I watched the universe, my universe, for a long time. I watched as stars were born and I watched as stars died. I watched as the remnants of those stars were blown across the expanse as roaming clouds to either end up orbiting another star to form planets, or join up with a nebula to form more stars, or even stayed roaming and condensed as asteroids. I watched as a star got too close to a black hole and a strand of the star was slowly being sucked away. I watched as stars gathered around black holes, forming galaxies of intricate shapes with their orbits.

The entirety of the universe was present in my thoughts. I could see each atom and its movement. I was aware of every interaction, each vibrant color, each spark of divinity. It all painted a beautiful moving picture in my mind. It was all so very interesting.

After watching for a while, multiple planets have formed. Cold rocky places, gas planets, molten planets, and even normal rocky planets. Some of them were capable of supporting life! There were a couple of those livable planets that even had water on them.

... None of them have life on them. Nor will they ever unless I do something about it.

I could feel it. The spark of divinity that was in each atom... while it was divine and had the power of creation in it, it required a will to act upon it to use its power. The stars and planets and everything else in the universe, while it was beautiful and awe-inspiring, did not have a will.

It’s like everything was alive-adjacent. I could brush my will against something and it would react as if trying to fulfill my will, but there were no thoughts, or feelings, or anything that would indicate that it was actually alive.

Which reminds me... I was on a mission! Why am I just wasting time? I had a planet to make! People to create! I didn’t want to be alone. I want someone to talk to! To laugh with. To dance and sing with! I want a friend.

I looked around at each of the planets capable of supporting life and had water. There were between 100 million and 500 million planets in each galaxy that could support human life, and there were trillions of galaxies in the universe. I had plenty of planets to choose from... but none of them felt right...

This was going to be my first populated planet after all. I wanted to give it some special treatment. It was decided then. I was going to have to create the world by hand.

I just needed a good star to support my world.

And I knew just the one.

In a galaxy not too far away, with two wide arms of stars, there was a white-ish yellow star that looked very similar to the first star I had made. It was perfect for my world! It was a very steady star with no big outbursts of radiation. And it was relatively young, having been born only a little more than a billion years ago...

Years? What is a year? It must be a measurement of time given the context... but how long is a year? Sometimes these random terms can be confusing... Ok, I remember how long ago this star was born, and if it was “a little more than a billion years” ago then if I divide that amount of time by a billion, then I can figure out about how long a year is... Ok, got it... I think. Hopefully, the definition of “year” will pop up in one of my trains soon.

Anyways, the star only had a small purple gas planet and a ring of small asteroids orbiting it. There was plenty of space to work with.

I moved through the universe, weaving through the galaxies and around the stars, bringing the solid ball of iron along with me. It was my first creation, I wasn’t just going to leave it in some random spot! No, I’ll place it in orbit around that star I found.

I stopped next to the star. It only took 200 million years to get there... Was that fast or slow? I think that was fast... I did get here faster than light, so I would say that that was fast.

I was getting distracted. It was time to get to work!

First, I needed to place my first star’s memento into orbit. It was small compared to the star, but even so, it was almost half as massive as the star. So, it had a lot of gravitational pull to it. Maybe right next to the star was best.

I nodded. That seemed like a good idea. I held up the iron ball next to the star...

Ok, it’s this close... and the mass is... then the orbital speed is... I see, then the center of gravity won’t be the star’s center, but would be closer to the star’s surface...

Carefully, I held the iron ball up as if it was a dart... and threw it along the path I had calculated... As soon as I let go of the iron memento, its gravity rolled outwards and started to affect the universe. Multiple asteroids were pulled off course, moving towards the center of the system. Most asteroids were too far away to be greatly affected though; the only result being a change from a circular orbit to an elliptical orbit. The gas planet was pulled off-course, and it would have been sling-shotted out into a different star system, so I snatched it and placed it back near where it was. The gas planet was a pretty purple color and had some nice swirls, so I wanted to keep it in this system.

As for the incoming asteroids, I brushed them off and out of the system.

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Everything is ready now...

I had a good star that would last about seven billion more years—not that long but plenty of time for people to develop and move to a different star if they wanted to—I had my memento in place, and I had lots of room to create things.

It was time to make a planet...

“Let there be a planet!” I shouted, watching in anticipation.

Nothing happened.

Huh?... Why didn’t a planet form? Was it because planet is too vague a word? No... Light is a vague word too and that worked out just fine... I looked at the star, then at everything else around me... Maybe...

I held my right hand up between the star and the gas planet. In my mind, I imagined a ball of rock, a nice sturdy place for people to live on, being made on the palm of my hand.

“Let there be a planet.”

And the ball of rock appeared in my right hand. Immediately, it started being pulled into the star, but I managed to clasp my hand around it before it moved any closer. Well, it was less “clasping my hand around it” and more “pinching it between my fingers” because it was so small. If the star was the size of a baseball, then the planet was the size of a small... What was something that small and round to compare it to? Oh! It was about the same size as the iron ball memento!

