God's Plan

"What the hell were you thinking?!" He yelled, slamming his mighty fist on the table!

The room went quiet. The projector shook a little after the commotion. One of these days, it would fall straight from the roof and stomp on his head like he was a goomba from Mario. But all focus remained on Death at the moment, who stared, poker-faced, at the one and only Holy Spirit as you humans like to call him. Or what I call him, the leading director of The Human Condition. Or, quite simply, boss.

"Do you see what I see?!" He pointed to the screen which lit up the office.

Death had always been more defiant than the rest of us. We watched as she rolled her eyes and crossed her arms like an angsty teen. "You said we needed to cut down the population, so that's what I did," she said, nonchalantly.

"Sure, that's what I said," God voiced angrily, "but all we needed was to slow their progress down! Not WIPE them out completely!"

Death just shrugged. "You can't blame me for being too good at my job."

"25 million. Gone. Done for. Dead. It'll take nearly eighty years for them to recover. Hell, they even call it the Black Death. This wasn't according to plan!"

"When is it ever?" Death smiled. "When have you ever been disappointed in my work? I get shit done, you know that as much as everyone else in this room. Because I don't make mistakes. I'm the result of them."

God restrained himself before he could erupt like the volcanos which buried the Roman city Pompeii (which was an entire ordeal on its own). He took a deep breath in, paused, then let it all out, releasing a faint mist of steam through his nostrils. Rubbing his tired eyes, he looked to all of us with a new-found determination.

On the board, there were a number of pie charts and graphs showing the mortality rate of humans, their progress, and possible evolution cycles we had planned for the future. God clicked his fingers, and the slides changed to present the words: God's plan for 1353."This year is going to be different," he said with a smile. He looked over to death who's arms remained folded. "You," he said. "No more pandemics for a while. Not until the twenty-first century, capeesh?"

Death's smug look returned. She unfolded her arms and said with great delight, "I've already got something planned."

"Good," God said, pacing back and fourth in the front. Each time he walked past the projected screen on the board, his face was baptised in a white light. He stopped pacing for a moment and faced us with a look we all knew too well. He was about to say something outrageous...

"Here's what I'm thinking..." His face lifted in anticipation. "A collaboration with the project next door." The conference room filled with groans at the idea (including my own). God's upbeat expression quickly reverted back to a constrained look of frustration then. "Give me one good reason why we shouldn't?!" He demanded. "The directors next door of the ⊑⎍⋔⏃⋏ are on board with idea!"

"Give us one good reason why we should, then," Buddha interjected calmly. "Humanity has barely held a grasp on themselves. What makes you think collaborating with a different species will help them?"

It was funny how Buddha came to work here. He specialized in enlightenment and the afterlife; a field of work I find to be pointless in the ultimate goal of the Human Condition. Religion seemed unnecessary to me, but I guess God found it vital for some reason. That wasn't my job anyway. I was there to keep progress going. Thinking is what I do. I think for the humans, so they don't have to.

"Introducing Humans to a foreign intelligence wouldn't be the best idea," I added. "If we look at numbers, human stability is running at 9%. However, that number will increase slowly over time, predicting to be around 45% in 2023." Now, that wouldn't make sense to most what I proclaimed, but an increase like that is something unheard of compared to average results. Other projects like ours don't stand a chance when it comes to progress and growth. We have the advantage. "Wait till 2024," I said. "Stability should hover around 47.8%. They should be ready for Aliens then."

God smiled at me. "And that's why you're on my team," he said. "I'll have good news to the tell the directors next door then. They'll be happy to hear this. I'll just have to get permission from the higher ups before we go ahead."

He clicked his fingers and the screen jumped to the next slide. More pie charts. More numbers. My favourite.

We planned for the next few centuries, putting in programs to control population growth and breakthroughs that would revolutionize everyday lives. The new plan we came up with today was the Renaissance, a break from the medieval scholasticism that incorporates classical thought into early modern ideas. I was excited for the idea, seeing as it was my own.

The meeting soon came to an end, and I found myself back at home, tired but happy. I sure do love my job, even if Humans can be a little annoying to deal with at times.