abimalech was a Philistine, one of a race that god intended to one day wipe from the face of the earth.

See, Abimalech was a nice guy, but some of his men had stolen a well from Abraham. Yup, it says, 'took by force,' in the ancient texts. It seems it'd be pretty easy to find it when you set about looking for it, and that's what Abraham did. Then he went to Abimalech, who was mightily worried about a visit from Abraham.

Abimalech begged Abraham to be nice to him and promise not to hurt him nor his sons. Abraham did so promise, but then made Abimalech sware that the well belonged to Abraham, and gave Abimalech seven ewes (female sheep for those of us who know what a Commodore 64 is (an ancient 8 bit computer for those of you who don't know what a Commodore 64 is)). Dunno why he did it, give the ewes, that is, but it seemed to convince Abimalech the well really belonged to Abraham, although Abimalech kept insisting he knew nothing of the heist of the well. Abimalech decided, finally, to shut up and take the sheep, promising not to never steal any more wells.

Part 10: The conspiracy unfolds

And god went unto the earth and did smack some people around such that, in the Levant, the scribes wrote the things he said they should write, the things about the greatness of god and the things about his jealousy, how he had created the earth, and the evil of the devil, for lo, if thou removest the letter ‘d’ from devil, thou hast ‘evil’, something the scribes simply left out, for such puns do not translate well, and, rather than writing the books in English, the language of the gods, they wrote it in Hebrew and Aramaic, the languages of men.

And Zeus and Odin did walk amongst men, and many did they lead astray, the followers of Zeus to a life of reasoning and morally upright effort, and a fondness for little boys to leaven the righteousness, and the followers of Odin to fight amongst themselves for the long ages until the Irish should grow to be a sufficiently large plum to pluck. The bible makes no mention of either of these, focusing on the other minor deities that were to be a pain in the butt for Jehovah, many of which this text will mention.

And, behold, did god keep the men in the dark about science or technology, the lesson embellished on the person of Rah by the Serrun-D’La, and the deeds of Lucifer being fresh in his mind, how mortals had fought a god. He told man that faith was the greatest virtue and that simple faith was evidence of strength of character, that man would stand in the knowledge of god, not bending nor breaking, knowing come what may, the anchor of faith will defend man against any onslaught by the forces of darkness.

And while all of this was coming to pass, god was not watching, and man was getting into trouble. Noah, the patriarch of the remaining humans, had planted a vineyard. He was getting old and needed a hobby. He whiled the time away puttering around in his field checking up on the grapes, shooing away the crows and generally being a crotchety old man.

When the grapes were ripe, he made his kids pick them and his daughters-in-law stomp them out. Six months later he had some low grade wine. He celebrated by drinking most of it, then passing out naked in his tent.

And Ham was kind of slow. He was out avoiding his wife and decided to stop by Noah’s tent. He opened the flap and saw Noah, passed out naked on his bed. He ran outside to tell his other brothers. Ham was kind of excitable and liked to share everything. He just knew his wife would yell at him about this, but he had to tell someone.

He found Shem and Japheth sitting in a field watching the sheep. “Shem, Japheth! I saw dad naked in his tent! It was disgusting!”

“Hold on now,” Shem said. “Dad was naked?”

“Yeah,” Ham said, doubled over and gathering his breath. “Naked as the day he was born, on his bed, drunk.”

“Well, we better go cover him up,” said Japheth. “Ham, stay here and watch the sheep.”

So Shem and Japheth went unto Noah, took a blanket and covered him up. “Crazy old fart,” Japheth said unto Shem, and they thought nothing more of it.

Later that evening, Noah woke up to rumors that he had been caught drunk and naked. The rumors said Ham had seen him and told his brothers, and now everyone knew.

And Noah cried out unto god and said, “O, Lord, knowest though not that they must see thee as a patriarch of patriarchs, yet they respect me not, the earthly patriarch? Seest thou not that they even now snicker about my nakedness!”

And the lord god thought to himself that this made a modicum of sense. So the lord god called down to Noah and said unto him, “Curse Ham for seeing thy nakedness and bless Shem and Japheth for covering thee up. I will prevail upon the scribes that they write down that Shem and Japheth sawest not thy nakedness. We all know Ham’s family isn’t going anywhere fast anyway.”

So, it was so. Noah called all his family unto him and said, “Cursed is Ham, for he has seen me naked. Ham’s children and his children’s children and his children’s children’s children unto the end of time shall forever serve both of his brothers and their children and their children’s children and their children’s children’s children unto the end of time. Oh, and Shem shall rule over everyone because he is the first born.”

And Ham cried out and said, “Not fair! I only stumbled into his tent! He’s just an ancient drunken fart!”

And everyone thought Ham was rude to say that to the old man’s face, and everyone else was pretty happy with the arrangement and Ham’s descendants were not very good at arguing, being much better at feasting, which they fell to with much gusto. And thus did the ruling class learn to distract the working class with feasts, chuckling to themselves.

So the beginning of the plan was established, that god was the patriarch of patriarchs and that his patriarch on earth was to be obeyed and respected at all times.

And this was when the great cities of old were started. Nimrod, in particular, made himself king over many cities, one being Babel, in the plain of Shinar. As humans are wont to do, they set about improving their lot. In those days, the devil walked amongst man as a man, not a snake, so that he may commune with man. The devil was always trying to make friends and have fun.

Well, the humans set to improving their lot, as I said was their wont. They made bricks, first out of mud, which allowed substantial houses, not bothered by wind or water or fire. During a fire, they discovered that the dried out brick was so much stronger, so they began making ever better ‘fired’ brick, using local slime as mortar. They found they could make taller and taller buildings.

