Designer's Journal, Book II

Celestial Day #7:
While waiting for life to get its foothold again on Terra after that last wipe out--okay, "extinction" if you must--I've been seeding other rocks over the universe to see if I can get better results. It's not as easy as on Terra. Some rocks don't have as much of the blue liquid stuff so I have to help them adjust to other elements. On one rock I started little critters that just fed on the ground, chewing up little rocks. Boring, in more ways than one. Then there was the gaseous life on a planet I call Mxylptlk. Fun to see through, but much too fragile. The problem is that it's so hard to get life right the first time. Creativity requires revision after revision, trial and error. It's a bitch.

Celestial Day #8:
I stopped worrying about my pet project, life, and decided to smell the galaxies, if you will. Okay, the inanimate stuff doesn't produce a lot of feedback, but it's swell to watch. I've been starting to adorn the rocks, which I'll call planets to distinguish them from the littler rocks that wander about--I'll call them "meteors"--and which are useful for demolition. I took some excess rocks and started twirling them around some of the planets near Terra. Wow, rings after rings after rings. And it's also fun to bounce some smaller planets towards the bigger ones and see what happens. Got too close for one near Terra and it broke off into a zillion pieces; but others got caught around the planets and now swirl like pretty little baubles. Not as intriguing as life, but certainly a lot more durable.

Celestial Day #9:
I noticed that with more and more balls of fire spewing out more and more cooling rock there's maybe a bit too much stray matter littering the universe. Not very aesthetic, so I needed a way to get rid of some of it. I took a deep breath and out of that act came up with a terrific insight--something to suck it up! I discovered that if you twirl the balls of fire fast enough they become exhausted and collapse, and amazingly, turn black and are so dense that they absorb all the matter around them. Don;t know my own strength! Not only is this efficient but it turns all the region of fire balls into swirling pinwheels. Galaxies, if you will, with the dark fireballs in the center. I like these better than life itself.

Celestial Day #10:
After all that busy work redecorating the cosmos I thought I'd check back on Terra to see what was going on. Wow--all those little creatures that went bye-bye with the last extinction have turned into gigantic ugly beasts with sharp teeth, lumbering around and bellowing nonsense at each other. Everything has become giant, in fact, even the flying pests I call insects. They put on a good show, have to admit, but it's all eat-and-be-eaten, without much purpose. Plus they're consuming all the green stuff on terra much too quickly. I'd like to vary my creatures, maybe even find some with real character, who can be sympatheitc to each other and not unendingly selfish. So I'll send them another meteor and try again.

Celestial Day#11:
Now the big creatures have fallen and were buried into terra and turned into black gunk that probably has no use at all. What's left are little beings that are, well, cuter. There's one animal form I have particular hopes for. It's friendly, loyal, plays well with others and doesn't automatically try to kill its neighbors. This could finally be the superior species I've been trying to fashion for all these celestial eras. I'll call it "dog."

Celestial Day# 12:
I still like the "dog" but it doesn't seem to be doing much with its existence. It just lays around and sleeps. So I'm going to try a radical experiment. There's a cousin of the dog, a two-legged hairy creature that looks a little like me, except it doesn't have tusks or a halo. It has developed the ability to use its forepaws to make tools and alter its environment. I like that creativity, so I'm going to give it some extra brain matter and see if it can learn to communicate with others.

Celestial Day# 13:
Wow, this new creature really got it going for a while, and its ability to communicate was something I hadn't seen in any of the other attempts. Problem is, it's just as arrogant as the big toothy beasts that I wiped out two celestial days ago. It does have some thinking ability, but as one of its smarter representatives once said, "A little learning is a dangerous thing." So now it's not only using up the resources I've given it, but is pretending to understand me, and acting superior to other animals as though Terra was its own dominion, and I don't like that attitude. I'm considering another extinction, maybe real soon. And when I begin again, maybe I'll go back into the blue liquid stuff. There's this really cool creature that I designed way down under I call a "tube worm," that eats up volcanic sulfide and doesn't cause a lot of trouble to its neighbors. Sounds promising. Next?