As long as the concept of conflict exists in people’s hearts, then fear will not disappear either. If someone didn’t have any means to protect themselves, they would just be killed, so peace and weapons go hand in hand. Deadly weapons and peace... Though those two things are antitheses and will never mix, they’ve become synonymous. Just like that, people accrue weapons, gradually become stronger, and most likely they eventually fall, burned by the weapons that made them too strong.
People recognize the inevitability of this future, at least somewhat. That is why there are so many postwar, postapocalyptic novels and stories in general. However, they still are unable to let go. If they do, they will be destroyed by others who haven’t, after all. There would be no protecting themselves. So, wouldn’t this be the point where God should step in? If a child picks up a toy that would hurt them, is it not the job of the parent to take the toy away? However, God is doing nothing.
These poor, unstable creatures need strict guidance! But no matter how they pray or wail, God pretends not to see. No, he surely isn’t even looking. She paused. If God really exists, then he is heartless.
At some point, she started to think like that. After years, decades, centuries of living amongst people, the dissatisfaction she had towards whoever had made this world grew ever stronger each time she came to know of the suffering that she was divorced from.
Living things die. They leave behind children as proof they were alive, and they continue to pass the baton to the next generation. The reason living things exist is in order to leave behind children. They lived in order to leave behind proof of their life. That was probably a necessary evolution in order to survive. It had to be done in order to allow creatures to adapt to their surroundings and maintain diversity. By having generations quickly change out, resources were not wasted.
There were many other reasons why this was done, and she understood that. However, she still felt it cruel. Because they were gifted with knowledge, humans all died while crying about not wanting to die. The will of this world was for everything that lived to die. There was no salvation; from birth, the world itself told them to die, to not survive. Why was the world made this beautiful but also this cruel?
At some point, she went out on a journey to save people. From the sick to the wounded to the suffering, she reached out the hand of salvation to all those she laid eyes on, continuing to pick them up. She was called a savior, a saint, and a goddess. She saved, and she saved, and she saved, but it was hopeless. There was no end. After all, people were made to die. In the end, it was as if she’d never saved them at all.
Because the world had been made this way, she was not solving the underlying problem. In order to save this world—in order to free everybody from their suffering—she had to flip the world over completely. That was why she decided to change the foundations.
Reaching the place was easy; she simply flew through the sky and space so fast that light was not even close to catching up, until she reached the end of the universe. It was impossible for a human-sized lump of matter to surpass the speed of light. Even if it did happen, it would be disastrous. However, none of that mattered to her. After all, she was a singularity. She was unbound by the laws of this universe, and she contained multitudes of different laws and providences within her. She simply rewrote the common sense of the universe, applied what laws were convenient to her, and forced them into place.
Normally, cooling water would turn it into ice. However, if she said that the water would become fire instead, cooling water would then produce fire. Why? Who knows? She was able to do it, and that was that. The question of why never entered her mind at all.
“I can do it.”
That was the truth, and that was all that mattered.
If someone saw the entirety of space at once, they would see that it resembled a brain, and that outside of that, there was nothing. There was just white that seemed to stretch on forever, and there was no god to be found. It was just endless nothingness.
“Ah... As I thought. There is no god.”
She was disappointed at that. The salvation that humanity believed in didn’t exist. There was no fantasy, and there was no dream. All there was was merciless nothingness.
I see. No wonder no one can be saved. No wonder no one stretched a hand out, no matter how people prayed. I mean, there’s no one here. But from now on, things will be different. I can save them. I can stretch my hand out. If there is no god, then I will become god. If they pray, then I can be like the gods from their dreamed-up myths, living beside them and listening to their wishes. After all, I can do anything.
“Okay, it’s time to change things. I will save them. It’s the end of this world with no god. From now on, I will love all of you. I will save all of you. From this moment, the true world begins.”
She laughed and was innocently happy.
From now on, I’ll be god. I can save everyone. I can make them happy. It’ll be fine. I will never abandon humanity. I will definitely make them all happy. I will save them!
A prisonlike world with no special powers is just boring, so let me split off another world. I’ll use a piece of my power—mana—to make a universe, populate it with stars and planets, and invite everyone there. People will be able to fly through the air and use magic, and I’ll even let them have ESP. I won’t put any fetters on evolution. If they don’t want to die, then they can live for thousands or tens of thousands of years if they like. I’ll even let them be immortal!
That’s right. It will be sad if they just disappear after death, so I’ll just create souls. That way, they can be reborn as many times as they like. I’ll also prepare a place—Valhalla, I’ll call it—to accept people after death and allow them to be reborn. I’ll trap all the bad concepts, like violence, life spans, hating others, and bringing people down, in bad mana, and separate that to make a wonderful world where everyone can live in peace.
Everything started with a wonderful idea. She simply had a pure desire to make people as happy as possible. However, her ideals weakened at some point, buried under vast years of time. She forgot what she’d set out to do. All that remained was the desire to make people happy, but it had been bent and twisted. Finally, all that was left was rampant goodwill left beyond the edges of space, continuing to comically dance alone forever and ever without forgetting the ideal of making people happy but making grave mistakes on how to go about it.