Genesis Part 1

In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. But He didn't, as of yet, know what a word was, let alone the word. He was, in fact, quite clueless - having just come into existence. Coming into existence is always a confusing period in one's life and this is especially so when one appears to be the only thing in existence. And God was the only thing in existence – except for the darkness of which there was a great deal, but darkness doesn't talk or explain things.

After a few days of floating around in the something or other that was nothingness, God decided that at least he wanted the place to look nice. "I wish I had a nice place to live" he mused "a place that has fluffy white stuff and lots of other things like me to talk to." Then, just as he was imagining the finer details of interior design, it popped into existence! God was surprised but rather ecstatic about this achievement, and decided to try something else. He figured that maybe he might get a bit tired of his new abode and might want somewhere else to stay. After a long period of thought he finally had it. He wanted a nice place where there'd be somewhere hot when he wanted it and somewhere cold when he wanted it and somewhere in the middle that was just right.

And thus the Universe began.

But, there was one problem.

God couldn't see anything! Frustrated, he blurted out "Let there be Light!" And there was. And God saw that it was good.

The next day God decided to have some more fun making things. He went to his holiday home: the round place with the hot area, the cold area and the bit that was just right, and did a little gardening. He made some solid hard stuff, and some blue stuff that wouldn't keep still and that you could sink into. But His holiday home still didn't look very nice, so he decided to make some green things and from the green things he made very colourful things which you could put into your mouth. This took a lot of time and so afterwards God took a nap.

The next day God was not so well rested. In all his grand designs there was one thing he hadn't thought of – how to turn the Light off. "The Light is good" he thought, "but maybe we can have a little darkness too?" After a while he came up with an ingenious idea: a gigantic red and orange ball in the nothingness that his holiday home would spin around. It would keep one bit cold, one bit hot, and one bit just right and he could enjoy the light and then enjoy the dark. But then, the dark was very dark, and the dark could be scary: after all, who knows what's in the dark? Therefore, very sensibly, God made a big round white ball to spin around his holiday home. And thus the first lava lamp and nightlight were invented.

The next day God decided to go really wild. Overjoyed with his power, he decided to make things that could move, and do things and think things – just like himself! God made many different things: he made things so tiny you couldn't see them (and then found that, since you couldn't see them, making them didn't make any difference to anyone) and so then he made some really huge things (so big you couldn't miss them). He made things that went "woof", things that went "neigh" and, just for a laugh, a thing that went "oink". This was really amusing for a few hours, but then God found that good companionship was not found with something that only ever said "oink." Conversations went like this:

"I made you – do you like me?"

"Oink."

"I made this grass. Did I get it right? I thought green was nice but perhaps pink would have been better?"

"Oink."

"Which do you like better? The lava lamp or the nightlight?"

"Oink."

Annoyed, God decided he needed to do something better. He got some dust, and started sculpting and, before he knew it, he had something that looked kind of like himself. He gave it a better brain than the thing that went "oink" or the really big things you couldn't miss or the really tiny things that made no difference to anyone. God decided he really liked this thing he had made and therefore He made a garden for it to enjoy, and thought, as a special birthday present, that this thing could name all the other things. God thought that was fair since he'd done all the work so far himself. "Tomorrow" God thought "I can rest and this thing can do all the work of naming everything. I'll go back up to my permanent residence and take it easy for the day. "

And so God rested on the seventh day having forgotten one important thing: whilst He had made two pairs of all the other things, he had only made one two legged thing. He knew this would be a problem as, from his own experience; he really wanted something that was the same as Him that he could talk to. So the next day God returned to the garden, to the two legged thing and took one of its ribs (making things from scratch can be rather time-consuming and God now had a whole planet with which to enjoy his recreation time) and made the thing a partner. Afterwards God told them the ground rules (after all, this was his planet and he didn't want them trashing it): they could name anything they liked and eat anything they liked except the fruit of a particular tree in the Garden. God had made that tree especially for himself, for it was especially delicious, but God, being an only child, was very possessive. He didn't wish for ANYONE to eat of his tree and so he said to the things that were now called "humans": "Eat of anything in this garden, except for the tree which stands in the middle of the garden for if you should eat of it... (and here God paused so as to sound impressive) then you shall die! Then God told them that he expected them to look after the garden so that it still looked nice when He came back to relax after having fun with his various recreational activities.

