A
Deists Dream

The Universe was not, as some would believe, a master
stroke of engineering from some divine being. It was a fluke: a one in an
infinitesimal number chance against it happening. It made the chances of
finding you're holding the winning the lottery whilst being charged by a herd
of polka-dotted elephants in your high street, seem pretty big. And then
there's life, sentient living breathing rutting life.  You think that
there's life on your cheese after it's been left in the fridge to have the
appearance ofe a hairy scrotum attached to a sweaty rugby player. Nope that's
just mold, absolutely no chance of anything interesting happening there.

          It
basically takes, as astrophysicists and evolutionists will tell you, a lot more
luck than that.

          Tuesday
afternoon Dave is bored, he's sitting through another lecture on the history of
someone or other who drew, painted or designed something really amazing. With an
A4 pad of paper on his lap and a 2B pencil in his hand he starts to doodle. The
lines flowing, like a melting glacier etching their way into the papery fibers
coating the micro-filaments with gray powdery soot. By the end of the lecture,
the assorted lines and shapes were just random patterns: swirls and oblique
angles mostly, nothing to write home about. He tore the paper from the pad and scrunched
it up, pushing it deep inside his jacket pocket before getting on with the rest
of his day.

          By lunch
the following day, he'd all but forgotten about the screwed up bit of paper, but,
as he pulls his coat on and fumbles around in the pockets looking for his keys,
his fingers run across the sharp edges of the paper ball. He pulls it out and
has a look, before scrunching it back up and, being too lazy to find a bin,
putting it back. The freezing air from the previous night dampened the fibers
of his woolen great-coat, leaving his pocket slightly damp and smelling like a musty
wet dog. He drags it on over a mangy jumper and torn pair of jeans before
shuffling his feet inside a pair of desert boots and slamming the door behind
him and heading to another lecture. It's raining;
the harsh Arctic wind drives it hard into his face singing as it does so. He
wipes the spray from his eyes, hoping that his eyelashes will stay clear enough
for long enough to cross the road. They don't, and, as he crosses the road, he
finds himself flying through the air before landing on the cold wet tarmac. Briefly,
he hears noises around him and then silence.

          He never
made it to his class, the next thing he remembers is waking in a strange bed,
and, except for the beeping machines complete silence. He tries to move,
everything aches. He sees his clothes in the corner of the room. A nurse comes
in, he asks for his clothes. The black jeans are torn, from the grit and the
nurses' scissors, the coat survives, it had been through worse than this in its
life, and in the pocket was the soggy bit of paper. The wet road has soaked
through the pocket and now it was disintegrating in his hand. He wasn’t sure
why, but he decided to keep it, he unfurled it and lay it on his bedside table
to dry.

          Unknown
to him, the water, the cold and collision with a car created the perfect storm
and a universe was created. The people of this universe created Gods,
eventually settling, more or less, on a single one. They believed that it would
look after them and answer their prayers.     

          As time passed, he kept hold of
that piece of paper, never knowing why. It followed him as the young man became
a young father who became a middle aged parent eventually becoming a
grandfather an old man. Still unaware of the lives he kick-started all those
years ago, he dies.