As Natasha Cohen--a black, Jewish, lesbian, humpbacked, left-handed midget�lay on her deathbed she pondered why all her life she had drunk only from the cup of bitterness.  Forty-four years of struggle against insurmountable odds.  Why had she even bothered fighting?  From her early teens, she had known that there was no escape.  She had been judged and pronounced guilty from the moment of birth.  For Natasha Cohen the years of being misunderstood and outcast had so worn on her that at age 44�for many an age of new beginnings--she had the withered appearance of a 90 year old, a shrunken creature with flesh folded upon itself, with twitching limbs.  Twice in her life she had met black Jews, and once, unbelievably, a lesbian humpback midget--Elizabeth--with whom she had had a fervid affair.  A brief, golden period until Elizabeth had been hit by a  Toys R Us semi-truck bearing Christmas gifts to all the children of the world.  For Elizabeth, who had been a fervent Christian, this was the only Christmas present.  Not quite crucified, she was reduced to a bloody splotch rended by a huge tire tread.  Nothing resembling a human body remained for decent burial.

            Had Elizabeth lived, would religion have come between her and Natasha?  Would Natasha have found Jesus?  Could happiness arrive for a pair of lesbian midgets?  The chance to find out was squelched all too quickly.  And as Natasha sank into her final sleep she thanked God for bringing her death.  She could sense death closing in on her, a mysterious figure shrouded in black.  But wait, was this death, or some other spirit?

            The spirit spoke up with a voice like velvet.  �Natasha.  I am your guardian spirit and never have I been handed a case as hard as yours.  All your life you have been misunderstood by all groups of people.   Spurned by those who should have been your friends.   Due to the unique circumstances of your life I have made an unusual request of the Most Holy Spirit, and the request has been granted.  Even I was surprised at this, for it has been several thousand years since the Holy Spirit has intervened, even in the slightest, with the laws that rule this universe.  Of course time and space are an illusion, depending upon one�s perspective, which, however, one has no capacity to change, making them not an illusion at all, but we won�t go into that now.  Why muddle up your head with paradoxes beyond your understanding?�

            Natasha was too polite to point out that the spirit had already done so.  After all it was her guardian spirit and had gone to special and unusual lengths for her, and it wouldn�t do to be rude.

            �The request is this,� continued the spirit.  �You may be granted one wish of your choice.  In this wish you may even go so far as to violate the normal rules of time and space, since they are, after all, problematic.  You may also make it a fairly complex wish, consisting of numerous phrases and clauses, compound verbs, etcetera.  Although the wish must follow the standard rules of English grammar, if you do happen to violate them you will be permitted to rephrase.�

            So, the spirit was something of a pedant.  Already faced with death, the ultimate test for any human being, Natasha now had to tangle with the intricacies of English grammar.  But she collected herself and, somehow, the right words sprang to her lips.  �Spirit, all my life I�ve been an outcast, misunderstood on every side.  Even my own parents, who had prayed for a child, didn�t know what to do with me when I arrived.  But what I ask isn�t for myself, but for the human race.  For the whole history of cruelty and misunderstanding that have burdened our species.  What I wish is that all the differences that have separated people�race and sexuality and physical disability�that all of these simply did not exist, and had never existed.�

            �Surprisingly well stated,� said the spirit.  �I had though we would have to go through several drafts to get your wish to come out right, but that will do nicely.  I�ll rush off to the highest and Most Holy Spirit to take care of your request as quickly as possible.�

The spirit was gone, leaving a darkness.  A calming, swirling darkness, a whirlpool of nothing and everything that sucked Natasha inward, inward . . . .

            A gentle chirping of crickets gave way to birds.  Was it two of everything?  The creation?  Or was humanity acting out its part in evolution?  Watching the grand sweep of history�the new history in its earliest days--Natasha did not know.  True, the couple referred to themselves as Urgham and Urv, which sounded faintly like Adam and Eve, but perhaps these grunts were merely the easiest sounds to transform into language.