As time progressed, with some help from the devil, they began to work out the secrets of geometry and engineering, constructing ever more lofty edifices. At one point, a bunch of people got together to see just how tall they could make their building. There was a girls’ hostel a few hundred yards away, with a high wall, and they felt that if the building was tall enough, they could see naked sunbathers. They knew they could never get that past the building inspector, so they said they wanted to make a tall tower to feel closer to god and to unite all people under one banner.

That sort of thing always sells, so the god tower was started. It snowballed out of control. Pretty soon people were coming from all over to donate time, money and construction materiel to the god tower. Using fired brick, the tower pretty much had to be a ziggurat, roughly pyramidal in shape, so each fresh donation allowed the tower to be that much bigger. Pretty soon, the base of the tower got so big that the girls’ hostel had to be moved to make room for it. This angered the original architects very much, and they quit in disgust.

And the lord looked down one day, taking a break from his excruciatingly busy schedule of golf, billiards and whiskey, and saw the tower being built. “Hold the phone,” he said, handing the phone to Jesus, “What are they up to down there?”

So the lord took a trip to earth and walked around the tower. He came as a tourist, as there were tourists all over. He walked up to the top of the tower, which kept getting higher as they piled more bricks on it, and looked around. The lord was also disappointed they had to move the girls’ hostel.

And then the lord went down and saw the make-shift buildings around the base of the tower. And the lord got curious and went in unto one of them and saw the elderly teaching the young the principles of geometry and engineering. He saw the elderly and the young alike thinking and discussing the natural world and how to exploit and improve upon it. And the lord became afraid.

And the lord was sore angry because he remembered the things before the flood, how the people had come to ignore him because they thought him demanding, annoying and a prude, and how it all started when men began to think too much for themselves. So the lord said to himself, “now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”

And the lord remembered also the fate of Rah, how his charges had become so advanced in the knowledge of the natural world they had lost all interest in following their deity. And the lord also remembered that one of the reasons he had created this stupid planet in the first place was to prove that a group of mortals could be led to follow his law and that following that law would make their lives better, and, here, right here in the Plain of Shinar, was growing proof of the bullshit of it. The lord, being a true believer in his law, could not countenance any proof to the contrary.

So, god thought a bit and figured out that if the elderly spoke a different language from the young, they would not be able to impart the knowledge. And, if the bricklayers spoke a different language from the brick makers, they would get all screwed up and quit. So the lord went to earth and smote the people such that they spoke different languages and made them angry so they fought constantly because they could not understand each other. Also, out of spite, the lord blew up their stupid little tower, saying unto the scribes it was really being built to be a safe haven from a flood, and the scribes, knowing the lord, did not mention that the lord had already basically sworn never to flood the earth again, and, besides, this stupid little tower wasn't nearly tall enough to protect against the sort of flood god was likely to use.

So the people left Babel, which is become synonymous with confusion, and founded the other great civilizations. Behold, the Buddha led his people into China, Shiva and Vishnu into India, and Romulus and Remus into Europe, and so on. Some stayed behind, the sons of Shem, to become what we call the Semites.

And, behold, the lord found the Semites pliable. In an unbroken chain, did the patriarchs proceed from Shem, even unto Terah. And, behold, the devil was pissed with god and was on him like stink so that everywhere god went to work amongst his people, the devil was there to undo all god’s work. And god fought with the devil constantly, and god kept control of the scribes, so that the things written about the battle were all in god’s favor.

And where the devil and god did not contest, religions of peace and love did abound, leaving most of humanity under the banner of some sort of eastern philosophy, such that only a tiny few came to know the saving knowledge of god and thus attain heaven, and the council of the most high, fearing how that looked to other elder gods, did order god to allow the other religions whatever heaven they felt they needed, which did sore piss off god, as he was counting on the fact that his law was the only way to heaven as a cudgel to convince people to follow the law. In a stroke of brilliance, however, he realized that he only had to set up the heavens; he didn't have to tell anyone about them, and thus has many a Buddhist arrived in some small part of heaven, very confused about the nature of Nirvana.

Anyway, time passed and this other patriarch showed up, named Terah. Apparently, nothing of note happened between Shem and Terah, or, just as likely, the records have been destroyed. Anyway, God told Terah to leave Ur, a place where the parties happened and the devil had gained a foothold. Terah was not really into god, but Abram, his son, was. Abram convinced Terah to leave, but couldn’t convince his brother Nahor, who would rather stay where there was good company, good wine, and plentiful food. Terah was an old man who never partied any way, so didn’t care.

Now, they went to Haran, a place they named after the father of Lot, Abram’s nephew. The relationship is too confusing to explain here, and why they named it Haran doesn’t make any sense, but there it is. Anyway, Terah died in Haran.

And behold, even in Haran, did the devil follow the lord like flies to a birthday party and the lord decided that even Haran had become too worldly and his elect were in danger of becoming corrupted by the devil, so he instructed Abram to leave Haran. Now that Terah was dead, he was to depart into the land of Canaan, where the descendants of Ham lived.

Now, we have to remember that even in the Levant, under the constant shepherding of the great shepherd, as the Christians call him, the elect were a tiny few compared to the great unwashed masses that followed the likes of Moloch or Baal, or just didn't give a shit, like most people today.

Abram went unto Sichem in the plain of Moreh, and climbed the mountain Beth-el, where he met the lord. The lord came down and said unto Abram, “I’m going to give this land, all you can see from here, to you and your descendants.”

So Abram built an altar unto the lord. Every day Abram sacrificed to the lord and every day it grew drier and then the day came that he no longer could feed and water his flocks completely. He begged the lord at the altar one last time, but no answer was forthcoming.

The lord had gone back to heaven and gotten involved in a prolonged Cricket match that went on for days, and, as a day is as a thousand years in the eyes of god, he missed the fact that the very land he’d just given to Abram was in famine now.

