This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Remote-Ad-2821 on 2024-11-01 22:44:31+00:00.

In the universe, in the Milky Way galaxy, on the Orion Arm, in a Solar System, on the third planet, in North America, in New York, down an alleyway, a homeless man was digging through a dumpster for food. Even though no one noticed, the man vanished.

I opened my eyes to find myself sitting in a very grand-looking chair in some kind of office, with a desk in front of me and another chair behind it. I looked around, trying to figure out what was going on. Just a minute ago, I had been searching for something to eat, and now I was… here.

“Ah, good! You’re finally here, Markus!” I spun around in my chair to find an old man with a giant white beard reaching his stomach, a gleaming bald head, and dressed in perfectly white robes. The man’s skin seemed to glow, and I could tell by a glance that he had never worked a day in his life. He turned around and closed the door behind him, but just before he shut it completely, I caught a glimpse of thousands of winged people flying back and forth through an endless blue sky with golden clouds drifting by. As the door closed, my eyes drifted back to the man, who was giving me a warm smile. He walked to the chair across from me, took a seat, leaned back, and exhaled, looking at me in silence. After a while, the silence became awkward, but before it went on any longer, he finally spoke.

“So, you want to be God?” he said in an upbeat tone. I blinked in confusion and asked for clarification.

“Sorry, come again?”

At this, he looked a bit more serious and began to explain.

“Okay, look—first of all, I’m God. And, to make a long story short, I was having a drink with a few other celestial beings. I might have had a bit too much and started boasting about how I created the best species and civilization in existence. I bragged that my species was so amazing that any one of them could be a better god than theirs. They told me to put my money where my mouth was, and… well, here we are. I need you to be the god of a civilization to prove I wasn’t just talking big.”

Then he continued, looking somewhat exasperated.

“After that, the other celestials started claiming that their species could be gods too. Things spiraled out of control, and we ended up turning it into this big competition. We decided to each choose one member from our created species, turn them into a god, put them all on a planet, and have them take care of a civilization. Whoever has the species with the largest population at the end wins.”

I leaned back in my chair, stunned, trying to process everything he had just told me. But one question burned in my mind.

“Why me?” I asked.

At this, God looked a bit uncomfortable before he replied.

“If I chose someone else, their family members would mourn them, or they might refuse. And no one in Heaven would volunteer because they’re already in paradise and would see this as work. But you… you’re perfect. You don’t have anyone who’d miss you or notice you’re gone. You focused only on work, without making connections with anyone.”

I wanted to feel offended, but I knew everything he said was true.

“Well, what if I refuse?” I asked defiantly.

He gave me a long look. “Come on, Markus. You spent your whole life focused on your job, and when you got too old, the company you were loyal to fired you because they thought you were no longer useful. Since you focused your entire life on that one career, you don’t have the skills to get another job. You ended up on the streets. Your parents passed away, and you have no friends. You have nothing to go back to. And here I am, offering you the opportunity to become a god, and you’re going to refuse?”

He was completely right. I had nothing to go back to but dumpster diving and barely surviving. Wordlessly, he extended his hand across the desk. I reached out and shook it.

(Using his knowledge of Markus’s life and situation, God managed to trick Markus into accepting the deal. Little did Markus know, he would come to deeply regret making that deal.)

“Did you hear that?” I heard a disembodied, soothing female voice.

“Oh, don’t mind that,” God said, waving it off. “That’s just the Narrator. It’s reading out the universe, but only gods and celestials can hear it. No one knows where it came from or why it’s doing it, and we haven’t been able to communicate with it. Just ignore it.”

(But Markus would come to regret it if he ignored the Narrator.)

“Are you sure? I mean, it’s saying some pretty ominous stuff,” I asked him.

“Yeah, it does that sometimes. Just ignore it.”

I pulled my hand back to my side, but despite what God said, I decided to keep the Narrator’s words in mind, in case they came in handy. God then got up from his chair and walked towards the door, motioning for me to follow him.

“I’ll explain everything you need to do in more detail while we fly.”

I did a double-take. “Sorry, could you repeat that?” I asked, thinking I’d misheard him.

He opened the door again, and I stood beside him as I looked out. I saw the same scene I had glimpsed before: thousands of winged beings—who I now assumed were angels—flying about.

“I… I don’t know how to fly,” I told him.

God placed a hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eyes, and pushed me out