Now, many will be wondering, between the ice age, creation of humans and the modern day world, how DID the immortals not just fuck up the whole system again. And the answer to that is that they did mess up again, well multiple times really. However, in every failure there is always something to learn and like a child being berated by their overly strict teacher for handing yet another volcano for the science fair they learned to spruce things up a bit. Certainly, project earth’s issues were not sorted and sent out with a neat bow that easily but some bugs in the program were found and deleted, and really isn’t that all that matters.
“I’m deleting it” Athena deadpanned.
“Noooo, pwease nooo” Brahma wailed in agony.
“You are an immortal deity with powers inconceivable to mortals and you’ve got snot dribbling down your face and for what!!” the goddess of wisdom stated, her hands clacking as she looked for the code to delete.
Brahma held onto Athena’s leg like a child throwing a tantrum for not getting the chocolate they wanted in the grocery store. But Athena ignored the deity and continued her rant as she stared at the planetary screen showing the moon, “just because you want the moon to stay being made of cheese!!!”
“Pwease!! Let me have this one thing” the immortal screeched.
“No!! Do you know how many times I've had to stop Artemis from killing you for doing this to the moon. How the cheese function had messed up the code for the tides causing massive floods.Poseidon may like the earth to be 100% water but no one else does.”
Moving on from that awkward scenario. You see after the ‘Great Planetary Burn’ (as the group sans John liked to call it) surprisingly, some of the system was still running despite the fact that earth was pretty much a giant snowball. Therefore, the group decided to discuss how to restore the earth to its natural state. Although that meeting left much to be desired since there were ideas such as melting the ice by hovering earth above the sun.
“I’m telling you, this is a full proof plan. We’ll just let it melt a bit and slot it back into place.”
All living beings today can thank creation Athena was there to smack sense into the originator of that plan. As in Athena literally body tackled them.
“Yeah, get them Athena. Throw the earth this way!! I’m open!!” John screamed from the sidelines.
They could not have the fridge idea be turned into a fiery one, or else the earth would suddenly become part of their spontaneous cooking show. Where the people bits are charred and the liquids are forever frozen. Bits of small balls of paper were hurt in the making of an idea, which all ended up being thrown towards earth, which really wasn’t a good idea since they ended becoming asteroids that killed a couple hundred species when it landed. But, oh well, John and the others would then proceed to make new ones. Life was short but an undying entity’s attention span was even shorter.
“You ever think the mortal beings hate us for that freak asteroid we threw at earth” Thoth wondered aloud one day.
The group of gods and goddesses looked at Thoth unblinkingly before they collectively replied with a simple “Naaaah.”
Meanwhile, on earth some humans could be seen on their knees in front of a shrine-like monument praying upwards to the sky. “Oh merciless gods, what has angered you so!!! Please have mercy on our lives.”
“Yeah you guys are probably right” Thoth says before shrugging nonchalantly and turning back to do one thing or another.
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Finally Nuwa, the one who helped Hector create the humans, had enough of their discussions and suggested rebooting the system. Seeing as there was nothing else they could do, the rest agreed and shut it down and restarted it. Lo and behold, the plan actually worked. Of course, there was just one itsy bitsy problem that came with that plan…..we forgot about the mortal creatures….again.
“Ok everyone, the first time with the dinosaurs was a bad mistake but really again” John said arms crossed as he stared down the group, Hector and Nuwa in particular.
Nuwa raised her arms in surrender, “not my best idea, I admit but it was an idea that didn’t involve spontaneous combustion.”
“Fair point, and what about you Hector any explanations.”
“I’m just a henchman, I followed orders” Hector reasoned, eyes watering slightly to look like a pitiful wounded animal.
John sighed and pinched the bridge of their nose in exasperation, “Hector you literally built more than 50% of the planetary system, how can you be JUST a henchman.”
“I am the henchman boss, the one on top, big top.”
“You know what….never mind” John replied shaking his head as he began trudging away.
“Where are you going?” Nuwa asked.
“I’m gonna go to Icarus.”
“Why? That star is like halfway across the galaxy, it will take you quite a while walking there.”
John just looks back at the goddess, “I need to walk it off.”
The goddess of creation flinched, “so you don’t blow up a planet in the milky way again.”
“Yes!! So I don't blow up a planet like I did with Quirinus again.”
The tiny planet located between Neptune and Pluto was destroyed by John when the deities had gone too far in messing with one of his creations. In summary, the tiny planet had been crushed by John’s hand when he was painstakingly creating some water features in the planet and the crew had decided it would be funny to watch some prey vs predator shows with John’s precious pets. It did not end well for Quirinus….clearly.
On the plus side, John had remembered to keep the blueprints for his fish *cough cough* primeape, yup primeape, not a fish at all. So rather than creating the same thing again, a new evolved human was born. Why? Because progress people.
The new human stood up straighter allowing them to reach for things without the need to climb all the time. This standing on two legs mechanism also made them look bigger to other animals therefore protecting themselves from smaller predators. Further, Athena and Nuwa had insisted on increasing the brain capacity of the new human. That's right, the human rate of thinking doubled. Why it was just a mere 10% before but now with ever so slightly less things to worry about their data bank could be increased to 20%.
The 80% leftover was used for various things, such as sorting through memories, having the body innately remember certain actions without conscious thought, and just keeping the human alive whilst they are not awake. Because if there's one thing worse than a human, it's a dead one. The amount of times they forgot to breathe because of lack of conscious thought was too damn high. Brahma and Hector were literally breaking their backs over trying to fix that particular hiccup.
"Hey guys, how are the new humans doing?" Athena asked as she wandered over towards earth.
Hector and Brahma looked at each other looked at the earth and then at Athena, expelling nervous energy in the truckloads. "Oh yeah, t-the humans are fine" Hector stuttered out, Brahma elbowed his mechanic buddy for being so obvious.
"You don't seem so sure of that, maybe I should get Nuwa here to check on them with me."
"No no no no no" Brahma replied quickly, flashbacking to the last time he earned the deities ire.
“Then move aside and let me see the humans.”
“We’re still updating them so you can’t see them yet” Hector replied quickly.
Athena furrowed her eyebrows, “I can at least see the progress you’ve made with the brain enhancement update.”
“You really don't,” Brahma mumbled.
“What was that?”
“Nothing” the god replied quickly as Hector jumped in to do damage control.
“Well, it's just, you know how updates are,” the immortal replied chuckling nervously. ‘They take a really long time, sometimes it causes problems with other programs.”
“Ok that’s it what are you both hiding” Athena shoved the two apart and walked to see the humans on earth.
Athena paused, she blinked once, twice and said in a strained voice, “you have one chance to explain to me why half the humans are levitating and the other half are dead on the floor.”
“Well we tried to rescale the brain size to see which one would help process information best with the increase of conscious thought and and…” Hector gestured to the levitating humans, “it kind of gave them psychic powers.”
“And the dead ones.”
“We wanted to see if we could increase the output by restructuring the brain so that their heads won’t become too big and impede movement, but then we made the unconscious program for breathing obsolete so the humans just had their bodies shut down on them when they slept” Brahma answered in a shaky voice.
Athena sucked in her teeth and breathed out, “we are gonna fix this. NOW.”
“Yes ma’am” the two replied as they scurried to resize the brain and its processing.
So mortals, if you have anyone to curse or to thank for your abilities or lack of you can thank these three immortal stooges.