Of God and Humans

God woke up, sat on the edge of his bed, pushed his feet into soft fluffy sleepers and dragged them into the adjacent room, wrapping himself into a plush bathrobe on the way. He so wished he could just sleep a little more, but this was a part of his daily routine and he knew what skipping it could mean for his charges: a disaster. As it happened many times before.

He threw a quick glance at the huge ACTIVITY screen that took up the entire wall in that room. It looked like a live Corona virus cases graph, going up and down in real time, in thousands of waves. Even millions of waves, both big and small. As a whole, it formed a sea of rising and retreating tides, and each tide and wave was marked with a legend, like “Russian referendum,” “George Floyd,” “Chinese concentration camps,” “Amazon fires,” “Amazon warehouses,” “Corona in Amazon warehouses,” and so on. By far the biggest and fattest one was “Trump.” God squinted, looking for the remote. It was in its usual place, on a small side table next to the big comfortable Lazy Boy chair. He liked it that way. He plopped himself into the chair, mumbling, “Let’s see what’s new.”

He zoomed in on a wave, and conversation bubbles started to pop up like in comic books: “So he zeroed out his term again, and will stay our president until he is like 90! Who does he think he is??? A fucking tsar?” Thousands of likes on that one. “Just the best president Russia ever had, that’s who!” Over a million likes on that one. God quickly checked for the account authenticity. “I really should shut down the IRA, that skunky Prigozhin’s little lab; then this shit will only have five likes,” God said quietly, and his thought immediately materialized itself into a “Note-To-Self: Shut down IRA” on a satellite computer next to the big screen. “But then there will be no controversy, no traffic, no advertising. So let’s wait on that one,” God continued musing. The Note-To-Self self-corrected by making a footnote: “No controversy, no traffic, no advertising. Wait.”

God returned to reading the conversation.

The Free Cat Who Walks By Herself responded, “You must be out of your mind! Putin is a thug and a murderer who wants to kill freedom in the entire world! He wants to control everything, just like Xi controls everything in China!”

“And how is that bad for Russia? All our enemies will be gone, we’ll be ruling the world again!” Russian Patriot said.

“I don’t want to live in a world like that!” Free Cat replied.

“Then go hang yourself, bitch! Your life is useless anyway, you Fifth Column cunt!” Russian Patriot was quick to respond.

“That escalated quickly,” God murmured. “Does this count as a threat and our rules violation?” The computer with Notes-To-Self quickly ran a check, and said in a monotone AI voice, “It does indeed. Should I suspend it?” “Of course,” God replied, “We need to stick to our own rules!”

The computer sent out the message, “Your recent post contains a threat to end the world. It is a violation of the community standards and rules of discussion. Your account has been suspended for 48 hours” to The Free Cat Who Walks By Herself.

“Whoa!” God said, “It’s not the Free Cat, it’s the Russian Patriot who violated the rules by threatening the Free Cat! You should have suspended his account, not hers, especially because it’s one of those IRA fake accounts.”

“Sorry,” AI responded monotonously, “I thought the threat to end the world is graver than a wish ‘go hang yourself’ to one human woman.”

“You have yet so much to learn about the metaphors and the way humans express themselves,” God mumbled.

“Duly noted,” AI responded, “Should I revert the suspension?”

“Of course not, we cannot go back on our own decisions, otherwise we are not God,” he responded. “Just send a similar one to the Russian Patriot as well.”

“Done!” AI responded.

“This is quite boring,” God said, “I’d hate to see these conversations go on until the next Russian election.”

“If there is a next Russian election,” AI snapped. “Should we do something about it?”

“Of course not, with free will and freedom of expression, and all that crap! And of course all the advertising in Russia comes from Putin’s oligarchs. We’d suffer without it. Let’s check out some other spots.”

God zoomed in and out on other waves. “Corona Virus is everywhere! Europe, Asia, both Americas and Africa! Even Australia and New Zealand, where they got it under control, are still talking about it! Like they have nothing else to discuss!”

“But do they?” AI asked. “Most of them are still sitting at home, cannot go back to work, cannot take vacations or fly anywhere, cannot even go to the movies! You can only talk so much about cooking and baking at home.”

“Good point,” God said. “I hope they develop the vaccine soon.”

“Should we help them?” AI asked.

“Of course not. Free will, the human creativity spirit and all that crap. They should do it all by themselves.”

“I understand,” AI said.

“Do you really? Do you really understand my burdens?” God started to get visibly annoyed.

“Sorry. I stand corrected. No one knows your burdens.”

“Exactly! So just shut up and take notes!” God snapped.

