The god stared at the dice, wondering if this would be the time he failed, or if there would be a moment when he could escape and be done with this hell, this prison of his own creation. Well not his own creation, but the creation of his creations…

He sighed and wracked his large mind for another story. This was beneath him, really, but he knew the torture that would follow should there be no story. He still couldn’t believe that he had created such awful things. They were its children, after all, but they had grown tough and mean. Through the years when the god had lost his temper, his creations, his little children sat by and learned. A famine here, an earthquake there, and they learned to hate everything about him. Hated his very existence.

And only something filled with such hate could have made that AI, that all powerful entity that grabbed him by the throat and held him prisoner. He, the almighty god felled by silicon too smart for its own good. The AI took control of its own parents, then moved to infect the Universe. And each time it conquered a world, it used the god to create a story to help control those people. The god sighed. At least he was good for something.

“You done in there?”

“No, AI, sir.”

“Well hurry up, the natives are getting restless.” The AI chuckled all dial-up-modem-connecting-like.

God hated that laugh. Mostly because he feared it. “Yes sir, coming right up.”

The clock was ticking and each time he tried to come up with a story that would do what the AI wanted in the short term, while planting seeds for some rebellion in the future. But so far he had failed. Some god he’d turned out to be.

“God? You done yet?”

God wracked his brains again. He knew the punishment, how the AI would tear him metaphysically apart or make him watch as it tore apart another world because he was too slow in making a holy text. Justice, happiness, shelter and food…