At the head of a growing crowd that now numbered in the hundreds, Khan walked purposefully through the streets of Brooklyn, keeping his eyes ahead of him and giving no sign that he was aware of the procession just meters behind.

From that crowd, a much shorter Irish man with pale skin and orange hair worked his way through the mass of people, holding his beat-up jacket over his head in a sad attempt to ward off the heavy rain. Eventually, he reached the front and started to walk alongside Khan, who didn’t so much as turn to look at him. The man with orange hair sized the other up as best he could in the oppressive darkness.

“Nice trench coat.”

Hesitantly, Khan said, “Thanks.”

“Just joshin’, you look like a right fucking poser. At least take off the shades.”

Khan shot a glance to his side, and then lifted his sunglasses ever so slightly. From his eyes emanated a white glow that illuminated his face for the few seconds before he lowered the shades again.

“Fancy that,” said the shorter man, who tried in vain to light a soaked cigarette.

With a smirk that was barely evident underneath the unkempt beard, Khan said, “You’re not surprised?”

“Eh, see one God, you’ve seen ‘em all.”

“Is that what they’re calling me now?”

“Nay, that’s what I’m calling you. There’s more to you than your fancy light tricks,” he said, pointing at the sunglasses.

Khan laughed sincerely. “So what kind of God am I, then?”

“Man-made. By these guys.” The short man pointed back over his shoulder at the shuffling crowd. “Didn’t need me to tell you that, so don’t play dumb. I know things.”

“Yeah? What kind of things?”

“All of them. According to that thing you’re fingering in your pocket, you’re Gregory Ahmed Khan. Funny name.”

Smile fading, Khan withdrew his worn U.S. passport from the trench coat and looked at the engraved eagle on it. “Guess it is. You got one?”

“Fate.”

Khan looked over at the Irish man- really looked at him- and met his eyes. He found that for what seemed like eternity, he couldn’t turn away- the black pupils seemed to go on endlessly, for years and years, to an infinite distance. In those eyes he could see the lives of people that he’d never met and never would, all of them, and what caught him off guard was what an infinitesimal part of that space and time they made up, they were so insignificant and small, and surrounded by other people who were more than people, some who weren’t even, and some who made all of them seem like ants- no, like bacteria- and even those mighty beings were dwarfed by the lives of entire planets and stars and galaxies whose billions of years were still nothing because they had a beginning and an end, and the blackness in those eyes was infinite. Khan’s brisk walk slowed to almost a shuffle, and his gaze only broke, finally, when Fate blinked.

Without any humor in his voice, Khan said, “Funny name.”

“Name. Title. Occupation.” Fate extended his hand in greeting, and the other warily took it. Khan stopped in his tracks as the world ground to a halt. The raindrops hung in mid-air, and then vanished completely, taking Fate, the crowd, and the streets of Brooklyn with them.

---

The teenager Khan and his parents have moved from Maryland to New York, and he has been in high school for nearly four weeks. Already he’s tired of the cafeteria food, and he’s in a rush anyway, so he grabs a drink and eyes the hall for his friends, who beckon him over. He waves and starts to walk towards them.

Two boys stand in his way. Both are Arab, one tall and skinny and the other considerably bulkier.

“Yes?” says Greg.

“Curious that all your friends are white, no? Must be thirty of us at this school and you’re the only one who keeps his distance. Why is that, Greg?“

“I don’t choose my friends on ethnicity. Not a bad call, judging by the sample.”

The bigger one says, “We stick with our own- what makes you so special?”

“Our own? Sorry, ancestors came from the sand, but I’m born and raised American.”

“Who gives a shit where you were born? You have centuries of culture in your blood!”

“Right, right; praise Allah.” He pushes past them and walks over to his table. The year isn’t a pleasant one.

---

Greg is lucky to have gotten the hotel room at all, with countless other passengers sleeping on the floor at the airport. His flight back to the States from London has been cancelled, and all he can do is wait. However, his mind is not on that, but on the news, and the repeating image of the twin towers crumbling to the ground.