Anyways, the planet was tiny in comparison to the star. It was three times as big as the Earth though... Not that I knew how I knew that. How did I know that this planet was bigger than the Earth? Strange. Where even was the Earth?

I think that the planet didn’t form the first time because I didn’t specify where I wanted it to be created. When I first created the light, there wasn’t anything to give a point of reference to where I wanted the light to be created, so it was just created. And when I created the atomic mist I created that everywhere so a point of reference wasn’t necessary. But now I have things, and creating other things too near may disrupt those other things, so I had to be more specific as to where I wanted the planet to be created... Yep, makes sense to me.

Whoops. The side of the planet facing the star was starting to turn molten. The side away from the star was frozen solid though. I moved it a bit further away from the star. It started to cool down significantly. The molten rock’s surface hardened into a thick crust while the core of the planet... Well, it was kind of solid but also kind of liquidy... the core was also spinning pretty fast which produced a field of energy around the whole planet. Magnetism produced by the iron and nickel in the core.

The surface was still extremely hot though, and was covered in volcanoes, spewing ash all over itself. Not into the air, because the planet didn’t have an atmosphere yet. I was getting to that. For now, I have to figure out the planet’s temperature.

All of the livable planets in the universe were all orbiting within a specific distance from their stars. Depending on the size of the star, that “livable orbit zone” changed. I looked at all of the stars that were of similar size as this star. It should be somewhere between two to three arm lengths away from the baseball sized star.

I moved the planet to be two arm lengths and three hand spans away from the star. That should be good enough... I calculated the needed orbit, and threw it into motion.

As it was right now, the planet was still too hot to live on, so I waited until the temperature cooled a bit.

Something’s not right. The planet is spinning as it orbits the star... but the side facing it grows too hot for life while the other, darker, side grows too cold... isn’t this the right distance from the star? Why isn’t it good then?

I turned my focus back to the other livable planets to see what was different about them... Oh. They were spinning a lot faster, giving the star less time to cook one side of the planet, and the shadowed side less time to lose all of its heat.

When the planet swung back around to me, I plucked it back out of orbit. Let’s try this again. This time when I threw it, I gave it a little twist with the tip of my fingers. The spin seemed to be alright, but there was a little bit of a wobble and tilt to the planet... Is that alright?... Now there’s fluctuations in temperature. The day is hotter than the night. But now the side pointed away from the star is freezing while the side pointed towards the star is hot... Then when the planet orbits the star, the side that was pointed away is now pointed towards the star, causing it to grow hot, while the other side grows cold...

I shrugged. The new spin and orbit of the planet ensured that the temperatures were all livable, and each side had about half a year being hot and half a year to be cold, so it would be fair to everyone living on the planet.

... Half a year?... half of an orbit is half a year? Does that mean a year refers to a planet’s full orbit around its star?... no, then a “year” would change depending on the planet... It must refer to Earth’s orbit! It’s the only planet I occasionally remember things about, so I must have remembered the “year” of Earth. Interesting. I coincidentally made my planet’s orbit have the same “year” as Earth has... My days are the same as well. Was it a coincidence? Or did I unconsciously make it the same?

I giggled. I keep learning new things about myself! How interesting! Whoever I was before I became a god, I must have lived on Earth. Hopefully, I’ll eventually remember who I was... For now, I had a world to finish making.

It took a couple years, but the planet had cooled down enough.

“Let there be water and air,” I said, focusing on the planet.

A glob of water and air engulfed the planet. The water rushed across its surface, seeping into the ground and into caves and crevices. The air spread evenly around the planet, whipping up dust and mud and water. Eventually everything calmed and settled into place. There wasn’t enough water to entirely cover the planet, which was a good thing, and there were three major continents and thousands of small islands. A couple of islands could be argued to be continents, but compared to the three large land masses they just looked like large islands.

Across the landmasses, lakes and rivers of all shapes and sizes formed, digging trenches and grooves into the rock. Weathering the stone into dirt. Water evaporated into the atmosphere. Clouds formed and precipitation fell. Rain, snow, sleet, and hail fell on various parts of the world. Ice caps formed on the north and south poles.

The world had weather now.

There were still plenty of things that needed doing, but I paused to watch the planet and its weather formations. I watched as the planet went through its cycles of hot and cold... Seasons. Summer was the hot part, autumn when it was cooling, winter when it was cold, and spring when it was warming up... Another bit of Earth terminology that popped into my head... Earth... that was the name of some planet that wasn’t in my universe.

Names... I don’t have a name...

I looked at all of my universe. I looked at the star I was next to, at the iron ball, at the purple gas planet, and at the world I had just created.

They don’t have names either... What should I name them?