Jeeves and the End of the World
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indeedsir_backupTitle: Jeeves and the End of the World (Part of the OMJW! Universe. The one where Jeeves and Wooster are God. Other parts Jeeves and the Mysterious Ways and Jeeves and the Big Bang)
Author: laeticia (channeling divine revelation, although the divinity in question may have been Dionysus)
Rating: G (unless you want a heresy rating then it’s full on “burn the witch”).
Characters: The Deity and the Deity’s Personal Deity (aka Wooster and Jeeves, more or less) plus brief guest appearance from another fandom.
Pairings: Still no General Relativity/Quantum Mechanics despite all the effort brainy coves have put in trying to get those two together. Some high-energy proton on proton action, but blink and you’ll miss it. (Please, someone, make me STOP.)
Genre: A serious treatise on weighty theological issues and a thoughtful exploration of contemporary problems in particle physics in no way describes this work.
Summary: Scripture-Wodehouse crossover in which the Deity’s personal Deity confronts a confounding physics problem, an aunt threatens a rift in the very the fabric of space-time, godheads are torn asunder, omnipotence is questioned, and the Darjeeling is perfectly brewed.
Warnings: Horrible liberties taken with Trinitarian theology and physics.(I’m assuming that if you're hoofing about here, you're not too easily offended by the odd splash or twelve of impiety, but if that isn’t your buttered crumpet, please ankle over to more genial parts.)
Disclaimer: Jeeves and Wooster belong to Wodehouse. The Great Old Ones belong to H.P Lovecraft (lucky him!). The Large Hadron Collider belongs to CERN. (That is probably the most ridiculous list of disclaimers I’ve ever had cause to write.)
“Remind me again why I made the sun rise so bally early in the morning,” I grumbled at my Deity’s Personal Deity as the light streamed in through the window of my apartment at the Pearly Gates. “Why does it have to get up at dawn, rather than a more civilized hour?”
“I believe that dawn is rather predicated on the sun’s rising, Sir, such that it would be impossible for the two to occur at separate times. It would, however, be more accurate to speak of the our abode’s rotation than the sun’s rising, since the sun is spatially fixed relative to its orbiting bodies, although taking into account the accelerating expansion of the universe, it is not in fact in a fixed position …”
“Yes, very well, but please no cosmology before breakfast.”
“As you say, Sir.” He passed me the glass of his restorative and I downed it in a single foul swig.
“Remind me not to go drinking with Dionysus again.”
“Very good, sir.”
I took a sip of the Darjeeling and hummed with contentment. “Heavenly.”
“Indeed, Sir.”
“You make the most perfect cup of tea in the cosmos.”
“Yes, Sir.”
*
Some people have accused me of being rather uninterested in politics and the human condition and what not, but I think it is important to keep track of what one’s people are up to so I tend to cast a gaze over the morning paper. “Well!” I exclaimed.
The Holy Ghost looked up from where he was tinkering with the quantum mechanics of something or other. Apparently the little whatsits work in a different way from the big thingummies – it’s dashed confusing.
“Sir?”
“The Pope’s valet has been arrested.” I noticed that my Personal Spirit was emanating a definite aura of smugness. “Did you have something to do with it?”
He has been wanting to get rid of the Vatican City for years. I think Saint Peter’s is a lovely monument to self, just like a big shiny Christmas present tied up with gold ribbon, but the Ghostly One finds it impossibly gaudy. I know he’s been secretly running a fault-line under the place so he can wobble it around like a giant jelly mold (which it does rather resemble, now I think of it) and then claim an ‘Act of Self’ when it falls down. If I really wanted to do it in, I would send in a rampaging mutant dinosaur, like in those Japanese movies, but that isn’t his style. Anyway, given his feelings toward the papal city, I was more than a little suspicious that the Holy Spirit may have had a hand in this valet business.
“Events may have conspired against him in a particularly coincidental manner.”
“Events don’t conspire, dash it, and you keep telling me there’s no such thing as coincidence.”
“Precisely, Sir.”
“What did you have against him?”
“Have you noted the pope’s attire, Sir?”
“Ahh, it was the red shoes then?”
“In addition to the gold brocaded capelets and the hats, Sir. The pontiff’s personal gentleman had not been guiding his gentleman’s sartorial decisions appropriately.”
When the H.S. is angered, his vengeance is swift and merciless. He takes slights to the wardrobe particularly badly. He’s still decidedly ungruntled over the episode of Joseph's multicolored coat (and I'm pretty sure he was behind the coat getting drenched in goat's blood while its owner was languishing away in some pit - it sounds exactly like one of his schemes). He even wanted to scupper one of the commandments and throw in a nolle prosequi about novel neckwear and he managed to bung some clothing regulations into Leviticus when I wasn’t paying attention.(1)
*
“Go and see who is at the door, will you?”
“It’s Apollo, Sir.” He announced without moving. “If you would just make use of your omniscience, you would know these things. And all other things.”
“Yes, yes, but it’s not very sporting is it, this omniscience wheeze, especially not if you throw in all the other omnis? I mean, if I’m aware of all the awful things and could put a stop to them as well, it puts rather a dent in one’s benevolence, what, not to mention one’s sunny disposish. Besides, it's a dashed lot of everything to take in all the time – look, just let the chap in, would you?”
“Very good, Sir.”
I didn’t need omniscience to know that Apollo had fallen in love with some tender goddess or nymph. Whenever this happens he goes running around after them and they turn into trees or springs or whatnot and he’s heartbroken for three minutes until he spots another one. A high proportion of the natural features of northern Greece are a result of his failed romances.
*
The H.S. had gone back to his tinkering. “What are you working on?” I asked. He really is a marvel - a paragon among paracletes. I mean, you look at the cosmos, and the thing seems like it works perfectly – the stars turning in the sky, and matter and anti-matter not completely annihilating each other like rabid dogs, and the strange particles and quarks and whatsits doing their strange quarky things – but it takes a great deal of footwork to make it all run smoothly and he is always shimmering about in various dimensions making sure it does. “Is this more of your quantumy-thingywhatsit?.”
It takes a lot to exasperate an omnipotent cove, but apparently this miniature physics business was dashed complicated.
