So… first, the Big Cheese said, “Someone turn on the damn lights.”

And we did.

And the light was kinda okay. I mean, how much do you really want out of a heavenly light that illuminates a whole lot of emptiness?

Apparently the Big Cheese reached that conclusion himself, cause then he put something in the middle of the vast darkness. He’s a showy kinda guy, so he made it explode, then looked back over his shoulder to make sure we appreciated the fireworks.

And we said, “Oooh. Aahhh.”

And it was.. well, something to look at with the light and the dark, but overall, no one was terribly impressed after the sparks were done shooting.

The Big Cheese coughed, apparently noticing something like that on his own. Which is good, cause you hate to be the guy that has to tell the boss his work isn’t all that impressive.

“Right!” he said, and we all nodded. And we waited.

And waited.

“Right!” he said again, and again, we all nodded. We’re awesome as yes men, always have been, probably always will be.

He clapped his hands briskly in front of him, and looked alarmed when a bunch of leftover sparks shot forth. “Well then… you know, boys, I’ve been working awfully hard with deciding to create the universe and everything. So I’ve decided to leave the whole life thing to Gabe and Mike. C’mon forward, boys.”

The lucky bastards, we all muttered, as they went to pick up the tools of the trade as it were. “Be sure you help ‘em out, guys, it’s a big responsibility getting all these little details right. Lots of species… and you all know this has to be done on time and on budget.” He gave Gabe and Mike a stern look to make sure his words sank in. “You’ll be alright though, there’s a good list of directions to follow.”

“So, right then… I’m off to go do what it is I do, which I’m sure I’ll figure out while you guys get that life thing going.” And just like that, the Big Cheese disappeared, going beyond the light and dark and everything else that he’d just created.

Mike looked at Gabe, who looked back at Mike.

“So.. what do we have to work with here?”

We gathered around as they opened the box. There was a sheet of instructions right on top, but no one could read them, so we shunted them off to one side.

Under that, though.. there were just more boxes. Thousands of them, all packed nice and neatly.

“Alright, we’re in charge here,” Gabe said, trying to sound like the Big Cheese. “Rafe, you take the first ten. Uriel, you’ve got the second ten, and so on and so on. Then just take them to a quiet corner and figure it out.”

“Yeah, good idea,” Mike piped up, the yes man yes manning us all to doom. “I mean, it’s just life, how hard can it be?”

By the time I got there, we were to the bottom of the box, and it turned out that there were just 5 left. They were pretty big, so I felt okay about not getting left out. I carried them over to my corner, and examined them closely.

The first one said ‘Immortality’ across the top, ‘use only for long term projects’ under that in smaller letters, and ‘brought to you by the finest mind at VoE’.

Surreptitiously, I looked around.

Rafe had all of his boxes open at once, and there were bits of crawling fleshy things moving towards each other that didn’t really seem to belong together. Over in Remy’s corner, the box said ‘Man’ and ‘some assembly required’.

I kicked the first box to one side. Just saving money on that budget, boss… cause none of this stuff looks like it should be immortal.

And wow, am I efficient or what? I’m already a fifth of the way through this job, and Mike’s still trying to jam wings onto that horse, I thought, and buffed my nails on my lapel.

The second box said ‘Foreknowledge’. Then, ‘use only for the enlightened’. I thought about that, rubbing my chin and trying to appear enlightened myself. “Hey, who’s got the dominant species again?”

“I do!” called Remy, as he jammed an ungainly collaboration of parts together. I gave it a long, considering look, and then looked at what Rafe was up to.

“Hey, those things have claws and teeth, right?”

“Yeah, tons of ‘em. I think all of them should end up with something like that,” Rafe said distractedly as he struggled to shove a whole lot of jagged teeth into a huge gaping mouth.

“Wait, man doesn’t have anything nearly as functional as that! Slide some of those parts over here, for man!” yelled Remy as he spied some of the weaponry set to go on Rafe’s projects.

“No way, no sharing parts!” Gabe had arrived on the scene, all authoritarian.

“But man doesn’t have a chance! Look at him… he’s all scrawny and fragile.” And when Remy held up the limp, wingless thing, we all kind of nodded, but Gabe held firm.

“Look there’s no point in doing this thing if we don’t go by the book.. err,” he said, casting one glance at the manual we’d tossed to one side. “Well, at least don’t go mixing up the parts!”

“Man,” we all said, shaking our heads. And the word, at that moment, became synonymous with ‘you’re screwed’.

On the other hand, that meant box two was out of the way, since clearly man was not going to live long enough to become enlightened at this rate.

The third box said ‘Peace’, and there was no descriptor. I couldn’t work without knowing more about it, and Mike and Gabe seemed to be really busy with this wine stuff that was in one of Uriel’s boxes, so it joined the other two.

The fourth box said ‘Time’, then ‘for a linear outlay of events’, and that seemed like a good idea, so I opened it, but it was empty. “Feh,” I said, then Uriel came and shared some of his wine and it was good.

So it took me awhile longer to look into the last box, which said ‘Pestilence’. Underneath that it said ‘for population control’.

Part of me thought that we didn’t have enough of a population to control yet, but the other part thought that we might someday, so just open the damn box and have done with it. After all, only using one out of five boxes was going to look like I wasn’t really working.

Besides, I needed to finish up so I could help Rafe with the animal problem. In the end we all had to pitch in on that one, and we wanted to go back to the instructions, but this thing Rafe kept calling a dragon set them on fire.

Apparently the Big Cheese didn’t read the directions either, cause when he got back, he was full of praise for all of life, and wasted no time taking the credit for it.

Gabe and Mike were kinda sore about that, but still managed to take whatever credit there was left to take.

As for the rest of us, we learned the universal truth. If work gets passed down far enough, no one really has to take any blame for the stuff that went wrong.

And it was good.