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"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
It is up to you to give [life] a meaning."
(Jean-Paul Sartre)

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"You're not meant to do it this way!"

Lucifer's stern voice cut across the room while he was coming closer.

Jachwe flinched. He should have bet on this. Leave it to Luce to point out one's flaws and weak points.

"I want to figure something out." The other told him. "Let me do my thing. You concentrate on your thing!"

But Lucifer was known to be a critical pessimist, and also to be rather nosy. He leaned closer, watching over the shoulder of Jachwe.

Clumsy dinosaurs were walking across a plain field overgrown with giant horsetail and a few pine trees. Admitted, their slow movements were pleasantly to watch. "That is not what we should do!" The skeptical cherub approached the experimental God.

"We were told to make them like us! Those creatures aren't anything like us!", he pointed out. The heavy creatures walking across Jachwe's world were cute and even interesting, but nothing like the angels or Gods in Heaven. "You'll fail again. Remember what happened the last time!"

Jachwe flinched again. He didn't want to be reminded of his previous errors. But this time he was sure to get it right. He'd learned from his mistakes and made a few changes. He tried to explain, although he knew the other one was never going to understand.

"I haven't forgotten that! I altered the conditions completely. It has to start here. This is just a passing stage. A complicated concept called Evolution. Wait and see! You'll understand soon. I've got everything covered this time. Those beautiful dinosaurs of mine won't last. It's a pity, but they need to give way to other beings. Beings more like us. I'll call them human beings, or just humans for short. I checked all the calculations twice. This time I'm going to make it work!"

"Interesting!" Luce rolled his pitch-black eyes. Just as predicted, he hadn't understood a word. The world he'd created was a strictly structured, yet boring hierarchy of angel-like beings. He was the boss of his world. He told them everything, they never did a single move without his permission.

"Boring", Jachwe thought, "and quite predictable." He had in mind something very different for his creation. But like usually the other Gods and angels didn't understand his brilliance and watched him skeptically- and as countless times before it had been striver cherub Luce who'd come by sneering.

Lucifer as always was full of and sure about himself. "Then let's make a bet. Let's see whose world is going to be better. Yours or mine!"

Jachwe was tired of all the critical words and he knew from a long row of experience that giving in, would be the quickest way out. "Alright!" He announced and offered his hand for a shake. Lucifer took it. "Agreed. The winner will have to obey the orders of the defeated for a day."

Another thing Jachwe could have made a wager on. Leave it to Lucifer to care for hierarchies and orders alone. He wasn't a God, he was a mere angel, so maybe for him, things like that were more important. Jachwe would never truly understand why. Here in Heaven, they were all equals among equals, as long as they obeyed the rules.

Their agreement was borderline walking. He overthought it quickly. Chances were, they would likely be forgiven should it escalate- when it escalated like it usually did. However, he was sure to stand a good chance this time. He was pretty convinced of his Godly work. He'd learned his lessons from the past.

"Agreed", he answered. "But once we start, we aren't allowed to tell our creations what to do. We can give them orders or a codex in advance or whatever we want, but from then on we must lean back and watch. The winner will be the one whose world thrives better or exists longer." Jachwe also learned from painful experience that you had to be careful when gambling with Lucifer. The other would tend to bend the rules and pull everything to his advantages. Not this time, however. Jachwe had learned his lesson, and Luce had no idea about his intentional plan to create a world with beings so godlike and perfect, that his interaction would not be necessary and required any longer. Another weakness of Lucifer's creation, his creatures were so much like himself, they needed a leader to tell them the way. They wouldn't last a decade without killing or at least fighting each other to death without his guidance. Jachwe smirked about his waterproof plan and wicked cleverness.

"Sure", Lucifer shrugged his shoulders. "I'm looking forward to it. And by the way, let the others watch our match and be the judges."

"Okay fine, what do you propose?"

"Let's upload our creations on WorldPad. Would be a good thing to see whose world they like better. Plus, that makes it easier to watch and more fun to beat you."

Sometimes Lucifer's ideas were surprisingly good- a blind angel finding a grain of corn.

"Sensible idea! I intended to transfer it to WorldPad anyway", Jachwe admitted. On WorldPad they were allowed to watch and comment on the developments of other worlds. Sometimes you came across pretty good ideas there. But wherever you found brilliance you could also stumble across miserable and poorly constructed creations. Truth be told, those creations doomed to fail were more commonly to be found than those of the first kind.

While doing so, young Gods and angels liked to interact with each other on their interactive platform, giving feedback and pointing out strong or weak points of their newest creations to one another. Uploading it would only increase the benefit of the challenge, Jachwe was sure.

"All right, so let's get this challenge started in a weeks' time. Seven days to prepare all the settings."

Lucifer was up for it. He too seemed pretty convinced of his angelic creation.

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Author's note II:

I have an even bigger problem now: I gathered around 100 brilliant quotes from brilliant persons, but I've got only ten chapters planned to fit them in.

It would be a shame not to put them in here somewhere- so I decided to put one of my most favorite quotations at the beginning and one at the end of each chapter. Whether you like it or not!

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"A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday."
(Alexander Pope)

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"We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us."
(Marcel Proust)

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Or maybe even two when I can't make a decision! :)