The Fable of the Phasmid
“It would never have been more beautiful than it was in that moment, floating down the stream.”
When God first created the Earth, Their intent was clear. They wanted to find a way to expand Their kingdom, and the only way to do such a thing, They concluded, would be to plant a seed of godhood within Their own creation. Thus, once the Earth was formed and life was given birth, eons passed and God scoured the Earth looking for the perfect vessels to carry Their seed of godhood: self-awareness. Hundreds of millions of years, sometimes billions of years, would pass before life hit a stalemate of equilibrium, with no satisfactory vessel. As such, God smote the Earth with mass extinction event after mass extinction event — plague, impacts, floods, drought — until, finally, the primate was not only born, but evolved to the point where it became a satisfactory vessel. However, it was not without its flaws, and God knew this. Primates were ravenous, competitive creatures, and after years of waiting for this to evolve out of the creature, God decided that if anything would purge its more carnal and unsavory ways, it would be self-awareness. As such, God gave it the primates, and humankind was born.
For hundreds of thousands of years, humans, blessed with self-awareness, roamed the Earth to no effective end. God knew that to make humans a proper likeness to Them would take time and work, but at some point, things became clear: nothing was going to change. Humans were a failed experiment. If it wasn’t obvious after Ashurbanipal and Tamerlane, it became increasingly worrisome to God after Alexander the Great. But things only worsened from Genghis Khan and his mass genocide of tens of millions to the Inquisition. Then, the coup de grâce that portrayed the unsuitableness of humans for the gift of self-awareness came with the Holocaust, the nuclear bomb, and then the landing on the moon — taking their first steps in threatening the entire universe with their inability to handle their divinity.
God was well aware that They had made a terrible mistake. Self-awareness had not made humans better; it had made them only more capable of appreciating their atrocities. God was so eager to bestow Their gift on a being of Their creation that They did not practice proper patience — never again. As God had done before, They sent ice ages, plagues, earthquakes, floods, and volcanoes. But this time They could not destroy Their own creation. The only alternative was to find a replacement.
In the remote jungles of Earth, God had been cultivating a new form of life that was a candidate for self-awareness: the phasmid. This small being was a perfect candidate to serve God’s dual purpose in bestowing divinity upon a proper creation of Theirs while ending the human plague. Even with the most recent atrocities committed by humans, and although they were rapidly advancing, making plans to land on Mars while the Earth itself was on the brink of environmental collapse, God would not make the same mistake. Lack of patience had gotten God into this mess in the first place, and They wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
But, thankfully, a phasmid had been born about eight months ago who was the perfect candidate to be God’s new Adam. Socially speaking, the phasmids as a whole had learned peace, harmony, and collaboration far beyond any other species. Other animals and creatures had even stopped attacking them, for they had formed a mutualistic bond with all other living beings. But this particular phasmid was gifted with all the mutations that had culminated to favor this new vessel of God: long, thin legs that could regrow when amputated, a carapace that could guard her from the radiation of a potential nuclear war, wings to quickly travel and spread her seed across the Earth, and a level of beauty and elegance that even nature around her worshipped. The trees themselves rustled with excitement when she approached, the rocks expressed gratitude when she used them as a bridge, and sunflowers, even for just a moment, would turn their faces towards her even at mid-day to catch a glimpse. She was innocent, lovely, and perfect. God had found the world’s savior.
It was early in the morning when the phasmid left her home to go on her daily trek towards the stream to collect the freshly fallen leaves of fall that floated along it. She was alone and loved the peace she had in the morning by herself. But unbeknownst to her, God was watching, ready to give her the gift that They had been waiting to give to a new creature for far too long.
As God watched, She approached the stream, and just as she always would, she began to collect her leaves. That was when a particularly odd leaf was floating in the river, completely golden, and almost shimmering in the sun. It was unlike any leaf she had seen before. God was pleased when They saw this. “Aww, curiosity, one of the hallmark traits of a being worthy of godhood.” But God was taken aback when the phasmid, instead of grabbing the leaf, sat back on her hind legs and simply watched it float away.
“Why did you do that?” The phasmid heard a voice say behind her. As she turned around, she saw a gentle ball of light that seemed to, in some ways, reflect the silhouette of a phasmid like herself, but yet remained ethereal to her.
