Chat, My Friend is a Literal God. What Do I Do?

“Thomas, is everything alright? Are you coming in for your shift?” the message from the manager read.

Thomas Robinson placed his phone back on the desk and went back to watching YouTube on his MacBook. However, after a few seconds, he decided he would be a decent person and let the manager know.

“No. I quit,” Robinson replied.

He put the phone down and unpaused the video. Much to his annoyance, another message arrived.

“For fuck’s sake!” Robinson uttered. If the capitalist pigs couldn’t find someone to flip burgers for a minimum wage that didn’t even cover living costs, that was on them. He had had enough. He picked up his iPhone to send a berating message to his ‘former’ manager, only to realize the new notification was for a DoorDash delivery. His cup of iced matcha latte had arrived and was left on the doorstep.

Picking up the drink, Robinson felt good. He had tipped the driver 40%. ‘At least I’m doing my part.’ He patted his own back.

He sat back down and resumed the video. The princess was appearing on some podcast Robinson had never heard of before.

The podcast channel copied Piers Morgan’s format. Four faces were laid out across the screen. The neckbeard host on the left, the princess kid on the right, and Martha and Lashonda in the middle, who, Robinson learned, had opposing views on the topic. All, nobodies. Except for the kid.

“—Your very existence proves the Christian God does not exist,” Lashonda was saying. “As I wrote on my Substack, Christianity has always been a vehicle for colonialism and misogyny—,”

“Hang on, hang on, Lashonda,” the Neckbeard interrupted. “We don’t know if Buttons and God are mutually exclusive—”

“There’s a logical flaw there, Lashonda,” Martha said over the host. “By your logic, if Buttons is not God, then the Christian God exists.”

“No, I’ve never said that!”

“That’s basically what you just said,” Martha shot back.

The Neckbeard tried to shut it down. “Ladies, ladies. Let’s not talk over each other.” He then addressed Martha. “So, Martha, I understand we are experiencing ontological chaos here, so my question is, did God create Buttons?”

Robinson kept his eyes on the little kid. Throughout all this, Buttons had been sipping tea. ‘Is she even listening?’ he wondered.

“Buttons? Buttons?” The Neckbeard called the kid.

“Huh? Sorry,” Buttons apologized. “Could you repeat that?”

A woman’s hand entered Buttons’ frame and bonked the kid on the head.

“I was asking if you could elaborate on your… claim that you are not a god,” said the host.

The princess put her teacup down.

Robinson leaned in and listened very carefully.

The kid denied she was a god. She had no recollection of ever creating the universe or mankind. She had no plan to assign any purpose to humanity. In fact, she herself had no clue what her purpose was or how she even came to be.

“Maybe I myself am a creation, but as far as I know, I have not met an entity that I’d consider a peer, let alone a higher being,” said Buttons. “Maybe there’s some purpose to my existence, but for now… I don’t know.”

“What about Mr. Goggles?”

“Well, I asked nicely, ‘Hey, would you look after me?’ and he said, ‘Sure,’ and popped up.”

Robinson could see the other three were losing their minds. The kid wasn’t giving any meaningful answers. She was, in fact, making things more confusing. Buttons had misunderstood the question, and the answer she gave made no sense. Goggles existed because Buttons had asked him to? Then who did she ask?

“So, anyway,” the kid continued, “I’ve been asking that question myself for so long, but you know, doing it alone is kinda hard.” Buttons flashed a smile. “So it’s good that you guys have also been asking the same question. Maybe you’ll find the answer before I do.”

“But you’ve been around so long,” Martha interjected. “Surely, you’ve seen something?”

“Oh!” the Neckbeard had an idea. “How about this? Did you meet Jesus? Or was Judea too far from Scotland?”

“Jesus didn’t exist,” Lashonda butted in, but was immediately met with rebuttals from the other two citing historical evidence.

“Judea?” Buttons’ eyes narrowed as she searched her memory.

What the kid said next made this particular podcast reach tens of millions of views in the coming days.

Buttons remembered encountering a man in the desert. He had been praying and meditating. Concerned that the man might be hungry and thirsty, she had offered her own food and water.

