. hands
Other than ours--aliens and scornful, too,
Would some day come upon this untold tale
And lay it bare with scalpels cold and sharp.
At least we had regard for laws of prophesy,
The customs of a future time. Here stands
The Book of Gud upon the rocks of truth.
Yet when one goes to Rome, Dame Rumor says,
Burn Roman candles--this have we done.

Chapter III

There was once a god whose name was Gud.

Gud was not a real god such as men believe in. He was only Gud, whom no
one believes in, and so does not exist, and will not unless some man who
reads this Book of Gud should believe in him and so make him (for that
is how gods are made). If there be sufficient faith in a god, all is
well with that god, since he is made by faith alone, without works, and
is dead. But a little faith is a dangerous thing.

Now Gud had had a universe, and had ordered it destroyed, and had
ordained that eternity be over and done.

The morning after, Gud sat alone in space. All things else had been
destroyed save Gud and space; and Gud was lonely, for creation had been
done and undone and was no more, and eternity was over; and time was no
more, for there were no more stars to mark the course of time.

Since this book is being written now, printed now, and read now and
burned now; and since printing presses and reading eyes and consuming
fires exist in an age of whirling worlds and beating hearts and ticking
watches, which mark time and thus seem to make it, it is that this book
is not. Those things that seem to happen herein, one after another,
really happened instantaneously,--for this is a tale of a timeless time,
and there will be, when these things are, no time at all, and no hope of
any time, since this story begins, and is finished the day after
eternity, which is after the ending of all that was and before the
beginning of that which will never be.

Therefore, this story is really not a story, because it never could
happen until after all things had happened. So what you now are reading
has no meaning at all and no existence, real or unreal.

So Gud sat alone in space. The fact that Gud was sitting is very
important. Gud sat down in haste at the very last moment of eternity, as
all things were being destroyed; for he saw that the very next moment
there would be nothing left on which to stand.

As Gud sat alone in space, he thought of everything that had been and
remembered everything