This system worked very well for the first few days but, then, one day, something happened that changed everything. God had forgotten about Human Prototype No.1: a long slithery thing that had 4 rather pointless legs attached to a body designed to propel itself along its belly. Human Prototype No.1 (hereafter HPN1), which could talk, was rather angry about having been rejected and decided that it was going to trick the two humans. It slithered uncomfortably along, its legs getting in the way of actually moving, towards the woman and said to her: "The fruit on that tree looks rather nice doesn't it?"

The woman glanced towards the tree and said "God has said that if we eat of it then we shall die."

"Ah!" said HPN1 "You shall not surely die; God merely knows that if you were to eat of this tree then you would be like God."

The woman looked again at the tree and saw that the fruit looked very nice - juicy and sweet and altogether far better looking than all the other fruit in the Garden. So she took a fruit for herself and one for the man and they ate. The fruit was very good and it was true that they did not die from eating it. "So, then we must be as God" said the woman.

"I suppose so" replied the man "But I don't feel much different. Perhaps if we were to do something God does, then we would feel like God? God wears something over his body – perhaps if we wear some of these plants on our bodies then we'll look just like God!"

Then, just as they finished making their first attempt at clothes, God returned from building snowmen in Alaska. The humans heard him and were scared that he would find out they had eaten the fruit of the tree, for God counted the fruit morning and evening so as to be sure that none had been eaten. Sure enough, a few minutes later they heard a terrible crash in the garden followed by God shouting furiously "WHO ATE THE FRUIT OF MY TREE? THAT WAS MY FRUIT!"

God tore through the garden until he found the man and the woman. He bore down upon them and said "WHO ATE MY FRUIT?!"

Adam suddenly jumped up and pointed to the woman "SHE gave it to me!" The woman jumped up and said "The HPN1 told me to eat it!"

"Well then" said God "You, HPN1, shall no longer have your legs and you'll have to go around on your belly! How do you like that, huh? You, woman, you'll have to do everything the man says, and you man, you'll have to WORK! Ha! "

Then, God had the man and woman leave the garden and go into the wilderness. He set an Angel (a type of being he had created to serve him when he was at his permanent residence) to guard the tree so no man or beast could eat of the fruit that was solely for God. Time passed and the man and woman had children, and their children had children, and then their children had children until the whole earth was full of children. But God was not happy. They had totally taken over his holiday home – there was not one place in the entire earth where they did not live. It was impossible for God to have any relaxation time. Something had to be done. God decided to cause a flood and drown all the noisy and annoying people, but there was a problem with the plan. God didn't want to have to start creation again from scratch, so he needed all the animals to survive: even the really small ones that no one could see and made no difference to anyone. In the end, God figured that it would be ok to let one family survive, as long as they didn't live in any of Gods favourite places. Thankfully, there was a family who lived in an extremely hot and sandy area that God didn't bother going to very much and so they very luckily received Gods request to build a giant boat to house all the animals in the world during the flood. Once they had collected all the animals (which had taken a long time as a good number of the animals were in areas of the world that no one actually knew about), they boarded the boat and the flood waters came. And came. And came. And came some more. Then, finally, the rain stopped and the floodwaters slowly subsided. The Ark hit land, the survivors disembarked and God thought "at last, I can have some peace and quiet on Earth. Now I can go and surf with no one bothering me!" And God was so happy that he decided to send the last humans a sign of good will and spread an arch of many colours across the sky.

And that was the Great Flood. But, as the years passed the Earth was once more populated and the people spread everywhere and God began to stay far more in his permanent residence, Heaven. Once more, he was fed up of the lack of privacy to be found on earth, although he had begun to find that watching the humans was great entertainment. However, after several hundreds of years watching the humans, God found that just viewing them from afar was not enough any longer. God thought it was just about time to stir things up...