Faith, Fenchurch and Furniture
Extract from the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Mostly Harmless
He allowed himself a hollow laugh at what he had just thought. He looked at his old watch, and shook it a bit to wind it. It had taken him, according to his own time scale, a year of hard travelling to get here. A year since the accident in hyperspace in which Fenchurch had completely vanished. One minute she had been sitting next to him in the SlumpJet; the next minute the ship had done a perfectly normal hyperspace hop and when he had next looked she was not there. The seat wasn't even warm. Her name wasn't even on the passenger list.
Faith, Fenchurch and Furniture
Fenchurch, you won't be shocked to hear, was shocked. She was shocked at the fact that she was no longer on the SlumpJet; she was shocked at the fact she was now standing on the red side of a huge room divided into red and white and she was shocked at the fact that she had just been shocked. She was not shocked, however, at the fact that she was flying; for her this was a regular occurrence. She was slowly lowered to the floor and shivered intensely as the static left her big toe and journeyed into the ground. Looking around she saw a series of seemingly random objects in the red half of the room, there were millions of them and there were even a few thousand animals; some from Earth but most from various other planets. The white half of the room, in direct contrast to the red, was completely empty; though contained a sort of presence.
As she explored her new environment with a sort of terrified curiosity, two men approach her from behind a kitchen bench with a couple of maracas on it. She was too busy concentrating on the men to notice the cloud of something that resembled gas, swarm around her from behind; she felt like she was being forced to inhale this gas and before she knew it was in her lungs. At first she was horrified, then mortified, then infatuated but these feelings slowly eroded as the feeling of euphoria kicked in. She felt positively divine. The gas left her body and joined the two men; the two men then joined each other and the gas joined in to. She was then staring in amazement at the one entity that was standing in front of her. "Hello" it said, speaking in a comforting voice that made her feel homely and relaxed, "I am George but you may know me as God". All feeling of relaxation was overwhelmed by confusion as she sat on the floor and rocked back and forth.
"Don't worry" George reassured Fenchurch, "most things have that reaction when I introduce myself to them, except the furniture but half the time I don't think it listens to me." In her current mood Fenchurch really didn't feel like hearing stories about disinterested furniture. She pulled herself together (although not as spectacularly as George had some moments ago) got to her feet and voiced her opposition to hearing silly stories. "This" she said in a rather demanding tone "is not the time for silly stories of disinterested furniture. This" she continued in the same tone "is the time for you to tell me exactly where I am, exactly how I got here and exactly how to get back"
"This" replied George mimicking her tone "may be a problem, as I am not exactly sure of any of the answers and I am not exactly happy that you do not like my stories. "Although" he added "there is all of eternity for you to get used to them."
"You are not being helpful!" Fenchurch cried out with just a hint of exasperation in her voice. "How can't you know the answers to my questions, you're God, you're all knowing! I need you to be clear with me, now try and explain carefully our present situation."
"OK" said George assuming the authoritative tone you would expect God to take "I will explain what I know but you may have to detach yourself from reality a little bit, as you're no longer in it"
"Done" replied Fenchurch feeling as if George was deliberately trying to bewilder her and so not showing any signs that she was confused.
"Well, your first mistake is assuming that I am the one true God, I am not, that is why I like to be called George. George was my original name; God just happened to be the noise I made when I created Universe #565377554. I do not think its fair on the other Gods if I go round saying I am God."
"Other Gods?" queried Fenchurch.
"Oh yes, look around the room" Fenchurch had another look around, she caught sight of a huge green monster that looked as if it had a bad cold, this did not fill her with joy "everything you see here is a God, even the furniture, although as you may have noticed they are not at this moment in my good books. You see that guitar? That belonged to Bono, I think that's why he thinks he's God"
"I would like to introduce you to my closest friends; Allah; Buddha; Vishnu; Zeus and Joe Hoover." They all appeared from around the varying inanimate objects and bowed weakly as if disinterested, disappearing again almost instantly.
"Right…" replied Fenchurch, trying and failing to mask her confusion. "Why, may I ask, is one of the Gods called Joe Hoover?"