Abram, realizing he was on his own, packed up and went to Egypt. Abram had heard the stories from the other patriarchs of the spotty nature of the god almighty, not to mention the complete irrationality of much of what the lord said. Abram, however, had grown very rich doing what god told him, as per the covenant explained by the patriarchs. So, Abram got along as best he could.

Now, Abram was a complete mercenary, only following god because of the material gain, and was a cheat and a liar besides. He had a wife that had been very beautiful, as most total bastards do (or did or whatever), and when he went to Egypt, he was afraid of the Pharaoh and the other Egyptians, worried that they would try to steal his wife, being somewhat aged, mildly potty and clearly still smitten with her.

So, he took his wife aside and said, “I am afraid Pharaoh will try to steal you. The easiest way for him to do this is to kill me. So I will tell them you are my sister, which is only a half lie because you are my half sister.”

And Sarai, his wife, was flattered that her husband thought her, a seventy year old woman, desirable enough that the Egyptians would kill her husband to get her, although she was angered that he would not stand up for her. However, she had been around enough patriarchs to not expect too much, so she said, “Ok. I will tell them I am your sister.”

So, when they were in Egypt, they told everyone they were siblings, although they had to say ‘brother and sister’ because the word ‘sibling’ hadn’t been invented yet.

Now, when Abram drove his cattle into Egypt, the Egyptians saw him as a great prince. They went unto Pharaoh and told him that a new prince had come into the land, with a sister, and that maybe an alliance could be possible. So the Pharaoh did call Sarai unto him, and wine her, and dine her, and offer his hand in marriage. The Pharaoh lived in a state of polygamy, so she would be just another wife.

Now, when Pharaoh’s servants arrived with the gifts of cattle, sheep, oxen, asses, manservants and maidservants, and even camels, Abram became afraid, for he feared the loss of his wife. So he ran outside and knelt down and begged the lord god almighty for aid in his dire need.

And the lord, about to retire a side, was sore pissed to be pulled away from his cricket game, as his team had to forfeit and thus lost a rung on the tournament. So god, in a foul mood, heard Abram’s plea, and became concerned that Abram might decide he had been negligent about the famine thing, so decided to make sure Abram thought god would always be on his side. So god struck the Egyptians with plagues in punishment for messing with Abram’s wife.

And Pharaoh, being that he was considered a god himself, had the ear of Atum, and spoke unto Atum and asked him what the deal was, and Atum asked Zeus and Zeus asked Odin and Odin asked Thor and Thor asked Loke and Loke asked Hel and Hel asked the devil what was up. The devil went in secret unto Jesus, who told him all about the Cricket game, and the famine, and that god was over-reacting. And the devil, concerned that there were way too many tongues between him and the Pharaoh, and that the story would get all messed up, like in that game we all played in gradeschool, the devil did go unto Pharaoh and said unto him, “Abram is a follower of the lord god almighty, who is kind of an a-hole. He screwed up and now he blames everyone but himself, and since he can’t punish Abram without making Abram think just maybe this mess is god’s fault in the first place, as god promised him a land that is dry as a cinder, which is something odd for the almighty god to promise. Anyway, we’ve thought it through, and you ought to just send some presents to Abram, act really contrite, explain you had no idea what was up, and kick Abram out of the country.”

And the Pharaoh did so, explaining to Abram that it was nothing personal, but that he couldn’t run the risk of offending Abram’s god. And god was sore vexed about that, but didn’t think it was worth messing with, as Atum was an elder god and there was an uneasy truce between the council of the most high and the elder gods. The lord did not figure out that the devil had been the one to give the advice.

So, Abram went unto Beth-el once more, and god ended the famine, and Abram’s herds grew. And Abram’s nephew Lot was enriched by being near Abram, and Lot became concerned because his herds were now so large that there was not enough room for both of them. So Lot went to Abram and told him the problem.

Lot said unto Abram, “Behold, our herdsmen strive against one another, fighting for the best places to tend the flocks. I am concerned we may see war.”

And Abram said, “There’s no reason for us to fight; the whole land of Canaan was promised to us, so just pick a spot and I’ll move the other way.”

So stunned was Lot at the reasonableness of the answer that he had to go think a bit, and while thinking, he happened to spy the Jordan valley. Lot’s wife had been pestering him to move to a city anyway, and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were in the Jordan valley. The Jordan valley was pretty much nothing but green in that time, and there was plenty of land to tend flocks on. Of course, over-grazing is why the area became desert, but that is something that belongs in the realm of science, and Lot moved into the Jordan valley on faith alone.

Now, Lot didn’t want to live in the city, but he was being nice to his wife, so he pitched his tent near the city so she could go there whenever she wanted. She loved the nightlife in the city, and the shopping too, and was often in there until late at night. She would come home and tell Lot, “I hate so much that I have to leave the city at night and come here. You know it is not safe in the city and it is even less safe outside the city. Can we get an apartment that I can stay in overnight there?”

And Lot felt sorry for her so got her a rather regal apartment. It was so large that he found himself there rather more often than not. Eventually, Lot moved there himself. And thus did Lot and his wife and children become corrupt.

Now, Sodom was so full of, well, sodomy, that they named the city after the behavior. Sodom was not any worse than any other city of that time, being about the same as Ninevah. Gomorrah was a worse city, with a higher crime rate and worse schools, but there was less sodomy.

And the lord came to Abram, concerned that he might follow Lot into possessing an apartment in the den of iniquity known as Sodom, and the lord said unto Abram, “You haven’t seen the entire land I’ve promised to you. Head over to Mamre in Hebron and see what it is like there.”

And Abram, accustomed to the whims of the lord, and knowing which side of the bread his butter was on, did pack up and depart for Mamre, in Hebron, after dispatching a message to Lot to that effect.

