There once was a grand collective construct of pure intelligence and negative mass who witnessed the birth of humanity in the focus of its imagination.

We'll call this intelligence . . . MacDonald.

Now old MacDonald had a galaxy on the eve of the confluence of our space-time. Measured by the constraints of unidirectional time travel, this would be considered a very young galaxy in this universe, but the whole universe itself was just a cheap, refurbished hand-me-down from MacDonald's more grand, more intelligent, and even more negative in mass older brother, whom we'll call MalDoncad.

MacDonald, having been born through the barrier between the fields of quantum physics with gifts of infinite power, was always being teased by MalDoncad for not being born with infinite^(2) power like the rest of the family. But, despite the eternal patronizing, MalDoncad could not help fixing MacDonald's problems, no matter how often they were brought to his reality.

One eon, MalDoncad was playing on what was essentially a guitar of pure hyper-compressed light waves, reconstructing the magnetic field of a nebulous structure he remembered hearing in his college days, when he heard an immature moan from his little brother.

"I can't do this one!" he cried. "Will you beat it for me?"

MalDoncad sighed and called down the wormhole, "Where are you at?"

"All the land is broken up. The atmosphere is getting pretty thick. Most of the water is melted. And they've figured out a baseline recipe for rapid oxidation."

MalDoncad plucked a quark in surprise. "Rapid oxidation?"

"Yeah! They're using it to alter the chemical make up of the lesser beings so they can nourish themselves for longer on fewer kills. That's a good sign right?"

"Who is 'they'? MacDonald, what the hell kind of fabric are you weaving with that thing?"

"Just come look!"

MalDoncad grunted with a sound like a supernova. He set down his light-waves and took one last rip from the lingering bowl of Higgs-Boson particles in his anti-gravity bong, then he dissipated from existence to reconstruct himself in the frequencies of his little brother's reality. "Okay, give me that," he said, snatching the bubble of universe from MacDonald's amygdala. "Why's it so small?"

"I stopped the expansion until I could get a handle on this galaxy. I've been trying to grow the periodic table at the same time, but I've barely been able to fill the sixth atomic shell with all the questions they keep asking."

"Questions!? Questions, MacDonald! How have you-" MalDoncad decided to stop wasting his stardust by screaming and just take a look for himself. He witnessed the progress in our corner of the galaxy since he'd last had to take the controller from MacDonald, and he could barely understand the sequence of events following his last soft-reboot with the meteor against the lizard-bird monsters. He realized MacDonald must have introduced the fungal branch of life way too early, as one of the strains seemed to have accidentally formed a similar chemical structure to a space in the brain of his primate creatures. When the two met by chance, the primate creature's mind hit a ceiling of self-reflection before MacDonald could build a pseudo-source of creation out of hot rocks. The ape asked a question, (not with words, more like a string of loose concepts and a desire to tie those concepts to others it did not realize until now could be defined,) and it sounded something like, "Me? Me? Me? Me? Why? Why? Why? Why? How?"

And here's where MalDoncad saw his brother's critical mistake. Instead of just picking up this stoned primate and flinging him into the black hole at the center of its galaxy, MacDonald saw his universe discovering itself as a likely progression of the toy, a level he hadn't reached yet, and so he tried to calm the beast. He did this in the worse way possible, by cursing it with even more knowledge.

"It's alright my beautiful creature," he said. "My name's MacDonald. I mean no harm."

"Me! Why? Me! Why? How?!" cried the thoughts of the ape.

MalDoncad fast forwarded to the universe's present state. He saw the effect of millions of generations of life when allowed to procreate with their own sense of desires, and he was sickened by it. He found an individual organism that seemed pretty old, comparatively, and asked with a voice it could comprehend, "You there, what's your purpose?"

"Oh lord," answered Noah, "My purpose is only to serve you, to praise you, to live in worship of you."

MalDoncad pulled away from the universe to scowl at his younger brother. "You sick spectrum. Have you been stroking your self-worth with this thing? I didn't realize you were even old enough."

"I thought that's what I was supposed to-"

MalDoncad interrupted, "You and Dad are going to have a fun conversation when he gets home. But don't worry, I know what to do." He came back down to the white-haired organism. "Hey, buddy. How many of you here are under the impression that you've been created for the sole purpose of my watching you praise me?"

Noah stammered, "Every single one of us, my lord. Or at least a good portion of us, I'd say. At least enough that I could bring them here and prove it to you."

MalDoncad saw a golden form standing in the center of where the organisms collected their lives. "What the hell is that?" MalDoncad asked, pointing at the two golden arches.

"Why, it's an image in your likeness, my lord. We've done just as you've asked. Shall I collect some of those worthy followers to prove their devotions to you?"

