Life Coaching for Analog Deities

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In the beginning, there was light.
A really, really bright light.
And she didn’t appreciate it in the slightest.
“Aim that damn thing somewhere else.” She shielded her eyes from the glare, but it came from every direction. It shone through her hand; she could see the bones outlined within the flesh. Or maybe her hand itself radiated…
Nope. Didn’t like that thought one bit.
“One moment, please.” A disembodied voice—or perhaps bodied but invisible in the pervasive dazzle—called out. Deep, reassuring, and wholly asexual. Also, loud enough that she struggled to cover her ears and her eyes at the same time.
“A bit softer, too,” she yelled to be heard over the echoes that reverberated off…something terribly big—like multiple magnitudes bigger than a sports stadium, if sports stadiums had existed yet.
“Sorry,” the voice dropped by half in volume and did its best to sound contrite in a low bellow. “Calibrating.”
A whisper tickled against her inner ear, rising as if from a deep pool.
“…’twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.” Rising fast. “All mimsy—”
“Stop!” This time she fully abandoned visual senses to protect her aural ones. “Go back to about toves.”
“Is this better?”
“Much,” she shifted her hands back to protecting her eyes. And then covered them with her forearm instead. Could still see her radius, ulna, and the gap between them. “And what’s a tove?”
“We are, um, not sure. Something like a badger, a bit of lizard, and, er, a corkscrew, or so we will be told. Though the slithy attribution remains, if possible, even less clear.”
“Will be told? You’re both uninformative and mixing your tenses. Can you do something about the light?” The glare now only partially revealed the two bones in her forearm through her closed eyelids.
“That will take a moment. Big Bang propagation proceeding as planned, but there is only so much you can do when creating a universe with a built-in speed-of-light limitation.”
Patience wasn’t her long suit, but she’d try it on for the moment, especially as she apparently had little say in the matter.
“It really is quite limiting, you know,” the voice boomed sonorously.
Wasn’t her long suit?
“This was not anticipated during the design meetings.”
And how did she know what her long suit was? Or that there was such a thing? Had she been playing bridge or pinochle? It felt as if she were more of a poker gal—no long suits there—except she wasn’t sure what poker might be either. She was…
Nothing came readily to mind.
“Um, Voice? Who am I?”
“We don’t know yet.” The voice softened to a brillig whisper. As if it were trying to hide something behind the rolling thunder of the creation of a universe.

Initial Publication: 2 May 2026
Print pages: 282