“Please don’t watch it, Sir, you’ll affect the outcome.”
“Oh, pish, tosh. Don’t be ridiculous, that’s impossible. That’s like saying if I watch the 3:20 at Ascot, it will make a different horse win.”
“As I have attempted to explain on previous occasions, the laws of the cosmos operate differently on large and small scales. I am currently attempting to reconcile the two. Perhaps if a bit more care had been put into the initial construction, we would not face these difficulties, Sir,” he added pointedly.
“Ahh, yes, I see. But why is it such a problem now? I mean for the last 13 billionish years you’ve just been glimmering around tidying up whenever anything got too messy and wrapping up everything to everyone’s satisfaction – even if people do think I’m mad now and again.”
“Because, Sir, the humans are dabbling in it. We need to straighten this out before they discover that the two systems don’t work together.”
“Or they’ll be able to exploit the loopholes … the wormholes … or both? They could be like that time travelling chappie, the one with the blue box!” That sounded rather exciting. The H.S. sighed. He does not approve of television, or time travel for that matter, and clip-on bow ties are beyond the pale.
“Time travel is impossible, Sir. It violates the fundamental universal laws of cause and effect. Nonetheless, the consequences of humans manipulating the inconsistencies bode ill for the continued functioning of reality, which is, as I have mentioned, not as stable as one might like.”
I would have continued helping him with his important cosmic business, but a knock sounded at the door.
“Let me in you young blot,” a deafening voice tore through the fabric of the universe, leaving its jagged edges fluttering in the breeze.
Now, I have previously mentioned one of my aunts – the infernal Agatha who feeds on the souls of the damned and leads the forces of darkness. Fortunately, this was not her, but another of my aged r.s, Aunt Dahliagoloth, who is a good sort, but who has a tendency to involve me in various schemes.
“Arrrgh, Aunt put that away.” I shouted as she appeared before me in all her vast unthinkable mind-bending horror.
“Oh, sorry young thing, I forget about it sometimes.”
Aunt D. is one of the Great Old Ones from the distant outer void and she is a terror to gaze upon. It would send a man mad, but I of course, being a divine sort, am made of sterner stuff. Or, perhaps my Personal Deity would say I have too few marbles for it to make much difference. Nonetheless, gazing upon her indescribable awfulness is not my cup of tea. Since her appearance is indescribable and all, I won’t go into too much detail, but imagine a lot of writhing tentacles and whatnot stretching across several light years and dimensions surrounding vast gaping jaws of fathomless darkness promising the oblivion of everything you’ve ever know and loved, and you’ll be on the right track.
“You can do it too, you know – appear in your unspeakable horror – it goes with the divine territory,” she said as she settled into a more conventionally auntly form.
“The Holy Spirit would never allow it.” I shuddered recalling his response the time I had ankled home with an extra couple of arms after I’d seen how spiffy they looked attached to Ganesh down at the club. “He doesn’t approve of gods having appearances at all. I think he only tolerates this blond willowy corpus, because it doesn’t have that great long grey beard I used to like. According to him ‘a deity should not be susceptible to representation.’ He’s all apophatowhatsit.”
“Ahhh.” She sympathized. “Anyway, there’s a tiny favor I need you to do for me.”
“No, great old a. I will not be party to the unfolding of another of your less-than-divine plans.”
“What’s the use of having an omnipotent nephew if he won’t do anything for you?” She grumbled.
“Omnipotent is not the same as omnicompetent.” I reminded her, but she ignored my sage advice.
“I need you to sneer at a particle collider.”
*
“Well, it was the rummiest thing. I went to sneer at the particle collider. It’s this shiny whatsit full of tubes – exactly the sort of thing to excite the slumbering ancient uncle.”
“And particles as well, I expect, Sir.”
“Yes, well. The dashed thing is underground somewhere.”
“The border between Switzerland and France, Sir.”
“Right. Anyway, apparently, a bit of divine sneering would put the thing right off its feed. The auntly plan was that smoke would come out its ears and it would kick up its heels, shoot out sparks, and create a black hole just big enough for itself to slip through … and, well, something about a wormhole leading to her part of the universe – I didn’t quite follow, but she’s a queen of interminable chaos and destruction, so I figured she had the wormhole thing figured out.”
“Did it occur to you that creating a black hole just below the surface of the planet might have adverse consequences?”
“It was only going to be a small one,” I pouted. “Anyway, that didn’t happen.”
“No, Sir.”
“Oh right, you know already because of your omnish disposish.”
“Actually, Sir, I surmised as much from the planet’s continued existence. I have, regrettably, been heavily focused on the physics problem and unable to keep quite as abreast of everything as usual.”
That was quite shocking in itself. What was the universe coming to?
“Well,” I continued, “as I was watching they fired up their contraption, and they began trying to smash those little blighters together – and I’m pretty sure they can’t see them – because they are really dashed small. I mean why do they call it the Large Hadron Collider when all the thingummies are so tiny?”
“The large refers to the size of the collider, rather than the hadrons, Sir.”
“Ah, that makes much better sense. Anyway, here they were trying to smash the little chappies together and whatnot, and it was fairly unimpressive compared to what you do, of course, but still … I couldn’t help being a bit proud of the monkeys. I mean, it seems like only yesterday that they were learning to peel bananas before they ate them.”
“Heart-warming, Sir.” Although fond of certain members of the species, he is less well-disposed to the humans as a whole than I am. I think he’s jealous because I came up with them while he was off inventing the blue whale, so they take after my side of the family a bit more.
“Well,” I went on, undeterred, “I was so caught up waiting to see what would happen next, that I forgot to sneer, and then they actually made those little whatsits hit one another, and I was dashed impressed. ‘I say’ I I-sayed.”
“You ‘I-sayed’?”
“Yes, as I said, ‘I say,’ I I-sayed,” I said. “Then all the little people in their white coats started jumping up and down and blithering on about some ‘God Particle’ they had found. A me particle? An us particle?”
“The humans were referring to the Higgs Boson, Sir.” His tone suggested that if he had had a head and hands, he would have put his h. in his h.