Well, the messenger came upon a war. See, a king by the name of Chedorlaomer and a bunch of his friends had been in control of the whole area, and Sodom and Gomorrah, among other cities, had been paying tribute to this guy. Well, the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, Bera and Birsha respectively, finally decided they were strong enough to throw Chedorlaomer off their back, so they allied with a bunch of other cities and the war was on.

Chedorlaomer went ahead and laid waste to much of the Jordan valley, smashing the combined army handily. They sacked Sodom and Gomorrah and killed off all the Amelekites, whoever they were. They took Lot and his family prisoner. The kings of Sodom and Gomorrah went and hid.

The messenger went running back to Abram and told him what had happened. Abram went and prayed to his god, saying “See, I have to go attack these people and get my nephew back. He’s a good boy and owes me some money. Besides, who will my children’s children marry if he’s not around? I know he’s no patriarch, but many people see him as one of yours.”

And the lord was persuaded, although he was beginning to think that Abram was going to the patriarch well too often in his arguments, and the lord said unto Abram, “Go get him. Tell him to leave Sodom. Take all the stuff and give it back except for a tithe, that I owe Melchizadek,” because the lord was always working an angle like that, figuring he could pay Melchizadek out of the proceeds from Sodom and the Sodomites would still like him.

So Abram gathered all his men together that he could spare, and found Chedorlaomer and his men partying. They fell on the army and nearly wiped them out, pursuing them all the way to Dan, who was kind of annoyed with the noise.

And Abram took the stuff and went to Sodom, where the king met him and said, “Thanks a lot. You’re a real lifesaver. Tell you what, give us our people back, especially our womenfolk, and you can keep the booty,” thinking that was a very generous offer, and since he had no bargaining chips in the game.

Abram surprised him by saying, “I’ll give you everything but 10% which we call a tithe which we owe to god, and that goes to king Melchizadek of Salem, the priest of the most high god.”

And, as god predicted, the king of Sodom was overjoyed, and there was great feasting that night. And Abram went to Melchizadek, and Melchizadek threw another party and said, “Abram, you must be the favorite of god, for here you slew the most powerful king in this area. Why do you keep nothing for yourself?”

And Abram answered and said unto Melchizadek, “Behold, I have everything a man could ever need, so much stuff it is a pain to keep track of. Yet god continues to enrich me. It is enough that my relatives live. Besides, god told me not to, so that no one would say that this battle made me rich.”

Now, Abram was increasingly vexed because his wife was barren. God kept meaning to get to fixing that, but it never seemed to happen. Even a deity, who has to but speak and it is so, may procrastinate.

And god also felt that the covenant between him and Abram was not formalized. He was concerned there’d be lots more battles and stuff, and this heir thing was bothering him, and he thought that maybe if they’d just get this settled, they could get on with the grand plan.

So he dragged Abram out into the field, with a heifer, a goat, a ram, a turtledove and a pigeon. Several young men cursed Abram’s name trying to catch the turtledove and the pigeon. And in the field Abram sliced the bigger animals in half, spreading them apart to make a sort of grisly path, but didn’t split the birds. Abram had the very devil of a time keeping the carrion eaters off the carcasses. He was so exhausted that when god finally showed up, he was asleep.

God made lemonade and entered Abram’s dreams, saying “I’m going to make your children as the sands of the sea. I give you this land, from the Nile to the Euphrates. All the people in these lands will I drive out. It’s all yours. All you have to do is have faith.”

Part 9: Jehovah strikes back again

And behold, the lord god paced, muttering under his breath. He kept going on about Zeus and Rah and that so-and-so Odin. Jesus came into the room at this time, looking for his thingy, that he’d put just there, you know the one, and heard god.

“God almighty,” Jesus said, “why are you in such a bad mood?”

God turned around and glared at Jesus. “Damn Zeus and all his. Damn Odin. Damn Rah.”

“What did they do?” Jesus asked.

“Well, Odin came to earth for reasons I don’t know, but probably at the request of the damn devil. Loki, Hel and Thor are here for sure, others maybe. Zeus got curious and came here, right into the middle of the stupid Serrun-D’La that Rah has been chasing all over the known universe. That moron Cronus got in a fight with Zeus!” Jehovah slammed his fist in his hand, wincing slightly.

“A war between mortal and god? That hasn’t happened since the devil fought you!”

“Ah, you bring that up every chance you get, don’t you? Have you nothing else to discuss?”

“Well, who won?”

“I went down there and tried to stop it. I was very angry with Zeus for coming here in the first place, and this Cronus guy presented me with an opportunity. I went and fashioned some weapons for his minions, you know, thunder, lightning, invisibility, that sort of thing, and they turned on me, Jesus!” god turned around, the anger clearly evident on his face. His voice turned whiny. “They looked me in the eye, thanked me, and gave the weapons to Zeus, who really had no power on this world. Two of Zeus’ minions got weapons too. Zeus made them gods!”

Jesus almost snorted at this. “Gods? How?”

“I don’t know. Apparently the Elysian Fields allow for the promotion of mortals to deities. And, get this: their deities are not omnipotent, not even Zeus!”

Jesus looked incredulous. “What? So, why didn’t you just destroy them and be done with it?”

“Well, I went to do that, you know, prepared to use the Word of the Lord, when Odin showed up.”

“Odin! I heard he was around. So, how is the Allfather?” Jesus only asked because he knew it annoyed Jehovah.

“Oh, just fantastic. He came to me and told me that he would not stand for any interference in the actions of another polity. Then he stood off and watched.”

“Watched? He didn’t do anything? Was Thor there?”

“No. Zeus and Thor don’t get along. Zeus doesn’t appreciate being compared to Thor, a lower god and Thor doesn’t like being compared to ‘that pansy Zeus’.”

