Who's looking over whose shoulder?

Submitted into Contest #55 in response to: Write a story where the readers are in on a secret that the characters are unaware of.... view prompt

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General

Who’s looking over whose shoulder?

“Listen up, everybody, this is between ourselves. The ignoramuses down there think they are operating an unknown clandestine outfit, but the stupid pricks are as transparent as a glass of vodka. I’m letting you in on this to show you how the best-laid plans of mice and the other thingy can go awry. 

“They’ve spent the last two years preparing, but for some reason thought they were invulnerable to someone literally looking over their shoulders. But we can learn from them. Have you ever seen such dedication to a cause? There’s been no backsliding, and as it will turn out, useless. Mark this, clandestine should mean just that. During the preparation of an operation, booze is your enemy, well excessive amounts of it is. Especially at the inception of the project. We’ve had plenty of time to observe them and take counter-measures. In fact, and I’m letting you all into this now, but we are going to let them take their preparations up to the day before their intended launch and we’ll simply eliminate them and take over for our own little escapade.”

“Hearken, fellow conspirators." We have the unofficial blessing of our Leader who is devoted to world peace with our operation. We have before us, of two cases of surveillance that only looked one way. The outfit you are witnessing on our screens here, through an assured viewpoint of their own invulnerability, only looked forward at their target. You hear their condemnatory accusations of the observed. They have been looking at the primary target for many months, but apart from a cursory look to their own scrutiny from an outside source, they directed their attention pretty much only at the target they hoped to conquer. Preparation should be at least a two-way exercise. If you develop a bomb that can eliminate all opposition, then you also had better have protection for yourselves too. 

“You will notice that we ourselves have adopted the 360-degree spherical vision approach of eyes everywhere. We won’t be caught with our pants down. In fact, we have provided almost as much protection guarding our own arse as we have of looking up the arses of the two adversaries in question. Well, one adversary actually, as we’ll let the first crew mop up the original target, then the second outfit deal with the first lot, and then we will march in and eliminate and retrieve the spoils for ourselves from the second bunch.”

Sitting above Mankind’s collective head, an old, old, branch of evolved human beings which usually benignly observed the antics of their fellow-creatures as they communed with each other on what they thought were ‘Higher Things.’ Of course, they realised that there are no higher or lower things but only consideration makes them so. Also, of course, they knew they were theoretically playing a game with themselves, but also knew that if they were to exist in the apparency known as time, they needed something to ‘keep them off the streets.’ So they arbitrarily nominated in this case, what they considered might be a bit of a giggle and decided to interfere with their ‘unevolved’ former buddies. They would let the ‘self-satisfied’ bunch of humans that were going to relinquish the spoils from the original bunch of guys and then relieve them of the purloined plunder. What they would do with the loot, wampam, scratch, would make a contemplation item to ward off any threatening ennui that could have crept in after gazing at navels for a few millennia.

There was a form of excitement among the colony of evolvees. Of course, it was at a level that was only perceived by those manifesting vibrations of that frequency but it was irritating to an even more evolved branch of spirit/s. This further bunch of higher order of coalesced beings lived, you could say, a very quiet life. They could exist in a state of almost complete unawareness and if one could use the term ‘enjoyed,’ then they enjoyed having elevated themselves to of almost non-existence. They were slowly working ‘their’ way into actual nothingness, wherein, they could really relax, but the ‘flat-dwellers’ below were causing waves of disturbance that was inhibiting their ‘march’ to oblivion and in an uncharacteristic celestial shout of ‘Fuck,’ resolved to do something about it.

God looked down upon his creation and thought it good, or at least, thought he thought it good. Now, he wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t understand how the bunch of souls immediately below him in the hierarchy could get irritated and think of interfering. He obviously hadn’t got the spell right. They’d given him something to ponder about, he couldn’t see how he’d got it wrong. He decided to let it play out.

A much higher order of God looked down and smiled a beatific kind of smile that lit up the heavens for those who were there to see it, or could see it.

This God was the ‘real’ thing. At least, he thought he was. Naturally, he was male, in the celestial sense and thus had the ability to swipe and smite. It was not that the lower one couldn’t, in fact, he’d demonstrated his ability in this genre by flooding, infecting and the making of his favourite tornados to wreck whole towns when he got bored. But senior God had imbued him with these qualities, anyway. But now Big Big God wondered, just because he could wonder, if it would be amusing to create a totally different type of Universe. He could make all the worlds as flat discs and periodically have them bump into each other. He could make humans that would melt like ice if they got too warm. Reproduction could be by way of either sex and required fasting together for six months and not knowing which of them would reproduce the infant. An infant who would have complete knowledge of his or her former lives.

‘Boring, boring, boring,’ he thought. ‘I’m the Big wheel and that's all I can think of as interesting? Then a sudden thought came to him. ‘Maybe, maybe I’m not the Big Big G. that I always thought I was, and of course, having such an elevated understanding he knew that he also was a fabric of an even greater understanding than he’d had previous awareness about. He hadn’t protected his own back and Big Big Big God decided upon as a whim, to give everything a rest and stamped his celestial Big Foot on the total creation and hoped he was the last in a chain of Big Gs.

August 18, 2020 04:34

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6 comments

Nandan Prasad
03:33 Aug 25, 2020

Ha, I loved this story! I loved the concept and the humour. The intro brought me in completely, and your title does the story justice. Very well-done and keep writing!

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01:56 Aug 21, 2020

Utterly charming! My favorite line: “thus had the ability to swipe and smite.“ This is such an Ode to 2020 and our unorganized apocalypse that should definitely be more orderly. But your theology explains it all. Making order out of chaos is the writer’s duty 🍷

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Len Mooring
22:03 Aug 21, 2020

Thank you, Deidra, ain't life grand?

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P. Jean
02:24 Aug 19, 2020

I liked the first reading as I was fascinated where this might be going. On second reading I liked it even more. I suspect a third or fourth are in order. Amazing writing.

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Len Mooring
22:46 Aug 19, 2020

Thank you, P.J.

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P. Jean
22:47 Aug 19, 2020

Very welcome always enjoy well crafted stories.

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