The Sitcom God

Omnipotent beings can do anything, and have all of time to do it in.

This is a hard concept to grasp because you lack ambition. You cannot imagine the ability to remove all of elephants, and replace them with hat stands, or fossilise the moon. And you can do it all a million time over. A chance to do everything in an infinite amount of time cooks our brains. 

Therefore, let’s take an specific example. 

A few million years into its life span, an omnipotent being decided to start watching sitcoms. All of them. They summoned every episode of every sitcom ever made, and decreed they be streamed one after each other on a cliff on their planet, two hundred foot wide and tall. They sat on clouds and watched, munching on fridge sized vats of mojito popcorn. 

Six months in they spotted a recurring trope. Most sitcoms featured two of the leads dipping in and out of love with each other. There was usually three seasons of unrequited hi-jinx, and they began their relation formally in season four. 

In the earlier series one of these leads nearly always entered in a long-term relationship with somebody outside the main gang. This was usually a celebrity cameo, or an actor whose rose to fame five years later. The kind that made your nudge your girlfriend in in the cinema, and whisper ‘Wasn’t that Julia’s boyfriend in that show we liked?’ 

Whatever happened to the actors in real life, there is no doubt that these characters are on a time limit. They never featured for more than two seasons, and existed to fulfil dramatic tension before the big romantic conclusion. After the inevitable break-up scene, they never appeared again. 

The omnipotent being thought it would be funny if these characters gained sentience existence. And so, before starting their final episode, the creature flicked their fingers. They knew the plots in advance after all. And with that flick, the characters understood their fate. That when the next scene ended, they would vanish from existence forever. 

The dialogues changed for these creatures. The boyfriends and girlfriends begged and pleaded for the character to keep them for one more wacky scenario, but each time the lead rebutted them with one-liners and romantic cliches. And then as always,the screen faded to a establishing shot. The last you saw of the estranged partners was their eyes, tears streaming down, fading away to the outside of a coffee shop. 

Then the beings got bored of sitcoms, and moved onto creating whole universes out of chewing gum, and swallowing candy floss seas. 

Such is the never-ending imagination of the omnipotent.