            A softly rising sun streaked its way through splotches of clouds, a play of light bouncing upon a nearby stream, whose trickling music trilled in syncopated harmony with the birds.  A new day dawning in this sheltered cove.  The first man-woman and the first woman-man grunted and cooed love calls back and forth.  For, in accordance with Natasha�s wish, both were hermaphrodites, capable of impregnating and being impregnated.  There was to be no patriarchal domination in the new order, no homosexuality if all humans were capable of acting out either gender role.

            Pregnancy happened soon, with each of the couple getting pregnant.   Natasha smiled; her new race would be able to populate the globe quickly.  For Urgham the baby slid out with relatively little pain, and soon the wrinkled little being slept peacefully in her mother�s arms.

Urv faced a longer pregnancy, and she screamed out as she gave birth, never before aware that such pain was possible.  For her second baby, however, birth was easier.  The stars seemed brighter than possible in those days, and Natasha long remembered one particular night, a full bright moon overhead, hovering protectively over a peaceful little scene, the last flames of a flickering fire, the first couple falling asleep each with a baby at her breast, another child lying curled at their feet.  Better than the Christ child in the manger.  Still, Natasha wondered, why did they deserve to have such a tranquil life when hers had been so horrendous?

            Not surprisingly, squabbling soon entered this new world, at least among the children.  But Natasha decided that this was normal�it made them seem more human.  Gruggg, the eldest, was Urgham�s favorite (Natasha thought of all these creatures as �her�), while Urv preferred Ingggg, the youngest, and loved to stroke and play with her.  The smallest of the middle children, Blub, they would shriek at and order to dig for roots to supplement the more easily picked fruits, as well as the occasional grasshopper or squirrel caught by the aggressive Gruggg, who loved playful sport.  To Natasha it was familiar and disconcerting, yet also, in a strange way, comforting.  Wasn�t this normal family life, the kind she had never had?

Tired of squatting double, digging in the dirt with the worms and primeval ants, Blub would often wander off alone, up the nearby craggy mountain.  What did she do there?  Climb and hunt and ramble?  Sit and meditate?  Worship strange gods?  No one knew, nor did this first human family care; only Natasha wondered.  Their curiosity was oriented to the pounding of stones and sharpening of sticks, the fashioning and sharpening of rudimentary tools, the invention of new words for new items: earth, sky, worm, apple.  Nouns had far outstripped verbs in their fecund variety.  But of Blub, no one inquired.

            A shock, a start.  Screams and blood.  The first murder?  So soon, so soon.    Inggg�s blood, her broken little body.  Above her a wailing, a weeping figure.  Urv.   She is stunned, she does not know what has happened.  It is unbelievable.  Tears and blood.  An injured mother, Urv squats fondling Inggg as though she were alive, coating her dangling arms in her daughter�s warm blood.  And a murky figure, a shadow, slips away in the darkness.  Blub.  Gone forever.  Too late to take back.  An ominous cloud, a cloud of wrongness, hangs above.  It should never have happened.  And yet it has.

            Within the recesses of her slumbering spirit Natasha felt a calling, a calling to awakeness.  The sweet perfume of flower petals permeated the air, crushed and burning, honied incense rising.  The world was youthful and energetic, the energy of the moon rising above, of thick clusters of newly brilliant stars staring upon the planet, of a spring breeze licking through the early night.  Dance and jubilation and youthful love, an energy Natasha had experienced only fleetingly during her own dreary life.  And the people danced and celebrated and called to the goddess.  The goddess Natasha, whose emptiness was filled with their spirit, something coming from nothing.  And why not, she thought, as she danced among the dancing flames, around which danced and sang the swaying crowd, stained with the bright reds and purples of berry juice, tasseled with feathers and loose-fitting animal pelts that danced and shook with the rippling crowd.  Wasn�t she the founding mother of this new race?  Wasn�t it she who had first conceived of this new humanity, a vision that included its foibles and jealousies, but excluded the hatreds planted deep within the flesh?  A new race, free from the destructiveness caused by differences in skin color and genitalia.  And what of that old race, she wondered briefly as the incense and the night wind carried her above the celebrating crowd.  Where had they gone?  To some other place?  To nonexistence?  To hell?  Very well, she thought, let them all go to hell, let them burn there forever.  It would be no worse than the pain inflicted upon her during her own lifetime.  And the dancing and yelling of the drunken worshippers crescendoed, vibrating through the chilly night air.  This new race was all that counted.  She loved them.  She loved them.  And she smiled upon the figures, limbs intertwined, drunk on grog and orgasm, gently sleeping below.

