Book I: Genesis Revisited
Chapter 2: The Creation of Earth
I knew I took a risk to even proffer the idea of world creation, since I didn’t know if Zebub or It’s son were even capable of creating a physical planet. More importantly I also knew that if my bosses sensed they might fail, they would surely take out their wrath upon me for such poor counsel. Yet the gamble was worth the risk in my mind, and thankfully Zebub and Lucifer were game for the challenge.
Naturally there was a bit of a twist – for after considering my idea Zebub claimed the venture was too petty for It to bother with and instead pawned off the work to Lucifer and I. Before Lucifer could protest, the Evil One dissipated Its aura within our little section of the Void. It was clear to me that Zebub recused Itself because It was afraid of failure and didn’t want to risk the embarrassment of such a grand plan not working out, but I pretended not to notice and in truth this was exactly what I was hoping for since this allowed me to step further into the spotlight.
The first thing I had to do was to pump up Lucifer’s psyche since it was clear that Evil’s son wasn’t up to the task. Baby Steps was always the key with Lucifer so I pretended that he was in charge as I guided him through the steps of my plan.
“There’s a lot going on around here with all this water – it’s everywhere. I’d wager there’s something useful underneath it all.”
“How do we find out?” Lucifer was unsure.
“Let’s build upon Zebub’s great work and gather the waters together.”
“How…do….we…do….that?!?” Lucifer was growing angry, unsure of his own power.
“All that is required is for you to speak the words into existence, my lord.” I suggested – not really sure if it would work but confident that I could lend a hand behind the scenes if need be.
Lucifer did his best to sound confident, as he said, “Ah, er..Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.”
As luck would have it, Lucifer’s black magic worked. Oh it’s possible I may have added a bit of assistance behind the scenes, but let’s not get nit picky about it; the fact is that Lucifer took the credit and he called the dry land ‘Earth,’ and the waters that were gathered together he called ‘Seas.’
Lucifer saw that it was good and he was incredibly proud of himself – that’s when I knew that my place was secure and I was immediately ready to up the game.
With Lucifer thus at the height of his self-puffery I suggested, “Master, you are incredible. All that you do is magical. You are clearly a god therefore I say why not try your hand at creating… Life?”
And that’s the question that would forever change the course of history – especially YOUR history.
Unfortunately Lucifer again seemed unsure of himself – backing away from The Moment. Dumbstruck, he stalled, “Life?”
“Well, we have the land you created, but in order to conduct some useful experiments we’re going to need a few things besides just barren earth.” I guided him. “How about we get something living. We can start with something small, perhaps something…green. Any ideas?”
Lucifer thought hard but quickly grew frustrated and I began to fear that perhaps I was pushing him too much too soon. Clearly he wasn’t sure if he had the kind of power needed to take the step I was suggesting and with Zebub nowhere to be seen, I knew drastic measures had to be taken or my whole plan might come crashing down on me.
“Might I suggest we use a patsy for this part?” I drew Lucifer’s attention to the presence of another lumenarc who was in our vicinity at the time – Gaia.
Zebub’s son was quick to buy in, “Yes! And if anything goes wrong we can blame her. But…what do we DO with her?”
“I have an idea.” I chuckled as I called Gaia over to us.
Ever the bleeding heart, little did Gaia know that my plan called for Lucifer to marry her living <essence> with the atomic elements of the still developing primordial lands of Terra. As I suspected, the lumenarc that was Gaia was destroyed as an individual being in the process of Lucifer’s haphazard efforts to combine her life’s aura with his new earth – it wasn’t a pretty sight and I know Gaia suffered horribly by Lucifer’s abuse. In fact that area that we first imprisoned Gaia in required us to use some pretty powerful magnetic forces to hold her down with – she fought like the dickens to escape, but between the two of us, Lucifer and I finally overpowered her and locked her within the earth’s core.
[You might be amused to learn that Gaia’s prison is located at what you currently call “The North Pole,” and while it is a planetary pole, it’s not geographically located in what you think of as the “North” or even ‘top’ of the planet, but instead at it’s very center. Remind me to tell you more about this area sometime – it’s a fascinating place complete with its own flora and fauna like nowhere else. But I digress]
Now where was I? Oh yes, Gaia – poor little Gaia. You’re wondering – did any part of me ever mourn for her? Never – after all I knew that sacrifices like this were required in the name of science and quite frankly I never liked Gaia anyway.
And so there you have it – Lucifer and I used the lumenarc Gaia to bring life to your world. And while things didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped in the course of Lucifer’s work, after some fits and starts, in the end Lucifer did succeed. Soon enough (speaking in terms of millions of years, mind you), Gaia’s earth began to put forth small plants that yielded self-sustaining seeds. Later fruit trees of every kind began to bear fruit with seeds in them. Believe it or not, when he witnessed the ‘fruits’ of his labor, the Big L was so enamored that he gave himself a new cognomen to mark the occasion — calling himself The Morning Star since, as he so boldly proclaimed, it was he who brought the “Dawn of Life” to a new world.
And so another ‘day’ passed.
I should probably mention here that Gaia produced a lot more than just plants and fruit trees – in fact the gal started putting out massive trees composed of silica too. I’ll give Gaia credit, her silica trees were beautiful to behold – and they grew to massive heights. Over time this would create a problem for me, but those ‘seeds’ wouldn’t bear fruit for a bit, so I won’t bother telling you about that just yet, but remember to remind me to tell you about the Silica Giants getting close to the Firmament.
