You would probably think me insane if I were to begin this viewpoint by telling you that God came to me. In a way, you would be right. At the very least — while not insane — I would be speaking inaccurately.

French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre said, “Hell is other people.” I wonder if he knew how right he was. For each extra person in the universe, we are that much less together. There is only one, but it is scattered, and becoming even more so.

So yes, God came to me in the form of a simple realization. The only way to come back together is to become one. The only way to become one is to repeatedly become fewer, until only one remains. I think I should embody that one. Anyone else would forget the goal before it could be attained.

At first, I thought it would be easy. I came benevolently and told the world that we are one. They nodded, agreed and worshipped me. What is wrong with people? There is nothing to worship.

And they breed, and breed and breed. We become further from God, further scattered and harder to convince that there is any other way closer to hell. Worse, they bring me closer to hell with them. For every split the soul takes, I feel myself grow smaller. So I gave up on benevolence and adopted malevolence. Malevolence brought millions closer to being one.

So what then? People start to feel better about themselves, start to feel closer to God and they stop believing in my malevolence. It’s infuriating! We got so close to being brought down to about seven figures. And then they stopped the merging. They started breeding twice as fast. Somehow, even after I planted the concept of overpopulation, they still bred. It’s like there’s a true malevolent force at work, keeping us from God. And it’s called us.

This time, though, I shall surely succeed. I have my finger on the trigger to bring a billion threads back into the true tapestry. It was hard to get in this position, but it will all be worth it to become one. I feel them still breeding. I feel it pulling me apart and my memory of God is gettting weaker. My hand is on the trigger.

Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two billion.

Two billion lives, all of value. What was I thinking?

Starace is a sophomore journalism major and is the Tribune’s MUSG reporter.,”Rikida N. Starace”

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