Peripheral Visions: The Fear of God

Peripheral Visions: They live in in terror's dark corners and move through the spaces between nightmares. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late.

The Fear of God

Rick finished writing and hit the upload command. He sat back with a sense of relief, took a deep breath, and rolled his head gingerly around on his stiff, sore shoulders. He reached for the cup of coffee sitting just to the side of his laptop. It would surely be cold. Rick had been working for hours.

Worse than cold, Rick realized as he brought the paper cup to his lips: It was empty.

Rick looked toward the counter to see how busy the barista was, wondering if a sixth cup of coffee might be too much. That's when he saw the old man looking right him.

The geezer was short – probably about five and a half feet tall. He was slightly stooped, and his clothing was decidedly out of date and moth-eaten. He wore a battered brown corduroy jacket over a faded blue shirt and dark slacks belted tight around his thin hips. His shoes were leather, black, and just as shabby as the rest of him: They had a creased, dull look. Rick grinned when he noticed the final touch: The old coot had a corduroy bowtie that was less tied around his neck than clinging for dear life to his collar. He held a small, open book in the palm of one hand. Rick wondered if the old guy made a habit of reading while out walking around. Plenty of people did that with their phones; perhaps this was just the old-school way of doing the same thing.

Rick's grin faded quickly when the old man locked eyes with him. The codger started walking – shuffling, actually – right toward his table, his stare bright and fixed. His eyes were an unsettling shade of blue.

"Oh, crap," Rick muttered to himself. He looked back at his laptop, saw his upload was finished, and then logged out. He shut the laptop and was about to shove his chair back and get to his feet when the old man set the small open book on the table and then sat in the chair across from him.

"Hey, I was just leaving," Rick said, looking up from his laptop. "The table's all yours."

"No need to go, son," the old man said.

Rick looked at the laptop again, unplugging the power cord. He craned his neck to look at the power point in the wall, then reached to unplug the cord from the socket.

He got an electrical jolt that stunned him momentarily.

"Ouch!" Rick exclaimed, yanking his hand back.

"Best sit tight," the geezer said.

Rick looked at him, annoyed. Then he registered that, suddenly, everything was different. The coffee shop was no longer his neighborhood Starbucks; it was larger, sparser, with large plate glass windows looking out over a flagstone terrace. Bright sunlight illuminated a view of majestic distant peaks, green slopes, and a bright blue sky. Puffy cumulus clouds paraded across the far horizon, brilliant white in contrast to the brilliant blue of the heavens.

"Not heaven, exactly," the old man said, his use of the word echoing Rick's thoughts in a way that made Rick start. Rick looked back at him.

The old man was the one thing that hadn't changed: He was still grizzled, still gray, his hair the same bristly salt and pepper and his leathery cheeks still sprinkled with a pale three-day growth of beard.

Rick looked down at the table in alarm, wondering where his laptop had gone. In its place was a fresh cup of coffee – in a real cup.

The book was still there, though. Rick leaned down a little, peering at it. It wasn't the same book, was it? It was different – the glimpse Rick had gotten before had left him with an impression of a well-worn volume, a small hardcover with scuffed corners. But this book had what looked like golden covers, and its pages...

Rick leaned down a little further. The pages didn't contain words. They radiated light. They seemed almost like screens, or windows into some other realms – a vast sky, or a whole new cosmos. Things were happening in those pages that Ricks' eyes couldn't quite catch, his mind couldn't parse.

Rick looked at the geezer, who now had a cup of his own. The old man took a sip. Then, setting his cup onto his saucer, he said, "Have a biscuit."

"A... a biscuit?"

The old man nodded at a plate of cookies that had appeared on the table. They hadn't been there an instant before. Rick stared at the cookies, wondering if he was having a stroke. Or maybe a dream?

"No, you're fine," the geezer sighed.

Rick looked at him.

"Yes, I know what you're thinking," the old man said. "Or rather, I know you're wondering if I can tell what you're thinking. And of course I can."

Of course?

Before Rick could get the words out, the old man answered his questions:

"Because I am the LORD thy GOD."

Rick stared at the old man in complete shock for a moment, then burst into laughter.

"That's amusing to you?" the old man asked, picking up his coffee cup again. He watched disapprovingly as Rick tried to wipe the smile off his face. "In the old days, people would piss themselves. Literally piss themselves with terror and awe. They'd thrown themselves face down, convinced if they looked me in the face they'd turn to stone or go up in flames or something."