“Ah. So, what happened to Rah? Didn’t he do anything?”

“Rah and Atum were there. They just stood there. Atum was gently swaying and shading his eyes against the light. He sort of winced resignedly at every noise. Rah had a maniacal giggle every time his charges lost ground and seemed positively gleeful when Zeus killed the Titans and chased the rest off the planet. Rah is gone now, something about relieved to not have to mess with this planet anymore. Atum is hanging around for some reason.”

“I know the reason. The devil throws great parties.”

“Don’t ever speak of that again! I will deal with the devil soon enough. For now, we have to figure out why not one, but two major dieties are sniffing around our planet”

“Well, at least it’s a bit of a relief to have Rah gone.”

“But he didn’t leave quickly enough. Some of my humans are telling the legend of Rah and elaborating a pantheon based on him and some of those damnable Serrun-D’La, which they’re now calling ‘Titans’, at least the original ones. The ones that joined Zeus he’s made his minions, and then gone and set up shop on Mount Olympus. Now humans are worshipping him too instead of me.”

“So, what are you going to do?” Jesus was hoping this conversation would wrap up so he could go do something else. He would think of what that important thing was as soon as he could get out of here.

“I don’t know exactly. I think we have to brand them all as evil. I’m thinking of this ‘Jealous God’ angle where I convince them I know what’s best for them and won’t brook them talking to any other god. I also think we can run a ‘there’s only one god’ program. I’ve got people looking into it, but I think we can make people both avoid other gods and be convinced they don’t exist.” God was positively beaming, as if all his problems were solved.

“Well, um, ok, then, good luck with that, uh, then, yeah,” Jesus said, getting up. “I gotta go.”

Part 8: The interest of Zeus

Now Zeus was the fairest of the gods, a god of great stature, with an internal light that came from his purity of thought and life, or so the scribes he hired have written of him. He was a large god in form, not that any god could be considered small. Zeus strode with a purpose over the surface of Elysium, or sat regally on the throne of Zeus where he dispensed justice and wisdom to his fellow deities.

Now, Rah had followed his charges, the Serrun-D’La, to earth in the hopes of persuading them to not end up beached on Jehovah’s legendary anger. Rah was an odd one, with a bird face. Many have believed he was a deity of the Egyptians, but he was nothing of the sort; the Egyptians were confused and were following the tattered remnants of a much earlier religion, that of the confused Serrun-D’La.

When a new creation gets advanced enough to no longer believe in its gods, the gods lose influence in the world and must learn to leave them alone, a lesson Rah never learned. His charges settled earth long before the flood, even before Adam and Eve were chased out of the garden. Rah continued to try to convince them to leave earth. These are those the scribes speak of when they say that ‘in those days there were giants in the land’.

Zeus heard through Hades’ friend Hel that Lucifer, earth’s planetary prince, so dubbed by himself, with no contest so far, had been off to talk to the Allfather about this particular planet, something to do with the behavior of its plenipotentiary deity, one Jehovah of the Council of the Most High.

Rumors had it that there was at least one elder god on the planet as well, Atum. Drawn by parties thrown by Lucifer, dubbed the devil by Jehovah, who styled himself simply as god, Atum had taken up residence in the Nile Delta area and proceeded to drink himself into a stupor on a daily basis.

Now the Serrun-D’La were majestic, large and varied. Some of them bore heads similar to animals found on earth, so were considered monsters by those who saw them. The greatest of the Serrun-D’La, however, looked like a large man. Cronus was not a particularly evil man, er, person, although he held on to his rule with an iron fist. He’d killed his father to get the job, being a relatively young ruler.

So long had the Serrun-D’La existed they no longer believed in Rah. Further, they figured themselves the apex of creation, almost gods, and, lo, the worlds they strode on trembled at the striding. Yet when they witnessed the arrival of Zeus they felt threatened.

On the fourth day of the seventh month of the tenth year after the flood did Zeus descend to earth in the area known as Greece. Zeus arrived as befits the god of the sky, on a cloud with thunder and lightning and the light of the sun radiating from his person.

It was not possible for Cronus to ignore this. His racial memory allowed him to ignore Rah, who was just a silly beak-faced monster to scare the children, but nothing like this Zeus arrival had ever happened, and so obviously. Cronus would not allow it, not another enslaver like the Rah of the ancient scripts. Cronus was the god of this world and none would dare dispute it. Well, Jehovah had tried to dispute it, but the council of the most high was interested in this Rah subplot so denied his request to swab them cleanly off his planet. Besides, as the council wisely, er, snidely, pointed out, god had still not created anything at all on his pet planet when the Serrun-D'La had arrived.

Cronus gathered his council together and prepared for war. The council of his best and strongest warriors called themselves the Titans. “My fellow Titans,” Cronus said, “today we defend our freedom, our way of life, our very identity. Today we take the war to the gods themselves. We are the rulers of this world. We shall prevail. And, when we do, we shall be gods!”

Well, most of them were not titans of intellect, these Titans, or they might have spent a few minutes in meditation on the chances of defeating a god, but they were titans of emotion, titans of courage, and in possession of titanic egos, so with a thunderous roar, most of the Titans rose up and strode out to meet Zeus. They did not go as one, however; many of them stayed back, some fearful of Zeus and of attacking a god and some certain of Cronus’ eventual comeuppance. Some even stole away in secret to aid Zeus.

The battle was met in classic style, with the army of Cronus drawn up on the northern end of the Island of Crete, so chosen because there was little there in those days, it being shortly after the flood, and the army of Zeus drawn up on the southern end of the island.

The battle was joined and fiercely did they fight. Zeus led charge after charge against Cronus, while Cronus led charge after charge against Zeus. It seemed that a creature may triumph over a god and upset the natural order of things, as Zeus' fury was unable to put a dent in the Titans' resolve.

