LITMIR.BIZ

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right. Or at least that’s what all Us Gods have believed for the last few billennia. But the trouble is no God can ever get an answer out of Ultimate Truth because old U.T. seems to make Himself available only to human beings, and then only to a very few.’

      ‘Human beings?’ echoed Whim incredulously. ‘But that’s ridiculous! Why, they –’

      ‘I know, it’s casting pearls before swine, as one of Jehova’s boys once said.’

      ‘But –’

      ‘And then the trouble is that the human beings who think they’ve met or seen Ultimate Truth disagree with each other about what they’ve seen. From in here We can’t tell which one of the damned little fellows actually has seen U.T. So we can’t be sure which one of Us is really the Lord of Creation.’

      ‘It all sounds so confusing and ridiculous,’ said Whim, shaking his head and looking gloomy.

      ‘Well, that’s Our Random Way, Son. Don’t knock it.’

      ‘But how can I possibly help?’ asked Whim, looking up again brightly at his Father.

      ‘You say you want to do something?’

      ‘Oh, yes!’

      ‘Well, Son, I think I can arrange it for you to be born into human form.’

      ‘Oh, no.’

      ‘And if, by Chance, you should happen to run into Ultimate Truth –’

      ‘We’d know!’ exclaimed Whim.

      ‘At last we’d know,’ sighed the Lord Chance softly, his eyes glowing.

      ‘I’ll do it,’ announced Whim. ‘I shall become a human being.’

      ‘Hold it, Son, hold it,’ Lord Chance said, smiling down at his Son’s enthusiasm. ‘You’re not going anywhere until I roll the Royal Cube and see what’s to be what.’

      ‘Yes, sir,’ Whim replied.

      ‘It’s one of the real glories of my Kingdom that even though I work always at random I still manage to hold my own with the other Big Gods. They can line up their every Act to try to thwart Me, while I can only shoot back sporadically, aiming randomly, and only haphazardly loading the gun.’

      ‘It’s Our Way, Father,’ said Whim proudly.

      ‘That’s right,’ said the Lord Chance, ‘and if You want to know, sometimes it’s a pain in the Royal Arse. However, we’ll have to roll the Royal Cube and see what will be what.’

      ‘And if I’m born a human being,’ said Whim dreamily, ‘I’ll find Ultimate Truth if it’s the last thing I do.’

      ‘No need to be dramatic,’ said the Lord Chance. ‘If You get to see old U.T. it’ll probably be by Accident.’

      The two of them, Father and Son, then walked slowly to the Royal Bowling Alley, a short six billion miles away. Our Beloved Whim had often heard the awful thunder of one of the Royal Rolls but He’d never previously been invited to see one.

      When at last they arrived Whim was surprised to see only a single long alley, beginning only four feet wide but widening outwards so that stare as He might Whim could see nothing but a vast sparkling horizon way off in the infinitely wide distance. It was simply a golden track expanding into infinity. Whim could see no Royal Cube at all.

      ‘Now, you stand here, Son,’ said the Lord Chance. ‘And don’t get edgy about what I do. Rolling the Royal Cube is tricky and a bit spectacular, but it’ll come out all right in the end. Has so far, anyway, though far be it from Me to predict that it’ll be the same today.’

      He then moved forwards and took the bowler’s crouch at the back on the lane, squinting down the infinite alley. Although His Right Hand was empty, His Aged Fingers flexed and unflexed as if He were preparing for something quite strenuous. As Our Beloved Whim watched, the Lord Chance at last strode forwards, and in an instant was Himself tumbling Head over Heels down the alley.

      Whim was stunned. His aged Father was bouncing and somersaulting into the distance like an epileptic tumbler, his Form becoming more and more cube-like as He bounced until, by the time He was five miles away, He was a fairly regular Die. And the Lord Chance or the Cube, or whatever It was, was expanding and somehow seemed to be returning towards Whim. The further It went, and the faster It flew away, the bigger It grew, until almost all of space began to be filled with this gigantic hurtling Cube and then:

      It exploded. The Cube disintegrated into a zillion fragments, each the size of a square house, scattering down the Royal Bowling Alley, the noise of the tumbling like a million earthly thunderstorms. On and on they tumbled and rumbled (they were gigantic dice, Whim realized), until million by million they disappeared into the infinite distance, and space was empty.

      Whim was dismayed, it not being every day that one sees one’s own father explode into a million pieces. Since nothing was reliable in the Lord Chance’s most unreliable of worlds, Whim feared the worst.

      ‘Father?’ He called tentatively.

      Silence.

      ‘Father!’ He called more loudly. Silence.

      ‘Fa … therrr! !!!’ he yelled, and his shout tumbled through space like some last errant die, but was soon lost again in silence.

      As Whim waited sadly, He began to hear something. At first it was a mere hum, then it grew into a steady noise like a herd of galloping buffalo. In the distance He spied at last something coming: an infinite number of creatures came surging over the horizon like Indians over the brow of a hill. As they came tearing towards Whim at terrific speed they slowly emerged as the returning dice zooming back.

      Whim barely had time to throw himself prostrate on the ground, arms over head, when he heard a ‘zzzst’, the thunder ceased, and He looked up to see his Father, the Lord Chance, standing and brushing off two or three haphazard tiny dice that still stuck to Him.

      ‘Father?’ Whim said cautiously, still lying on the ground.

      ‘It seems,’ said the Lord Chance, scratching his head and speaking with dignity, ‘that the weather in 11.62 per cent of the universes will be unseasonably hot. There will be 2,567 earthquakes tomorrow, an errant solar system will wipe out all life in universe 344, the Orkny Blue Sox will win fifty-three straight games in the Beta League (universe 69), and You, My Son, are going to be born on a planet called “earth”.’

      ‘Don’t forget,’ said Cause and Effect a few years before Whim’s possible human birth, ‘belief in us has produced that modern civilization you’re about to be born into.’

      ‘I wouldn’t voice it around if I were you,’ replied Whim, and the next thing He knew, less than a month later,

      He was being born.

      In actual fact the Lord Chance had more or less determined (planning in advance was not his forte) that Whim was to be born in November of 1932 earth time, but when He paused to scratch his right elbow the whole thing was delayed a year, and next He chanced to sneeze loudly, and then He had to blow His Royal Nose, and what with one random event and another, in the end it wasn’t until April, 1968, that Our Beloved Whim was finally pushed out into the darkness of human life.

       One & One SELF

      What is life but man’s maddening efforts to live a full life in chains.

      SUZUKI

       Anybody can be anybody.

       Luke

      The self is one of mankind’s ways of

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