            Soon new forms of  worship came to Natasha�s tribe, the Natashites, most of whom considered her as one among many gods, albeit the one with a special affinity for the tribe.  The tribe began to bring her small animals for sacrifice, eating of their flesh and leaving the bones for Natasha�s benefit.  Natasha had never been a vegetarian, and although she found this practice annoying she also considered it harmless.

Soon, the animal sacrifice grew in scope.  A group of children dragged a squirrel to the altar for an unofficial sacrifice.  Instead of just killing the creature, they poked its eyes out, then cut off its limbs one by one, finishing with its tail, and watched as it writhed as it bled to death.

            The third time the children set out on their task, they were discovered.  They had added a new twist to their ritual; having piled twigs upon the squirming, amputated body, they were attempting to burn the creature to death, but, it being a damp and drippy day, could not get the flint to spark.  Three young lovers strolling in the woods (there being no distinct sexes, loving sometimes took place in threes) happened upon this scene, and began shouting.  The largest of the three approached and towered over the children, demanding an explanation.  The shortest child, a mischievous tyke, answered with a squeaky voice, quick and breathless.  Soon the adult�s companions came round, and instead of scolding the children, helped to shelter the altar from the wind and created the spark that set the whole thing alight.

            Squirrel sacrifice was soon regular part of the Natashite rituals, and quickly gave way to the slaughter of sheep.  And Natasha did feel a certain pride.  In expressing gratitude to their sovereign-queen, whose wish had, after all, brought them and their history to life, shouldn�t the full range of emotions be displayed?  Besides laughter and lust, aren�t terror and pain part of the human condition?  And they did owe Natasha all aspects of their existence.  So it seemed right, and pleasing, that they displayed these emotions in sacrifices to her.

            Soon dissension came to the Natashites.   A few believed that Natasha was the mother of all gods, and was made manifest in the earth and sky, never assuming human form.  This sect further believed that animal sacrifice was a desecration of the holy spirit which Natasha had placed in all beings.   Refusing the bloody altar upon which the majority of the Natashites sacrificed, they chose a new altar, a great flat rock hidden within a forest clearing that lay at the foot of a mountain.  The tinkling music of a mountain stream played nearby, reminding Natasha of the originary fountain that had gurgled for the first humans in this new world.  On the flat rock the worshippers placed flowers and herbs pungent with sensual smells, and sang simple songs.  Natasha luxuriated for a spell in the peaceful enclosure, meditating and drinking in the words of worship.  Soon, however, she realized that she was bored.  She missed the whelping emotion of  her other worshippers, and hurried to join them.

            She bounced upon cold gusts of wind, frenzied little gusts that carried her through the darkening sky, dark with thick clouds and the approach of night.  A frenzied chorus of screams beckoned from below, yelps and bellows, a thickening disharmonious hullabaloo.  The excitement crested as she approached the jubilant worshippers, who summoned her to their shrine.  A large dark figure clothed in black garments led the proceedings, a faceless figure, a high priest who bellowed out words of praise to Natasha.  And the chorus answered, lust answering lust in crescendoing waves.  Tonight�s sacrifice was to be a large animal, and Natasha could feel the rapid, warm pulse beating through the crowd.  The night sky flashed yellow and rumbled with thunder, joining the rumbling mob.