"Uh huh." Rick had sat back in his chair. He didn't know what was going on, but he was certain there was no God, no Heaven, and no such thing a magic or miracles.

"But not you folks," the old man said, setting his cup down once again. He sighed.

"Look," Rick began. "Whatever you're up to, whatever you want..."

"What I want," the old man interrupted, "is for you to pipe down for a minute. And maybe show a little respect. I mean, I hate braggarts – almost as much as I hate bigots – but let's be clear: I'm the author of all existence. You might do well to show a little deference, maybe even a little respect."

Rick stared at him, still not getting it. The look on his face reflected his conviction that the old man was unhinged, and Rick was unsure whether he should be amused or frightened.

"I'd be frightened if I were you," the old man supplied.

"Uh, okay." Rick looked down at the table, not seeing it, his eyes scanning back and forth as he searched his brain for some sort of explanation. Then he pushed his chair back again and started to get up. "Like I said, I gotta go now."

"Feel free," the old man said. "There's nowhere to go, but don't let that stop you."

Rick turned away from the old man, looked out the window at the terrace and the view across an enormous expanse of terrain. He looked at the sky, the splendid cumulus clouds, and then turned his attention to the counter. No barista tended the customers; in fact, there were no customers, just himself and the old man.

Rick strode quickly to the windows, searching for a door, but saw none. He turned his gaze to the terrace, noticing that while it was large and well-kept, there were no tables.

"Wouldn't matter if there were tables out there," the old man said behind him. "You can't get out there anyway."

Rick looked at a small table flanked with two plain, wooden chairs. He considered picking up one of the chairs and heaving it through the window.

"Oh, for pity's sake," the old man said, and then Rick found himself back t the table, sitting across from the old man once again. He looked across the room toward the windows and the view. It was still there.

"Okay," Rick said. "Where are we? How did we get here? Why have you brought me here?"

The old man mouthed the questions even as Rick said them.

Rick frowned, his anger rising.

"Don't get cross with me, son," the old man said.

"I am not your son!" Rick screamed in his face.

The old man looked vaguely amused. Then: "The hell you're not!" he roared back.

The room shook, and distant thunder rolled across the mountains outside.

"Sorry about that," the old man said, instantly calm once again.

Rick watched him, eyes huge with terror.

"Well, don't clam up on me now," the old man said.

"I, um, I..." Rick had no idea what to say.

The old man filled in. "Why are you here? Because I want you to do something for me. Where is 'here?' It's... well, it's the same place as everywhere else: It's in my imagination."

"Uh..." Rick still couldn't formulate words.

"You don't grasp in any way at all what I'm telling you, but let's make it easy and summarize by saying that the entire universe... all universes, really... the entire cosmos... it's all a passing thought," the old man said. "And I'm the one doing the thinking."

Rick's eyes dropped to the table and then he looked back up at the old man.

"Which, yes, does mean that you, too, are nothing but a wisp of thought in my eternal, all-powerful being. Or rather, Being, capital B."

"So – so can't you make me more..."

"Courageous? Witty? What do you want to know? Can't I what, exactly? Turn you into something other than who and what you are? Sure I could. Just like I could have stopped the Earth's rotation and prolonged the daylight while Joshua's army defeated the forces of Jericho. Or I could have parted the Red Sea to allow Moses and his people to pass through to safety and then let water be water and drown Pharaoh and his guys as soon as the Israelites were out of harm's way. I could have done all those things that are described in that book of fairy tales you people worship. But I didn't. I don't even ask you to worship me instead of that goddamn... pardon me, that ridiculous book."

Rick's expression changed into one of shock.

"What?" the old man snapped. "What's with the face? You don't believe those stories any more than I do. I mean, I like science fiction and everything... and there's hardly anything else you could call it; an epic about humans communicating with a superior intelligence from the skies? That could be a real potboiler. But it's hardly something to try and build a system of laws around, much less a global civilization... or two. Or several. I forget, because I don't care, but how many different versions of the One Inerrant Gospel do you people have, anyway? How many competing visions of Eternal Truth?"

"This can't be happening," Rick said.