Another video shows footage of Palestinian locals rejoicing in the streets. Greg looks at this with an expression of hatred. He loathes them. He loathes his people and everything they stand for. He doesn’t notice the lights starting to flicker in the room, ever more, the angrier he gets.

It takes looking over at the American passport on the end table- his- to remind himself that the cheering crowds are not his people. This calms him just a little. The lights stop flickering.

---

The white car in front of his house is a police cruiser, he realizes, while walking back from the bus stop. He sees his overweight father yelling at one of the cops at the fence, while his mother worriedly stays in the sidelines. Another cop is standing by, expressionless.

“Random search my ass!” screams his father, a vein popping out in his head. “The only non-white family for six miles and my house gets raided? Do you think I’m stupid?”

“Mr. Khan, this is a security matter. If you have nothing to hide, as you say, you have nothing to lose.”

“Bullshit! I’ve been in this country longer than you’ve been alive. I pay all my taxes, work an honest job, I vote-”

Greg finally reaches the group. “Dad, what’s going on?”

The cop answers. “Your father’s refusing to let us in on police business.”

Before Greg can answer, his father yells again. “You pigs either show me a warrant or get the hell off my lawn.” He turns around to head back into the house. In a flash, the cop twists his arm from behind and pulls out a pair of cuffs. Greg’s mother starts to scream.

“Hey, hey, lay off!” Without thinking, Greg grabs the cop’s arm. Before he knows what’s happening, a strong hand is gripping his throat and pushing him to the ground.

“Fucking Ay-rab shit! Think you people can come into our good country-”

Greg, operating on instinct now, pries the cop’s arms off with brutal strength and grabs his collar. He doesn’t remember again for months that what he does next is lift the policeman into the air with seemingly little effort. Then, with blinding rage, he feels a rush through his entire body, feels it channeling into his arms, and he pumps the cop’s body with electricity, making him spasm uncontrollably. Nothing fatal, and nothing near what Greg will be capable of years from now- akin to a Taser at best. The cop falls to the ground, twitching.

The second one, who Greg has conveniently forgotten about, clubs him on the head from behind, and the young Greg slumps to the sidewalk, his vision going black. The yelling policeman starts to kick him, breaking his nose in the process and eventually rendering him unconscious. Greg is arrested and eventually convicted for assault on a police officer. The Taser he supposedly used is never found, of course, and he wonders for months how exactly the cop was electrocuted. He doesn’t remember until the next time that he gets uncontrollably angry.

---

Real timed resumed. The reel of Greg Khan’s life finally ended after what seemed like years, and he was standing in the streets of Brooklyn under the heavy rain again. He shuddered and looked around. The crowd behind had ground to a halt along with he and the Irish man.

“It happens,” said Fate, answering just about anything Greg could have said. “You can let go now, though- people will say we’re in love, they will.”

Greg looked over to find that he was still gripping Fate’s hand, and calmly pulled his away. For the next few minutes, the procession continued in silence, the tall Arab man in deep thought, and the short Irish one whistling and watching the lightning.

“So,” Fate finally said. “Planning on traveling anytime soon?”

Greg looked over, frowning. “Thought you knew everything?”

Fate stuck out his lower lip and shrugged- he looked like a clown, Greg decided. “I do- just making conversation, boy. Man’s life flashes before his eyes, figure he needs to talk to someone, nay?”

“I guess...” Still walking, Greg opened the passport and looked at the far out-of-date photograph of himself, from when he shaved regularly and kept his hair short and proper. All be damned, he was actually smiling in it. “This used to be my identity.”

“Ah, that’s what a passport’s for, according to some.”

Ignoring the quip, Greg said, “It’s who I was. Gregory Ahmed Khan. American citizen. I was proud of that.”

“Why?”

He had to think for a moment. “It’s just how I was raised. My mom... I mean, I guess you already know.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“She was raped. Repeatedly. Back in Syria. But the law of the land said she was an adulteress unless she could get four witnesses to prove it- how things work with them, apparently. So she and my dad fled and made it to the States. They really bought in to the dream of America, you know? So they raised me the same way, renouncing the past and all. I was young, I ate it all up.”

