Now, it’s been about a year (and a half) since you and I took a pit stop to the Almighty Creator’s gambling house. . .
. . .where we encountered every species conceivable in a casino the size of Heaven itself, bodies crammed in every nook and cranny that will fit them. We’ve got aliens yankin’ on slot handles, monsters throwing chips, and daemons placing bets on who can drink the most, just to name a few.
Well,
The point of this exercise the last time I described it was to show you that God is gambling on everybody whether you want Him to or not because we gamble on ourselves all the time. A good example of this is drinking – every day you take a shot or sip a cocktail, you make a wager with your liver that it’ll manage to handle whatever you throw at it just fine. For most of us, this isn’t a problem; if we’re moderate about our consumption over time, our odds of a safe bet increase.
Or maybe it won’t! Naturally, drinking more increases your chances of liver-based diseases if you do it long enough and heavy enough, but what if you were placing a modest bet and still ended up with cirrhosis because of your genetics? The same thing can be said about anything else we do in life; whether we smoke, have children, drive, Hell, even breathe, our odds of living from one day to the next are no more certain than the weather.
And now, that brings me here. I, the author who writes this, have hedged a series of bets that I can write multiple projects in real-time by playing with the metaverse. So far, I’d say, so good! I’m pleased to report about 1.6K hits for the first two books with a total of 1.7K visitors here, not counting all the kooky fanfiction I’ve cranked out in-between. Really, I’ve got to thank each and every one of you for helping me grow an organic audience because this isn’t possible without you. ♥
(There’s just one catch. . .)
“Oh, boy, here we go.”
Lucifer begins once I find my ass parked back up at the largest betting table in all the House. In a hierarchy of gamblers, God (Elohim or Yahweh, take your pick) has His happy ass parked at the peak of the mountain with The Devil parked to His left side and His Best Soldier, Michael, parked to the right. “See, Micah? I told you this flesh wrap was going to fold eventually.”
And Lucifer throws out his hand of cards. He put down a Full House with 3 seven’s and 2 queens, the likes of which flop down right next to a modest pile of his golden coins. “The hand was decent to start but got too unwieldy for them to carry on!”
Michael sighs, tsk tsks at me, and shakes his head. He’d slap down a regular Flush that went from a Jack, a ten, a nine, and two lower ranking numbers next to a pile of massive silver coins. “Don’t I know it, Luciel. I was trying to make the wager with this trinket that by working with me, they’d maintain the discipline to stay focused and keep to one thing at a time but, ah, I forgot that humans can get quite easily distracted.”
“Boys, boys, boys!”
Yahweh interjects between the pair, forcing my attention to Him. He gives a grin that’s got so many teeth I’d be surprised if He didn’t just use them to bet alone. “That’s no way to talk about our latest worshipper, now is it? Just because your bet didn’t pan out the way you thought it would doesn’t mean it isn’t working.”
And by sheer virtue of being God, Yahweh smacks down the strongest hand on the table, a perfect Five of a Kind with all aces and a joker. He only put the wager of one, single coin that’s forged in His court of jewels, yet it outweighs both the gold and the silver by a mile; even if He had ‘lost’ the wager itself, God never loses the game which is why He’s all smiles as the giant LED sign behind Him flashes: “WINNER: YAHWEH!”
“Ugh, again?”
Lucifer groans, sulking into a hand as he shoves his pile towards God. “You always win, you asshole, not fair!”
Yahweh cackles. “Yeah, you’d know that better than anybody, wouldn’t you Mr. ‘I Think I Can Be God?’”
“I’m inclined to agree with him, Father.”
Michael sighs out with an eye roll, shoving his pile toward God as well. “You never let us take any credit.”
Oh, wah, Yahweh hums as He tilts the table back so both the piles rain down onto His nigh-infinite stack of coins. “You’re not here to take credit, Mikaeli, you’re here to spread my word and you did exactly that by grabbing this trinket’s attention!”
The bet, why do you think I won the bet? “The point of using one of my angels to attract worshippers is because they don’t always like talking to me at first. They think ‘ugh, that God guy again? What good has He done for me lately, I don’t wanna talk to Him!’ Then, when I distract them with one of my pretty birdies – “
(Or Jesus, Yahweh would give Jesus the head nod down a couple more tiers to his right),
“ – they start doing their little deep dive into my origins without all the religious dogma, letting them reconnect to the source without their blinders on. It’s hook, line, sinker every fuckin’ time!”
Alright, you got ‘em there. Lucifer can’t help but smile some with an eye roll of his own. Michael bears the hint of a smirk through a half-lidded gaze, eyes cast towards me with a brow arched. As for myself, I keep my eyes fixed to God even though I bring Him nary more than a meager pile of coins and a decent Three of a Kind.
“Well, trinket? Go on, tell your audience what you’ve learned from playing before I give you a second to play God yourself!”
To which I turn around and pretend you who reads this can see me in the middle of this fantastical palace with a nervous little smile of my own.
“Alright. Well, what I learned was – “
And I’ll spare you a lot of rambling, but the gist is that the longer I did my research and got to writing, the more I went backwards in time. I already did this the first time when I tried to create my own version of these entities before getting interested in the real-world history that gave birth to their existence,
Before going even further back in time to creating my own idea of an origin story that preceded even human history,
All just to end up going back to the real-world curiosity of how God Himself came to be. Really, that’s just my funny way of saying that I ended up wanting to do more research about gods and Canaanite lore in particular since that’s where Yahweh Himself began.
“Correct.”
Yahweh concludes, hemming and hawing with the grin still on. “In order to understand what you’re doing, you need to know your history. Every attempt you’ve made when it comes to the original fiction front has brought you one step closer to the source, just like seeking Mikaeli as your patron helped you understand how to come to me.”
God, everything is God. “I am, you are, and every bastard trinket I’ve created is, too. The longer it takes you flesh wraps to get this in your minds, the longer it is you stray from the oldest source in the world: yourself.”
Indeed, Michael hums with a solemn nod. “Your fallible species and your need to gaslight each other is quite a spectacle for us. We often wonder how and why you do it when it clearly makes you miserable.”
Who are you telling, Lucifer guffaws. “I keep telling them knowledge isn’t a sin as long as they use it right, and what do they do? They drop the ball every fucking time!”
Yahweh shrugs. “That’s just life, boys. It’s a cycle as old as time. . .inevitably, even the universe will stretch so far into dead, cold space that I’ll have to wrap it all up again and start it over.”
And that’ll never make sense to somebody like me, who must live in a time where I watch things collapse,
“But that’s the good thing, too. If everybody remembers they are God and that they come from God, they have the chance to change and create the reality they want.”