            And the crowd parted like a great sea, and brought forth a figure bound and bowed.  They pulled her forward and, with a start that Natasha would not have believed possible in her current wraithlike form, she realized that it was no animal.  Or rather a human animal, struggling in terror.  A silence fell, and the priest uttered incantations in a loud yet somehow flat voice, emptied of emotion as though aware of the enormity of what was to come.  �The unbelievers have snuck away,� he said, �and are even now performing their blasphemous rites.  Yet we have caught one of their number and offer her in sacrifice to the great Natasha.�  For her?  Suddenly, aware of what was happening, the crowd grew silent as though they no longer believed in this event.  Towering over the wriggling little body, the priest uttered some final syllables of worship, then raised high a slender, shining implement.  A plunging dagger, a muffled scream, a final surge of fear and pain.  For Natasha?  True she was great, was the mother of this world, but did she deserve all of this?   She felt both horrified and flattered.  And uncertainty filled the night.  Lightening flashed dimly in the distance, and those with keen ears heard a muffled thunder.  The storm was moving away.

            Searching through time and eternity.  Two huge intersecting elements, riddles wrapped in mysteries, mazes within mazes.  Natasha was lost.

            What to do?  Stand still, call for help?  Mentally she called out again and again, thoughts echoing through her disembodied spirit, but she felt enclosed, alone.  Could she be heard by any outside being?

            Yes.  The spirit had heard.  The spirit was here.

            �Oh Great Spirit,� Natasha began.

            �Not so great,� said the spirit.  �Let�s have none of that overblown mumbo-jumbo.�

            �Oh Spirit, then.�

            �Better, but just Spirit is better still.�

            �Very well, then.  Spirit.�

            �Yes.�
            �You seem to have pulled out of our initial bargain.  Didn�t I request an end to discrimination in this new world?  And isn�t this religious discrimination?�

            �You requested, and I quote,� said the spirit, popping out a scroll on which her original words were inscribed, �that �all the differences that have separated people�race and sexuality and physical disability�that all of these simply did not exist, and had never existed.�  Nowhere did you mention religion.�

            �Oh, so you�re applying the letter of the law, but not the spirit.�

            �I am the Spirit of the Letter.�

            �The Letter?  And do you mean also of the Word.�

            �The Word?  No, no, that is a higher power than I.  The Letter as in the kind of letter that delivers a message.  For you see, I am only a messenger.�

            �Oh.  Now I�m all mixed up and have lost my train of thought.  My point is that by �race and sexuality and physical disability� I was merely giving examples of various kinds of differences, differences being the main category.�

            �Ah, it�s all in the syntax.  Is that what you�re getting at?  Don�t you think that we in the higher world, or lower world, or parallel world, depending upon one�s point of view, already know this?�

            �I�m not trying to get entangled in syntax.  I�m no lawyer.  I just want a world free of discrimination.�

            �So you wish for a race of insectoid creatures with no differences?  A hive-like entity?  Or a race of super-robots?�

            �No, that�s not what I meant at all.  You�re deliberately misinterpreting whatever I say.  It seems as though you like to cause trouble.  You should act according to my original intent.�

            �Original intent?  But you yourself were not sure what you meant when you spoke those words.�

            �I thought I was.�

�Thoughts are deceiving.  Words never quite mean what they first seem to mean.  And the further from their original utterance, the more this is true.  So we have been letting you serve as a kind of barometer.  You decide the shape and direction of your new world.  You have been doing so all along.�
            �Then I renounce my role.�

            �You cannot do so.  For you see a barometer has no will of its own.  It merely reflects the movement of external elements, just as you reflect the changing circumstances of this new world.�

            Natasha meant to protest but was struck dumb.  As she considered what to say she realized that the Spirit was gone, that she was alone once again.

