The Demiurge

The Demiurge was looking carefully at the world he had created. That fabulous world, born by his mind and will, sculpted pedantically till the least possible details, with an endless love and diligence. Vast plains, yellowing fields, lush valleys through which sparkling streams that started from the bowels of the high mountains and their hackly rocky spires to gather together into abounding rivers were spread in front of him. He was staggering the world around and watching his creatures: people who had settled it thinking their cities were built by them without having any idea that all those things were his deed. Everything, till the last grain of sand: the roads, the automobiles that they drove, the different installations that improved their lives. Little ones, fragile and defenseless, depending completely on his will. They did not realize that he was above them, taking care for each one of them and it was in his power without any effort to mow down as a separate human, as the whole that small, refined universe. They were walking, rushing to and fro, staying at a place, sitting in the sun, meeting each other, talking to each other.

The Demiurge remembered the difficulties he had had while he was sculpting that world, the problems he had met, the ways he had solved them in, so everything to be at its place, to be separate and meanwhile inseparably connected with everything else and to be realized as a whole, complete creation. Of course, the Demiurge was able to see the small bugs he had not avoided, discovered some imperfections, trying to eliminate them; he exulted when he managed to do it and suffered when it did not work but he realized that those small imperfections were too exiguous to be noticed by the people, by those ones who did not have his eyes.

He was observing the movement in this world of his. The perfect dance of that amalgam of organisms and mechanisms; he was amazed by the beauty he discovered even into the machines which people rarely paid attention to as if they were some kind of granted thing. He was admiring the automobiles and airplanes, that gave them freedom but mostly to the beautiful trains that were curving around valleys and hills. He had been shivering in front of the ebullience at the railway stations – one of his most favorite places – that were holding into them both history and modern time, journeys to the new places and coming home still since the time of the steam engines far to the slim, drafting high-speed trains. He was enjoying the travelers who were getting on and off them, some of them indifferent by the gathered habit, others, still joyful because of the travelling, the welcoming people who were running to their closest ones, the people, accompanying the departures, waving with a bit of sadness. He was keeping an eye whether everything was alright though people thought they ruled over.

A sudden rumble sniffed him out of his contemplation. The error in the system had missed a freight train running over the passing counter express-train through the railroad switch. He switched the power off instantly but the inertia of the heavy cistern cut the diesel locomotive into the long passenger carriages. The first ones had derailed, the third and the fourth were inverted by the machine which had hit them and the rest of them were stacking up one above another, the cisterns were turning over. The Demiurge shuddered. He was looking at the descended chaos and was checking for damages.

“Daddy, what happened?” – his curious son, who always helped him with an interest, shouted.

“Don’t ask!”

“Is anything broken?”

The Demiurge was looking carefully at the layout.

“Fortunately, there’s nothing damaged” – he sighed.

He started arranging the wagons carefully without paying any attention to his wife who had peeped behind the door and ticking her tongue graciously:

“Are you playing model trains? Kid stuff...”

He was amused but did not answer: she could not, she would never realize the beauty of his hobby. The Demiurge reversed the time, arranged the two compositions again and let them move so that to pass along each other and he did not feel that somewhere above him God was looking at him, smiling and remembering: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

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Dedicated to all the railway nerds :)

Translated by: Vessislava Savova