Gods Apprentice (Or How A Superhero Was Not Born)

Late 1982 or early 1983 (Converting Earth years to the Celestial Calendar is not an exact science)

Being an apprentice doesn’t work out all that great for the ego but he was not complaining. He had a neat package waiting for him; a God given job, a Heavenly salary and a Hell of a stock option. He just had to get this one little thing right.

bip…bip…bip…bip…BLEEEP…damn busy signal…the multi-dimensional network thingy was starting to get on his nerves.

The rumour was out that he would be put in charge of the whole western spiral end of the Milkyway galaxy…the area he has worked on the most. A bit down market but it was a good start. It came with some troubles though.
The one populated planet in the area was so far down the drain that the Boss was thinking of burning it up and claiming insurance… the Apocalypse strategy. Boss had always been pissed with the place after His effort in the previous quarter to resurrect the place by sending in his best Man didn’t show the results he had hoped for.

“System ready… please load programme,” said the tinny voice out of nowhere…finally… he hit the buttons.

Oh well, he was also partly to blame for the fiasco. He had thought that the Pillar of cloud by day - Ball of fire by night was a neat thing to do, and that too on his first job. How was he to know that his final coordinates for the Chosen Ones were over the one place in the Middle East with no oil? There was a hell to pay. The whole balance of power thingy was affected and there was an immediate take over bid from the Devil. Then somebody had to sit up through the millennia and come up with the Renaissance plan with that brilliant Capitalism spin off. A whole new continent had to be put in place and a strategic relocation initiated but it was serious fun.

“Programme loaded… please specify deliver parameters,” he checked the calendar and typed in the date and time of delivery.

Things were going fine till the Finance Guys screwed up and went ahead with that George Bush Jr. project. They said it had something to do with the Accumulated Wisdom of the Ages having to be balanced with an equal amount of stupidity or something like that. It was very complicated. The Future Affairs cell immediately reported a failure in the system. They suggested Total Recall, but the Finance guys said it was too late for a Miracle. That was when God got serious about that Apocalypse strategy of His.

God…! He suddenly remembered that’s what he forgot… the Divine Intervention!! It was too late to use the Angel service… The only way out was the Emergency Prayer Hotline, but God just didn’t get along well with that after all those prank calls started coming over the direct line from Vatican…Damn!!

Oh, what the hell…this one was clean…after all this was not the first time he is handling the delivery of a Genius to Save Humanity package. He had handled Einstein… he even got an award for that. This was supposed to be bigger though, the first one in the newly created Pre-Apocalypse World Saviours series. It was pretty much the same as the old Knights series, but with a jacked-up Brain – Brawn configuration. “This is my last attempt on that miserable place,” God had said, “If this one doesn’t work I am withdrawing the budget and going in for Apocalypse.”

He rechecked the checklist; all seemed fine. “Alright, here goes nothing,” he pressed the delivery button. The green loading bar appeared on the screen. With the heavy configuration, this one was going to take some time, even over broadband. He leaned back and relaxed. The manual for the series was lying on the table; he glanced over it.

SHIT!! ABORT!! ABORT!!

“Package Delivered…System ready to reboot…” said the tinny voice.
DAMN… Those buggers in Design had changed the whole things around…!! The jacked-up Brain-Brawn configuration was a separate file. It had to be cut and paste to the original programme before sending. The only thing inbuilt in the programme was the Super Inflated Ego code…!! A whole lot of good that’s gonna do…!!
He had managed to bungle it up. He lifted the Hotline set and dialled extension 42.

“Heaven…We have a problem.”

10 months later

The English professor looked down at the bundle that lay on the hospital bed in an unfashionable area on the doomed planet on the western spiral end of the Milkyway galaxy. “God… I could do without this one,” he said in an almost Hamletian soliloquy. “Alright,” he said, turning to his wife and the three kids hanging around her bed, “I know just what to call this one…”

THE END