            A scattering.  A replenishing.  A spreading.  The human race, eating of the fruits of the trees, of the roots of the ground, itself fruitful and multiplying.  Struggling and dying.  Stalking and being stalked by the other creatures that share the planet.  Stalking and being stalked by its own members.  Receding and licking its wounds, then replenishing and moving onward.  A slowly changing mosaic.  Tribal creatures that divide into differing tribes.  Was it this, Natasha wondered, that drove the human race, drove them to explore new geographies, to create new inventions?   Could they not live in peace, nurturing each other, nurturing a love of learning and exploration?  Was there something fatally wrong with her wish?  Or with the nature of humanity?  Or of the universe?

            Orgies and drunkenness.  Roasted goat and sheep flesh in rich sauces flavored by pungent spices from distant lands.  A city besotted with grog and wine, with opium leaves refined and rolled, inhaled and exhaled from enormous hookas decorated with intricate gargoyle carvings. Massages with fruit juices and oils.  Swapping of wives and mistresses.  Oral and anal, three way and four way sex in all manner of positions, with adults and, increasingly, with children.  Such was the life of Goooduhmmmm, more than a city a product of empire, a leisure class with time to spare.  In the distant reaches of the empire sinewy slaves labored to provide the material goods�gold and incense, chariots and statues, spices and ointments�required by the people of Gooduhmmmm.  Closer at hand fatter slaves labored in the kitchens, baked and roasted, swept and organized and cleaned and, after each orgy, cleaned once again, picking up chicken bones and shattered pottery, scrubbing away splotches of vomit and semen.  Occasionally a slave was punished for disobedience, a sacrificial victim of the frenzied group, raped from all directions, disfigured and burned.

            The screams filled Natasha with a wild energy as she drifted, dispersed, through the smoke, through the wind currents, that flowed through Goooduhmmmm.  On a hot, still day she would linger there, stagnant among the people who lay lazy and dizzy in the hot sun, still faintly nauseous from the latest orgy.  What kept them going was the knowledge that another orgy was coming soon, another day of lust and passion.  Still even these were becoming dull, leading to greater and greater extremes: more drugs, more sexual experimentation, innovative methods of torture.  And Natasha had learned not to resist.  As a goddess, she enjoyed being revered and feared.  She ruled not just through love but through terror.  The full range of passion.  And these pathetic beings of clay, doomed to die.  Doomed to put on passion plays, love and betrayal, endless reenactments, new versions of Romeo and Juliet, of King Lear, dramas that meant everything to the players, nothing in the vastness of time.  On good old earth Shakespeare had had it right.  And Natasha saw how ephemeral these creatures were.  One would die and two new ones would arise.  They existed for her pleasure.

            She wondered if she had been put upon the previous planet Earth, made to live her wretched life, by a god as bitter as she.

            Natasha glanced again over the great panorama of the new world.  The same.  It was all the same.  Freshly populated with peoples swelling and multiplying, multitudes of languages spilling from their lips, each with individual ways of expressing themselves, with ingenious arts, innumerable means of  combining stones, woods, metals, dyes and unusual substances, into sculptures and paintings.  There were even art forms undreamt of upon earth, based on shifting combinations of smells, tastes, and touches.  There were the Niapmylos, an athletic people who dwelt in the sweaty tropics, proud of their pungent aroma.  They equated nobility with pungency; the stronger the smell emitted from their yawning pores, the better the person.  �A rich soul emits a rich aroma,� was a common saying among them.  Every year they held a great festival, with competition among the youth who had reached 14 years old, in wrestling, running, and climbing of trees, followed by a torturous march through thick jungles.  Those who fell and broke a bone were judged unworthy of Niapmylon standards and left behind.  Each year at least one was ripped to death by a doglike pack animal common in those parts.  Finally those who returned were subject to a great contest of smells, judged on the saltiness and pungency of their stench and given a thumbs up or thumbs down by the tribal elders.   The latter were immediately stoned to death.  While farting could increase one�s chances of surviving, it could not make up for a total lack of sweatiness.

