Intelligent Design
by Roger Ley
Roger Ley has self-published eight novels and one anthology of speculative stories.
He was born and educated mainly in London, but spent some of his formative years in Saudi Arabia. Later, he worked as an engineer in the oilfields of North Africa and in the North Sea before starting a career in higher education teaching computer-aided engineering.
His early articles appeared in publications including The Guardian, Reader’s Digest, The Oldie, and Best of British. His short stories have been published on a multiplicity of websites and broadcast on BBC Radio.
He lives in Suffolk (UK).
Visit his website at rogerley.co.uk
More TTTV Stories by Roger ley: https://talltaletv.com/tag/roger-ley/
His Amazon author page is at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Roger-Ley/author/B01KOVZFHM
As any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, so the four entities who met in the Eternal Realm to confer, could be gods or scientists; you could also call them academics or even very powerful magicians. They were immortals, neither good nor evil, neither fiends nor angels. They were powerful and had great knowledge, but these four were young by the standards of their species, although ancient by any other. They had completed their education and now, to prove their worth and pass into adulthood, they had to complete a project, an end of course exhibition if you will. The task never varied; it was a requirement for graduation; they were to create a new universe and populate it with humanity. Not a planet, not a solar system, not even a galaxy, but a complete universe, starting with nothing but a singularity. And why? For the amusement and entertainment of their peers.
The four had no physical presence; they did not even exist as energy. They inhabited a universe empty of all but themselves and their works, the Eternal Realm. As individuals, they had no names we could use, so for convenience we shall give them colours: Black, Red, Grey, and White.
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‘First item on the agenda. “Macrocosm”. Initial thoughts?’ asked Black, who was chairing the meeting, on account of his levelheadedness and even-handedness. Not that he had either appendage, not that he was even a “he”, but under the circumstances one must approximate, else the story cannot be told. ‘Red, I’m sure you’ll have something to offer?’ he said.
‘How about, instead of the usual universe laid out as an infinite flat membrane, we try a radically new geometry?’
‘The universe has to be infinite; it’s in the project specification,’ said Grey, who was a conformist and enjoyed the restrictions that rules imposed on design.
‘No,’ said Red, ‘the spec says that it has to be boundless.’
‘Correct,’ said Grey, ‘that’s another word for infinite.’
‘How about we start with a sphere?’ asked Red. ‘Spheres are boundless. They certainly don’t have edges.’
The other three laughed.
‘You want humanity to live on a sphere. All right, let’s go with the idea and see where it leads,’ suggested Black, eager to demonstrate his impartiality. With luck, he thought, Red would eventually tire of this radical concept and they could get back to designing something sensible, the sort of universe the sages on the thesis committee were used to, something that would earn them a pass without too many awkward questions.
‘What would the sphere be made of?’ asked White, who was curious and open to new ideas.
‘I don’t know. How about molten rock with a thin scum of solid rock on top?’ said Red. ‘We could even have holes where the molten rock comes out.’
‘How about the solid rock is made of big flat chunks that float around on the molten stuff very slowly,’ laughed Grey, who thought she was being ridiculous.
‘Good idea,’ said Red. ‘There could be cracks between the chunks where the molten rock appears. Smoke, steam, flames. It would be so dramatic.’
‘Flames and smoke. What is it with you?’ asked Grey.
‘Just trying to make life on the sphere a bit more interesting,’ said Red sulkily.
‘How will we illuminate this sphere?’ asked White. ‘We can’t leave it in darkness. I suppose a cluster of stars suspended over different parts to give even lighting would work?’
‘Well, actually,’ said Red, ‘I thought of having just one star some distance away.’
‘Wouldn’t they crash into each other?’ asked White. ‘The star and the sphere?’
‘Okay, then let the sphere sort of roll around the star,’ countered Red.
‘But one side would be hot and the other cold,’ said Grey.
‘It could spin on its axis. Then it would be warm all over.’
‘You have an answer for everything,’ laughed Black.
‘I haven’t worked out all the details,’ said Red.
‘But the middle part of the sphere would get direct starlight and be hotter than the top and bottom,’ said Grey.
‘I don’t think that would be a problem,’ said Red.
‘The temperature difference would affect the atmosphere. It wouldn’t be in balance; there’d be turbulence and all sorts of unpredictable effects, made even more complicated because the sphere would be spinning on its axis.’
Red shrugged, or would have, if he’d had shoulders.
‘Have you thought about the structure of the rest of this universe?’ asked Black.
‘Let’s keep it simple at first,’ said Red. ‘One star, one sphere, the rest infinite space, and we’ll go from there. As the humans develop and discover technologies, we can allow for more complication. But at the start, there’ll be no point in giving them a cosmos until they invent a means of exploring it.’