A relatively unknown Serrun-D’La, Gaia, approached Zeus one day after nearly ten years of fighting and timidly told him of the Serrun-D’La Cronus had locked up in the Underworld, a vast subterranean complex built by the Titans as a base on their rise to power. Zeus, accompanied by Gaia as a guide, went down there, killed the guard, and freed the prisoners, some truly frightful and gigantic monsters. They swore allegiance to Zeus and explained some of the deep magic of this world to him, allowing him full use of his powers, and gave him magical talismans from 'the god of this world', to give him power over lightning and thunder.

On ascending to the surface, Zeus led his army in a vicious charge straight at Cronus’ side, only to find Atlas, Cronus’ lieutenant, commanding the host of the Titans. Upset about this, they stalked about searching Cronus, finally finding him in his citadel at Tartarus, where Zeus and his new allies killed Cronus.

Today, many believe the Titans remain imprisoned in Tartarus, believing them to be as immortal as they believed themselves to be. However, in the collapsed and crumbling citadel, long since covered by a relentless planet, with both water and rock, rest nothing but bones of those who would challenge the gods.

Zeus was not a vindictive god, and raised many of the Serrun-D’La who stood with him to godhood on this planet, some of which remain Egyptian deities to this day, and many of whom reigned with him in Athens on Mount Olympus.

Part 7: Jehovah strikes back

And Jehovah did hear of the machinations of Lucifer and was sore wroth with him. There was plenty to be sore and wroth about, as the humans in his charge began to engage in all sorts of perversion out of sheer boredom. There being only eight of them on the ark, and all those animals, well, you know what humans can get up to after the fiftieth day with no beer and no TV.

So Jehovah resolved that day to dry the earth up and set about doing so, syphoning water off to form a new comet dubbed Haley’s that the Lord himself set in orbit as a warning that he could easily flood the earth again every seventy-five years or so.

He beached the Ark on a cleft in a mountain, angry as he was with the humans, and made them walk down the mountainside. Arrarat was the most treacherous mountain he could find that would not actually kill his humans, and he had to send angels to make sure they were safe, but it made him feel better. The animals faired worse, and he had to recreate some species, which made him angry again.

So annoyed was he with the whole thing that he told Noah he’d probably never destroy the earth with water again, which the scribes took down as a promise from the most high god that he would never flood the earth with a total flood again.

I’m glossing over the whole sending of the birds substory and the discussion of the number of animals, either two or seven, that absorb theologians with too much time on their hands, as these discussions will never be resolved and are completely irrelevant anyway, as the majority of animals saved were in limbo and most of the other ones had to be recreated as their carcasses lay broken in some crevasse on Mount Arrarat. In other words, whether god told Noah to take in animals by sevens, twos, sixty-fours or whatever, the precious few that survived the trip were unable to sit down for weeks anyway.

As for the birds Noah supposedly released to find land, that was Noah’s wife’s idea. She was tired of being in the stupid boat and kept pestering Noah to try to find out from god how long the trip would last. Noah figured, correctly, that god would take that about as well as a parent does on the fifteenth hour of a car trip, so refused. As a compromise, he periodically threw birds out of the ark, most of which never came back at all, not meaning there was land, but rather that birds are pretty dumb and will often end up dead trying to figure out how to get back to the only dry spot in the whole world.

Well, one bird came back with an olive branch, and much has been made of this. The problem is, of course, that no olive tree could have grown in such a short time to where it was in bloom, which has led scholars of a less than righteous bent to suggest that just maybe the flood was local rather than global, but the truth is that the olive branch came from some flotsam still floating about, and it only looked like it was blooming.

Anyway, let's place those pointless digressions behind us and pick up the story again. God knew nothing of the nature of the trip the devil had made to Valhalla, only that he had gone away for a while and now Odin had opened up shop on a far continent on earth. Odin was not aligned with the council of the most high so god had no way to force him to leave. The council expressed its regret to him about that. God feared his title of most high god was in jeopardy on this planet.

God called his personal posse together; Jesus and Gabriel and his most trusted angels showed up. Even though they were his most trusted angels, they kind of hung back, worried about what god was going to do now. Jesus muttered under his breath that he’d rather be washing his hair. Gabriel licked Jesus' hand.

“Ok, I called you here to tell you my grand plan for earth. Each of you has a part to play in this plan. The plan I have made allows for redemption of mankind and return to the good graces of the hosts of heaven. Oh, yeah, that’s what man will refer to our little council here. You are in on the ground level on this project. We will go far.

“Man has sinned by disobeying my law. We have to convince mankind to not befriend the devil again. This world must not get out of our control. We have to plan firmly for a future where man feels the need to follow us.

“I have spent a lot of time thinking on this and I think I have the answer. We had the germ of the idea when we had man up in the mountains, but we didn’t give them the things they wanted, steady meals and wealth. We need to give them these things with the condition that if they wish to keep getting them they need to obey god’s law. We’ll explain that it is in their best interest to stay close to us in order to achieve rebirth in the heavenly host.

“Any questions? No? Very well. I’ve printed out some talking points. Mainly, we’d like to punch up the idea that this is a covenant between god and man, to get the contract angle. We think the humans will agree to hold up their side when we convince them they wouldn’t be here were it not for our beneficence. Also, of course, they have to follow the covenant in order to make it to heaven. We need to weigh in heavily on the three points of the covenant angle.

“One, that the human has violated god’s law through Adam and their tendency will be to violate god’s law continually.

“Two, that the human owes his existence entirely to us through the miracle of creation and that divine law is the best way, as we would know best.

“Three, that the covenant keepers will be the only ones allowed into heaven. We want to stress that you have to keep the whole covenant as established.

