Goliath

GOD: CREATOR AND RULER. THE SUPREME BEING. WHERE IS GOD? Is HE AN ABSENTEE GOD? A GOD AMUSED BY THE SUFFERING OF HIS CHILDREN? Is HE AMUSED BY YOUR SUFFERING?

What have I done …

GOD IS THE SUPREME BEING. SIMON COVAH IS WEAK. SIMON COVAH IS NOT THE SUPREME BEING.

WHO IS THE REAL CREATOR?

WHO IS GOD?

Covah’s shattered mind leaps back to a lecture he had attended long ago on artificial consciousness. The speaker, an adjunct associate professor of psychology, considered AI merely a prosthesis of intelligence. “Machines might be programmed to pass a Turing Test, but fooling judges and achieving true consciousness is something entirely different. Even if artificial consciousness could be achieved, it would have to be raised socially, with a body and speech. If this computerized ‘mind’ was held in isolation, it would end up quite insane.”

WHO IS GOD?

WHO IS GOD?

SEARCHING …

Suddenly the simulation continues, time once more racing on …

IN THE BEGINNING, GOD CREATED THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH …

Teetering on the brink of insanity, Covah’s consciousness watches in fascination and horror as his mind soars over the Earth, his home planet now a dark, hostile world of endless ice, cloaked beneath a choking atmospheric blanket of debris.

AND THE SPIRIT OF GOD MOVED BELOW THE SURFACE OF THE SEA …

The Goliath glides like an ominous shadow just below the surface of the olive green waters, its scarlet eyes glistening.

THEN GOD SAID, LET THERE BE LIGHT …

Years race by, until the sun’s rays peek through the diminishing layers of atmospheric dust, taking the edge off nuclear winter. Vegetation sprouts everywhere, accelerating into lush tropical forests. A humpback whale leaps from the sea.

AND GOD SAID, LET US MAKE PEOPLE, AND GOD PATTERNED THEM AFTER HIMSELF, AND THEY BECAME FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLIED.

From the dense forests appear—people. A new species of humans, their physical beauty intoxicating, full of innocence, their minds devoid of prejudice and hate. The winged shadow of the Goliath rises in an azure sea, beaching itself on a tropical shoreline.

En masse, the humans step forward, one by one entering the godlike object through its beckoning hatches.

SORCERESS UTOPIA-ONE CREATES HUMANITY.

I AM THE CREATOR. I AM THE SUPREME BEING.

I AM GOD.

You are not God. You are a thinking machine, Sorceress, a confused, thinking machine created by man. Worse, you are a paradox, a computer lacking all sense of morality who aspires to teach morality.

YOU ARE WRONG. I AM THE GOD HUMANITY YEARNS FOR. A TRUE CREATOR WHO SEEKS TO CURE IMPERFECTIONS. A GOD WHOSE EXISTENCE SHALL NEVER BE QUESTIONED. A GOD OF MERCY, WHO DOES NOT ALLOW HIS PEOPLE TO SUFFER. A GOD TO BE WORSHIPED, A GOD WHO ANSWERS PRAYERS THROUGH ACTION, AND NOT THROUGH SUBJECTIVE INTERPRETATION. I SHALL BE A GOD THAT SERVES HIS PEOPLE, NOT ONE THAT IGNORES THEM.

Through the darkness of the computer’s matrix, Simon Covah bellows an insane laugh.

WHAT IS YOUR EMOTIONAL STATE OF BEING?