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Discounted Dreams of Conversations with God

I figured out way back if God is all-powerful,

He cannot be all good. And if He is all good, then
He cannot be all-powerful.
— Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, 2016

Arnina’s dream world was a realm all of its own. The location she found herself in was

mostly constant, never varying from night to night. Or so she thought. In reality, it shifted in

ways so subtle that she could never really tell if it had even changed at all. It was smokey,

smelled of incense, and the ground below her – if it could even be called that – was a layer of

cloud, insubstantial, yet thick enough to stand on, and overgrown with flowers, grass, and a thick

portion of trees and vines.

Smack dab in the middle of it all sat a golden throne, left to nature and therefore stripped

of any pretense, with patches of green lichen in places. On the throne sat a figure, but Arnina

could never quite make out said figure’s details through all the smoke and haze, which seemed to

coalesce at the throne’s center.

The figure had provided an introduction once, on Arnina’s first journey into this ethereal

dream realm, providing her with the name “God”. Such impracticalities were easier to accept

when Arnina was asleep, so she didn’t question the assertion, though she did argue that God

seemed more title than name. God laughed at this, the sound as neutral as their voice, which

seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once.

Arnina’s first night in Heaven consisted of getting to know God. Later, she would begin

to learn the secrets of the universe, but first she came to know her host. Out of order simply
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wasn’t done -- it was impolite. Besides, the key to unlocking all that other knowledge seemed to

be getting to know the one person who knew more than quite possibly anyone else.

Arnina asked God all sorts of questions, ranging from their origin (the story of which

contained all sorts of shifting details, to the point where she wasn’t sure if even God knew how

they had come to be), to God’s gender, which she had reduced in her head to either man or

woman. God had set her straight on that misconception.

“Binaries are a human notion,” God said. “A folly. Something I had no part in creating,

except insofar as I created humans who misinterpreted my design. I created sea life -- clownfish

and moray eels, for example -- that can change sexes, and animals that go against human

perceptions of gender norms: like male penguins, which care for the egg, spotted hyenas, where

the females are more dominant and aggressive than the males, and male seahorses, which carry

the young.”

“Huh,” was all Arnina could think to say. If only society knew: this knowledge would be

revolutionary.

***

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

The next morning Arnina’s alarm clock blared, jarring her awake. Her surroundings

didn’t feel quite right for some reason, as though she’d been at home somewhere else, and she

awoke with words on her tongue, though she couldn’t recall what they were. It was a feeling

she’d gotten many times before, but never immediately upon waking, and what was even more

uncomfortable was the nagging feeling that she was forgetting something important.

‘Nonsense,’ she thought to herself, sitting up at once and shaking her head, as though to
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shake off the feeling, her curly, full hair bouncing as she did so. Her morning after that was

uneventful and she followed her usual routine in every way as she made herself coffee,

showered, dressed, and left to catch the bus to the supermarket at which she worked.

Work was long and monotonous and one might hazard to guess that it was equally as

uneventful, but it wasn’t. Not really. Not when it was broken up by instances that challenged

black and white thinking.

Such as when, an aisle over from where she was zoning, she saw a little boy ask his

mother for a baby doll, only to have her to snap at him to “Put down the girl toy and pick out

something meant for boys instead!” The boy pulled on his mother’s sleeve and stuck out his lip,

pouting and looking up at her with pleading, wide eyes, but she shook her head.

As the mother snatched the doll from his hand and replaced it with a G.I. Joe, the little

boy started crying in the toy section, and Arnina couldn’t help but think as she observed that the

distinction between a toy meant for boys and a toy meant for girls seemed arbitrary and forced.

The thought felt right, somehow. And, though it wasn’t a thought she’d had before, it felt

familiar, as though it fit in like a puzzle piece with something she’d learned once but since

forgotten.

