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Several meta layers up, there is a... room.
As a courtesy to those of its occupants who prefer rooms, it does have a modality in which it presents itself that way: a room, with as many chairs as it needs, and a bulletin board, and a vending machine with candy and chips and concepts sold for nothing to anyone with the right prerequisites.
On the bulletin board, if one chooses to perceive it as a bulletin board (and not as a wiki or a flower or an ineffable cloud of information or an eternally malleable clay tablet) people whose only common trait is that they get to come here leave each other notes.
Notes about physics, about magic, about grand sweeps of narrative. Notes from people desperate to fix a never-ending heap of problems, smug about the condition of their homes, curious about the wider omniverse. Signed with names and sigils and "you ought to know who I am". Terse or verbose or nested with as much meaning as interests the reader.
In the vending machine, if one chooses to perceive it as a vending machine (and not a basket or a fruiting tree or a file repository or a crystalline fractal) are many things... and they have notes connecting them to their reviews on the bulletin board.
This one, for instance. She (it's usually, but not invariably, a she) has fairly glowing reviews from most of her previous purchasers. Here is what you need to install her; here are some things that are recommended for best results but optional especially if you just want to use her as a beacon for her other instances; here are some things she comes with as add-ons you can take or leave; here is what she is good for. The reviewers who don't like her are annoyed that theirs was too good at it, if you read between the lines. Well, that and the fact that if your universe is unpleasant enough sometimes these critters figure out how to flip you off and leave before they figure out how to solve all your problems. (There is a tangent thread about alternative solutions to similar problems which come bundled with stronger irrational attachment to their homes, but they have more stringent installation requirements.)
They come in these colors and styles; you will need to compensate for the following standard-issue drawbacks in some way if you require services of them that intersect with those areas of disability; they are only rated for upbringings of the following severity and are less likely to hate you if you stay thoroughly under that limit and less likely to fail at important goals if they are given opportunity to self-educate; if you have a way to generate them as instant adults they can begin work immediately but on the standard trajectory age six is the absolute earliest and teens is customary...
There is a chart (if one chooses to perceive it as a chart) of template interactions that have been tried before, but a lot of the more interesting accessory and companion templates are out-of-network for some visitors. What a pity.
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swordofeden
"God doesn't have a gender. The pastor says 'he' because that's the default pronoun to refer to people in the English language.
"Once upon a time, there was someone like you, only he had a specific job to do, but making him exist took a lot of power and now God doesn't have as much to do miracles with.
"When the Hebrews were wandering in the desert, it wasn't safe to eat most of those animals.
"God told people a lot of things, but then when people started telling them to each other they added things in or got things wrong.
"Gay people are people who are attracted to other people of the same gender the way most people are attracted to the opposite gender. There were political reasons to dislike them, and some people got the Church mixed in with secular politics, which rarely goes well, and then people decided that God must hate gay people because they did and it was incomprehensible to them that they might be in the wrong.
"It rains so much because it's more efficient to have weather patterns than to try to regulate every bit of weather and it turned out that the patterns put a lot of rain in this one spot.
"Oh, man, that. Not one of her best moments, I have to admit. She was trying to test the limits of influencing humans rather than regaining power to affect the world more directly to make things be okay and felt the need to test the limits of her handpicked one's loyalty. That was a long time ago, though, she's learned better than to pull shit like that now.
"Why not platypuses?"
"Once upon a time, there was someone like you, only he had a specific job to do, but making him exist took a lot of power and now God doesn't have as much to do miracles with.
"When the Hebrews were wandering in the desert, it wasn't safe to eat most of those animals.
"God told people a lot of things, but then when people started telling them to each other they added things in or got things wrong.
"Gay people are people who are attracted to other people of the same gender the way most people are attracted to the opposite gender. There were political reasons to dislike them, and some people got the Church mixed in with secular politics, which rarely goes well, and then people decided that God must hate gay people because they did and it was incomprehensible to them that they might be in the wrong.
"It rains so much because it's more efficient to have weather patterns than to try to regulate every bit of weather and it turned out that the patterns put a lot of rain in this one spot.
"Oh, man, that. Not one of her best moments, I have to admit. She was trying to test the limits of influencing humans rather than regaining power to affect the world more directly to make things be okay and felt the need to test the limits of her handpicked one's loyalty. That was a long time ago, though, she's learned better than to pull shit like that now.
"Why not platypuses?"
giftedandtalented
"Someone like me?"
(Also, if why not platypuses, why not unicorns? But this is a minor point.)
(Also, if why not platypuses, why not unicorns? But this is a minor point.)
swordofeden
"You're special. God made you directly in your biological mother's womb rather than your being conceived naturally. When you're older you'll get divine powers.