Meanwhile, I had other things to attend to: with Gaia’s reproductive abilities on full display I needed a way to manage everything that was going on around me. Knowing Lucifer was getting bored, I had to keep him occupied too. So I suggested to him that we put a few ‘systems’ in place, “My Lord, how about we place a few lights up in the dome of Zebub’s Sky?”
“Why?” The self-proclaimed Morning Star asked me.
“Well, for starters, we can use our lights to distinguish the day from the night. That will allow us to organize our work more efficiently because we can set the lights up to rotate around Terra in such a way that these rotations will act as a marker for us to track time by.”
“What do I care about Time?” Lucifer scoffed. “This all sounds too tedious to me.”
Trying to hide my annoyance, I tried a different approach, “Our experiments have only just begun. Think what we could do with the lights in the sky you produce – especially if they gave off varying degrees of heat and light. These variations – controlled by us mind you – would allow us to create a kind of ‘whether or not’ system in which we can force Gaia to act in various ways. Our lights and this new ‘weather’ can then be used in combination to divide time into a series of days, seasons, years, and oh well you name it, Lord. So what do you say?”
And that’s how Lucifer (and I) created the Sun and the Moon – two great lights. The greater (and hotter) to rule over the ‘day’ and the lesser (and cooler) to rule the night. We also still had a bunch of stellar ones inside the firmament that lit up the sky as well as those plenty more that were beyond the dome and looked like ethereal lights still visible beyond the firmament – all these we named ‘stars.’
Meanwhile, Lucifer, nee The Morning Star, nee ‘god’ (at least in his own mind) saw that it was good and he was pleased with himself again.
And there was evening and there was morning – the fourth day.
[Psst – I’ll let you in on a little secret – besides Lucifer’s new Sun and Moon, I created a third large celestial body under the dome – you can think of it as a Dark Sun, Lucifer never knew about it and most of your world doesn’t either. But it’s there and it serves a purpose – or at least my purpose. You don’t believe me on the Dark Sun – ah, my little peon, you need only to pay more attention to the real science behind eclipses to SEE the truth. Escape the chains of your matrix – use your own senses for a change. The Dark Sun is there for you to bear witness to – if you dare].
Ok. OK. Gee whiz, why do you keep sidetracking me with your little conspiracies?
So anyway, after that fourth ‘day’ ended, I kicked things up a notch and proposed to the ‘god’ Lucifer that we force Gaia to bring forth swarms of living creatures in the waters that covered Terra, as well as make her produce birds to fly above the earth across the dome of the sky. Thinking that the power was all his, Lucifer giddily tortured Gaia until she created great sea monsters and scores of creatures of every kind with which the waters soon swarmed. After that The Morning Star mercilessly drove Gaia to produce winged birds of every kind too.
Although Gaia (and Terra) was a mess after Lucifer’s abuse, for his part god saw that it was good (at least in his mind) and couldn’t have been happier. As a result, god blessed all his new creatures by commanding them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”
Again there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
The sixth day was a bit more eventual. Oh it started tame enough, with Lucifer not even needing much prompting from me to continue his creationary efforts – commanding Gaia to “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.”
And with a bit of effort, Gaia complied – causing Terra to put forth the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And soon Life was booming on your world.
Naturally Lucifer took all the credit – calling all the lumenarcs upon Terra to witness his great progress.
Again, god saw that it was good and was about to proclaim the end to another day – but just then Zebub returned – and It was not happy!
Which is exactly the opportunity I was waiting for!
OK listen, let’s get something straight – in spite of Lucifer’s pride, to be honest it was hard to be impressed with his results: I mean ‘The Life’ Lucifer created on your world was flawed with shortcomings — it was [and still is] finite, difficult, and requires that you, its creatures, survive by preying upon each other to fulfill your needs. I mean seriously, that’s just grotesque, right?
Yet this was the best the self-proclaimed Morning Star could muster and so that’s what you ended up with.
[Also, at this point I should probably admit that this entire creation process didn’t just happen overnight. Nor did it take a mere ‘7 Days’ — that absurd figure some of you believe. Rather the efforts of Zebub, his son, and yours truly lasted billions of years (based on your measurement of time). I don’t want you to get hung up on all this, I’m merely pointing it out to you for posterity’s sake. After all, what’s the difference between a day or a few million millennia where a god is concerned?]
So anyway, as our ‘days’ passed, I’m knew Zebub had been watching as Gaia+Terra sputtered with life at Lucifer’s bidding. It happened in fits and starts — and it didn’t help that the planet was still in its infancy from a geological sense — but, to Lucifer’s credit, life on your planet overcame the odds and survived. [Although I’ll have you know that I provided a good deal of help in the background by keeping Gaia alive to endure god’s abuse so she could survive to continue putting out for us].
During this time I learned a great deal by observing what was working and what wasn’t [remember I told you Terra was first and foremost MY ‘experiment’ so I never failed to make a note of everything that was happening]. Eventually I became convinced that Terra held within it certain secrets that were so powerful that whoever controlled them may well control all creation! Naturally I wanted that certain someone to be me, but there was little I could do to further my own plans so long as Lucifer and Zebub remained in this universe.
Thankfully, it was about that time that Zebub came to an important realization — and Its wrath echoed throughout this dimension, “This plane of existence is not enough. It will never be enough. I need…more.”
Behold – this was the crucial moment that I had been waiting for lo these many eons! And I had the perfect idea to take advantage of it…
The Apocrypha of Azazel 