“Well, I don’t know this Higgs Boson or any other Boson. Sounds like he would wear a pith helmet and hunt rhinos though, what?”
“The Higgs Boson is that which gives particles their mass.”
“Their thing-ness you mean?”
“I suppose one could say that, provided one were not overly concerned with linguistic precision.”
“Dashed exciting being there when they found it, what?”
“It wasn’t coincidence, Sir. Think back to the beginning of time.”
“Dash it, you know I can’t remember that far back.”
“Try.”
“OK, Hmmm, ‘in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was Me…’ ”
“And what did you say?”
“Let There Be Light!”
“Not in the novelization. What did you really say?”
I thought for a moment. “I I-sayed ‘I say,’” I said.
“Correct, Sir. You have imbued those words with generative power. By pronouncing them over the collider you approximated the conditions of the beginning of time.”
“Oh, well, that must have played havoc with their experiment.”
“Quite the reverse, I’m afraid. Sir, I must ask you to desist from all interference with this matter. Your presence is only going to increase the rate at which they attain knowledge, rendering my current task of repairing the cosmic anomalies even more urgent,” he huffed.
“But they were so happy.”
“Sir, humans are easily amused. You can amaze them for two millennia with an unexpected all-you-can-eat fish buffet with breadsticks. They are enamored of practically anything shiny that isn’t obviously toxic waste and anything fuzzy that isn’t slime mold. They are delighted by screens with moving pictures on them.” He raised his voice, warming to his theme and the universe shook around us. Here and there a few small chunks of it crumbled. "They have spent the majority of the past decade contemplating grammatically incorrect phrases superimposed on images of domestic felines and only desisted from this activity in order to launch non-existent birds at non-existent pigs for recreational purposes!”
“Are you saying they are mentally negligible?”
“I am saying that they do not need an increased knowledge of particle physics. You can make them happy, if that is your desire, in thousands of ways that do not threaten the structural integrity of the cosmos: give them baby pandas in a range of tasteful new colors, or large carnivorous plants, or tiny antelopes, or flying cars – but I must insist you refrain from interfering in their scientific experiments.”
“I know you consider yourself the brains of this operation, but I do not like your tone. I am well aware that mauve pandas and whatnot are not equal to discoveries that cause a parasite shift in their knowledge of reality.” I meant it to sting. The ‘parasite shift in knowledge of reality’ business was something I had overhead one of the white-coated people say, and I thought it sounded quite impressive, even if I wasn’t sure how exactly parasites came into it. Come to think of it, maybe it had been ‘paradise shift,’ which would be a bit easier to wrangle some sense out of. Normally I would have asked the H.S., he would know, but at that moment, I was far too cross with him. “I think you’re just jealous, because you know that for once I’m doing something important. So, no, I don't think I will refrain.”
“In that case, Sir, I must give my notice.”
“What? You can’t up and leave! We’re two persons of the same Godhead!”
“Omnipotence has its privileges,” he sniffed, and then, without so much as a toodle-pip, he shimmered out of the Pearly Gates.
Well.
Much to my surprise, the cosmos did not collapse in a useless heap of fried protons. The Holy Ghost kept doing his job – it’s just he was doing it for someone else. He was immediately snapped up by my old chum Duffy, who had been down on his luck for a few millennia. Duffy – Marduk as he is known to his worshippers – was delighted to score my deity’s personal deity off me, as payback for the time several thousand years ago when we were all ankling around in those places full of sand and camels, and I had (quite literally) stolen his thunder. Anyway, it wasn’t long after Duffy scooped up my feudal spirit that funny little pyrammiddy things started showing up everywhere – zigzagurrats or something. A couple of centuries later they pulled down Saint Peters and bunged one of those silly looking things on top.
Now it seemed everyone was saying “Oh my Marduk!” instead of “Oh my Me!” and no one was paying me the slightest bit of attention. I briefly contemplated punishing them with some horrible kind of pestilential wheeze, but without my paraclete around my heart just wasn’t in it and, worse yet, I realized he’d always done the research and design on those blighters, so I was at a bit of a loss. I settled for throwing the odd pustulant boil and a few large cockroaches in their direction. Even that didn’t really cheer me up though. It wasn’t like the good old days where I could tear down a city or turn someone into a pillar of salt and then everything would be ouja-cum-spiff again.
Things weren’t so topping in the personal deity department either. Loki, despite having excellent references from Odin, was a shifty sort of chap, and his tea making was not up to scratch.
In those dark days, the only thing that really gave me pleasure was going to visit my collider. Every time I showed up, the scientist chappies would find a new exciting thing. They did so well that some government birds gave them money to build an even bigger one and then an even larger one after that. Often the only thing that could get me out of bed in the early afternoon was the thought of hoofing down to the Super Mega Huge Hadron Collider.
Well, things toddled on like that for a few centuries or millennia – the eons all just sort of blending together – until a rummy sitch arose with the new personal deity’s deity. I had always figured him for a sneaky chap, but it wasn’t until he bunged a bally great mountain on top of me and snuck off with my thunderbolts that I realized just how untrustworthy he was.
How, you may ask, did this happen. I suppose I have to foot some responsibility for the existence of the mountain since I did create the wretched thing. Still, I ask you, how was I to know that the answer to the question he asked – “Can God create a rock too heavy for God to lift?” – would be a resounding “Yes.”
Now, you may be saying, O Your Divine Majesty, while mountains might imprison the odd ancient Greek deity, surely you move mountains on a regular basis, even ones that are too heavy for you to lift? I mean, what good is omnipotence otherwise? It would probably take a whole bevy of philosophers to figure that one out, and they would be incredibly dull as they did so, but the practical heart of the matter is that apparently without the Holy Spirit my omnipotence is neither omni nor potent, and so there I was somewhere in the Himalayas sitting under several million tons of rock, being scaled by avid mountaineers, and generally feeling very sorry for myself.
Then, suddenly, nothing. I mean, one minute I was bearing the weight of the world on my shoulders, and then there was a moment of vast screaming darkness, like hearing Aunt Agatha on the phone, and the next thing I knew I was just drifting in space. It was mighty cold and lonely. I looked around in a panic. I could see Venus off to one side and Mars on the other, but no sign of Earth, just a patch of darkness where it had been. I floated over to Mars and sank down onto its cold hard surface.