The old man waved a hand. "Yeah, right. That's pretty much what I said when I looked at what you folks have been up to for the past six thousand years or so. The last time I looked, you were building cities, figuring out systems of government, coming up with some pretty nifty inventions like writing and mathematics... I can't tell you how optimistic I was. I mean, you were still filthy unregenerate animals, but at least you had some promise. I figured I'd give you a little time to grow into something interesting, but... well, you've managed some more interesting innovations, I'll give you that. Color TV. Haute couture. Orbiting telescopes. Good for you! I wanted you to be inquisitive, and you are. But you're still up all the same childish tricks you pulled before. Genocide. Greed. Okay, I get it; it's my own damned fault. I gave you two, and only two, primary driving forces: Survive and procreate. The rest of it is a matter of ornamentation and calibration. Compassion? Necessary because you have to be social animals in order to survive. Curiosity? Like I said, a garnish for your intelligence. A reason for you to be smart in the first place, because otherwise what were you ever going to do with your smarts?

"Now, look," the old man continued, pushing his now-empty coffee cup away and leaning forward, his bright, compelling eyes seeming to hook into Rick's soul. Three was no way Rick could look away from the man. "Here's the thing: I created you. I know what you're capable of. I know I gave you innate directives, hardwired impulses. about competing to see who'd be leader of the pack – who'd have the best ideas, who'd be the strongest and most clever, who'd get the girl."

Despite his fear, Rick took offense. "Don't tell me you have something against gays?"

The old man laughed. "Good heavens, no. I suppose I should have said, 'Get the girl for those of who who fall that way.' Because about ten percent of you fall some other way, which is natural and normal and fine. I mean, ten percent of you are left-handed, too. But never discount the power of a fraction. Only ten percent of the universe is made of baryonic matter –�the stuff planets, starts, and people are made of. The other ninety percent? Something different. Dark matter, you people call it."

"Um," Rick ventured, "I don't ... I don't really get science."

"Then just understand the takeaway," the old man said. "Ordinary matter is only ten percent of all existence, but it's a crucial ten percent."

"I... I'm sorry, but I really don't understand..." Rick said.

"Don't worry about it," the old man told him. "I was getting off topic anyway. What was I saying before? Oh yes: Sexual reproduction, brilliant idea! Great way to drive the self-perpetuating refinement of the human population. It was a wonderful shortcut, a wonderful way to get life in this universe to evolve. And evolution... I want you to hear this, son. Are you listening?"

Rick, his eyes still fastened on those of the old man, nodded.

"Evolution is not only real, it's my primary tool for keeping life going. More than that, it's kind of a cushion. I didn't really have you lot in mind when I set the whole mess in motion, but I knew some kind of intelligence would be the end result – someone I could talk to. If I had created thinking, self-aware beings out of nothing on the very first day of creation, why – you'd never have survived the shock of it! You're have gotten depressed or jumped over a cliff in a mass suicide. You'd have latched onto the most obvious feature of any material, mechanistic universe, which is that it's bound to be self-limiting and, when seen from the inside, pointless. Give a life form a mind, and it wants to know, 'Why? Always, Why? Why am I here? Why should I bother?' "

The old man paused and looked at Rick meaningfully. Rick didn't know what to say.

"It's not like that's not a good question," the old man resumed. "It is. When you realize that generation after generation lives, strives, and breaks itself into pieces for no other reason than to create a new generation, it kinda takes the wind out of your sails. Right? If the point of living is to create little living things, which will then do the same, and on into infinity, then you start to get the feeling that all of life, the whole generational cycle, is nothing but another kind of rat wheel. A treadmill, I mean. You charge forward full throttle, and... hey! You get nowhere!"

Rick nodded. "Yes," he said. "It's true. So you're here to tell me that there really is no meaning."

The old man rolled his eyes, then reached toward his coffee cup and snatched it up. The cup was suddenly full again.

Rick watched the old man take a sip. Then the geezer sighed.

"Yes, yes," he said at last. "Yes, it's true. There is no meaning. But that's only the first room in a duplex. That's the first layer, the first impression, the... what I mean is, there's more to it than that. But you people have never quite gotten there, and I just don't know why."

"But don't you know everything?" Rick asked, words coming to him now with force.

The old man laughed. "I could if it would help. But there's a difference between knowing and understanding."

"Okay, fine," Rick said. "Don't you understand everything?"

"No!" the old man cried out, a huge smile on his face. "No, I don't! That's another reason for creation. For you, for planets, for stars. I created all of it not because I understood it or knew where it would go, but in order to watch it happen. To be surprised. To achieve some new understanding."

Rick shook his head. "Are you really God?"

"You have some other name for the creator of everything that exists?"

"But you're really the God of... of the Bible?"

The old man snorted. "Hardly. I read that book... at least, the original. I guess there's been a sequel since then, but you people did such a hatchet job on me in the first volume... I mean, the character based on me comes across as a drunken bully who's off his meds." The old man sighed. "I understand you have an urge to... to know me, in some sense, even though you're hardly equipped for it. But what I don't appreciate is how you've made me, or this fictional version of me, in your own image."

