“Why does she move so slowly in the picture?”
“That’s the result of time flowing at different speeds. From our frame of reference, time flows extremely slowly on a spaceship flying close to the speed of light.”
“Then… can she still talk to you?” Yulian asked.
God nodded. He flipped a switch behind the TV. Immediately a sound came out of it. It was a woman’s voice, but the sound didn’t change, like a singer holding a note steady at the end of a song. God stared at the screen, his eyes full of love.
“She’s talking right now. She’s finishing three words: ‘I love you.’ Each word took more than a year. It’s now been three and a half years, and right now she’s just finishing ‘you.’ To completely finish the sentence will take another three months.” God lifted his eyes from the TV to the domed sky above the yard. “She still has more to say. I’ll spend the rest of my life listening to her.”
Bingbing actually managed to maintain a pretty good relationship with God for a while. The Gods all had some childishness to them, and they enjoyed talking and playing with children. But one day, Bingbing wanted God to give him the large watch he wore, and God steadfastly refused. He explained that the watch was a tool for communicating with the God Civilization. Without it, he would no longer be able to connect with his own people.
“Hmm, look at this. You’re still thinking about your own civilization and race. You’ve never thought of us as your real family!” Yulian said angrily.
After that, Bingbing was no longer nice to God. Instead, he often played practical tricks on him.
The only one in the family who still had respect and feelings of filial piety toward God was Qiusheng. Qiusheng had graduated from high school and liked to read. Other than a few people who passed the college-entrance examination and went away for college, he was the most learned individual in the village. But at home, Qiusheng had no power. On practically everything he listened to the direction of his wife and followed the commands of his father. If somehow his wife and father had conflicting instructions, then all he could do was to sit in a corner and cry. Given that he was such a softy, he had no way to protect God at home.
The relationship between the Gods and humans had finally deteriorated beyond repair.
The complete breakdown between God and Qiusheng’s family occurred after the incident involving instant noodles. One day, before lunch, Yulian came out of the kitchen with a paper box and asked why half the box of instant noodles she had bought yesterday had already disappeared.
“I took them,” God said in a small voice. “I gave them to those living by the river. They’ve almost run out of things to eat.”
He was talking about the place where the Gods who had left their families were gathering. Recently there had been frequent incidents of abuse of the Gods in the village. One particularly savage couple had been beating and cursing out their God, and even withheld food from him. Eventually that God tried to commit suicide in the river that ran in front of the village, but luckily others were able to stop him.
This incident caused a great deal of publicity. It went beyond the county, and the city’s police eventually came, along with a bunch of reporters from CCTV and the provincial TV station, and took the couple away in handcuffs. According to the God Support Law, they had committed God abuse and would be sentenced to at least ten years in jail. This was the only law that was universal among all the nations of the world, with uniform prison terms.
After that, the families in the village became more careful and stopped treating the Gods too poorly in front of other people. But at the same time, the incident worsened the relationship between the Gods and the villagers. Eventually, some of the Gods left their families, and other Gods followed. By now almost one-third of the Gods in Xicen had already left their assigned families. These wandering Gods set up camp in the field across the river and lived a primitive, difficult life.
In other parts of the country and across the world, the situation was the same. Once again, the streets of big cities were filled with crowds of wandering, homeless Gods. The number quickly increased like a repeat of the nightmare three years ago. The world, full of Gods and people, faced a gigantic crisis.
“Ha, you’re very generous, you old fool! How dare you eat our food while giving it away?” Yulian began to curse loudly.
Qiusheng’s father slammed the table and got up. “You idiot! Get out of here! You miss those Gods by the river? Why don’t you go and join them?”
God sat silently for a while, thinking. Then he stood up, went to his tiny room, and packed up his few belongings. Leaning on his bamboo cane, he slowly made his way out the door, heading in the direction of the river.
Qiusheng didn’t eat with the rest of his family. He squatted in a corner with his head lowered and not speaking.
“Hey, dummy! Come here and eat. We have to go into town to buy feed this afternoon,” Yulian shouted at him. Since he refused to budge, she went over to yank his ear.
“Let go,” Qiusheng said. His voice was not loud, but Yulian let him go as though she had been shocked. She had never seen her husband with such a gloomy expression on his face.
“Forget about him,” Qiusheng’s father said carelessly. “If he doesn’t want to eat, then he’s a fool.”
“Ha, you miss your God? Why don’t you go join him and his friends in that field by the river, too?” Yulian poked a finger at Qiusheng’s head.
Qiusheng stood up and went upstairs to his bedroom. Like God, he packed a few things into a bundle and put it in a duffel bag he had once used when he had gone to the city to work. With the bag on his back, he headed outside.
“Where are you going?” Yulian yelled. But Qiusheng ignored her. She yelled again, but now there was fear in her voice. “How long are you going to be out?”
“I’m not coming back,” Qiusheng said without looking back.
“What? Come back here! Is your head filled with shit?” Qiusheng’s father followed him out of the house. “What’s the matter with you? Even if you don’t want your wife and kid, how dare you leave your father?”
Qiusheng stopped but still did not turn around. “Why should I care about you?”
“How can you talk like that? I’m your father! I raised you! Your mother died early. You think it was easy to raise you and your sister? Have you lost your mind?”
Qiusheng finally turned back to look at his father. “If you can kick the people who created our ancestors’ ancestors’ ancestors out of our house, then I don’t think it’s much of a sin for me not to support you in your old age.”
He left, and Yulian and his father stood there, dumbfounded.
Qiusheng went over the ancient arched stone bridge and walked toward the tents of the Gods. He saw a few of the Gods had set up a pot to cook something in the grassy clearing strewn with golden leaves. Their white beards and the white steam coming out of the pot reflected the noon sunlight like a scene out of an ancient myth.
Qiusheng found his God and said stubbornly, “Gramps God, let’s go.”
“I’m not going back to that house.”
“I’m not, either. Let’s go together into town and stay with my sister for a while. Then I’ll go into the city and find a job, and we’ll rent a place together. I’ll support you for the rest of my life.”