“To this end, we will be establishing a priesthood and recruiting prophets. We don’t want to create a system where intelligent people run things because they are in the habit of engaging in blasphemy. We need to make sure they get marginalized, so we need to create a culture of faith, simple belief. We make it a positive moral attribute to have simple faith, showing the man of faith as a strong man of deeply rooted beliefs.

“So, unless there are any questions, I want each of us to come back here with some new ideas about how to elaborate this and what parts of the project you want to shepherd personally. I guess that’s it.”

As the others filed out, god took Jesus aside and said unto him, “I’m really trying to make this work. You know every battle the devil wins reflects badly on both of us. I think this meeting went well and is just the start of something great.”

Jesus answered and said unto him, “I don’t think the devil thinks he’s battling you. I think he’s just trying to have fun and you’re being a bit of an asshole.”

And god was wroth, but he needed the help of Jesus, so he held his temper, only saying, “You shall see. The devil truly is evil and his ways are wily. He shows you a good time, but the end thereof is destruction.”

And Jesus, shaking his head, did say, “The only destruction at the end is rained down by you, not a natural thing. There is no magic in your law.”

And god, sensing trouble, said unto Jesus, “It’s not just our law, it’s the law of the council of the most high. Do you dare to challenge them? These wise ancients have lived far longer than us.”

At that, Jesus did drop it and walked out, although he knew for a certainty that the council of the most high had never ratified god's law.

Part 6: What Loke Said

Now, Loke was a minor deity in Valhalla. Loke had a bad reputation for being unruly, a bit of a prankster, and generally uncool, which was exactly the sort of person the devil avoided, but he was also the sort of person god hated.

The devil found Loke dodging Thor. Loke had a joke he liked. He’d walk in and ask Thor, “What is your name?”

Thor would answer “I’m Thor!” with his characteristic panache and enthusiasm.

Loke would answer “I’m Thorry!” and Thor would throw something at him, in this case, repeatedly throw something at him, multiple lightning bolts from his hammer.

“Hey, Lucifer!” Loke yelled from his current hiding place, a large stone on a mountain in Valhalla.

“Hey, Loke. I got a problem.” The devil ambled over, dodging a lightning bolt. “Thor, lay off him for a bit; I have to talk to him.”

Thor huffed and went off to find Sif to complain.

The devil waited until Thor had left earshot. “As I said, I’ve got a problem. This Jehovah has declared himself most high over earth, this tinpot planet he’s made. I don’t know why I care, but it is pissing me off. He thinks he’s banished me there. I am no longer able to access heaven, but I can enter the counsel of the most high as per treaty. And, of course, I can go to pretty much any other polity, so here I am. As I said, we have to do something about this Jehovah.”

“Jehovah? Who is that? I thought that planet was under the counsel of the most high? How did Jehovah get control of it?”

“Well, you know the most high. They are far more interested in golf than in anything else. He’s gotten permission to pretty much run the whole show. I really think they’re phoning it in these days. That’s why I’m here.”

“Why not consult the elder gods? Wouldn’t Rah or Atum be interested in this?”

“Ra has his hands full with the Serrun-D’La right now. Rumor has it that they are thinking about a colony on earth, but have not made any moves yet. Atum, as you know, is a complete playboy and can’t be roused for anything. He swings by earth a lot for the parties.”

“Yeah, you always throw the greatest parties, with the best minds and the finest conversation available. What happened?”

“Jehovah drowned the damn world!” The devil looked away, a hard, distant look settling on his visage.

“Drowned the world? How is that even possible?”

“Well, he let loose all the water he could find on earth, then he hit it with a comet. There were exactly eight survivors, not counting the animals Jehovah felt needed saving. They’re still tossing around down there on the high seas, over the mountaintops.”

Loke let out a low whistle. “Yeah, I see what you mean. Even in his worst rages, Thor would never drown an entire world, and certainly not for partying. I must speak to Odin about this. The Allfather may know what to do. Certainly the halls of Valhalla will be interested, even if there’s nothing that can be done.”

“Ok,” Jesus said. “But first I must seek out Hel and see if she can spring my friends from Gehenna.”

The night arrived, and, with it, the perpetual party of the halls of Valhalla was called to disorder. Odin, the Allfather, master of Valhalla assumed the place of honor at the head of the table, dodging an errant axe sent sizzling by some young punk. Odin was old enough that the carousing and fighting didn’t interest him much. He was interested in the eating and the dancing wenches.

Lucifer entered the great hall a bit after Loke, and his presence ate into the noise like a flame into styrofoam. As he strode into the room, pockets of chaos once seeing him fell silent like a fish falls on a butcher block, with a sort of audible whump caused by a dozen or so warrior mouths shutting at once, with the clatter of trenchers struck by discarded meat and the thunk and slosh of hastily settled tankards.

Lucifer was always quite the sight. Created by Jehovah himself as an earlier creation, Lucifer was not a god. He was a massive majestic angel of such intense beauty that even the manliest, straightest of the halls of Valhalla couldn’t help but shift themselves in their seats a little to relieve the pressure of their rising tumescence.

He carried himself proudly but not arrogantly. He also carried a majestic pair of wings attached to his back. These wings were the source of his power, being an angel. As per the Treaty of Titus, he was allowed to retain his power if he promised to never foul the presence of God’s house again. Now he was using every ounce of energy he had to be the being of intense light he was, with a radiance that would cause a mere mortal to pee himself but merely annoyed the residents of the halls of Valhalla.

However, without a doubt, he had successfully gotten everyone’s attention in Valhalla, a feat not to ever be matched until Ragnarok. Silence fell like some sort of massive ancient cloak of silence or maybe a heavy blanket. Lucifer found himself in an open place and so stopped, turned to Odin and demanded in a loud voice, “Odin, great Allfather, Lucifer, prince of earth, demands an audience!”