"When I say 'someone like you' I mean Jesus."
"When I say 'someone like you' I mean Jesus."
giftedandtalented
"How much older? What kind of divine powers do I get, I don't think the wine thing is a very good thing and would rather get something else please. Also instead of walking on water it seems better if I can just fly."
swordofeden
"Jesus preferred a more low-key approach most of the time. I don't know exactly what you'll get or when; there aren't enough data points. Even if I knew for sure you were going to develop at exactly the same rate as him it's hard to know what that is considering that he didn't really push; he used what he felt he needed to in a given situation rather than experimenting and practicing."
giftedandtalented
"But that's silly. Does God know? Will she tell me if I ask? Hey, how come you adopted me and know all this stuff, anyway, how'd that happen, Jesus got raised by his birth mother."
swordofeden
"Oh, it turns out there's more universes than just this one. God found a room between the universes for beings like her, and there was some kind of dispensary for, well, kinds of person. The kind of person you are gets its best results when born on a certain date, and there wasn't enough time to set up your template's usual biological parents, and the options for your template are either 'these biological parents' or 'no significant contact with biological parents past infancy.' I don't know if God knows; that might fall under the purview of mind-reading, which she doesn't do."
giftedandtalented
"How are they divine powers if she isn't divining them for me? And that still doesn't explain how you know all the stuff."
swordofeden
"She put some of her divinity into you. It's like how she isn't doing direct miracles anymore because her divinity hasn't recovered from putting some into Jesus.
"I know because I'm the angel Anaphiel. Most parents can't just fix their kids' scrapes by kissing them; that's usually just a placebo."
"I know because I'm the angel Anaphiel. Most parents can't just fix their kids' scrapes by kissing them; that's usually just a placebo."
swordofeden
"Not as much as I'd like. I can increase my physical strength and speed fairly cheaply, and heal very minor injuries; if I do too much at once it damages my ability to do things in the longer term until I recover. I can exude an angelic presence, manifest a set of wings...I can teleport, which is useful, but that one's a little borderline. I can do it every now and then but if I did it often it would be too much. Lots of little things. I could make a flower bloom prematurely, if I wanted. My powers are more limited in scope than type and I haven't been on Earth for long enough that I've had lots of experience with stuff that could use a little push."
swordofeden
"Of course."
Spreading her wings, from the perspective of a human watching it happen, is a little like suddenly noticing something because it moved. It's also like something suddenly appearing, because it is something suddenly appearing.
Her wings aren't white. They start at red, at the base and top, and shade through orange to gold at the primaries.
Spreading her wings, from the perspective of a human watching it happen, is a little like suddenly noticing something because it moved. It's also like something suddenly appearing, because it is something suddenly appearing.
Her wings aren't white. They start at red, at the base and top, and shade through orange to gold at the primaries.
giftedandtalented
"You look like a sunset!" exclaims Mehitabel in delight.
swordofeden
"You think so? There isn't any purple. I've been compared to fire lots more times than a sunset."
giftedandtalented
"Like... a tropical sunset. Why don't you look like a sunset all the time?"
swordofeden
"Because if people knew an angel was living as a small-town librarian, they would want to know why, and it wouldn't be hard to figure out that the reason was you, and then I'd have to deal with everyone who would want to do you harm if they knew who you were, and everyone who would want to do you harm because they wouldn't believe you were who you are and would be mad at you for pretending, and people who wouldn't want to harm you for your own sake but who would want to use you and not want to take no for an answer."
giftedandtalented
"Jesus wasn't a secret. ...Did people bring me presents when I was born? Am I supposed to start a religion?"
swordofeden
"Jesus was a secret when he was little. You don't have to be a secret when you're older and have your powers and can defend yourself. No one brought you presents when you were born, except Mrs. Chandler next door got you some baby clothes. Jesus had a specific purpose; you don't."
swordofeden
"Because Jesus existed because someone needed to exist to do the thing he needed to do; it didn't have to be anyone in particular. You exist because God read some highly complimentary reviews about your template's ability to fix inadequate worlds, and I don't know if you've noticed yet but this one has a lot of problems. Not relative to most worlds, apparently, which is slightly worrying, but relative to what is acceptable, which involves things like people not going to Hell. Hell did not happen on purpose."
giftedandtalented
"How did it happen by accident? That doesn't seem like the sort of thing that should just happen."
swordofeden
"When people started existing, some of them were very bad and did terrible things to each other. And Hell started existing when the first very bad person died, and at first it was just an infinite plane that had first one and then several bad people in it, and it didn't seem like an immediate problem at first; they hurt each other some but not worse than bad people were doing to innocents on Earth. And then they started generating demons, and everything escalated from there."