The Universe Builders: Bernie and the Putty (18 page)

“What does the second charm do exactly?” Bernie asked.

“They’re all different. Today is my first day with this one,” Lenny said pointing to a golden stud in his left earlobe. “It’s supposed to make me look sexy. So far, it doesn’t seem to do much. You find that sometimes. A charm works great for someone else, but doesn’t do anything for you, and vice versa.”

“How long have you been collecting charms?”

“Gosh, ever since I was a kid. I’ve got hundreds of pages of notes on them too. If you’re going to make scientific progress, you’ve got to do a lot of testing, you know.”

“Have you ever found anything that works?”

“Well, nothing’s perfect, Bernie,” Lenny said a little defensively. “But I’ve found a few combinations that show a lot of promise. If you’re interested, I know a couple that are practically guaranteed to work for you. Oh, oh—”

Lenny looked up. “Hi there, Suzie. Bernie and I’ve been waiting for you,” he said as he closed his notebook and tucked it away in his pocket.

Shemal Startles Bernie

Although Bernie spent his days working on his universe, he didn’t get much accomplished. He was too tired from staying up most of the night, guarding it from unwanted intruders. Despite his vigilance, he hadn’t seen the shimmering figure again. During the day, when he looked at Billy’s cubicle, Billy seemed busy on his own tasks, apparently oblivious to Bernie or his suspicions.

Shemal made a surprise inspection three days after the rotting fungus incident. Bernie was deep in thought and did not hear him approach. When Shemal touched him on the shoulder, Bernie jumped. His shimmer lit up both his cubicle and the ceiling above him.

“Hey, shimmer down, kid. It’s just me,” Shemal said.

“Yes, sir,” said Bernie as he fought to get his shimmer under control. That wasn’t what worried him. His shimmer, after all, was just light. His chaos cloud, on the other hand, could be much more dangerous. He found it busy rattling his wastebasket and lining up paperclips for suicide jumps off the corner of his desk.

“Do you know how to work your dampener?” Shemal reached over to the cosmic dampener installed in Bernie’s cubicle. “You have a chaotic bent, right?” he asked as he cranked the dial up from two to eight, thus saving the lives of four paper clips who had not yet made the leap.

“No, sir. I didn’t find anything about it in the manuals, and we didn’t have anything like them in school.”

“I had them invented especially for Final Assembly. I wanted to eliminate any quality problems that might be coming from my own people. They work really well. People like you, with a strong chaotic bent, can move things out of alignment when you get upset. This baby tones down that effect,” he said as he affectionately patted the dampener. “It works on order clouds, too. Don’t let them kid you, they can cause just as many problems when they get out of control as you chaos’ers can. I had one of them cause every planet and moon in her system to come into perfect alignment. We almost had a cosmic episode right there.” Shemal chuckled at the memory.

“They teach us to control our clouds, but sometimes—”

Shemal interrupted, “Try it at eight for a couple of days, but don’t be afraid to turn it up. It should keep your cloud under control.

“Now, let’s see what you’ve been up to.” Shemal peered into Bernie’s universe, and his eyes took on a far-away look. His only sounds were an occasional, “Tsk, tsk.” and a couple of “What’s this?” and one “Oh, my,” along with several headshakes. After five minutes, his eyes came back, and he said, “I can see you’re getting a bit further, Bernie, but I don’t see anything here that impresses me. Tell me, why did you make all those volcanoes and then plug them up?”

He and Suzie had discussed how to respond to these questions. They decided it would not be wise to blame Shemal’s nephew for Bernie’s problems. Suzie said Shemal’s reviews of Billy were excellent, and she was sure Shemal wouldn’t believe anything bad about him.

“Two reasons, sir. I wanted to make the landscape more rugged looking, and I wanted a good layer of volcanic ash spread around the planet to accelerate plant growth.”

Shemal grunted an acceptance of Bernie’s answer. “Why are some of the sand and rocks stained red?”