‘Undulations’ said White, bubbling with enthusiasm. ‘How about undulations on the surface, going up and down, not flat like usual? And there could be water in the low parts.’
Black sighed. ‘Yes, White, too much detail, I think. Let’s move on. The next item on the agenda is “Life”. What are we going to do about that?’
‘Just the usual?’ suggested Grey. ‘We can take the flora and fauna from the standard catalogue.’
‘No, no, no,’ said Red. ‘Let’s design our own. Better still, we can let it design itself. We could seed the planet with simple forms and watch them develop. There’s no hurry; we’ve got plenty of time. As much as we want, actually.’
‘Hmm,’ said White, ‘we could give them some sort of feedback loop so that succeeding generations could adapt to conditions. If it were cold, they could grow more fur, or the opposite if it were too hot.’
‘Or, we could be even more radical,’ said Red. ‘We could allow small random changes to each species every generation, and only the ones that were well adapted to their environment would survive and breed.’
‘No feedback?’ asked Grey.
‘That’s right,’ said Red. ‘If it’s cold, the ones with the longest fur would live and breed; the short-haired ones would die out. Instead of us inventing the ecology, it would invent itself.’
‘That seems unnecessarily cruel,’ said Black. ‘It wouldn’t be very efficient; there’d be a lot of wastage.’
Red shrugged again.
‘And who knows what sort of creatures would develop?’ said White. ‘It would all be so unpredictable.’
‘I think that’s Red’s point,’ said Black.
‘I want squiggly things with eight legs that live in the water,’ said White. ‘Even if they’re different from all the other animals.’
‘Next item,’ said Black, ignoring her. ‘What about the humans? I assume they’ll be cookie-cutter, standard-pattern types?’ He raised an eyebrow, or would have if he’d had…
‘How about we also introduce a little variety into the human species?’ said Red. ‘We could have different types living on the various solid plates.’
‘What d’you mean, “different types”?’ asked Grey. ‘Different numbers of arms and legs? More than one head?’
‘I don’t know, maybe just varying sizes and colours, that sort of thing,’ said Red.
‘If you let them change slightly every generation, like the animals,’ suggested White, ‘then they would slowly diversify, and not look the same on each of the rock plates. They might even develop individual languages and not be able to understand one another. That could lead to all sorts of fun,’ she chuckled.
Black shuddered. ‘Next item, “Religion”. I’ll hazard a guess that you don’t want the usual one imposed on them?’
‘If we keep out of sight, they’ll have to make their own interpretations of the metaphysical,’ said Red.
‘I was being sarcastic,’ said Black. ‘I didn’t expect you to take me seriously.’
‘Different religions on different plates, how funny would that be?’ laughed White. ‘I can’t wait to see what they’d come up with. This definitely gets my vote.’
‘Are you seriously saying we shouldn’t reveal ourselves?’ asked Grey, shocked. ‘They might think they just developed naturally without our intervention.’
‘I doubt that,’ said Red. ‘It doesn’t really make sense, does it? And they do have rudimentary intelligence.’
‘If we don’t reveal ourselves to them, they won’t know about the Eternal Realm,’ said Grey. ‘They’ll live their lives not knowing what lies after. They might even think there was nothing. How would they cope with that? Surely they’d all go mad?’
‘It’ll toughen them up,’ said Red. ‘And they’ll appreciate it all the more when they wake up after they’ve died.’
‘As a matter of interest, how do you propose they travel to the Eternal Realm when their lives are over?’ asked Black.
‘Perhaps we should just let them wear out, die, and decompose,’ said Red.
‘Like the animals?’ asked Grey. ‘That would be terrible. No Rapture at the end of the cycle, just ignominious decrepitude. It hardly seems fair.’
‘Their human essence can travel to the Eternal Realm without the encumbrance of corporeality. Then they can take charge of their new and perfect bodies when they arrive, like all the rest,’ said Red. ‘It’ll just be a bit more of a surprise for them.’
‘That might be a step too far for the sages on the committee,’ said Black. ‘We may have to hold back on that one and let them be assumed into the Eternal Realm at the peak of their abilities, like in the other universes.’
‘But that would spoil everything,’ said Red. ‘The whole point about them making up their own religions is the basic uncertainty at the root of them all. None of them will be able to prove they’re right. Watching them will be so entertaining.’
‘Mmm,’ said Black as he considered the ramifications.
‘This is going to cause us so much trouble,’ said Grey, who could see that Black was wavering. ‘We’ll fail and have to do another project. We’ll have wasted so much time.’ He would have shaken his head if …
‘This will never get past the faculty, and even if it does, the dean will never allow it,’ said Black.
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