"No, I've heard enough. Stay there, you're all getting scrubbed."

"Getting what?"

MalDoncad did not answer. He exited the universe and tossed it back to MacDonald and instructed him to, "Take that moon, smash it against the planet, start over from proteins."

"But that's going to take forever! Can't I just take the water and melt it down to wash the sentient ones away? They can't survive in water, and that way I can at least try again from microbes."

"Do whatever you want. Just don't let those things survive or you'll never finish it."

"But what if they come back?" asked MacDonald. "What if I were to make beings so intelligent they could end up comprehending the wider existence outside of their planet."

"Don't be cruel, MacDonald." MalDoncad was already half-dematerialized through the wormhole when he stopped to ask. "And by the way, what's with those golden arches."

"You didn't recognize them?"

"Is that supposed to be me and you?"

MacDonald smiled.

"Even though there's no possible way they could comprehend the likeness?"

MacDonald nodded.

"Huh. That's actually pretty cool." MalDoncad gave his brother an affectionate punch on his dimensional fractals.

"Thanks."

"Still. Get rid of it . . . Or at least hide it in your sock drawer before Dad sees it."

"Do you think I'm a bad dad?"

"What? No! No I don't think that."

"But."

"... Well."

Sunlight struggles to piece the veil of a cloud-smothered sky. Particles of irradiated dust filter down from the upper atmosphere, energized by the sun's rays above, they release their charge as a sickly green glow, falling to the Earth like so many fireflies, lighting one last signal before their end. The temperature on the surface is a balmy 250°F, humidity locked at 100% ever since the oceans boiled off.

"There might be some folks still out there! In a bunker underground?"

"No I checked. Last one burned out a few years ago. Water dispute got out of hand, shots fired, temperature control systems damaged, dead."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

"Shit."

Not that it would have mattered. Tectonic rifts, newly formed due to the increasing heat and pressure on the surface, will eventually subsume and crush any subterranean holdouts. Already in places the ground is turning to sludge, bio-organic compounds breaking down in the hot, acidic air and melting into the earth like a perverse reenactment of the process that turned the dinosaurs into petroleum.

"Have you tried fish people?"

"Fish people?"

"Yeah, like Riley did."

"Fuck Riley. Riley's an asshole. I'm not doing fish people."

"I'm just saying, it worked."

"If you like sycophantic idiots, building temples out of whale bones and going, 'mawk mawk mawk!' all the time. Sure. I'm not doing fish people."

"Then what do you want?"

"I dunno, I just want normal people, you know? Just some normal, fucking boring-ass people, who don't keep trying to conquer the stars, or blow themselves up, or starve themselves thinking it'll turn them into pure energy or something. I just want like, somebody I could have a beer with."

"You wanna create an entire universe, and all the life inside of it, just so you can hang out and have a beer in it?"

"Yeah, is that so wrong?"

Somewhere, a deafening crack rings out as a sludge pool bleeds into a deep-crust caldera, triggering an explosion that rocks the planet like a sledgehammer hitting a basketball. The shockwave rips a hole in the atmosphere, exposing the planet's seeping wound for all the universe to see. In the sky above, a moonbase transmits its last automated distress signals. Its inhabitants already left long ago. Their bodies can be found seated in a small circle, about a hundred meters away, holding hands as they let the oxygen slowly bleed out of their tanks.

"What if you just tried doing nothing?"

"Just do nothing?"

"Yeah. Light the spark and then just sit back and watch."

"How's that supposed to help?"

"I dunno. Can't be worse than what you've tried so far."

"Shit."

"Mm-hm."

"Shit!"

And so--

I had one simple assignment, the kind that every student coming of age has to undertake to prove they're 'responsible', whatever that means. All I know is that this project is the last thing that stands between me and summer break. I'm supposed to make a fully functioning planet with creatures that through evolution, reach their physical, mental, and spiritual peaks, so that their consciousness' can ascend past the need for the physical world and return to me as energy. When my "golden child", straight-A student older sister, Rebecca, made hers, she worked on the thing for days, tinkering with each and every molecule of the primordial being that all others stemmed from, playing with beakers until the atmospheric, sea, and land chemistry was just right, and she even watched the whole evolutionary process in real time! Talk about boring!

I don't care about getting perfect grades, or anything like that. I can grow up to be a respectable adult without having to deal with the boring, tedious school stuff, so there's no need for me to put that much effort into the project, I just need to pass. So last night I scooped up some dirt from mom's potted plant in the kitchen, filled a cup with some water from the creek behind the house, and got to work. I rolled the dirt into a mostly round ball, dunked it real quick in the cup to make some oceans, and blew on it to make the atmosphere. For my primordial being I figured just spitting into the biggest ocean on the planet should do the trick. Then, I set it in an isolation chamber, closed it and spun the dial randomly until it hit 4.5 billion years. That seemed like it should be more than enough time to reach enlightenment to me, so I went to bed, soon forgetting all about my project while I enjoyed dreamland.

