The Fall of Man
an excerpt

When he had been promoted to journeyman, he rarely ventured into the Social Sphere, and his first Four Universes found little influence from the tastes of the fashion kids. But when Shanti disappeared, his inspiration went with her. Notebooks that had previously filled with unnatural speed now sat empty and offered up no suggestion as to how to proceed. After endless cycles spent fidgeting with thin glass globes and staring blankly into the pages, he decided it was finally time to revisit the Social Sphere.

As he walked amidst the ocean of indulgences, something caught Jehuda's eye. There was a girl on one of the porches, her head completely covered by the effigy of a cloud, dancing madly. Her feet pounded the ground in the furious rhythm of a rainstorm and her arms scooped the air as if calling out to something merely through gesture. Most sentient dancing Jehuda had witnessed fell into one of three categories – expression, communication, or aesthetics. He could not put his finger on why, but Jehuda had the distinct impression that this dance served an entirely different purposes. When the dance ended and the girl removed her cloud head.

Jehuda approched her. “What was that?” he asked.

“Isn't it marvelous? It's from the brutal period of the Nom'rahnick from Kiterrie Parnong's Eighth. They thought there might be a man up in the clouds and they'd do dances and offer him food and affection and all kinds of things to try to get him to send rain when they needed it and keep the really destructive storms away.”

“What happened to them?”

“At some point, they realized it didn't work and they just stopped. Kind of shame, really. For a few dozen generations, it made their world magical.”

She handed Jehuda her clouded head and he barely had time to thank her as he sprinted back to Vosh. When he got back, he immediately contacted the Ministry of Sentients and requested research and consultants on any supernatural beliefs held by sentients in their brutal periods. He met with the first consultant, a professorial old man with a particular distaste for world builders, most of whom he found unimaginative and disappointingly risk-averse. When Jehuda asked about the possibility of creating a sentient race that maintained its supernatural beliefs beyond its brutal period, the consultant smiled.

Shanti had said that sometimes a universe can be built around a single object. She claimed she made the Ninth because she had a dream about a forest filled with bioluminescent fruit.

With the creation of Man, with the code for prolonged, multi-generational faith outlined, the rest of Jehuda's Fifth came together. Jehuda was not even conscious that he was creating. Everything simply fell into place – mathematical systems, chemical structures, evolutionary processes. When he paused from his work, it was only to run his hand over the fashion girl's cloud head.