DEUTERONOMY

There might be gods somewhere ... who can tell? Maybe gods with inhuman genitals and too much power...

“Look at them,” squeaked Zimba, Captain in the Galactic Imperial Reserves, and proud of his stripes. He had four of them, emblazoned, as was the Imperial fashion, across his middle crotch, and every time he scratched his testicles a feeling of intense pride surged through him.

“What about them?” asked Zelda, his female companion and love of his life. She might have been a mere Corporal, but his heart lurched every time he saw her. Theirs was a special relationship and he treasured it. So did she.

“The way they know, they absolutely know, that they are plundering their planet, pillaging it of everything with any actual value, and I made it for them in the first place. Listen to them on their crude broadcasts: moaning about storms and gales and hurricanes and all the natural and inevitable consequences of climate change caused by them and them alone, yet continuing in their filthy old ways, demanding more and more energy as if it was a right! They sicken me: a people lost in space with a cause to fight, yet they can't see it!”

“What cause?” asked Zelda, holding his by three hands and squeezing an excessive number of fingers.

“The future!” declared Zimba. “They are weeping for the future and doing nothing about their tears! They tell each other that they must stop doing this or that - burning the few fossil fuels that remain to them, using too much energy needlessly, hurtling about the countryside in gas-guzzling vehicles … I mean, they still use the internal combustion engine, for goodness' sake! Can you imagine anything more imbecilic and childish than that!”

“They probably don't know any better,” suggested Zelda, exposing one of her breasts for him to examine minutely. He scratched it with unbelievable gentility and winked at her.

“That's really, really pretty,” sighed Zimba. “But back to the people down below: they sicken me, the way their simple broadcasts go on and on about fracking and mining and nuclear energy and wind farms - and we all know the consequences of going down that road - when the solution is at hand!”

“The solution, Zimba?”

“Yes. They must stop complaining. They must stop charging about like maniacs. They must recognise reality. In short, they must stop doing everything they are doing - and start praying.”

“To you, Zimba?”

He scratched his four stripes and sighed as a surge of physical pleasure washed through him.

“To me,” he whispered. “Like they always should.”

“You're playing with yourself again,” pointed out Zelda. “It's not becoming in a member of the Galactic Imperial Reserves!”

"I'm sorry,” he said contritely. “It's just that I can't help feeling sorry for them."

“And sympathy makes you scratch your stripes,” she smiled. “I dared say if I had some stripes I'd be scratching them all the time, but I'm a mere Corporal.”

“And you're female,” he pointed out. “Lovely and female!”

“So this praying you want them to do?”

“Yes. I want them to fill those vast waste-of-time cathedrals they've built, huddle inside them in their thousands, and lift their voices and beg for forgiveness. Only if they really, truly mean it will it work on me.”

“Now you're sounding like a God!”

“That's because I am,” hissed Zimba. “You weren't around when I made the place, were you? I had another wench then, and all I can say is you've got much better mammaries than she, bless her, had! She was a bit on the scrawny side, but I sort of loved her. The apple in the garden was her idea. The tart! But it was a good game while it lasted. Then came the war and I was called back to Galactic Central before I could set them on a straight path.”

“You made quite a name for yourself,” sighed Zelda. “I remember the way you posed on that platform with all the Zogs bowing and scraping to you, and calling you by all sorts of hyperbolic names!”

“Bless them,” sighed Zimba. “But they did my ego a lot of good at a time when I was feeling low. Zingo had died, blown to smithereens in front of my eyes. I blamed myself, though in truth there was little I could have done in the face of a neutron bomb The war was a bad thing, and there mustn't be another or it might be the end of everything. That supernova it set off, the one that shone so brightly in the sky the little people down on that planet thought it was a sign of some great king being born … that scared the s**t out of me, all right!”

“They got their king, though.”

“Some king! Nothing but a damned hippie, and it took a heck of a long time for word of mouth to turn him into any kind of posthumous king! But that didn't matter, only they started talking of him as if he was my son!”

Zelda giggled. “As if you'd have a son with only two legs,” she said.

“Or only one set of balls,” he grinned.

“Anyway, this place with all the waste and pollution … what about it?”

He looked serious for a moment. “There are some good souls down there,” he murmured, wistfully, “but there can only be one answer. I made the place and I guess I must unmake it.”

“That sounds a bit harsh,” suggested Zelda. “What about just teaching them a lesson? They're not stupid, you know.”

“They are, or it wouldn't have come to this,” Zimba said, trying to convince himself as well as her. “I tried it with that flood way back, but that didn't work.”

“So what are you going to do?” she asked, knowing the answer full well.

“This,” replied Zimba, and he pressed a button on the console in front of him.

There was a momentary pause and then the planet slowly spinning below them burst into an instant's blaze of superheated energy before disappearing completely, leaving a space in the vacuum where, one day, Zimba thought he might try creating something a little better.

Author's Note

Please don't take it too seriously...!