Jim Baen's Universe

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Fantasy Stories

Creation: The Launch!

Written by Laura Resnick

Illustrated by Karl Nordman

Don't call me Ishmael.

Yes, technically, it's my name. Believe me, sweetie, I know. And I assure you, I have not suffered in silence. It is so not ME.

Then again, is "Ishmael" a name that's right for anyone? I mean, okay, maybe for a metro-sexual pop star with fabulous lashes and no last name. Or possibly someone in the whaling industry (and don't look at me like that, I didn't even want whales in Creation). But, honey, for a creative consultant, it is a tough name to adapt to.

(Oh, can I say "adapt" here? I hear there's been some controversy about adaptation since we launched Creation.)

But, all right, sure, I know— it could have been worse. At least I didn't get stuck with a name like Laban, Esau, Hagar, Methuselah, Nehemiah, or Walter. Those poor schmucks. (And people wonder why we added therapists to Creation after we saw what God had wrought.)

In fact, this whole naming thing was high on my list of hot targets for a major revamp. Such an obvious flaw in the grand plan. But then we got so close to the launch, and what with one thing and another, I barely had time to put the finishing touches on the Big Bang before the Lord God was all, like, "Hey, I'm separating the darkness from the light, and I'm doing it NOW." I'm telling you, He has the patience of a two-year-old child— and, yep, they were indeed made in His image, right down to the temperament.

Well, maybe you know how insane a launch is! I mean, gaga-smack-a-rooney-cuckoo with lunacy on top, honey. So a lot gets overlooked in the heat of the moment— not to mention the heat of cosmic matter spinning madly through space in all different directions at a gazillion miles per second. Plus, to be totally up-fro, bro, the Big Guy is not that easy to work with. I don't think I'm letting the feline out of the bag when I say he can be unbelievably touchy. (You've read Genesis, right?) In fact, when our first effort at Creation totally flopped while we were still out of town and on the road with our early material . . . Well, for a while, I honestly feared the Master of the Universe would commit suicide by swallowing hot primordial ooze.

Which was a total overreaction, of course. (Deities. Always so high-strung.) As I kept telling Yahweh, it was only natural that He would need a few dry runs before we had a success on our hands. No one had done Creation before, we were trying for something completely new and original! You can't expect to pull off the most ambitious launch in Eternity without first learning from a few failures.

For one thing, the Lord God hates loud noises, so we tried a Big Sigh, a Big Hum, a Soft Bang, and even a Small Bang before I finally convinced Him that we had to go full throttle, no holding back. "God, sweetie, pumpkin," I said, "Creation needs to commence with a big bang! With the Big Bang! With the biggest cosmic explosion of light and matter that ever was, or ever will be!" This is the kind of input where I really earn my salary. Clients are so held back by their own limitations.

Well, once God agreed to go with the Big Bang, He got a little more confidence in my guidance. So, fortunately, it didn't take me long to nix the whole "polka-dotted universe" plan, along with some of His other less-inspired ideas. (Frankly, it's thanks to me that you're not reading this with your belly button and eating your own hair for sustenance.) And by the time we got down to the fine details of planetary-planning, I could tell we were onto something really special. I loved the idea of a place that had land, sea, rivers, people, plants, animals, plumbing, and ethnic food! And the whole idea of a planet tilting on its axis to create seasons— I mean, isn't that just darling?

"God," I said, "this time, we're really going to launch. And this is going to be your best work ever! Your chef d'oeuvre. Your pièce de résistance."

And the Lord God said, "I like those nasal-sounding phrases you're using, Ishmael. We should come up with a language that sounds just like that."

"God, please don't call me Ishmael."

"But it's your name. The name that I gave you."

"We've talked about this before, Lord. I'd rather You call me Rafe. Or perhaps Thad. Something that won't sound so out of place on the Upper West Side."

"You mean the Upper North Side," God corrected.

"I don't think we should call it that," I said. "Trust me on this."

Well, now that we obviously had a solid Creation strategy and some exciting concepts to work with, God got very competitive. He started worrying that some other omnipotent being might beat us to the punch, so He was very eager to launch right away. I really should have put the brakes on, we weren't at all ready yet. But you try saying "no" to the Lord God Almighty and see what happens. (I'll tell you what happens. Supernovas happen.)

So, naturally, once we launched, it was just one problem after another. We spent eons running around putting out the fires.

For example, there was that whole problem with the firmament, which we discovered too late can look exactly like New Jersey when viewed in the wrong light. In fact, certain parts of the firmament are New Jersey. No one saw this coming; if we had, naturally, we'd have postponed the launch.

And since seven is such an asymmetrical number of continents, I begged Yahweh to wait until we could design a better look for them. I mean, that whole Asia thing is so over the top. It's simply massive. We needed to transfer some of it to Europe to create a sense of balance. And Japan just hangs out there, as if we'd left a fifth leg on a mammal! Plus, sweetie, how many deserts does the world really need, for goodness sake? And Mexico across the Gulf from Florida? Totally lopsided! No sense of proportion at all.

"Let's organize this," I said to the Lord God, "let's make a statement with our continents. Let's not just have random landmasses flopping all over the planet."

But no. What do I know? I am only the creative consultant on the biggest project in the history of the Universe. So we launched Creation right away. With the Middle East still plopped haphazardly between three continents like an uninvited guest, and Antarctica stuck down at the South Pole like planetary genitalia. (I know, I know. Believe me, I tried to make Him see reason. But I am just a servant of God Almighty— and you know what clients are like.)

So we wound up having to relocate a ton of creatures after they saw the landscape that God intended to give to them, i.e. New Jersey. It made the exodus from Egypt look like a cakewalk by comparison, let me tell you. For a few millennia there, I was afraid the launch would collapse completely and we'd have to start all over. Since then, of course, the shifting of tectonic plates and subsequent earthquakes have continued proving my point (we so needed a better layout for the landmasses), but you don't say "I told you so" to Jehovah. You just don't.

So, anyhow, we barely got past the firmament crisis, and God started naming things. He was off and running! "This is an armadillo, that's a slug, this is an avocado, over there is a ficus." He really had no gift at all for it. I'd realized ever since He named me Ishmael, shortly after creating me to help launch His grand plan, that we needed a better system. But then, suddenly, it was too late, we'd launched, and there was the Creator, naming everything in sight: "We'll call this part a penis, and that a vagina, and I think we should call this characteristic 'perspicacity.'" It was a disaster.

I was meanwhile up to my supernovas in PR problems after someone on my staff leaked the bit about Eve being taken from Adam's rib. I blame myself. It was Yahweh's idea —I mean, honestly, most of Creation was His idea, I just guided the packaging, He really deserves a lot of credit for the Universe— but I should have seen the inevitable problems before we were blindsided by them: If Man was created in the image of Yahweh, but Woman was created from Man's rib, well, you're obviously going to have considerable problems perpetuating the species. Or even holding a decent conversation.

The critics simply shredded us for this. The Lord God was devastated by some of those early reviews. And while I didn't disagree in principle with the comments, I thought their tone was way harsh.

Look, it was an honest mistake. Also