The Neglectful Watchmaker
by E. Kimball
Other TTTV Stories by E. Kimball
E. Kimball still has nothing to promote, except his other story published on Tall Tale TV which was wonderfully brought to life. He likes telling stories that make people laugh at the shared pain of the human experience. Just because we don’t get God’s joke, doesn’t mean it isn’t funny.
“I admit, the beach is nice.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
“Don’t get cocky, I just said it’s nice.”
“Oh, but think about the potential of a beach like this, completely untouched and unspoiled.”
“Potential? Perhaps- Wait, what’s that?”
“What’s what? I don’t see anything.”
“This! This right here! Tell me what this is.”
“Um… It kind of resembles a pocket watch.”
“It resembles a pocket watch, because, it, is, a pocket watch. It’s a pocket watch on this ‘completely untouched and unspoiled’ beach of yours.”
“Not necessarily.”
“This is not necessarily a pocket watch? Or you lied to me and this is not necessarily a virgin world? Because I agree with the second interpretation.”
“Look, I admit that this object does, superficially, resemble a pocket watch-”
“It’s a silver alloy disk with a latched hinge that opens up to reveal numbers and twin hands pointing at those numbers. How, by any measure of watchness, is it not a pocket watch?”
“Um… it’s probably just an optical illusion, a trick of the light. Have you noticed how nice the light is here? Look at that sun. Yellow. That’s pretty neat, right? Atmospheric scattering, that’s the trick of it.
“Unless the sun dropped its pocket watch on this beach. I don’t care.”
“It might have?”
“…”
“Well, not the sun exactly. But, you know, things like the sun. That watch-like object could have been shaped by natural forces.”
“Natural forces?”
“Yes, you know, the windblown sand and the action of the waves shaping it over the millennia, maybe a stray lightning strike, that sort of thing.”
“It’s ticking”
“Amazing that we arrived just in time to witness that watch like thing start to tick. Probably a one in a million chance.”
“…”
“Come on, think about it, what’s more likely? That over millions of years random events came together to create a formation that resembles a pocket watch? Or the improbable circumstance that that watch has some unobserved maker?”
“…”
“I mean, mathematically, the random formation of a ticking pocket watch is inevitable given the scope of time and the number of worlds that exist.”
“…”
“Ok, I admit it’s a little unlikely that this is the naturally occurring pocket watch that, I maintain, must exist somewhere. But even if this isn’t that natural pocket watch, and it does happen to have a maker, perhaps that maker spontaneously gained the intellect to make it, through random mutation?”
“Random mutation?”
“Yeah.”
“And this spontaneous mutant super genius just up and decided to make a pocket watch? Why? So that they’d remember to keep their twelve o’clock butt sniffing appointment with the other non-verbal dung flinging animals of their pack?”
“Well, perhaps there are a whole bunch of mutants… with a concept of time, living together.”
“Now you’re being ridiculous. Biological species cannot independently develop intelligence. It’s too energy intensive. The small smart ones always get eaten by the bigger dumber ones with more teeth. That’s a fundamental law of evolution.”
“So, what? I just created a people and then forgot about it?”
“That would be my read on the situation. Yes.”
“I will have you know I am a very benevolent and caring God, and I look after all my children.”
“What about the humans?”
“The what?”
“The humans, you were going on about them a while back. Some sort of hairless, tailless thing. Sounded ridiculous to me. I mean how would they express emotions without fur?”
“Oh, right, them. They expressed emotions by wrinkling their faces.”
“Ugh, that sounds repulsive.”
“It was, a little… Ok it was really repulsive. But the point is, they were mostly arboreal. They’d never leave the safety of the trees to go to an exposed beach. So, it’s not them.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I am. I’m so sure, that we don’t need to talk about the humans any further.”
“I agree. We don’t need to talk about them, because you’re going to show them to me. Take me to the human world to prove that this isn’t it.”
“Now?”
“Yes, right now, take me to your bald, face wrinkling things.”
“But… You see… I don’t want to gross you out.”
“Do you remember where you put them, yes or no?”
“Um… not precisely. I mean, I have a general idea… I think… I just haven’t been there in a while.”
“You haven’t been there? You, the benevolent and caring God?”
“They didn’t work out, ok? It wasn’t just the face thing, it was the way they moved, and don’t get me started on how they used sounds to communicate. When a whole bunch of them got together it was like a room full of deflating balloons. They used to pray to me that way, getting together and squeaking their little hearts out. It was awful. I was going to get back to them, eventually, honest. But this can’t be their work. When I last checked, they were nowhere near smart enough to accomplish anything like fine clockworks. Honestly, getting them to hit flint rocks together to make anything other than pulverized flint was a struggle with them.”
“And when was that? The last time you checked?”
“When did I tell you about them?”
“About fifty thousand years ago.”
“Then… I suppose… The last time I checked in on them was… generally… about fifty thousand years ago.”
“Oh, for our sake! Fifty thousand years! You created intelligent life and then just abandoned it for fifty thousand years? They’ve probably gone all atheist by this point.”
“Alright, alright, fine. Let’s just forget about this world. No need to dwell on it, or the humans. Particularly not the humans. Let’s just move on. Oh, I know, I have a world with islands floating in the air that doesn’t have any intelligent life on it anymore.”
“Anymore?”
“Well… They kept falling off the islands. I thought giving them intelligence would fix the problem, but it kind of made it worse.”
“Yeah, hard pass on the terminal velocity death trap world. To be honest, I am kind of partial to this one. You did a solid job on the fundamental laws of physics. I don’t know why you based everything on one over one thirty-seven but it seems to work.”
“Oh, that’s a joke. Like; I’m one for the one at thirty-seven!”
“You’re a child. Would three dimensional entities even get that?”
“No, I just figured I could watch them do quantum mechanics calculations and laugh. But you’re interested in this world? In the humans?”
“The humans? Oh, good us no! Species that have gone atheist are just a nightmare to deal with. You introduce yourself as their God, do a few standard miracles, water to wine, curing the blind, etc., and all they do is yell, ‘You hid it up your sleeve,’ ‘It’s a mirror trick,’ ‘Why is there suffering in the world?’ No, the humans are the reason you’re going to give me a discount.”
“Wait, what are you going to do with the humans then? I mean repulsive or not, they’re still my children. I don’t want to do anything drastic to them… again.”
“Again?”
“I was having a bad day. And they just kept on squeaking at me about death. See, I was making some last-minute tweaks, and you know how entropy was all the rage back then. Well, they didn’t like it. I figured it was easier to clean them out with a flood and start over…
“…Turns out being furless made them really good at swimming.”
“Well don’t worry about that, I’m not going to do anything to your… Beloved? Humans. I won’t have to. If they’ve advanced to the point of creating and needing timekeeping devices, they’re probably pretty close to mastering the atom. After that… well the problem kind of takes care of itself. And I’ve been thinking about trying something out with cockroaches.”
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