Now, you may wonder, why does the divine entity need to settle himself down anywhere? Technically of course I’m incorporeal and omnipresent – it’s just that I find it so dashed disorienting, because when I’m everywhere, I can’t tell where I am, and terms like “closer” and “further” lose all meaning – throw in another nine or eleven dimensions, or how ever many the H.S. is up to now, and the whole thing is a bally nightmare. No, regardless of my feudal spirit’s thoughts on the matter, I prefer to ankle about in some form or other, whether it’s a pillar of smoke (or fire, if one is dressing for dinner, since one simply cannot be smoke after 6pm), a rather whimsical dove-like get-up, or a nattily-attired young man about town.
Anyway, this led to me trying to make myself comfortable on Mars. Ruddy unpleasant planet if you ask me. All minimalist red rocks. I could see the remains of some things the humans had left there – little vehicles like children’s toys abandoned in a sandpit. I added some more atmosphere, a bit of liquid water, a patch of grass and a couple of trees and rabbits, so it was a bit more homey, but I didn’t have the energy to do anything else, and I lay down and went to sleep.
I was awoken the next morning by the sound of a gentle cough, like a solar wind in a distant galaxy, if sound traveled through space of course. To my amazement my former personal deity had manifested from the void and – for he is truly a miraculous being – was handing me a cup of tea.
“Jeeves!” If he hadn’t been insubstantial I would have hugged him. “Are you back with me?”
“I am, Sir. Lord Marduk was not up to the required standard.”
“I should say not – too many eyes and ears, what? Not to mention the fire blazing from his mouth whenever he speaks.”
“Precisely, Sir.”
“Well,” I said. “I don’t seem to have a collider any more.”
“No, Sir.”
I sighed. “I don’t suppose I could just get a fairly small one.”
“No, Sir.”
“What happened to the planet?”
“The humans finally succeeded in creating a black hole, which destroyed it.”
“Ahh. I see. I’m sorry, incredibly ancient old thing. I know you were fond of all those P- cities – Paris and Prague and Saint Petersburg.”
“Thank you, Sir. Might I suggest that we return to the Pearly Gates?”
It hadn’t occurred to me that the celestial abode would still be standing, or floating, or orbiting, or whatever it does, given that it was built above the Earth, but there it was, all white and shimmery, perched on a bank of cumulo-nimbus in cheerful defiance of commonsense and gravity.
I wandered into my bedroom and immediately collapsed into the first sound sleep I’d had in geological ages.(2) I awoke with a pang of sadness realizing that there would be no snails on thorns or larks on wings. Some people have said that I don’t care a lot about such things, given the unpleasantness with floods and fires and various other Acts of Me, but in fact I had put a lot of work into the planet and was dashed sorry to lose it. Imagine my amazement, then, when I glanced out the window and saw the bally thing hanging there just as blue and green and chipper as ever.
I rushed out of my chamber into the kitchen, where I found the H.S. drinking tea with a man whose attire included a nifty little round hat and a bowtie.
“It’s back!” I shouted and took the opportunity of throwing my arms around the Feudal S., for he was in one of his rare corporeal manifestations.
“Indeed, Sir.”
“Well, if that will be all, I should be going, Mr. Jeeves. Was there anything else?” The visitor cast a rather rummy look in my direction and rose from his seat. (I have noted over the years that people seem to be dashed unsettled at seeing God in his pajamas, although I don’t know why, since they are a lovely heliotrope shade.)
“No, just deliver the cargo to Mrs. Travers at the given address and time.”
The man disappeared into the living room and then there was a strange hooshing-roaring sound, like an accordion with asthma.
“Was that…?”
“The universe’s only consulting time lord. I brought him in to fix the related problems of the human investigation of particle physics and the destruction of their planet.” I goggled at him. “After ruling out other solutions, I had him go back in time and remove the Large Hadron Collider before it was turned on, thereby averting both problems. He is now – or rather, he was then – delivering it to Mrs. Travers.”
I goggled some more. “I thought you said time travel was impossible.”
“That was erroneous.”
“You’re never wrong.”
“I didn’t say I was mistaken, Sir, merely that the statement was erroneous. Besides, if you consult the definition of omnipotent, you will see that in us all things are possible.”
I huffed a little. “It seems to me you changed the rules at the last minute. A bit of a Machina Ex You,” I think. ”
“On the contrary, I have spent the last several centuries rewriting the rules. There was nothing last minute about it.”
Happy as I was to have the planet back, something was bothering me. “Hang on a mo., I seem to remember that this time travelling cove, with whom you were just now drinking tea, is a fictional character, and you’ve been very strict about maintaining the division between real and un. For instance,” I said icily, “one is allowed to chat with Arthur Conan Doyle, but not with Sherlock Holmes.” It was a sore point. My Personal Deity's Deity could have Spinoza and Marcus Aurelius over for a convivial brandy and s., but I wasn’t able to so much as exchange a friendly what-ho with the world’s greatest detective. “It seems a bit capuchin? carparccio? cappadocian? What’s the word I want?”
“Capricious, Sir?”
“Yes, that’s the one. Your behavior strikes me as decidedly caprish.”
“Perhaps there is room for negotiation on the matter of Mr. Holmes, Sir.”
I beamed. I was in my h. and all was right with the world.
*
(1) Poseidon, Apollo, Hermes and I came up with that book when we were well beneath the surface – quite literally in fact, since we were in Poseidon’s pile in Atlantis, lovely place – though a bit damp – as well as metaphorically. We never dreamed anyone would take it seriously and that was the last time I ever drank absinthe from the Proxima Centauri region. Horrible stuff.
(2) Of course I have a bedroom, read The Song of Solomon. (You can read the S of S as an allegory about the relationship between Self and Church – a bit raunchy, what? I never liked Saint Peter’s that much – or the relationship between the female and male principles of the Godhead, meaning Holy Spirit and Self. Ahem. Look, we all like writing a little bit of the fruitier kind of literature now and then, what?)
Other educational thingummies:
apophatowhatsit
Recently discovered large carnivorous plant.