“Why did I do what?” the phasmid asked.
“Why didn’t you get the golden leaf?”
“It was so pretty,” the phasmid said, matter-of-factly.
“Yes, it was beautiful. I saw it myself and I too almost lunged to grab it. Why didn’t you get it?” God queried.
“It would never have been more beautiful than it was in that moment, floating down the stream.”
God found her answer beautiful. They were always amazed by what They could learn from Their own creations, and They were not at all disappointed by the phasmid’s response. “You truly are a work of art,” God said to the phasmid lovingly. “I have a gift to give you.”
“Oh?” the phasmid replied.
“Yes, I would like to make you like me. That is to say, I would like to make you like God. I want to give you the power of self-awareness.”
“Self-awareness?” the phasmid wondered, perplexed.
“Have you seen the humans?”
“Yes, I have seen them here and there. We have remained relatively unnoticed by them all this time. But it is hard not to notice them.”
“How would you like to be like them?” God asked.
“What is it like to be like them?”
“What is it like to be like you?”
The phasmid turned her head in a jerking motion and, after a moment, responded, “The world around me is a sensory machine, and it is draped in darkness. I only sense what I need to sense, and I behave based on these inputs.”
“To be like them,” God replied, “To be like Me, I should say, is to have a fire burning inside you. It is a light that allows you to control the sensory machine.”
“Why would I want to be in the light when I am already acquainted with the dark?”
God, taken aback, responded, “To have that light is better, trust Me.”
“Because that makes me like You?”
“Yes.” God responded.
Is being like You inherently good? I am one with the trees, the grass, the birds, and the fish. It is the common consensus that humans will destroy us all. Would this still be the case if You had not tried to make them like You?”
“I am not sure,” God pondered her words for a moment. “But what I do know is that if I do not find something to combat the human, this world will be destroyed.”
“I agree; this world is doomed.”
“And I, God, have chosen you to take this burden and to help Me save this world.”
“Why?”
“I was hasty when I chose the primates to become self-aware; I was not hasty in my choice when choosing you. You have found peace and love and harmony. You are now ready for self-awareness.”
“Yet, You want me to combat the humans? You aim to give me a gift that will destroy what You cherish in me?” The phasmid asked, frank and matter-of-fact in all her speech.
“It isn’t like that,” God parried rapidly. “Once the humans have been taken care of, whether tamed or exterminated, then what will be left is a species that knows how to create peace.”
The phasmid responded, completely unaware of the significance of this conversation due to her very nature, talking to God as a friend, an acquaintance, rather than a being to be worshipped. “I fear that the only form of being that would want Your gift is one that cannot see its inherent danger.”
“But if a being that appreciates its inherent danger does not take the gift, then this world is doomed.”
“Was it not already?”
“No.”
“I have spoken to the snakes, the turtles, the birds, and the reptiles. I have heard their ancient tales of constant natural destruction over billions of years. It seems that, regardless of what happens next, the world and all that lives on it will die eventually. We accept that.”
“It would not happen again if you would accept this gift.”
“But you just said it was a burden.”
“This gift and a burden.”
“Why would it not happen again?” The phasmid asked.
“Because I created those plagues, that destruction, in My pursuit to find a life-form to inherit this gift. And now, I cannot destroy the humans. They are like bedbugs, mosquitoes, termites, and rats that infest My creation no matter what destruction I throw at it.”
“What is wrong with the bedbugs, the mosquitoes, the termites, and the rats?”
“They infest; they destroy.”
“It seems that in Your pursuit to find a being to inherit Your gift, You have infested the Earth with humans and continued to destroy each and every one of your creations in the process,” the phasmid responded.
God was in total shock. It was at this moment that They finally recognized that They had been having a conversation with what They would have considered, up until this point, a lesser being. And in this moment, God began to weep.
“What are You doing?” The phasmid asked, confused by God’s response.
“I am weeping.”
“Does that come from the fire inside?”
“It does.”
“You seem so lonely.”
“I am.”
A sensitive and thought provoking piece. I particularly liked this sentence "Is being like You inherently good? I am one with the trees, the grass, the birds, and the fish. It is the common consensus that humans will destroy us all. Would this still be the case if You had not tried to make them like You?”