In the Beginning... okay, stop right there. There wasn't a beginning. Um... In the Always Was, Don't Ask Me How, there wasn't much of anything. In fact, the only thing there was was a vague understanding that there was nothing. And things stayed like this for longer than can be comprehended by anyone. Then suddenly, the Understanding That There Was Nothing realized that there was an Understanding, and that surely that was something more than nothing. Now that the Understanding had these brand new thoughts, it occurred to the Understanding that there might be no limits on how much could be understood, other than those limits it placed on itself. Still, there wasn't much else around to understand.

And so unfathomably more time passed. Then suddenly the Understanding wondered if it mightn't be able to create something to understand. It figured the only raw material to build with was understanding itself. So it thought and thought. It decided to let its imagination run free and wild, stream of consciousness style. And any stray thoughts that came into its head... no, not its head, but any stray thoughts that... well, that just came... suddenly came into being.

The Understanding couldn't see any of it. Suddenly it understood why and thought, "Aha, what I need here is some light." Suddenly there were lots of relatively little balls of light scattered about. The Understanding would have preferred one really big ball of light instead of uncountable smaller ones scattered about, but it hadn't specified that, not having realized specifically what it wanted until it saw the scattered lights. But as it happened, and not entirely by coincidence, the lights were all hung rather near the things the Understanding wanted to see anyway. So it left them as they were.

It spent uncountably more time (though some would put it on the order of 13-18 billion years) exploring and understanding all its imagination had created. It was all very interesting. It used its expanded understanding to create for itself a place removed from the first universe, a place made of all the best things in all the worlds its free imagination had created. Then it moved into this second universe, which it called Heaven, and was very happy.

For a long time. Then eventually it decided it was tired of calling itself the Understanding all the time. It decided to give itself a second name, which it called the Creator. Not long after that it occurred to the Creator that it was still the only thing in either universe that thought. It decided to create other thinking beings like itself. First it made three other beings, who took to calling themselves angels. The angels lived with the Creator in Heaven.

The angels chose names for themselves: Michael, Gabriel, and Lucifer. Lucifer, after a great time, came to secretly wonder why the Creator must always be the most powerful being in the universes. Lucifer decided it would try to discover whether it was possible to become the most powerful being. It knew it would need help, however. First of all, the basic nature of things would have to be changed somewhat. As it was, the Creator and the angels were merely understanding. Lucifer knew you couldn't easily destroy or imprison understanding. So it suggested to the Creator the idea of creating bodies for them all, which might better enjoy all the worlds had to offer, more than mere understanding could enjoy it. The Creator was surprised it had never thought of that itself. It did so straight away. It made bodies which might best enjoy the universes and all they had to offer.

Things continued in this new fashion for a long time. Then Lucifer made another suggestion. He suggested making more angels. The Creator decided to let the others have a go at it for themselves. Each of them made lots of other angels, which they called Seraphim. The first three angels took to calling themselves Arch Angels. This worked out amazingly well, and all the angels in Heaven were happy for a long time.

"Still," said Lucifer one day, "there is no one enjoying the First Universe." The Creator decided to work with the Arch Angels on designing the beings to put out on the worlds of the First Universe. They called these beings on all the worlds People. They made all the people's bodies as similar to their own as possible, but also tried to make them suited particularly to whatever world they were put on, so that some worlds would have slightly different sorts of people. Of course, they also tried to make as much diversity as possible on any one world. "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, I always say," said the Creator.

For a time, the Creator visited these people on their various worlds, as did some of the angels from time to time. It was all very nice. But one day, Lucifer felt he was ready to make his move. He had created his seraphim in such a way that they would be loyal to him, if ever there was question as to who to be loyal to. None of them ever realized this, for Lucifer never said nor did anything to suggest the possibility of dissent in Heaven. Later, when the arch angels and Creator were working on people, Lucifer had included in them certain characteristics which might be used to his advantage.

When he made his move, the Creator and angels and people were all surprised nearly beyond belief. It was a terrible battle, but ultimately the Creator won. He decided to create a Third Universe, apart from the first two, made of the worst things about all the worlds of the First Universe. He called the place Hell, and imprisoned Lucifer and his followers there, hoping some day they would be reformed, and could then be released.