Tiny antelope. (Not for use with large carnivorous plant.)
So can God create a rock too heavy for God to lift? (and why exactly would he want to anyway?)
Author: laeticia (channeling divine revelation, although the divinity in question may have been Dionysus)
Rating: G (unless you want a heresy rating then it’s full on “burn the witch”).
Characters: The Deity and the Deity’s Personal Deity (aka Wooster and Jeeves, more or less) plus brief guest appearance from another fandom.
Pairings: Still no General Relativity/Quantum Mechanics despite all the effort brainy coves have put in trying to get those two together. Some high-energy proton on proton action, but blink and you’ll miss it. (Please, someone, make me STOP.)
Genre: A serious treatise on weighty theological issues and a thoughtful exploration of contemporary problems in particle physics in no way describes this work.
Summary: Scripture-Wodehouse crossover in which the Deity’s personal Deity confronts a confounding physics problem, an aunt threatens a rift in the very the fabric of space-time, godheads are torn asunder, omnipotence is questioned, and the Darjeeling is perfectly brewed.
Warnings: Horrible liberties taken with Trinitarian theology and physics.(I’m assuming that if you're hoofing about here, you're not too easily offended by the odd splash or twelve of impiety, but if that isn’t your buttered crumpet, please ankle over to more genial parts.)
Disclaimer: Jeeves and Wooster belong to Wodehouse. The Great Old Ones belong to H.P Lovecraft (lucky him!). The Large Hadron Collider belongs to CERN. (That is probably the most ridiculous list of disclaimers I’ve ever had cause to write.)
“Remind me again why I made the sun rise so bally early in the morning,” I grumbled at my Deity’s Personal Deity as the light streamed in through the window of my apartment at the Pearly Gates. “Why does it have to get up at dawn, rather than a more civilized hour?”
“I believe that dawn is rather predicated on the sun’s rising, Sir, such that it would be impossible for the two to occur at separate times. It would, however, be more accurate to speak of the our abode’s rotation than the sun’s rising, since the sun is spatially fixed relative to its orbiting bodies, although taking into account the accelerating expansion of the universe, it is not in fact in a fixed position …”
“Yes, very well, but please no cosmology before breakfast.”
“As you say, Sir.” He passed me the glass of his restorative and I downed it in a single foul swig.
“Remind me not to go drinking with Dionysus again.”
“Very good, sir.”
I took a sip of the Darjeeling and hummed with contentment. “Heavenly.”
“Indeed, Sir.”
“You make the most perfect cup of tea in the cosmos.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Some people have accused me of being rather uninterested in politics and the human condition and what not, but I think it is important to keep track of what one’s people are up to so I tend to cast a gaze over the morning paper. “Well!” I exclaimed.
The Holy Ghost looked up from where he was tinkering with the quantum mechanics of something or other. Apparently the little whatsits work in a different way from the big thingummies – it’s dashed confusing.
“Sir?”
“The Pope’s valet has been arrested.” I noticed that my Personal Spirit was emanating a definite aura of smugness. “Did you have something to do with it?”
He has been wanting to get rid of the Vatican City for years. I think Saint Peter’s is a lovely monument to self, just like a big shiny Christmas present tied up with gold ribbon, but the Ghostly One finds it impossibly gaudy. I know he’s been secretly running a fault-line under the place so he can wobble it around like a giant jelly mold (which it does rather resemble, now I think of it) and then claim an ‘Act of Self’ when it falls down. If I really wanted to do it in, I would send in a rampaging mutant dinosaur, like in those Japanese movies, but that isn’t his style. Anyway, given his feelings toward the papal city, I was more than a little suspicious that the Holy Spirit may have had a hand in this valet business.
“Events may have conspired against him in a particularly coincidental manner.”
“Events don’t conspire, dash it, and you keep telling me there’s no such thing as coincidence.”
“Precisely, Sir.”
“What did you have against him?”
“Have you noted the pope’s attire, Sir?”
“Ahh, it was the red shoes then?”
“In addition to the gold brocaded capelets and the hats, Sir. The pontiff’s personal gentleman had not been guiding his gentleman’s sartorial decisions appropriately.”
When the H.S. is angered, his vengeance is swift and merciless. He takes slights to the wardrobe particularly badly. He’s still decidedly ungruntled over the episode of Joseph's multicolored coat (and I'm pretty sure he was behind the coat getting drenched in goat's blood while its owner was languishing away in some pit - it sounds exactly like one of his schemes). He even wanted to scupper one of the commandments and throw in a nolle prosequi about novel neckwear and he managed to bung some clothing regulations into Leviticus when I wasn’t paying attention.(1)
“Go and see who is at the door, will you?”
“It’s Apollo, Sir.” He announced without moving. “If you would just make use of your omniscience, you would know these things. And all other things.”
“Yes, yes, but it’s not very sporting is it, this omniscience wheeze, especially not if you throw in all the other omnis? I mean, if I’m aware of all the awful things and could put a stop to them as well, it puts rather a dent in one’s benevolence, what, not to mention one’s sunny disposish. Besides, it's a dashed lot of everything to take in all the time – look, just let the chap in, would you?”
“Very good, Sir.”
I didn’t need omniscience to know that Apollo had fallen in love with some tender goddess or nymph. Whenever this happens he goes running around after them and they turn into trees or springs or whatnot and he’s heartbroken for three minutes until he spots another one. A high proportion of the natural features of northern Greece are a result of his failed romances.
The H.S. had gone back to his tinkering. “What are you working on?” I asked. He really is a marvel - a paragon among paracletes. I mean, you look at the cosmos, and the thing seems like it works perfectly – the stars turning in the sky, and matter and anti-matter not completely annihilating each other like rabid dogs, and the strange particles and quarks and whatsits doing their strange quarky things – but it takes a great deal of footwork to make it all run smoothly and he is always shimmering about in various dimensions making sure it does. “Is this more of your quantumy-thingywhatsit?.”
It takes a lot to exasperate an omnipotent cove, but apparently this miniature physics business was dashed complicated.
“Please don’t watch it, Sir, you’ll affect the outcome.”