“Ah heck,” Odin muttered to himself. Being the Allfather sucked. Lesser deities constantly demanded his time and this nut wasn’t even a deity, and Odin knew for a fact that his claim to be prince of the spit ball of a planet called earth was tenuous at best, but he also knew Lucifer had to claim to be someone to be granted an audience. Of course, the presence of Loki just made things that much more complicated as Loki complicated nearly everything. Was that the delightful child Hel standing behind Lucifer? Well, maybe this was worth pursuing if Hel was involved.

Odin waved a hand, pitching his voice just loud enough to be heard in the entire hall, which was still silent as a tomb, “granted.” Then he went back to his meal, gesturing at the dancing girls to be about it again.

Lucifer strode out of Valhalla, truly disgusted with the place. The next day, Odin rose at the crack of noon as was his wont and met with Lucifer, Hel, Loke and Thor and began to plan the downfall of Jehovah.

Part 5: The Flood

Well, after Enoch left, Methuselah and then Lamech led the people of god. As the planet cooled from creation, it became ever harder to eke out a living up in the mountains, but the valley became downright pleasant. God’s people cried out to him, as they always did over every little thing, arguing that the devil’s people had it better and hadn’t god’s people worked so hard to be righteous and stuff?

So god got to thinking over his espresso, having recently emerged from rehab for his drinking problem that wouldn’t have been a problem if man would just behave, and it finally occurred to him that the bad people were on the bottom and the good people on the top. He could just drown the bad people.

God called in his engineers and they sat down to calculate. They figured out how much water would drown everyone and set about doing that. To preserve life, they designed a boat that was simply gargantuan. They told Noah it needed to be at least six miles long by a mile wide and around three thousand feet high to hold all the animals and food that was going to be embarked.

God had to later admit he was a bit drunk when he told Noah this, but he still thought Noah could have used his brain. Here they were around twenty years into building an ark out of shitty wood, being as there wasn’t any old growth timber up in the mountains suitable to building an ark (redwoods take thousands of years to grow, and creation only happened a few hundred years ago), and the whole project was being conducted by Noah and his sons, and the ark was about 600 times too small. It would barely hold all those who still sort of believed in god.

So, god worried and fretted, and cast about for a plan, but found none. Twenty more years passed and god got more worried until one day Jesus came in unto god and said unto him, 'behold, twenty years ago when you finally realized that idiot Noah was building the ark too small, there were thousands of righteous in the mountains. Lo, now, there are mere hundreds, so many have starved, died of disease or simply moved out to join the devil in the valley. If you just wait a while, there will be few enough they will all fit in the ark.'

And god was so relieved at the plan that he slept well for the first time in a very long time that night. He awoke the next day and went unto Noah, saying unto him, 'I have decided to prolong the time before the flood that more may be saved. Verily, preach unto them of the evils of the valley whilst thy sons assemble the ark.'

Thus did Noah set about preaching to anyone who would listen, having about as much luck as Enoch. Even many up on the mountain lost interest in the idea of waiting for a flood to float this massive boat, and many of them had seen Noah’s simple sons assemble it and were not at all convinced it’d float. Many of them went down into the valley.

As a matter of fact, the more Noah preached, the nuttier he got, working in all sorts of conspiracy theories about the evil in the valley, much of which simply was not so. True, sodomy was tolerated in the valley, but you couldn’t get it accidentally, and if you were not a sodomite you would almost certainly fall to the wiles of one of the women of the valley long before you fell for the men. It certainly was a relief to not have to chase sheep. And, certainly, the only danger to a young woman was to swoon at the sight of the seriously hunky, yet stylishly sophisticated and serenely sensitive men who had attended the devil's classes on how to treat a lady well.

As an historical note, the behavior of sodomy, something god abhors because he sees everything and just is disgusted by having to see that, the behavior lent its name to the city, not, as is commonly assumed, the other way round.

Well, Noah, his wife, his sons and their wives were soon all that was left. The rest of the patriarchs died off and everyone else lost interest in trying to eke out a slow starvation on the increasingly cold mountains, moving to the valleys for warmth and food. Truth be told, Noah’s wife and his sons wives would have left as well but were too ashamed to leave.

Down in the valley, the devil and the scholars felt that god was just bluffing, that there was way too much work invested in this world, and that god would not snuff people simply because they wanted to have a nice life. Boy were they wrong.

When god finally got around to it, after ushering some animals in for show and suspending the rest momentarily in limbo, god rained water for forty days and forty nights. He broke every natural dam. The scholars say there was water under the earth somehow, and he released that. He tore a chunk of ice off a comet and melted that onto the earth for good measure. He covered every single mountain by at least six feet.

Noah’s wife and his sons’ wives were actually feeling pretty good about their choice in husbands at this point, which brings up an odd truth, that religious people are afraid to die. Lack of faith has been god’s biggest problem when it comes to leadership of the fallen race of man, because the devil does not lead; he merely tempts man with a happy life of ease.

Anyway, god scoured the surface of the earth, upheaving a great many forests and burying literally billions of metric tons of detritus that would later become coal for the Christians to use in exploiting the world. God did not realize it at the time, but the energy he was burying at this point would make life so much easier later on that people would come to praise him for the flood, for now they could heat their homes cheaply.

The devil sat in with the people of the plain. So distraught was he with god’s doing that he wished to die with them. The scholars write that the devil feared he might die, but the truth is that death was the dearest thing to him in that dark hour, as all his earthly friends died a slow death by drowning, their accusatory eyes turning glassy as their bodies bloated and began to smell, and the devil forced himself to watch, forced himself to feel, forced himself to partake of their misery he felt he had helped cause. In the pit of his stomach, a revulsion formed that a god would do such a thing, and he resolved to fight god every step of the way. On the fortieth day, he went out seeking Loke.