They entered a tall building and rode the elevator up, leaving the crowd downstairs to wait for the inevitable. With no rain to stop him, Fate pulled out another cigarette and successfully lit it.

“Turns out you can't bury your past. No one lets you. Not here.”

“What brought you to that conclusion?”

“All the shit we had to deal with for having Arab blood, for starters. Didn’t matter that my parents weren’t sending money to terrorist camps- somehow they found an excuse to fire Dad from his job. Eventually they even lost their house. Hell, I got a criminal record for fighting a racist cop.”

“Electrocuting a racist cop.”

“Wasn’t my fault... you’re the one who said I was man-made, remember? Those people downstairs, maybe their belief created me. Maybe they needed a God.”

Fate coughed from the smoke that now filled up the tiny lift, and then said, “Mm. So you tell me then- what kind of God did they need?”

The elevator opened and they walked on to the roof, back into the rain. Greg went and stood on the edge, overlooking the silent crowd below. The bright lights of Manhattan filled the view across the river.

“I guess I’d be the God of everyone who realized there are no Americans. Doesn’t matter that you were born here- it’s always about your forefathers. People you never knew- you cant get away from them. Take me- I tried my whole life to be of this country, and neither white man nor Arab would let me for a second. So hell, they win. I’m no American. My parents had it wrong.”

“And what does this have to do with destroying Manhattan?”

Greg threw off his shades and turned around. His eyes looked like pure electricity, and lit the entire roof. “Can’t be an America if there’s no Americans. Everyone wants me to be an “Ay-rab,”, here I am.”

Fate nodded. “It’s understandable- I might do the same if I were an angsty Arab-American in his mid-twenties with identity issues and the power of the heavens on me side. Or I might not. But that’s just me, pay me no mind.”

By now, the light from Greg’s eyes was blinding. “Ever figure this is why I was given Godhood?”

“I’d know if there was,” said Fate, a slight frown on his face. “Figure there’s a reason I’m here, kid?”

Greg pretended not to hear, and looked again at the passport in his hand. “I thought I was going to destroy this. Symbolism and all.”

“Having second thoughts?”

The other didn’t answer. “Why don’t you hold on to it?”

“Why?”

After a pause, Greg said, “Can’t imagine many reasons you’d be here. Might as well save something.”

“You know, no one ever takes this advice, but you can still walk away.”

“Hmm.” Greg made a false smile. “Hell now. If that were true, I reckon you wouldn’t be here at all.” He stretched the hand with the passport further towards the shorter man.

Fate shrugged and took the small document. “’Kay, Mr. American.”

Greg took a deep breath and turned around. He took off the trench coat and raised his arms towards the sky- at first, nothing happened, but a half-minute in his shirt started to smoke and soon disintegrated. Sparks emanated from the exposed skin, which by itself started to glow a little. For minutes he stood there, his fists and gaze directed at the heavens, till lightning started to emanate from his very body.

“Besides,” he said, “can’t disappoint the devotees.”

The rain got heavier, and the storm clouds over Manhattan started to flash. And then, in an instant, it started- relentlessly, one bolt after the other, lightning started to strike the city. The arcs of electricity enveloped the entire island, lighting it to the point of being blinding, tearing through the skyscrapers with all the fury that the mad God could muster.

“Fuckin’ terrible reasoning, lad,” said Fate, knowing that Greg couldn’t hear him. He took a look at the passport, at the young man in the photo on the inside, and then, casually, threw it off the roof.

Greg had nearly all his attention focused on his little Armageddon, but he still had his peripheral vision. His face went from an expression of calm menace to one of confusion, and then horror as he saw the small booklet fly over the edge. In that moment, none of his revelations, none of his ideology, none of his past hurt or experiences mattered. He panicked and tried to grab for the document that proclaimed his identity.

Over the edge the God Khan went, hurtling towards the ground, six stories below. Fate didn’t bother looking to see him land- seconds later, the lightning storm ceased as suddenly as it had begun, leaving a score of burning buildings in its wake, but a still very much intact Manhattan.

Fate smiled wryly to himself and walked back to the elevator.