“Oh, pish, tosh. Don’t be ridiculous, that’s impossible. That’s like saying if I watch the 3:20 at Ascot, it will make a different horse win.”
“As I have attempted to explain on previous occasions, the laws of the cosmos operate differently on large and small scales. I am currently attempting to reconcile the two. Perhaps if a bit more care had been put into the initial construction, we would not face these difficulties, Sir,” he added pointedly.
“Ahh, yes, I see. But why is it such a problem now? I mean for the last 13 billionish years you’ve just been glimmering around tidying up whenever anything got too messy and wrapping up everything to everyone’s satisfaction – even if people do think I’m mad now and again.”
“Because, Sir, the humans are dabbling in it. We need to straighten this out before they discover that the two systems don’t work together.”
“Or they’ll be able to exploit the loopholes … the wormholes … or both? They could be like that time travelling chappie, the one with the blue box!” That sounded rather exciting. The H.S. sighed. He does not approve of television, or time travel for that matter, and clip-on bow ties are beyond the pale.
“Time travel is impossible, Sir. It violates the fundamental universal laws of cause and effect. Nonetheless, the consequences of humans manipulating the inconsistencies bode ill for the continued functioning of reality, which is, as I have mentioned, not as stable as one might like.”
I would have continued helping him with his important cosmic business, but a knock sounded at the door.
“Let me in you young blot,” a deafening voice tore through the fabric of the universe, leaving its jagged edges fluttering in the breeze.
Now, I have previously mentioned one of my aunts – the infernal Agatha who feeds on the souls of the damned and leads the forces of darkness. Fortunately, this was not her, but another of my aged r.s, Aunt Dahliagoloth, who is a good sort, but who has a tendency to involve me in various schemes.
“Arrrgh, Aunt put that away.” I shouted as she appeared before me in all her vast unthinkable mind-bending horror.
“Oh, sorry young thing, I forget about it sometimes.”
Aunt D. is one of the Great Old Ones from the distant outer void and she is a terror to gaze upon. It would send a man mad, but I of course, being a divine sort, am made of sterner stuff. Or, perhaps my Personal Deity would say I have too few marbles for it to make much difference. Nonetheless, gazing upon her indescribable awfulness is not my cup of tea. Since her appearance is indescribable and all, I won’t go into too much detail, but imagine a lot of writhing tentacles and whatnot stretching across several light years and dimensions surrounding vast gaping jaws of fathomless darkness promising the oblivion of everything you’ve ever know and loved, and you’ll be on the right track.
“You can do it too, you know – appear in your unspeakable horror – it goes with the divine territory,” she said as she settled into a more conventionally auntly form.
“The Holy Spirit would never allow it.” I shuddered recalling his response the time I had ankled home with an extra couple of arms after I’d seen how spiffy they looked attached to Ganesh down at the club. “He doesn’t approve of gods having appearances at all. I think he only tolerates this blond willowy corpus, because it doesn’t have that great long grey beard I used to like. According to him ‘a deity should not be susceptible to representation.’ He’s all apophatowhatsit.”
“Ahhh.” She sympathized. “Anyway, there’s a tiny favor I need you to do for me.”
“No, great old a. I will not be party to the unfolding of another of your less-than-divine plans.”
“What’s the use of having an omnipotent nephew if he won’t do anything for you?” She grumbled.
“Omnipotent is not the same as omnicompetent.” I reminded her, but she ignored my sage advice.
“I need you to sneer at a particle collider.”
“Well, it was the rummiest thing. I went to sneer at the particle collider. It’s this shiny whatsit full of tubes – exactly the sort of thing to excite the slumbering ancient uncle.”
“And particles as well, I expect, Sir.”
“Yes, well. The dashed thing is underground somewhere.”
“The border between Switzerland and France, Sir.”
“Right. Anyway, apparently, a bit of divine sneering would put the thing right off its feed. The auntly plan was that smoke would come out its ears and it would kick up its heels, shoot out sparks, and create a black hole just big enough for itself to slip through … and, well, something about a wormhole leading to her part of the universe – I didn’t quite follow, but she’s a queen of interminable chaos and destruction, so I figured she had the wormhole thing figured out.”
“Did it occur to you that creating a black hole just below the surface of the planet might have adverse consequences?”
“It was only going to be a small one,” I pouted. “Anyway, that didn’t happen.”
“No, Sir.”
“Oh right, you know already because of your omnish disposish.”
“Actually, Sir, I surmised as much from the planet’s continued existence. I have, regrettably, been heavily focused on the physics problem and unable to keep quite as abreast of everything as usual.”
That was quite shocking in itself. What was the universe coming to?
“Well,” I continued, “as I was watching they fired up their contraption, and they began trying to smash those little blighters together – and I’m pretty sure they can’t see them – because they are really dashed small. I mean why do they call it the Large Hadron Collider when all the thingummies are so tiny?”
“The large refers to the size of the collider, rather than the hadrons, Sir.”
“Ah, that makes much better sense. Anyway, here they were trying to smash the little chappies together and whatnot, and it was fairly unimpressive compared to what you do, of course, but still … I couldn’t help being a bit proud of the monkeys. I mean, it seems like only yesterday that they were learning to peel bananas before they ate them.”
“Heart-warming, Sir.” Although fond of certain members of the species, he is less well-disposed to the humans as a whole than I am. I think he’s jealous because I came up with them while he was off inventing the blue whale, so they take after my side of the family a bit more.
“Well,” I went on, undeterred, “I was so caught up waiting to see what would happen next, that I forgot to sneer, and then they actually made those little whatsits hit one another, and I was dashed impressed. ‘I say’ I I-sayed.”
“You ‘I-sayed’?”
“Yes, as I said, ‘I say,’ I I-sayed,” I said. “Then all the little people in their white coats started jumping up and down and blithering on about some ‘God Particle’ they had found. A me particle? An us particle?”
“The humans were referring to the Higgs Boson, Sir.” His tone suggested that if he had had a head and hands, he would have put his h. in his h.
“Well, I don’t know this Higgs Boson or any other Boson. Sounds like he would wear a pith helmet and hunt rhinos though, what?”
“The Higgs Boson is that which gives particles their mass.”