“There were red plankton in my ocean. I…I got rid of them, but…but the coastal areas were badly stained,” Bernie stammered.

“Sounds like sloppy work, Bernie. And why don’t I see any animal life forms?”

“My higher life forms have very complex elements and interdependencies, so I’m delaying introduction of any animal life until I have everything worked out.”

“Work harder, kid,” Shemal said as he headed back to his office.

The Putty

Shemal’s inspection had not gone well. Bernie spent the rest of the day thinking about the price of failure. He had no doubt of Shemal’s disappointment with his performance, and he knew Shemal would fire him if he thought Bernie couldn’t do the job. It was hard enough to create a good universe, but it was impossible when another god was undermining your efforts. How could he fight a god with powers as great as his own? Especially a god who didn’t play by the rules? Even though he was trying his hardest, he could feel his grip on his life as a builder slipping away.

Maybe that was why Bernie, never known for neatness even in the best of times, was more careless than usual. By the end of the day, he was so distraught he forgot to clean up his workspace before heading zombie-like toward the door. That was also why he forgot the jar of putty on the planet’s surface.

* * *

Bernie’s scarred and broken world hung like a big blue marble in the black emptiness of the void. The only life forms were the plants on the land and in the water.

The putty didn’t have thoughts or feelings as we know them. It was just a translucent gob of goo. But it was aware of the warm sun, and the putty liked the way it felt when the sun shined on it. In fact, the putty liked the sun very much, and wanted to be closer—to reach out and touch the warm bright thing in the sky.

Slowly, small tendrils grew out of the jar and arched upward. You could almost see it stretching, as if waking up from a long sleep. Each tendril shimmered in a kaleidoscope of colors, experimenting until it seemed more and more of the tendrils agreed on green. It liked green. You couldn’t call it a plant at this point, because it hadn’t really decided what it wanted to be. Right then, it wanted only to be with the sun.

As the sun went lower and lower in the sky, its warmth began to fade. The tendrils reached out farther, searching for the light and the warmth, but it didn’t help. The sun was leaving.

As it watched the sun set in the west, the putty didn’t like feeling alone. It wanted the bright warm thing to stay. It reached out all of its tendrils and stretched farther, as if beseeching the sun not to go.

And as it watched the sun slip down beyond the edge of the world, the putty reached out so far that the jar, its home, fell over. As the putty oozed from the jar, it yearned for its warm friend.

Ever so slowly, it found a way to move. It moved as a snail would move if it had a forest of arms on its back, each arm reaching toward the sun as its body slithered in the same direction.

If it had words, you might have heard it say, “My Sun… My Sun… Please wait for me.”

Billy’s Gang

It hadn’t taken long for Billy to form a new gang after starting work at The Business. It had been ridiculously easy. All it took was a few choice remarks like, “Gosh, I’m really looking forward to working here. Uncle Shemal and I have always been close, and now we get to see each other every day.” Builders were smart people, and they had no trouble reading between the lines of that message.

Billy appraised the people sitting at his table. They were a cut above his lieutenants, RedDog and Butcher, back in school. These young gods were builders. RedDog and Butcher had been just muscle. They followed orders, but they weren’t good for much else. Well, they laughed at all his jokes, but that had never been a problem. When you’re the king, everyone laughs at your jokes.

Billy didn’t delude himself. He knew the young builders at his table were only here because they feared him. He didn’t mind. He knew plenty of ways to keep their anxiety levels elevated. From time to time he even threw them little rewards by saying things like, “Gee, that really pleases me. I’m going to tell Uncle Shemal what a terrific employee I think you are.” Of course, the real joke was he and Shemal were never close. They only saw each other once or twice a year at family get-togethers.