Then there were the Frigglefrippfropperrs, who spoke in high squeaky voices, whose language was a series of buzzes, squeaks, and beeps.  They took pride in the volatility of their speech.  The higher the pitch the better.  Those with particularly sharp, frenetic voices were made nobles, while those with low, dull voices were considered inferior, cast out from the majority.  The lowest of all were made to wear ugly rags, their faces disfigured, made to carry before them buckets of human excrement, so that they would offend every sense of the ordinary Frigglefrippopperrian, who would know to keep away. 

            Natasha witnessed also a great tribal war between the Muthaluvs and Luvvamuths, who had once been blood sisters but who now killed each other upon sight.  Those unlucky enough to be captured would be tortured, forced to renounce their religion and killed upon confession of their crimes.  The reason for this feud is that the two tribes differed in their worship of Natasha.  At religious feasts both ate the great Muk Ostrich egg, which symbolized, in its fertility, roundness and completeness, the primal cycles of life.  The Muthaluvs, however, cracked these eggs with the skinny side pointed upwards to the heavens, symbolizing life-giving and the vast mystery of Natasha.  The practice of the Luvvamuths was utterly different: they pointed their eggs to the ground, giver of fertility and life, as they cracked them and shouted holy incantations.  Cracked.  They could not understand ground and sky as united.

            Lost among the clouds.  In rough outline, Natasha saw the future of this new world, and it resembled the old.  There would be wars, oppression, weapons of mass destruction, genocide.  Ho hum.  The same old same old.  What a wretched species this humanity, in whatever guise.  Would it blunder its way to a better future?  She did not care to find out.

            Returning to the Guardian Spirit, Natasha demanded to be thrown into the void.

            �You have already been granted your wish,� said the Spirit, �and a wish is a great privilege, far more than most people get.  Now you must live with the consequences.�

            �It was presented under false pretenses.  You offered it as a gift, and it turned out to be a curse.�

            �Isn�t that always the way it is with wishes?  You haven�t studied your fairy tales very well.�

            �Look at the gravity of this situation.  My deathbed.  I was sick and depressed.  You haven�t taken this into account.  It wasn�t a fair bargain fairly offered.�

            �Oh, so you want fairness?  You could have wished for the void at that time.  Eternal nothingness.  Eternal tranquility.  Ignorance is bliss.  Do you want me to destroy this new world?�

            �No, that would be unfair.  Unless the creatures living there agree to it.�

            �You know that they never will.  And I can�t send you into the abyss without destroying this world.�

            �Why not?  Aren�t I just one of many gods?�

            �You are and you aren�t.�

            �Where does talking in paradoxes get us?�

            �You are the prime mover, the dream weaver.�

            �So is the new world just a dream.�

            �Yes but so was the old.  So are they all.�

            �So why does it matter?�

            �A dream with the terrible force of reality.�

            �How melodramatic.  You disgust me.  If you were my lover, I�d leave you.�

            �But now I will leave you.  Or rather send you away . . . .�  And with that the spirit began to shrink and spin, like a sock lost in a laundromat or a toy boat in a draining bath tub, or a cockroach in a toilet, spinning as it is flushed away.  Centrifugal force.  Natasha felt herself propelled, splitting up, dispersing.  There was no longer a Natasha, but a billion sparks, a billion souls, or perhaps a hundred billion, souls that were and would be, dreamlike and filled with terrible reality, living out a history that Natasha had initiated without understanding.  Now there was no Natasha, but no void either, or rather a great black void and within it a bubble of life, a bubble blue with oxygen and hydrogen, seething with life like some  plague, a plague of lonely, separate souls bound together on this vast and complex planet, playing out a new history wondrous and terrible.