Never Finished

The last star flared into being with the quiet dignity of a candle lit in a cathedral.

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God  watched the pulse of newborn light, satisfied with the balance of  gravity and heat. The spiral galaxy would run a while without  supervision. Blue giants mellowing into red, dust collapsing into worlds  that would never know They existed. Creation, in Their experience, was  less a bang than a never-ending orchestration. Adjust here, temper  there, don’t forget to let the silence breathe.

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And  yet an itch had grown at the back of Their mind. A familiar ache. Time  to scratch it. Time to return to the blue world They had set up as Their  first experiment with a dangerous idea. Free will. They had left it  alone long enough. It was time to find out what it had become.

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They folded the distance between stars as if it were a blanket and stepped across.

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They  arrived above a coastline glittering with glass and neon. The breath of  the city surged into Them, exhaust, sea salt, hot oil, the faint  metallic taste of wireless signals. A motorized box with wheels roared  past blaring percussion loud enough to rattle windows. A wall of screens  stacked four stories high shouted over each other. A phone that  “changed everything forever”. Mascara that defied physics. Three  political ads, each accusing the others of historically implausible  atrocities before a final one promised to “restore common sense by  lunchtime.” A drone drifted by. A plastic bag took flight. Somewhere a  siren started and never quite decided to end.

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“Well,” God observed, Their voice lost in the traffic, “this is…different.”