Pharik left the Lord of All’s chamber with a slick of sweat running down his back. He hoped it wasn’t showing through his flowing gossamer robe, but Pharik had never been that lucky.

Unlike many of his coworkers, Pharik had been born to this life. Both his parents had served the Lord of All in the space between. There had been no choice in vocation for him. All the worlds in all the universes at his fingertips and no choice but to serve. Still, he respected the Lord and wanted to make him proud. He looked back at the Lord of All sitting at their small wooden desk and sighed. The Lord’s endless patience seemed only to make his failures cut deeper. 

He pulled the small card the Lord had given him from his pocket. It was written in the Lord’s cramped, vertical script. Every number a gash across space. He memorized the number, 6119866111889916996, then tucked it back into his robe. He turned down the hall heading toward the costume department, raised the Personal Computer on his wrist, and entered the World Code. In moments his PC had spun up a roll of information on the planet and people he was about to visit. 

They were still in the nascent stage of development. They had learned to work metal as hard as steel, had no inkling of what electricity was save that lightning was bad, and still believed their abilities were magic and not the complex interaction between quantum entanglement and the effects of observation and will on matter and energy. 

The Lord had instructed Pharik to deliver a simple message, a message he had delivered a thousand times before. He was to Port into the home of one particular person, being number 9916996 on planet 611986611188, and tell them they were the chosen one, destined to overthrow their oppressors and free their people from tyranny. The first time Pharik had delivered such a message he had felt as powerful as the Lord himself. Now he found it tedious. 

He stepped into costuming and selected an appropriately garish outfit that befit this world’s visage of a god. It was a long cloak of gold, with gems and bits of metal sewn into the fabric in ornate patterns that caught the light. His PC would project a hologram over himself adding to the effect, but it was always good to have a tangible foundation to build an illusion upon: his mother had taught him that. 

Once dressed, Pharik returned to his rooms to read over the assignment details on his PC one more time. Though he was nervous he tried to slow himself down to make sure he’d gathered all the important details. But he found the more he tried to focus the more his brain skipped over the information. After an hour of trying and failing to concentrate, mentally exhausted, he gave up. 

With a sigh, Pharik activated the holo and the voice modulator making his voice high and fluty, as this world’s gods were want to sound. He spoke a few lines and couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculous tone. He collected himself, pulled the card from his pocket one more time, and punched the number into his PC for porting: 9669166881119986119. He took one more deep breath and activated the Porter. 

Warm light suffused every fiber of Pharik’s being for less than a second. He felt weightless, dizzy, and then he was standing on a rickety wooden table with a family of six staring up at him with wide, horrified eyes. 

“Fear not!” Pharik declared—though he had to admit his stupid high-pitched voice sounded far less commanding in than he’d have liked. 

Of course, the family reacted with fear. The father, a middle-aged fellow, burly, with rough hands and forams as thick as Pharik’s legs, shot forward with the skewer in hand. The sharp twinned fork still held a sad-looking tubber as the big man drove it towards Pharik’s flesh. The three children that were old enough to move of their own accord all reacted differently. The oldest ran screaming. The second darted to the left placing himself between Pharik and his mother, who held the still-mulling baby, and the third dashed behind the father. 

The father’s skewer bounced off the force shield Pharik’s PC auto-deployed and sent the man crashing backward atop the third child. 

“I said, fear not!” Pharik repeated. “I am Ehl Elesh! And I come to speak truths beyond the minds of men!” 

There were varying reactions whenever Pharik first appeared from thin air. This family’s has been pretty standard. However, the second child’s protective instinct was a bit abnormal for one so young. What was truly strange, however, was the way the family reacted when he announced his godhood. 

Normally, when Pharik declared himself a god with truth to speak everyone threw themselves at his feet to cry, pray, or some combination of the two. 

This family only glanced at each other and then frowned up at him like he was an idiot. 

It was at that moment that the ricketty table beneath Pharik’s feet decided to collapse. 

He fell to the packed dirt floor with a crash and a groan. 

“Not very godly,” Pharik muttered. 

The second oldest stepped forward, tentatively offering him a hand. Pharik took it and was surprised at how easily the boy helped him to his feet. 

“Well,” he said, plucking splinters from his gaudy robe. “My message is clear. My work complete. You child,” he laid his hand atop the boy’s head. “You are to lead your people. Gather them and you shall repeal your oppressors and save your kind from your long-suffering!” 

Then, before they could ask any questions he hadn’t made up an answer for, Pharik reactivated his Porter and was phased back to the space between. 

Once back in his rooms, he let out a sigh, stripped off the stupid robe, and tossed it on his dresser before going about the rest of his day. 

It wasn’t until that night when he stumbled into the Lord of All in the hallway, and they asked Pharik how the woman took the news that Pharik realized he’d made another grave mistake. 

After quickly making up a lie, he ran back to his room, pulled the card with the World Code from the robe, and compared it to the World Code he had Ported to. They matched. 

So why in all the stars had the Lord asked him about a woman? Was he supposed to deliver the message to the mother? But his PC had indicated the boy? That’s when he noticed the text printed on the bottom of the card which for some reason had been printed upside down. He turned the card over in his hand so the printed text was legible then looked again at the World Code the Lord had written. 

Pharilk was an idiot.

The correct code was 6119866111889916 not 9669166881119986119. Too afraid to admit yet another mistake. Pharik threw the robe back on, Ported to the right world, and delivered his message to the proper woman. 

He finally made it back to his rooms exhausted and anxious. He sat down on the edge of his bed staring at the stupid card with the world code. He knew should tell the Lord of his error so a correction team could be sent, but even Pharik had never made a mistake this disastrous. He feared that look of disappointment in the Lord’s eyes. 

Instead, he ripped up the card, wiped the day’s memory from his PC, climbed into bed, and told himself that a single, strange interaction with an unknown god would do little to affect the life of a young boy let alone the course of a planet’s future. 

But Pharik had never been more wrong.