“Their thing-ness you mean?”
“I suppose one could say that, provided one were not overly concerned with linguistic precision.”
“Dashed exciting being there when they found it, what?”
“It wasn’t coincidence, Sir. Think back to the beginning of time.”
“Dash it, you know I can’t remember that far back.”
“Try.”
“OK, Hmmm, ‘in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was Me…’ ”
“And what did you say?”
“Let There Be Light!”
“Not in the novelization. What did you really say?”
I thought for a moment. “I I-sayed ‘I say,’” I said.
“Correct, Sir. You have imbued those words with generative power. By pronouncing them over the collider you approximated the conditions of the beginning of time.”
“Oh, well, that must have played havoc with their experiment.”
“Quite the reverse, I’m afraid. Sir, I must ask you to desist from all interference with this matter. Your presence is only going to increase the rate at which they attain knowledge, rendering my current task of repairing the cosmic anomalies even more urgent,” he huffed.
“But they were so happy.”
“Sir, humans are easily amused. You can amaze them for two millennia with an unexpected all-you-can-eat fish buffet with breadsticks. They are enamored of practically anything shiny that isn’t obviously toxic waste and anything fuzzy that isn’t slime mold. They are delighted by screens with moving pictures on them.” He raised his voice, warming to his theme and the universe shook around us. Here and there a few small chunks of it crumbled. "They have spent the majority of the past decade contemplating grammatically incorrect phrases superimposed on images of domestic felines and only desisted from this activity in order to launch non-existent birds at non-existent pigs for recreational purposes!”
“Are you saying they are mentally negligible?”
“I am saying that they do not need an increased knowledge of particle physics. You can make them happy, if that is your desire, in thousands of ways that do not threaten the structural integrity of the cosmos: give them baby pandas in a range of tasteful new colors, or large carnivorous plants, or tiny antelopes, or flying cars – but I must insist you refrain from interfering in their scientific experiments.”
“I know you consider yourself the brains of this operation, but I do not like your tone. I am well aware that mauve pandas and whatnot are not equal to discoveries that cause a parasite shift in their knowledge of reality.” I meant it to sting. The ‘parasite shift in knowledge of reality’ business was something I had overhead one of the white-coated people say, and I thought it sounded quite impressive, even if I wasn’t sure how exactly parasites came into it. Come to think of it, maybe it had been ‘paradise shift,’ which would be a bit easier to wrangle some sense out of. Normally I would have asked the H.S., he would know, but at that moment, I was far too cross with him. “I think you’re just jealous, because you know that for once I’m doing something important. So, no, I don't think I will refrain.”
“In that case, Sir, I must give my notice.”
“What? You can’t up and leave! We’re two persons of the same Godhead!”
“Omnipotence has its privileges,” he sniffed, and then, without so much as a toodle-pip, he shimmered out of the Pearly Gates.
Well.
Much to my surprise, the cosmos did not collapse in a useless heap of fried protons. The Holy Ghost kept doing his job – it’s just he was doing it for someone else. He was immediately snapped up by my old chum Duffy, who had been down on his luck for a few millennia. Duffy – Marduk as he is known to his worshippers – was delighted to score my deity’s personal deity off me, as payback for the time several thousand years ago when we were all ankling around in those places full of sand and camels, and I had (quite literally) stolen his thunder. Anyway, it wasn’t long after Duffy scooped up my feudal spirit that funny little pyrammiddy things started showing up everywhere – zigzagurrats or something. A couple of centuries later they pulled down Saint Peters and bunged one of those silly looking things on top.
Now it seemed everyone was saying “Oh my Marduk!” instead of “Oh my Me!” and no one was paying me the slightest bit of attention. I briefly contemplated punishing them with some horrible kind of pestilential wheeze, but without my paraclete around my heart just wasn’t in it and, worse yet, I realized he’d always done the research and design on those blighters, so I was at a bit of a loss. I settled for throwing the odd pustulant boil and a few large cockroaches in their direction. Even that didn’t really cheer me up though. It wasn’t like the good old days where I could tear down a city or turn someone into a pillar of salt and then everything would be ouja-cum-spiff again.
Things weren’t so topping in the personal deity department either. Loki, despite having excellent references from Odin, was a shifty sort of chap, and his tea making was not up to scratch.
In those dark days, the only thing that really gave me pleasure was going to visit my collider. Every time I showed up, the scientist chappies would find a new exciting thing. They did so well that some government birds gave them money to build an even bigger one and then an even larger one after that. Often the only thing that could get me out of bed in the early afternoon was the thought of hoofing down to the Super Mega Huge Hadron Collider.
Well, things toddled on like that for a few centuries or millennia – the eons all just sort of blending together – until a rummy sitch arose with the new personal deity’s deity. I had always figured him for a sneaky chap, but it wasn’t until he bunged a bally great mountain on top of me and snuck off with my thunderbolts that I realized just how untrustworthy he was.
How, you may ask, did this happen. I suppose I have to foot some responsibility for the existence of the mountain since I did create the wretched thing. Still, I ask you, how was I to know that the answer to the question he asked – “Can God create a rock too heavy for God to lift?” – would be a resounding “Yes.”
Now, you may be saying, O Your Divine Majesty, while mountains might imprison the odd ancient Greek deity, surely you move mountains on a regular basis, even ones that are too heavy for you to lift? I mean, what good is omnipotence otherwise? It would probably take a whole bevy of philosophers to figure that one out, and they would be incredibly dull as they did so, but the practical heart of the matter is that apparently without the Holy Spirit my omnipotence is neither omni nor potent, and so there I was somewhere in the Himalayas sitting under several million tons of rock, being scaled by avid mountaineers, and generally feeling very sorry for myself.
Then, suddenly, nothing. I mean, one minute I was bearing the weight of the world on my shoulders, and then there was a moment of vast screaming darkness, like hearing Aunt Agatha on the phone, and the next thing I knew I was just drifting in space. It was mighty cold and lonely. I looked around in a panic. I could see Venus off to one side and Mars on the other, but no sign of Earth, just a patch of darkness where it had been. I floated over to Mars and sank down onto its cold hard surface.
