A World of Our Own Making

We killed our gods with mathematics. Not all at once—that would have been too kind. We drained them slowly, equation by equation, until their miracles withered into statistical anomalies.

I remember the day we proved prayer was just quantum interference. Professor Harris threw up in the lab sink while the equations sprawled across his whiteboard like murder confessions. The math was beautiful. The math was hideous. The math was true.

They didn't die, exactly. Death implies a finality we couldn't grant them. Instead, they sleep in tombs of myth and memory, their dreams leaking into our sewers and circuits. Sometimes the maintenance crews come up babbling about angels in the pipes. We give them pills and reassignment forms.

Today my daughter asked me why the sky screams at night. I told her it's just wind through the steel and glass. I didn't tell her it's the gods having nightmares.

The new paradise doesn't need miracles. We built it from scratch, each wonder carefully tested and proven true. Children learn to shape reality through reason, crafting beyond the promise of prayer. We are our own architects, building potential from the fundamental laws of existence.

But lately, the equations are showing anomalies.

Small things at first: rounding errors in reality's constants, undefined variables appearing in our models of consciousness. Last week, a quantum computer sprouted flowers from its cooling vents—actual, impossible flowers that smelled of ozone and forgiveness.

The gods are stirring, but we've learned something they never did: power isn't the same as wisdom.

I'm watching the monitors now as divine brainwaves spike through bedrock. My colleagues are arguing about containment protocols, about weapons and walls. They sound just like the gods in the old stories—always reaching for lightning when a conversation would do.

The really funny thing about building paradise? Turns out it has nothing to do with power. No quantum arrays or reality engines needed. Just people choosing to be kind when they could be cruel. Looking out for each other. Helping up instead of pushing down.

The ground trembles and storms clouds gather. Through the observation window, I watch my daughter share her lunch with the maintenance worker's kid. No divine intervention required—just a child choosing to be kind.

Maybe that's what the gods need to learn from us.