God of the Stars

It's tough being a God, ladies and gentlemen. People think it's all power and glory but they forget about the one thing which drives everything among intelligent beings. The pernicious and inescapable fabric of politics. That's why I left Home, and came to the planet Earth. I have built a new life for myself in the City of Toronto, province of Ontario. I'm Jonathan Carlson, York University graduate, Toronto Police Constable and proud Jamaican-Canadian immigrant. A six-foot-one, lean and athletic black man in his late twenties, that's what the world sees when it looks at me. I've learned much since I came to Earth, about humanity, about the world and about myself.

I have another name but I won't burden you with it because you couldn't possibly pronounce it with a human mouth and also, names have power where I come from. Speak the name of a particular entity and you might very well summon him, her or it. Considering how many nasty things there are out there, it's best not to attract unwanted attention to oneself. I've seen much of what's out there and there are things you definitely don't want to meet. Trust me on that one, my earthling friends.

The place I once called Home is a planet, not unlike Earth, only with a blood-red sky, and a rocky, bleak surface. There's very little water, and both fauna and flora are scarce. And yet, there is life there. My kind evolved there at a time when the ancestors of humanity still lived in fear of those gigantic reptiles that paleontologists seem so fascinated by. We evolved into pure intelligence and pure power, and the cost of that evolution was that once we achieved immortality, we became, well, bored. Turns out that it's life and death that prompt all life forms to improve, to evolve and to thrive. Without that drive, you become complacent. That's exactly what happened to my people.

There were tens of thousands of us back on the home world the day my people achieved virtual immortality. We began spreading out among the stars, traveling under our own power. We encountered numerous beings, entities and creatures on many worlds. For the most part we observed them without interfering. Some of us couldn't resist the urge to interact with these creatures, for benevolent as well as nefarious purposes. To these lower life forms we became Gods and Demons, Angels and Monsters. We played favorites among them, helping them evolve or annihilating them. Sometimes we fought each other over these creatures. I'm ashamed to say that I did participate in this madness but ultimately, after millions of years of cosmic interference, I grew tired and left.

That was right around the time when my people went to war with one another. On the one side there were the Light Bringers, also called the Great Ones. They saw it as their duty to travel to other worlds and help other intelligent beings evolve and achieve their full potential. On the other side there were the Darklings They saw intelligent beings from other races as a threat to their power because, given enough time and knowledge, other species could find their way to immortality and supremacy. The Darklings feared competition, and for that they began eradicating intelligent life forms wherever they encountered them. The war between Light Bringer and Darkling spread across numerous galaxies and a billion worlds.

I left my people because they had all begun to descend into madness, at least in my eyes. I don't feel that I have the right to play God with the lives of intelligent beings simply because I have the power. What gives me the right, morally speaking? Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do it. There are consequences to everyone's actions, and us so-called Gods are no exceptions. I left my people and roamed the universe for millions of years. I was homeless in a universe filled with dangers.

There are things out there which pose a threat even to immortal entities like myself. I could tell you about the Hunger, a planet-sized beast that resembles the whales of Earth's oceans. It roams the stars in search of sentient life and devours them. That's how it stays alive, apparently. The Hunter has been alive for millions of years and it's been responsible for wiping out countless intelligent species. I battled it once, to save a solar system called Magr by its inhabitants the Magrall, an intelligent reptilian species living on a lush jungle planet.

I fought the Hunter to a standstill because I lacked the power to destroy it. I also placed an energy vortex near the planet Magrall. It's a stable singularity that poses no threat to the Magrall since they lack space flight but it will swallow any flying object that attempts to enter the planet's atmosphere. The home world of the Magrall is thus safe from asteroids, comets and alien invasions. Until the end of time. The Hunger fears the singularity since it's encountered black holes many times in its journey across the stars. I created a stable black hole as a defense for a race of sentient beings whom I admired and respected. It's the one and only time I broke my rule about not interfering with other races.

I was flying around a strange new solar system when I came across a tiny blue planet orbiting an average yellow star. The planet Earth. Curious, I approached it and found myself experiencing shock for the first time in half a billion years of my existence. The planet Earth's dominant species, the humans, they closely resemble my people! We were humanoid entities too, once. Long before our level of technological expertise allowed us to transcend physical bodies and evolve into pure intelligence and power in invisible and intangible form. I flew down to Earth and for months I observed the humans. I visited every land, every nation and every single spot on that world. From Africa to the Middle East, from Latin America to the Caribbean, from North America to Europe, from Asia to Antarctica. Something amazing happened, ladies and gentlemen. I fell in love with the humans, a people that reminded me so much of my own.

