Small Things

Author: Majoki

Thor got thunder.

Prometheus got fire.

Shiva got a laser eye.

Me? I got a measly quark. Smallest thing in the universe. Two and a half trillion times smaller than a grain of sand.

What’s a god supposed to do with that? Make the masses tremble and beg mercy, pledge obedience and fealty–to what? A quark, a subatomic particle that can’t even be directly observed. That only theoretically exists.

Does that make me theoretical, a speculative deity, worthy only of mind-crumbling conjecture? That’ll never get me the succulent sacrifices and liberal libations offered up to larger, noisier, showier gods.

How can I compete with those look-at-me divinities? Because it’s all about competition. It always is. If you’re not winning you’re not living–and that’s especially true of immortals. Nothing is worse than being ignored, overlooked, unseen, unnoticed.

Small.

So small that your existence is a question, an academic abstraction, a mere ghost in the machine. Think how hard that makes it to command respect and inspire adulation. Or conjure fear.

That’s the key. Fear. And who fears the very small?

It took a while to figure that out. Most of humanity’s existence, in fact. It took scores of quantum physicists to reveal what lies at the rock-bottom foundation of all matter: my regal quarkiness.

Now, I have the platform to shake the world, demand obeisance, and rule the ethereal pantheon. Thor. Prometheus. Shiva. Mere pretenders of power and might, for without me, without my quarks, there is nothing. I am prime, the building block of creation, everything made to my plan, in my image.

Finally, I have a modern identity worthy of my might, and a newly supreme name to make the masses quaver underfoot and bend a knee to the unbreakable god of small things: LEGO.

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