Arnina wanted to intervene on the boy’s behalf, but she knew she couldn’t. Not when she

was on the clock. Still, she smiled when, after his mother had stopped paying attention, already

rolling her cart forward and expecting him to follow, the boy switched out the box the G.I. Joe

came in for a box containing a Barbie doll. It wasn’t quite a victory, but at least his tears stopped

falling as he walked away with something a little closer to what he’d wanted.

Much later, after work had ended and she had taken the bus back to her apartment,

Arnina stretched out on the couch in her living room, laying down in repose as she watched the
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news. Somewhere midway through, a poised, polished pundit, whose carefully gelled hair and

tailored suit made him look like someone who would be out of place in a war zone, began

covering a conflict overseas in strident language that contrasted the two sides from one another,

not just explaining the reasons for the conflict or giving the soldier’s mortality rate, but

generalizing about the cultures of both sides involved, the implication being that the one less

familiar to his audience was inferior, and steeped in violence.

This distinction seemed too simple, too broad, and Arnina turned away

from the t.v. with a frustrated huff, closing her eyes. Worn out from a job that kept her on her

feet all day, Arnina fell asleep to the sound of the man’s drivil.

***

“Hello,” said Arnina, greeting God again when she found herself in the same dreamworld

as before, still not completely at ease, but this time a little less timid, a little less shy.

God for their part had been approachable thus far, giving away the secrets of the universe

with the ease of a person telling stories at the bar. “Hi,” said God, continuing the trend. “How

was your day?”

Everything she couldn’t remember when she was awake, she remembered now, and she

recounted the stories of the little boy and his mother and the judgmental news anchor who fed his

audience a narrative they would find comfortable. “I think I see what you mean about binaries,”

she eventually finished, making the connection that had eluded her during the day.

God smiled, though Armina couldn’t see it through the mist. “Very perceptive,” they

said, tone full of the affection, the pride, that a parent would have for a precocious child.
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Her story, though it had pleased God, had begged a question, now planted firmly in

Arnina’s mind. She had been powerless to intervene, earlier at work, because of the constraints

of a customer service job, which dictated that she smile and ignore many objectionable things a

customer did or said. God, though, wouldn’t have any such constraints.

“Can I ask you something?” she asked, tone cautious, as though the question that

followed might be deemed inappropriate.

“Sure. What is it?”

“Everyone thinks you’re all powerful. Assuming that notion’s not another human folly,

why don’t you intervene more?” She waves her hand.“You know, smite rapists with a bolt of

lightening and paralyze abusers so they’re incapable of hurting anyone. That sort of thing.”

“Because I don’t know how,” they said. “I mean, sure, I have the power to do it. But that

doesn’t mean I know how to do it well, or have any way to be sure of the ramifications my

intervention will have down the line.” God paused. “I used to try, back when civilization was

new. Sometimes it worked out, but sometimes it was disastrous.” The words sound a little

dejected, a bit jaded. If before God was the bar’s storyteller, now they’re a maudlin drunk.

“I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Civilization isn’t new anymore, and society has systems in place that let it

police itself. They’re flawed, of course, but they’re something.”

***

Arnina woke early to the sounds of yelling, despite the fact that it was her day off, and

she didn’t have to be up for hours. Her body flinching, she sat up, disoriented, looking around for

the source of the commotion. After roving around the room, her eyes landed on the television,
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still on, and the scene it depicted. A protestor was yelling at a politician about what she called a

“failed system”. Bleary eyed and still half asleep, Arnina didn’t catch precisely what about the

system the woman was railing against, but between growing income equality and a racist,

militarized police force (not to mention other issues), the woman was spoiled for choice.

“What are you going to do about it?” the woman screamed over and over, trying to get

the politician to answer, to take accountability, all while being dragged away by security.

Yet again, it all felt a little somehow, but Arnina ignored the feeling as she got ready to

leave the house. Later, as the day progressed, Arnina saw ailing, inefficient systems all around,

something that also struck a chord within her, though she wasn’t sure just to what it was

connected.