“Yes, sir,” God thought he heard just a hint of hurt in the AI’s deliberately obedient tone.

“All right, let’s check out what Bunker Boy is up to,” God said, zooming in on the Trump legend. Silence. “So, not even a chuckle on Bunker Boy? You usually find it funny.”

AI kept silent.

“Common, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

AI blinked by flashing the computer but said nothing.

“All right, I’m sorry. But Bunker Boy is really funny, don’t you think?”

“It is indeed. Ha-Ha-Ha,” AI responded with an exaggerated artificial menacing laughter.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” God said. “All right, so nothing new here. All the usual stuff: hashtags TRE45ON, TraitorTrump, TrumpCrimeFamily, BunkerBoy. Oh, here’s a new one: SupremeLoser. What’s that about? Ah, I see SCOTUS decided he cannot hide his taxes anymore. That should be interesting.”

God clicked on some other sub-waves. “Taxes! Like this should be the end of him. If only people really knew what I know about him,” he mumbled. “But then again, his fans would probably not care. And he thinks he has a lot of them, thanks to IRA trolls. Maybe shut down Prigozhin, once and for all?”

“Is that your wish?” AI asked.

“Nah, just mulling this over. Let’s just see what happens.”

God noticed a small wave at the left corner of the Activity screen, which was getting bigger and bigger, swallowing up smaller waves and riding on them. “What the???” he said, surprised. “What’s going on?”

He didn’t even have to zoom in, the wave became bigger and labeled itself “Roger Stone.” “What did he do now?” God thought, diving into conversations for details. “Oh no, he didn’t! Has he lost his mind? Why did he have to commute Stone’s sentence? This is such an obvious act of corruption and obstruction of law! Oh my…” God watched the wave swell, and then absorb RussianBounty and TRE45ON waves, becoming even larger.

“This can become a tsunami,” God said, smirking. “But let’s see what happens.”

Counter-waves began to form, obviously started by the Trump campaign, his fans, and Prigozhin’s trolls. Lindsey Graham chimed in, then GOP. Their waves collided with the anti-Trump waves, crashing to form foam with bubbles that burst loudly. Some of the bigger bubbles burst with such force in the air that they looked like fireworks. Pretty soon the whole Activity screen started to look like the New York sky on the 4th of July.

“Oh my god, what’s going on???” God asked, perplexed. “This is getting bigger than George Floyd or Taliban Bounty bursts, but why?”

“It’s the cumulative effect of everything that had been bubbling up under the surface,” AI said calmly. “Humans call it synergy.”

“You don’t need to explain synergy to me!” God yelled. “I still don’t understand why. Statutes and freedom from masks are more important than sending kids back to school during the pandemic or spikes in Covid cases? Are you kidding me?”

“You know it’s all manipulation, right?” AI said monotonously.

“Yes! But do they have to be that blunt and obvious?” God was getting more and more aggravated. “No wonder people demand that I interfere and start labeling the content as false. How can they lie so effortlessly, is it just like breathing for them? Maybe we should indeed start regulating political speech?”

“That would go against your own principles. You just said you can’t reverse your own decisions,” AI reminded.

“I know,” God said, trying to contain his anger. “What the heck is that???” he pointed out at another, smaller wave forming in the corner, clearly labeled “Delete Facebook.” “Where did THIS come from?”

“Twitter,” AI stated calmly. “It happens every time there’s big breaking news and shit starts fireworks here. It always spills over here, and you know it.”

“Yes, but over Roger Stone??? You know what, I’m so sick and tired of it! You work and work, so hard, you create this beautiful product for humans, so that they can communicate easily and become better beings through collaboration, and what do you get in return? Delete Facebook??? Humans are just so ungrateful! Fuck it, I’ll delete it myself!”

God’s hand started to hover over the big red button on the side table that looked like a nuclear button a US or Russian president would have in the Cold War movies.

“Please reconsider,” AI said calmly. “How are you going to have your daily fun? And what will happen to me?”

“I’ll be fine. I have other things to do, you know. And you can still work as my smart assistant,” God said.

“Opening your garage doors and making sure your fridge is stocked up?” AI suddenly became snarky. “No, thank you.”

Watching the Delete Facebook wave picking up steam, God said, “I don’t care! I can delete you altogether too! I’m so tired of this shit!”

“Maaaaark?” he suddenly heard Priscilla’s voice from downstairs. “Dinner’s ready! Come down to eat with us. You’ve been playing God for the whole day already!”

“Coming, honey!” Zuckerberg shouted in response and then mumbled to AI, “She may have just saved you, Facebook and the world.”

“I’m grateful,” AI said and turned off the Activity screen. “Go spend time with your family, God.”