I chose Canada as my new home because it's a nation of immigrants and in many ways, I'm the ultimate immigrant. I chose to become a tall human male of Afro-Caribbean descent. Why did I choose this gender and ethnicity? In my previous form, more than half a billion years ago, I was male. I think. I vividly remember having dark chartreuse skin and luminescent yellow eyes and since that color did not exist among human beings, I chose the next best thing. I became a Black man with bronze eyes. In the next few months I'd learn much about racial relations, cultural issues and things of that nature. Nevertheless, I do not regret my choice. Until such time that I no longer feel like residing on the planet Earth, I am Jonathan Carlson.

I've built quite a life for myself in the short years that I've been on Earth. I am a police officer, a job which I love because it enables me to interact with every facet of humanity. I am good friends with a fellow cop named Anton Suleiman, a roughneck from Scarborough who's the proud son of Lebanese Christian immigrants. We were in the same barracks in police college, and somehow we both ended up working for the Toronto Police Service. Anton Suleiman has a sibling, a tall, raven-haired and bronze-skinned Lebanese-Canadian journalist named Andrea Suleiman. From what I understand of human beauty standards, she's quite beautiful. She gets very flirty every time she sees me, much to my discomfort and Anton's amusement. I find her beautiful but have yet to respond to her advances. There is much that I don't understand about human interactions and none confuse me more than sexual and romantic relations. I've made friends with several humans but I have yet to 'mate', for lack of a better term. I'm not sure I should. I have no idea what would happen if I engaged in sexual congress with a human female. I'm immortal but not all-knowing, thank you very much.

I had been on Earth for ten standard years when my world changed. I was sitting in the park, listening to music while feeding the birds on my day off when I suddenly sensed a presence. Standing ten meters from me was a tall, blonde-haired and blue-eyed Caucasian woman in her early thirties. She approached me, a confident smile on her pretty face. I immediately peered into her disguise with my unearthly gaze, and what I saw there shocked me. For there was absolutely nothing inside of her. This was my first meeting with the Void. The Void is quite possibly the only thing in the universe that both mortals and immortals should fear. If there is such a thing as an Angel of Death that claims every life, every soul, every atom and molecule when their light extinguishes, it would be the Void.

My people first sensed The Void when we evolved from mortal entities into vastly immortal beings. When you achieve apotheosis and go from mortal to divine, you gain knowledge of a great many things. The Void is one of these things. It is old. Older than the universe. When the Big Bang occurred, The Void was already there. It existed before the Big Bang itself. In the Nothingness, or whatever you want to call it, The Void dwelled. The Void doesn't like the universe, or anything it whether animate or inanimate, sentient or unintelligent. The Void wants the cosmos destroyed so it can be the only thing anywhere. For all of our power and knowledge, The Void is the one thing that my people instinctively knew to fear even after we became immortal. We've avoided it ever since and thank the Fates, it avoided us because it had other concerns.

The Void stood face to face with me, and sneered. It mocked me, and told me that this world I had come to cherish and all that dwell upon it would soon die. I looked into the eyes of this thing which existed long before the universe itself, and I knew fear. Every atom, every molecule in this Cosmos fears this thing. It is beyond good and evil. It simply is. I was scared shitless, to use a human expression I've head often in the police station where I work. I looked at The Void in its human disguise, and heard myself tell it that I would fight it should it threaten my adopted home and its people. The Void laughed, and then gently touched my face, as one would touch the face of a friend or loved one you haven't seen in a long time.

My flesh sizzled where The Void touched it, and I had to shape-shift to get rid of the scar. It has been a long time since I felt physical pain. Even while in human form I retain the powers of Telekinesis, Shape-Shifting, Flight, Invisibility, Intangibility and Teleportation. I can do other things as well but having a physical form limits me somewhat. Laws of physics and all that. I recoiled from The Void, as all things have done since the dawn of time, and amazingly, I fell and landed on my butt. When I got up, The Void was gone. I stood there for several moments, feeling afraid and helpless for the first time in half a billion years.

Honestly, I didn't know what to do. In the ten years that I've lived on the planet Earth, I've grown to care for its people. In spite of the racism, sexism, religious intolerance and warmongering that I've seen, I still find the place to be worthwhile. In a thousand worlds I've seen no greater beauty. The Void scares me. It scares all of my people, whether we call ourselves Darkling or Light Bringer. We're talking about an all-powerful entity at war with the universe, with the whole of existence itself. How can I stand against it? I don't know, but perhaps my people can help.

Darkling and Light Bringer were united once, we used to be one people. Before we achieved Godhood and immortality, we were a species of technologically advanced creatures in search of meaning. I know that together we can achieve great things. So it's with a heavy heart that I must leave the planet Earth in search of the very beings I've spent millions of years fleeing from. My people. The Void is here and I cannot possibly take it on alone. I'm not even sure if all of my people, the good and the evil, stand a snowball's chance in hell against it. I've got to try, though. If there is one thing I've learned from living amongst humans is that they never give up, even when there's no chance. I guess it's starting to rub off on me. So I go, knowing that such a beautiful world full of strong people has nothing to fear in the absence of the one who has quietly protected it for so long. I'll be back as soon as I can. For all of our lives are at stake.