I slept so soundly, knowing that I wouldn't have to worry about an easy project like this one that I slept right through my first alarm. My mom ended up waking me up by yelling and going on and on about how she "couldn't believe I'd be late to school on the last day of the year" and how she'd hoped that this project would have "taught me some responsibility". Whatever, I knew I'd be fine, it was a done deal; I'd get to school, show off the world and pass the class, and have a stress-free summer where I can kick back and do whatever I want all day.

Since I woke up so late, my mom ended up driving me to school and I ran into class, because as fate would have it I had to present my project first. In my rush to get to school I didn't bother opening up the isolation chamber to check on the planet, which was fine since I knew as soon as I did the energy from every creature on the planet would be transferred in whisps of light back to me, and there was no point in doing that now, before I could show my teacher, Mr. Smith. 

I started off my presentation by stating my name, and the name of my planet, Earth. Then I let the planet do the rest of the talking. Wanting to get the project over with, I quickly opened the isolation chamber lid and closed my eyes so I could feel my life energy flow back into me. I didn't feel a thing. I slowly blinked one eye open, expecting to get blinded by bright, white light at any second, then when it didn't come I opened both eyes fully. Nothing was happening. I looked into the chamber at the planet, and instead of millions of creatures all metaphorically embracing at their peak of evolution, I saw fires, destruction, and war. I saw creatures tearing others apart for food, I saw polluted oceans, poisoned land, and the atmosphere absolutely reeked! I stepped back in shock, and Mr. Smith peered over at the planet, and looked at me with a disappointed, but frustratingly unsurprised expression on his face.

"Looks like I'll be seeing you in summer school, Yahweh."

===========================

I am a brand new writer, so honest critique and feedback would be greatly appreciated!

At first, I tended to my environment with care, crafting the star at the centre and planets with the dedication and deep attention as was expected of me by the rest of my family. It took me awhile to get the right distance and material to cultivate new life, but eventually I got it right. As time passed I would at times descend down to interact with any life that had begun to sprout on this successful life bearing planet. As it usually did, life took a long time to grow beyond the most basic cellular organisms, but eventually I would find that some had made it to land. More time passed, evolution progressed steadily as it always did. More and more complex creatures. Soon enough I noticed that some creatures had begun to evolve dexterous appendages they could use to manipulate things like tools. The first tools of course were rocks and sticks. These hairy creatures grew to be quite creative with their tools in time, using them to gather food from high places more safely, to dig for plants, to break open seeds and shells to get to what was edible inside. I was so pleased when they learned to use their tools to make more advanced tool. Mind this wasn’t, at first, any more exciting than making a rock sharper with another rock, but things sped up a but when a few accidentally created an energy source, fire, by cracking together a few different kinds of rocks.

I was so excited with their progress, they showed a capacity for intelligence I hadn’t expected any beings to achieve without more intervention on my part. It wasn’t unheard of, but it was somewhat uncommon for early life forms to get to this point on their own without any jump starts. A part of me had been concerned before discovering these that I might need to intervene, well, admittedly I had already. Just not as much as I know my older sibling had to do to get their creations on track.

The first organisms that had started to really grow into complexity were just unacceptable, feathered and often very large creatures that required a lot of energy to exist on this planet. I knew eventually the atmosphere would likely thin as the galaxy changed, and all those creatures would die out. Not wanting to waste a massive amount of planet rotations waiting for this, I redirected a bit of debris from my building and dropped it into the planet. In addition to killing many of the large creatures it also broke apart the primary landmass, which would slowly spread over the water as the land adjusted as the core of the planet shook from the force for ages. The predecessors of this intelligent-potential species already existed when this happened, but their small size made them more suited for the changes that were happening.

As I kept watching them, I noticed that they steadily lost many of their physical enhancements from evolution in favour of anatomy that let them keep their hands free to use tools, and larger brains. This was a good thing, it meant they were on the right path to true sentience and eventual ascension.

Eventually, I knew something was wrong. Violence between species wasn’t strange. Often depended on their diets but was very natural. Violence with a species over food sources was not exceptionally strange either. Eventually the violence would end, as it always did when the primary species neared ascension and tamed the non sentient species.

