How I Found God
by Ann Leckie
published on sonandfoe.com, 22 October 2006
I found God in a bar near the university. He was sitting alone at a table by the window, half-leaning against the letters painted on the glass, his face dark against the gray, rain-heavy day outside. He was smoking and drinking a Rolling Rock. “Hey, Mike,” he said. “Have a seat.” He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a day or two, but otherwise he was neat and well groomed—short, dark hair, thick, white Aran sweater, dark slacks. Nothing special. Not at all what I’d expected from God.
“What the hell,” I said. I went over to the table, but I didn’t sit. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He shrugged. “Hanging out,” he said. “Having a beer.” He tapped his cigarette on the ashtray and gestured to the opposite chair. “I thought you wanted to talk.”
I pulled out the chair and sat. “There’s no smoking over here,” I told him as he blew smoke across the table. “Not during lunch.”
“I’m God,” he said. “You want a burger? The burgers here are—oh, hey. Speak of the devil.”
I looked up to see a blue T-shirted waitress with a tray. “One bacon bleu cheese burger, extra well-done, extra onions,” she said, setting a plate in front of God. “One three cheese with mushrooms, rare.” That one was for me, apparently.
“I didn’t order this,” I told her. “I only walked in just now.”
“God ordered it for you,” she said. “I’ll be right back with your beer.”
“I don’t want a beer,” I said.
“Yes you do,” said God.
“No,” I said, looking right at him. “I don’t.”
He shrugged and took another drag of his cigarette, and the waitress left. “So where were we?”
“You couldn’t have turned up sooner?”
He set the still-burning cigarette in the ashtray and picked up his burger. “I suppose I could have.” He frowned, chewed for a few moments, then swallowed. “Hey, I heard this joke the other day. These three nuns, they die and they’re standing outside the Pearly Gates…”
I blinked. “So there is a heaven, then? With pearly gates?”
God’s hand, full of cheeseburger, stopped halfway to his mouth. “It’s a joke,” he said. “If I told you the talking muffin joke, would you think there were really talking muffins?” A few raindrops spattered on the window.
“What’s the talking muffin joke?”
“There are these muffins in the oven,” he said. “The one turns to the other and says, ‘It sure is hot in here.’ The other one says, ‘Holy shit, a talking muffin!’” He looked at me for a moment. “You always did take yourself too seriously.”
“So whose fault is that?”
“I’ll give you that,” he said. “Hey, are you going to eat your lunch or not?” He reached over and took a fry off my plate. I’d only seen him take a few bites of his burger, but it was gone, and his plate was nearly clean.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Suit yourself.”
I pushed the plate across the table. “So are you really omnipotent?” I asked.
“Of course I am,” he said around a mouthful of mushroom burger. “I wouldn’t be God if I weren’t.”
“So can you make a rock so heavy you can’t lift it?”
He picked up his beer. “Oh, yeah, like no one’s asked me that before.” He took a swig. “Got any other burning questions? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Does a dog have Buddha nature?”
“The problem of evil?” I countered.
“Oh, sure, it looks like a problem from where you sit,” he said, gesturing towards me with his beer. “But it’s not. Trust me.”
I just looked at him.
“Really. Evil will not escape my sight.”
“Right,” I said. The rain was coming harder, blowing against the window, a rhythmless spatting sound. It was a few moments before I placed the quote. “What the hell,” I said. “Are you God, or the Green Lantern?” He laughed. “The Gospel According to Stan Lee?”
He picked up his cigarette. “I thought you were some kind of scholar, Mike,” he said. “Don’t you know the difference between Marvel and DC?” His face was completely serious. “Hey, I’ve gotta go.” He finished off the last of his Rolling Rock and stood.
“You’re forgetting something,” I said.
“I never forget anything. I’m a little short on cash.”
“You’re God. Make some.”
“That would be counterfeiting.”
“No it wouldn’t,” I said. “Besides, you’re outside time, right? Just make it so you earn some money or whatever, so you can pay for your own damn lunch.”
“Or I could make it so you earn some money so I can pay for my own damn lunch,” he said. “It was good talking to you. Maybe we can do it again sometime.”
The first time you seriously consider the idea of killing God, it’s natural to feel a bit overwhelmed. How would you do it? What could one human do that would kill the omnipotent creator of time itself? And what would that mean? Would the universe cease to exist once its creator was gone, if Brahma blinked and never opened his eyes again? Or would things just continue much as they had before, but with humans in charge of their own fate, no longer living at the whim of a capricious deity?
I obviously had a lot of research in front of me, so I studied. Theology, mythology, comparative religion. I read every holy book I could find—the Vedas, the Avesta, fragments of Sumerian hymns, anything. I read the commentaries on the holy books, and I read the commentaries on the commentaries. I had a long conversation with a schizophrenic who claimed God was a frequent correspondent of his via coded messages tucked into his Value Pack coupon envelopes, and such was my diligence and determination that I did not dismiss this possibility out of hand but instead studied my own junk mail assiduously.
I learned very little, except that wherever God goes he seems to surround himself with paradoxes and contradictions.
The sound of the phone ringing woke me. I squinted at the clock, trying to make sense of the numbers. 3:04 AM. The phone, where was it? I sat up, forcing my brain to work, trying to locate the sound in the dark. I swung my feet to the floor and stood, walked forward until I met the counter that made the other half of the room a “kitchen,” and somehow found the handset.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Mike. It’s me. God.”
“Do you know what time it is?”
“Of course I do,” he said. “I know everything. What are you doing?”
“Sleeping,” I said. “Are you stalking me or something?”
“You spent ten years tracking me around the world. I call you up once and I’m the stalker?”
“It’s three o’clock in the morning. What do you expect, calling at this hour?”
“How about, ‘Here I am, Lord.’”
“Fat chance,” I said.
“Look, there’s this club over on the East Side…”
I didn’t let him finish. “I have to work tomorrow.” I walked around the counter, into the kitchen.
“What do you think I made sick days for?” asked God. “Look, we don’t have to go to the East Side if you don’t want.” I pulled a glass out of the cupboard. “We could just hang out. Bullshit for a while.”
I turned on the tap. “No.”
“Damn,” he said. “Well, do you have some cigarettes I could borrow? I’m all out.”
“I don’t have any,” I said. I took a drink and set the glass on the counter. “I quit six years ago.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right,” said God.