The two stared at each other in silence.

"Then I don't see what you want with me," Rick said at last.

"It's simple. I want you to take a message back to the rest of your kind," the old man said.

"Don't you have angels for that?" Rick asked.

The old man snorted. "Angels? Please. Arrogant assholes. Now, they were a mistake. Don't even talk to me about angels."

Puzzled, Rick began to protest, to demand more of an explanation, but the old man shushed him. "Let's not get sidetracked again," the old man said.

"Okay..." Rick waited to hear more.

"It's like this," the old man said. "You people are not only on the wrong track, you're downright belligerent in your insistence that it's where you want to be."

"And?" Rick asked.

"And I just want you to understand that you have free will – yes! You do! And it's well and good. But the point of having free will is that you learn the essential facts of life."

"Like what?"

"Like, for one thing, there really are facts. Facts that are real, that stay real no matter what your druthers might be. Facts as in E=MC2. Facts as in the charge on the electron. Facts as in actions have consequences, and those who do terrible things have to answer for them."

"Is there a Heaven? And a Hell?"

The old man winked at him with a coy smile. Then he said: "Better than Heaven, worse than Hell, there's an Earth. A world suitable for life, where life took hold and re-shaped the planet itself. And now that very same life is on the verge of wiping itself out. And you people complain to me about meaninglessness and entropy and whatever else. Listen, I'd be happy to help you – but only if you help yourselves."

"What do you mean?" Rick asked, frowning.

"I mean, you're the ones fucking things up. But who do you expect to swoop down and set things to rights again? Me, that's who. And it's not gonna happen." The old man watched Rick over the rim of his coffee cup as he took another sip.

Rick tried to work out what he was hearing. "You mean to say that God... that you exist, but that you'll allow evil things to happen in the world?"

The old mad sputtered with laughter and Rick thought he might choke on his coffee. Then the old man put his cup back onto its saucer and wiped his damp lips with the back of one thin, veiny hand. "Have you ever looked around you?"

"I don't..." Rick shook his head, confused.

"Of course evil things happen. That's because you people have decided what's 'evil' and what's 'good.' That's not on me. I'm just good old 'I Am who Am.' That, by extension, means I created 'Is what Is.' There's such a thing as natural law. There's such a thing as physics, chemistry, biology... well, those are the names you give to the studies of the real and systemic realities of physical law. But to call them good and evil? I'm not sure who invented all that, but it's one of your biggest mistakes, and one of the most distracting illusions you've surrendered to."

"But of course there are good and evil things!" Rick cried out.

"What, babies starving? Men murdering men? Or, more elementally, mudslides wiping out villages? Tigers carrying off farmers? That's your idea of evil? One, if a man murders another man, that's his choice. You've created a moral framework to help you figure out what's acceptable to your societies. Congratulations! You've found a way to rise above your innate lawlessness, because there's nobody in charge of your affairs but you. That's a start. But it's only a start. Call it 'good' and 'evil' if that helps you codify your standards of conduct. Sure! Why not? But those are not eternal and universal standards. They're yours, they belong to you, and you need to live by them.

"As for nature? Tigers and mudslides?" The old man laughed. "You think it's 'evil' when a tiger eats a farmer. Well, it's not so 'evil' from the tiger's point of view. Who encroached on the tiger's territory? Who messed up the ecological balance of the tiger's hunting ground? Who makes a nice hot meal for a hungry tiger whose world has been put into disarray? I'd say the tiger thinks you're the evil ones, and it's a good thing when he has a chance to take one of you out of the picture and get a bite to eat while he's at it."

"You don't mean that," Rick said.

The old man smiled. "You might not mean it, but that's beside the point. And I don't have to mean it in any case. I'm just pointing it out. It's obvious to me."

"But you'd just stand by and watch the world burn?"

"If you people set it on fire? Which you have, incidentally? Well, yes. But what do you want?"

"If you're God, then you should fix it!" Rick cried out.

"I am God, for what that's worth, but so what? I'm supposed to be merciful? Or just? Or gather one tribe to my table while shutting every other tribe out and letting them gnash their teeth in the winter wind, or whatever the quote is from that book? What for? I'm GOD, you idiot. You don't tell me what to do. I'm nature and all natural law. You expect miracles? You expect me to contradict myself just because that would make things easy for you? I don't think so."