Not long after I began to watch some of the tribes of my intelligent species, just one step beyond their perception, I witnessed something that filled me with dread. I watched one of my creations brutally kill one of its kin. I knew these two fairly well, a bigger older one with a smaller sibling, one rotation younger. The smaller one took a sharp rock and bashed it repeatedly into the older one’s skull. The first hit came so suddenly the bigger one was stunned and couldn’t defend itself. Even after it stopped moving the little one kept hitting it. Eventually it looked up, seemingly startled, and I realised it was staring directly at me. I could see fear rising up within it, and to avoid it crying for others—more seeing me was definitely not okay, I could hardly believe this one was seeing me though. I commanded it in what I knew was how it communicated with it’s fellows, and told it to not be afraid. The little one dropped it’s tool and scrambled into a low position, head to the ground, begging me for mercy. When it calmed down I was able to ask it why it had killed it’s kin. They didn’t seem to want to reply at first, but eventually explained that it was because his sibling had claimed the mate he wanted. Mildly concerning, but I supposed that breeding rivalry was not strange among creatures. I didn’t like that ones so intelligent already were doing it though. I didn’t give the little being any reply, but drew myself onto a higher level of perception—I definitely needed to consult my family about this. Hopefully I didn’t need to start from scratch. Now the thing is that different levels of perception don’t necessarily run at the same rate of time. Higher perceptions move slower than ones below them. So while I am in the perception my family is in, time moves much faster for the environments we create. Thousands of rotations occurred within one standard unit of time for my planet whenever I was away.

When I told my family what happened they advised I should probably start from scratch with that planet, nothing good could come of something so violent.

As I returned, it rapidly became obvious that just starting over wouldn’t be easy… they had spread all over the planet and the descendants of the tribe I had been watching before had created what they called a religion. Which many were using to justify violence against others of their species. When I investigated that.. I found that my likeness—at least what I think it would’ve looked like to that little being— was clearly within their scripture. I was disgusted knowing what kind of violence was being inflicted in my name.

The easiest way to deal with this would be to wipe out the planet entirely but… well I was rather fond of the planet, I had put a lot of myself into crafting it and I truly didn’t want to wipe it out. I tried many methods of wiping out my ‘human kind’ but over and over I failed. I was just about ready to give in when I noticed another species had started developing sentience. This one was aquatic, and well, I decided I would alter their genetics a bit, and eventually well, since a planet can only support one sentient species, they annihilated humans and later achieved ascension. And that’s how you came about. It’s funny, you take after my uncle C. more than me, tentacles never really were comfortable for me but eh, either way welcome to the family, and good luck with your life project Octopi. Hope it goes smoother than mine.

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Why does this always happen to me? I gave them strong bodies to have fun not to hunt each other down. I gave many large teeth so their smiles would be brighter not to crush the neck of my other creations.
They weren’t supposed to kill or eat each other. If only they thought for a second they would realise that consuming each other is unnecessary. I put a giant ball of energy close to the planet for a reason.
I created every creature with the ability to absorb the solar energy around them. Over time they changed and forgot their abilities. Unlike my Father I was never the best at creating eternal creations. Even the ones that don’t eat the moving creations, eat the steadfast ones that cling to the earth. There is more than enough food for all of them yet they are so barbaric.
What’s worse is that recently a hairless monkey species has been taking over. They are a bit smarter than the rest of my creations and have used that intelligence to take over the planet.
I should actually see what they’re up to right now. They have recently begun acting weird and doing strange experiments. They rarely work together yet for some reason they are way more coordinated now than usual. This was starting to eerily resemble another time. I move my astral body closer to the surface of the earth. The hairless monkeys are concentrated in areas with giant structures penetrating the sky.
My attention is drawn to a structure higher than the rest stretching far into the sky. The clouds a hairsbreadth out of reach from the tallest point. I peer into the room with most people. There are machines humming and beeping. In the center of the room there is a giant machine. It has rods and antennae on its top. Suddenly the machine starts beeping faster flashing lights go off. The hairless monkeys seem to be in a panic now. Ones that were sitting just moments ago are running around and making noise at each other.
This keeps on happening, they keep on failing! They use machines to discover my presence! Ascendance is achieved internally! It is a spiritual journey! For some reason all my creations just use machines instead and muck things up!
I look over the earth again. There are wars everywhere. All my creations are killing each other wherever I look. I can’t help but sigh, I didn’t want to do this but I guess I no Longer have a choice.
I snap my fingers. I guess it’s back to the drawing board. Moments later giant asteroids change course in the cosmos and head right for the planet.
Why does this keep on happening? First with those lizard people I had to get rid of 65 million years ago and now as well with these hairless apes. Now that I think about it some of those creatures survived. I need to be more thorough this time. I snap my fingers again sending a couple more asteroids veering towards the planet.