“I try to be a nice person,” explained the girl.

Annoyed by the disturbance, the man had lashed out. “Be gone! I’m praying, can’t you see?” Paraphrased by the little kid, of course. But the man had then quickly apologized, and welcomed and thanked Buttons for her kindness.

“What are you praying for?” the kid had asked. “Wealth? Power?”

“For love and peace,” the man had answered.

Later, Buttons had encountered the man again. He had been lecturing a group of people. Buttons had squeezed her way to the front to hear what the fuss was about. The man had recognized Buttons, and given a very nice smile, and tapped his knees, gesturing for Buttons to come forward.

Setting the kid down on his lap, the man had told the crowd, “She’s a kind soul. Please treat this child as you’d treat me.”

“Holy fucking…” the Neckbeard uttered.

“I could see people loved him very much,” said Buttons, “so when he told them to be as nice to me as they were to him, I thought that was very nice.” She then sipped tea.

“What happened afterward?” Martha urged Buttons to continue.

“The Romans picked me up and asked, ‘Hey, kid, you don’t look like you’re from around here. Who are you? What are you doing here?’” Buttons shrugged. “And when I told them, they said, ‘Oh, no. Poor thing! We’ll get you home,’ and shipped me all the way to Rome.”

“No, I meant the man—”

But Buttons was still going. “And from Rome, they were going to ship me back to Scotland, but I had walked so far! I’m not gonna let them send me back to the spawn point. Nowaying! So I slipped off—”

Robinson took a sharp breath in. The kid just confirmed his suspicion. She was Satan.

The Neckbeard recovered quickly and addressed Martha. “Martha, what do you think?”

Martha cleared her throat. “Well, the general consensus is that Jesus was indeed a person in our history. We have more than enough historical records telling us so. So, although her anecdote is charming as it is, it doesn’t really add to the discussion we are having about where she fits in—”

Here, Buttons leaned sideways to make room for Goggles. The butler pushed his head into the frame and spoke into the mic.

“Sorry to butt in, but the ontological discussion would lead nowhere if we do not address the fundamentals.”

“Could you elaborate on that, Mr. Goggles?” the host invited.

“Do you preach to cats and dogs?”

“No,” answered the Neckbeard and Martha at the same time.

Lashonda, however, said yes. “It’s a cult. They’d preach to anything that has ears.”

Goggles ignored her and continued, “You did preach to Asians. Africans. And the indigenous people of the Americas. Yes?”

Lashonda butted in again. “But that was to tame and control the people. To subjugate them under Eurocentric white supremacy—”

Goggles shook his head. “Miss Lashonda, you are talking about the logic behind the decisions to allow Christian missionaries access to the indigenous population. I am talking about the underlying motivation of the missionaries themselves.”

“Why, yes, we do need to see the distinction,” Martha agreed.

“So, then,” Goggles went on, “would you preach to aliens?”

Nobody could answer.

“So, missionaries to Africa, Asia, and the Americas… There is one theological belief at the fundamental level, isn’t there?” Goggles held up his hand to stop interruptions. “No need to seek an answer to that. Your history has already answered that, wouldn’t you agree? So then, doesn’t that make Buttons and me fellows of yours?”

Buttons pushed her head in. “Yeah, you see? I’m not a god. I’m just a neighbor kid.”

***

After rewatching the podcast one more time, Robinson opened his notepad. He had bought it only a few weeks ago, but it was already halfway full. It was his journal of everything about Buttons.

He found the page where he had written in big capital letters, ‘BUTTONS =’ as the main heading. Underneath it was a long list of bullet points. The first entry was ‘Princess = privileged.’ Robinson added ‘Satan’ below ‘Arrogant,’ which, in turn, was below ‘Fascist.’ After a thought, he added ‘Blasphemy,’ too.

After that, he wrote a couple more paragraphs in his manifesto.

‘Claims not to be God, yet acts above all systems. Tramples humanity with arrogance and spoiled entitlement—’ His phone buzzed, interrupting him. The ButtonsTracker app was sending out an alert.

He quickly checked the location of the reported sighting, but tossed the phone back onto the desk, disappointed. She was on the other side of the planet.