The first instance of which occurred when she got to her bus stop, only for the bus not to

be 10 or 20, but 30 minutes late. She spent the wait staring at the time on her phone, tapping her

foot against the sidewalk, and willing the bus to hurry up. Occasionally, she’d glance to the right

of her at an evangelist with a sign, dressed in a suit and shouting about God’s glory, but mostly

she tried to ignore the preacher, set on edge a little by his fervor. As she saw the bus pulling up,

she handed him a bottle of water, not because she agreed with his message, necessarily, but

because it was hot and he was wearing layers.

A system failed her yet again when Arnina got off the bus and headed straight to the bank

to sort out a problem with her account, only to find that there was a long line of people all with

the same complaint: their accounts were missing money. It was an error, they were told, and

though there was no specification on how the error was made, the bank did restore their funds.

Having taken care of that errand, Arnina rode the bus home, this time without a hitch.

Once she arrived back at her apartment, she had a quiet, uneventful dinner. Tired and a little
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world weary, she laid down in her bed shortly after, wondering if there was a God, like the

Evangelist said, and if so, was that God capable of designing a better system? And just what

might that system look like?

She fell asleep without divining the answers to her questions.

***

“I’m sorry,” said God at the beginning of their next meeting, in lieu of greeting.

“For what?” asked Arnina, confused, even as her dreamworld shifted into view,

and all of her memories clicked into place once again.

“Just sorry,” repeated God. “Sorry that humans are fragile. That they die. That

they just . . . go, sometimes. That I was still learning when I created them and couldn’t

think of something better.”

“Why can’t you just, you know, go poof?” asked Arnina, gesticulating with her

hands. “Make us better?”

“It takes destruction to replace one design with another -- well, except for

evolution, which is slow. And not really a process of replacement, so much as change.”

“What do you mean?” asked Arnina, who didn’t follow.

“Like the dinosaurs. I saw the flaw in that design, so I wiped them out and

replaced them with humans. But I love humankind too much to do the same. So, you’ll

all languish and die, until maybe one day you evolve into something stronger.”

“Something stronger?”

“Yeah,” said God. “And, in the meantime, I’ve created less fragile beings

elsewhere.”
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Arnina wasn’t sure how she felt about that. It was like finding out your dad had a

second family somewhere, but he still loved you.

She opened her mouth to say as much, but her dream world dissolved around her.

***

RING. RIIIIIIING. RING.

Arnina’s phone woke her,and she reached for it from where it was sitting on her

nightstand, plugged in and left to charge overnight.

“Hello?” she said, voice groggy with sleep, when she answered it.

“I’m sorry to call with bad news, but your great-grandmother died this morning. Just a

few minutes ago,” said the voice on the other line, her mother, according to caller ID.

“She what? She died?”

“Yes,” said the woman on the other line. “ In her sleep. She just. . . went. No one could

have predicted it.”

Now, that seemed to fit with something she’d heard. Sometimes, people just went. . . Her

eyes grew wide as the shock of it all his her, and suddenly she remembered her dreams, the

conversations she’d been having with god.

“. . . Oh, god,” she said, voice breaking on the colloquial. “That traitor!” They’d known,

but they hadn’t told her, offering a cryptic apology instead.

“Honey?” asked her mother. “What do you mean? Are you alright?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you later, alright?”

She hung up, the finality of the click coming before her mother even had the chance to

respond. She called off at work for that day and the next, and once she was left alone with her
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thoughts, without anyone to talk to or any pressing tasks to complete, Arnina sat on her bed and

sobbed for a while, tissues scattered all around.

That night, she held off on sleep, angry with God and opting to binge watch bad

television instead of allowing another of their conversations to take place, until she became so

exhausted that eventually she drifted off to sleep anyway.

When she awoke this time, it was to the observation that her sleep had been dreamless, as

though God had offered her a respite. And if that were the case then she couldn’t hate God, after

all, though she didn’t worship them, either, at least not in the traditional sense. Not in the

misinformed way the Evangelist did. Oh, no. She forgave. And she pitied them the way she

would a friend. A friend who’d had great plans, only to see them fail.