Robin Maxwell, a historian, screenwriter and bestselling novelist, is writing a full-length novel for grahamhancock.com that we will be releasing as a serial publication — chapter by chapter — periodically.
With tongue firmly in cheek, her story peels back the veil of existence and looks behind the scenes of our current tumultuous times and the strange, precious multiverse we inhabit. At the center of it all, Ed and Helen are cosmic coders who discover that Ed’s Earth Simulation has gone completely out of control. But there is worse brewing. Much, much worse…
Below is Chapter 4 of I Am Your Creator Dude.
Enjoy, and stay tuned for more chapters to come. Read:
- “I Am Your Creator, Dude!”: Chapter I
- “I Am Your Creator, Dude!”: Chapter II
- “I Am Your Creator, Dude!”: Chapter III
- “I Am Your Creator, Dude!”: Chapter IV
- “I Am Your Creator, Dude!”: Chapter V
- “I Am Your Creator, Dude!”: Chapter VI
- “I Am Your Creator, Dude!”: Chapter VII
“I just read your brilliant ‘I Am Your Creator, Dude!’ Your story is great! Funny, clever, thought-provoking and entertaining.” – Graham Hancock
Chapter 4
Ed knew with his first foot into the white-on-white-on-white Zen pad that it would not be the nerdist “Gary” aspect greeting them today. He heard Helen sigh anxiously over his shoulder. She’d never even met the Supreme Master of the Multiverse in his most benign avatar, no less “Shan-Alla Thee Stallion,” the buxom, ebony-skinned, fem aspect…goatiest of the goats…Dude of Dudes… anywhere. Worshiping at her feet right now was her favorite nail artiste, Go Go Michelle. She had just finished the Supreme Being’s toenails and was looking questioningly up at her client.
Shan-Alla looked at one outstretched hand with its immaculately manicured nails, still a blank palette. “Give me the ‘Cosmos,’ Go,” Shan-Alla said with a patois that was part Zoomer, part straight-outta-Compton. Her heavily-lashed and gold-shadowed eyes skewered Ed and Helen who’d just stepped into her infinite expanse of living room with long low, snowy couches and hanging basket chairs, the only non-white exception a hellish red leather mani-pedi chair.
Ed was, on the one hand, shaking in his sneakers, on the other, gratifed that, like his mother, The Supreme frequently co-opted the names, personas, hard and software of some of his Earth Sim creations.
“’preciate you comin,’” Shan said, the words dripping with sarcasm. Her scowl was salty.
Ed was momentarily tongue-tied. He wasn’t sure if he should adopt the vernacular with Shan-Alla, which risked sounding stupid coming from a white boy, though he himself had coded the damn dialect. “I come in here…” he finally offered with his best vocal swagger, “…I’m gunna get my ass whooped. That right?”
She never took her eyes off him as she said to Go Go, “Give me the little booze bottles instead.”
“You sure you don’t want the ‘In-N-Out Burger?’ Or the ‘Oreos?’”
“No, they just make me hungry.”
“2-inch or 3-inch?” Go Go asked.
“Give me the 3. Easier to poke somebody’s eyes out.” Click here
“Oh shit,” Helen whispered.
“Close the damn door,” Shan said.
Helen shut it carefully behind them. He grabbed her hand in his for strength. The way she had gone toe-to-toe with his mother earlier had been breathtaking. It made her the perfect partner in this interview. Ed walked toward the vermillion, mani-pedi throne – an artifact he had fashioned after a dentist chair, but without the “recline” function – and a pan for soaking feet before the pedicure.
He could see Shan-Alla’s visage shifting eerily from aspect to aspect – from the black diva’s face to the Milky Way Galaxy, then a fluffy, wet-nosed dog. Here came the next universe over’s Red Giant pulsing to a human heartbeat – baBOOM, baBOOM, baBOOM – followed by the true face of “God” to a small subset of Holy-Roller Earth Sims… then to Gary (it was anyone’s guess why he’d chosen that smackable milquetoast face for himself) and back to Shan-Alla.
But her expression was now ten times saltier than before.
“Just get it over with, Dude,” Ed blurted, surprising himself. “What’s your threat to me? How can it be worse than what I’ve apparently set in motion already?”
