Meeting My Maker

He was quite buff, God. I got a glimpse of his lats through the side of his toga thingy. His hair and beard were neat white waves, and his brow was stern.

I couldn't believe God himself was showing me round, and I said as much, with lots of embrassed stammering.

He fixed his steely gaze on me, and clapped me on the shoulder with a broad hand.

"We believe in the personal touch up here," he said. "But if it makes you feel any better, keep in mind I'm an all-powerful being. There are copies of me doing the Welcome work, I've got a team of me on Prayers, and there's another one of me doing the other general Godding."

"Really?" I was fascinated by this.

"Mhm," he said, his voice rich and golden. "When we get bored, we rotate. But it's all me, you understand? We are all aspects of me."

I nodded. I did understand, as it happens. Dying broadens your mind something fierce.

"So," he said, after a short pause. "An atheist, eh? Guess this was a bit of a shock, am I right?"

"It was a bit," I said. "Should I even be here? I hate to talk myself out of a good gig, but isn't there, oh, I don't know, a special circle in hell for people like me?"

He laughed, a proper belly laugh, holding his left bicep and tipping his head back.

"Good Me, no," he said, wiping tears from his eyes and still chortling. "Not a bit of it! We get loads of atheists up here. Thing is, quite a lot of you just do good things and try to be decent for the sake of it. That's actually more likely to get you in than doing the right thing to get in here, or to curry favour with me."

"I see," I said. "Amazing really, because the writing down there says we can only get in by, you know, worshipping you."

He waved a hand dismissively.

"I didn't write any of that," he said. "Ignoring it was the best thing you could have done."

"The neat thing about you being an atheist," he said, a conspiratorial quirk to his slight crow's feet, "I can show you all the different Paradises. Some of them are quite cool. You can even try them out, if you want."

This did sound quite appealing, but God had already moved on to another topic. Religion, it turned out, wasn't one of his favourites.

"Come on," he said, "Come and have a look at my species prototypes. This is the best thing up here, I swear to Me."

I followed him into what looked like a grand museum, with tall stone pillars sandwiching the front door.

"You're not scared of snakes, are you?" He hesitated in the doorway.

"Not at all," I said.

"Good," he nodded decisively. "The first hall is basically all snakes. Or as I like to call them-" he grinned a wide, white grin, "Nope Ropes."

Sure enough, this is what was engraved on the large plaque at the entrance.

HALL OF NOPE ROPES

"Funny really," God murmured, "All that guff in the actual bible, and some dork on Twitter gets this bit right quite by accident."

He showed me the various species, some of them still with legs. "These are very early prototypes, you see," he explained.

"Ah," he said, his eyes lighting up. "Come and look at this. I was pretty pleased with that one. I called it Dog. Excellent companion, intelligent, loyal, funny, brave... Not a bad conversationalist either, but no filter at all, unfortunately."

I did a double take, and the prototype ambled to the front of his spacious kennel.

"'Ello," he said.

"Umm... Hi." I wasn't sure what to say.

"Any chance of a walk, Boss?" the dog asked with a hopeful whine. He paddled his front paws in anticipation.

"Give me five minutes, Stanley, ok?"

Stanley tilted his head. "Is that a You five minutes, or a Me five minutes?" he asked.

God turned to me and sighed. "There's a reason I took away the ability to talk. Always wanting something, always asking questions, criticising... And honest? OH, Stanley is honest as the day is long, and the days are very long up here, by the way. Honest to the point of snark, is our Stanley." He stroked his beard thoughtfully, and continued, "The talking thing really clashed with what I thought of as his primary directive. There's no way you'd have been friends with him if you could hear what he was thinking all the time."

"Ummm," I said again. "I'd love to go for a walk with you and a talking dog, actually. If that's ok."

"Really?" God smiled. "Let's do it, then."

It was a very pleasant afternoon. The weather is always nice in the afterlife. Stanley didn't want to go to the dog park. It was very crowded, given that absolutely all dogs went there. There were plenty of beautiful grounds to explore, side by side. I almost didn't want to ruin it by asking about the Holocaust, or cancer.

I watched Stanley gambolling about on the grass, and thought of how God had taken away his ability to speak, because he didn't like what Dog had to say.

Maybe I'll ask him about childhood leukaemia tomorrow.