The Sims Goddess."

Disclaimer: The Sims world doesn't belong to me, of course; it's the property of The Electronic Arts. Enjoy!

Beta: Creator of Magic (I'm eternally grateful to you and your kind help with my story :) )


"It is certainly the most wonderful feeling to be a goddess", thought Jo, moving gracefully from her computer and onto her bed. The girl smiled in satisfaction, resting her head on the soft pillow. It had been a wonderful day; she spent almost the whole of it playing "The Sims".

After ages of begging, her parents agreed to buy her the game as a reward for the good grades their daughter got at school, and she adored it! It seemed all her friends played this, creating their own virtual humans in the simulated reality of their making. It had become a huge part of their lives, and they had many conversations about the things they made those little humans do.

And the greatest thing about this was that they didn't suspect anything, leading their petty artificial lives in the fake world, created by the rich imagination of young Jo. She had spent so much time with her artificial creatures, yet she never got bored with them. And it didn't seem she ever would. She was the owner – the goddess – of them; the one in control of their whole simulated reality.

The girl felt very attached to her 'pets' – this was how she perceived them – and thought about them with tenderness, like a scientist would feel about the experiments in their laboratory. Said experiments, similar to Jo's Sims, couldn't get out of the small world they were limited to, not thinking about that there could be anything else besides it. Almost like they were kept in a huge glass jar, unable to see the walls keeping them trapped.

They were also unable to see the puppeteer standing behind their insignificant existence, with all her moments of happiness as well as sorrow. No thought that something might be not quite right in this respect ever crossed the tiny brains of Jo's simulated pets – she never described them using any other words. They had not the slightest idea what the truth was. That they weren't real, that they were a part of their owner and goddess.

Yes, goddess. Ever since she was a young child, Jo cherished the desire to play the role of god for some less developed life forms and now, finally, her dream came true. She was very grateful to her parents for this. She was spending numerous hours, entranced with the game. Only herself – and her simulated humans. Her Sims.

They had no way to know it was her who was behind all of the misfortune that happened in their lives, pulling the strings of what they were sure was reality, responsible for their sorrow. Their personal goddess they didn't pray to, for they didn't know it was no one else but her, no matter their religion.

Indeed, Jo observed many of their funeral ceremonies, observed the crying mourners with a dose of silent satisfaction that caused her heart to grow. She was not interested in her made up "humans'' spiritual beliefs, but rather in inventing the numerous ways she could make them suffer. Jo loved this.

They weren't real, after all – even if they looked oh, so very realistic. They were real only to themselves. Their small world seemed a genuine universe to them. Nearly everything was like the world Jo herself lived in. Their worlds both had the seasons of year, there were plants and houses and the beings who lived in the worlds – both in the real one and in this simulated reality Jo created, had friends and pets.

Jo giggled to herself. Watching them lie to themselves was amusing.

And the best, the funniest thing about them was making them suffer numerous misfortunes. It was herself standing behind their divorces and poverty; for their deaths and the deaths of their loved ones. She loved the ability to kill them in so many different forms. Death by electrocution. Drowning in a swimming pool. Dying of hunger – she couldn't just give all of them access to food, could she?

It was just incredible. After all, it wasn't like they were real and their life could mean anything to anyone but themselves. Killing a Sim, a virtual human, wasn't a bad thing. It was just the game of a bored goddess. But she did love her 'pets' – babies, adults and the elderly alike. The white and the black. The rich stars in their own world, living in huge mansions in big cities, as well as those who were too poor to afford anything more than a small hut.

In other words, they were so different from each other and, due to this, almost painfully realistic! From time to time – very rarely but still, the young girl almost felt some pricks of conscience when she decimated their population. But then she remembered that they weren't even real, so why bother crying over them?

Jo was a young goddess in the making; a goddess in total control of these creatures' insignificant lives and very happy because of it. "The Sims" was a very popular game and what happened in it depended only on who was sitting behind the screen. Some created idyllic, paradise-like worlds, while some others killed their artificial humans with their whole passion. And Jo belonged to the latter category.

They were created on the whim of a mere girl, appearing in just one moment and thinking they existed for that whole time. And if Jo didn't feel like playing with them for good, she could always reset their world, making them disappear forever. They wouldn't even know this, vanishing into oblivion without even an idea of what was happening.

Jo yawned. She had played for most of the day and was exhausted. It was nearly midnight, and her parents would be coming in to check on her soon. Tomorrow she would return to the game. She had so many ideas. Maybe this man should be killed in some horrible acident? Or maybe this woman should lose her baby, taken by the social services because she didn't take care of her well enough? Come on, she had already six other children, she shouldn't even care!

It was a great power she yielded; perhaps too big for a mere child. Jo smiled once more. Tomorrow she would probably spend the entire day playing. She didn't need to go to school; she was on vacation. The Sims may just be virtual, but for young Jo, they were real enough.

Jo reached one of her eighteen green tentacles for the computer to turn it off. In one moment the world of the Sims – though they didn't call themselves that, they preferred to be called humans; the inhabitants of Earth in a galaxy called The Milky Way – disappeared from the screen.

"They really are cute", thought Jo - or rather Jo'lwnaf'hnah'uh'eogot'nilgh'rishuggogg; Jo was just a nickname her parents and friends called her. It was actually a funny nickname, sounding quite like a name from the home planet of her 'pets'. The girl wondered lazily for a moment if her humans could make their own 'Sims' game. It was one of the last thoughts that crossed the inhuman mind of hers. Jo'lwnaf'hnah'uh'eogot'nilgh'rishuggogg, a ten years old creator of the simulated planet Earth, a member of a civilization that a long time ago reached what her virtual 'earthlings' called the seventh level on the Kardasvev scale, yawned once more and closed her six pairs of eyes.

For now she would rest, but once the sun rose she would be back to playing her game.