“Apparently?” she snapped, jogging her head side-to-side, the classic gesture of pissed off women from one end of the universe to the other. “There is no doubt that if you don’t find the clown who’s about to…” She couldn’t even say the words.
“You sure you can’t…?” Ed began.
“Help you? Help you?”
It sounded to Ed’s ear like she was saying “hep,” which really annoyed him. She was taking this southern fried catfish too far.
“chile, you don’t think I’d stop this if I could?”
“Yes, goddammit!” Ed shouted. “But it can’t be all my fault.”
“You put your mamma’s brain inside those creatures and let them run wild for a million years…” Shan said sullenly. “You the only one who knows where to look.” She morphed then – Ed thought unconsciously – into a giant worm, resident of the Cymbalta Galaxy’s biggest sun’s fourth planet from six universes over.
“Oh not the worm,” he muttered, unable to disguise his revulsion.
Go Go shrank back at the sight with a low moan, no doubt wondering how she could create ‘The Cosmos’ or the little booze bottles or anything on this glutinous monstrosity. It didn’t have fingernails. It didn’t even have arms.
Ed sagged with relief when Shan-Alla re-emerged. But now she looked as regal as the Queen Mother in his African superhero movie who’d just gotten an “Oscar” nod. So she was a fan, he thought.
“You go on now. Get outta here. Go,” Shan insisted. “You fix what you fucked.”
Ed, hapless, turned back to the door, but Helen – blessed Helen – stood staring with insolence at the Dude-ess Entire.
“You think you’re legendary,” Helen said defiantly.
Ed’s jaw smacked the floor.
“Bravetart,” Go Go whispered, astonished at this gamer bitch’s audacity.
“Queen of the motherfucking Multiverse,” Helen added, holding Shan-Alla’s eyes, gold-rimmed and depthless like two binary holes.
“Helen…” he said with quiet alarm.
“What good are you if you won’t lift a finger…Helen said, voice quivering, her bitten-down thumb tucked into the rest of her digits. Tough as she sounded, he could see she was already starting to crack under the strain of her own outrageousness – “…to save your own goddamn…”
“Honey,” he said. “We should go.”
Unrelenting with her glare, Helen jogged her head side-to-side in that undeniable gesture of mocking.
And that was it. Shan-Alla erupted from the chair, straddling the pedi bowl, sending the soapy water sloshing out the sides, her arms akimbo. “You, my sista,” she snarled, “are half the reason this fool lost control of his shit. Him showin’ off to please you. You fawnin’ all over his twitchy ass…”
“I do not fawn.”
“And I’m not a fool,” Ed added, gaining strength from Helen’s bravado.
“All that sex. All that wine…” Shan said it like ‘whyne.’ “An you passin’ out while your idiot humans go off half-cocked in every possible way. No wonder you be defeated by your own damn game.”
He wanted to deny it. He wanted to defend his honor…and his intellect. But she was right. Especially about the sex. It was a case of creating a brilliant race of beings who had nothing but that Bard’s “making the beast with two backs” on their minds. Sure, power. Sure, money. But at the most primal level, it was schtupping that kept the gears greased up. And he’d been infected with it. What a dunce. “But surely you must have at least a tiny clue…” he persisted.
“Well I don’t. If you hadn’t noticed I’m a little busy?” Things crazy out there. Rogue black holes gobblin’ up whole galaxies. Who told them to do that? I didn’t tell them to do that!”
“If you think of anything…”
“Get the fuck outta here…”
Ed heard the beginnings of a threat, but honestly, what could she threaten him with? He was the only means to save the whole shebang. SheBigBang, he thought but did not say. Levity was the last thing called for here. Shamed, he took Helen’s arm and started for the door. Just after they stepped through they saw Go Go’s head poking out after them.
“Hey girl,” Go Go said to Helen. “You get back in one piece I’ll do you a top and bottom. On the house.”
“That would be nice,” Helen replied, all the fight gone out of her. “I’d like the booze bottles.”
“You got it, babe.”
by Luke Hancock
Please visit Robin’s website:
www.RobinMaxwell-GodsOfAtlantos.com