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(Originally Posted by YearEnds)

I was, of course, listening in on Gary's thoughts. Well, I'm always listening in on everyone's thoughts, and I can replay them whenever I want, but I'd taken extra care to monitor my students' thoughts as they had them that day.

I hadn't actually changed the past, of course. It had still happened that Gary had had one body when he came to Stanford, then was split into six a few days ago, thirty-six before our in-class sex session, and his current million-plus during that. I couldn't change the past--I wasn't God then, and while I could certainly look into the past, only the God at that time could actually change things. But I could simulate what would have happened if I could make a retroactive change, then alter everyone's memories and the current physical environment to match the result, which was just as good, really.

And I admitted to myself that Gary and Brooke had good points about consent. Jack had been, quite simply, a ****, or so I'd told myself. He'd just been snapping his fingers, forcing people to fuck him left and right, and was completely unrepentant about it. I'd told myself I didn't want to do that, so what did I do? Snap my fingers (mostly metaphorically) and turn people into sex creatures out of my wildest perversions!

Of course, he also had a point that since I'm God and hence omnibenevolent, I can quite literally do no wrong. Everything I do is good because I did it. I cannot do evil by definition. Still, I had twenty-three years of divinely-imposed morality to overcome. Even knowing exactly why I thought that **** was wrong, theft was wrong, **** was wrong, and so on, I couldn't free myself from those shackles the way I'd liberated Miranda from them. It was why the mantle of Godhood was always passed to a mortal, never an already-immortal angel, despite their vast experience at wielding power--giving a being who was already free of the demands of conscience infinite power could not end at all well.

Still, I figured I was allowed to indulge myself from time to time.

So I was sitting in a bar in New York when I felt Miranda access her teleportation powers and pop in on the stool next to mine.

"Hey, Plain Jane."

"Hey, Commie."

"So, I saw some of what I'm sure must have been your handiwork." (I'd made sure that Miranda would remember things both the way they had been and the way they became after my various changes.) "Can I fuck them?"

"If they want. They're off limits to you fucking with them. So are a few others. You'll know them when you see them."

Miranda pouted. "I can't even have one or two for shits and giggles?"

"There's got to be somebody left to fear you, even if they don't know they don't have to."

"I guess." Miranda sighed. "Ooh, I just got a great idea."

I knew where this was going, of course, but played along. "Oh?"

"Yeah, I want to do something really heroic."

"Like what?"

"Are there any aliens out there? Especially ones with faster-than-light travel and big energy weapons and scary ships and stuff."

"Sure. It's an infinite universe, after all. And I'm so amused that humans think relativity's actually true."

"Okay, can you arrange for a invasion fleet to be, say, a few hours away? Especially if they can come in 'cloaked' so there's no time to even try to scramble any sort of defense ****."

"Yeah, sure. I suppose Ultimate Woman's going to fight the aliens?"

"Obviously. Stopping natural disasters and crime is fine and all but I need something really big. This month an alien invasion, maybe a rogue comet a few months from now..."

"Sure, no problem. They're two hours away and think Earth is a nice, primitive world ripe for extermination, terraforming and colonization. To them, humans are little more than what millipedes are to humans."

"Awesome. You're the best omnipotent friend a demigod superheroine could have."

I didn't upbraid her for using the term "demigod," since, after all, assuming I let her continue to use the powers I'd told her she could, that pretty aptly described what she was. "Just be sure to take a little time," I reminded her. "People have to know that the threat is real in order to appreciate you for stopping it."

"Yeah, yeah. I'll let them kill a few thousand people first."

With that, I felt Miranda tapping into my powers once again, and she vanished from the stool. I closed my eyes (thoroughly needlessly, of course, since I don't need sleep or rest and see everything everywhere all the time anyway) and awaited the carnage.