Meanwhile, the Creator now realized that people had in them both innate goodness and innate evil. And now the people understood that too. So the Creator made their bodies and minds less perfect, less dangerous. And he began visiting them less often.

But Lucifer's experiment (for that's all it really was, he didn't really care for power, he just wanted to know, academically, if it was possible to take over) wasn't over. The first Great Battle had been lost, but the War went on. He still vied for control of the people of the First Universe. A great deal of the history of that universe was spent in his helping to make people more powerful than what they had been reduced to. It was a very slow process, to the now short-lived people, but relatively little time at all to angels like Lucifer. He was always helping them advance in technology and medicine and philosophy and politics and practically anything else the people thought up to amuse themselves with during their little lives. He even dabbled in religion. Many religions were invented by people entirely or by Lucifer, or by the Creator, or somehow made of mixtures of various other religions. Eventually it got so there was no one religion on any world which was entirely accurate. All this confusion only made things better for Lucifer's plans.

The Creator made numerous attempts to set things straight, but never with complete success. One of his best attempts was the Flood. He made it rain rather heavily for a fortnight, on each of the worlds. He told people he could keep it up until they came to understand the true origins of their worlds. Very few people every really understood, or believed, but a few did on each world. On some worlds, people just tried making big boats or other forms of shelter to wait out the rain. Finally, after two weeks of this, the Creator decided to just give up for now. And people were darn happy. Seemed to them it had been a lot longer time raining than it really had been.

Of course, not all the time was spent either by Lucifer or the Creator in thinking about or working on plans for battles. One day, the Creator realized he was the only being in the universes without a birthday, because he had always existed. He could have counted the creation of his body, but that's merely a shell, not him. No one is their shell. So he decided he would split himself in two distinct beings, and the new one would be him, and yet still a new being. He decided he might as well use this as another attempt to fix things up some in the First Universe, and so he was born as this new person, all at once on each world of the First Universe. And each world's version of the new being was the same, yet each shell was of the type of the beings on whatever world it was on.

This new being was known as the Son, and the Creator now took on a third name, the Father. The Son went by other names on the various worlds, however. He did all he could in the time he was on each world, but Lucifer was still working against him. Eventually he was killed on most of the worlds. The Father didn't much like this idea, so he decided to bring his Son's spirit back to life in Heaven. This was a new concept. He decided to use it for people now as well, even retroactively. He established certain criteria for who would go where when they died, based on any number of things. But the primary thing was accepting the teachings the Son had taught while on the worlds, and asking forgiveness for having been wrong about whatever each individual happened to be wrong about.

Still, one day the Son realized he missed the First Universe. He thought perhaps he'd do just as well to split into yet a third being. Not a living being as he had been when he was born, but a spirit. The Son had been fragmented as one being on each world; this third being, the Spirit, would be fragmented farther still, and live within any being on any world who had accepted his prior teachings.

None of this fixed things entirely, nor did they bring back the knowledge of the true origins of people and everything. But at least it fixed things up just about enough. Smaller battles continued for a long time between the forces of Lucifer and the forces of the Creator, but the majority of such battles were more or less won by the Creator.

Meanwhile, the Not-So-Accurate religions, even the ones the Creator supported as being Close Enough, continued as they were, content and unsuspecting in their inaccuracies. But eventually one person on each world was born who realized the truth, or at least realized that things couldn't quite be as his or her own religion made them out to be, and decided to write an explanation of things. The Creator thought, What the heck, I'll try channeling through them and let the truth come through in what they write. Maybe it won't be adopted as truth by most people, but at least it'll be out there.

At least one of the people who were doing this procrastinated AN AWFULLY LONG TIME, HAVEN'T YOU DAVE? Sorry, man, I've tried you know. YEAH WHATEVER THANKS KID, YOU'RE DOIN' OKAY REALLY YOU ARE. Thanks, God do you mind me calling you? TO BE EXPECTED I SUPPOSE. Okay, anyway, some of them never really got around to working out the whole thing, and finally the Creator decided to present them with an opportunity to do as they had always been meaning to do not only, but as an assignment in school or work or situations like that. And might I say how frightfully clever you are, sir? I KNOW, I KNOW... THANKS DAVE. Is it entirely right using teachers and employers and such like that, though? ANYTHING I DO IS RIGHT... MOSTLY... Of course, sir.

stuff I wrote