"You're jumping the gun a bit," explained George "first I will explain where we are. We are currently standing in a room containing nothing but Gods and you. As Gods are comprised of nothing, we technically don't exist so you are the only entity in the room. The white room contains nothing but one atom; one atom which weighs the same amount as a whole universe, minus your weight. To sum up we are standing in a room which contains nothing but you after life, the universe and everything; next to a room which contains everything but you before life, the universe and everything. You follow?"
""No, but carry on" replied Fenchurch, dropping her act of calm collectiveness.
"So to answer your question, why is one of the Gods called Joe Hoover? He was the first conscious being to create a universe, as far as we know. He arrived here from planet Blarghn where he lived as a Hoover repairman and, rather disorientated, he stepped into the white room where he created universe #10. As I have already explained, each God is named after the sound they make when they create their universe, no one was around to hear his noise and so he kept his original name, Joe. We have always called him Joe Hoover because of his Hoover obsession; simple really."
"Plainly, very simple" replied Fenchurch in an overly sarcastic tone.
"We have all tried living in varying planets in varying universes, never works out very well though. People keep witnessing Joe and start calling him Jehovah, which annoys him immensely; I keep getting crucified and Buddha gets all his stuff stolen, he says he gets rid of it on purpose to 'lead a life without material distraction' but I don't believe him."
"Ok," said Fenchurch, ignoring the onslaught of silly stories "so I am just supposed to wander over to the white room and create my universe?"
"Yep"
"Then what?"
"You come to live with us."
"For how long?"
The answer George gave Fenchurch was not what she wanted to hear, in fact it was so far the opposite of what she wanted to hear that she would have much preferred to be given a totally nonsensical answer. The word 'estuary' would have far better suited her than the word George presented her with. That word was "forever."
"Look, that can be a bit mind blowing" George spoke softly "so we'll talk about you for a while, where are you from?"
"The planet Earth" replied Fenchurch.
"Oh that was a good one, everyone there felt a this great sense of resentment for each other, kept the talk short and the wars long. I even recall a good few wars over me. Lets find out which universe though; back on Earth, did you have flip-flops?"
"Erm…yes." Fenchurch was now begging to realise just how mad George actually was.
"How about porridge?"
"Yeah."
"The pencils, on average how long were they?"
"Shaven or unshaven?" she asked, being awkward just for the hell of it.
"Unshaven"
"About this long" she held her hands apart, showing the approximate size of a pencil.
"Universe #736856785! One of my favourites. Did you know that your entire universe, all of the life forms, the objects, even the furniture" as these last few words left George's mouth he pulled a rather disapproving face "was created by a bedside lamp?"
"What? You mean everyone in my universe should have been worshipping a plain and simple bedside lamp?" replied Fenchurch, wondering if her belief system could have been anymore flawed.
"Yes" said George. "Although, I wouldn't say it was plain and simple, it had tassels hanging off the lampshade, quite extravagant really."
Fenchurch had had enough of idle chit-chat and so asked the question that George had still failed to answer. "How then" she said "did I get here?"
"Oh I have no idea" responded George "no of us have any clue who or what keeps putting all of us here, we presume it is God. All I know is I'm quite thrilled to have you here, you see you're going to be the first female. You will be the first woman to create a universe."
"I see" replied Fenchurch, feeling extremely fed up and wondering if creating a whole universe would put a happy tilt on her day. "Well, I better get on with it"
Suddenly she ran towards the white room, she crossed the border between rooms and finally she was pulled, quite quickly, into the centre of the room. A huge explosion ensued and as it did so George thought he could just hear, through big bang, the word "SSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEVVVVVVVVVVAAAAAA." Shiva, the name of the perfect universe's God. A woman's touch, hat's all it takes really to create a thing of perfection of perfection. Funny then that in the aforementioned perfect universe, Shiva should be celebrated by a faith called Hinduism as the God of destruction. I guess God can't get everything right, after all, she is only human.
Shiva reappeared in the room and was shocked, she was shocked that the white room had disappeared, she was shocked that she was stuck with the name Shiva for all of eternity and she was shocked that she had once again been shocked. George approached her.
"Well Shiva you've done it, you've created the perfect universe."
"Cool," she said with a sort of nonchalance "what number is it?"
"We ran out of numbers a while back" explained George "had to start again, so that'll be #42."