"And that's your message?"

"No, my friend, that's your message. You want me to intervene? This is as much intervention as you're gonna get from me: Simply telling you fools to grow up and get hold of yourselves."

"You're a monster!" Rick shouted.

"You want to know what's monstrous? Your neglect, your smug entitlement, and your presumption!" God roared back. More thunder rolled across the distant peaks, and the large glass windows rattled.

Rick shrank back, eyes huge.

"Let's scale this down to something you can comprehend," the old man added, calm once more. "Let's say you leave the kids at home for a little while. Well, not you; you're gay. Even if you were straight, you're one of these ambitious, career-oriented types, on top of which you're a man, and I've more or less programmed you to want to do the procreative act without having to stick around and deal with the consequences. It works great for lesser animals, but I have to say I thought any intelligent race would grow out of it once it achieved a measure of self-awareness."

Rick stared at the old man, confounded.

"Okay, never mind all that," the old man said. "Back to the point. How would you feel, or how would anyone feel, if they left the kids alone for a few hours and went out to get a few errands done... maybe have a little 'me time' at the local coffee shop, like so many of you do?" The old man swept his arm to indicate their surroundings, which were suddenly full of people – murmuring, sipping coffee, standing at the counter and ordering while baristas tended to noisy machines.

Rick looked around, bewildered.

Abruptly, the people were gone and silence returned. It was just Rick and the old man.

"And you're thinking: Why not? The kids will be find on their own. They're, I dunno, fifteen or sixteen. Old enough to understand that actions have consequences, old enough not to stick their hands in a fire just to see if it will hurt. But then you come back home and find that the kids have not only burned down half the house, they've flooded the other half. And they're broken most of the furniture. And they've trashed the yard and the garden patch, thrown the potted herbs to the kitchen floor, and drowned the family dog in the bathtub. And then what do the brats have to say when you walk in the door and see the carnage they're created? Without a hint of remorse or an ounce of shame, they announce they expect you to clean it all up for them. On top of that, they demand to know when supper will be ready. Imagine any human being coming home to that. You think that would go down well?"

"But... you're God," Rick protested.

"So what? You think that the golden rule of doing unto others the same why you'd want to be done yourself, you think that only applies to other human beings? And not me?"

"So... you created us to be competitive and energetic and then you left us alone to, what, go run errands?" Rick said angrily. "To have a little me time?"

"What if I did?" the old man challenged in turn. "You know the last time I had a day off? Just after getting the universe started, that's when! Triggering the fireball, sculpting the plasma, and making sure that there were gravitational force lines incised on the face of the cosmos where matter could accumulate and galaxies could grow.

"Oh, and don't even get me started on the planning that went into the whole thing even before the big bang," the old man continued. "Working out how to balance dark energy with just the right acceleration constant. Figuring out how to create gravity, because that makes things so much easier when it comes to designing life.

"On top of which, you might think the universe revolves around puny planet Earth, but it doesn't," the old geezer added, raising a sharp-nailed finger as though Rick had tired to interrupt him. "I have a whole universe to tend to. It's hundreds of billions of light years in every direction, and not because Earth is in the center of things... but just because it's so damn huge! And I don't have a whole lot of time to do and see everything I want to with this little thought-into-form experiment. I mean, okay, the framework and the essential components won't break down for about three hundred trillion trillion trillion years, which I grant you is a pretty good run, but star formation and life and things actually happening won't last nearly that long! The universe is only gonna be interesting for a couple hundred billion years. A few stars will last a trillion years or so, but by then all the really cool stuff will be over and done with. So it's not like I have all day to hover over your planet and scold you."

Rick gulped, hearing the sound of it loudly in how own ears.

The old geezer took no notice. "But the larger point is, I wouldn't scold you people even if I had nothing better to do," he declared. "Why? Well, I didn't create you in order to infantilize you! You're smart, you're driven, you don't have to stand there with your hands in your dirty diaper crying for me. You can fucking figure it out!"

The old man sat back and reached for his cup. He didn't even make contact with it; the cup simply disappeared from the table and reappeared in his hand.

Rick watched as the old man tipped his head back and drained the cup one last time.

Then he tossed the cup away. It flickered out of existence the moment it let his grasp. The saucer vanished at the same moment.

The old man nodded at the plate of cookies. "Sure you don't want any?"

Rick looked at the plate and then back at the old man. "No, thank you."

"Suit yourself."

The plate disappeared.

