"What question?" Yahweh asked the young man standing before him.

The man looked silent for a moment before finally asking, "Did my son have to die? Did I?"

Yahweh looked at the man before Him and said Nothing.

The man shook his head and seemed to be vacillating between questions he wanted answered. "How is it possible for something to be both good and evil?" the man, said, seeming to be speaking more to himself than to God.

Adonai said nothing.

The man suddenly shouted, "What is it with you and this . . . obscene silence on your part? Answer me!"

After a brief pause, "I am who I am," He said, as if riddling the answer to a puzzle. "What is good?" He continued, "What is evil? Is the sun evil when it dries the crops? Is the water evil when it drowns a child?"

"What a stupid answer," the man stated flatly. "You're either all powerful or you aren't. You're either in control or you aren't."

"Who cares?" said the deity, visibly bored by the conversation. "Does it really matter? I answer a stupid question with a stupid answer. What I mean to say is that you may as well be asking the wind why she does what she does or the water why she flows downhill; that's just the way it is. Are you even ever completely in control of yourself?"

"I'm not a God."

"Neither am I. I'm more than God. God—a feeble name for something you don't understand." He spoke softly, instructively. "A feeble name—three letters long—as if in those three letters, everything that I am could be named. Can the infinite be clothed in language? I am not 'God.' I am not anything that can be named. I am what I am." The man was well aware Elohim had derailed the intent of his question, but didn't press Brahman for an answer.

At that moment, He seemed to come closer.

"Don't!" the man cried.

"I won't harm you; I want you to close your eyes and see me," He said as He stepped forward while not. The man closed his eyes slowly and felt the world go silent, felt the light flicker and fade—and there in that silence he felt the presence of the Almighty surrounding him like a fierce yet gentle wind, and he felt the weight of the world lift off of his shoulders—vanished and melted away like soap suds on the water surface.

Yahweh was looking at him, an impassive look on his face.

"What did you do to me?" the man asked.

Yahweh said nothing at first, and it was in that silence that the man was now able to hear the voice of God, no longer masked by language or culture. The man's gaze fell on the clouds behind the deity; they were illuminated, touched with gold, as though the sun were shining behind them. The young man looked back at the persona standing before him and realisation dawned: "You're not God."

A smiled crossed His lips, "Oh, I am, but also not. I am . . . a mask through which My voice passes."

"So wait, you are or are not God?"

"I am; but just a piece. I am that part of Myself that has been revealed. That of Me which is infinite lies Beyond."

The man looked again to the veil of clouds and the shining light. "What's over there?"

YHWH was silent for a long time while the man waited.

"Can't you say?" he asked at last.

Yahweh nodded and picked up the conversation from seemingly out of nowhere; "There is no name for that which lies beyond. Just . . . let it Be."

The man seemed to understand, and wandered away into the Ether. God followed him—accompanying the man into the Mystery for a little before returning.

Elohim watched him leave and sat in the centre of Himself as He had the same conversation, to a greater or lesser extent, with thousands as they came to Him, dying one right after the other and joining Him in Eternity: their confusion and sorrow, and in some cases elation, giving way to a confused chorus of voices that only He could hear. Yahweh continued conversing with those souls reaching Heaven and decided He needed some time by Himself, as alone as He could be. Seeing the Earth in his mind's eye, He chose a spot where the evening was just coming to cover the land. He saw a young girl at a well. She couldn't have been more than sixteen by the looks of her, though her skinny appearance had without a doubt been the work of poor nutrition.

He sighed and went down to her, thinking to enjoy the cool of the evening for as long as he could, though He knew what was coming, what must come to pass . . .

There was a young man sitting by the well as the girl came up. She bade him good evening in a soft voice, though kept her eyes to the ground, weary of strangers. Yahweh smiled shyly as she fetched the water. "It's a lovely evening," he said as she looked up. His stomach clenched and he moved away as then a sound caught both of their ears—a loud whistling that grew louder. The girl looked around in confusion for a moment before her eyes widened with terror and she looked up. At just that moment a rocket landed on the well, blowing that poor girl to pieces. Yahweh looked away but perceived the incident anyway, and almost instantly found Himself speaking to her in Heaven, helping her adjust to the New Way while he was still on earth.

Chaos reigned in the nearby village whence he knew the girl had come. Bombs and gunfire were heard as night began to overtake the land. The orange glow the city emitted was suddenly snuffed as villagers put out their fires. Yahweh walked over to the place where the girl had been standing and picked up from the rubble a charred piece of jewellery—a beautiful stone set in brass, meant to be worn as a broach. It had been in her mother's family for generations. Tonight, all her family would die, leaving the broach without a home, no family, no history that anybody would remember. The village would be wiped out and not a single story would remain giving a hint or clue that the girl and her family, as old as it was, had ever even existed save the broach.

Yahweh looked for a brief moment at the broach in his hands before letting it fall to the earth with a soft clink and crushing it beneath his foot.

As he heard the footsteps coming up behind him he raised a hand wishing to stop time, but in his current state He knew he couldn't; he also knew he couldn't rely on his all-power to save himself. It was time for God, the Great and Terrible to obliterate God, the Meek. His all-seeing eye watched from outside himself, watched from the centre. Another paradox, he thought and he smiled to himself grimly; but the smile faltered as a shout was let out behind him, and suddenly rough hands grabbed him and threw him down to the ground.

His attackers, thinking he was a man from the village being destroyed—an escapee—, set to work beating him and cutting away at his body—stabbing at him and asking him questions he couldn't answer until, at last, he was pulled up by the shoulders and was made to kneel in the gravel. Their bullets passed through his body causing him to twitch and wrench in a vain attempt to stop the pain, the hand of a man yanking his hair, pulling his head up, keeping him upright. He cried out to himself, shouting, "God! Make it stop! I beg you!"

The cry fell on deaf ears as he felt his body burst, his life force draining from his limbs, as he fell forward to the ground. He tried his best to cling for life, praying for an end to the agony. His breaths became raspy has he sought to take deeper breaths. Maybe if he could just force himself to breathe he could live! He could survive this.

The men standing round him merely laughed and one finally leant down, putting a pistol to his head. "Please, don't kill me," he begged, tears running down His face. The man smiled and lowered his gun, so when the shot came from behind, shattering his skull, it took him by complete surprise but only for a moment. His eyes crossed, he found himself unable to think, unable to breathe, his head was on fire, and his breath left him on an exhale he was no longer conscious of nor unable to stop as his head went limp and hit the ground.

Instantly he found himself standing before Himself, reflected as it were, in a mirror. "It was bad this time," Adonai said to the injured avatar standing before him.

"Yeah . . . really bad. It always is, you know?"

"I know."

"How are the others?"

"As well as We can be, but you know that; you can talk to them, too."

The other avatars were speaking to God and each other individually and collectively. They were all suddenly, instantly, One; even as they always were, their sense of individuality obliterated yet ever-present.

He conversed with Himself and himself to hear and share the experience He'd had within.

"We can spare no one," the Chorus said in unison, "not even Ourself," the Silence finished.

At those words, He became himself again: no longer the frightened, meek god, but God, the force to be reckoned with. He was Two and One again. He was a sacrifice made unto Himself.

He went down again, to a place where the dawn was just breaking, and there he landed, choosing to forget he was a god, choosing to forget his memories. He lost foresight and his ability to see time all at once—yet he was still God, the All Knowing. He embraced His contradiction—His being both and neither, and His landing was soft.