It was far too early for any of this. Well, it depends on your definition of early. And time. And space.
So while the world turned on its axis, the world also orbited merrily around the sun, the moon around the earth and at the same time on its own axis in coincidental lunar synchronicity. The Sun flared boisterously, emitting those fizzing, mysterious photons at the speed of itself, probably not knowing even what day it was. Or even that it was day. Turns out it's always daytime for the Sun. Which is nice for it. Explains why it's so jolly.
Meanwhile, somewhere less relevant but at the same time extremely more relevant for this story, light began to creep through the shutters of a very small cuboid office, down a long cuboid corridor in a vast cuboid building. Those curious photons making trouble. On the door with said shutter was a dusty sign in an official-looking font, that at certain angles looked like exotic animals in stern conversation, and which read:
'Planet 23235123131241'
Underneath, in biro — the sort of biro you think you should lick to get going but you know it never works like that — was nicely printed in all caps, with a heart and a question mark wrapped around it:
'❤️EARTH?'
The photons, meanwhile, had entered the room.
Dave creaked his eyes open as the photons scattered on them like tiny annoying glowing marbles, imagining a small Lego winch machine attached to each eye, desperately pulling his eyelids up, squeaking and creaking but all the time facing the reality of the gravity of the situation at hand.
He had fallen asleep on the job.
'Oh.'
'My.'
'GOD.'
GOD.
He stared reluctantly at the green screen blinking at him, as he blinked back at it.
It responded to his struggle by typing at him in striking, staccato bursts.
'Hello GOD. God of Planet 23235123131241. Did you have a nice sleep? Is your report ready?'
Dave closed his eyes again and tried to remember if it was four or five beers he had had the night before. That had to be the only explanation for his predicament. Then he realised he was doing Dry January this year for the first time. He had told everyone this fact many times this month in the office. That he wasn't drinking tonight but would still be loads of fun and everyone nodded, but they really knew that what he really meant was that his entire personality hinged on alcohol, and without four or five beers he was just a husk of a man.
'Dave. Wake up.'
A voice boomed in his head. This wasn't the computer talking now.
'No, for god's sake. I am obviously asleep.'
'Dave, we are in a big shit. Very big shit.'
The voice boomed again.
Dave opened his eyes again and stared directly into the face of God.
(Note: in all of human history, when people think they have met God they have usually been either drunk, mad, or dead. Dave, sadly, was none of those. At least right now.)
Standing by his desk was God. Well, technically a minor god. The main God — the one who made the universe, the one who weaved space and time from nothing and brought matter into being — that God had the big office with the big desk and the big chair. You never really saw them; you just knew they were there. It was a belief system most of the time, and that kept everyone in check when it came to timesheets and managing interplanetary belief systems.
Belief kept it all working seamlessly.
You have to remember that with 2 trillion galaxies, each with 200 billion stars, each with a couple of planets thrown in, the big boss of the universe had been busy. The universe didn't end and nor did God's to-do list. No rest on Sundays — they just cracked on and kept going. Galaxy here. Planet there. Supernova sprinkled for good measure. Boss God didn't have a boss themselves telling them to 'just chill now — you've probably made enough stuff to go around.' No. There was now a lot to manage.
So here is where the minor gods come in. Each and every planet was assigned a minor god to look after it. To discover if it could have life, to nurture and cultivate that life, to encourage intelligence, culture, society and — when needed — sprinkle a dash of religion. Keep an eye on it. It's like being given a chameleon for Christmas. For you, keeping it alive is a big responsibility. For the Madagascan rainforest, it doesn't matter either way.
So in the vastness, there was a bit of a pecking order, as you can imagine. Some of these gods just looked after floating space pebbles. Some black holes. Some had nothing to do but check on a huge gas giant that emitted space farts (scientific nomenclature) once every 400 million years.
At the same time, some were just being absolute arseholes, torturing their people and planets with spiked pokey things, and others were just your classic spotty swots — the ones who casually developed life that existed in eleven dimensions and had transcended their bodies to achieve a higher level of consciousness and intergalactic spirituality. Those types.
The God of 23235123131241 was definitely in the lower divisions. If divisions had depths, they were truly plumbed by our God.
You have to remember that Earth is 4 billion years old and had been mainly a big hot ball of lava, being pummelled by meteors and asteroids for most of that time. It wasn't until 200 million years ago that our God, God of Earth, finally got some things to play with.
Lizards.
Now a whole host of lizards was what he got, and what he only had for over 180 million years. God had lizards. And the lizards were terrifically great.
(Footnote: the pronoun situation with Gods is even more complicated than with humans. We'll go with he/him just to highlight that the crushing effects of the patriarchy exist on all celestial planes.)
Dave was sat up despite the gravity of the situation, and realised he both needed the toilet and was having a religious epiphany at the same time. God grabbed him by the shoulders and spoke very close to his face.
'Dave. Listen. I repeat. I fell asleep on the job. For about 1 second. Turns out that's millions of years for you people. Listen — I CAN'T EVEN SLEEP. IT'S IMPOSSIBLE. Did you know that? And then when I woke up my lizards were dead and there were lots of tiny metal boxes on my planet, and my lizards are now all gone because I'm sure some arsehole from down the corridor threw a rock at Earth while I was asleep. I want my lizards back. There was one lizard with little arms that used to pray to me, I'm sure of it, and even that one is gone. And now I have to file a bloody quarterly report on the state of my planet and I was just going to say "oh my lizards are absolutely fine" and get my B+... could do better, like I always do, but instead I'm in a big shit.
Actually, we both are.'
Dave was now definitely convinced he was dead.