CHAPTER 8: FIRST DAYS AS A GOD

  The prayers started at 3 AM.

  Charley woke up to voices in his head—not words exactly, but feelings. Needs. Desperate hopes compressed into pure emotion that hit him like a wave.

  Help my daughter she's sick please please please—

  —the harvest is failing we'll starve—

  —guide me I'm lost I don't know what to—

  He sat up in bed, gasping. The voices weren't loud. They were everywhere and nowhere, a constant background hum of a trillion souls all living their lives, and some of them—the desperate ones, the faithful ones—were reaching out.

  Tenuk had mentioned this. "You'll learn to filter," he'd said. "Otherwise you'll go mad in a week."

  Charley closed his eyes and tried to focus. The prayers sorted themselves, like his brain was suddenly running cosmic spam filters. Most faded to background noise. A few pushed forward, urgent and clear.

  The sick daughter first. He could see her somehow—a small reptilian child on a planet he didn't have a name for, burning with fever while her father knelt beside her bed. The father's prayer was a wordless scream of fear.

  Charley reached out, not physically but with whatever divine sense he now possessed. He could feel the illness, some kind of bacterial infection. He couldn't just cure it—Tenuk had been clear about that. "We maintain balance. We don't play miracle worker for every stubbed toe."

  But he could nudge. He let his awareness drift to a healer three streets over, a woman who was restless, couldn't sleep. Charley gave her the gentlest push—check on the Korven family—and watched as she sat up, frowning, then grabbed her medicine bag.

  The father's prayer shifted from desperation to confused hope as footsteps approached his door.

  Charley moved to the next prayer. The failing harvest. He could see the fields, the withered crops. A fungal blight, spreading fast. This one was trickier. He couldn't just make it rain or kill the fungus. But he could... adjust. He found a species of beetle on the other side of the planet, natural predators of the fungus. He shifted wind patterns, just slightly, creating conditions for the beetles to migrate.

  It would take weeks. The farmers would still struggle. But they wouldn't starve.

  The third prayer was from someone lost—not physically, but spiritually. A young woman standing on a cliff, staring at the ocean, wondering if her life meant anything.

  Charley hesitated. What the hell was he supposed to do with that?

  He thought about deflecting, moving on to something easier. Then he stopped himself.

  No. That was the old Charley. The one who joked his way out of uncomfortable moments.

  He reached out carefully, not with words but with presence. He let her feel that she was seen. That her life was part of something vast and interconnected. He couldn't fix her depression or solve her problems, but he could offer her the same thing Tenuk had offered him: the knowledge that she wasn't alone in the universe.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  She took a step back from the cliff.

  Charley opened his eyes. His hands were shaking. The whole thing had taken maybe ten minutes, but he felt exhausted.

  His phone buzzed. A text from Sam: "Dude where are you? You're supposed to open today."

  Shit. Buy Less.

  He'd been so caught up in cosmic responsibility that he'd forgotten about his actual job. The one that paid rent.

  Charley got dressed and transported himself to the parking lot. Still felt weird, reality just bending around him like that. He walked in through the front door like a normal person because appearing out of thin air in the break room seemed like a bad idea.

  Dave was at the customer service desk, looking annoyed.

  "You're late."

  "Yeah. Sorry. I need to talk to you."

  "If this is about switching shifts again—"

  "I'm quitting."

  Dave blinked. "What?"

  "I'm done. Two weeks notice, effective now. I'll work through the end of the month if you need me to, but I'm out."

  "Charley, you can't just—we're already short-staffed—"

  "I know. I'm sorry. But I got another opportunity and I have to take it."

  Dave's expression cycled through anger, confusion, and finally resignation. "Fine. Whatever. Fill out the paperwork in the office."

  It took twenty minutes. Charley signed forms, turned in his name tag, and walked out of Buy Less Groceries for the last time. Sam caught him in the parking lot.

  "Holy shit, you actually did it. What's the new job?"

  "It's... complicated. I'll explain later."

  "Is this about that weird stuff you mentioned? The thing you couldn't talk about?"

  "Yeah."

  Sam studied him. "You look different. I don't know how, but you do."

  Charley managed a smile. "I'm working on some things. I'll call you soon, okay?"

  He transported home before Sam could ask more questions.

  The prayers continued throughout the day. Charley handled them in batches, learning to prioritize. A natural disaster on one planet—he couldn't stop it, but he could warn the population through dreams and intuition, give them time to evacuate. A war brewing on another world—he nudged a key diplomat toward a conversation that might prevent bloodshed.

  It was exhausting. It was overwhelming.

  It was also the first time in his life that Charley felt like he was doing something that actually mattered.

  He was heating up leftover Chinese food around 8 PM when a prayer came through that made him freeze.

  It felt wrong.

  All the other prayers had a certain quality—organic, emotional, alive. This one was cold. Distorted. Like someone screaming through static.

  Help me help me help me help me—

  The words repeated, mechanical. Charley tried to trace it back to its source, the way he'd done with all the others.

  Nothing.

  The prayer was coming from nowhere. Or everywhere. It had no origin point, no desperate soul behind it. Just the words, looping endlessly.

  Help me help me help me help me—

  Charley pushed deeper, trying to find the source. His awareness stretched across Universe 2, searching.

  And then he found it.

  A tiny tear in reality. Not like the big one from before—this was smaller, barely visible. But it was there, and the prayer was leaking through it like poison.

  Charley reached out to seal it, the way Tenuk had taught him.

  The tear moved.

  It slid away from his touch, deliberate and fast. Charley chased it, but it was already closing on its own, winking out of existence.

  The prayer stopped.

  Charley stood in his kitchen, heart pounding. Tears didn't move. They didn't close themselves. And they definitely didn't generate fake prayers.

  Something was testing him. Probing Universe 2's defenses.

  Learning.

  He thought about calling Tenuk, or one of the other gods. Then he stopped. He was the God of Universe 2 now. This was his responsibility.

  But he had no idea what he was dealing with.

  Charley pulled out his phone and stared at it. He should eat. Should sleep. Should do something normal to ground himself.

  Instead, he closed his eyes and stretched his awareness across Universe 2, searching for more tears. More anomalies.

  He found three more before midnight. Each one closed itself before he could reach it. Each one whispered the same distorted prayer.

  Help me help me help me help me—

  Whatever was in the Void, it wasn't just trying to break through anymore.

  It was watching him.

  And it wanted him to know.