Now, you may wonder, why does the divine entity need to settle himself down anywhere? Technically of course I’m incorporeal and omnipresent – it’s just that I find it so dashed disorienting, because when I’m everywhere, I can’t tell where I am, and terms like “closer” and “further” lose all meaning – throw in another nine or eleven dimensions, or how ever many the H.S. is up to now, and the whole thing is a bally nightmare. No, regardless of my feudal spirit’s thoughts on the matter, I prefer to ankle about in some form or other, whether it’s a pillar of smoke (or fire, if one is dressing for dinner, since one simply cannot be smoke after 6pm), a rather whimsical dove-like get-up, or a nattily-attired young man about town.
Anyway, this led to me trying to make myself comfortable on Mars. Ruddy unpleasant planet if you ask me. All minimalist red rocks. I could see the remains of some things the humans had left there – little vehicles like children’s toys abandoned in a sandpit. I added some more atmosphere, a bit of liquid water, a patch of grass and a couple of trees and rabbits, so it was a bit more homey, but I didn’t have the energy to do anything else, and I lay down and went to sleep.
I was awoken the next morning by the sound of a gentle cough, like a solar wind in a distant galaxy, if sound traveled through space of course. To my amazement my former personal deity had manifested from the void and – for he is truly a miraculous being – was handing me a cup of tea.
“Jeeves!” If he hadn’t been insubstantial I would have hugged him. “Are you back with me?”
“I am, Sir. Lord Marduk was not up to the required standard.”
“I should say not – too many eyes and ears, what? Not to mention the fire blazing from his mouth whenever he speaks.”
“Precisely, Sir.”
“Well,” I said. “I don’t seem to have a collider any more.”
“No, Sir.”
I sighed. “I don’t suppose I could just get a fairly small one.”
“No, Sir.”
“What happened to the planet?”
“The humans finally succeeded in creating a black hole, which destroyed it.”
“Ahh. I see. I’m sorry, incredibly ancient old thing. I know you were fond of all those P- cities – Paris and Prague and Saint Petersburg.”
“Thank you, Sir. Might I suggest that we return to the Pearly Gates?”
It hadn’t occurred to me that the celestial abode would still be standing, or floating, or orbiting, or whatever it does, given that it was built above the Earth, but there it was, all white and shimmery, perched on a bank of cumulo-nimbus in cheerful defiance of commonsense and gravity.
I wandered into my bedroom and immediately collapsed into the first sound sleep I’d had in geological ages.(2) I awoke with a pang of sadness realizing that there would be no snails on thorns or larks on wings. Some people have said that I don’t care a lot about such things, given the unpleasantness with floods and fires and various other Acts of Me, but in fact I had put a lot of work into the planet and was dashed sorry to lose it. Imagine my amazement, then, when I glanced out the window and saw the bally thing hanging there just as blue and green and chipper as ever.
I rushed out of my chamber into the kitchen, where I found the H.S. drinking tea with a man whose attire included a nifty little round hat and a bowtie.
“It’s back!” I shouted and took the opportunity of throwing my arms around the Feudal S., for he was in one of his rare corporeal manifestations.
“Indeed, Sir.”
“Well, if that will be all, I should be going, Mr. Jeeves. Was there anything else?” The visitor cast a rather rummy look in my direction and rose from his seat. (I have noted over the years that people seem to be dashed unsettled at seeing God in his pajamas, although I don’t know why, since they are a lovely heliotrope shade.)
“No, just deliver the cargo to Mrs. Travers at the given address and time.”
The man disappeared into the living room and then there was a strange hooshing-roaring sound, like an accordion with asthma.
“Was that…?”
“The universe’s only consulting time lord. I brought him in to fix the related problems of the human investigation of particle physics and the destruction of their planet.” I goggled at him. “After ruling out other solutions, I had him go back in time and remove the Large Hadron Collider before it was turned on, thereby averting both problems. He is now – or rather, he was then – delivering it to Mrs. Travers.”
I goggled some more. “I thought you said time travel was impossible.”
“That was erroneous.”
“You’re never wrong.”
“I didn’t say I was mistaken, Sir, merely that the statement was erroneous. Besides, if you consult the definition of omnipotent, you will see that in us all things are possible.”
I huffed a little. “It seems to me you changed the rules at the last minute. A bit of a Machina Ex You,” I think. ”
“On the contrary, I have spent the last several centuries rewriting the rules. There was nothing last minute about it.”
Happy as I was to have the planet back, something was bothering me. “Hang on a mo., I seem to remember that this time travelling cove, with whom you were just now drinking tea, is a fictional character, and you’ve been very strict about maintaining the division between real and un. For instance,” I said icily, “one is allowed to chat with Arthur Conan Doyle, but not with Sherlock Holmes.” It was a sore point. My Personal Deity's Deity could have Spinoza and Marcus Aurelius over for a convivial brandy and s., but I wasn’t able to so much as exchange a friendly what-ho with the world’s greatest detective. “It seems a bit capuchin? carparccio? cappadocian? What’s the word I want?”
“Capricious, Sir?”
“Yes, that’s the one. Your behavior strikes me as decidedly caprish.”
“Perhaps there is room for negotiation on the matter of Mr. Holmes, Sir.”
I beamed. I was in my h. and all was right with the world.
(1) Poseidon, Apollo, Hermes and I came up with that book when we were well beneath the surface – quite literally in fact, since we were in Poseidon’s pile in Atlantis, lovely place – though a bit damp – as well as metaphorically. We never dreamed anyone would take it seriously and that was the last time I ever drank absinthe from the Proxima Centauri region. Horrible stuff.
(2) Of course I have a bedroom, read The Song of Solomon. (You can read the S of S as an allegory about the relationship between Self and Church – a bit raunchy, what? I never liked Saint Peter’s that much – or the relationship between the female and male principles of the Godhead, meaning Holy Spirit and Self. Ahem. Look, we all like writing a little bit of the fruitier kind of literature now and then, what?)
Other educational thingummies:
apophatowhatsit
Recently discovered large carnivorous plant.
Tiny antelope. (Not for use with large carnivorous plant.)
So can God create a rock too heavy for God to lift? (and why exactly would he want to anyway?)
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