Jimmy and Candi were in the Division when Billy arrived. Billy’s sixth sense led him to them right away. Although they came across as competent and confident, Billy knew only the first was true. One of his greatest skills was reading someone’s insecurity and using it to manipulate them. Jimmy was a basic soldier. He did whatever he was told. It was easy to manipulate him—just let Jimmy believe serving Billy was the same as serving Shemal. Candi, on the other hand, was different. She had her own opinions and would even voice them. In addition, Candi was strikingly beautiful, which made her headstrong, the way beautiful women sometimes are. But Billy knew how to make her afraid, and when she was afraid, she did what she was told.
After all
, thought Billy,
I don’t care about adoration. All I want is obedience.

The third person at the table was Donald, transferred into Final Assembly seven months earlier. Most people believed Donald had been transferred in the hope Shemal would do the dirty work and fire him. Donald probably believed the same thing, because from the moment he arrived, he’d tried desperately to attach himself to Billy. Billy held him at arm’s length for a while, knowing it wouldn’t help his image if one of his associates got fired. It might give people the idea Billy didn’t have as much power as they thought. But after Shemal completed a few reviews without firing Donald, Billy finally let him into the group.

The rest of the table consisted of a person or two Billy invited to stop by for lunch. No one ever refused, because no one wanted to anger Billy. It was the same as angering Shemal, or so they believed.

Today, Billy was talking about Bernie, as he often did. “Yes, poor Bernie is not long for our department. A little birdie told me he’s having problems with his universe again.”

“Why are you doing this to him?” Candi asked. “He never bothers anyone. What did he ever do to you?”

“Ah, now that’s quite a story, dear Candi,” Billie said as he casually stroked the hideous scar that ran from his eyebrow to his cheek. He’d seldom met anyone who hadn’t fought to suppress a shudder when they first saw him. His gruesome scar reminded every god of his own mortality and the fine line between living forever and sudden death. A moment of carelessness or an act of violence was all it took.

Billy took a moment for the effect to reach its maximum. “It’s the tale of a young boy who did not know his place in the world. And even though his betters tried to explain, he resisted his lessons at every turn. Then one day, this foolish boy resorted to violence to the disadvantage of his betters, whose only sin was trying to help him understand his proper place. But do not fear, young Candi, for Fate has a way of setting things right with the finality of a boot in pants and the sound of a slamming door.”

Billy’s sinister smile lingered. “And who is to be this instrument of Fate, you might ask? Somehow, I suspect Uncle Shemal has been chosen for that part.” Billy laughed. “Although perhaps a little birdie nominated him for that role.” At that, Billy laughed more.

That’s pretty funny
, he thought.

Divine Intervention

The god looming above the planet took time to study it. He saw the continents and oceans of the world resting on a thick shell of solid rock. Bernie had designed the planet to minimize global stresses, but it was easy enough to get around that.

The outer crust
of the planet floated on a layer of hot magma. The thick layer of rock protected the oceans and the land from the intense heat below, and as long as it remained intact, there was little danger from the inner forces trapped below. The looming god knew this could be changed with a few carefully designed cracks. It wasn’t hard at all.

From high above the planet, the god made deep cuts in the crust, giving the pressure below its chance to escape. As he created more cuts in more places, more pressure was released. But carefully, thought the god. It must look unplanned. And so he worked to create a mosaic of fractures around the planet.

Then, to make sure he had planned well, he advanced time to observe his work. By the end of the first million years, he could see the edges of the continents begin to shift. Earthquakes along the fault lines rumbled dire warnings. By the second million years, he knew he had done well. Jagged edges along the coastline could be easily seen. It would take millions of years to break up the continents. But that wasn’t his goal. His goal wasn’t to destroy this world. He wanted a world full of scars, proof of the incompetence of its creator.

He looked proudly at his work. It was not overdone. Bernie would see it and think he had done something wrong again.

The god smiled as he thought of his enemy. Bernie was feeling the pain. There wasn’t enough pain yet; there would never be enough. But this was a start.

And there would be so much more to come.

The Sun

A long time ago…

The cold night had begun once again. The Sun had set for the day, and everyone was returning home.

The people didn’t like the night. They liked the Sun. Each day it warmed them, and it gave them comfort as it had for years beyond counting. But every night, the Sun went away.