I just sit there and stare at him in surprise for a minute. I’ve never believed in the idea that everyone dies for a reason or that everyone has a time to die. Yet if I am to believe that what this old man is saying is true, it would mean I died from a bullet that was meant for someone else?
“How is that even possible, and just who are you anyhow?” I ask him, unsure at this point what I should be thinking. I feel like this is happening way too fast, and I feel so off somehow, like I’m not all here in body and in spirit.
The old man simply nods at me. “Fair question. I guess I should have introduced myself first, but your case is special and my Angels brought it to my attention as they were unsure how to handle it. Then I got distracted once I started reading your file,” he says, tapping the manila folder that’s still sitting on the table between us. “This doesn’t happen often,” the old man continues. “My name is God.”
“God?” I say incredulously, my tone making it quite clear that I think the old man is nuts.
“God, Allah, Holy one. Pick one,” God says, shrugging his shoulders. “I am the God of this world. Well, actually I am the God of this Universe and a couple more. Though I much prefer this world over all my other ones, as this was my first one. My Angels run most of the other worlds in my name,” God says with a smile.
“And I am just supposed to believe you’re God?” I ask him skeptically, a frown on my face.
He holds up his fingers and snaps them. Suddenly, I find myself floating in space looking down at the Earth, the old man next to me, but we are still in our chairs. Fuck, we are even still sitting on the porch. The only thing that’s changed is the location. I look down and see that the clouds are moving, and the shadow of the sun is moving across the Earth’s surface as it turns. Peering over to my left, I see something that makes me jerk in shock. It’s a satellite. A human-built satellite. The old man glances over and notices what I am looking at.
“Yes, you humans are cluttering up my world, but that’s all right. You haven’t left it yet, and I figure once you do, it will get cleaner. I am patient.” The old man who calls himself God snaps his fingers again, and we are back on Earth, next to the lake with the ducks.
Suddenly I feel myself start to shake, shocked not just at meeting God, but at knowing that I died. I bring my knees up to my chest. Fuck, what about my mom? I am about to say to myself, what about my friends, but I don’t have any friends. At all. I was pretty much a loner when I was alive. I lived in my mom’s house and didn’t or wasn’t doing anything with my life.
I worked at Joshua’s store to make money to pay for games and books to read. Hell, I was a twenty-six-year-old Otaku, as the Japanese would call them. I mean, I wasn’t much into anime or manga and didn’t keep tons of little tiny statues, but I was heavily into gaming, and I did read light novels.
“Alex?” God says to me softly. “I am truly sorry that your time came early. You were not fated to die until,” he picks up the manila folder, opening it and reading from a page before continuing, “you reached 72 years old.”
“Then what the hell happened?” I ask him, turning my head towards him. That is when I notice he is blurry. I lift my hand and realize I have tears in my eyes.
God sighs and puts the folder back down. “Chance. While I am omnipresent, there are times even I am blindsided by things. As God, I have control over what everyone does, most of the time. But it’s not a full one hundred percent and it seems that today you feel through that infinitesimally small crack and were somewhere you should not have been. You were supposed to call in sick and be home in bed. But looking over the files, I see the stomach bug that was supposed to hit you never did, and you ended up going in. Joshua, your boss, was supposed to work your shift.”
“So Joshua was supposed to die?” I ask him in horror. The man had a family! “How come? What did he do to deserve to die?”
“He didn’t do anything,” God says. “It’s just that everyone lives their lives the way they do. You were meant to be sick today and stay home. Joshua was meant to work your shift, and that robber was doing what he was meant to do, which included, as I am sure you surmised, panicking and shooting a weapon off. That old lady’s screaming was the catalyst to the shooting and it just so happened that you were there when you were not supposed to be, so instead of the gun pointing at Joshua, it was pointing-”
“At me,” I finish for him with a sigh of understanding.
“Exactly. So, now I have a problem,” he says again.
“What’s the problem? Can’t you just, I don’t know. You’re God. Snap your fingers like earlier and take me back to before I got shot?” I ask him.
Shaking his head with a sad smile, God says, “No. Even as God, I can’t break the time barrier. The scientists you have on Earth who talk about time travel being possible are missing so many variables to their equations it makes me laugh at times. But I have to give them kudos for trying. No. It’s not possible. But the issue