"This is message for all mankind, and you are my messenger," the old man said, leaning forward meaningfully. "And here's the message I charge you to deliver: Sort yourselves out, because I'm not gonna do it for you."

With that, Rick found himself back in his familiar old Starbuck's – gray day, tables full of customers all around him, baristas making noise at the milk foaming machine. And his laptop, sitting right where it was supposed to be.

On the screen was a message:

YOU HAVE YOUR INSTRUCTIONS. YOU HAVE THE MESSAGE. YOU'RE A BLOGGER. BLOG.

Rick started to peck at his keyboard.

***

Six days later, walking home after an interview, Rick saw the old man standing under a streetlight, still dressed in his ratty clothing and still holding the scuffed little hardcover book in the upturned palm of his hand. Even as his feet continued to carry him forward, Rick told himself to turn and run.

Not that it would do any good, Rick thought bleakly, as he drew closer and closer still to where the old man waited.

Finally they stood together under the street light. The city around them ceased to exist; they stood in a blank, black expanse of space, in a circle of light that seemed to have no source. The scuffed little book in the old geezer's hand had transformed also: It was once again golden and mysterious, its open pages portals into some celestial realm.

"Well?" the old man asked, and Rick marveled at the book and then looked around at his impossible surroundings.

Rick turned to the old man. "Well," he said.

"And?"

"And... I can't."

"You can't? What do you mean by that? Of course you can. That's why I chose you to bear the message. For the first time in six thousand-odd years, I'm talking to you people. It' s a simple, concise message. All you have to do is put it out there."

"Yeah," Rick said. "And the more I think it over, the more I understand the message. And I'm grateful. And... and I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because," Rick said, "whether you meant to or not, you made us headstrong but weak-willed. You gave us venomous hearts and brutal natures. You... you..."

"I did no such thing," the old man told him. "I made you as you needed to be made in order to survive as a species in the universe as it is. And don't even ask why things can't be different. They can, sure, and they are... but not here. This is where we are, and this is where you live, and this is who you have to be. I've told you what you need to hear if you're going to survive."

"Survive? But if I tell them this – if I give them your message – they'll crucify me!"

"They'll what?" The old man frowned at Rick in puzzlement. Then: "You mean that thing the ancient Romans did to execute people? Surely no one does that anymore. You people are too good at killing now days, and you've become too impatient to spend that much time and effort on murdering each other."

"I thought you'd understand the reference," Rick said with humor born of despair. He laughed, a laugh that sounded like a sob. "What I mean is, people don't want to hear it. You talked about facts? They reject facts. You talked about truth? They invent the truth they choose, and then they cling to it even if it kills them. You're right, the world is dying. We've killed it, and we've killed ourselves. And we're standing around chanting prayers and praises... not to you, but to ourselves. We're worshiping our own folly."

"Well, you might as well," the old man said. "I'm not interested in hearing it."

"The point is, anyone who doesn't play along..."

"They murder," the old man said, as if grasping it for the first time. "That's what you're afraid of?"

"It is," Rick said.

The city reappeared around them.

The old man shook his head. "You miserable little delinquents," he said. Then: "All the same, I gave you a message and the task of delivering it. And I am the LORD thy GOD. Do you not fear me? Aren't you afraid not to do as I tell you?"

Rick raised his hands. "I am," he said desolately. Then he pointed out at the city, the night, the world that humankind had ruined. "But I'm more afraid of them."

The old geezer sighed. "Yeah," he said. "That's what I was afraid of." With a flick of his wrist, he snapped the book shut. A thunderclap echoed across the sky.

Rick looked around. "Uh... what was that?"

"Nothing," the old geezer said. "Never mind it. It's nothing for you to worry about."

"Was that thunder the noise of your book closing?" Rick insisted.

"Yeah. So what?"

"Well, I mean... what kind of book is that?"

The geezer shrugged. "It's the Book of Life. What did you think it was?" He started walking away. "Not that it matters any more. Not to you people."

Abruptly, the old geezer was not there anymore.

The sky began to crack open. Stars began to fall. The world around Rick began to wink out piecemeal, just as the old geezer had a moment ago.

And then all of humankind, together with all of human history, vanished.

The old man, being God, was free to break one of his own longstanding rules: He looked back at the void that had once been the realm of the sons and daughters of Adam. Then he shrugged, looked ahead, and walked on, having forsaken a world that would not hear Him.

Next week we return with a brand new sight: Photo editing software that picks up more from an image than mere light can capture. Hopes, fears, sinister intentions, and future crimes show up in "The Devil and the Details!"